Andrew Rowe - Sufficiently Advanced Magic

“Echion,” she replied. “He’s… more than just a child.”

I folded my arms. “When you were in the jail cells, you acted like you didn’t even know him.”

She frowned. “Sorry about that. I couldn’t let anyone — especially Keras — realize how important he is to me. And in general.”

“What if that deception had caused me to leave the two of you in there? Or if Keras got impatient and triggered the traps?”

Vera shook her head. “Had to take my chances. There was too much of a chance Keras would have killed Echion outright if he’d known what he was dealing with. Echion wouldn’t have starved, and I doubt the traps would have done much to him.”

She paused for a breath. “Believe me, I thought long and hard about how I was going to behave in order to find the best chance of getting us both out. And that meant trying to get myself out, so I could find a way to free him. You having a second key just made it easier. If you’d just freed Echion and tried to walk out, I suspect Katashi would have just killed you both.”

I nodded. “Why’d Katashi attack him? Was this some kind of coup? Is Echion actually Tenjin?”

Vera shook her head. “No, but it’s not a bad guess.” She took in a deep breath. “Let me start from the beginning. Caelford and Valia have been allies since the Six Year War.”

I remembered the class about that. About eighty years ago, Edria’s army had swept east and conquered the kingdom of Kelridge — now known as “East Edria” — which sat along Valia’s border. They’d continued to push toward Valia, but we put up a better fight.

Caelford was on the opposite side of the continent — the far west side — and bordered West Edria. They were concerned about being Edria’s next target after Valia fell, and had some border skirmishes on their own, so they provided us with advanced weapons during the war. Caelford’s powerful cannons had been a key part of how we were able to hold the numerically superior Edrian army at bay.

I waved a hand. “Sure. And I take it this had something to do with the Edrian forces massing at our borders?”

Vera nodded. “More than you realize. Caelford and Valia have been bracing for another Edrian push for decades. Our spies told us that the time for that assault is finally on the horizon, so we decided to accelerate the timeline on one of our most important research projects.”

Some sort of joint military research between our nations made sense. I nodded for her to continue.

“Our team was put together from some of the best each nation could offer. I was the least experienced, but I had a strong connection with the research subject.”

“The research subject was a person?” I frowned. “Echion, I suppose?”

Jin raised a hand to his temple, looking introspective.

Vera continued. “Yeah. I’m sure you saw the marks on his forehead. We were doing some… unusual research with him. We had a powerful enough group that we assumed we could keep him safe regardless of what we ran into. We weren’t expecting a visage.”

I folded my arms, considering. “Katashi or Tenjin?”

“Tenjin. One of the members of our group cast what sounded like an ordinary summoning spell, but Tenjin arrived instead of the summoned monster. Showed up with an entourage. Told us that what we were doing was extraordinarily dangerous, that we were dabbling with powers beyond our comprehension… that sort of thing. Commanded us to stand down and surrender. And, you know, I think we would have. Probably.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“His entourage stabbed him in the back — almost literally. One of ‘em put a hand on his back. Blasted a hole in his chest. Didn’t kill Tenjin, but it certainly startled him. I guess the traitor realized that a shroud doesn’t protect someone from attacks that come from inside the shroud.”

Jin bristled. “A visage could not be harmed so easily.”

Vera shrugged. “Just telling you what I saw. Anyway, that traitor — woman in a dark mask — kept pummeling Tenjin. The other member of the entourage went for us. Tall bastard, crazy good with a sword. Echion probably could have handled him, but our Summoner hit Echion with some kind of binding spell. Pinned him to the ground.”

I sighed. “This Summoner. Was that Elora Theas, by any chance?”

She tightened her jaw. “Yeah, that’s the bitch’s name. You know her?”

I thought back to the fight between Keras and the Council of Lords. Elora had tried to chain Keras down, probably with the same spell she’d used on Tenjin. Keras had broken out almost instantly.

I nodded. “Yeah. Or, I know of her, anyway. So, she turned on your group and helped the people who were attacking?”

“Yeah. It was obvious this was a planned ambush. Rochelle and Lawrence put up a good fight, but that swordsman was just too much. Must have been an Emerald. Even three Citrines couldn’t stand up against him. Tenjin was starting to recover, but then Elora laid into him with her magic, too. Managed to pin him down like she did with Echion, then that masked woman knocked Tenjin out.”

That… sounded insane. The idea of a group of humans managing to incapacitate a visage — even if they accomplished it through the element of surprise — it was mind-boggling.

Then again, I’d seen Keras manage to hold Katashi at bay in a straight fight.

And Tenjin was the Visage of Inspiration. He wasn’t known for his combat abilities. It was possible that he was considerably weaker in a direct confrontation than someone like Katashi would be.

Something she said earlier scratched at the back of my mind, though. “Why do you think Echion might have been able to handle the situation if he hadn’t been incapacitated?”

Vera winced. “You saw that mark on his forehead, yeah?”

I nodded and another piece of the puzzle slid into place. “You’re experimenting with making artificial attunements, aren’t you?”

Vera ran a hand through her hair. “Been doing that for decades. This was… a little more advanced than that. I won’t bombard you with theory, but the point is that Tenjin was right. It’s incredibly dangerous work.”

She paused, taking a breath, then continued. “We were bringing Echion into the tower to test him against monsters. We tried smaller tests at home, of course, but we needed something closer to real combat. If the test had succeeded, we’d have had a weapon that might have been strong enough to prevent a war.”

I could understand the logic behind that. In fact, I was very interested in the subject of artificially creating attunements myself.

If there was a way to give anyone power — and the power they wanted, not just what the goddess chose to give them — we could work toward a society with vastly better efficiency and quality of life for everyone.

Elementalist farmers could make rain for their own crops. Shaper blacksmiths could create tools and weapons with less effort and better quality results. Summoner couriers could teleport from place to place, saving tremendous amounts of time and effort.

There were already some people doing all these things, but most attuned were bound tightly to the military or similar pursuits. And, of course, only those people who were both wealthy enough to take the test and lucky enough to succeed managed to earn attunements. Most farmers never even stood a chance at getting one. Marissa’s family probably had to save up for years just to get her a shot at taking the test.

I could see problems with giving attunements to everyone, of course. The Judgments might have served as some sort of vetting process to determine who would be safe enough to carry one without causing harm to others, and the school education afterward served a second step in that process.