Chapter 13: An Unexpected Journey
"Okay, Verdant, until I come back from this quest, you'll fill my place as Rook," Chrome told the Pixie, holding out a dull silver pin she pulled from her hair.
Her surprise was evident as she said, "Wait, me? But I'm not, um…"
"What, capable?" Chrome asked, eyebrow raised. "You're smart, you know where most things are around here; really, that's all you need for this job."
"But I'm not you!" she protested. "You're much smarter, and stronger, too! I'm just a downgrade compared to you."
"Not really," Chrome assured her with a shrug. "I'm smart, sure, but you're actually good with people. And what's this about strength? How strong you are has nothing to do with it; it's all about caring, and helping the fairies under your charge."
"But… what if they don't respect me?"
"You say that as if they respect me." The pair shared a chuckle over that. "Well?" Chrome said, raising the pin once more. With a small gulp, Verdant accepted it, putting it in her hair so only the head stuck out from the top of her messy bun.
"I won't let you down, miss," the Pixie said with a nod, displaying only a little of her earlier nervousness.
"I know you won't."
We left the Maze after a round of goodbyes from the Fae that called it home. We took to the air in the first time in two hours, our mana regenerated by nearby Wisps. I was ecstatic at my regained 3-D maneuverability; you never know what you have until it's gone, and the gift of flight was a very sweet gift indeed. I managed to keep myself from doing any over the top tricks, though; the last thing we needed was Marcas deciding we needed another grounding. I was content doing an occasional aileron roll around Chrome, who looked resolutely ahead, expression neutral except for her slightly furrowed brow. She did a good job of hiding it in front of the other fairies, but I could tell she was a lot more rattled by Lady Oriel's quest than she let on. I had no idea how to put her mind at ease about something like this, but at the very least I could let her focus on something less gut twisting. "So you and Verdant back there… are you two an item or-" How about something awkward instead? My mouth was just… incredible sometimes.
"…No." To her credit, her expression barely changed, only arching an eyebrow slightly.
"Ah, yes, of course… I'm sorry, that was a bafflingly inappropriate question."
"It's fine." That didn't stop the awkward silence from permeating the air between us.
I slowed to a halt, and somehow worked up the nerve to speak again under her questioning gaze. "So what I meant to ask was, what's a Rook?"
"Oh, that's just our name for the castellan," Chrome said easily, forgetting she was talking to me.
"Okay… and that is…?" I prodded.
"Oh, r-right…" she cleared her throat, embarrassed, and went on, "Technically I am, or was, Lady Oriel's second-in-command. I took care of things she wasn't able to do herself, like organizing crews for gardening, repairs, cleaning, cooking, teaching… just everything needed to keep the Hedge Maze running."
"Right, that makes sense since Oriel can't… move."
"Yes, that is indeed why she has Rooks," Chrome said, her tone familiarly dry.
"Rooks, plural?"
"Yeah, um, I'm actually the fifth castellan Lady Oriel has had. I've had the position for just over a year now."
"Sounds like a lot of work. How do you like being Rook?" I asked as we started moving again.
She shrugged. "It was… I was good at it. I got the job done and pulled through even when things didn't go according to plan." That didn't actually answer my question, but the set of her jaw and the slight narrowing of her eye told me dropping the issue would be best, at least for now.
We stopped at the sight of the crater the missile left, both of us too occupied by our thoughts to break the silence. From Marcas's explanation-slash-distraction, I was imagining his army to be a ragtag bunch of magical creatures who split their time equally between getting beaten half to death by Apprentice Wizards and starving the rest of the way there. The crater in front of me, however, revealed that the reality of the Fir Darrig's threat was far more potent and alarming than I think any sane person could've guessed. "How did they even get a missile?" I finally asked to myself, not really seeking an answer.
"I don't know, but the more troubling question is "how were they able to cut off our magic?"" Chrome replied, looking to the west as she hovered. "The Fir Darrig launched an anti-magic wave to cut off our escape route, that much is clear, but anti-magic is so rare and obtuse that they could have up and killed themselves developing it; heck, that's what happens to most people who try to research it."
"What is anti-magic? Is it like antimatter?" I asked, not really up to speed on advanced magickal laws and physics.
"Oh, you know what antimatter is?" she asked, a bit surprised for some reason.
"Well, yeah, it's, um… well, it's kinda hard to explain offhand… stuff that acts like the opposite of normal matter? They explode when they touch, anyway."
"Basically. The technical explanation is that antimatter is made up of antiparticles, which are like regular particles except they have opposite charges: for every electron—negative energy—there's an "antielectron"—positive energy—, and so on until you get up to antielements and the like. When antimatter and ordinary matter come into contact, they annihilate- as in, they convert to energy rather violently, like you said. On the face of it, anti-magic is kind of similar: magic, being in the end energy, has an oppositely charged counterpart, fittingly named anti-magic. It exists in very small quantities all over the Spiral, and is very unstable, so it rarely has any opportunities to interact with regular magic, but when it does it does something odd: instead of annihilating like their material counterparts, they just plain cancel each other out, creating a sort of vacuum for a moment before it gets filled in by whatever's around." She began to dive toward the park, and I dipped in turn to keep up. "It doesn't help that they had to have collected a relatively huge amount to fire it like that, which is stupidly dangerous in populated worlds like this; most of them are saturated in magic, so if the anti-magic gets exposed from whatever you're sealing it in, they react and create a vacuum, which will probably make your container explode from the pressure displacement."
"Well that would suck," I quipped as we reached the ground and continued through the park at a float.
Chrome nodded. "Especially since anti-magic is such an exhausting thing to collect in the first place. There's no way to really detect or interact with it; it's almost completely inert, so you can't wield it like regular magic, and when you try to intake it when drained of regular mana, it doesn't power you at all, so you're stuck until it's drawn from you by a larger amount of anti-magic. The best you can do is go up to a source and try to catch it with a container manually."
"That seems… kind of ridiculous," I said, picturing Chrome in deep space, flailing about with a mason jar like she was catching invisible fireflies. I was shaken out of my thoughts by a "Baa!"from behind us. Turning around, we saw the source: a brown Bighorn sheep, standing at about five foot even at the shoulder, whose back half was trapped under a large slab of rock, no doubt debris kicked up from the missile's explosion. Scrabbling for purchase to no effect, it closed its large, mournful hazel eyes wearily and let out another pained bleat.
"Do… do we help it?" Chrome asked, hesitant; knowing how violent injured animals in general could be, and seeing how its enormous horns could do a number on anyone, especially a fragile Fairy, I could see why. Even so, I just couldn't bear seeing it in pain like that, which was odd, since I never really pegged myself for an animal lover. Still, I've known myself for less than 24 hours, so what did I know?
I walked forward, grabbing its attention. "It's okay," I said quickly, hands out in front of me, "I'm a friend! I'm here to help you!" I kept my voice low, not wanting to startle it. Its scream of fear and rage, however, told me it didn't work. "No no no, it's okay!" I said as quickly and soothingly as I could, halting my approach. "Just let me help you; I can pick up the rock, no problem." The Bighorn turned a suspicious eye on me, obviously doubting my ability. "Trust me, you'll be out in no time, and my friend can heal you!" I gestured to Chrome, who waved nervously and, with a grunt of effort, bathed her free hand in a cheery green light. That, if nothing else, seemed to be to the Bighorn's liking, because it stopped straining to stand, and instead watched me warily as I renewed my approach.
Reaching it, I stretched out my hand to pat it reassuringly, only for it to snort and paw at the ground fiercely. Its meaning was clear: focus on the task on hand. I complied with a smile and a nod, grabbing hold of one end of the rock and getting airborne, its weight staggering me at first. Progress was slow, to say the least; I ascended as if I was pulling teeth, every inch hard won, the Bighorn's screams of pain eventually giving way to exhausted gasps and rasps. Chrome did what she could to soothe it, but out and out healing it was out of the question: its body was so broken under the slab, a healing would only fuse the parts into a twisted, useless mess. It was up to the both of us after the Bighorn was free to realign the body to at least the point where the healing magic could work from there. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, I was clear of the Bighorn's body. While Chrome went to work realigning the spine, I flew away from the immediate area, finally setting the rock down some dozen feet away, before rushing over to aid her.
It was simple, in theory if not in practice: pulling broken, bunched up segments of bone away from each other, and realigning them as well as one could manage, in order to Heal the breaks as cleanly as possible. It was bloody, miserable work, made more difficult by trying to avoid causing the Bighorn any more pain than absolutely necessary. Pulling each jutting area back from the rest of the body, and forcing it back into alignment as close as we were able, was somehow both mind-numbingly tedious and impossibly tense.
Deciding we did the best we possibly could, Chrome sent me to fetch water from the nearby pond while she began Healing. Without an immediate way to actually carry water, I first searched until I found a bucket in a nearby gazebo. Filling it to the brim at the pond, I flew back over to the Bighorn to help it drink, and check its condition in the meantime. In short, not great, but getting better: its eyes, though glassy, were alert and looking into mine intently, if blearily. Its groans of pain were slowly giving way to a sigh of deep relief as Chrome's magic knit splintered bone and shredded flesh back together like new. As with everything else in the process, it was agonizingly slow work, as she had to be careful to allow the magic time to fit everything to where it should be. Eventually, though, it was done, and the Bighorn stood on its four hooves with practiced ease.
With a baa of joy, it leapt clear over my head, landing a few yards away, and began to lope off, but stopped short and, turning around, made its way back to us. Stooping low, it regarded us intently for a moment. I saw us in the reflection of its eye: mussed and bedraggled, and covered in blood that was quickly drying in the cool Autumn air, we shook with exhaustion, completely drained. It nuzzled us briefly, and in the next moment was off again, making its way down the way we came, and was out of sight within moments. That strange but powerful episode over with, we washed up as best we could in the pond, and traveled to the gate to the Wizard City Commons on foot.
"Why were you surprised?" I asked, feeling a sudden desire to know. Chrome looked at me, confusion clear on her face. "When I said I knew about antimatter," I clarified. "Like what, you didn't think I'd know more than grade school science?"
"I didn't think you'd know any science at all," she admitted. "Most people don't; magic is far and away more useful when it comes to the day-to-day, and even when it is used, it's only really engineering. Very few people look at the more theoretical fields unless it's to advance magical study somehow. Antimatter has no real world application that anyone is aware of, so no one bothers with it. For you know about it at all must mean stuff like physics, astronomy, and other sciences are something you pursued before you lost your memories."
"Ah." That gave me something to think about. Why didn't I know that? The way Chrome said it, it was apparently plain as day, yet I didn't know at all. I knew things about the world already: my idioms were plain to everyone who heard them, magic (at least the basic mechanics) was well within my grasp, I knew what types of creatures the Fir Darrig were except the actual Fir Darrig, how to talk, read, everything! But, it was clear my knowledge wasn't perfect, or possibly even complete. There were gaps that at that point I was far too tired to begin probing, so I dropped it for the time being. Without fanfare, we went through the gate to the Commons, and the rest of Wizard City proper.