To Fly the Soaring Tides

Cira said farming always took a long time and a lot of work, so we sat down at her golden table and chairs to watch it go. Cira spent much of the afternoon enchanting a gold fountain so that it wouldn’t make the beer foam up. I complained at first, but it was nice being able to just scoop up my next glass like we were floating down the river.

After a while of this, the field had actually started to look kind of brown. Almost like dirt. I couldn’t begin to estimate the number of fish that rotted in there and it seemed everything was long spread around. The smell was unbearable, and despite Cira’s barrier, she kept sending little streams of it at my face to test my ‘air awareness’.

I had been contemplating a way to hit her with it, but she cancelled my casts the moment I tried anything, or worse yet, redirected it right back to me. I was beginning to get frustrated when the soil suddenly stopped churning. Cira got up from her chair and walked over to the fields, kneeling down as she did by the lake to run her hand through it. Picking up a scoop, she brought it up to her face and inspected it closely. I swear, I even caught her giving it a whiff.

“It’s ready.” I internally cheered that we could finally get back home. Not that this wasn’t fun, but Jimbo and the boys must have been worried. It would be even more fun to have the rest of them with us, but looking back on the guardians… maybe we weren’t here for fun in the first place.

“Finally, I’ve been craving apples ever since you mentioned them.” Was it this morning or last night? Who knows. “Why don’t you own a watch like James?”

She scrunched up her forehead and gave me a funny look, “I own many watches, and did you not see the orichalcum clock in the living room? They are obsolete for me as Prismagora can discern the time, but since a sorcerer is always where they need to be, what does it matter?” Her shiny bone staff with the bright crystal on top appeared and she shrugged, “Look at that. It’s high noon.”

I clinked her outstretched glass. “But you don’t know how much time has passed?”

“…no. I neglected to keep track.” She pulled a pouch out of her pocket and dumped its contents on the table. “Nature mana is auxiliary to life, if that weren’t obvious. One can grow plants without seeds, but they are as limited as any conjuration. They will dispel in time and their nutrients gradually diminish as you digest them. But from seed, you can promote boundless growth.”

There were countless seeds on the table. They seemed small… but a lot of apples was a good thing. “So can you grow… the world’s biggest corn cob?”

She snorted ale out her nose and shattered her mug against the table trying to cough it up. Once Cira seemed to have recovered, she looked at me with great displeasure, “What is wrong with you? That’s not how it—well, maybe… I haven’t tried. Let me tell you, I can grow a stalk of corn in four seconds flat though. Increasing the points from which it bears fruit—corn—is also possible. But enough of that. Watch.”

What must have been thousands of seeds spread out across the field and Cira’s orbital streams suddenly flooded with bright blue mana, forming what looked like a river delta in the sky before gently raining down. It was an amazing sight. Paradise’s golden landscape reflected cerulean light into the hue of Cira’s mithril disc and painted a pretty scene as it shimmered over hilltops, like the light off a lake but from above.

Each raindrop seemed to contain a little bit of this mana, too. By a little bit, I mean in proportion to the river. I could probably fill a barrel with this trickling rain, and unlikely my entire aura on a good day would stack up. This corn—or apples were getting fed absurd amounts of mana.

As raindrops splashed in fleeting bursts of light, the soil responded with a faint green haze that seeped out with every little pitter patter. Exercising my air awareness, I could tell it was happening more times per second than I could ever hope to count, and soon, an ominous mist coated the field the same shade as the greenest canopy.

“Wait… what is that?” Little sprigs popped up everywhere. More than countless, it was like a lush forest was trying to sprout. “Isn’t this too many trees?”

“Hmm?” Every time she made this face at me, she wrote something down. “I understand your confusion. It’s far too early for trees. It’s not quite there yet. I fear fish alone isn’t a diverse enough pool of nutrients, and with this, I can at least introduce an outside variable I’ve used before. Grass is resilient and doesn’t need much to grow in general. This is also our proof of concept and will further increase the soil’s fertility. What I’m doing is a practice commonly known as enriching the earth or fertilizing the land.”

Is she going to… plant apples in this field of grass?

The grass grew into a lush meadow with short blades, but as water kept falling, it grew exponentially until it was nearly up to our knees. Still, we watched this occur from our golden table.

I winced as the soil suddenly started churning again. All the beautiful, verdant grass she grew was gone in the blink of an eye.

“Wh-what did you do?!”

“Huh?” She took down some more notes, “I’m enriching the earth. The grass is meant to break down like the fish. This must go on for a few cycles, then I think I might grow some enderbark to mulch up. It grows its own little worms, you see.”

“Uh… I see…”

There were no more words exchanged between us for at least an hour as we watched the grass repeatedly grow unnaturally fast only to be gurgled away in the tumultuous earth. I guess the fact that I thought of it as earth instead of gold was really saying something. When I really thought about it, she already grew grass in something that started off as pure gold. The rapid succession of things I didn’t understand since coming to this place perhaps dulled the excitement I would normally have about such a feat, but it really was incredible. Eventually Cira broke the silence with some more drinks and dinner on the grill.

“No, no… Neither of my parents had an aura. Neither did I, at first.” I replied to her aimless banter, “But we were always poor, so I stole a few books from a merchant that washed up on Lost Cloud and practiced every night after they went to bed.”

“Well, it isn’t common or a particularly easy feat,” Cira shrugged and dipped her glass into the fountain again. “But your talent really is remarkable for someone who conjured their own aura. I’m glad I didn’t cripple you with an artifact when you threw that fireball at me. It would have been much harder to be friends.”

You’re saying… she simply decided against crippling me? I really was pissing on a hornet’s nest.

“Your father’s aura must have made me look like a single drop of rain,” I laughed, going with a safe, cheeky compliment. “I don’t even understand how someone can be stronger than you.”

She chuckled, much to my relief, “I looked like a single drop of rain next to him. Need I remind you I’m only a sorcerer of intermediate caliber?”

And before she went into the forge, she called herself a sorcerer of moderate caliber—the person who reshaped an entire island and encased thousands of rivers in titanium all within a single day. Her holy light lasted a week. You’re telling me the sorcerer that did that was beneath the intermediate level? That’s halfway, right? Does it only get exponentially worse from there? A man that could skew my master’s worldview to such a severe degree could only be the most absurd person who ever lived. What did that make the creator of this realm?

“How the hell did he die?!” I had actually meant the creator, but Cira’s smile faded. The same question could be posed about her father, but I was trying really hard not to touch that subject. She set her glass down while her gaze grew distant.

“It’s my fault.” A dark wooden staff appeared in her hand and seemed to only increase the displeasure on her face. At the same time, my own heart grew heavy just looking at it. Cira looked over her shoulder and in a few different places before relaxing with a sigh. “Have you ever seen a curse?”

I could feel the blood drain from my face. It was difficult to take my eyes off the branch’s gnarled top. A faint gray light fell from it, but it was hopelessly dull.

“What… No… Why do you—”

Cira cut me off with a self-deprecating laugh, “I don’t remember where it came from. I’ve always been able to summon it, and it channels the curse I bear. Check it out.” She held it out toward her glass and billowed dark smoke that burned with dreadful mana, “This glass shall never shatter so long as the sun is shining.”

Black smoke enveloped it then she drank its entire contents. When that cleared, Cira slammed it against the table with a burst of wind. Air cracked and I heard it clink against the hard surface then soar into the sky. After I blinked, it was gone, but there was a distant impact a few seconds later.

A new crystal mug appeared in her hands, “Granted, mine are not typical curses, such that it’s hard to call them curses in the first place. They are pure, and thus, I bear no direct burden. Not physical or aethereal, anyway. But if you’ve spent time in the library, you should know what happens if one lays far too many curses without consideration for the saturation of their soul. My father burned away what he could and claimed the rest for himself… he seemed fine, like it was nothing… until a few years later. It only got worse from there—”

“You… don’t have to,” I stopped her. I didn’t read up on curses while she slept, but I also didn’t mean to dig up bad memories.

“But some curses can never really be removed, you see?” She tossed the weathered branch into the sky and her prism staff beamed a violent ray of light through it, burning a hole in the island so deep I couldn’t see past its own shadow. The staff was long gone and the smell of burnt gold threatened to melt my nostrils.

Holding out her hand, the immolated staff of ancient wood appeared again within her grasp, “At least the methods of removal are beyond me. He merely gave me a quick purification and reduced the curse to a sealed state until I was responsible enough to manage it for myself. So, did my father die for nothing? It’s hard to say.”

She emptied yet another glass with vacant eyes and I took this chance to hold out my hand and practice the healing sorcery I read about in one of those sorcerer’s compendiums since she seemed to have forgotten to keep sobering herself up. It manifested in vague golden sparkles which looked scarce more than useless.

Cira snorted, covering her face, “Maybe I’ve said too much. And standard healing will take forever compared to a detofixication, hic, spell.” She held out a hand and healed herself at least a little bit. “I’ve had enough of thinking about soul stuff for one lifetime. Forget everything I just said.”

“It’s kinda hard too…” I shrugged. “But he, your father, made his choice to stop something bad from happening to you, didn’t he? No offense, but it’s kind of shitty to feel guilty about it.”

Her eyes went wide and I watched her blink in shock, slowly recoiling back. “I… How dare… is… is that how it is…?” Emotions flashed across Cira’s face like a flickering flame, broken up by confusion here and there. She picked up her glass again and made short work of undoing her prior healing sorcery, deep in thought.

I followed suit and she poured another pouch out on the table. It was quite a marvel the first time, so I sat back and watched farming happen again with a drink in my hand, sending a couple playful streams of rotten wind into my master’s face only for them to be denied decisively.

Instead of grass, this time real saplings sprouted. Of course, grass filled in around them too. Cira said plenty more seeds had been produced and it would pretty much grow itself if left alone—or accelerated with vehement vitality.

Maybe she could have gone faster, but these trees grew much, much slower than the grass. We sat there and watched a single batch grow much taller than our heads in about an hour and it was more than twice that before Cira deemed their cycle to have ended. She cut off a bunch of twigs with little green sprouts and the field resumed its violent churning. I guess mixing wood in had a similar effect to the other things, but I also noticed her picking worms out. For now, I guess they would fly around until needed, but I took it as a good sign.

This went on a few more times as we drank at the golden table and eventually started talking about nothing important again. It seemed she’d forgotten about the earlier conversation, or at least moved on. We were both pretty tired and had just eaten a great deal of that eel she caught, and when I turned to reply to a joke, her eyes were closed.

I was a little bummed I would never hear the punchline, but this seemed a good time as any to get some sleep while the trees grew again from sapling.

I woke up at some point to the sound of heavy rain—no it was hail… when I opened my eyes further, I realized it was just fish falling from the sky. I guess she needed more. They bounced off the hardy trees and crushed colorful flowers before settling in grass as high as my waist. I caught a small stream of more gold sand flying in from somewhere as well and mixing with the roiling fish guts. She was really fine tuning it. Anyway, I rolled back over and went back to bed after another drink or two.

When I awoke again, Cira was asleep this time. I decided to practice my sorcery alone instead of waking her up. She instructed me on the first step to making a domain, but not any others beyond that. At this point, I felt the wind around me was much more solid now. I could feel—almost see—everything in arm’s reach, and I could feel a change in the breeze near the mana-rich soil. I suspect I could even feel projectiles ahead of time like this, and the wind surrounding me could become a blade or a spear anytime I wanted. It really was like an upgraded version of my passive reservoir. My ‘well’, so to speak.

The hard part was figuring out the next step.

Realistically… what do I want my domain do? I bet Cira would ask me that. Obviously, I’ll never be a real sorcerer if I don’t just have a barrier around me all the time. Since I woke up, no less than three flies tried to land on Cira’s face only to return to the aether in a white flame.

I quickly found it a concept too great for me to grasp, but I figured the best way to start was just condensing the outside of my range. This led to me realize that wind didn’t have very clear borders, so defining one became my goal. This had to be the next step to building my domain, so I eagerly chipped away at it.

Improving my offensive power is obvious, but I’ve always needed to do that. What I really lack is perception. It’s not like I can conjure stone projectiles to throw at myself…

This much had me stumped for a while, so I just closed my eyes and tried to feel out the landscape, forcefully forming a mental image in my head. It was pretty bad when I opened my eyes to check the results, but… any progress was welcome.

I spent most of the day working on my perception and making ever-deeper dents in some gold boulders, trying to improve my cast speed while I was at it. The goal here was to shoot a wind spear so deep that it disappeared, but it was slow going.

Then, I thought it would be nice to reach even a fraction of the power the Infernal Scepter allowed me. While maintaining my partial domain, I tried bolstering the flame in my offhand without increasing its size. This quickly turned into a game of melt the island, and I ended up writing my name a hundred times in the earth behind us with a focused beam of crimson fire, using my partial domain as my eyes. Somewhere around a hundred-twenty, the sparse forest before us crumbled in on itself and the soil began to turn over again.

This is the kind of time when I would expect Cira to diligently wake up, but she remained asleep. I was kind of hungry, but couldn’t access the food without waking her up, so I thought I’d just take another nap. It was comfortable enough, somehow, in this enchanted chair of solid gold.

The sound of scratching woke me up next time. I looked to the side and Cira was fiddling with Jimbo’s flask, artificing needle in hand—her own property pilfered from my pocket.

“What are you doing?” I rubbed my eyes to try and see clearly.

“I went ahead and washed it out. You would not believe how disgusting it was.” She shook her head in revulsion, “More floaties than a mossy tidepool, stray hair, even a fingernail clipping. I nearly turned it to ash.”

“You never saw me drinking from it did you?” I laughed in her face. “Are you going to make it clean itself or something?”

“No, that’s a good idea, but I’m just giving the enchantments a little rework. Nothing major.” It seemed she was done and put everything away before standing up to stretch. Cira let out a dramatic yawn, “I sure am getting good at conjuring chairs though, huh? I’m worried I’ll make beds obsolete at this point. It’s easily among my top five fears.”

“Right…” I noticed the field ahead of us was still but looked like proper dirt. It held a fertile brown hue and there was a thin layer of grass on top in most places, like a forest clearing. “Is it actually done now?”

She answered with a bright smile, “Almost! I’m weaning the soil off of supplemental life, then we should be all ready to plant. My worms are nice and healthy down there like gods among tiny demons, and I dare say our dirt is richer than that of Fount Salt’s fields. We have done well. Won’t be long now.”

I didn’t do much toward this achievement, but I still had a slight headache from all the sorcery practice last time I was awake, so I just watched the dirt. It didn’t do anything, “What should we do while we wait…?”

“Take a look at this.” Cira tossed me a gold cylinder and I was ripped from my chair trying to catch it. It slipped away and she caught us both before hitting the ground while she chuckled from her seat. The cylinder unraveled before me like a scroll in the air or a veil of honey as the sun shined through it. “Golden silk. We should make clothes from it. Don’t you think it would be fun to be dressed head to toe in gold when we return to the others?”

“But… how?” I gawked as a stiff wind ruffled the sheet of gold and swirled doubts around my mind, “It’s metal… right?”

“I already made socks. See?” She kicked her feet up and they were indeed coated in gold. “The trick is to enchant the fabric as I weave it onto a roll to adjust the physical properties, then again once each peace has been tailored.”

“Hmm…” As ridiculous as it sounded, any girl would be interested in solid gold clothing, even if she didn’t plan on wearing it every day. “Now that you mention it, I am due for a new set of clothes.”

We must have spent all day on it. I had no proficiency in geomancy yet, but I helped come up with ideas and we spent hours trying on different outfits and laughing at easily forgotten nothings. This was probably the highlight of the trip—we had a blast. Being attacked by a giant snake didn’t even compare. When it seemed our wardrobe couldn’t get any larger, we sat down for dinner and eventually lulled to a gentle sleep.

“I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!” A voice shook the sky and broke me out of my peaceful slumber. I looked over at Cira in a panic and she had much the same expression, eyelids half open. “ONE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-EIGHT YEARS I HAVE WAITED FOR A SORCERER TO BEAR MY WILL, YET YOU CONTINUE TO WASTE MY TIME. ALL YOU HAVE ACCOMPLISHED SINCE YOU GOT HERE IS LOBOTOMIZING MY PET SNAKE AND TURNING MY GOLD INTO DIRT. DO YOU NOT EVEN CARE THE REASON FOR WHICH THIS ENDLESS BOUNTY HAS BEEN LAID OUT FOR YOU?!”

I had assumed the fetal position, covering my ears in futility when I looked up at Cira. She was also covering her ears but glaring towards the center of the island.

“Tone it done there, Pal. Just ‘cuz you can speak with your mind doesn’t mean you have to be loud. I met a giant slug with more manners than you.” Cira spoke in the language of the undine. Is she insane? Each word that person spoke nearly turned my aura to dust! Cira continued speaking with her mouth this time, arms spread out to display her wisping golden robes, “First of all, if you wanted a sorcerer, this is what you get.”