Chapter 29

There is nothing civil about war

Apart from the tablets and the anti-magic material, everything else is worthless to me. The only reason I call these millimeter-thick sheets, tablets is in regard to their unbelievable rigidity and sturdiness.

All three of them are perfectly identical, unblemished by the years and contain the same eight chains of eight Words, meaningless no matter in which direction they are read.

Eight times four makes it thirty-two combinations, but that is only assuming they are read in straight lines and does not require special knowledge or apparatus… in which case they would be as worthless as everything else and we would be back to zero.

First, we try to read them from left to right, then top to bottom, right to left and it is only by our twenty-seventh try that we finally get a reaction - the third column from the bottom-right, read upwardly. It renders the bag unresponsive, by which I mean that though it does not swallow objects anymore, I still appear to be working. At least, it has yet to release its content.

This is the first-ever step forward since the bag discovery! We hurry and try the last five combinations but nothing happens: the bag is still inert... could it be we broke it?

There are three more sequences to try. Anxious, we input the first one, and as soon as we do, the bag goes back to its usual state.

With the bag restarted, we soon discover two more functions for a total of four commands. One of them is particularly interesting as it makes a floating text appears – a visual interface of sorts – listing the item currently inside for retrieval and inventory. The last one also displays some text, but this one is a warning: ‘Do not deactivate the bag with items still inside. Doing so carries a high risk of damage to both the content and the surrounding. Are you sure you wish to continue?’

“No, I certainly do not!” There is no point in taking risks. I follow the instruction and empty the bag with the help of the floating pictures… there is quite a lot inside, even if it is mostly trash.

I shut it down… let us hope one of the combinations will restart it.

“Hey, it is my sandwich, it’s as fresh as when I put it in!”

What with that guy? We are about to reveal the secrets of the bag of holding and he is talking about his lunch? I look at his brooch, preparing to scold him but what he says next, stops me from getting further than uttering his name.

“Varettil...”

“Sir, it has been in there for a month and it is still as fresh as when I put it in!”

That… this is quite the discovery, the Queen already intended to use it as a granary of minuscule size yet tremendous capacity, but with what we just learned, its potential increased tremendously.

“I feel like I should scold you, but that was surprisingly a well-thought experiment.”

The moment of truth… again! I look inside and to my great surprise, the words of power are sewn directly into the fabric, many of which I do not know. The one I do, though, greatly resembles the dragon-slaying spell.

All of this is well and good, and has tremendous potential but… “I do not see anything resembling a mana source, do you?”

“No, sir.”

“Can someone write the spell down?”

“Already on it!”

“That was fast!”

“Someone gets the mana measuring tools. We are restarting it.” Hopefully.

Our past experiments proved that the bag did not consume mana… at least not in a quantity we could measure with our tools. This led us to assume the power came from the inside, but it does not seem like it is the case.

I input the first sequence again to restart the bag. “What are the readings?”

“Nothing sir, there is no variation in the surrounding mana.”

My sense also tells me the same thing, but if I were to create a similarly sized exclusion barrier, even by my most conservative estimate it would empty the mana contained in a bag this size so fast we would not have time to register it.

Whatever its source of power is, it is beyond us for now. But, what could it be? There are not so many possibilities, only two in fact, the bag materials or a remote source.

I cannot say it was not worthwhile though, the floating images alone make the usage of complex enchantments possible for all. As if that were not enough, we have also gotten many unknown words of power to decipher, a task which might take years - not that anyone here would complain: for the like of us knowledge is just as important if not more important than what we can do with it.

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Three days have passed, and four copies of the bags have been made. As we cannot reproduce the weaves, we used crystals, and it shows. So far, the best we achieved it was eight seconds before it failed.

In a way, it is a step forward. It confirms that the spell has nothing to do with the lack of mana consumption in the original model. On the other hand, it means I will have to go with the many large crystals route to power my dragon-slaying spell.

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Three more days, and we have our first functioning bags. By diminishing the volume, we have managed to keep the consumption almost reasonable. Why does diminishing the size by about one-third result in barely a twelfth of a twelfth of the previous models? No one knows but with each new bag we create, I become increasingly wary of the risk of accidents – one part of the spell is similar to the dragon-slaying spell.

I take two prototypes with me and teleport as far from civilization as I can. There I do everything in my power to damage them – from afar, thank you I already died once – but nothing I do put even the slightest scratch on it.

The next method is a sure way, but less likely to happen naturally. I create an exclusion barrier to consume the mana as to force one of them to shut-down but nothing like what the original warned us about happens. No, the items drop off the bags one after the other until apart from a few larger ones that tear through the bag albeit without damage to the surrounding.

Good, I feel more secure now. As I happen to have a functioning bag with me, I go to the beach to collect two hundred kilos of sand – the bag maximum capacity – and the spindle of spider-silk before returning.

As I drop the materials in my workshop’s safe, Varettil comes to talk to me excitedly. “It was time all along, sir! I put some hot and cold objects in the original bags and ours, the temperature barely changed! Elaric was wrong, the state of the food was not due to a lack of air!”

He is somewhat wrong with his assumption, as an absence of air could give similar results. Yet… Time? Mana consumption? Could it really be this simple?

“You know, you can simply put a candle inside, it will show whether it was a lack of air or not. Either way, I have a new experiment for you: I want you to put objects with the same temperature in each of our prototype and the original, then measure the change every few days. I want to see if there is a correlation between the rate at which the temperature changes and each bag’s specific consumption!”

Varettil is a bright fellow, although, in a different way from Alaric, he thinks about the implications for an instant before answering vigorously with a bright smile. “Yes, my lord, I will see to it immediately!”

As I go back to the castle for the night after what should have been a good day, I am taken to the throne room by one the Queen’s personal servant. There I learn that what we all feared has come to pass: a little less than one week ago, the southern provinces which used to be part of the One True God’s Kingdom have fallen into a state of open rebellion.

Luckily for us, the rebels’ attempts to cajole non-believers into joining them have been unsuccessful. Their recent mellowed attitude could never erase decades of ingrained grievances and distrust. As soon as the insurrection started, the non-believer ran north to seek refuge and put themselves under the protection of the order.

The knights, who had been preparing for an invasion, quickly sent news and deployed into the northern part of the province.

I ask. “Why did it take this much time for the news to reach us?”

“The messengers had to avoid the kingdom’s assassins along the road.”

“If the kingdom intervened this directly, then it really is an invasion and the traitors aiding them can be considered the same as foreign enemies.” Says a great Korok so tall he almost reaches my shoulder and looks like he holds a serious grudge.

“The messenger explains, they were disguised as bandits but I’d never mistake their accent: they were unmistakably from the kingdom!”

“What of the south?” Ask the Queen.

I hear the citizens have formed militias to hold the cities, but their numbers are too large by far. They have clearly received foreign reinforcement.” His tone becomes somber. “We moved as much personnel as possible, but I fear that the human garrisons and whoever was left there are no more.”

“We see… They made their choice, so be it. Announce the One True God’s cult is now illegal and arrest all known worshippers. Sequesters them in the camps we had prepared, they may not all be traitors but I doubt the people will see it that way.”

It might come as a surprise for the so-called human supremacist of the One True God’s religion, but they are far more hated by their brethren than the non-human.

The highest-ranking clergy-man from the capital is brought before the Queen, but I feel no fear in him, only conviction. “Witch,” he says with contempt “an envoy from the high clergy will come soon for parleys, you better listen to his demands for it is your beast last hope to beg for the Lord's mercy.”

“Can you even call that parleys when you attacked us without a declaration of war?”

“There is no truce with monsters and infidels, we only took back what was rightfully ours.”

“Yes, we see now that there can be no truce with the mindless and we regret our past foolishness of seeking a peaceful resolution… we will not make the same mistake again. Guards put this one to the question.”

Despite what transpired, he appears triumphant and I suddenly feel like repainting the room with his blood. The voices in my head scream in hatred I have never imagined possible. “KILL HIM, PURGE THEM ALL.” And I cannot discern anymore which thoughts are my own.

I hurriedly leave the room, and they calm down. I cannot say if it was my outrage that incited the collective or the other way around but I now know one thing for sure: I was not as prepared as I thought I was.