Dead Tired - Volume Four - Chapter Twelve (Patreon)

Chapter Twelve

“Study more,” she grumbled as she sat at her desk. There were books and scrolls heaped across it, some of those heaps being tall enough that they rivaled her own height when she stood up. Which was something she hadn’t done in... a while.

Other than getting a few hours of sleep and attending one or two short, mandatory meetings, her time has been spent glued to this chair. At least it had cushions. 

She was splitting her limited attention two ways. One part of that was dedicated to running the empire that she was splicing together from bits and bobs. The rest were spellbooks.

When she had told her Master she wanted to study more, she had expected a bit more one-on-one time with him, maybe to learn a couple more spells. Instead he had pulled out a small library of tomes from his pocket and buried her in them.

She was still trying to wrap her head around some of the basic theories the books taught, but it was giving her a headache.

And she didn’t use that as a metaphor. The complex weave of magic, forced into a semblance of something organized, then empowered through will and semantic ritual to create an actual spell was so complex that keeping it all in her head at once made her feel her heart beating inside of her skull.

Casting a simple spell, like Mage Hand, was easy to her now. She had been practicing a lot. But practice and study were different.

It was like... using a hammer a lot, and growing comfortable and good with the tool, familiar with its weight and how hard to strike and where, versus knowing how to make a hammer. There were even levels to that. 

She supposed that someone could go and buy some iron and a few bits of wood and assemble a hammer from those with a few tools. Taht was the surface level understanding of magic.

The heap of books were a lot deeper than that. 

It was more, to continue her own analogy, like spending years learning about geology to discover the best place to dig for raw iron, then learning how to smelt that iron into a bar, but first, also learning how to make the smelter and find the coal to operate it. 

Then for the wooden haft, knowing how trees worked, where to plant and tend and grow one from a seed to a fully grown tree only to harvest the wood for a handle which she’d carve for herself.

The end result was... a hammer.

The end result was always going to be a hammer, and she was quite certain that the hammer that was the product of thousands of hours of study was not much better than the one assembled from pre-made parts.

It did give her a much increased level of respect for her Master. Harold was a legend. When she poked into old archives, she could sometimes see the ancient traces he had left behind, and... it was a lot. More than that, though, he knew all of this. 

The things she was struggling to learn? They were things that had been discovered and codified and experimented and perfected a long, long time ago, and probably by her master.

To return to the hammer analogy, it was like... her Master hadn’t invented the hammer, but he invented the smelter to make the iron bars that were then combined with other metals to make the perfect material for a hammer head. 

Her headache was back.

There was a faint creak as the door into her office was opened. She glanced up, then smiled. “Hello, Alex,” she said. She knew that the door didn’t usually creak at all, so it had been a purposeful sound, to alert her that someone was entering quietly, but not while actually being so quiet that she didn’t know they were coming in.

She wondered if Alex knew as much about being a maid as Harold knew about being a god-killing archmage lich. 

“I brought tea,” Alex said as they swept into the room, moving without making so much as a whisper of noise. 

Behind the maid came Rem, who clittered and clattered across the floor, each step a loud snap. 

“Are you wearing shoes?” Fenfang asked.

“Stupid feet torture things,” Rem mumbled. 

“Rem is wearing appropriate footwear for a butler, yes,” Alex said while Rem followed behind, scythe arms folded awkwardly to hold onto a tray while she walked like... well, like a dog given shoes. Each leg was raised way up before coming down with a loud smack.

Fenfang decided not to comment, or laugh. She was confident in her magical skills, but not confident that Rem wouldn't cut her head off one day for making fun of her. “What kind of tea is it?” she asked instead.

“It’s a blend,” Alex said. “The taste won’t be up to usual standards, but it will help relieve headaches.”

“How did you know that I had a headache?” she asked.

“A maid knows,” Alex replied while they set a a tray onto one of the only free spaces on the table and started to lay out a small mid-evening snack. There were small puffs of something baked with jelly leaking out of them and of course a warm kettle with tea steaming out of it.

“The maid spies on you,” Rem said before levelling a look at Alex’s back. “Creep.”

“Ignore Rem, she’s testy because she doesn’t like her new footwear.”

“Stupid footwear,” Rem muttered.

Fenfang accepted a mug of tea and took a delicate sip. The warmth of is slowly sank down her chest and it felt like all sorts of things loosened up inside of her. The pounding in her head didn’t abate quite so easily, but she felt like someone removing a tight belt after wearing it all day long.

“Ah, this is good, thank you, Alex.”

“You’re very welcome,” Alex replied. “Are the studies coming along well?”

“Hmm, it’s like learning new math in a different language, but I think it is. Some of the books are confusing, but on re-reading them they make a little more sense. I think this is all supposed to be taught over years at a nice sect.”

“I don’t think wizards are taught in sects most of the time,” Alex corrected gently. “Though cults aren’t out of the ordinary. There’s a whole different set of maidly formalities when serving in a cult.”

Fenfang decided not to ask.

“What of your non-magical work?”

“That is coming along much better,” she said. “At least, I think. Tomorrow should be the day we open up the first portals in other cities to ordinary traffic. We’ll be allowing people in before we move materials out. It’s a lot of organization. Plus we had to see if sending merchant traffic out in the last few days would be worth the wait. And there have been several arguments about tolls and transportation taxes. We’re keeping things as low as we can while still charging something for the privilege.”

“Impressive,” Alex said.

“I hope so,” Fenfang said. “Starting tomorrow, we’ll see the first participants for the tournament show up as well. I’m a little nervous about it.”

“Oh?”

“What if no one shows up?” she asked.

“Then I suppose Miss Cinder will have an easy victory within her bracket,” Alex replied.

“I could take her,” Rem said.

“I’m more worried about the... well, reputational damages. The other side of things is scary too. What if too many people show up? This could be a disaster either way,” she said.

Alex walked a little closer, then slowly placed a hand on her upper back and started to rub circles. “It’ll be okay,” Alex said. “Trust in the Bone Father. He wants to see interesting fights, so interesting fights will happen.”

“Does he?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. Lots of people with interesting ways of doing things, and new magics? Or at least, new methods of using old magics. I think that Papa Master has spent a long, long time experimenting on all sorts of things, but not even he can have tried everything. Sometimes an idea is so bad that he would never think of it himself. That’s why people like you are important to him.”

“Wait... was that an insult?”

“No,” Alex said with complete certitude.

“Right... well, whatever. A snack, and then back to studying. I think I can knock out another few chapters before bed. But I do need some good sleep tonight. Tomorrow is going to be an action-packed day.”

“I’ll make sure you have clean sheets, and Rem can practice making beds. Isn’t that right, Rem?”

“Stupid beds. Just sleep on the floor, idiot.”

“Rem agrees,” Alex said as if Rem hadn’t just not done that.

Fenfang was beginning to wonder how much she could trust Alex’s judgement about certain things.

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