Ends of Magic

The Heirs discussed their planned speeches late into the night, going through multiple outlines before practicing. Nathan and Khachi had both given plenty of dramatic battlefield speeches and possessed skills that enhanced their oratory. Social skills wouldn't influence others during the conclave, but they could still function internally to guide a speaker. None of the other Heirs had any social skills or much practice, and they struggled to provide much help, or even prepare snappy counters they could deliver at the end of a duel. Stella in particular stumbled over her words, protesting that she'd have a better response in the moment. Nathan encouraged her to keep thinking about it in idle moments. There was nothing for speaking off the cuff like knowing your points backwards and forwards.

Nathan had some trouble falling asleep afterwards, for many reasons. Partially, he was taking his own advice and going over his arguments ad infinitum, which probably wasn’t the best idea. There wasn’t a perfect answer for what to say, no magic words that would fix everything. But he kept searching for a turn of phrase that would be a bit better, that could, in some hypothetical scenario, be the edge between victory and defeat.

What he was really doing was avoiding the existential dread lurking at the edge of his awareness. He was on the edge of the abyss, and it would be soul-crushing to let himself feel the weight of the quite literally billions of people who would die if he messed up.

Eventually, he meditated to clear his mind, and then reflected on the wonders of Ostren. It was a beautiful place, with picturesue landscapes and exotic cities. If he had one critique, it was that the mortals here were too subservient to Questors. But then again, he’d only really interacted with the mortals in Questor-facing services. Most of the villages he’d flown over probably never saw any Questors. He drifted off to sleep while trying to piece together how those societies worked based on what he’d seen from above.

The next morning, Nathan and the Heirs met Sarya for a late breakfast in a cozy breakfast nook decorated with live trees growing from the walls. She started them off. “I’m your scheduler now, and Colborn is wrangling our delegates. What do you wish from the day?”

“I wanted to see the inside of the Arena,” Nathan prompted, sipping at a sweetened coffee-like drink and eating a pastry. “Beyond that, we just need some time to prepare, unless there’s anybody else you think we need to talk to. We could probably use some more feedback on our planned speeches.”

“Nobody notable, and feedback is easily accomplished,” Sarya said agreeably. “Aught else?”

“I want input from Kaelis on my words,” Stella added. “He spoke with magic, and this is his conclave.”

“Are there any more magical items I could get?” Aarl asked. “I’ve got quite a wealth already, but I don’t have many disposable weapons suited against specific builds.”

“I could do with practicing against various enemies in mock duels,” Sarah said.

Sarya considered their requests for a moment. “There's time in the afternoon, I’ll send some messages. For now, let’s go see the Arena of the Concord.”

They left the Golden Respite and walked towards the arena. The shadow of the giant mirrored sphere felt oppressive to Nathan, as if it were a massive boulder about to slip off its perch and roll down to crush them. The connection to the crest of the hill looked small from a distance, but that was only because of the huge scale of the building. There were enough entrances for thousands of people to funnel through at a time.

“Most of the Questors will arrive by Travelling into the city and then walking or flying into the arena,” Sarya explained.

They entered from the ground and were transported up into the massive sphere by a magical lift. The Heirs rode on the platform of force while Nathan followed along behind, jumping on the air inside the open shaft. They entered the main space, and Nathan gazed around at the space in wonder. The entire sphere was hollow, which he’d expected on some level. But it was a bit vertigo-inducing to see a perfectly spherical internal shape so large. It was like somebody had taken two Olympic stadiums, flipped one upside down, and pasted it atop the first. The seats up there were upside down, with gravity magic imbued into each seating ring so that everybody had a comfortable viewing angle and nobody had to crane their necks to see the center of the sphere. The stonework all around was plain and smooth, without the baroque excesses he’d come to associate with Questors. It looked like it had been carved by machine.

At the very center of the arena, equidistant from all of the seats, was a mostly translucent crystal platform. It looked hemispherical from here, though Nathan was having a difficult time judging distances because it was hard to get a frame of reference.

“How many seats?” Khachi asked from atop the plane of force that held the Heirs.

“A hundred and fifty thousand,” Sarya answered as she steered the platform with subtle hand motions, guiding it up towards the center of the sphere. "Though it's rare for it to be even half-full. We may achieve it, though."

The stage kept getting larger as they approached, and Nathan realized that it was several hundred feet across, not the fifty he'd first assumed. “That’s the arena?” He asked. “It seems a little far from the seats.”

“Davrar magnifies the speaker and the duels according to the choice of the viewer, providing a viewing or magnification window,” Sarya said, then proceeded to summarize a few other logistical things. Davrar would assert significantly more control over the arena during the conclave, controlling the platforms of force, tracking challenges, and moving people around to facilitate the event. It didn’t need to cut off anybody speaking. Instead, it just delivered challengers to them after the time was up. It would also decide which challenges were appropriate, picking a few it judged had the best chance of beating the speaker. Almost everything was optimized around keeping the conclave moving at a rapid pace, and having an unpopular speaker fight hundreds of duels was not helpful to that effect.

They reached the stage and walked across it, exploring the featureless crystal. Nathan scuffed his foot on the surface. Despite being transparent, it still provided a good grip to his feet. It looked a bit like solid crystal mana, but it wasn’t giving off any obvious signatures beyond a strange solidity in the aether. “What’s the stage made out of?” Nathan asked.

Sarya shrugged. “A material beyond wizardry. During the duels, this space is entirely enclosed in the crystal. It blocks all external effects and ensures the duels are fair.”

Nathan didn’t answer, and Khachi picked up the questioning, asking Sarya about which way the speaker should face. Nathan was busy sending his senses into the material. It wasn’t held up by any mundane magical effects, simply seeming to exist as a fixed point that was immune to external forces. The crystal was a solid object in reality but was divorced from most physical effects. Something like a boundary condition. The same seemed to be true in the aether, where it existed as a solid barrier that prevented the passage of magic or wizardry of any kind.