Wild Card 24

The study door opens, and Vanion walks in. He's wearing a styric smock again, as he's done often since I've been here in Elenia; I find myself wondering how much of it's for comfort, and how much of it's subconsciously for the sake of that Sephrenia woman. He closes the door behind himself and moves around me, where I'm using Upgrade on his desk. Boredom is, after all, a pervasive thing, and I find it helps keep my interest and my focus if I have a variety of test subjects to cast it on. Without that variety, Upgrade is tediously subtle and mindnumbing to the point I'm not even sure half the time if I'm actually making progress or going through the motions. Now that he's here, though...

"Any progress on the poisonous bush?" I ask without preamble.

Vanion sighs and collapses into his chair. "It has only been two weeks; you greatly underestimate the amount of time it takes to even send a messenger, much less acquire something from another nation."

Loki help me, I find myself actually missing Amazon right now. "Yeah, I get it. I was just hoping..."

"What you ask for is a difficult ask in and of itself, you realize?" Vanion points out, rubbing his temples. "Shepherds burn it on sight, and few enough aside from them actually know what it is to begin with - all of whom are at best unsavory. Attempting to acquire it is virtually to identify oneself as an assassin, and a poisoner at that. I have several of our best seeking it discreetly but whispers travel faster than the wind. It is paramount that Annias does not learn we seek darestim."

I grunt as I add an ornate flourish to the beveling of his desk. "Yes, that would matter so very much. Because he'll double poison the queen if we're not circumspect." The sarcasm is painfully obvious; I'm a little short tempered today.

Vanion aims a stink eye at me. "With that clever tongue and soft frame, I wonder that your tongue was never cut out long before you came here."

"See, that's the thing," I reply. I know I should shut up but right now I'm annoyed enough I have to say SOMETHING. "People don't DO that in a civilized society. People speak truth to power, express their opinions, and attempt to reach as wide as possible a concensus on what's best for everyone - even if pointing out the truth is painful to the listener."

Vanion scoffs. "Your home is a strange one. Don't misunderstand, I'm quite in favor of ensuring that the best life for all is achieved, but the notion that peasantry en masse have anything meaningful to contribute to actual politics beyond shouting? Rather foolish."

I roll my eyes. "Matters are different in a society where education is not only widespread but mandatory."

"A waste of money." Vanion shakes his head. "At most, they need to read and count. Anything more gets in the way of harvesting the grain."

"Ironically, many children feel the same. 'When will I ever use this' is a common teenage rebellious cry against enforced schooling. And when they become adults, those same people are frequently duped by otherwise amateurish propaganda aimed at the lowest common denominator."

"Aimed at the lowest peasant what?" Vanion asks.

"Denominator." I mull over how to explain this a moment. "An... underlying trait, after a fashion. In this case, the lowest level of understanding that reaches the most people. Those with simple educations and simple minds hear simple messages and follow them. The poorly educated need little goading to fear or anger, and stampede easily."

Vanion grunts. "So you claim that teaching them more makes them, what, less likely to rise up in rebellion?"

I shrug, letting my creative side take over as I begin to Upgrade sculpting dryads on the desk legs. "Among other things. It also enables those who are gifted but born poor to achieve what they are able rather than let their gifts wither as they plow fields or muck gutters to survive."

"That sounds like a ready path for peasants to think more highly of themselves than they rate," Vanion replies. He frowns at the dryads. "Remove these at once. It's crass."

"It's art," I protest, even as I smooth out the desk legs again.

"They were nude."

"Art is like that, sometimes," I answer. "There is beauty in the unadorned and unconcealed."

"An invitation to license." Ohh, Vanion's hauling out the fancy words now.

"An expression of natural beauty appreciable by all," I counter. "Even grown women have an appreciation for the curve and form of the female body once society stops punishing them for it." I eye him with a sly smile. "Or would you have preferred that I made them look more like someone else?"

"You go too far!" Vanion snaps, glaring at me.

"I made no suggestions of who," I say, raising my hands. "I'm not even speculating."

Vanion favors me with a suspicious stare, before settling back in his chair. "Keep it so." He frowns, looking down at his desk. "My desk looks... different."

I look at the desk, examining where he's staring. "Looks normal to me."

"No." He taps the desk at a specific spot about two inches from his piled paperwork. "There's a scratch here. Or there was. I dropped my knife while paring a nib."

I look at it. "Huh. Looks like I've broken through into permanent upgrades."

"A repair hardly strikes me as an upgrade," Vanion comments.

"Oh, anything that improves the quality, durability, or usability of a thing qualifies as an upgrade. If I didn't branch out on how I exercise the magic, I'd go absolutely insane." A thought occurs to me. "By the way... have you been practicing Alter Object?"

He sighs. "With what time?"

"MAKE the time," I say chidingly. "Without working on it, you'll never improve. And the earliest improvements are the easiest. It's the larger and later refinements that take months of effort. Like right now."

Vanion waves a hand in a general fashion over his desk. "I have too much work to do."

I stare at him flatly. "You're not doing it right now, though. You're just flopped into your chair."

"I can't tell if you would make a good secretary or a horrible one," Vanion says peevishly, sitting up with clear reluctance and pulling the top parchment, then the one beneath it, from one pile. "This is the stage you've been working toward, yes? Where improvements that you make become permanent?"

"This is the most basic form of that... but yes. It will take many months more to stretch that to its fullest potential, which is quite substantial." I think for a moment. "You know... I could use it on arms and armor."

Vanion freezes, looking up at me with his quill mid-air. "Pardon?"

"The Upgrade spell. I can upgrade your equipment. The effect is small, for now, but I can give you several small benefits that would build on one another greatly." I give him a moment to think on that before I add, "And I can do more elaborate enchantments as well. A blade that strikes not just with its edge, but also with lightning. Armor that doesn't merely turn blows, but lessens wounds you take even where it doesn't protect you. And a shower. Oh, please, for the love of all that's good and beautiful in the world, let me build a shower - if not for you, then for myself. I'd offer to enchant Dyrnwynn for you, but you've already made it clear on how you feel about weaponized fire, and Dyrnwynn was primarily for slaying the undead anyway. Do you even have undead here?"

"I don't know those words, so I would assume not," Vanion answers drily.

"Right, so Dyrnwynn is out." I shrug.

"As much as I'd enjoy armor that did its job better, for the sake of visibility you know I must decline." Vanion shakes his head. "This shower. What do you need to do to make it?"

"... Well, I'd need to enchant a metal rod with my Fire Bolt spell to give the water heat. Prestidigitation would be better, but I'm not skilled enough at that to do the job as it needs to be, which is a shame, because Prestidigitation would give me far better temperature control." I scratch my chin, considering. "Also, Shape Water, but that's already cleared for use for Brew. Other than that, I'll need... Perhaps twelve pounds of iron, a goodly bit of wood sap, and a wooden log of around fifty pounds or so. I can make a dual barrel out of that with little issue, and pipes to carry the water and make the showerhead."

"How would you even empty out the dirty water afterward?" he asks.

"Shape Water lets me remove impurities," I reply. "Simple as - after purifying the water, it goes back in the ready tank waiting for the next use."

"For someone from a world without magic, you seem rather clever in how you arrange to use it."

"A combination of education, and looking for ways to use what I have to do what we do with chemicals and machines back home. Education is a hell of a thing. Once you have it, you want to spread it around, and it compels you to try the weirdest combinations in hopes of making life just a little bit easier."

Vanion sighs heavily and nods. "And how much time would your shower require?"

"Sixteen days training with Shape Water to get it up to snuff, then two days to build the shower. And it'll leave my Fire Bolt and Shape Water weakened for a few days afterward, but I intend to have an adequate stockpile of Brews stored up in my Pocket spell where they'll be time frozen til I retrieve them later. Maximally effective, and all that."

"Where would you put it, anyway?"

I stare at him a moment. "Oh, right. You've never been inside the hideaway, have you? The main room that's visible from the doorway isn't the only part. There's three side rooms, also. Not particularly big, but one of them is fully adequate for a shower."

"More like a small cottage than a mere hideaway, it sounds like," Vanion observes thoughtfully.

"With practice, I could get it to virtually palatial levels," I reply. "Multiple floors, fancy furnishings, the ability to store things in it between uses. I can already make three separate hideaways at once but fully mastered I could maintain five, all equally enormous, and would last unmaintained for a full week."

Vanion jaw briefly tightens, then relaxes, and he aims a carefully neutral look very similar to those which chilled my blood coming from Sparhawk and the other knights, so long back. "... your magic is rather frightening in its implications. You could easily store weeks of rations and water, feed for horses, supplies... a veritable army train of your own self."

I shrug, brushing aside the discomfort from his stare. "That's all assuming I don't open a Gate between two places and eliminate the distance between them for people passing through. Although I'll need a lot of work to master that."

"When you are finally free of your obligations to Sparhawk, what then?" Vanion asks.

"Well, my plans for the time being are to immediately bend all my available time practicing and studying magic in hopes of finding a way back home. Hopefully within distance of civilization so I don't go mad from an all Goodberry diet, but if you and yours demand it, I'll go out to the wilds somewhere away from people. Far preferable to losing my head because all of you think I'm too dangerous to live. Don't try to deny it," I say, holding a hand up to forestall a protest that already looked feeble before it had the chance to leave Vanion's lips. "Every one of you in this office right here, with the exception of those kids, looked at me at least once with the obvious desire to kill me and be done with my existence. Sparhawk because I was a loose end, Sephrenia because my magic doesn't work the way she thinks it should, that young one... Berit, that was his name, him because I startled the shit out of him by teleporting up next to him on the wall. The others mostly, I think, because they could tell Berit and Sparhawk were seriously considering killing me, so likely out of solidarity or something. And now, you, tonight, as you think of uses to turn my abilities to war, abilities that I would rather use just to be comfortable and secure."

"You can honestly claim that you would never think of turning your prodigious gifts to the labor of war?" Vanion asks, staring me dead in the eye.

"I suppose if I was pressured to, I could find violent uses for all my magics. But let me ask you something: Barring dire need, why would I?" I retort bluntly. "I've seen the contempt you all hold for me and the shape I'm in. Soft, weak, hardly manly in your eyes, I'm guessing. Shameful. I'm not blind to your scorn. And I get it. My values, my goals, aren't yours. Your first thoughts always seem to be, 'how can I use this to kill a foe' or something similar. Comes of being a fanatical religious militant organization, I imagine. When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

Vanion stares at me quietly while I continue my practice with Upgrade, this time on his carpet. After a minute or so, he breaks the silence. "I had not considered that you hold us in as much distaste as we hold you, for our... brutish ways, hmm?"

I shrug. "Nature is cruel. Violent. Brutal. Unfair. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. Starvation, disease, injury, or bad weather can delete an entire tribe with nobody knowing or caring. But somewhere, a long time ago, our ancestors decided that even if nature was cruel, we didn't have to be. We didn't have to confine ourselves to the rules of our environment because we could reshape our environment. The weak didn't have to be at the questionable mercy of the strong and sadistic, food didn't have to be scarce, we didn't have to huddle in natural caves for shelter, we didn't have to be eaten by wild beasts. We had the power to change all that, and we did. We still have that power. There is no state of perfection, and because of that we are empowered to find ways of making our world better, such that a child's blunt honesty doesn't get him killed when spoken in front of a feudal lord, that same child didn't have to starve in the winter because we learned to grow crops and keep livestock. The world is built not by the powerful hand of mighty warlords, but by the quiet, generous, and inventive common man, one brick, one row of tilled earth, one loaf of oven baked bread, one carefully deliberated and inscribed law at a time."

"Pretty words," Vanion commented dismissively. His words are comparatively light in tone, but the hand not holding his quill is clenched tight enough that the tendons on his knuckles are visible. "Words are no defense against a Zemoch spear or a bandit's knife. No defense against the sword of a fanatical Rendoor. What you say is all well and good when dealing with reasonable men. But men are frequently unreasonable, and when that happens, it falls to men like me and Sparhawk, men you scorn, to defend you."

I shrug. "I don't scorn you because you are capable of violence, Vanion. I scorn you because you all seem so damned eager to use it when it's not necessary."

"Not eager," he disagrees. "Just unflinching in its use when other methods fail. I think living in your polite and pacifist society has robbed you of the steel in your spine. If you had been raised in a more sensible world, you might have made a fine and courageous knight, but your home has ruined you, and for that, I pity you."

I shake my head. "And your organized mind while learning magic, your willingness to learn, your curiosity, you might have made an excellent statesman or scientist in mine. But here, all you aspire to is the role of a soldier - when you're not doing the paperwork. I suppose we each are upset by the wasted potential of the other. Or maybe what we're really disgusted by is the thought that, born in each other's world, we might have found ourselves on the opposite side of our disagreement."

Vanion mulls this over, the muscle of his temple flexing occasionally as he clenches and relaxes his jaw, and we lapse into silence for a little while. He's managed to calm himself a minute or so later when he says, "Might be some merit to your words. The other role you mentioned, that you thought I might have been good at. Not the courtier, the other one. What do they do?"

"Scientists study the laws of the world around us, using the scientific method. Look at what's happening in the world, try to understand what's happening, and why it happens that way. Asking questions of the world, and deciphering the answers. Then asking more exacting questions afterwards."

"Your world speaks to you?"

"After a fashion." I stretch my back a bit. "Another word for the questions we ask are 'experiments'. For instance, what would happen if you held your quill out at arms length and let go of it?"

"It would fall, naturally."

"Are you sure?"

Vanion looks at me like I'm an idiot. "Of course. All things fall when unsupported."

"How do you know that? Are you sure it's the same everywhere you go?"

"Obviously it is." He says it like I'm a child.

"What if you drop it unsupported while holding it at arms length in water?"

"It-" He pauses, blinking, then starts thinking.

"Would it still fall? Or, in this case, sink?"

"I don't actually know," he admits after a few seconds. "But falling and sinking aren't the same thing."

"Why not?" I ask.

"Well, because falling is because there's nothing under it, while sinking there's water!"

"But when you drop a quill, there IS something under it. Air."

Vanion's mouth works for a moment, then shuts. He looks first irritated, then perplexed, then finally thoughtful.

"There IS one way to find out for sure what will happen, Vanion. Ask the universe. Or, in less metaphorical terms: try it. Then record it, and try it again, somewhere else, in case something different happens. And record that, too. And once you think you've figured out what the results have in common, and guessed at reasons, think up ways to test if that's true or false. That, in a nutshell, is science."

I continue to practice Upgrade on his carpet as he silently ponders his quill. Barring deliberate action on my part, Vanion is going to have the nicest damned carpet in Elenia before I'm done. Hope the brute appreciates it. "So. The shower?" I prompt.

Vanion blinks at me, looking up from the quill. "What?"

"The shower. Can I build it."

"Oh - Yes, of course." He looks at the quill, then at me again. "I'll see to getting you your wood and iron."

"And the wood sap." I think a moment. "Or if you have some, I can skip a step and use pitch. I'd ask for some chromium so I could make stainless steel, but I suspect your metallurgy isn't quite there yet."

"As do I, given that word didn't translate." He pauses. "The air. You mentioned it like it's affecting the quill in a fashion akin to water, but lesser - or at least, that's what you seem to be implying. Yes?"

I smile. "That is indeed what I was implying, yes."

He thinks for a moment, then says, "What if there was no air there at all? Is that even possible?"

My smile widens into a grin. "Vanion, Sir Vanion, you are asking the right questions."