The Power of Ten

Valences clean and full. I’d be ready to Slot new spells upon Renewal.

I didn’t actually have that many Valences, so I didn’t need much time to recharge. Just something else that would improve with time...

The other soldiers recuperating were watching me in interest and envy. Obviously they weren’t Casters, and a casual Assay confirmed they weren’t Forsaken. Just Warriors, not-very-willing combatants putting in their time and hoping to get out of this alive.

I frowned to myself. Staying Primos was bound to create hard feelings between those with magic and those without it. Obviously this world hadn’t developed ki or soul magic techniques to the required level, or possibly even learned of Forsaken.

Hadn’t developed... or had suppressed development of? After all, anything that gave power to the masses diluted the power of the Powered. People who wanted to hold onto their power could be very nasty about it, even if it impacted the survival of humanity as a whole.

Still, they couldn’t resent me completely, because I was halvyr, born with magic. I wasn’t ‘lucky’, I just had the magic.

Father Bower was at his desk in a side tent, and came out when he sensed my Draw end. He cleared his throat, waited until I put my finger in my ear, and said, “<You’re quite gifted at that.>”

“Necessity.” And a +3 Talent, but hey. I pulled a Mason jar out of my purse. “Holy water. You take donations?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “<We stockpile the stuff. It supplies the Soakers and water cannons.>” I pictured long squirty-tubes filled with holy water hitting ghosts in the face like acid, and a tanker truck full of the stuff hosing down whole phalanxes of undead. They could run through a lot of it pretty fast. I imagined that most of the churches regularly sent gallons of the stuff to all the hot zones.

He accepted the jar calmly, fingers sparkling a second to confirm what it was, and sighed as he set it aside. “<Might I ask why you are having trouble with our language? You don’t seem unfamiliar with it, and your accent sounds like you came from America.>”

“When my Bloodline Awakened, it turned out I had two that were in opposition to another. I had to destroy them and mix them up back into a standard Arcane Bloodline to balance out. There were significant magical implications to this, including rewiring a portion of my head. My language centers were part of it. The languages I knew were dropped and replaced. I am absolutely sure I did not know Elven before, as it is a hideously difficult and complex language to learn. As for the others... well, learning them challenges your sanity, but I basically just know them because something wanted me to know them.” I rolled my eyes at the clouded sky, as did he.

“<But I’m having no trouble understanding you,>” he noted, frowning. “<You’re using a Cantrip to translate, I understand that, but it should not be translating for me...>”

“I’m speaking Human.”

He blinked. “<What?>” He was incredulous. “<There is no human language!>”

“Obviously there is, because I am speaking it.” I inclined my head. “Humans are magical, just like elves and dwarves. Why wouldn’t you have a language attuned to your Life Spiral, just like them?”

He stared at me in disbelief. “<This... the old stories, from before the Shroud... they said that we all spoke one language, before the fall of the Tower of Babel...>”

Confirming that magic had definitely not been here all the time. “Entirely possible that you had magic in the ancient past, and its weakening cost you your genetic tongue.”

“<This...>” He seemed quite excited. “<There are old things and races waking up with the return of magic, proving it was here long ago. To think we had a unified language!...>” His eyes fixed on me. “<Can you teach it to me?>” he asked urgently.

I lifted an eyebrow. “Father, it is your genetic language. I don’t believe there’s any possible way to stop you from learning it, even if you don’t want to.”

He blinked at me, then turned and looked at the other three soldiers, all looking and listening in curiously. “<Lads, gather around.>” He walked back into his office, came back with a simple chair, and set it down as the soldiers all gathered to sit down on cots, eyes bright as they looked at me.

“A moment.” I began to arrange my thoughts, spread them in a Visual File

I brought up on Holo to the side of me. “Can you all read this?” I asked, as I began to put nouns onto it, starting with fruit. Apple, Banana, Cantaloupe, Dewberry, Elderberry...

“<Yes!>” they all said together.

“Yes!” I corrected them, spelling it out on the Holo.

“Yes!” they repeated, staring at the words.

“Then repeat all these after me... Apple!” I put up a picture of one.

“Apple!” they all repeated dutifully.

--------

I think it frightened them with how fast they learned it. Once the connection of object, word, sight, and sound came together, it stuck like glue. After a thousand words drawn from everything around them, I was on to verbs, demonstrating with the Holo what I meant, displaying the words in the proper script, and they were nodding and picking it up with amazing speed.

Then it was on to sentence structure, conversation, and as the akashic links solidified, soon they were getting ahead of me, starting to blurt out phrases that came to mind, shocking even themselves as they did so.

I tolerated it all with a straight face, simply going on and on. I couldn’t translate their English questions without bringing down the Holo, but that was fine: I recorded all their questions and phrases and terms in Visual File, translated them to Human, and brought them all back up, complete with answers.

It took an hour, and suddenly I was holding conversations with them in Human, as if they’d been speaking it all their lives.

The three soldiers were named Bill, Pedro, and Dwayne, coming from Massachusetts, Texas, and Atlanta, respectively. They had never experienced magic working on them so directly like this, and it sort of freaked them out, even as they found it way cool.

“So, can we teach this to others?” Pedro had to ask. “I mean, like, we’d all be speaking one language then, right? No more need for Spanish, English, Chinese...”

“Except if you don’t want others to know what you are saying.” All four guys grimaced despite themselves. “And naturally people are going to want to hold onto their old languages, because there are unique and special things about them; the way they make you think, and the like. While you can teach everyone Human, and they can learn it and understand it, you can’t make them speak it. It’s just one more way to separate groups from one another.”

“But that’s not something the military cares about. Getting over language hurdles is a minor but pervasive problem.” Father Bower’s face was glowing at this. “Miss Traveler, if you like, I would like to record a video of a teaching session with you. If we can teach this Human language to all of humanity, we will have done a great service for the human race!”

“I agree, but you might make some powerful people quite angry,” I warned him.

He waved his hand dismissively. “The whole Church of Harse will have my back,” he promised me. “I will arrange this for the morning, if that is alright with you.”

“That is fine. May I ask if the Wall is open for outsiders in the night?”

He smiled as if I’d said something expected. “It is. The early evening is when most civilians come to the wall to tease the undead, harvesting power to get stronger. Some of the braver soldiers do so as well, if they have the means.”

“Yeah, not all of us can cast spells, so we can’t hurt those things, and having an oversized water pistol isn’t something you want to take up against one of those things,” Bill, the skinny white kid from Massachusetts, muttered.

“Magical items are concentrated among the Powered?” I asked calmly, knowing it was true, and even Father Bower had to sigh and nod with the three soldiers. “It is the principle of giving your best troops the best gear. It is a solid strategy, proven by thousands of years of combat. However, there is an exception, and that is the weapon of a warrior.” All three of them blinked, and leaned forwards. “Find a masterwork weapon, Name it, and by right of victory, you can grow its power, without needing all the precious metal and power components to do so.”

Even Father Bower was staring at me now. “Is that true?” he asked in a hushed voice.

“Yes.” I turned my eyes on the soldiers. “And the Weapons of those without magic are stronger than the Weapons of those with magic.”

Dwayne, the chocolate-skinned fellow from Atlanta, fairly bounced to his feet. “What you saying? Better? How? Girl, I gotta get me one of those!” His arm was in a sling, but he looked ready to jump around in excitement.

“Please sit down.” I didn’t look at him, but he abashedly sat back down on the cot.

“Requirement one is a fine weapon. Is that your rifle?” I asked Pedro, pointing to an automatic firearm leaning against a cot. He nodded, and was about to go get it when I flicked my fingers, and it flew quickly enough to my hand. He sat back down, looking a little envious.

I fluttered my fingers, and my eyes glowed. “An Assay says this is an AR-18, QL 18. It’s good quality for the tech level it is at, but you need a 20 to get even the most minor magical Weapon, and you want a 23 to 26, at a minimum. At 23, you can start putting additional stuff in it.”

I made a cutting motion between the soldiers and the cleric. “The difference between people with no magic and those who do is a magical signature. In effect, Powered people throw off magical static. Makes sense, right?” The three soldiers sort of nodded along. “You don’t have any static. So, a magic item made to be used by us Powered has to be capable of withstanding that static, which means the runic structure has to be strong and fixed, or it’ll just short out and be non-functional.

“Weapons made for Primos don’t have to be quite that rigid. They can have an Arsenal.”

All three soldiers had really bright eyes right now.

“An Arsenal means you can switch the effects of a Weapon to a new effect. It is very similar to a Powered Casting a Greater Magic Weapon, and choosing to have their gun flaming, or crackling with electricity, or Bane against the undead, right?”

“Wait,” Father Bower raised his hand. “I thought magical Weapons were fixed in effect.”

“For you and I. Weapons made by the Primos, for the Primos... no.” Father Bower blinked. “If you or I tried to wield them, we’d get minimal effect out of them. But a Primos wielding a Named Weapon allows the Weapon to truly shine.”

“Intelligent Weapon?” He frowned. “There is great danger in binding spirits...”

“NAMED Weapon,” I corrected him. “Was Excalibur considered intelligent? Mjolnir? Glaupner? Kusanagi? Caliburn? No. A Named Weapon. A fine Weapon, christened and used to conquer, growing with its wielder. Feed it victory, and grow its Name.”

I flicked up a holo of a dagger. “A basic magic Weapon, and yes, you prefer guns, let me go on,” I said as mouths opened. “You first make the weapon magical, but you’re at QL 24, and you want a second effect on it.” I waved at the wall behind me. “You choose Undead Bane.” The dagger was limned with a dead black fire. “But, oh no! You’re fighting a demon, and Undead Bane is useless...

“If you’re Powered, that’s when you toss a Bane Against Fiends on the dagger,” the yellow-black hue of that Banefire overlaid the first. “But if you’re Primos, maybe you realized this a long time ago, and you happened to kill a demon. You switch the Bane via Slaughter to Fiends.” The dagger’s black flames vanished, and were replaced by the black-yellow. “Or maybe you had to pop a Warlock, and you want Humanbane.” The liquid crimson fires of Humanbane covered the dagger, and all of them pulled back...