Book 3 Chapter 13.5: Refined Conversation
Book 3 Chapter 13.5: Refined Conversation
++Looking back on it, I really did put a lot of effort into the oil business. Then again, it put a lot of funds into my plans.++
- From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, ‘The Great Lich’. 1,891 A.E.
Flying lessons—self-taught lessons at least—occupied much of my time, and I was making steady progress with them.
Twice more I ended up landing in the oil fields, and one of those times resulted in another submergence. Fortunately, it is virtually impossible to beat a diligent magician in the same way twice. This time I was so quick in using my secondary shield trick to escape that I felt cool air on my face before my lungs even had the chance to start throbbing.
Now I was able to stably hover, as well as provide rapid thrust when needed. My only issue was steering. As before, I made several attempts at working out a solution for this. The first was wings.
No. Not even close, a horrid idea. Fortunately I knew better than to try and attach my aetheric wings to my own body, that would very likely have torn me in half the moment I attempted a high-speed turn, but it was not much better that I affixed them to my shield.
The level of force I could produce with magic now was considerable. Stone was not much of an obstacle anymore, period, and even good-quality steel was something I demanded in quantities measured in inches to even impede me. Turned to accelerating me through the air, this magical power was such that my speed was best measured in tens of times a horse's.
So it did not matter that my wings were not directly connected to my body, simply catching the air with one while moving at that speed was a disaster in and of itself.
The first time I did it, I was snatched clean around so rapidly that I blacked out and tasted blood in my own mouth. I did not experience what happened next, I only regained consciousness after landing, but was told by witnesses after the fact that I had literally torn my aether construct apart with the deceleration.
Subsequent efforts were not much better.
If I made my wings too small, they simply did not catch enough of the air to turn me at any appreciable speed. I could see an object looming thousands of feet ahead and still not veer to avoid it in time.
Make them too big, and I was simply repeating the G-force problem and subjecting every blood vessel in my body to an impromptu durability test.
Eventually I caved in and requested Sethira’s advice, though soon found she was just as stumped as me.
“I wouldn’t have thought it was even possible to do this with our level of power,” she admitted. “You’re sure that Bagran fellow could?”
“Yes,” I assured her. I had gone out of my way to verify while in Garamon, and the Voret family’s flight was a widely recognised secret of theirs. In fact, it had remained secret for over two centuries. That itself implied something interesting and untoward was being done behind the scenes to keep the spell from leaking out, though I did not have the time nor inclination to investigate for now.
“Well…” Sethira seemed to be giving it some thought. “Did he use aether that you saw of?”
“He did not,” I confessed. “Though I cannot imagine how he achieved this without doing so.”
“Maybe that’s your problem then,” she suggested. “Maybe instead of trying to force it with what you’re more familiar with, you should take a step back and focus on how he might have achieved it through means you’re not.”
It was simultaneously satisfying, thrilling and somewhat annoying to be given such good advice. I only wished I had thought of it myself.
But it also left me, essentially, back to square one.
While I worked at this, I was kept occasionally inconvenienced by the need to approve some course of action or other in the refinery’s construction. I had anticipated this, and dreaded it. It was the very reason I had never, as Sakhent once did, styled myself as any sort of sorcerer king. Direct leadership was simply too time consuming.
On the other hand, this was necessary. I could not gain direct control over just about anything with Garamon’s view on women, but I was, fortunately, permitted to own property. Which meant I could own capital, and that was the strongest force in Garamon except for magic itself.
And of course, I was still working on magic itself.
By the time the main structure of the refinery was finished, I had started experimenting with a secondary spell matrix made to keep my body from being rocked by the winds generated by my own flight. By the time the refinery’s interior was being finished, I had managed to bind my spells to the constantly-banished gravitational force in order to use it as a source of constant direction.
Propulsion and guidance, those were my weaknesses. I needed to move myself forward at speed without leaving myself unable to control the vector of that speed. Cancelling air resistance took mana, mana that could otherwise be used to accelerate myself even faster. The greater the drag force, the more power was needed to banish it. I was no longer able to move faster than the speed of sound with my current power, an imperfection that bothered me.
But on the other hand, discarding wind meant that I could afford to move around without sending myself spinning uncontrollably off-kilter. And I still had enough mana to adjust course directly, nudging myself one way or another with deliberate pulses of force.
Not good enough.
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This is where I took advantage of my own natural leg-up. Or, as Sethira put it, ‘cheated’.
For most magicians, working out precisely how the several spell matrixes I was now juggling interacted with one another would involve lengthy study, calculation, and no small amount of dumb guesswork. I had a simpler path: simply looking and watching. Sometimes I think my eyes are more powerful than the rest of my talents combined.
I could not track wind currents, but what I could track was the magic that went into cancelling them out on contact. With effort, I could make magic that tracked that in other magic. Mana can do virtually anything after all, the only limit is target and direction. I could see this, which meant I could pinpoint it, and that meant time was the only separator between me and doing it.
The good thing about having hundreds of subordinates diligently working away to achieve my goals, of course, was that I had an abundance of time.
Days turned to weeks. I continued my diligent practice of raw mana to ensure my strength continued growing, I oversaw the continued work, and I further perfected my new technique. On the day of my final breakthrough, the refinery itself had been completed already for a good seventy-two hours and was almost ready to begin use. A more superstitious mind would have considered this fate.
I was preoccupied with other, more sophisticated thoughts however.
“Sethira,” I called down to the ground twenty paces below me. “Look at what I can do!”
Sethira did look, and though the distance between us was great, I could still see the expression of disbelief mixed with abject jealousy blossom on her face.
“I can fly,” I called. “Can you fly? No, because you are an idiot.”
Sethira stormed away, and I was left to enjoy the satisfaction of seeing her tantrum. It was shocking how immature an ancient lich could truly be.
What was even more shocking, though, was how the air felt. I was used to flight of course, as Lord Dread. This was my first experience of the skies as Isabel Vornholt. I could not have even begun to imagine how it would feel.
The wind was hitting my face, and the brief moment between that and my magic banishing its effects was beyond description. I could feel my hair whipping and quivering behind me, experienced my stomach surging with every turn. It was a freedom beyond freedom and a joy beyond joy.
It was enough to leave me thinking back to Sethira’s words about the pleasures of mortality. Even I was forced to consider that I may, in fact, have been…less than entirely correct.
By the time I landed, my thoughts had re-ordered themselves and the thrill of my flight was starting to subside. Had I been giggling up there? Perhaps Sethira was starting to rub off on me, now there was an unpleasant thought.
I was barely one second on the ground before Alira rushed over with eyes bright. She looked better now than she had when I first reunited with her those months ago, re-energised and practically glowing with new life. Full lips, bright eyes, hair tousled and chocolate-coloured. Her clothing was far less practical and far more encouraging of the imagination, too.
“Are you listening?” she asked me.
Ah. I had not been, something distracted me. Perhaps flight was a bit over-stimulating.
“No,” I replied. “Repeat what you just said?”
“I said that this is amazing,” Alira replied. She still sounded pleased, apparently too thrilled by my innovation to care much about my concentration.
“Of course it is,” I noted. “I did it.”
She just laughed at that. “How’d you even do it?”
I almost hesitated. Like anything else done through my unique vision, this was a spell I could simply not explain.
“I am simply a genius,” I told her.
The next day, the refinery was up and running, and a week after that we had a sizable batch of oil extracted from the ground and made usable in lamps or other such things. But that was only half of the battle, what I needed just as much was a buyer.
And this was where things became more difficult, because though oil was a growing industry, and Poloira in general home to a great many opportunities, I found it hard to find anyone willing to do business with me. I knew well enough why that was now.
But I also knew that greed was as strong an emotion as dumb traditionalism had ever been. Perhaps some avenues would always be closed off to me, but not all. I let my prices be known and sent out feelers, and sure enough it did not take too long for me to receive several offers to meet with various men of property.
Some I corresponded with via letter, a few I met in person. Of those, one was my real target. Martin Ryol, a mine-owner with quite a profitable, expanding business. Profitable and expanding mines meant he needed an ever-greater source of oil to fuel his lamps, and I was hoping to be the one to provide it.
His place of work was a good sixty miles from my oil refinery, but I covered the distance in less than ten minutes. Flight truly is among the most useful abilities, not just in combat. Speed limits are quite a bit higher in the air than they are on land.
If Ryol was impressed to see me descend and land before his house, he kept the fact to himself. I was invited inside, seated opposite him and quickly engulfed in conversations regarding business.
“Let’s make this quick, ma’am,” he said abruptly. “I have other appointments scheduled today.”
He did not like me, I suspected. It likely had something to do with characteristics determined while my cells were still multiplying in my mother’s womb. Fortunately I had not come here to be liked, I had come here to be rich.
“I can offer you high-quality petroleum oil at a price of three bills per two barrels.”
He inhaled sharply and tried to pretend he had not. That offer translated roughly into point-zero-five crowns per barrel, the industry standard was sixty-five pennies—twenty percent more.
Nothing gets a man’s attention like the thought of profit.
“Why would you be selling so cheaply?” he asked, suspicion taking over as he thought about it.
“I have new refining methods,” I told him. Which was true. “And I need money fast. My father wants this business founded shortly.”
“Your father?” he asked.
“I’m running this on daddy’s account, of course,” I smiled and fluttered my eyelashes the way the drooling morons of this age tended to like so much. “Oh, don’t tell me you thought I was in charge of everything? Gosh, I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
I wanted to throw up, but I wanted to make money even more, and I could see progress coming.
Fortunately, Ryol did not take much convincing. People rarely do when they are staring down the best deal of their lives. “How much can you provide?” he asked.
“Thirty thousand barrels to begin with, then another thirty thousand per week.”
His smile was like a crescent moon.
“You’ve got yourself a deal.”