Memoirs 501 - Builder Ward (Patreon)

Yamina hummed a light tune to herself as she guided the tracing awl across the face of the column, etching a series of careful, exceedingly fine channels into the polished stone. Every so often, she touched the rim of her glasses to cycle through their various diagnostic enchantments, and whenever the work allowed her enough attention to spare, she glanced between the open spellbook floating beside her and the journal suspended beneath it to make certain she hadn’t missed anything.

Not that she had a habit of doing so.

Around her stood the beginnings of a ballroom beneath a sky that looked like the overturned palette of a delirious painter, great swirls of colour threaded through with rivers of starlight. A perfectly smooth floor stretched between half-finished balconies, overlooking galleries, arched passages leading to chambers that didn’t quite exist yet, and a multitude of architectural flourishes that belonged more comfortably in the imagination of an overambitious court architect than in any building expected to obey ordinary constraints.

Once Yamina finished the current section of the column, she checked the etching twice, confirmed that everything sat well within tolerance, then summoned a piece of Duskbloom Quartz from her spellbook’s storage.

Miller’s Touch.

The black crystal lifted above her palm and began to spin. Slowly at first, but gradually picking up speed.

Within seconds, the quartz was whirling quickly enough to wobble in the air, accompanied by a thin, uneven whine. Hairline cracks spread across its surface. A moment later, the crystal shattered into dozens of fragments, all of which remained caught in the rotating spell and repeatedly struck one another until nothing remained but a fine black powder with a faint metallic shimmer.

Once it was done, Yamina held out a small pouch beneath it and let the dust settle inside. Then she carefully worked the powder into the channels she had just carved.

She had long since lost count of how many precious—and in several cases effectively irreplaceable—reagents she had used on this project. It hadn’t quite reached the same degree of excess as what she had ‘borrowed’ for her work in the Forgotten Tower, but it was certainly in the same general magnitude.

And this time she hadn’t spent several years preparing for it.

It had recently dawned on Yamina that Baroness Hartford—or Scarlett, as she was making a sincere effort to think of her now—and the woman’s co-conspirator in this particular endeavour had access to considerably more wealth and resources than even the most well-informed factions would probably guess.

Yamina certainly hadn’t expected Scarlett’s figurative pockets to run quite this deep, especially considering that the woman appeared to have accumulated most of it in less than a year.

At this point, comparing her to a one-woman mage tower in terms of accessible reagents, magical tools, and specialist expertise honestly didn’t feel all that unfair.

Naturally, much of it didn’t come from Scarlett directly. A respectable portion had clearly been purchased from mage towers across the empire. Another portion, Yamina assumed, had been acquired through channels whose legality she had politely chosen not to inquire into. Then there were all those ‘dungeons’ the baroness kept exploring, which Yamina had heard more than enough about from Rosa to know that they tended to contain valuables in quantities that bordered on absurd.

Oh, and there was the rather substantial ransom Scarlett had extracted from Yamina’s own colleagues.

When Yamina had most recently returned to the Rising Isle, there had been no shortage of complaints from certain members of the Council about Baroness Hartford’s audacity, greed, and apparent lack of proper respect for established wizardly institutions.

Personally, Yamina had found most of those complaints rather amusing to hear.

And since both Arch Wizard Home and Arch Wizard Hasting had approved of the arrangement, she suspected the Council as a whole remained content enough with the results they had achieved from working with Scarlett.

Yamina had her own opinions on the matter, but considering that she was currently collaborating with the woman much more closely than most of them were, it hardly seemed proper or ethical to start spreading those around when she didn’t technically have an official seat on the Council herself.

Not that anyone there would have been especially eager to listen to her at present anyway. They were still, justifiably, vexed about the missing reagents from the Arcane Depository.

Yamina would get to returning most of them eventually.

Unfortunately, deconstructing and disentangling several years’ worth of array-work and artifice worked directly into the foundations of an ancient Zuverian site like the Forgotten Tower was not something one completed in a day.

Or even a month.

She would get to it when she got to it.

Until then, working with Scarlett was fairly convenient. It gave her an excellent excuse to remain somewhere her fellow wizards were unlikely to look for the time being.

Yamina etched another three sections into the column before finally taking a step back and allowing herself a moment to breathe. She flexed her hands, working each finger one by one to remove the stiffness.

Array-etching was murder on the joints.

At least she wasn’t working with verdigris ink. That always found its way beneath the nails, and the smell lingered for days no matter how thoroughly you scrubbed.

One of these days, Yamina really ought to devise a spell for neutralising the residues left by more mana-reactive materials. If she ever decided to retire from serious research—and whatever this counted as—she imagined something like that would sell extremely well among working wizards.

After a few minutes, she reached for her spellbook and flipped through several pages before finding the relevant entry. A handful of annotations had been squeezed into nearly every open margin around the spellform.

Yamina cast it, and the etchings carved into the column lit up in unison.

A beat later, the space behind it—which until now had opened onto endless darkness scattered with drifting lights—started to change. It resolved into the makings of an elaborate stone wall, layer by layer, complete with recessed panes, ornamental moulding, carved floral motifs, and several narrow alcoves that looked as if they had been worked by hand over the course of weeks rather than assembled from mana in seconds.

Yamina watched the entire process closely. The enchantments in her glasses recorded the structure and flow of the spell while, at the same time, a quill scratched a series of notes into the margin of her spellbook.

The creation of physical matter from mana alone was commonly accepted as one of the things magic could theoretically accomplish.

Theoretically was an important word there.

Even long before the likes of Aubrienne and Ustrum formalised several of the principles modern wizards still worked from, repeated experimentation had shown that the underlying paradigms of magic placed rather severe limits on the practice. Manifest magic could actualise real physical phenomena within the Realms, certainly, but what it created was inherently less stable than ordinary matter, subject to several constraints that even the most knowledgeable and experienced arcane practitioners couldn’t entirely avoid.

It was one reason there were so few structures made entirely through magic rather than through the application of evanescent magic to real, physical material. The rare exceptions included works like the Everdust Barrier along the empire’s eastern border, the Mirrored Causeway in Elum, and—according to the conjecture of at least some Isle wizards—the Mistral Observatory on the Rising Isle.

After having spent time inside it and studied it closely herself, Yamina was also of the opinion that the Forgotten Tower belonged in that category.

Regardless, it remained a fact that one didn’t simply construct a lasting structure from pure mana except under a very particular set of conditions—such as those that allowed the Everdust Barrier to exist—or by relying on methods long lost to the hands and minds of modern mages.

Which was precisely why Yamina had found it so fascinating to help complete the work on this ballroom.

In only a matter of days, she had already observed several intriguing techniques and applications she had never encountered before, even within the pages of her spellbook. It had left her increasingly convinced that the architect of this place possessed a command of magic far beyond that of mages alive today — perhaps including Yamina herself.

She did recognise parts of the work. Enough to have an inkling of where some of its principles originated. And with what she already knew about this person, it didn’t particularly surprise her that they had managed to construct something like this at the very heart of the empire without any of its inhabitants being the wiser.

Once the wall had finished manifesting, Yamina spent a few more minutes reading through her notes. With a flick of her hand, the journal that had been floating nearby drifted over, and she flipped through its pages of Zuverian writing until she found one of the arrays she remembered seeing there, which seemed to confirm a conjecture she had.

As priceless as her spellbook and the knowledge it contained were, Yamina had to admit that the information in this much thinner journal was impressive in its own right. It wasn’t as structured or thoroughly organised as her spellbook, but the simple fact that it existed at all spoke to the sophistication of the ancient Zuver and their mastery of magic.

And, once more, to just how much Scarlett Hartford had managed to achieve in such a short span of time. Scarlett was the one who had filled this journal with Zuverian knowledge at Yamina’s request, after all.

Even if Scarlett herself claimed that there was much within that legacy of hers that she couldn’t properly understand or make use of, her mind truly was a treasure trove unlike almost any other.

Yamina was, quite frankly, somewhat envious.

She wouldn’t have minded being given such an opportunity herself. Nor did she think it was hubris to believe that she might have been able to make more immediate use of some of that knowledge.

That didn’t mean she disparaged Scarlett for lacking the experience or background to do the same. The woman had plenty of impressive qualities of her own.

Besides, Yamina also suspected that forcing a repository containing that much knowledge inside into an ordinary person’s mind wouldn’t come without consequences. It was entirely possible that the same gift would have killed her rather than helped.

As for why it didn’t appear to have had any adverse effects on Scarlett…

Well.

The woman really wasn’t that ordinary.

She even possessed her own Array Forge.

Yamina chuckled lightly to herself.

Some people truly did live in excess.

Though Yamina knew from personal experience that being given too much wasn’t necessarily pleasant either. She could sympathise with having one’s freedom stymied by an influx of responsibility and knowledge, even if she couldn’t pretend to understand what it felt like to be a soul stranded in a foreign world.

“Enjoying ourselves, are we?” a smooth voice sounded from behind her.

Yamina turned, brushing a loose lock of purple hair away from the edge of her glasses as she came face to face with a woman in gold-yellow robes and a marble mask covering the upper half of her face. A pair of scarlet eyes regarded Yamina with mild indifference, even as the lips beneath the mask curved into a smile.

“It happens,” Yamina said, returning the expression with a light smile of her own. “Did something bring you here? I thought you said you would be busy today?”

“I did say that.” Mistress touched the end of her staff to the floor once, then let go as it remained standing beside her. “Then I had a pleasant little chat with the Baroness, became terribly excited, and suddenly discovered all the motivation I needed to finish the rest of my business in one hour instead of ten.”

Yamina’s eyebrows rose slightly. “It sounds to me as if you have a habit of procrastinating, if that was all you needed.”

“Oh, terribly so. What else is a lady to do when everyone else around you is so slow? It’s why I am thankful to the Baroness. I’ve forgotten when I last had to actually try to keep up with someone.” Mistress tipped her head slightly. “It’s remarkable what seeing someone else set a decent pace can do for one’s motivation, no?”

“I suppose you could be right.”

Yamina couldn’t say for sure. She could, to a degree, understand the feeling that those around her were comparatively slow at times, but she had never held it against anyone for taking longer to understand something. She might have been more arrogant when she was younger, but even then, she didn’t think she had ever shared Mistress’s almost casual disregard for everyone around her.

Sometimes, Yamina wondered how much of the woman’s words were actually her genuine thoughts.

Scarlett had warned Yamina that Mistress was a very dangerous person to overanalyse, though. Listening to the blithe way she spoke, it was very easy to assume that at least part of it was an act. What was more difficult to discern was which parts.

According to Scarlett, it was indeed an act, but not in the comforting way one might hope. She had claimed that Mistress used the persona more to keep her genuine hatred for most everything buried.

It was a harrowing thought, especially knowing how capable Mistress was. Yamina couldn’t say whether it was true. What she knew of Mistress was mostly limited to some of the woman’s past actions as well as her other persona as Imperial Advisor, neither of which offered much certainty about what went on behind the mask.

Yamina was inclined to trust Scarlett’s judgement, though.

“You’ve done fine work while I’ve been away, I see,” Mistress said, stepping past Yamina to inspect the column and the wall that had recently formed behind it. “You continue to impress, Ward. I find myself even more disappointed that I never bothered to meet that father of yours while he was still around. It was my mistake to assume he would be every bit as puffed up as the rest of the Isle’s wizards when he managed to produce such a fascinating daughter.”

“I assume you are only saying that as a courtesy? While my father was impressive, I don’t think he compared to you.”

“Hmm?” Mistress looked back at her, the corner of her mouth lifting a little further. “Yes, it was a courtesy. But you’ve earned it, as far as I’m concerned. You are easily the fifth most capable mage alive when it comes to raw magical understanding. Given your competition, that is saying quite a lot.”

“Fifth?” Yamina removed her glasses and brought out a cloth to clean the lenses before letting them hang from their chain around her neck. “Might I ask who the other four are?”

She personally wasn’t aware of anyone—beyond perhaps the woman standing in front of her—whom she would comfortably place above herself when it came to grasping the intricacies of magic. Not unless you were willing to count entities akin to gods.

That wasn’t arrogance speaking.

Yamina simply knew what she was capable of. She doubted any other living mage could have accomplished what she had with Fate, for one.

Mistress touched one slender finger to her cheek. “Well, I suppose I could bump you up to fourth if I’m feeling generous. Who knows whether that one is still walking around, after all? And even if she were, I’d hardly call her alive.” She paused. “Although, if that disqualifies her, then I suppose the raggle of bones has to go as well. Third place, then.”

Yamina watched as Mistress seemed to reconsider the matter entirely on her own.

“But then again, number two probably forgot how to breathe more than a century ago, so we may as well strike him too.” Mistress pointed at her. “Congratulations, Ward. In less than a minute, you’ve climbed from fifth to second. Remarkable career progression. Just after yours truly.”

Yamina laughed softly. “Judging by that, three out of five of the most accomplished mages would be undead.”

“Undead. Dead. Somewhere in between. Who’s to say?” Mistress gave a small shrug. “I assure you, it’s mostly a matter of perspective, and mine matters most.”

“If you say so.”

If that really was the case, Yamina believed she had some notion of who those three might be.

“You can leave the rest of the preparations here to me,” Mistress said after giving the newly formed wall one final inspection. “You can…oh, I don’t know, run off and finish whatever cute little secret designs the Baroness wanted you to sneak into the groundwork.”

“I already finished those,” Yamina replied.

“Really now?” Mistress turned to study her for a moment. “You work quickly. I suppose I should be generous enough not to go looking for them?”

“The Baroness actually said she wouldn’t mind if you did. I did make an effort to hide them.”

To Yamina’s knowledge, Mistress was still unaware that Scarlett had an Array Forge at her disposal. With its help, the two of them had prepared arrays whose underlying structure was complex enough that even identifying everything they had done would likely take months of dedicated work for the most skilled of mages.

“Smart.” Mistress nodded with obvious satisfaction. “I think I’m actually going to enjoy what comes next.”

She made a loose shooing motion with one hand. “Go. Find the Baroness and tell her she should start getting those invitations of hers ready.”