Isengar and Nurgle in the style of Aubrey Beardsley, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.

  Chapter 29: Shadow

  Bergen, Norway, Erd dimension

  Year 42 of the Confluence Republic (visitor time)

  “Pretty grim place, huh?” Isengar was gazing out over the dark and foggy fjord.

  “As grim as they get.” The gloomy surroundings were not, however, reflected in Nurgle’s mood; he felt great as he conjured up some grub for the two of them. Nearby, hanging just over the water, their captured shadow struggled mechanically and hopelessly against its magical confines.

  They had studied the construct for a while now. At first, they had been utterly confused – this magic was different from anything they knew. Incomprehensible to the mind, something like an alien dimension or a Veil experience. Just completely different from anything else they had ever come across.

  But they stayed with it, Sparking up and looking for patterns. Of course, they were careful to look for traps and other hidden shenanigans, but there seemed to be nothing of the kind. And eventually, they started recognizing the patterns. The alien magic was composed of different strands, just like any other complex magical flow the two had seen, even if the structure of these strands was highly unusual and their interactions inscrutable. Among its various functions, the shadow most distinctly and recognizably included an energy curse which enabled it to suck up magical energy. Unlike what would be the case with Confluence magics, however, the Life Magic component was not a single identifiable strand but rather a collection distributed across the overall magical flow.

  In the Confluence, the major functions of a magical project were normally assembled as the major strands of its flow. By contrast, this alien magic had an entirely different architecture, organized seemingly at random and with no regard to function. It seemed arbitrary and chaotic, and the peculiar organization made the prospect of nesting up a basic function such as the energy curse highly complicated.

  To understand what was going on, Isengar and Nurgle had to create their own model of the flow constituting the shadow, then color-code individual low-level strands according to their function. Along the way, they discovered one advantage of the alien architecture: the low-level strands were part of several high-level functions at the same time. This made the alien magic less costly in terms of the amount of energy it consumed. In essence, it seemed like the aliens sacrificed order for efficiency: their magic was slightly more efficient at the cost of being vastly more complicated.

  Having understood these aspects of its organizing principle, the other secrets of the alien magic eventually yielded to the Elders’ Divination probes. However, the shadows’ ability to replicate themselves seemed closely linked to their quasi-physical form, and it was not clear why it should be so.

  “Why do these shadows have any physical aspect at all? There are no obvious benefits to it.” Nurgle was annoyed at the fact that the damn things were unnecessarily complicated.

  “No benefits and several drawbacks, I’d say. They would be more fearsome if we could not see them, and the fact that they manifest physically as shadows probably makes them vulnerable to physical attacks.” Isengar for his part enjoyed the complexity of the alien magic, mostly because – although he would have resisted the observation – it gave him something to do with his mind other than being miserable all the time.

  “Yeah. We could probably have attacked them just with light, don’t you think?”

  “Probably, if we needed to. Non-physical constructs would be vastly preferable.”

  “Well, at the margin. Wouldn’t have made a difference to us, actually.”

  “True. Still, it’s weird that our enemies would give the shadows a physical manifestation unless it’s useful in some way.”

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  “Exactly. You know, if we ever need to fight these guys, having had this opportunity to learn about their magic gives us a major advantage. Do you think they have had the same opportunity to study our magic?”

  “Let’s hope not. To do so, they would probably have had to visit our dimension and stay hidden while observing us. Unless they were able to intercept one of our expeditions.”

  “So, not impossible, but this attack on Erd has cost them something. Maybe they think this magic is basic stuff that they don’t need to keep secret.”

  “Could be. The replication thing is new to us, though. Not basic stuff.”

  “But pretty useless unless we have someone we can suck the energy from. Like in the good old days, yes?” Nurgle grinned.

  Isengar sighed. “Such happy memories. But maybe we’d feel justified in attacking our enemies with stuff like this.”

  “I’d say they are well prepared for such eventualities. Wouldn’t get very far as an attack on the Confluence either, even if they have never encountered it before.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. It’s a simple little thing, useful against defenseless Erd and otherwise crap.” Isengar sighed. “We’ve learnt nothing worthwhile.”

  “I don’t think that’s quite true. We learnt something about how they structure their magic. That will be useful if we have to look at other magics they’re throwing our way later.”

  “Always looking at the bright side, aren’t you?”

  “Some of us have to. If it were up to you, we’d be drowning in gloom.”

  “Mm. Well, there’s one thing I don’t understand. What is the relation between the replication ability and the quasi-physical form. They seem very closely linked.”

  “They do replicate their physical form, obviously.”

  “Yeah, but they also replicate their vampiric curse, but that does not seem as closely entwined.”

  They studied the shadow and its various strands of magic more closely. The specimen they had captured carried a small charge of energy – probably something like a tenth of what it needed to replicate itself. Interestingly, this tiny energy charge seemed to float freely around its shadow form rather than being contained somewhere specific.

  “The energy is dispersed throughout the shadow,” said Isengar. “There’s no containment except the shadow form itself.”

  “Huh. But why? Isn’t that a less stable arrangement?”

  “Probably in some situations, but maybe not in a way that is relevant to their task here in Erd. Maybe the shadow form is a way to save energy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The quasi-physical form provides no clear benefits and some vulnerabilities, right? But it also does not cost very much. A containment field for the energy the vampire shadow steals would be more costly.”

  “Yeah. Wow. They’re saving a few pennies on each shadow by making it more vulnerable. Same thing as with the architecture of their magic – they keep making sacrifices to preserve energy.”

  “But these shadows run on stolen energy in any case, so when you make them as efficient as possible, you’ll end up with a larger shadow army.”

  “Maximizing efficiency at the cost of adding vulnerabilities. Not something we would think of, or the people running the Confluence Republic for that matter.”

  “Says something about who they are, doesn’t it? Efficiency at any cost.”

  “Should we count it as having a very clear focus or as monomania?”

  “Maybe both. I don’t know if this makes them more dangerous or less dangerous to us. Ruthless optimization could cut both ways, depending on what you sacrifice to save costs.”

  “I guess.” Nurgle was starting to lose interest. “Anyway, at this point we can probably replicate the shadows, right? Just change what they target.”

  “More or less. But there’s a few issues to consider. We want them to target the shadows, but we don’t want them to target shadow-eating shadows. And are we sure that the target shadows will be destroyed when our attack shadows suck them dry? Maybe we need to add a cancellation attack to get rid of them completely.”

  “Ok, that’s something. Our shadow eaters will be more costly, then.”

  “Another thing is that while the target shadows should be defenseless against the shadow eaters, they will probably try to attack them. The shadows will be draining the shadow eaters while the eaters are draining the shadows.”

  “But they are not attacking each other now.”

  “Right. So, if we make our shadow eaters look similar to the old shadows, they won’t be attacked. And then we need to modify the targeting procedure of our eaters so they do attack the old shadows.”

  “We get this to work, our eaters will infiltrate the shadows, suck them dry and then destroy them with a cancellation attack, without encountering any resistance or counterattack. They will feed and replicate unhindered. So elegant it’s almost scary.”

  “Yeah, we do this and, unless someone upgrades the old shadows or something, this whole dimension will gradually be populated by our shadow eaters. What happens then?”

  “We’ve won. Erd magic can manifest all it wants to, and our shadow eaters will slowly use up the energy they have drifting aimlessly around.”

  A chill came over Isengar. “Unless – unless that’s when your supposed allies show up. Maybe this is what they wanted. They swoop in and somehow take control over all the shadow eaters.”

  “How could they do that?”

  “They have magics to control constructs, maybe. It’s possible we could do the same thing – take control of all the shadows with one great magic flow.”

  “Huh. We probably could, actually. I never thought of that. But it would be way more costly than what we’re doing now.”

  “I’m not saying it’s highly likely, but I think we should add some kind of self-destruction measure. When there are no target shadows anymore, and maybe if we send a specific signal, they all go somewhere, upload whatever energy they’re carrying, and disintegrate.”

  “That would require strong obfuscation, or someone like Soth could take advantage of it.”

  “Right. We have a plan?”

  “Love working with you, old chum.”

  Nurgle and Isengar in the style of Pop Art, as interpreted by DALL-E in February 2025.