Week 9

  They left the town behind at a brisk pace, Briar with her gatherer’s stride, Tanith uncomplaining even as the hem of her robe collected seeds and burrs, Zhao Tong moving with a long-legged ease that made him seem to glide above the rutted path, a small wooden barrel under one arm. Ember led the way, tail high, pausing every few yards to look back and ensure that his little pack had not gotten lost or distracted.

  Callie carried the bulk of their “equipment” herself; a canvas bag rattling with roughly blown glass beakers, borrowed from the apothecary’s back room, and a jury-rigged tripod from the kitchen.

  Their destination was a secluded pond about half a league outside Apsu’s Respite. The water was shallow at the near edge, deepening quickly toward the center, with banks furred in willows and a fringe of marsh grass that played host to a thousand insistent frogs.

  ***

  Callie set her bag down a few paces from the pond. She extracted the beaker, filled it with muddy pond water, and held it up so the others could see the suspended clots of silt and the unhappy mosquito larva flicking near the surface.

  “First, the baseline,” Callie said. She swirled the contents for effect, then cast Purify Water. The murk in the glass rolled, swirled, and then settled out into perfectly clear water.

  Callie continued. “At the base level, it can only remove biological contaminants from a small amount of water making it safe to drink. With Verdant Weave, it injects pure nature-mana into the water and converts contaminants into harmless inert residue. The water is supposed to be saturated with positive life polarity, whatever that means.

  Tanith, who had been scribbling on a roll of paper, asked without looking up: “Can you adjust the targeting vector for magical contaminants, or only for physical impurities?”

  Callie considered. “Good question. The spell is calibrated for physical stuff: germs, dirt, and other contaminants. It doesn’t work on poisons apparently. I’ve tried to tweak it for mana-infused toxins, but the best you get is a mild reduction.”

  Zhao Tong grunted. “Does this have any applications in battle?”

  “Logistically speaking, if your army is dying of thirst,” Callie replied. “Or if the enemy is throwing mud in your face.”

  Briar leaned forward, nose nearly touching the beaker. “But it’s pretty, right? Imagine a whole pond going crystal clear at once.”

  ***

  “Next,” Callie said, and produced a bucket she’d borrowed from the shop. She’d filled it with water and added a measured spoonful of Harman’s extract, a poisonous plant known for its gut-twisting effect on local livestock. The solution was only a pale yellow, but the smell had a sharp, chemical bite.

  She looked at Briar, who sniffed the bucket and recoiled. “You didn’t have to make it that strong,” Briar protested.

  “It’s not even as bad as the river after the snowmelt,” Callie replied. “Besides, this is for science.”

  She set the bucket in the grass, then flexed her hands. “I’m going to use the Detoxify II: Purge Root spell.”

  Callie channeled a denser current of mana into the bucket. Filaments formed on the water’s surface; first foam, then threads so fine they looked like spiderwebs. They branched into a mat, thickened, then collapsed with a burst of bubbles.

  The water, now slightly turbid, gave off a faint scent of rain and fresh earth.

  “Wow,” Briar said. “Is it alive?”

  Callie poked the mass with a stick. “Semi-alive. The spell constructs plant matter from natural green mana; the little roots which form join together to create the tiny threads you saw. It purges toxins, then withers and disappears.”

  She scooped up a tangle and held it out for inspection. “When the roots die, they release the absorbed mana as this plant residue.”

  Tanith asked, “Does it work for non-plant-based toxins?”

  Callie nodded. “As long as there’s a known structure for the spell to reference. It works best for organic poisons; alkaloids, glycosides, that sort of thing. It’s less effective on heavy metals, but you can combine it with Purify for a two-step process.”

  Zhao Tong watched, arms still folded, as the fibrous clumps filled the bucket and then, just as quickly, withered to mush. “What is the cost to you?”

  Callie flexed her fingers. “A fraction of my current mana. It’s needed to trigger the ambient green mana. More if the volume is big. The roots always burn themselves out. If you cast the spell in a lake, the effect would be diluted, but in a small volume like this, it’s almost immediate.”

  Tanith scribbled more notes. “If the system scales with volume, can you trigger a chain reaction?”

  Callie grinned. “That’s the experiment, isn’t it? But first, I want to test the two spells together.”

  ***

  The next phase was less about artistry and more about raw volume.

  The barrel which Zhao Tong had carried now came into play. He filled it with buckets of the worst-smelling pond water he could reach, and stirred in another dose of the bitterroot extract for “realism.” The stench was so potent that even Ember sniffed and took three careful steps away.

  Briar gagged and pinched her nose, but refused to give up her front-row seat.

  Tanith produced a measuring stick from somewhere in her sleeve and checked the barrel’s depth. “Sixty-four liters, give or take,” she announced.

  Callie wiped sweat from her brow. She flexed her hands, feeling the tingle of anticipation run up her arms. “All right. Stand back.”

  She reached out, touching the barrel’s rim with both palms. Instead of a careful, measured pulse of mana, she dumped as much as she dared into the wood and water—Purify and Detoxify, both at maximum. The effect was almost immediate.

  From the murk, a swarm of white roots erupted, but instead of forming a tidy mat or a few clumps, the roots multiplied exponentially, filling every cubic inch with a web so dense that the water couldn’t be seen at all. Tiny bubbles popped along the rim, spraying mist into the air. The scent of concentrated green mana lingered over the barrel and soon spread outwards faster than a man could walk.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Whoa,” Briar said, eyes wide. “It’s like a whole ecosystem in there.”

  Tanith jotted furiously. “The acceleration of the process appears to be nonlinear. The vectors are self-replicating.”

  Callie grinned. “That’s what I was hoping for. If the system has a way of multiplying the effect with scale, then we can use it as an area defense.”

  Zhao Tong, unimpressed by the spectacle, tapped the barrel. “How does it work and, more importantly, long does it last?”

  Callie peered inside. “It’s already slowing down. The roots only exist to neutralize the poison, then they gradually wither away. In small doses, it’s a matter of seconds. But in a larger volume, the system ‘wants’ to fill the container, then burns itself out. I suspect it would take a couple of days or more depending on the body of water. As for how it works… ”

  “Let me try,” Tanith offered. “My guess is that Purify’s residual energy over-energizes the dying roots. Instead of decaying quietly, they detonate into these clouds which are the tiny bubbles popping over the surface of the water.”

  “It’ll be difficult to prove anything without a microscope,” Callie said.

  “What’s that?” Briar asked.

  “It’s a kind powerful lens which allows us to see tiny objects beyond the resolving power of our own eyes,” Callie answered. “Without it, we can only guess at what is happening. Considering the way the mist is spreading, I assume it has to be an accelerated growth reaction. I’ve had colleagues who have created similar constructs in other… uhm… cities.” Callie wanted to says worlds but it seemed like too much a hassle to explain that or the concept of photosynthesis.

  “So these ‘microscopic’ mana plants or whatever are feeding off sunlight, the air, and ambient mana resulting in this expanding green fog. As to what effect it will have on mana-based spells, I was hoping for a demonstration from Tanith.”

  Tanith was ready with a basic Flame Arrow which she cast over the expanding mist. The arrow leapt from her hands and streaked towards the barrel but immediately dissipated upon contact with the green mist.

  “Yes!” Callie shouted. The fuzzy science which the liminal Library created for fantasy worlds seemed to be holding for the one she had been dumped into. The others seemed less impressed, probably wondering how many barrels they would need to deposit around town for this to be of any use.

  Briar poked at the surface with a stick. “Do you think the effect would be the same if we used, say, a town reservoir?”

  Tanith nodded. “Or a city aqueduct. The vectors would propagate until all contaminants were removed. Or until the system ran out of mana.”

  Briar swirled the water with her finger. “So if we released this into a river, would it just keep going?”

  Callie considered. “It’s limited by the amount of mana I can infuse and the ambient green mana. Otherwise, the roots wither and the system shuts itself down. It’s a self-limiting cycle.” She paused, considering. “But if you tweaked the targeting vector, or introduced a repeating mana pulse, it might be possible to create a standing field of these rootlets, an area of effect that neutralizes any incoming toxin or magical attack.”

  Tanith’s eyes gleamed. “A biological dampener.”

  Callie nodded. “Exactly.”

  Zhao Tong smiled, just a little.

  ***

  Callie stood at the margin of the pond, boots in the cool mud, and looked out at the surface.

  She closed her eyes and let her mind “zoom out,” seeing the pond not as a sum of its creatures or chemicals, but as one immense, unified container. She drew a breath, held it, then flexed every magical muscle she possessed.

  “Here goes nothing,” she said, just loud enough for Briar to hear.

  Then, with the steadiness of years spent doing impossible things under deadline, Callie dumped every remaining bit of mana into the water. She pictured the rootlets growing not just as a mat, but as a three-dimensional engine, hungry for disorder, hungry to fill every void.

  The effect was instant and catastrophic.

  The pond convulsed. From the bottom up, a storm of white roots exploded outward, knotting and branching in every direction, turning the basin into a solid, writhing mass. Where the previous tests had been content to mesh at the surface, this time the rootlets pierced air and water alike, rising in columns and whorls that reached for the sky.

  Tanith let out a strangled laugh. “You’ve started a chain reaction!”

  Callie tried to throttle the flow, but the spell was out of her hands. The root mass pulsed, built to a peak, then collapsed; bursting into a cloud of luminous green that shot straight up and then billowed out in all directions, enveloping the shore and anyone foolish enough to be standing near the blast zone.

  Callie staggered back, realizing it was too late to wonder if she would catch a fungal lung infection. The green residue was cool, not hot, and they clung to her skin with a tingle like mint or a low-grade static shock.

  “That wasn’t supposed to happen,” she managed. Then noticed that the mist had replenished her mana gauges. Her Toxin Awareness didn’t seem to detect any potential irritants which was only marginally reassuring.

  The others watched, stunned, as the mist thickened around them. The sunlight, hitting the upper edge of the cloud, refracted down into a swirling aurora of greens and yellows. For a moment, the world was transformed, a fairy tale gone feral, a page from a botany textbook illustrated by a madman.

  ***

  Tanith was the first to move. She stepped into the mist, raised a hand, and muttered the words for a basic fire spell. Her fingers sparked, but the flame that usually leapt from her thumb sputtered and died with a whimper.

  Tanith tried again, this time with a more aggressive gesture. Nothing.

  She looked at Callie, eyes huge behind her spectacles. “My mana gauge drops when I fire off the spell but then surges back up a moment later,” she said, with wonder and panic in equal measure. “It’s being siphoned off. Or… buffered?” She spent a whole fifteen seconds thinking then lit up. “I know what’s happening. The micro… plants are constantly absorbing and radiating mana, they equalize ambient magic levels: Too much mana, they absorb it. Too little, they release it.

  Zhao Tong tested the theory in his own way. He braced, then launched himself into a textbook-perfect forward somersault, landing with martial precision. Then he swept his spear through a standard guard stance. No change. “Physical capacity is unaffected,” he reported.

  Callie, still smarting from the aftershock of the spell, tried to analyze the phenomenon.

  “It’s like each micro-scale plant is absorbing ambient mana,” she said, thinking aloud. “Possibly even draining spells cast in the area—and using it to maintain equilibrium. A self-healing, mana-dampening mist.”

  Tanith, not to be outdone, added, “It’s like releasing conductive dust in a storm. The energy dissipates before it can form a coherent strike.”

  “Which means…” Briar prompted.

  Callie felt her mind racing to keep up. “Which means, if we seeded enough of this stuff into the air, it would short-circuit any large-scale spellcasting or magical siege weapons. Maybe not forever, but for hours at a time. Maybe even a few days.”

  Zhao Tong nodded, satisfaction in his eyes. “But do we know it’s safe?”

  Callie swallowed hard. “I’m afraid we’ve just become the guinea pigs. But my passive triage skills aren’t detecting any ailments in the vicinity.”

  Tanith wasn’t quite sure what Callie meant by “guinea pigs" but she assumed it wasn’t anything good to be compared to an animal.

  ***

  Callie watched as the cloud began to thin, the motes of green settling gently onto the grass, the trees, the surface of the pond like a green mold. Already, the first birds were returning, swooping low to snag insects that had not even noticed the change. The frogs resumed their chorus, unbothered.

  She scooped a palmful of the water, now perfectly transparent, and tasted it. Cool, astringent, with a subtle flavor of raw chlorophyll. She let it roll down her throat, and felt the last trace of a headache disappear.

  Briar turned to her. “So. If we release this at the aqueduct intake... ”

  “It would blanket the town in a matter of hours,” Callie finished. “If the Purge comes as a magical assault, or even a mana-based disease vector, it’ll hit a wall.”

  Tanith pushed her glasses up and looked at the water with a new respect. “Of course, if the Purge is a physical event; a flood, a fire, or a band of Purifiers, we’ll need a Plan B.”

  Zhao Tong smiled. “But for now, we might have evened the odds or even acquired an edge.”

  They lingered at the pond, watching to see if the cloud would dissipate in the absence of light. It didn’t but neither did it expand beyond its daytime limits. The sun was lower now, and the first night insects had started to dance in the new, clarified air.

  Callie laughed, and the sound startled a flock of finches from the reeds. For a moment, the future didn’t feel so terrifying. There was a plan. There was a path forward.

  Briar was already halfway up the path, shouting back, “Last one home has to feed the warg!”

  Zhao Tong and Tanith followed, still deep in technical debate.

  Callie turned once, looked back at the pond, and let herself imagine, just for a second, that the world could be bent—gently, not broken—by careful hands and a little help from friends.

  She wiped her face, and set off after the others, ready for whatever the Audit would bring.