Chapter 655 – Your Plan Is Done
The White Pantheon project that was Grand Arcadia, under review, serves for no purpose other than to drown Elassa in so much meaningless bureaucracy that she becomes impotent outside of her enclosure. It was not a gift, it was a prison. Anyone with working eyes should be able to see that. The mandate that no magician be allowed out if they did not have fluency in their subject was not an uplifting of generations of magicians, it was bringing them all down to the level of the lowest common denominator. In a way, if we look at it from that perspective, it was masterfully designed. I am certain it came from the combined minds of Helenna and Allasaria working together to defeat a common foe.
Elassa has always professed to be a teacher, not an educator. In that sense, I would go even a step further. She is not a teacher, she a tutor of arts. There is no better way to magic than it is to have sessions in small groups with Elassa. Anassa herself is the prime example of what happens when Elassa sees so much potential in a person, that she whimsically dismisses her own work, takes on a favourite, and then proceeds to feed them so much knowledge and esoteric theory that they eventually ascend into Divinity.
And the Anassa phenomenon is not scalable whatsoever. Elassa practically disappeared from the world when she was tutoring Anassa, all Of Magic’s attention was spent on Anassa. Yet there is another side to the coin, there is no better teacher individually than Elassa, there is no worse teacher for the masses than Elassa. She sees talent, she proceeds to enable talent, and she leaves everyone else behind. Mistakes are only tolerable as long as the mistakes do not slow one down. The War College of Arcadia produced the greatest generations of Archmages, and those generations numbered no more than a few hundred every few dozen years. A National War College of Magic, before the Great War, was lucky to a pair of wizards or witches that could go toe-to-toe with an Arcadian thoroughbred every century.
Elassa, viewed from this fashion, is not difficult at all to deal with. She needs to be assigned a task, and she will complete that task eventually. Once there are no more tasks to do, she simply needs to provided her small cohort of mages, and then she will enjoy her time teaching them. To give her bureaucracy is to punish her, oversight to her is akin to having a neighbour stick a camera in one’s bathroom. And Elassa will simply keep on tutoring, writing and researching, at her own pace, until she is called upon once again.
One can tell she was formed at the Worldbreaking. She is the Goddess of Magic, and she is thoroughly done with providing magic for the world.
- Excerpt from the private writings of God Arascus, of Pride.
Elassa twisted her hands at the dome before her as she poured more power into the enchantments. The ignition of Ashen Skies wasn’t a feasible solution, so the ritual circle had been taken. She had told Arascus, apparently, he would handle the materials as long as she would handle the magic.
And now, in the same Skunkworks that had once been used to transmute ash into diamonds, Elassa was practicing. An audience of magicians was by her side, the scientists had been sent back to their labs in Doschia. At this point, atomic theory, as interesting as it was, had nothing to add when the topic was the sheer impossibility Arascus was asking for.
A simple rune of transmutation once again began to fray and bend and twist under the forces of the ritual it was powering. It was as if someone had taken their thumb and simply began to smudge the delicate runic circuitry Elassa had drawn. The audience of mages began to take notes, Elassa could track herself, but this was too important an event to be slowed down by embarrassment. Thirty extra pairs of eyes may catch something she did not.
The door swung open. Arascus again, he made these trips to Arcadia every few days at this point. Elassa felt the howling wind come in before the guards closed the door. Outside, the skies of Arcadia rumbled as mages twisted hurricanes and tried to contain them into the sizes of domes. The next generation of magicians would be a different class compared to the jesters of Pantheon Peace, but those were still a few months off before they were ready for combat. The Goddess of Magic, in her traditional blue robes, her fingers adorned with rings of the precious, pristine diamonds she had transmuted herself from the ash, felt his presence next to her.
She did not care whatsoever. He would see her fail, she knew it already. The diamonds glowed a brilliant, blinding light, as if the very stars had come to affix themselves to her earrings, her rings, and the catalysts that were sewn into her dress so that they could always act as gateways for her body. The transmutation circle glowed brighter, its colour shifted from the controlled light blue to a darker shade, she felt the channels of magic slipping from her control like fences being swept away by a flood.
There was no explosion, no sound, nothing, the runes simply shifted to unrecognizability and then powered down. Elassa cut off her flows before she channelled more power into the empty air around her. Pens and pencils rapidly scribbled on notepads from the audience, outside, lightning and fire roared. Inside, Elassa felt her spirit roar as she stared at defeat once again. “It’s impossible.” She spoke before Arascus did. “Or it may not be impossible, but it will require a re-writing of how we do ritual magic. How quickly do you want it done? That’s the harder question.”
“As soon as possible.” Elassa’s reply was a flat glare. She was a magician, not an engineer. There wasn’t such a thing as “as soon as possible” in this domain. Something could either be done according to the rules of Magic, or it could not.
A third-thousand mile ritual, a curved ritual to top it off, was something that had not been even theorized. A thousand mile ritual had never been done. The God was asking for impossibility that shattered the known ceiling not by levels but by magnitudes. “I cannot change the shape of the world.” An engineering problem simply needed more materials and time. This was not that. “A ritual is flat or close enough to. Arda is not.” She stared at the enchantments, waved her hand, the diamond rings on her fingers flashed and the embodiment of impossibility on that half-sphere was wiped away. “I have tried already. Even with minor circles, the only way it works is if we decide to combine rituals.”
Arascus was not stupid thought, neither was she. “Tens or hundreds of thousands?” He asked.
“At the scale of a planet, millions even. I’ve not done the maths.” Elassa said and Arascus sighed.
“A pillar enchantment then.” He said. “Up and down.”
“Do you know how much power that would take?” Elassa asked.
“You will have Kavaa’s healing throughout it. Every mage in the Empire can serve in a communion.”
“I’m questioning whether there’s ever been enough mages in the whole world for that.” Elassa asked. She looked around the hall. The presence of the burns at the far end had been finally cleaned away, most of the diagrams remained. A bookshelf stood with modern atomic theory. Elassa had been using her authority to request the most modern of books to read on her recovery breaks. Anything that gave her more awareness gave her more to manipulate.
Arascus stared at the sphere, her took a step forward, past Elassa, hands behind his back, then looked down at her training grounds. It wasn’t large, a man lying on the ground would be the diameter. But she wanted to see what he would say and propose. An outside perspective always helped. It was Anassa’s outside perspective on magic that had formalized sorcery into its own school after all. The Emperor stood there and thought, his brows creased. “A ritual has to be flat.”
“Flat enough.” Elassa said. “There’s leeway, it’s an art, not a science.”
“And it has no size limit?”
“Well it has now.”
“I meant in theory.”
“If we have instant communication, I could manage it.” That, she wasn’t even certain of. But Arascus was building an impossible structure at her behest, she would do an impossible feat of organisation at his. The audience kept on scribbling any faults they had seen in the incantation and the example Elassa had just given. At least the effort had not been useless, this level of working together had already revealed a way that rituals could be optimized, one of the students who was on here as a reward had spotted that.
“Can a ritual be moved?” Arascus asked. Elassa had to think about the answer. It was too general. Can a ritual be moved? Could a man with no legs move?
“What do you mean? Can it project differently?”
“Could you put a ritual on a train car for example?” Oh. He was actually talking about the physical, real, material moving of the enchantment that activated it.
“Of course.” She said. “We’ve done it on ships.” How different was a ship to a train?
“What of this then?” He asked. A golden sphere came out of the air, a huge steel sickle slid out of it, handle first. He held it as if it was a feather and nothing more. Arascus put the sickle around the half-sphere, then moved it up and down. “A ring around Arda, that is your flat surface.” Elassa stared at it. Could it work? Why couldn’t it?
She stared at him. “Are you proposing we cast the ritual from space?”
“I am.”
“You’ve not gotten a man into space yet, much less magic. Does magic even work in a vacuum?” Arascus turned back to Elassa, those dark eyes closed as he took another breath.
“I do not know Elassa.” He said, for once, he sounded utterly exhausted. “Does it work when not on Arda? It is native to here? Tartarus and Paraideisius don’t use magic as we know it, so how should I tell you that?”
“I don’t know either.” Elassa said. She nodded to the ring. “How long would that take to build?”
“Ten years at least.” Arascus said. “Add another five for a space project.”
“We do not have that much time.”
“No.” Arascus said. Paraideisius was not in the war yet, they would not be in tomorrow, but next month? Next year? Maybe. Ten years? Definitely. He pursed his lips and opened his eyes. “Then your project is cancelled.” Elassa’s eyes went wide, her mouth fell open for a moment. It wasn’t even a humiliation, she had not thought it possible anyway. It was just… That easy? They weren’t going to spend a century battering their heads against a brick wall? They would just cut losses and move on?
It was incredible that the God of Pride somehow managed to surprise her even after all this time. Where was his pride? Why wasn’t he going to be stubborn? Now she wanted to do the planetary ritual circle! Just to prove him wrong! “Just like that?” She asked.
“Just like that.” Arascus said. “I have consulted with Kassandora and Iliyal. There is another way.”
Now that was a humiliation. “What do they know of magic?”
“They know of warfare.” Arascus said. “We do not cast the ritual from outside, we cast it from within. The same style of enchantment as is done for warding barriers, but changed into transmutation rather than repelling, can that be done?”
Repelling wards into transmutation ones? Elassa stared at the God of Pride. She had never heard such a stupid, useless idea. That was the magic of Pantheon Peace. What was even the purpose of such a thing? Could it be done? Probably? Why couldn’t it? “Ahh…” Elassa had to blink and shake her arms to awake from sheer stunning befuddlement he had just thrown upon her. “I think so?”
“You think so?”
It had to be said in a language he would understand. “Can a king sleep in a peasant’s house?” Arascus looked at Elassa for a moment, he blinked at the question.
“Why? Is he running from something?”
“You have your answer.” Elassa said. “Why would anyone do that?” Arascus turned to the sphere.
“When has anyone faced Ashen Skies before?” And there was the answer. It was a useless enchantment for a problem that existed only in the minds of people that Elassa did not allow into positions of leadership. She watched Arascus turn, the red cape on his back swaying as he looked at the sphere. A dozen golden portals appeared around it, daggers slid out. Pristine blades that caught and glinted even in the artificial lamps that were used to light the skunkworks. They turned the circle into a porcupine.
“Warding towers, we have forty miles built of the thirty-thousand mile ritual circle. That can be repurposed.”
“You have it built already!?”
“The start of it.” Arascus said. “Those can serve as your towers. A warding network, in the same style that is used to protect fortresses. Save for the fact that it will not be protecting, it will be passively transmuting everything around it.” Elassa blinked at the sheer gall of the idea. She could see Kassandora’s fingers all over it. It was just as when the woman had managed to integrate magicians back into society after Worldbreaking by proposing national war colleges. Arcadia had been the first to buy into the script, every nation needed to follow. It was the most unmagical process possible.
And then she realised what was truly being proposed. “You mean you want to build towers under Ashen Skies? How?”
“That is my field to deal with.” Arascus said. “Can this style work? Can it work like a fortress ward? With a commander? Will it form a web?” Elassa thought of the artisanry involved. The hardest issue with magic was always finding the purpose of a structure. Once a purpose was found, then it was just a matter of arranging all the pieces in the right way. And this? A transmutatory ward? It wasn’t even complex arts. Wards could be powered to increase their range. Transmutation could easily be done in mass. What was difficult about it? She blinked, then stared at Arascus.
There was no doubt, not a single shred of evidence, that she was the better magician of the two. She was the incarnation of the subject. He was just the God of Pride. But that was the issue, he was the God of Pride, and he seemingly knew how to integrate her subject into the real world far better than anything she did. “How large could a range be?”
“I don’t know. We would have to build a prototype and test it.” Elassa said.
“Then we shall. Will it require millions though?”
“No.” That was certain. A tower could cover in all directions, it would cover in all directions. When they were synced up, they could spread their effect out even further. “Thousands at the most.”
“Thousands or tens of thousands?”
“Thousands.” Elassa said. That was the rough estimate in her head. A city required no more than a few orbs. If he was talking about entire towers… “Maybe in the teens, definitely not more than twenty.” But the desert was grand.
“Can we get the number down to hundreds?”
“If you don’t want to cover all the Sassara.”
“We do.” Arascus said. “We have to find, isolate and close every portal they have before dropping the FP1-N.”
“And that is?”
“Our extermination bomb.” Arascus said, he turned and began to walk out. “Get to work. We handle the logistics, you handle the magic. We’ll have a tower ready for you soon. Make it grand.”