Lineage

I dropped onto the wooden floor with an exhausted sigh, having handed over the fragment of the key to Svea and letting her examine it while I had a brief rest.

“So,” I called over to her. “You know anything about it?”

“No,” she answered, not exactly what I wanted to hear at the moment. “Before you brought this to me, I never knew of any sort of key to any sort of treasure room in this entire city. Though in hindsight, it was quite stupid of me to assume this city’s treasure wouldn’t be guarded or locked away.”

“Yeah, guarded is a good word for it,” I said, rolling my stiff shoulder as I spoke. “Rinvae really gave me a run for my money.”

“That reminds me; how did you come to learn of his name?” Svea asked, turning to look at me with a cocked eyebrow. “From what I know, the Highmoore didn’t speak the language we use today.”

“He used some kind of mental imagery on me, some weird telepathic magic or something,” I answered, then getting a thought moments later. “Now that I bring it up; how was he using magic? I thought you said there was a spell or something over the city that prevented any kind of magic being used.”

“It’s complicated,” Svea answered.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I shrugged, unbuckling the straps of my armour and allowing myself to breathe a little easier.

“Magic, in and of itself, is an extremely complicated artform,” Svea began. “Unlike other things in the world, it does not assume nor does it adapt, and as such, it will only do exactly what is commanded of it and nothing more. Oral magic, much like oral curses, are very dependant of the wording used to cast them.”

“Oral magic?” I asked. “Like, spoken magic? Spells, essentially?”

“A form of spells, Richter,” Svea nodded. “There are of course other spells that require no speaking, such as elemental control, telekinesis, energy attacks, and all sorts of other magics don’t need you to speak a single word, only to will what you want the magic to do and then channel the energy into it. It makes duelling silent magic users a very dangerous process.”

“Why?” I asked, feeling like the answer to this was obvious, yet I was missing it. “Surely you’d be able to see them doing something and prevent it, right?”

“You may, if they’re using an attack that requires both charging time and physical motion to use,” Svea explained. “Magic users that use things like plasma, fire, water, and other elements often use their hands or other parts of their body to cast spells, whereas other magic users can merely look at a person and cause them to explode.”

“That… that seems very unfair,” I said in a surprised manner.

“It is,” Svea nodded. “Luckily, magic such as that is both banned and extremely hard to learn anywhere in the world, though you may run into someone like that.”

“Right then,” I said, nodding slowly. “You mentioned plasma mages a minute ago. How do they work?”

“As strange as it may sound due to the rarity of its use, plasma magic is extraordinarily easy to learn and use,” Svea said. “I’d demonstrate for you, but I’m unable to due to the magic jammer. Essentially, plasma mages gather particles in the air and force the energy into their body out into this concentration to such a degree that it ionises the particles and causes the electron to break away from the atoms, changing the gathered compounds into the fourth state of matter, which is extremely useful in combat due to the extreme level of heat plasma possesses; the bigger the beam, the hotter it gets. Its simplicity and power only has one drawback for powerful mages: its lack of function beyond beam attacks, as plasma can’t be shaped into constructs or shields, like other magic can.”

“Huh. So it’s basically forcing shitloads of energy out and throwing whatever you’ve made at someone?” I asked.

“Essentially, yes,” she nodded.

“Neat,” I said with a nod. “But anyway, you were saying something about an oral spell and what it has to do with the magic blocker here?”

“Yes, I believe that an oral spell was used on this entire city with specific clauses that exempt certain entities from its dampening effects, thus rendering them able to maintain access to their magic for use whenever they so wish,” she explained.

“I should take you back to meet my Aunt Twilight. I think you guys would get along really well,” I commented.

“Do you understand what I said?” she asked quickly.

“Yes, Svea. I’m not an idiot,” I nodded. “You’re informing me that the contract agreed upon by the oral casting and confirmation of these specific clauses allows those exempt from the rulings set forth by the declaration of magical disallowance enables them to maintain a non-degradative connection with their inherent casting abilities as well as their full range of inter-connective, cognitive magical repertoire with which to convey certain images and concepts passed across and understood by cognitive adaption between the host’s native tongue and that of the foreign party with no prior knowledge of the primary linguistic design that has set foot in this area and has been degeneratively affected by the clauses of this here location’s magical disenfranchising effect.”

“Now you’re just being an asshole, Richter.”

“Eh, it’s what I do best.”

Svea pinched the bridge of her nose, sighing loudly, before continuing the conversation:

“So yes, the way the spell was worded allows people that weren’t named to use their magic, but prevent those that were from using theirs,” she said. “And while this finding is extremely interesting to learn about, it also brings a large amount of bad news to light which is the fact that, due to this spell not being given any physical manifestation-”

“We can’t destroy a source and stop its effects because there isn’t one,” I sighed, gritting my teeth angrily.

“Essentially, yes,” she sighed, sitting down on the floor and tossing the key fragment back and forth between her hands. “So without any way to shut down the magic jam effect, you’re going to have to rely on your sword to take care of whatever else has the other two fragments.”

“And knowing how this kind of shit goes, the other two will most likely be in the possession of two different people, at predetermined locations, with each one being different from the other. But due to the lack of linearity in this scenario, I might not have to worry about each of these ‘Possessors’ scaling in strength as I look for them, as there’s no way for those that placed them here to determine which I’d find first, meaning that there was a chance I’d run into the third and final one before the first one and get killed by it due to it being much stronger than the other two. So to make the quest fair, they’ll almost definitely be three of the Possessors of equal strength, but each one having different strengths and abilities to prevent me from just exploiting the same weakness for all the others I fight,” I said quickly, taking a long breath before looking Svea deep in her eyes. “I think I just got really fucking meta for a second there.”

“Indeed,” she said, shaking her head and standing up. “Now, if it’s all the same to you, I think I’m going to get some rest.”

“If I may make a suggestion: I found a spot not too far from here that’s got a safe bedroom to rest up in. It’s not that much of a climb and the bed seemed really comfortable,” I offered.

“Richter… there’s a queen-sized bed upstairs,” Svea responded. “And I’m not fucking hopping across rooftops.”

“Why?” I asked. “I already told you it’s not that hard to climb up to.”

“Richter, when you have to lug around tits that each individually weigh the same as a newborn baby and an ass as big as a human torso, you have the right to tell me what is and isn’t easy to climb,” she said, crossing her arms underneath her aforementioned rack. “Until then, shush, dear boy.

“Alright, fine,” I nodded. “I’ll be up in a minute.”

“It’s cute you think you’re sleeping in the bed,” she giggled as she disappeared up the stairs.

“Surely it’s big enough for both of us?” I asked in confusion. “You said it was queen-sized?”

“Indeed it is,” she called back down. “And I’m the queen in this house right now, so it’s all for me.”