Chapter 36:

  Fellguard, those imperial lapdogs. All the members of the guard-end houses – the Fellguards, the Wrathguards, and the Foreguards to name a few – were so desperately loyal to the Families they’d probably sell their own children for a chance to lick an imperial boot. It made sense that the youths of the Fellguard family were the ones entrusted with such precious shipments. Eli probably should have been focusing more on the strategic importance of having this information, however the truth was that outside of maybe tracking more shipments, these pathetic, loyal hounds were useless as a source of information for him.

  When the 1st Invasion happened, they had been caught just as off guard as everybody else. Despite happily dropping to their hands and knees to act as stepping stools for the Families, their imperial handlers never bothered to inform them just who they were really taking orders from. In fairness to them, even members of the Family’s direct lineages hadn't known the true source of the unique tools and power they had been given. In fact, Eli would bet a significant sum that these two had no idea what they were transporting, only that it was so important they had been placed under a geas.

  Of course, once the wars began almost all of the guard-ends had sided with the invaders, so he felt neither sympathy for their ignorance, nor guilt at learning their secrets. He would focus on learning as much as he could about this so-called ‘phase beyond mana expansion’. It was the older one speaking now, and inside his small pocket dimension, Eli listened.

  “You already know you should expand your channels as well as your pool, right?”

  “Yeah, my father explained about widening your mana channels for better flow,” the younger one responded.

  “Right, but a mistake people make is not condensing before they expand,” the older one said, dropping some of the pomposity as he warmed to the instruction.

  “What do you mean ‘condense before you expand?”

  “Oh, they probably don’t teach this to the lower houses,” the older one stated. Eli might have scoffed, if he hadn’t been so focused on playing dead in a spatial pocket the size of a child’s coffin. If 3rd step were ‘lower’ houses to this guy, then what were 5th? Glorified commoners? Then Eli remembered his academy days and realized that, yeah. To a lot of the upper nobility, that’s exactly what they were. He put it out of his mind as he continued to listen.

  “Is it too late?” Asked the younger. “My father just said that once your pool is filled, you begin the expansion process. Press out with your mana until the pool stretches, then fill it again before it contracts. Do the same with your channels, just more carefully. Start with the wider ones, then the-”

  “Connecting ones, then the smaller branches, and so on. Yes, I know. This is why your family is so much weaker than mine.” Said the older one, cutting the younger one off. “Your mana is thinner, your techniques so fragile. You never bother consolidating between expansions.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. Even if you started now, you’ve already wasted half your potential.”

  “What?” The younger one’s voice had gone shrill.

  “Watch your tone,” the older one gritted out, and Eli ‘saw’ through his spatial sense as the older one smacked the back of the younger’s head. Hard. If Eli hadn’t learned that the boy had begun body reinforcement, he would have been genuinely worried about brain damage – then how would Eli learn more?

  With that, the older one stopped speaking. He was tempted to scan their bodies with life mana. Really tempted. Of course he’d scanned guard-ends before, even healed a few during his academy days, and on missions and assignments before the 1st invasion. However, their unique constitutions had just been seen as ‘body reinforcement’ by him and the other healers. In fact, his healing lessons had almost explicitly steered healers away from questioning or looking into the body’s of people who had done any reinforcement, or what he supposed was ‘forging’. They were told to heal and move on.

  It made him wonder what might have happened if he had gone prying. If he had asked too many too pointed questions. What if he scanned some of these people, knowing what he knew now. The insights he might gain could help him with his own process. He really should speak with an Aguire and get some proper lessons in healing. For now though, he had a mission to complete and couldn’t risk being detected because he satisfied his curiosity.

  Still, if he wasn’t under an incredibly restrictive life spell right now, Eli knew his heart would have been slamming against his ribs. Expand channels? Compression phase? He knew expansion, every mage did. But compression? Also, manuals for body forging? What kind of manuals, what did they do? He needed to get his hands on one. He could feel the spatial enchantment on both of their bodies. A simple probe at the enchantments was enough to tell him that they both had spatially expanded artifacts. Artifacts where they were likely to keep important things. Artifacts that he could tap into using his affinity. He just needed enough time.

  The younger had gained the courage to speak again. “How old were you when you started your compression? Would you be willing to offer any advice?”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself. What good would it even do you? Your thin mana is just fine for your weak channels. Finish your body reforging. Only then will compression really mean anything. The Families restrict the manuals for a reason. Who are you to question their will?”

  “Nobody, I am nobody so shameless. It’s just,” the younger’s voice lowered. “ what happens next. After compression, I mean. What about the next steps?”

  “You’re from a branch of a third-step house,” the older said, voice edged with disdain, and impatience. “Complete this mission, earn your merits, and maybe someone will tell you someday. Now be quiet.”

  The rune car trundled on in silence, and with the secondary detection device still active, Eli didn’t dare leave this pocket. Instead, he would have to steal the shipment from inside. Not impossible, but maintaining the pocket added a burden to his mind, and a layer of complexity to the task. Eli’s mind spun. So many assumptions about mana training, so many things he took for granted – hundreds of years of study – had been bent sideways. Of course, he knew some people, often those in higher step Houses had denser, more potent mana. However, he had assumed that these were biological differences.

  Just like some people were born with longer fingers, good for playing instruments, or more flexible wrists, great for swordplay. He had figured that some children were born with wider channels and denser mana. He’d thought the qualitative difference had more to do with pedigree than any training method or active ‘consolidation’, whatever that was. He’d always believed – in fact he’d been explicitly told by many an arrogant person of a higher step – that the Families, and some houses were just good at picking out talent and marrying them in, or that generations of strong mages had simply had stronger and stronger children over time. After all, power begets power.

  The academy only taught mages about mana pool expansion. There had been no mention of compression, or consolidation, or even channel expansion while he was there. In fact, while not explicitly taught, the ‘Generational Strengthening’ theory was common and well accepted, even within academic circles. What fools they all were. The truth was different, so very different. Compression, channel growth, body forging manuals – the Families had been hiding everything. Hoarding everything. It was past the point of clutching onto power. Past the point of paranoid secrecy, and into the realm of maliciously stunting the natural development of strength on Vereth. The special techniques were all in plain sight, and yet out of reach. Locked away behind binding oaths so restrictive they could take a life at the speed of thought.

  If someone gained insights on their own, they would be recruited, absorbed, or silenced. Sometimes permanently. How many young geniuses had he seen lured by the promise of proximity to power only to be bound and silenced or stunted. How many new ideas and insights had been buried by bureaucracy and disdain, only to never be heard of again. How many children were mysteriously crippled just as they began to rise, how many once-in-a-lifetime talents who wouldn’t bend the knee simply disappeared, and were never heard from again.

  What Eli found the most ironic is that the invaders treated the Families the same way the Families treated others. They had been played. Sure, they were given superior strengthening techniques to what the non-affiliated mages received, but these were far inferior to whatever techniques the aliens themselves used. The few he’d fought made it difficult to believe they were both humans when their base strength was so monstrous.

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  Still, still! He should be ashamed by his own surprise. Why wouldn’t such powerful forces use unique methods to build their strength. These insights into forming his mana pools and channels, this ‘compression’. If he gained nothing else from this trip, the knowledge he had now was priceless. He shook his head back into focus. He would decipher the revelations later, for now, it was time to collect what he had come here to get.

  He forced his breath steady. Mission first. Compartmentalize. Answers would come later. The rune car was still moving, and his task hadn’t changed.

  Eli’s mana shifted slightly; right now it was diffused like thin fog over the rune car, but he needed to use the cover caused by the present but faint spatial mana as a smokescreen to slip a focused tendril into the heavily enchanted and defended storage compartment. He noted the pattern of wards pulsing across the roof — detection cycles, resistance lines, weak points where one script connected to another in a method that was just on the wrong side of secure.

  He timed the flows of mana carefully. Enchantments like this had a rhythm to them, almost a life all their own. Eli carefully marked the flow, then ever so slowly, began to match its rhythm. Faint pulses blended with the natural flow of the layered enchantment, and just as one pulse ebbed, and another was on the horizon, his mana slipped right in, following the circuitous route past the exterior and into the layers of dense metal and an element Eli could neither name, but recognized as similar to some of the weapons the Family’s and their good little retainers were given.

  With the thin mana tendril inside he nearly made a critical mistake. There was life. Inside the storage section of the rune car, was another figure. One he hadn’t sensed despite his spatial magic. He hadn’t wanted to use any life mana, because unlike spatial mana anyone who had been to a healer likely had intimate experience with it. If he used it, and they sensed it, he would be detected.

  Life mana wasn’t like water or earth mana, where dense pockets could be found sporadically in the wild. There were few places where life mana concentrated in a high enough density in the natural world to be sensed, outside of specifically cultivated areas and natural treasures that might be found in the deep wilds, not be laying about on a mountain road, along a highly travelled trade rout.

  However, he might not have a choice. Inside, the container there was life, and that meant either there was another person here or a tamed beast was guarding the shipment. Either way, if he made any sudden movements, he would be sensed. Unlike his haze of spatial mana, the concentrated string he had filtered into the rune car was much easier to sense. Sure, most people and beasts had no clue what they were sensing, but the magical fluctuations would be difficult to hide. Anyone who had their guard up, or was particularly sensitive would know something was happening, just not ‘what’.

  He needed a new plan, some way to hide the tendril. He had an option, but there was no way he could pull it off while keeping up the body magic, running the enchantments on his clothing, managing the spatial mana and the spatial pocket, navigating the rune car enchantments and carefully manipulating the spatial tendril. It was too much. He wasn’t strong enough, and his mind hadn’t developed enough yet for him to keep so many simultaneous processes running. Not without messing something up.

  This wasn’t a smash and grab, it was a coordinated extraction, and right now he decided that he needed to focus on his magic more than he needed to hear what the people in the vehicle were saying. It almost physically pained him to pull back his senses. In just the past few minutes he’d learned insights so valuable, he wondered if they rivalled whatever was in those crates. Items were transient, but knowledge was priceless.

  No, he couldn’t lose focus. The knowledge had been an unplanned bonus, but the contents of those crates were what he’d come for. The families were moving something valuable, something clandestine and valuable. That meant that whatever it was he needed to get his hands on, even if all he could do was keep it from the hands of the people who would one day reveal themselves as his enemies. Enemies to the world.

  Having freed a sliver of mental processing power, he bled shadow mana around himself in a thin cocoon. Forming a tube, he began to insulate the tendril of spatial mana, sensing as he went along that the mana was slowly bleeding down the thin tendril, encapsulating it as it went. He matched the rhythm of the enchantments, feeling as the shadow mana crept along, hiding all traces as it went.

  As the rune car rolled on through the night, Eli lay in his spatial coffin. His body was motionless, his mind split across spells and calculations as beads of perspiration began to form on his brow. Eli pressed harder, guiding the now cloaked thread of spatial mana deeper, forcing it into the enchanted crates bolted inside the rune car. He felt the resonance shift and was forced to split his focus between the resonance pattern from the enchantments on the rune car, and the ones on the boxes.

  He wasn’t sure how much time had passed as he worked, only that he had developed a headache, but hadn’t been discovered. Then there was a sudden absence. It was that same feeling he got when trying to climb a step only to realize you were already at the top of the staircase. Like climbing into empty space, only the space here was anything but empty. What he sensed from inside this crate was power. Unfamiliar, but incredibly nostalgic power.

  Alien, power.

  Step four: Break into the crates: Complete.

  He anchored a part of his mana thread to his own stasis pouch. A link formed, as stable as he could make it all things considered, and vision blurring, he split his concentration again. His teeth clenched despite the life spell, as he touched the objects in the crate with his spatial mana. Every time the tendril came in contact with something, he would cast a spell, pulling the object from one end of the line to the other end anchored to his pouch. Piece by piece, he emptied some of the contents from the box. When that was done, he moved on to the next one. Threading his way in, transporting some items to his pouch, then moving on to another crate.

  Then another. Then another.

  Each transfer sent pain lancing through his skull, as though his mana channels were being scraped raw, and someone was drilling a flaming bolt through his nose and into his brain. His vision blurred, his body was kept from trembling only because he was still under the control of his life magic. Time lost all meaning as he forced the thread steady. The rune car rolled on.

  The contents of one last crate were piled neatly into his now half full storage pouch, and the relief of being done nearly had him losing control. Instead, he held steady, extracting his cloaked tendril and promising himself he would lay in and skip training, but first he had one more thing to do before he retrieved his magic.

  Breaking into the spatial pouches of the two young men was so much simpler than with the alien enchantments that it almost felt anticlimactic. A simple rerouting and bypassing of the concealment, privacy, security, and identification enchantments was all it took to slip the concealed tendril in and fish around until he found what he hoped he was looking for. The body forging manuals. There was more than one scroll, book, and transfer tablet inside each pouch, and it took him a moment to sort through what he could and pilfer what he couldn’t. Knowledge was knowledge. He gave a mental shrug before carefully disengaging.

  Once his magic was back in the spatial pocket with him, he cancelled the spell, and felt immediate relief flood his mind so completely that he nearly groaned aloud. Instead, he reactivated his body enhancement magic, took a deep breath, and listened.

  He heard nothing past the usual sounds of night. Leaves rustling, night critters dashing through the underbrush, and the rhythmic breathing and calm heartbeats of the two drivers and whatever was in the back compartment.

  Eli took a moment. Slowly releasing the life magic, he let his body regain its natural rhythms. That spell always took a toll out of a person, but it wasn’t the first time, or the longest time he’d used it for. Hiding had once been a way of life for him, and he was acutely aware of just what limits he could push his body to. So, as he lay flat, gasping, slick with sweat and a splitting, full body ache that threatened to drag him into unconsciousness. He basked in the fact that this part at least was successful. Now he just needed to get away.

  Step five: Extract the goods. Complete.

  Getting out was as simple and as complex as moving the spatial anchor from the rune car to a secure location in the forest. This was made difficult by the fact that the vehicle was in motion and Eli had no idea where he was.

  Well, it wasn’t like he hadn’t taken bigger gambles already tonight. He waited for the next wave of detection magic to pass, and just before it swept over again, he detached the anchor and flung it into the underbrush he could sense. As he sensed the rune car pulling away at speed, he was immensely grateful that his little fold in space was completely stationary relative to the movement and location of it’s anchor.

  Once the vehicle was out of sight, and out of sensory range, Eli unfolded the pocket. Twisting in the air, he landed hard on one knee. His hands shook as he pushed shadow mana around himself, blurring his outline. The veil flickered, unstable. He forced it tighter, holding until he was sure he could maintain it.

  Only once he felt somewhat sure of the stability of his body and mana again did he push to his feet and move. He needed to get somewhere secure. He had loot to examine.

  ***

  Inside the rune car, in the compartment that held the crates and boxes containing the precious cargo she’d been tasked to watch over, a young woman opened her eyes. She’d sensed… something. Again. An hour ago she had convinced herself she’d been mistaken when that small spatial distortion appeared and disappeared, directly above her in less time than it took for a thought to pass. However, now she had felt a similar signature again. It was faint. So faint she might have believed she had imagined it, if not for her unnaturally good mana senses and her constant vigilance.

  Yes, that really was a spatial distortion. Something small, truly tiny, was tucked into the underbrush. She couldn’t be sure what it was, but with spatial magic there was no such thing as ‘too small’ or ‘too weak’ to do harm. This wasn’t fire mana where a weak flame could be easily extinguished. Spatial mana was rare, and dangerous, and they were in Adler territory. Domain of Sela Adler Rodrigo. Perhaps the foremost spatial expert on the continent. Nothing could be taken for granted.

  She watched the spot with keen mana senses and incredible stealth. She kept her attention glued to it until the rune car had trundled far enough away that any move would be obvious, and something she could easily react to. It wasn’t until they were far out of sight of the fluctuation, and even farther out of range for any attack too abrupt for the young woman to meaningfully defend against, that she let her attention return to observing the space around her.