Adamant Blood

25 minutes and a bit of a wait later due to scheduled meetings being interrupted for Mark, Mark entered Rekaro's office.

"Mark, hello! Please have a seat." Rekaro asked, "How can I help you?"

Mark didn't quite want to sit down, for he and Rekaro were both busy, but Mark sat down anyway and he floated his metal hand into the air, asking, "I have a question about Sigaldry and Adamantiumkinesis. I know that specific combo is probably hidden knowledge or hard to find, but Mithrilkinesis and Sigaldry should be known, right? My question is this: Can Mithrilkinetics use their mithril to make magic? And therefore, can I? I tried making something with this hand here, but nothing much happened."

"Trying to do cantrips, right?"

"Yes, sir."

Rekaro had no trouble at all simply answering, "The nuances of Adamantiumkinesis and Sigaldry are not well-researched, nor is that research in publicly accessible places, but yes, Mithrilkinesis and Sigaldry are well researched. But beyond that, this is a basic magic problem.

"Mithril, adamantium, and orichalcum are mana.

"For Mithrilkinetics, and, I assume, Adamantiumkinetics, the answer to why they can't make magic with their mana-Shaping is simple: their Binding specifically disallows them from using their mithril to make magic. They have to either separate their mithril from their astral body in order to use it as an enchanted object, or what have you, or they have to dissolve the mithril into their astral body in order to use it for an Alteration to their Binding. They can, however, use their shaping to cast a cantrip, as you have done.

" 'Manashaping' is not a Shaper Skill that ever comes out of the Tutorial, but everyone who goes through the Tutorial instinctively knows how to shape their own mana, even if they're not a Shaper. It's basic astral body control. In that way, most people eventually learn how to make cantrips without any visual markers of casting cantrips, if they have an astral body that's mostly invisible, anyway. You do not have that luxury.

"But, if someone did go through the Tutorial and came out with 'Manashaper', I can practically guarantee you that they could not use their mana directly to make magical effects, just like you." Rekaro added, "But they'd probably be really good at all forms of magic. It'd just take them a while to get there."

Mark had questions about mana storage, now.

A while ago, Archmage Blackthorn had spoken about how mithrilkinetics could de-manifest their mithril. Adamantiumkinetics could not do that at all, and it didn't matter that Mark's adamantium came entirely from him. He still couldn't de-manifest it. Adamantium was purpose manifested, after all. Blackthorn had even said that Mark couldn't turn his adamantium back into mana, because there was no known way to do that.

But Blackthorn had also said that mages needed extra mana, and they probably needed it for cantrips; for magic cast in the heat of the moment. So they manifested their mana and stored it as crystals in their bodies, or souls, or something. Blackthorn had said that was possible, but he didn't say how. So how did mages store their extra mana?

To make sure he was thinking correctly, Mark asked, "Mages keep around extra mana for cantrips, right?"

"Oh yes. Cantrips are probably the bulk of many mage's magics."

Mark felt like an idiot asking, "Where do mages usually keep their extra mana for cantrips?"

Rekaro held up a hand. "It's complicated."

And then the world collected into a point in his palm, forming a tiny dollop of opal-like liquid. It sloshed a little, like colorful mercury, and Mark barely understood what had happened. Rekaro had condensed his astral body, hadn't he? Yeah, probably.

Rekaro said, "This much of my mana is about an hour's worth. I would never keep it around like this, though..." He flexed the world in his hand and the opal-like mercury flexed into a grain of rice, and then smaller, and then it vanished altogether. "… So I do this with it, solidifying it and bringing it into my astral body. And now I have an hour's worth of mana to use later, for whatever things I need to use it for… But you'll have to take my word for it. I doubt you can tell where it is, can you?"

Mark could kinda tell if a person was weakened or not, based on the size and shape of their vectors upon the world, but only if he knew them. A stranger who had a vector Mark had never seen before? Mark would have no idea about if that person was astrally strong, or not.

Rekaro, though… Mark knew Rekaro, and his vector filled the room in a rather normal way, sloshing around kinda lazily. But it had been focused.

Was there a change?

"Huh… And no, not… really." Mark asked, "This is one of those lessons I would get in a normal class, isn't it?"

"Usually, yes. Most people have simple manas, though, and they can do this. But you do not have a simple mana at all. So you wouldn't even benefit from those lesson plans, and you're usually too busy, anyway." Rekaro added, "To go a little further with the initial query, though: you cannot sign with your manifested mana, just like a Mithrilkinetic cannot sign with their manifested mana, either, but it is still a part of you, and you can still use it to make shapes and such, which will then use your free mana to cast spells. The simple genre of spells, you know. 'Gather fire; shoot there', and 'Clean water, only water' type of spells. Cantrips, they're called." He waved a hand. "I probably mentioned that already, but repetition is important for learning."

Mark had a think.

Rekaro nodded, then said, "I'm glad you have taken up my offer of stopping by anytime. Now I have a concern for you: Are you going to do the Aethercall Understanding today?"

Mark reoriented, putting away those other thoughts, to say, "Sure. In 3 hours?"

"Thank you."

There were a few more pleasantries, but Mark got out of there fast enough—

"Oh," Mark said, as he was about to walk out the door. "Was that giant beam spell something that could be Protected against? The command center wasn't sure if it was a Power or not. I'm leaning toward 'not'."

Rekaro easily said, "It was the effect of a spell, and not a spell, so no; Protect would not work. Protect would have prevented that pink-marking-magic from the notebook goblin, though, if you had it up and running beforehand. Though maybe not! Some mages put some utility into their marking magics, specifically to trigger any types of nullification magics, such as Protect, and then to apply the effect they want applied. I doubt a 10-day-old goblin would think to do that, though you never know."

"Thank you. Any word on the Glorious Goblin?"

"Hmm! That little bastard. He's a tricky one. The initial assessment of 'soul parasite' is more or less correct. You deal with those through ritual containment to a single body, and then you kill the body. He'll be a hard one to kill, for sure."

… Mark had a sudden thought about demons, and whatever Okuana had figured out about how to kill demons, permanently. He did not even think to school his face at all.

Rekaro quietly asked, "You have an idea?"

Mark wasn't sure what he could say, or even if he should, but he decided to ask, "Demons are sort of like soul parasites, right?"

Rekaro smiled like Mark had told a joke, and then he said, "In the vaguest of ways."

Mark took his leave, repeating, "Thank you."

"Anytime."

Mark went back to the Understanding Building.

He ignored the demon/glory-goblin parallel, for now.

Mark said, "So Mithrilkinetic Bindings specifically disallow the user from using their manifested mithril in spellwork, but it still uses up the free mana just fine. Adamantiumkinesis is probably the same. I probably would have already gone through tens of kilos of adamantium by accident if that wasn't specifically barred against by the Binding… and so! I have another idea for how you can help me make magic! … Maybe."

Mark crafted a very tiny bony hand that was more a representation of a hand than a real hand. Every little bone had a little latch that hooked into each other, to allow it to move sort of like a real hand. Mark had to adjust it a few times to make it so that the bones only bent in the ways they were supposed to bend, but soon, he had an anatomically correct bony hand. It was about 3 centimeters long and 2 wide.

Mark held the little sculpture to Quark, on his helmet-collar, as he asked, "Can you move this around with your silver body?"

"Perhaps!"

Quark's silver body flowed over the black hand, turning the whole thing silver. And then Quark moved the hand. It was inarticulate and Mark had fucked up the thumb, so after a moment of Quark pulling back and some small repairs, Quark had a little hand on the edge of Mark's collar. Quark moved that hand around, fingers twitching, wrist flopping, thumb still a little wonky, but he was getting it. He also had a little camera higher up looking at his own hand.

… Mark suddenly realized that familiars usually had bodies, and those bodies controlled the mana of their owners, as long as the owner allowed it.

Mark had literally never tried to make Quark take a humanoid form, but Quark did so anyway inside his holographic projections in Mark's vision. In all of those cases Quark took on a human form all on his own. Would he even want a humanoid body in real life?

… Would he want to be small, or should Mark make him a full-sized skeleton?

… How big could Quark get?

Lots of things to think about, Mark supposed.

"Try some cantrip," Mark said. "Something simple."

Quark asked, "Like what, sir?"

Mark wondered if Quark had built in limitations against experimenting on magic on his own, because yeah, of course he did. Could he even work magic this way at all? How about using his own little tendrils to do things?

"Are you saying you cannot do magic without my express permission, or that you don't know what to do?"

"Both, sir. I don't have a start, so where will the message begin? From-the-gut?"

"From-the-head, I suppose. You're a Mind-ish Power, being a familiar, so… From-the-mind, usually. So all the experiments will need to be cerebral and exact..." Mark thought, then signed, 'From-the-head, the warmth of a person-space gathers into a spot of heat/light a pace ahead.' Mark had done that without any actual magic behind it, so nothing happened. "Try that one. Show me thermals."

Mark's vision overlaid with thermal imagery, casting the room into unnatural colors; mostly green, but there were hot spots of yellow near the ceiling. The sunlit windows were all orange. It was a warm day out there.

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Quark's little hand flashed out the Sigaldry easily enough.

It worked.

Simply put, it worked.

Mark felt his options expand, his possibilities increase, as the air in front of him gained a slight blue/green tint, except for a little pocket of air, about the size of Mark's own fist, right in front of him. That little bit turned from green to yellow/green, and Mark smiled.

Quark's little hand went still.

The spot of heat in the air dissipated with the flows in the space.

Mark said, "I think I need to make you an entire skeleton, or, I need you to try to wiggle just your silver bits, to see if that works."

"Yes, sir!" Quark said, even more excited than Mark right now.

Mark grinned as he looked down at the adamantium collar of his shirt, as little tendrils tried to come together and do things.

Turned out that didn't work at all. Quark's body, by itself, could not cast a cantrip.

So Mark made a simplified skeleton with good hands and arms, and that worked a lot better. Quark could manifest anywhere inside of Mark's astral body, and now, he manifested on that little man, covering black bones with silver 'flesh'. He fell a few times, and they had a discussion about heaviness of bones, hollow bones, equilibrium, and inner ears. Mark thinned out a lot of bones and then he created a small sphere of adamantium with another sphere of adamantium inside. He placed the sphere-in-a-sphere inside of the skull, and Quark interfaced with that sphere-in-a-sphere. Tah dah! Gravity sense and stability and a little silver guy with perhaps oversized hands.

Mark marveled at the little guy.

Quark marveled at his little arms and legs and torso, too, and then he wanted to try a spell, so he stepped to the edge of a big table and made some signs. Soon, Quark was repeating signs, linking one action to the next, doubling power and then flowing power into power. The sphere of contained heat soon became a sphere of contained fire.

With a very tiny, pointed finger, Quark sent the bubble of heated air forward, toward the floor.

That bubble struck stone and popped with all the sound of a firecracker, like a hydrogen balloon igniting.

"SUCCESS!" Mark cheered.

Quark stared at his hands. And then he bowed. "Success, sir."

Mark grinned, and then he got serious. "So I can make some guesses as to how to do a Protect through pure Sigaldry, and how to dispel whatever that pink marking magic was, but do we already know how to actually do any of that?"

"Nothing but basic language signing, sir. The master of the Sigaldry House, Whaler, might know."

"Yes! Let's go ask him."

Mark felt a little bit joyous as he walked out of the Understanding building, back into the sun, with a little Quark literally sitting on his shoulder. Mark was kinda glad the little guy had chosen to go sexless instead of hanging dong. There was enough of that in Mark's usual adventuring and he certainly didn't need anyone commenting on Quark's manhood, thank you very much, especially since he looked almost exactly like Mark, but in miniature.

Blackvein's fans did not need more fodder for their art.

10 minutes later Mark walked into Sigaldry House. The place was just as full as it usually was, maybe about 30 people on 3 floors, but the types of people here were different than before. Instead of young people in separate groups, there were a lot of older people, in their 30s, 50s, and one group of grannies in their 80s, all signing in their little groups. Mark recognized a pair of grannies from the Sigaldry Understanding Parties that he had done last week, and they got all excited to see him, but they just waved.

Mark waved back.

Whaler was tending to his plants in the front room but he turned and spotted Mark and exclaimed, "Mark! So good to see you— Oh my! And you gave your familiar a little body! Neat!"

Quark waved.

Mark smiled, and asked, "I'm here about that, Whaler. Do you know of any Sigaldry strings that can enable a Protect effect? Or a dispel effect? I'd like to know how to do them so Quark can do them in battle, if needed."

With a vector that told of supreme confidence in undertaking this new task, Whaler said, "I do know that magic and it'll take about an hour to go over them…" Whaler hummed as he looked at the clock on the wall. "Maybe 40 minutes, if you have perfect recollection, which an AI usually does. It takes about 5 minutes to cast a Protect and 3 minutes to dispel a known effect, and that's if you're really fast about it, and if you can throw out some extra hands. I assume that you'll be adding more arms to Quark, perhaps? Or perhaps doing some Adamantiumkinesis with extra hands yourself? Then you can get it down to maybe a minute. It's a big drain on your resources, though, to go that fast with it."

Mark eagerly said, "I'd love to learn anyway!"

Mark ended up sitting down with Whaler in a side room and doing some advanced Sigaldry which used both hands, and which could use a lot more hands than that, if he wanted.

By the end of 53 minutes, after putting palms to the air in every direction, Mark had enacted a generalized Protect on his astral body, more or less akin to wearing a spellbreaker charm. It felt like he wasn't wearing any sort of charm at all, though. It was just… present.

Mark felt strangely secured for the first time in a while.

This was neat.

Whaler said, "Like a normal spellbreaker, that will Protect you from anything that manages to pierce your Power Level defenses, and there are a lot of caveats to this effect," Whaler said, "It's a temporary buff, and like most buffs it will only last about an hour. Less, if you're in a high stress environment. Dispelling things is a lot more nuanced and I don't really know what Union is capable of, but I'm sure you can figure out easier ways to dispel things through Union than through Sigaldry."

Something to ask Lola!

Mark smiled as he said, "Thank you so much, Whaler."

Whaler bowed deeply, saying, "Anytime, for any reason, Mister Careed. Thank you."

Mark bowed too, but not as deep as Whaler, even though Mark was the one who had come here out of the blue, requesting help. Mark took his leave.

On the way back to the arcanaeum, to the Understanding building, Mark had a lot of thoughts about magic.

Apparently, he didn't need to learn how to Alter the Binding to have Protect. He could just reapply Protect every it time wore out, and maybe Quark could even automate that for him. But did Mark want a little human sitting on his shoulder? Sure, it seemed fine now, but… always? But before Mark got too far down that path, Quark had some thoughts as well.

Quark said, "I am not sure I am comfortable as a human-shaped thing, and making signs in the open is against both Curtain Protocol and Mage Secrecy."

Mark had a few different thoughts about that. The first thought was that Quark was right about making signs in the open. The second thought was, strangely enough, about HVP merchandising deals and Quark making a great plushie, if he looked less like a little man and more like a doll, or something. Noel and Reddron would know more about plushie merchandising. But yeah! Quark plushies!

Mark grinned. "You don't want little silver man plushies? Might be cute!"

"I already look too close to Platinum Princess, and that would be infringing on her arena."

Mark snorted. "She would hate that, wouldn't she! Then how about we go the other way, entirely? A floating ball with interior arms and hands?"

"I would like that greatly," Quark said, seriously.

Mark paused a little. Quark really wanted that? Just... a floating orb body? Well… Okay. Mark said, "Okay, well… I wonder if Eliot can make some well-articulated stuff…" Mark openly wondered, "How about a sphere a meter across with a thousand hands… inside?"

Or maybe an orb with thousands of hands on the outside? Just as a pure 'can this be done this way' sort of thing? Did that… Did that work like that?

Mark paused.

That'd be an entire thousand-person ritual done up in a small space, wouldn't it?

Were people already doing this, elsewhere? Anywhere? Surely they were, right?

Were there automated rituals?

… AI automated rituals?

… No way. That just seemed crazy.

Mark was missing something big, for sure. And yet, something about that entire idea seemed… right. It was like Mark had stumbled upon a vast conspiracy that must logically exist. Because if Quark could do little spells with his little hands, and he was perfectly capable of adapting to having even more hands, could he really just… Do That?

Suddenly, the idea of Malaqua, the Stone God of the System and the former City AI for New Delhi, ascending to godhood first, to become the First God of the New Pantheon, suddenly made a whole lot of sense.

Mark asked, "Does it work like that? Can you do that?"

"It might work exactly like that, sir."

The Aethercall Understanding party was in less than an hour, otherwise Mark would have gone right to Eliot at Cybersong Industries and see about getting such a thing built, but Eliot, Isoko, and Sally were coming to the party anyway.

With thoughts far, far away, Mark wandered down the streets of Mage Society, to the Understanding building.