Chapter Twenty-Four - A Time to Go

“You know, I can be somewhat sneaky at times.”

***

I eyed the map the limpet had given me.

The Silent Lake was a rather large body of water, one that we’d need to circumvent in order to make it to the Path to Heaven.

The problems were many:

For one, it would take some time to get there. By carriage, assuming the map was accurately scaled (which I doubted) it would take over a week.

For two, we would be coming from a known location, taking a known route. Our path would be predictable.

And for three, I wasn’t in a travelling mood.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a spot of adventure, and the travelling to and from points of interest is a big part of that. Some of my best ideas came as I rode in the back of a wagon or walked along a woodland trail.

I genuinely enjoyed travelling and seeing new sights, but this situation might call for something a little... faster.

At the same time. Teleporting right to the top of this Path to Heaven might set off a few alarms, and while I was confident in my skills, I wasn’t certain if I could take on every member of this new pantheon on my own without first studying them in depth.

A mage fought by knowing their enemy and preparing accordingly. In this situation I was on the backfoot.

I tapped a boney finger to the map, then traced the route around the western shore of the Silent Lake, up around the mountains to the north, then into the path leading up to our next destination.

I had an idea.

Looking up, I took in the room at a glance. Alex was standing at attention nearby, his hands folded over his stomach and a careful smile on his lips. The limpet was at the far end of the table from me, a spoon hovering next to her mouth with one hand while she stared into a notebook, her food forgotten.

“Alex, I need a large bowl, one filled with water.”

Alex curtsied. “I can get that for you right away, Sir Papa.”

The limpet looked up from her studies. “What’s the bowl for?” she asked before noticing the spoonful of porridge she was holding up and taking a bite from it.

“I will be using it to scry ahead. We will be moving out of Dolsrus in a few minutes.”

“Oh! I’ll pack my things then.” The limpet hopped off her seat and ran over to her room, and soon things were flying into her satchel. “I need to feed Fang Fang!”

I watched her run by, take two big gulps from her porridge, then run off with the bowl.

What a strange girl.

Alex soon returned cradling a glass bottle under one arm and holding a bowl in the other. He set both before me, popped the cork off the bottle and filled the bowl without so much as a splash. “Is this enough, Papa?”

“It’s sufficient, thank you.” I dipped a finger into the water and allowed an inkling of divine magic to suffuse the bowl.

“Scry.”

The water wavered for a moment, the bottom of the bowl stretched out, as if replaced by a shifting mirror, then a kaleidoscopic reflection of the ceiling above twisted around before being replaced with an eagle-eyed view of Dolsrus from above, centered right over the Come Inn inn.

“Let’s see which route is best, shall we? Oh hoho!”

I flicked my fingers forwards and the image in the bowl shifted with the motion, first moving further away from the earth, then moving northwards.

Scrying was a tricky bit of magic. Not so much the actual casting. All one needed was a bit of holy water or a crystal ball, an idea of who or what they wanted to scry and a bit of time. You could even turn normal water into holy water if you knew what you were doing, making the casting far easier.

The tricky part was controlling the scry, moving the point from which you were seeing. The sensor wasn’t tied to the plane, not the way something physical would be. Which made moving it harder than it seemed.

Had I a tongue, it would have been pinched between my teeth as I brought the sensor over the northern shore of the Silent Lake, then moved up and over a mountain range.

The range here was bizarre, with mountains that were like great columns instead of the more triangular peaks I was used to seeing. I wondered what geological shift caused that to happen, but it was a consideration for another time.

The woods around that area were sparse, probably owing to the rocky soil, but they were still vibrant and green, a change from the Badlands just to the east.

Was it distance from the Badlands that changed that, or was it the mountains cutting off the wind? I had so many little curiosities to dig into!

“I think I found a place,” I said as I shifted the sensor higher and took in a much broader view of the area. There was a road leading from the west, through the mountains, and to a small city that was more or less where the Path to Heaven was on the limpet’s map.

“Where’s that?” Alex asked.

“If we appear along this road here, we can simply walk to the Path to Heaven. We’ll seem like normal travellers, or pilgrims. The road leads in from the northwest.”

“Is Papa trying to avoid suspicion?” Alex asked.

I leaned back into my seat. It was actually a valid question. From what I’d seen so far, there wasn’t much that could threaten me outright, not unless the local gods mounted a concerted effort against me. Even then, I could probably escape.

On the other hand, there was a great deal of value in being inconspicuous. Being underestimated was the bread and butter of a weaker mage, and it was something that I’d always enjoyed as it gave me a favourable edge.

Also, I liked being left along to do my science, and I was running a few experiments that would work better with less interference. The limpet’s training, for one, and seeing how the world’s culture had changed.

I didn’t doubt for a moment that some ingenious people had come up with new sciences and disciplines that I’d never thought of, and I wanted to see those at work.

“No Alex, we’re not trying to avoid suspicion. We’re trying to avoid trouble,” I said. I found a nice, suitable location next to a small river and only a few hundred paces from a cleared road, then dismissed my scry spell. “Get everything ready to go, Alex. I’ll be in the backyard.”

“Yes Papa!”

I got up while Alex packed up our few things away. He’d found a purse at some point, and a few simple cloth bags besides.

Stepping out of the inn room, I found the limpet making her way up stairs. “We’re heading out in a moment,” I said. ‘If you want to come with us, then I’d suggest getting ready in a jiffy.”

“Yes master!” the limpet said.

I pat her atop the head to reward her for behaving, then moved down and out to the back. The inn had a small courtyard that the owner had turned into a simple, understated rock garden with a few fragrant flowers and a nice bench.

I walked over to the patch of small rocks and started marking out a symbol in the ground using a Mage Hand. Teleportation was one of those spells where taking your time to make sure everything was done right was always worth the trouble.

Alex came down just as I finished preparing everything. “Where do I put our things?” Alex asked as he lifted one of his bags.

“Just there,” I said with a gesture towards the ring I’d made. “Are you certain you’ll be able to travel with all of that?” He seemed to have a lot of pots and pan and other such paraphernalia.

“Yes Daddy.”

“Well, it’s your back.”

Limpet and her dog appeared in a rush, the girl’s face flushed as she ran over and her dog bounced behind her and barked as if it was a game. “I’m here!” she said.

“Good. I’m aware that you’re familiar with being teleported, but this time there’s no lake to catch your fall. Brace yourself.”

“Greater Teleport.”

The three of if--four if you counted the dog--appeared in a little wooded area. The sudden absence of city noises and the influx of bird calls and the gurgling of a nearby river was a bit of a shock to the system, as was the change in pressure. At least, it was a change to the two members of our group that were still alive.

“Whoa,” the limpet said as she swayed dizzily. She blinked a few times, then looked around. “Whoa!”

“Indeed,” I said. “Now, I do believe the road is due south from here.” I pointed in the right direction. “Shall we?”

The limpet stayed by my side as I led us down and through the forest. Her dog ran out ahead, sniffing at this and that as dogs did, and Alex took up the rear with all of our things clanging and banging and no doubt scaring away the local wildlife.

“Do you think I can learn how to do that?” the limpet asked. “Teleporting, I mean?”

“Do you remember what I said about the difficulty tiers of spells?” I asked.

The limpet nodded. “I do. And I took notes. The tier is based on the difficulty to cast, and the level of danger presented by a spell if poorly used.”

“A sufficiently accurate summation,” I said as I moved a branch out of my way. “How are you coming along with Detect Magic?”

“I’m getting there,” the limpet said. “I still need more practice before I’ve perfected it, but I will.”

“That’s a first tier spell. A second tier spell would be twice as complicated to learn and master. A third tier spell twice again as difficult. Teleport is a seventh tier spell.”

I refrained from laughing at the consternation on the limpet’s face. “That will take a while to learn.”

“If you did nothing but focus on a tier seven spell, I suspect it would take you about four to five months to learn how to cast it. Once. I don’t think you’d survive that one casting.”

“Darn,” the limpet said. “If I don’t learn just that spell, then... what should I do to get stronger?”

“There are many paths to power. You could focus on a single school of magic. That would make learning in that one speciality easier in the long run. Or you could generalize and learn a bit of everything, scaling up as you go.”

“What did Master do?”

“I learned everything I could about magic, regardless of school.”

She nodded. “Then I’ll do the same.”

“What I did wasn’t the wisest course. It worked for me in the end, but were I to start over, I would do many things differently. That’s one of the hardest lessons to learn as a scientist, that no matter how clever you are, more often than not, you’ll still never see the entire picture, and because of that, you’ll always be just a little bit wrong.”

The limpet huffed. “That’s not what I expect to hear from Master.”

“The truth?”

“That you’re not.... I don’t know. All powerful?”

I snorted. “I’m powerful, not all powerful. There’s more left to learn than I’ve uncovered. The more I discover, the more questions I have.”

The limpet nodded.

“What school do you want to focus on? Or schools, for that matter. I know all of them well enough to teach them to you.”

The limpet grinned. “What are my options?”

I gave her a skeletal grin right back. “Let’s start from the top, then.”

***