Chapter 36.1: A Semblance of Control

Christoff Veritas rapped on the green glass of one of Kikka’s disturbing test cylinders. Four days had passed since he’d first been introduced to this macabre menagerie, and he’d grown more accustomed to it. However gruesome the chambers got at times, they were all just animals, even this stalker. Majestic though the big, midnight-black cat was, it couldn’t have fulfilled a more honorable purpose than it was about to, being another in a long line of creatures helping to prove the magical efficacy of the Unseen Ones, the only true human gods.

Beside Veritas stood Vadd, the slender, dreadlocked asura who happened to also be one of Kikka’s lead engineers. He held a glowing data tablet and poked the thing repeatedly. He claimed it was a tool critical to his research—now their research—but Christoff still had no idea what the asuran glyphs on it said. He’d grown used to the way the little man always had one foot in reality and the other in the information he was playing with, but that didn’t change the fact that he looked asinine doing it.

Vadd turned his narrow, hatchet of a face and squinted up at the human. He squinted most of the time, but even more so when moving his attention from that glowing tablet to anything else in the testing chamber’s dim light.

“I have high hopes for our prototype,” he mumbled, shifting the goggles hanging around his neck. “Your principle of dividing the beam seemed like a stretch to me, but I must concede that it seems to control the emission’s orientation excellently, judging by our previous tests. To think that we wasted so many cycles—and took so many punishments—trying to control that massive amount of power at once, with a single focal iris, and all we needed to do was break the projection into more manageable constituents all aimed in the same direction. Inconceivable that we missed such a simple solution.”

Christoff worked to raise something like a smile. “Yes. Utterly baffling.” He’d always prided himself on his rhetorical abilities, but even he couldn’t understand what made asura so long-winded.

Vadd’s hand at his midsection said his ulcer was acting up. Christoff rolled his eyes. That ulcer and Kikka were the only things the weasley engineer ever seemed to talk about.

“Now if only we can provide evidence that control comes at no substantial cost to magical efficacy,” the twit continued, “perhaps we can provide Mistress Kikka what she wants. We must see it cause the same degree of damage that the combined beam was capable of at ninety-percent absorption.”

“Oh yes.” Christoff glowered openly. “Gods help us serve Kikka to our utmost.”

Cocking an eyebrow, the asura turned, assessing Veritas up and down, almost as he did the data tablet. He pressed his hands to his hips and straightened, still standing only as high as Christoff’s belt. “I fear you do not fully understand the seriousness of what we’ve accomplished.”

Christoff did understand, though. He’d been made to understand several times a day, and the conversation always ended with the engineer making one of two points: either they had “added an entirely new mode of energy stabilization” or they’d “saved the krewe from becoming Mistress Kikka’s lab rats.” This time, Vadd repeated both, but Christoff didn’t care about either any more than he had the time he’d heard them.

Aside from wondering yet again how Kikka had managed to keep all these people so far under her thumb, Christoff only cared about one result of their chosen method of controlling the beam of spectral-agony magic, one that he hoped he was about to confirm. If separating the projected magic into many smaller flows that ran parallel toward a common target could make the whole thing more controllable by the asura’s magical machines, Christoff concluded it would have a similar effect for any spellcaster technically trained to rein such energy. And as it just so happened, he was one such spellcaster.

The basic scheme had come to him almost immediately after Kikka had pressed him into demonstrating his spells for Vadd and his engineers: if they were going to give him access to a magic his father may actually have taught him how to control, it was an advantage he could and must exploit. Though it surprised him, it seemed that in their arrogance, the overreaching dolts had actually overlooked the chance that Christoff could seize their active power for himself. He just had to make sure he could steal that control from their machines.

The problem that quickly became apparent, though, was that Vadd and his people were right about at least one thing: the amount of magic they were attempting to funnel through that energy-cannon of theirs was enormous. It was easily more than Veritas or his predecessors would ever have been capable of controlling. He’d reached out with his senses and touched it in one of the first experiments he’d been privy to, and it had honestly been enough to scare him. At that volume, there was no telling if he would simply lose control or be consumed by the agony himself. It was the very reason he’d been taught from his first lessons that a wise Mantle caster didn’t wield spectral agony himself but spent adequate time imbuing the power in stacking, multiplying layers within a construct. The construct, obedient to your commands, could then unleash larger amounts of its magical reservoir than any human could hope to, without any risk to the mind or soul it didn’t possess.

It was that principle that he offered so amicably to his “business partners.” If they could divide the power into separate streams and point it all toward a common target, they may be able to approximate the imbuement and use of a construct at one time. To their credit, they’d managed to take his advice, watching his spells only for inspiration, and completely redesign their device in hardly any time at all. And now they were testing it not simply for accuracy, but efficacy. He just had his own efficacy test to perform.

Running a finger down the length of his scar again, Christoff returned his attention to the big cat in that tube and Vadd’s two lab assistants on the other side of if. Gods only knew who they were: just another pair of haughty engineers. Perched on matching ladders, the two gripped a large, mostly tubular, steel device and screwed it down into a port in the cap of the stalker’s cell. They connected several cables into sockets on the thing’s surface.

Vadd did likewise, attaching the opposite end of one of those cables to his tablet as he stared into the cylinder. “Commence impact test 27,” he instructed. “Lenses up.”

Christoff obeyed, pulling bulbous goggles up to his eyes as the asura did.

Vadd raised three fingers. “Three. Two. One. Mark.”

One of the laddered asura spun a dial until it clicked, and the contraption atop the cylinder revved to life, thrumming at a frequency just lower than the jade itself would.

Tail swishing aggressively, the stalker pressed its ears back and eyed each of the asura before glaring up at the brightening glow of energy amassing several feet above its head. It let out a low, dangerous growl.

For a second, just a second, Christoff felt for the creature. He eyed the asura around it, around them both, and his finger flicked back to his scar.

Of course it was too late for either of them to do anything. When the charge reached capacity, the now blinding glow burst, erupting into a torrent of fluorescent purple that flooded the interior of the cylinder and seemed to soak into the animal like water into a sponge. Some fraction of the magic devolved into concussive energy that pressed the cat against the stone floor of the cylinder, helping to keep it in place as the rest was absorbed into its body. He didn’t yet know why, but Christoff took note of that even as he shifted his focus to what he was really there for.

With those lenses on, he could pick out each individual strand of magic, showering down as a single, massive beam. More importantly than seeing the strands, though, Christoff could feel them, every last one that flowed through the containment unit. It was a thrill.

Glancing aside, Christoff prepared himself. Vadd was too taken by his work to give him a second thought, and thanks to the ongoing energy blast, the assistants on the other side of the tank couldn’t see him at all.

Whispering his father’s incantation under his breath, Veritas focused his concentration on one thread of that flow, only the single bolt of energy running nearest to him behind the glass. It was hard to filter it out from the rest; he could feel them all, and he wanted for anything to seize every last one of them, but he didn’t. He focused on the one and chanted all but silently under the hum of the energy projector.

The asura couldn’t hear him—he could barely hear himself—but when he flicked his fingers, that single thread of purple magic shot off course toward Vadd and ticked harmlessly against the glass. Altering the recitation and pulling back his hand just a hair, he released the flow, and it returned to its course, rejoining the rest of the small beams in their united torrent.

He snapped another glance at Vadd, who looked no different. And suddenly Christoff Veritas grinned. Cold and satisfied, he grinned like he hadn’t done in a season. It had worked.

The beam tapered off inside the tube a minute later, and Christoff crossed his arms, resuming his callous analysis of the test. The panting animal convulsed at the base of the cell, whimpering between heaved breaths, but Veritas very much didn’t care.

Vadd pulled down his goggles and inspected his tablet more closely. He leaned past it to inspect the stalker, amazement on his face. “Extraordinary. Not a scrap of residual energy that I can see.” He glanced again at his tablet. “The subject absorbed the entire payload. No waste.”

“There seems to have been a single thread almost separated from the focal flow, but it was rejoined to the primary expulsion without incident.” Though the asura paused, he was still too absorbed in his measurements to pay Christoff any mind. He simply shook his head. “Only a minor calibration issue, I’m sure.”

“Of course,” Veritas agreed. He had expected the fool to overlook what had happened, and the engineer did not disappoint. “Minor calibration.”

As he tapped away at his glowing tablet, Vadd continued to nervously spew his thoughts. It was some kind of nervous tick he had, but it almost always proved useful if Christoff listened long enough. “Between this and the primary team’s achievements with their field emitters, Mistress Kikka is sure to be pleased with our products.” The little man started to hum.

“Yes,” Christoff agreed, baiting the asura. “She is certain to be pleased by all the progress. Myself, though? I find the field emitters curious.”

This was the first he’d heard of field emitters, but Vadd didn’t seem to recognize that. There had been another team in their workspace modifying a horde of smaller, floating golems, which Veritas had been curious about, but what was this emitter business?

“Indeed. ‘Curious’ is a valid term,” Vadd said, nodding absently. He went on talking to Christoff despite the fact that neither his eyes nor mind seemed to move away from the flickering glyphs on his data tablet. “The approach is quite a curious one, much more circumspect than our project, which is a shame, considering the advancement we’ve made in focused expulsion-control. Even at our lowest estimates, the amount of applied psychological stress our beam can inflict on a subject is miles beyond anything those domed emissions make. And yet, Kikka seems much more interested in Jezzi’s work than ours.” He blinked as if remembering something. “Then again, Kikka’s interest comes with risks.”

Still nodding to himself, the wedge-faced asura glanced down again at the big cat, which had begun to rise from the floor of its cell, its claws extended and pupils dilated. It continued to pant. This was the part of the test Vadd had insisted would get truly gruesome. There was apparently no telling what sort of insanity the tormenting magic might induce in any given subject.

Christoff’s mind was elsewhere, though. What did he mean by domed projections? Did it have something to do with those little, hovering, pill-shaped golems? A different set of asura had done that work, and Veritas thought he’d noticed them applying the same Unseen-One magic into the little constructs, but he’d never gotten much information about that out of Vadd, who only ever muttered complaints and returned to work. Still, Kikka seemed to keep her special projects in that lab, so whatever she had planned for the collection of small golems, it had to be important.

Light, flapping feet padded up behind him on the stonework floor. Christoff heard it but refused to turn until addressed.

“Bookah,” a sharp voice demanded. “Look at me, bookah.”

Pausing another moment, Veritas made a point of turning slowly, first his body and then his head, so that his eyes reached Comakk last of all. He raised an eyebrow. “Ah, Comakk, the loyal flunky. How can I help you?” Sometimes he looked like a big, ugly baby with that bald head.

“Shut your mouth and follow me. Mistress Kikka requires you.”

Christoff turned his sneer into a smile. “In case you don’t recall, your dear Mistress kindly asked me to prioritize this work, so I’m obliging.” Behind him, the stalker slammed against the thick glass of its containment.

Vadd jumped, but Comakk’s lifeless expression never changed. He spun back and stalked away in the direction he’d come from, still talking at them over his shoulder. “Also you, Vadd. We have your new test subjects.”

Christoff was walking before he knew it, a grin already parting his lips. There were only two test subjects they’d been expecting, and he’d been waiting to see one of them for quite some time.