Chapter 105: Practice_Millennial Mage

Chapter 105: Practice

 T sat on the wagon top as it trundled towards the trees. The caravan was underway, and T had a task before her.

 Per Mistress Oderas instructions, she was preparing to activate her active gravity maniption for the first time. I really should have done this a week ago But there had just been too much else to do. I still havent even started experimenting with spell-forms in my lungs, either No. This took priority.

 She ced her palms on her elbows, left arm going above right. She carefully positioned her fingers per Hollys instructions, getting into the very awkward and specific position required for the initial activation. I know we didnt want this to activate on ident, but this is a bit ridiculous.

 Even so, she followed the instructions given, closed her eyes, and entered the required mental state.

 Control.

 Power whipped through her, filling the gold inscriptions in her left breast and radiating outward into the others linked to them. A few of the forms made subtle additions to her mage-sight as well, utilizing the base scripts to give her needed information.

 The miniscule copper links ced to kick off this first activation burned away, leaving her with another active draw on her power.

 It was a massive drain.

 Ts eyes opened, widening in surprise as she felt her reserves begin to steadily, if slowly, empty. With quick, practiced technique, she forged one of her standard void-channels and connected it to her body and the inscriptions there.

 The added flow was just enough to satisfy the much greater demand for power. Great Any time she didnt have an active void-channel, she would be losing power. I need to understand this spell-working better. That should increase the efficiency and reduce the draw.

 She thought she could hold the single void-channel for most of a day. Even so, it wasnt enough to refill what shed lost. So, she quickly forged a second void-channel and dispersed it a few secondster when her reserves were refilled.

 That done, she opened her eyes, and had to blink back tears.

 The entire world seemed to have a uniform, additional coloryered overtop both her normal vision and that of her mage-sight. Not quite a color, more an added depth.

 She felt her mind hitch at the additional facet of information.

 Thankfully, given that the new portion of her sight was directly linked to her mage-sight, it functioned the same. Now that she had taken in the gravity of everything around her, it faded from her sight. Only differences will be highlighted.

 She nced down at her hands and was greeted by such a difference. The light of gravity was deeper,ing from her body, the effect seeming to highlight the weight of difference. T huffed a chuckle at that. Well, thats exactly what it is, so thats probably why I perceive it that way.

 Once shed limated to that, her extra perception with regard to her own body faded as well. Only changes will manifest.

 Shed picked up a small stone for practice and set it near her feet during the initial activation. As such, she picked it up to hold, focusing on it to bring back the other light that indicated gravitys effect.

 She brought her left, middle finger down to press against her left thumb, her other fingers curling naturally into the position shed had Holly lock the ability behind. I cant make changes, unless I have this hand position, for now. It seemed a wise precaution.

 Increase. She applied her will and felt a marked uptick in the power drain. She immediately created another void-channel. The light increased minutely, but the increase in weight was much, much too little for her hand to register. All that, for this?

 She thought for a long moment. What am I doing, exactly?

 She was dumping power into an effect, without considering how it would be aplished. She remembered her inefficiency with charging the cargo-slots, before shed fully utilized a mental model. She recalled how horrible her skins defenses were before she understood the bio-chemistry behind inter- and intra-cellr bonds.

 Yeah, thats whats happening, here. I havent bothered to really understand how this is doing what its supposed to do.

 She thought for a moment.

 Its exactly like my crush. As soon as the thought entered her mind, solidifying into a mental construct, the new, added drain on her power greatly diminished. The stone got noticeably heavier, if still just minutely.

 Thats right. Take that 10% extra weight and crack! She shook her head, a smile tugging at her lips. Hey, its a start.

 She bent her will towards increasing it, and over the next hour was able to raise the stones weight by nearly 50%, then slowly return it to normal. It was a colossally cial process, but T thought she could make it faster, in time.

 Practice it is, then.

 * * *

 T watched the false twilightndscape around their small caravan.

 It had taken her nearly two hours to fully adjust to the dappled green light. Even still, she kept thinking that she saw movement out of the corners of her vision, but it was just the obscuring leaves and branches, high above, swaying in a wind she couldnt see. Or, moving on their own

 Now that they were past the forests edge, the massive trees were actually spaced fairly far apart, with few exceptions.

 Those exceptions seemed to be growing just too close together to get a wagon through, thus diverting them from their intended course. Whenever they came to such blockages, at least one of the trees was invariably one of the migratory variety. Ts mage-sight told her that the magics within were much moreplex than the average specimen of tree. Even so, theycked the level ofplexity of an arcanous creature.

 As things would have it, it was always easier to divert to the left, or east, around the barrier. When they tried to go right, or west, the terrain became more difficult, often with great tangles of roots slowing them down or just making the path impossible.

 The tree trunks were colossal, as befitted their height. If T was estimating correctly, therger trees, past the leading edge of the forest, were close to nine hundred feet tall, and approaching two hundred feet across. In general, the trees grew around that far apart, making it a very dense forest, rtively speaking, while still having a lot of clear ground for them to traverse.

 Thus, any given diversion took them only around four hundred feet out of their way, but it was still quite inconvenient, as the arrangement of the trees made it difficult to tell where paths through were, until they drew close.

 The whole scale of this ce twists the mind. She assumed that the trees got as much of their needs from the magic, which they were drawing up from the earth, as from sunlight, and that made the closer crowding less of an issue.

 The fact that any light reached them at all was a testament to the sparseness of the canopy. Those limbs are huge, though! It was mainly the leaves that were sparse, barely forming a singleyer between them and the clouds, all told. She even caught some glimpses of those clouds, asionally.

 It was cold enough under the trees that the ground was frost covered, but it didnt seem like much snow got through to the forest floor, at least not here.

 The guards had attached an interesting device to the front of the cargo-wagons shaft, between the two oxen. It extended out in front of the animals on a hinge. To T, it looked mostly like a weight, resting on a set of wheels that moved up and down to stay in heavy contact with the ground. It seemed incrediblyplicated, since it could move and swivel, while not hindering the turns or movements of the oxen and wagon in the least.

 To prevent the oxen from falling into a pit-trap?

 That was probably a good idea. The oxen were pretty key to the whole venture.

 Huh what would happen if the oxen were in? It was probably worth asking. If it were up to her, now that she thought about it, there would be scripts embedded in the wagon that could do the work of the oxen, in the case of an emergency, but they would also be too expensive for regr use.

 That in mind, she took a moment away from her practice, and watching their surroundings, to examine the wagon more closely with her mage-sight.

 There wasnt active magic to stand out to her, but she thought she detected the intrinsic power of metal embedded, swirling through various parts of the vehicle.

 I wonder who can activate it, and how? She was probably better off not knowing.

 I can be trusted not to activate it. T decided to redirect her mind to other topics. Sometimes she felt like she was herding a toddler, while trying to direct her own mind.

 Rude. She would get over it.

 She felt a tickling from the edges of her mage-sight and looked up.

 Something was moving through the canopy nearly directly overhead. As she opened her mouth to call out a warning, one of the guards on the chuckwagon beat her to it.

 Above! He directed their attention to the one that T had seen, though she noticed some of the other guards pointedly looking elsewhere. To ensure its not a distraction?

 The Cert clearly seemed to notice their attention, vaulting off the massive branch it had been charging across.

 T immediately brought her middle finger back to her left thumb, focusing on the falling animal and dumping five void-channels worth of power through her mental construct, through the spell-form, and towards increasing the beasts weight.

 In the roughly six seconds before it impacted, beside the cargo-wagon, T was able to increase its weight by only about 10%, if she was understanding the new aspect of her sight properly. That barely increased the speed of impact, only increasing the energy of such by a bit.

 The beast stumbled in itsnding. The oddity of gravitys effect changing seemed to have caught it by surprise.

 T continued to bend her will towards increasing it, even as guards jammednces into it with passing charges from horseback.

 This Cert didnt have any elemental abilities, that she could see, and all the power in it seemed focused on its normal functions. A bit like me, I guess

 As such, thences were mainly mundane, and didnt have the huge impact that those using the creatures own power would have achieved.

 T nced to Mistress Odera, but the woman shook her head. No. Master Rane has it handled.

 As if on cue, Rane swept by at incredible speed. Force struck the beasts chest and blew through it, while the creatures increased weight helped with anchoring the thing to allow for a through-and-through, upward cut.

 Blood fountained into the air, and a chorus of deep, guttural notes rained from the canopy, above.

 T swept her gaze across their green ceiling, seeing hints of creatures looking out from behind the power-filled branches, where they were very difficult for her mage-sight to pick out. How many are there?

 Mistress Oderas voice was clear as she spoke. They are ambushers more than fighters. They know weve seen them. Expect them to retreat but be wary just in case.

 The next minutes were incredibly stressful, as the wagons slowly left the pack behind. The beasts, for their part, didnt seem to be following, at least not those that T was able to pick out. Those watched the wagons depart until tree-trunks blocked direct line of sight.

 Mistress Odera finally breathed out a sigh of relief and nodded. Return to regr observance.

 The guards responded to hermand, seeming to rx.

 Back to practice, then.

 The rest of the day passed with little of note.

 They were attacked quite a few more times, but it was always by singr creatures.

 Some ten lesser Leshkin, total, five more Certs, a white stag that emitted blinding pulses of light, three medium-sized reptiles that reminded T a bit of Terry, and two night-pumas fell before Rane and the guardsmen.

 Mistress Odera only had to shield them once, when a Cert dropped from directly overhead. The woman angled her defense, shaped as a t ne, so that the beast rolled off to fall the rest of the way to the ground. There, it was quickly dispatched, just like the others.

 All told, T was an anciry resource who barely helped, though she did get a lot of practice with her gravity maniption.

 By the time they made camp that evening, T understood how it worked well enough to be able to alter gravitational effects by close to ten percent per second, with sufficient power devoted to the task. Thankfully, her increased understanding also meant that the void-channel to her body was no longer required, while she wasnt actively making modifications to the gravity around her. Thats good, at least. I dont want to think what would happen if I ran out of power in the night

 The rate of change that shed reached was still nowhere near fast enough to rece her Crush, but it was nearly six times her earlier pace.

 Every step draws me closer to where I want to be. She knew that her future progress would be slower, but it wouldnt stop any time soon.

 Their camp that night was in a slightlyrger-than-average gap between several trees. Shed asked Mistress Odera if there was any danger of being fully surrounded and blocked in during the night, and the woman had simply said that it rarely happened. So, not never

 Still the older woman didnt seem concerned, so T had returned to her practice.

 As T walked across the wagon-top, thinking about her progress gave her an idea, and she decided to reduce her weight by ten percent, just to see what it would be like. The magic affected her easily. As it originated within her, her iron salve didnt block it.

 She tripped immediatelyon the smooth wagon top. Seriously?

 Her every movement felt wrong. Even so, she gritted her teeth and went through her exercises with the altered gravity, forcing herself to adjust. Alright, then. I need to practice under as many different levels of gravity as possible.

 She didnt really know how, exactly, it would be useful, but she didnt like that she was so ipetent with such a minor variation.

 But should I practicerge variations first, or subtle ones? She had no idea. I should ask someone

 It was too bad that everyone was busy with their evening duties. Rane walked in a wide circle around the wagons, checking for any hiddenirs or traps.

 Mistress Odera and the guards seemed to be thoroughly checking the ground between and immediately around their campsite in much greater detail than Rane could hope to achieve with his wide sweep.

 I should go ask if I can help. She sighed, dropping off the side of the wagon.

 She mmed into the ground, fracturing the already frozen soil. She ground her teeth, feeling how much ending-berry power had been required to absorb the blow. Ok. Im calling it. I can always put it back on, now that my active maniption is up and running.

 As Terry appeared on her shoulder, T brought middle finger and thumb together, and she began dumping power into reducing gravitys effect on her. It took every void-channel she had and nearly a minute to reach a normal weight, or close enough to be irrelevant.

 She was able to watch her hand andpare that to her sleeve as a way of matching the gravity light from each, nearly perfectly.

 Yeah I should have released that ages ago She hadnt really considered how easily she could ce the effect back on, if she wanted. Im a bit foolish, sometimes

 She approached Mistress Odera, a literal spring in her step. Thankfully, she got used to her lightness before stopping beside the other woman. Is there anything I can do to assist?

 I dont think at the moment, Mistress, but thank you for checking in. Mistress Odera nced to Terry. Now, you, good avian, would you be willing to do a sweep of the surroundings? You can move faster than all but a horseman and will draw less attention than one of the mounted guards.

 Terry cocked his head, then nced towards T.

 T smiled at her friend. If you want, might be nice to stretch your legs? Hed been a bitzier that day, not really leaving Ts side very often.

 He bobbed and vanished.

 In less than an hour, the camp was as secure as they could easily make it, and dinner was being served.

 T and Rane sparred once again, to the delight of the others in the caravan.

 T was having a bit more trouble, today, given her normal weight.

 She was a bit faster on sideways and upward movements than before, but she couldnt anchor against Ranes blows as easily, and the result was that she was flung about much more often.

 It was a stark lesson in humility, and inly showed just howcent shed already be in epting certain hits. I should probably practice with even less than normal gravitybut not today. In truth, she should wait until she could match Rane before pushing further, but she doubted she would have the patience. Well see.

 After a particrly brutal bout, T was taking a break to drink deeply from her water incorporator when she felt something bump her shoulder.

 T turned to see Terry, the size of a small horse, looking at her.

 A silence had fallen over those watching. They seemed to be curious more than anything else, as theyd all seen the bird in his smaller form, and the guards knew he could get bigger. Many had even seen him at this size, over thest few days.

 Whats up, Terry?

 The bird bobbed to her, then tapped Flow with his nose and flicked his head towards where she and Rane had been sparring.

 You want me to fight some more?

 He bobbed, then shuffled that way.

 Her eyes widened. You want me to spar with you?

 He bobbed again, seeming much more excited.

 T swallowed, though her mouth had been empty. Well, I suppose it could be good practice What under the stars am I agreeing to?

 Terry did a happy little shuffle, then appeared in the cleared area, crouched and ready.

 Well, alright then. Lets see what we can do.

MillionNovel

Chapter 105: Practice