Chapter 107: A Scientific Inquiry Into Magic

“You can’t do this to yourself.”

“I told you not to bother me here,” Gilbert muttered so that the other patrons couldn’t hear him.

Ysentrud pried his fingers from the handle of a half-full ale mug and took his hand, warm in her grasp. “Helen keeps asking where daddy is, but I can’t tell her you’re here, drinking yourself to death. Would you at least come home and talk to her? Girls that grow up without their father become faeries.”

Gilbert glared at his wife to make her leave, yet she stared back unflinchingly. Their battle of wills continued as the slurred shouting of drunks and metal cups slamming into stone tables erupted across the old alehouse.

He broke eye contact first. For Ysentrud to see him like this drove in the shame. Gilbert worked from dawn to dusk, sleeping in the barn where his last shift ended, the aches of laying on uneven timber flooring like that of someone hammering his spine. He could only sleep with ale in his belly. The more he worked, the more he drank, and the less he could be around the kids.

“I don’t want them to see me like this,” Gilbert said. “But don’t worry. Should be soon, now.”

Ysentrud’s arm retracted to her roughspun gown. “You’ve been saying that for eight years.”

“This time for sure. When the apostle reclaims the coast, people will need cooks again, and everything will go back to normal. Like before the war.”

Head down, Ysentrud fiddled with loose fibers protruding from her sleeves. She wore a familiar expression—that of a once sweet girl hardened into a cynic after a decade of crushed dreams. But today, despite all the shit they’ve been through, hope eked through her eyes. “Tell me that story again.”

“About the Holy Thunder?”

“That’s the one.”

Gilbert grinned like the boisterous youth he had been when he met his wife. “Saw a whole squad of sorceresses with ‘em on the Night of Repentance. The roars echoed all the way to Smithen Street when they killed that damned carapaced devil. Zera’s blessing is back.”

A smile took her lips, and for once, Gilbert felt like he might sleep well tonight, but there was only one way to be sure. He glanced into his mug only to discover an empty iron pit. All the ale had gone. Gilbert tapped his pouch, yet he did not hear the jingle of coin. Disappointment welled within.

Wrapped in disheveled black like a molting crow, a man who sat alone at an adjacent table glanced back at them.

Gilbert pulled his wife closer. Ma had always said that strangers carried more curses than a stray cat, and with the horrific tales of barbarism going around, of kidnappings and village raids, she was righter than ever.

The man tipped his flat cap in greeting and stood up. “Madam, another for me and a friend in need.” He tossed a few coppers to the ale wench rushing closer to fill their mugs.

Ysentrud scowled as if to smite the enabler, but she was never one for confrontation. Her gaze fell to her torn boots.

Gilbert brought the dark orange elixir to his nose and took a big whiff, mildly fruity fent and warmth rushing into his nose. The sweet bitterness was more divine than Olsten and all three matriarchs. “Cheers, friend!”

Seeing him fall prey to drink, Ysentrud mustered the courage to speak. “What do we owe you, friend?”

“Just an ear for your benefit, madam,” the man said.

Her eyes narrowed.

“May I have a seat?”

Thinking Ysentrud should loosen up a bit, Gilbert laughed. “Nothing like a drink in good company!”

The rickety chair across the table croaked as the man sat down. He sipped some ale and swiped a finger to clean his frothy mustache. “I heard you two talking about the apostle.”

“Isn’t it great?” Gilbert said. “Finally, something good’s happening around here. About time, I’d say. I’m tired of running around, looking for decent work. Won’t be long now.”

“I used to think the same.”

“Used to?”

“You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?”

“The apostle’s handouts,” the man said. “They were cursed.”

“Do you mean the meat pies?” Ysentrud asked.

“Oh, that!” Gilbert waved his hand. “The town criers have been screaming about it all night. People getting sick; a scheme of the faithless, they say. Ain’t the first time some pricks have tried to ruin it for the rest of us.”

“Then I suppose you haven’t heard about his corrupted magic.”

The drunks who had shouted all morning fell silent, and the ale wench froze in her tracks.

“Corrupted magic?” Ysentrud asked the question no one else dared utter.

“An enchantment that burned the flesh, corroded stone, injured the apostle’s flock. They say it glowed bright white and devoured all. The apostle no longer carries Zera’s blessing. His holy magic falters.”

“That… that ain’t true,” Gilbert said, his voice growing louder. “The Holy Thunder works! We all heard—“

“I’m afraid it’s true,” the man said with regret in his tone.

“And what proof do you have?”

“Me.” A woman with a face like wrinkled leather stood up. “I was there. Felt it burn and freeze my skin. Never had I felt anything so cold and devoid of Zera’s embrace.”

All jollity had left the alehouse’s second floor. Everyone watched the woman then the man, wide-eyed, praying to Zera and Celeste that their promise of peace wouldn’t be ripped from them again.

Gilbert was no different. The fragile hope that he had nurtured so gently, for himself and his family, retreated into a blackening abyss.

“It’s like the Church all over again,” the man said, pressing his hat tighter to his scalp. “They help you once, collect your tithes, and leave you in a roadside gutter. We best rid ourselves of this supposed apostle while Malten still stands.” He stumbled to the exit. “Things’ll only get worse the longer we follow his false guidance.”

Gilbert willed himself to retort, to correct the man and take back the future that he had worked hard to earn, but all he could do was glance at Ysentrud. She looked back at him, smile gone without a trace.

He wouldn’t sleep well tonight.

Outside the Arboretum of the Mystics, a musty glass-roofed chamber where assorted herbs jutted from a dirt floor and ivy crept through the crevices of sandstone brick walls, a cluster of red-robed women peeked inside from around an archway corner. The younger sorceresses shoved one another, competing to catch a closer glimpse of the ongoing science experiment, while their older and wizened coworkers watched with cautious hesitation.

Two dozen stares focused past Dimitry and Mira at a navy glowing condiment cup of honey. An iron wire mesh suspended the honey cup above a bucket containing only water and a green glass tube with a reservoir of red-dyed ethanol at the bottom—a crude alcohol thermometer; the only temperature measuring device Dimitry could conceive that the glassblowers of Malten could craft. It wasn’t great. Aside from a scratch two-thirds up the stem, standardized to the freezing point of water, the alcohol thermometer couldn’t gage temperature with precision. But the limited functionality would suffice for now.

Dimitry needed to learn what he did wrong. The freezia enchantment’s eerie white glow had burned into his mind, and soon, it would torch his reputation. All the way from the cathedral to the arboretum on the top floor of the Sorceresses Guild, civilians watched him with doubt. With fear. Ideally, he would still have been treating his many methanol poisoning victims, but with much fewer patients coming in for treatment since last night’s catastrophe, he was falling further into debt from dwindling revenue streams, people were dying from treatable conditions, and a messenger from Saphiria warned that the worst was yet to come.

Dimitry and his followers would be struck again.

So he prepared.

While Lukas’ men struggled to mend Dimitry’s reputation by shouting propaganda from podiums and his nurses distributed ethanol doses to his patients, he met with the most knowledgeable thaumaturge in Malten. Dimitry would need modified magic again. If she knew anything that could help him prevent another enchantment from going berserk and stirring further distrust in the very populace he relied on to advance society, the trip would pay dividends.

“What am I meant to be looking for?” Mira asked.

To avoid nearing a potentially lethal freezia enchantment, Dimitry pointed to the thermometer’s meniscus with a rusted and neglected fireplace poker. “We’re waiting for the ethanol level to move.”

“Of what consequence is it whether this ethanol moves?”

“Ethanol is a liquid that expands when it’s heated and contracts when it’s cooled. Since I cast a modification of freezia that extracts warmth from its surroundings to decompose the sugar in honey—“

“Sugar?” Mira twirled her chestnut hair around a long finger.

“You don’t know what sugar is?”

“I assume you’ll tell me.”

“It’s the chemical that makes honey sweet.”

“Chemical?”

“Chemical is just another word for a specific type of stuff.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” she said, her calm tone edging towards frustration.

Faced with a sorceress guildmistress who had never heard of sugar, Dimitry decided against delving into specifics. The experiment’s outcome would be self-evident. He ‘programmed’ the freezia enchantment around the honey cup to decompose glucose with thermal energy—a reaction visually evident through the expulsion of carbon dioxide and water. Though Dimitry would have preferred to test the freezia enchantment he used to treat methanol poisoning directly, he lacked not only a concentrated source of formic acid to decompose but also knowledge of its exact reaction mechanisms. Gaps in understanding might have been why the original enchantment failed.

Glucose, however, he knew well. Really well. There wasn’t a chemical more ubiquitous in his studies and medical practice than glucose, and this world had tons of it. Hopefully, naked-eye observation and a makeshift calorimeter would produce enough data to identify freezia’s failings. “Basically, if the ethanol level goes down, the enchantment is working.”

“Then it appears to be working,” she said.

The alcohol thermometer’s readings gradually fell, and a sparse vapor stream escaped the cup. Signs that the enchantment successfully drained heat from the water bucket to fuel the reaction.

“How odd,” Mira said. “The honey doesn’t bubble, nor does it radiate heat, so why does it produce steam?”

Her question wasn’t one Dimitry could answer with certainty. Though the decomposition of glucose required an input of activation energy, the overall reaction was exothermic, meaning the honey should have grown hotter. But how much hotter? Since glucose was just one of several sugars present in honey, perhaps its degradation alone couldn’t raise the solution’s temperature.

His hypothesis was swiftly proven wrong.

The water bucket’s temperature fell further, and the honey roiled, turning golden brown. A savory, nutty aroma fused with the scent of dozens of fresh herbs growing throughout the arboretum.

Four buzzing sorceresses—no older than Angelika—barged into the room despite Dimitry’s earlier warnings. The shortest licked her lips.

“It’s caramelizing,” Mira announced with the conviction of someone who had uncovered the origins of the universe.

Dimitry stroked his chin. Now the solution was too hot. Why the sudden change? Did modified enchantments intensify with time, or did the heat released by decomposing glucose hasten the reaction?

The navy blue enchantment flashed green.

His heart skipped a beat. That again. “Back!”

The meniscus on the thermometer plummeted. A thick layer of ice spread across the water bucket’s surface and grew thicker as the caramelized honey burned into a black slurry.

Though her sorceresses retreated, Mira stayed put. “I’ve seen nothing like it…”

As if to thwart Dimitry’s understanding further, the ice layering the bucket melted and the ethanol in the thermometer boiled, bursting from its encasement and shooting jagged green glass shards at seedlings and bricks and people.

“Protectia!” the more alert sorceresses chanted, defending those who were too enraptured to react.

Mira held her palm out. The glass shards hurling in her and Dimitry’s direction clinked against an unseen barrier and fell to their feet.

“Dispel it now,” Dimitry warned. “It’ll only get worse!”

The sorceresses reached into their vol pockets, but they froze at Mira’s behest. “None will act without my command!”

While the iron bucket’s handle took turns melting into a red hot slurry and solidifying, the ceramic cup that held the enchantment liquefied, its corrosive glow flickering between colors like an ominous rainbow.

“That’s enough,” Dimitry said. “The experiment’s over. It’s a failure. Kill the enchantment before someone dies!”

“An enchantment of this strength will not reach that far,” Mira said.

“How can you know that for sure?”

“Decades of experience and a lady’s intuition.”

Running a hand through his hair, Dimitry stepped back. This woman was nuts.

The liquid enchantment warped through the experiment table and seeped into the arboretum’s dirt flooring, churning and wilting a helpless plant along the way. When the magic began to disfigure the sandstone bricks beneath, Mira flicked her wrist, and the lethal glow extinguished.

The chamber went silent.

Dimitry struggled to piece together what he saw. Based on his observations, the enchantment progressed in three phases: the initial stage where the magic functioned within expected parameters, the second stage where the original effect amplified exponentially, and lastly the batshit insane stage where the enchantment shifted between incendia, meltia, and countless other unknown spells before deteriorating into an ungodly catastrophe. He even saw the gold of reflectia and the silver of dispelia. Were those glows simply visual defects?

Unsure of how to analyze the data, Dimitry looked to Mira for clues, yet she watched him as if passing judgment.

“What if the magic really is corrupted?” a sorceress whispered to another.

“Can’t be. It rid my father of the plague.”

“Maybe Zera changed her mind?”

Dimitry glanced back. “Corrupted?”

Like nurses hesitating to inform a widow of his wife’s passing, the sorceresses avoided his gaze, looking at everything except him.

“Could it be true?” Mira mumbled to herself.

“I’d prefer if you talked with me instead of around me,” he said.

“Very well.” Watching her boots as if lost in thought, she strutted past him. “A message came from my sister’s estate this morning. I was told to be wary of the apostle abandoned by Zera. They say your healing magic has become corrupted, killing anyone who places their faith in you. Given the stack of letters that have arrived today and the hushed murmurs in my halls since, I have no doubt my girls have received the same warning.”

A sorceress with a scarred cheek nodded.

Dimitry’s mouth hung ajar, grasping for a retort that never came. The freezia incident occurred last night. It was noon now. While spreading rumors explained why his patient count had dwindled, how could commoners’ gossip reach women from exalted lineages like Mira and her sorceresses so soon? An unnatural development. Most nobles kept the common man a longsword’s distance away.

This was another organized attack—the kind Saphiria warned him about.

He rushed to defend himself. “Without my magic, there’d be a hundred new corpses in the ditch by the river and another hundred by nightfall. Does that sound corrupted to you?”

“Raina said the same.”

“Then how could you believe those rumors?”

“If I believed them,” Mira said, “I would never have permitted you inside my guild nor allowed you to channel your enchantment here. I did not forget what you’ve done for my girls. How many live now because of you? I’m grateful I do not know the number.” She stopped near an herb with magically disfigured petals. “Yet I would be remiss to ignore what I saw. If Zera gifted us magic for our benefit, why would Celeste guide you to conjure a spell so caustic?”

“Celeste does not guide me to cast modified spells,” he said. “Aside from scant visions and a goal, I’ve been given the same tools as everyone else.”

“Do you speak of science? You’ve mentioned it before, when my darlings enchanted your greenhouse.”

“No. Science is simply the means of attaining understanding through experimentation. Knowing how a spell might enact its effect—that’s what is needed to modify magic. Or so I thought. I’m missing something.”

“Have you tried channeling a plague curing preservia enchantment recently?”

“Yes, and it functions well. So does this.” Dimitry plucked a vol pellet off the experiment table. “Illumina.”

The violet fluorescence of atmospheric nitrogen expelling electrons flashed around a central pillar, the scattered specks of light reflecting from the pupils of a wide-eyed sorceress.

“Hmm…” Despite a clinical disposition, Mira’s curiosity was apparent in her longing gaze. “And you’ve tried casting the caustic freezia as a spell?”

“With my poor control over magic, I fear trying without a controlled test environment.”

“So you’ve come to me. To use my facilities.”

“That and to get your thoughts. Mostly the latter.”

Conflicted like a surgeon weighing the risks of an intraoperative decision that might save or kill her patient, the guildmistress leaned back against an uneven brick wall and folded her arms over her chest, the gold trim of her cuffs gleaming with ceremonial torchlight. Mira stared at the ceiling with glazed-over eyes while tapping her arm. “You know, I’ve always believed that there’s nothing of higher import than unearthing the truth. Like my master before me, I devoted my life to pursuing knowledge. ‘Someday, we will map the arcane,’ Laura told me. ‘Not I, and perhaps not you, but these girls we raise in our halls, they will.’ She has since died fighting heathens, and I remain to fulfill her will. For so long, I have yearned to make a discovery like that of modified magic. To make her proud. I used to think that was all I cared for.”

Mira paused. “That’s why it pains me to say that I can’t help you.”

“As in, you know nothing that can help me?”

She shook her head. “As in, I will not get involved any further.”

Dimitry’s heart dropped, and injustice rose in its place, clambering up his throat. “Let me guess, you don’t want to risk your reputation for me?”

“My reputation?” Mira said. “Though I am noble in name, a lady of the distinguished Bright house, I have lived in the dormitories of this guild since I was eight, save the abandoned manor house I retreat to to study scrolls. I do not recall the last time my sister consulted me on family matters. Perhaps she forgets I exist.”

“No, I fear for them.” She glanced across the onlooking sorceresses. “While many of my girls have placed their faith in you, Your Holiness, their households may not be so pious. The recent rumors have only stoked their fears. If I involve my guild in the study of your allegedly corrupt magic, the lords and ladies who have entrusted their daughters to me won’t hesitate to take them back. I will not see my darlings torn from me; not for all the arcane knowledge in the Church’s vaults. They are my family.”

Dimitry fumbled, struggling to understand how a rumor could cause him so much grief. A week ago, he had knelt at the queen’s throne, applauded from all sides for slaughtering heathens with miraculous time magic, and now, Mira hesitated to cooperate with him. Though Precious revealed that much of the praise was disingenuous, a scheme to get in Dimitry’s good graces, that was fine. He cared only for securing his new home. Opportunistic alliances with nobles were preferable to bloody wars.

However, if a thaumaturgical mishap was all it took to sway their opinion of Dimitry, they did not consider him much of an asset at all. A passing fancy prey to fleeting whims. He had to mend his reputation before he crossed a lord he couldn’t ignore, before he lost all clout with the public. The obvious solution was to uproot whoever was spreading those ill rumors, but if Saphiria and her knights couldn’t find them, and if Lukas’ men struggled to undo the damage with propaganda, Dimitry couldn’t strike at the problem directly, either.

His options were limited to only one: to remove all doubt of his holiness.

“Fine,” Dimitry said. “I get it. But you can still kill heathens for me, right?”

“Kill heathens?”

“I need two dozen combat sorceresses. Today. Now, if possible. For a few weeks.”

Mira pressed a long finger to her lip, spending a moment in thought. “Your ambitions elude me, but I know that look. None would make a fuss over dead heathens. Draft the contract, and we’ll see to the terms.”