Book 3, Chapter 39

I wasn’t exactly sure what the normal sleeping hours were for a giant, magical bird, but most of the work I’d done with Grandfather had been in the evening. Since it was already evening right now, that meant I didn’t have much time to put things together if I wanted to be sure he was still awake when I projected my consciousness a few thousand miles to talk to him.

Stone shape was one of the most useful spells in my repertoire when it came to inscribing runes, at least as long as the material I was cutting into was some form of stone. Since it almost always was, at least for quick and dirty spells like this, I got a lot of use out of a simple basic-tier transmutation. It took a bit of work to get the spell going, but it was so cheap to use that I’d been relying on it heavily ever since my reincarnation.

I started with a stretch of flat, barren rock jutting out of the side of the mountain. A burst of fire scoured it of the moss clinging to its surface, followed by brooms of air to sweep any lingering ash away. Then I shaped the stone into a circle bisected with two lines to form an X in the center. Each quadrant got its own rune formation. I laid another concentric circle around the first one, only inches apart, and drew runic script all the way between them.

Doing that free-hand was not nearly as easy as I made it look, but I’d been drawing these kinds of things for a long time. I wasn’t inventing circles from scratch; I was recycling spells I’d used thousands of times before. If I had to do a bit of mixing and matching to get the result I wanted, well, that was the benefit of experience.

At the intersection of the two lines, I plopped down one of my massive mana crystals from my phantom space. None of them were full anymore, not since I’d started nightly work on my newest, biggest, most efficient mana crystal to date, but I’d been using them regularly to hold the overflow my own core generated. This one would be plenty to empower the circle with mana.

Senica watched me work silently. I sensed a dozen new questions churning in her head, probably relating to runes she hadn’t seen before and how I’d managed to get the ones she did know to work in the configuration I was using. They weren’t balanced anything like how I’d been teaching her, a consequence of the extreme distance I needed to achieve with the divination. I was covering that by piggybacking off the long string of teleportation beacons I’d scattered behind us, or more specifically, the scrying beacons tied into them.

That was what the outer ring was for, and where the bigger portion of the mana I was spending on the ritual circle would go. Keeping such a delicate array of runes from collapsing in on itself or, worse, exploding, took a considerable amount of mana. I could hold it together myself through sheer force of will, but this formation minimized the risk of any sort of feedback.

“I’m about to start now,” I warned Senica. “You might as well find something to amuse yourself since it’s just going to look like I’m sitting here doing nothing. Maybe go give a proper read to that chapter on Akrallian rune combinations I saw you skimming the other day.”

“They’re so boring, though. They don’t do anything useful!”

“They’re use-specific,” I admitted. “But they’re in the book for a reason.”

I would know; I was the one who’d written the book. I had not bothered to tell my sister that, though. If she knew she was reading my work, she’d abandon it completely and just pester me to teach her the content directly. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to it beyond rote memorization. It was like learning the letters of a foreign language. She just needed to keep studying it until she got it down.

Grumbling, Senica dropped off the ledge and floated back down to our camp below. I noted with a smile that she did it without making a sound, and the entire spell was constructed inside her shroud, which was stronger than either of the two Lightbearers I’d met.

Then I pushed those thoughts aside and took my place standing on top of the pillar-shaped mana crystal in the center of my circle. With an effort of will, I pushed the mana out of the crystal and directly into the inscription, flooding them with power. Soft blue light glowed in the runes, each one lightning individually, but as such speed that the whole circle brightened within two seconds.

The wards were raised and everything was as safe as I could make it. There was nothing left to do but project myself out of my body. It wasn’t really like abandoning my mortal shell so much as creating a duplicate out of pure mana and piloting that around. My projection would have access only to the mana I invested into it, most of which would be used to keep it whole. If I needed to cast any spells at all, it would shorten the duration of the projection.

My mind rode along with it, the divination magic tethering me to my projection as it rose into the sky and blurred toward the horizon. The ground rolled by beneath me, dozens of miles every minute until, half an hour later, I came to a halt above Eyrie Peak.

This late in the day, most of the brakvaw seemed to have already settled down. The mountain walls had been carved sheer and dotted with what looked like hundreds of cave entrances. From a distance, they seemed small, but I knew that as I got closer, they would be revealed to be truly massive holes in the stone, expertly shaped with magic.

I bypassed those. No one I was interested in talking to lived in the chasms that had been cut from the peak. The brakvaw with any measure of status lived higher up, often in great towers not unlike the ones that dotted the archipelago of islands we lived on. I scanned them as I flew by, not sure what I was expecting to find but hoping to see something unusual. Either nobody was home, or they were all tucked away in their eyries already.

Finally I came to my destination: the huge tower that housed Grandfather’s physical form. When I met with him, he almost always used a projection spell similar to the one I was employing right now, though his was structured via lossless casting, which meant his range was far, far more limited. One of the drawbacks of brakvaw magic was that it was useless over long distances – though long was a very subjective measurement, especially for giant birds that could fly hundreds of miles a day.

I hadn’t yet found a way to adapt lossless casting to enchanting or inscription, but I did have a few theories to work on in the future. For now, I’d resigned myself to the enormous mana expenditure setting me back a day or two on my new mana crystal so that I could keep Senica happy.

A bird appeared in front of me, six inches tall and so black it looked like it had been dipped in tar. Even its beak and talons were black, a coloring I hadn’t seen on any brakvaw before. “Keiran,” it cawed in an unfamiliar voice.

“Hello,” I said. “Have we met?”

“No. I’m a messenger construct from Grandfather.”

I glanced down at the tower, looking for a projection of the old bird himself, but all was dark and still. In fact, other than the few dozen or so brakvaw flying slow circles around Eyrie Peak, there was no movement at all.

“You have a message for me?” I asked.

“Yes. I’m to warn you off. An insurrection has occurred with five of the elders siding against Grandfather. The populace has divided into three factions, and it’s looking like it’ll be a civil war soon. Your presence here could tip the balance of power Grandfather has been working to nudge in a bad way, so he requests that you clear the area immediately.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Sorry, I’m just a construct.”

“Does Grandfather need assistance?”

“I don’t have an answer to that question,” the tiny bird said.

No surprise there. Messenger constructs were only useful for their intended purpose. Good ones might take a message back to their creators, but that was the extent of their abilities. I was surprised see Grandfather using this one instead of meeting me himself, but I suspected there was a good reason. If things were as unstable as his message implied, it was almost certain that my time spent with the brakvaw was one of the points of contention.

“Are you able to take a return message?” I asked the construct.

“A short one, yes.”

“Good. Tell Grandfather that I need to speak with him, that there have been brakvaw attacks on human settlements. I will await his presence at the peak of the mountain due west of here.” I raised a finger to point at the meeting place I’d chosen. “Sooner is better. This projection is going to run out of mana soon.”

“Understood,” the construct said. “I will relay your message.”

Then it popped out of existence again, returned to Grandfather. If he’d already detected me, it was only a matter of time until others did as well. I retreated, the world rolling underneath me for a second until I was standing on the mountain I’d indicated. It was only fifteen miles at most, but far enough to stay outside the range of any brakvaw patrols.

It would be a strain for Grandfather to project himself this far without losing mana, but I knew it was within his capabilities. I stood there, waiting and watching Eyrie Peak for some clue about what was happening. After a few minutes, Grandfather appeared next to me.

“Keiran,” he said, his voice warm but tired. “Let’s make this quick. Not to be rude, but things are bad.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Turns out I wasn’t keeping as good of an eye on things as I thought,” Grandfather told me. “You know how it is. No amount of scrying is as good as seeing things in person. Some of the elders were making decisions that ran counter to my own commands, and they weren’t happy about having me come down to the mountain to oversee them.”

“So they rebelled. Probably tried to kill you.”

“Exactly right,” Grandfather said. “Not that they could. Even if they’d all sided against me, I doubt they have the magical acumen to succeed in a task like that.”

“And since you’re all so good at conserving your mana, things ended up in a stalemate,” I guessed. “You’re tethered to this location by the floating island, and they decided when they couldn’t beat you, they’d just leave your sphere of influence.”

“That’s more of less the truth of it,” Grandfather confirmed.

“Since I’m a known associate, they’d want to take me out, too. If I came back and threw my strength behind yours, we could crush the rebels easily.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that, but yes, you are correct that they would take steps to eliminate you if they thought you were going to interfere.”

“Oh, they already tried that a few months ago,” I told the old bird. “Three of them were waiting at an eyrie just on the other side of the channel northwest of the island.”

“Are they dead?” Grandfather asked.

“I’m not in the habit of leaving things stupid enough to attack me alive. They might try again.”

Grandfather grimaced, but nodded. “There’s not much you can do here now. This is an internal manner, and I’m afraid that accepting support from an outsider would turn some of the brakvaw who’ve sided with me.”

“I would agree that it’s none of my business, except some of your people are attacking humans. I’m not sure what side they’re loyal to, but either way, it needs to stop.”

“The rebels seeking to establish a new colony, I would guess,” Grandfather said. “They work against me now, but it would still have far-reaching implications if you killed them. We are a long-lived species, but are numbers are not great.”

“Well then, I think we’ve got a problem,” I told the brakvaw that I suspected I was about to mentally adjust into the category of ‘former ally.’