45: Arcane Dampening
Liam
A gentle rocking motion moved Liam from side to side. He briefly had a vision of a smiling face looking down at him. A woman who filled him with a profound sense of warmth as he looked up at her. Also a profound sense of loss for some reason he couldn't explain.
He blinked. The woman was gone, but the rocking was still there and his back felt uncomfortable. There was something pressing into it, poking him in multiple spots.
“Oh good. You're finally awake.”
Liam almost wanted to go back to where he'd been. To that smiling face looking down at him and filling him with a warmth that went beyond any comfort he'd ever felt before. Even the nights when he and Andrea would lie together by the fire. Back when they were young enough that sort of thing didn't excite any sort of comment from the adults around them.
He turned and he saw a cat sitting there on a bench on the other side of what looked like the interior of a coach. There was a shaft of light that came from the back and sides of the thing that illuminated it a little, bathing the interior in twilight.
"Where am I?" Liam asked, and he felt a slight pain in his gut. He moved a hand down and felt at that spot, running his fingers lightly over where he'd taken a punch from that armored Inquisitor.
"The bastard," Liam muttered, and then his eyes went wide. Because he also remembered the last thing he'd seen before that fist connected with his gut.
"Where’s Ana?" he asked, turning to Albert.
The cat merely sat there licking a paw, his tail swishing.
"Well, isn't this interesting?” Albert said.
"What?" Liam said, his eyes narrowing. He got the feeling he wasn't going to like whatever the cat was about to say to him. He was relieved to see the cat made it out of the cottage, but he also knew he wasn’t going to like whatever the cat was about to say.
"You were so eager to go off and get in a fight with a group of Inquisitors who you should’ve been able to take on easily if you knew even a fraction of the spells I gave you."
"You're still going on about this?" Liam said, sighing and rolling his eyes.
"Yes," Albert hissed, "I am still going on about this. You are my grand experiment. The last thing I need is for you to go off and get yourself killed by a bunch of Inquisitors, of all things. Do you have any idea how utterly wasted you would be on these idiots? They weren't even a threat back when I was around, let alone now.”
"I just want to know what happened to Ana," he said.
“I’m quite alright as well, thank you,” Albert said, still licking his paw.
“I… I’m sorry,” Liam said after a moment. “I was worried about you as well.”
“I’m sure you were,” Albert said in a dry voice that told Liam how much he believed him.
“How did you get in here, anyway?” Liam asked.
“The damned cottage collapsed around us when I found Ana. She… pulled me out of a pile of what I can only assume was your stuff before the collapse, and then some damned Inquisitor was grabbing me by the scruff of the neck and no amount of clawing could convince him to let me go. They tossed me in here with you, and now here we are.
“I feel bad for the Inquisitor who grabbed you,” Liam said.
“I don’t,” Albert said.
Liam rubbed at his stomach and felt something settling down in the pit of his stomach that was different from any feeling he'd ever had before.
He'd had disagreements with people around Baron Riven's farm. He’d gotten into scuffles with some of the boys in the village. He’d felt the thrill of the hunt when he was out going after scourgelings.
But at no point in any of those hunts, in any of those fights, had he ever felt a personal anger towards any of the people he was fighting. The scourgelings were just doing what scourgelings did. The village boys were just doing what village boys did, for that matter.
But this was personal.
"They clapped her in some sort of irons, didn't they?" he said.
"They clapped her in irons, yes," Albert said. “Made of the same material as your felblade. Arcane infused fel iron. Meant to negate her demonic powers and prevent her from being able to use her wily magics to overpower their senses and kill them."
Liam squeezed his eyes shut. He let out a long and slow sigh.
"Can she do that?"
"If they think she can do that, does it make any difference as to their reasoning if it ends with her being clapped in irons regardless?” Albert asked.
"How do we get out of here?" Liam asked.
He stepped forward, stooped over because there wasn’t enough room in the coach interior for him to stand up completely. He looked down and was surprised to realize he didn't have any sort of shackles on him.
"Why am I not contained?" he said.
"Well, that's simple enough," Albert said. "Why don't you think of a simple illumination spell?"
"A simple illumination spell?" Liam asked.
"This is going to get very tiresome if you have to repeat everything I say back to me," Albert said. "I'm looking for a grand experiment that challenges the very foundation of how we think the world works. I'm not looking for a creature that can repeat everything back to me. If I wanted that then I would’ve gotten an exotic bird from the southern climates."
"Right," Liam said, figuring he was going to play along with the asshole cat for the moment if it meant he would get help out of here.
"So now that you've decided you're interested in my help, why don't you go ahead and take that help?" Albert said.
"You're acting like an asshole. You know that, right?" Liam said.
"I'm a cat," Albert said, continuing to lick his paw and then wipe it across the top of his head. "Of course I'm an asshole. It's in my nature."
"Something tells me it was in your nature even before you were transformed into a feline familiar," Liam said.
"Sticks and stones, my grand experiment," Albert said. "Sticks and stones."
Liam thought of a simple illumination spell. Something like a ball of light that would hover over his hand. He'd read about that kind of spell in the stories about people from the Academy going on adventures. They never said how the spell was created, only that it was possible to create it.
He wasn’t sure how else to access the spells, so he thought of it. And sure enough, a diagram appeared in front of him. It seemed simple enough. He frowned as he concentrated on it, trying to focus on the diagram and how to use mana to fill it in.
It required all of his concentration. It reminded him of when he'd first started learning how to draw so many years ago. It was as though his hand didn't want to go where his brain was telling it to move for all that he had a picture in his mind and it seemed like it should be easy enough to translate the picture in his head to the paper in front of him.
Only it hadn't been close to being that easy, and now here he was doing the same thing, only the power that held the world together was his medium and the air in front of him was his canvas. He tried to move the mana, and it wobbled as he tried to paint with it.
"That's not quite right,” Albert said.
Liam reached out and grabbed the cat by the scruff of his neck. Though surprisingly, he felt like he was missing some of the strength he'd had before his Ascensions. Though he was still more than able to manhandle the familiar and pull him up so he was just to the side of the diagram in front of him that he was trying to fill in.
"I'm trying to concentrate."
"Well, you're doing it wrong," Albert said.
Liam sighed, and he lost his concentration again. Which caused a bit of the mana brush in his mind, that's how he thought of it for all that he had no idea if that's what it actually was, to go off course.
He winced as the diagram in front of him started to glow. It wasn't nearly as complicated as the Slow Fall diagram he'd worked on, but it was still a spell diagram he’d messed up and mana was flowing into it through his body.
He held his breath, wondering if it was going to explode in front of him like the spell back at the tower. He wondered if he’d be survive it, or if this was going to be it. If Ana was going to be taken captive and there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing he could do to try and save her.
Only it sputtered a few times, the mana pulsing, and then it went out entirely with barely a squeak, let alone a massive explosion that took out the coach all around him.
He looked to the window in the back to the bars blocking him, and he thought he sensed a faint buzzing coming from those bars.
"What happened?" Liam said.
"That would be why they haven't clapped you in arcane dampeners, the same as they put your demon girlfriend in fel iron to keep her from using any magic against them."
"She's not my girlfriend," Liam muttered, though the idea did send a thrill running through him.
"Of course she isn’t,” Albert said.
"So they have some sort of material that's designed to keep me from being able to use magic."
"It's something that dampens your ability to use the arcane, yes," Albert said. "The stuff is fabulously expensive to make and maintain, but if there’s any group of assholes out in the world who would put together a coach that has spell dampening material all through it, it would be the Inquisition."
"Why would they even bring something like that out here if they were expecting a demon?"
"Because nobody expects the Inquisition," Albert said. “And one of their chief weapons is surprise. Part of that surprise is keeping people guessing as to exactly what they're capable of, up to and including keeping an arcane dampening wagon at the ready in case they run into a mage who’s causing them trouble.”
"Damn," Liam said. He looked around and saw a bench against the back wall. He sat down on it, and immediately regretting it because suddenly a bunch of splinters moved up through his pants and poked at his ass. That had him moving up just a little.
"Still, it's odd," Albert said. "You shouldn't be able to manhandle me like you just did if you're surrounded by an arcane dampener."
Liam looked at the bars again, and then he walked over to them. He reached out to touch them, and he tried to pour all the strength that he possibly could into pulling them aside. And he realized that the strength was definitely still there.
Only it felt odd. He closed his eyes and reached within. Felt at the two cores. Only there was something wrong with the arcane core. It felt less. Like something was dimming it within him. He could feel the bars pushing at his arcane core more directly as he touched them, and the coach all around him pushing at it more passively, as well as the fitful weak push back from that core.
He also imagined that somebody with sufficient strength, far beyond the two Ascensions he'd reached, might be able to reach into that arcane core and blast these arcane dampeners away.
Only he couldn’t. So his arcane core was dim within him. He didn’t like that feeling.
That was only one of his cores, though.
"My infernal core," Liam said.
"What's that?" Albert asked. And then his eyes went wide as he came to the same sudden and dawning realization that Liam just had. The cat started to laugh, shaking his head and swishing his tail in amusement.
"Looks like those bastards in the Inquisition are going to be the ones on the wrong end of a surprise for a change," he said in between spluttering laughs.