1??????????????Soul Bound
1.1????????????Finding her Feet
1.1.7??????????An Extreme Response
1.1.7.7????????Hat trick
Alderney had put the visual from Mary-Lynn’s feed on a large screen and set up a couple of large padded virtual couches facing it. Kafana greeted the others. Reading their posts, or even dipping into their recordings just didn’t give the same feel of connection as meeting their avatar face to face, talking and hugging. She handed around food and drinks, and they all sat down to watch. Alderney turned the sound on, just like they were watching late night films together back at UCL.
Mary-Lynn was standing next to Grand Master Air, Dimitri Yusupov, who was looking on as Vessel-Wellington, Flavio and Rudolfo sketched out a rune diagram the size of two football pitches, on the floor of Triple’s cavern. There were circles in the diagram for Rudolfo’s anvil, three Dewars, Vessel-Tomsk carrying Nothung in its scabbard, Rudolfo’s support team, Vessel-Kafana backed by Vessel-Bungo and Vessel-Bulgaria, the rest of the Wombles, and three separate teams of Flavio’s CoThEx mages.
But Mary-Lynn wasn’t looking at that. Her eyes were glued on two figures standing in a different area, Columbina and Harlequin. It was like a ballet on fast forwards. One moment Harlequin was on his knees, a wooing swain, yearning for the hand which Columbina left out stretched but kept moving away at the last minute, leaving him flat on his face, the picture of rejected despair while she laughed gaily behind her fan. The next he was standing, lustful, menacing and demonic, while she was a powerless pure virgin, cowering away, tripping over her feet and yet somehow evading his charges.
Then the mood changed a third time, and they were children playing tag, complete with stuck out tongues and childish gestures, leapfrogging over each other and hiding behind imaginary trees. A fourth change, and Columbina’s fan was instead a knife and they fought in a blur of blades both deadly and graceful. A fifth change, a sixth change, each act getting shorter and shorter until Kafana found herself holding her breath, sure the two of them would explode from sheer energy.
Until suddenly, without warning *freeze frame*. The two faced each other, frozen in mid action, eyes locked, every muscle motionless, hands reaching towards each other but not touching, never to touch. 8 heartbeats. 10 heartbeats. 12 heartbeats. It seemed an eternity.
At 12 they broke their stances and sat down, chatting like old friends. Harlequin seemed to be critiquing Columbina’s performance at one stage, holding his arm in two very similar poses, one the way she’d done it, the other the way he thought she ought to have done it. She waved the criticism off, like one who’d heard it before, arguing her interpretation over his.
Alderney: “Now I understand why they keep sending each other messages, but I’ve never seen them together before.”
“The practice needed to do that.” Tomsk shook his head in awe. “I can see that I have been far too lax with my stunt crew. We are not perfect, we are nowhere near perfect. I am going to make them watch that. Fifty times, if I have to.”
Bulgaria: “I had heard about this from Comico, but I didn’t understand. This is how two acrobats gained so much reputation that they acquired society patrons and were put in charge of running businesses. Everybody knows their names. They are the star power that draws people to those businesses.”
Bungo: “So are they lovers? Brother and sister? I don’t understand.”
Bulgaria: “They are true partners, Bungo. Whether or not they have had sex is irrelevant. What I do know is that, for the rest of their lives, if you cut one of them, the other bleeds.”
Kafana: “I’ve seen Columbina look at Tomsk. She and Harlequin are not Soul Mates in the sexual sense. But it would take a strong man to be with her, knowing that he’d never be first in her life.”
Bungo: “So it is like Tomsk and Nothung? They are mutually Soul Bound, and there’s a link between them that others can never break?”
Tomsk: “Kafana, you say she had eyes for me?”
Kafana: “Yes, but only after she’d asked me about you.” She grinned wickedly “We were going to sit down and have a long chat about you today.” She raised an eyebrow at Tomsk “Should I tell her that you also have eyes for her?”
Tomsk gave the pleased look he normally used when finding a sparring partner good enough to stretch his abilities: “She’d have to understand that she wouldn’t be the only person in my heart. Is she strong enough to accept that?”
Kafana sniffed. “I don’t know if you’ll kill each other or bring the roof down, but you deserve each other.”
Alderney: “It was the carrot. Love at first thrown carrot. You speak her language.”
Wellington: “Hush, they’re about to start.”
Flavio ordered everybody to hold out their hand, palm up. Columbina holding a large tray of snacks and Harlequin holding a bag lined up at the edge of the diagram. On some signal they both started racing around the diagram in opposite directions, zig zagging and leaping. Harlequin was pinning jewellery on people’s clothing, while Columbina was placing one neatly cut desert on each hand. Both had obviously used magic to boost their speed - you could see mages’ cloaks whipping around in the wind of their passing. A lot of them were clutching the hats on their heads.
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30 seconds later, having covered the field sized area at least twice, they were back at their original position, not a single line of the rune diagram having been touched. Harlequin had narrowly won the race, and Columbina was pointing at the ring on a finger of a hand he was trying to hold behind his back, obviously accusing him of cheating. He responded by gently touching a remaining crumb at the corner of her mouth, where she’d eaten magic food. Words were superfluous, their acting was just that expressive. Columbina shrugged in such a way as to indicate “What of it? That is just how things are. It is my right to hold you to a different standard. Are you an idiot for not understanding this?”
Then Vessel-Kafana started to sing.
She sang beautifully. Not phrasing things precisely the way Spirit-Kafana would have, but pouring such pure emotion into her song that everything before seemed just an opening act. A whole team of mages poured mana into her, as she sang buff after buff, until every eye in the place cracked with a blue strong enough to cast shadows, before she sang a calming spell, turning them a deep steady colour.
Kafana found herself applauding. You go, grrl!
And then Vessel-Kafana did something Kafana had never done. She held her pendant and diadem, and sang a prayer to Cov with Vessel-Tomsk. Then held out the ring she’d reclaimed from Pierrot and sang a prayer to Mor with Rudolfo. Then held out the Heart of Light and sang a prayer to Zer with Flavio. Then held out the ruby she won from FancyAnts, and sang a prayer to Krev with Vessel-Alderney. Then held out her purple mind-healing gem and sang a prayer to Lun with Vessel-Bungo. Then held out the Emerald of Harmony and sang a prayer to Dro with Vessel-Wellington. Finally she held hands with Vessel-Bulgaria and sang a haunting melody to Rac. 7 deities she invoked and 7 deities answered with their blessings.
Everyone now in unity, they returned to their places on the rune diagram. Flavio didn’t even have to give directions. Nothung levitated up to a spherical reaction chamber above the anvil. Hollow channels of vacuum were created, double mage shielded, keeping the contents of the channel in and the air out. The first Dewar was opened, and a quench of liquid oxygen was sent to cool Nothung down. The second Dewar was opened, and liquid nitrogen was used to bring it down more, in a move that would have shattered any sword which wasn’t already indestructible.
But then they dared go further. The third Dewar was opened, and rare precious 4He-II flowed up and into the reaction chamber, and a smaller amount flowed into a sample chamber surrounded by an eye-bending transference coil. A dark shroud sprung up around the reaction chamber, shielding it even from light. Spells were cast compressing the chamber inwards until it was sword shaped. Magic storage coils thrummed, and lights flashed across the rune diagram as gallons of liquid nitrogen were moved into position by the heat transfer coil, and shields were erected around it. Rudolfo took a couple of practice swings with his hammer.
Kafana crossed her fingers. Wellington looked very intent. Tomsk clenched his fingers around an imaginary haft, as though he were going to swing the hammer rather than Rudolfo. Even the normally irrepressible Bungo looked worried. Alderney, surprisingly, was looking relaxed and cheerful. This was crafting at its finest.
There was a sound so loud Mary-Lynn felt it in her chest more than heard it, as heat transferred from the helium via resonance and then into the nitrogen via the heating coil. The nitrogen evaporated in a single instant, the explosive force rattling the shields around it. The superfluid 4He-II cooled further, becoming one of the strangest materials known to man: supersolid helium.
With perfect timing, in that brief moment Flavio and Vessel-Wellington laid its second enchantment upon the sword, Nothung, merging selected properties of the supersolid helium into the blade, even as Rudolfo’s hammer swing arrived at the anvil sealing the ritual.
A mannequin holding a normal iron sword was set up by Rudolfo and Vessel-Tomsk put on a heavy insulated gauntlet created by Vessel-Alderney and earlier enchanted by Flavio. He borrowed Bungo’s shield and then carefully lifted Nothung up and stood before the mannequin. He touched Nothung to the sword.
Nothing happened.
Vessel-Wellington smiled and nodded. Vessel-Tomsk tried sheathing Nothung and drawing it. Still nothing unusual. He took a deep breath, held the shield before his face, and wound backwards ready for a big strike. Vessel-Wellington stood back, looking serious now, and said something. Vessel-Tomsk swung fast and accurately, aiming for the mannequin’s neck, as though the mannequin’s sword were there to parry it, his intent to kill clear.
The mannequin’s sword shattered like thin glass, barely slowing Vessel-Tomsk’s blade which carried onwards into the mannequin. Shards of metal flew everywhere, including at Vessel-Wellington who had not stepped far enough back to be safe. A few shards got within a hand’s distance of his body, but then bounced away at a sharp angle.
Wellington, sitting on the couch, muttered “clever lad”.
Kafana: “How did he do that?”
Wellington: “He planned ahead. He actually made use of the effect from the first enchantment, Of Justice. It won’t cause collateral damage. He was testing whether the shatter fragments count as intentional area of effect damage, and stood just close enough to get hit by a few. It looks like they do count. That was very impressive enchanting and almost certainly a critical success.”
The mages cheered and relaxed, and the Womble Vessels all gathered around celebrating. They’d pulled it off.
It took another minute for the other boot to drop, as mages started wondering why their hats no longer fitted correctly. They looked over at Columbina who waved a hat at them which looked suspiciously like Flavio’s, and at Harlequin who was juggling three hats.
Every single mage was wearing a different top hat to the one they’d started off with.
It was almost as though proud isolated chaos did not like being absent, when the other deities are all invited and she is not.