Book 4 Chapter 19: New Avenues

++Magical relics are some of the most tightly controlled objects in existence, and as such they have incurred a cultural fascination that is second to none.++

- From ‘Magic and Mundanity’, a commentary on the role of the arcane in an advancing society.

I spent two months alone after leaving the Vornholt estate. My brief time with Victoria left the isolation stinging me, a sensation that, even just a few months earlier, I would have despised as the evidence of my growing weakness. Instead, now, I just felt it sting me.

This did not mean that I was not productive however. No, I got far more done alone than I ever had with my sister. Unbeholden to the happiness or wellbeing of any other, it was a simple affair for me to flit around the country and make my presence known in one establishment after another. Museums and art galleries, exhibitions, scientific displays in universities, and even the occasional private collection.

It was greatly convenient to me that this last category almost universally fell under the domain of wealthy men and women. Ones who, though they ordinarily guarded their possessions jealously, were rarely willing to deny me entrance. There is something unique about the brain of extremely wealthy people that leaves them to simper and bow before those who are yet wealthier. The only ones who seemed to even consider me equals rather than their betters were the fellow millionaires, and even they were far more cordial than I would have expected. Like we were sharing some deep secret between us.

For my own part, I did not especially like any of them, but the respectful treatment was pleasant if nothing else. What I was really interested in, though, were their possessions.

I saw a great many different aspects of Garamon in this search. Museums that were older than some countries, great boxy buildings made for space and foot traffic. I saw mansions of wood, of stone, even one of metal and glass belonging to a Highmage of some esteem. I flitted wide and far through the country, to hilltops and beach houses and everything in-between.

It was, actually, quite amusing to see how poorly structured Garamon was for such travel. Its government liked keeping track of magicians like me, ones who could—and indeed had—toppled the very largest of buildings without much effort.

Constant training over the months with and without Victoria had pushed me over the threshold of thirty, then thirty-one thousand vis. I was still a ways away from attaining the level of first class Highmage, but I was chipping away at the difference.

It was funny actually. In my first life, the few years I would need to achieve that level of power would have felt like nothing. Now they seemed long and sluggish. My world was more vibrant now with other people in it, but when I was forced to do nothing but wait, to slow down and watch time pass around me, it all became so agonizingly languid.

What sped things up a shade was my ongoing search.

Being so powerful a magician did not necessarily make me well liked, but it most certainly made the people of Garamon more polite. This politeness was rather comparable to the sort that a woman with a naval cannon aimed at their heads would likely have enjoyed.

At museums, I was shown all the most interesting finds and asked for my sincere opinions. At galleries I was given tours by curators who dropped everything to attend to me. At the scientific exhibits I ventured into, I found myself ensnared by conversation and debate about the subjects.

When you are wealthy and important, it seems, everybody cares what you think. Experiencing this first hand was more interesting than any of the drivel people attempted to intrigue me with through conversation.

And unfortunately, not a single one of these places so far had what I was looking for.

It was, frustratingly, possible that even my magical vision could not pick up the artifact I was seeking, and I had no way of narrowing that possibility down as I did not even have a physical description of it. But I was not sure. My eyes could see through almost any enchantment, with the sole exception being cases where magical power was sectioned away entirely.

I knew for a fact that Zameka was able to perform that latter feat, as Sethira’s rebirth and reclamation of Sakhent’s power left me unable to recognise her true power on sight, but I was doubtful that the technique had been employed here.

If it had been, I was even more doubtful of my—or anyone’s—ability to make use of the hidden magic, and this whole affair would have been borderline pointless.

My uncertainty only grew as I continued the effort, and my life fell into a routine.

Wake up, train. First physically, performing push-ups, sit-ups, jumps and squats and every other form of exercise I could think of until my muscles burned and my joints ached. Then I would sit and practice my magic, weaving mana like I always had. By the time I had finished both, three hours had passed.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Magicians never had much time on their hands, now I would have even less. If my company were not bringing in so much money entirely without my attention then I feared I would never get anything done.

But training was just the start, because then I would need to continue my search for artefacts through the museums, the galleries, and the exhibits. Running my eyes lazily over rows of ancient objects. Knives of copper, of stone, edges of material so clumsy and primitive that they could not even be called a tool at all. Metal masks and shackles, cups and musical instruments, then other things that even I did not already know the meaning of.

None of it was magical. Not to me, and, evidently, not to the people who had stashed the things here.

Day by day I continued, failure after failure, and my frustration started to grow. I was beholden to Zameka, and so there was no real choice in what I did here. Not without abandoning the morality that had kept me conscious for so many millennia.

But I was not to be forced into this task forever, due to a single, simple reason. There were only a finite number of spaces in Garamon that this artefact may have been found. Two months was all I took to finish searching through each one. That I needed even that long, despite being given the chance to skip essentially every queue in the country and fly between cities in minutes, was an especially damning highlight of just how few of the country’s museum relics were actually native to it.

That did not matter though. What did matter was that I had now, at last, run out of steam entirely in my investigation.

I took a seat atop the great tower that housed Large Henry, the largest bell in Garamon, and pondered my issue while I rested atop it. The winds were strong, so high, but nothing compared to how they felt during flight, and my newly strengthening body seemed less susceptible to cold.

Hm. Would my warrior’s physique let me speed up in flight by spending less of my power mitigating drag force for safety?

But that was a matter for later, so I stashed it away deeper in my mind and focused on the currently pressing issue of my search seeming to have hit a brick wall.

I was tempted to give it up entirely, and persisted now only because I valued my own debts far too strongly to let an impediment like this stop me so soon.

The wind whipped me and dragged my hair one way and the other. The clouds swirled just a scant few dozen paces above my head. Below, the streets churned around with so many people moving in such compressed unity that they stopped resembling people at all. No. From this distance, I felt more like I was watching coloured liquid ooze down the streets and pool at points of congestion.

Garamon was such a big place. I did not often consider that, and my nearly two decades spent among it had been enough time to adjust to the sheer scale, but in that moment I was reminded of it all over again.

Billions. That was the estimated population of the whole Empire. Not millions, billions. With dozens of millions housed on this tiny island alone, compressed into sprawling cities and fed by crop yields that demanded an endless tax of magic to sustain. If human civilisation was an organism, the civilisation of Garamon was one grown long past its natural proportions. Sluggish, hunched and crippled by the weight of its own body and the creasing of its own spine; cancerous.

I would kill this shambling monstrosity, but before I did, I would need to understand it. And seeing things that way made me decide that this little detour of mine to search for the artefact was not nearly as pointless as I had feared.

Currency.

That was the heart of Garamon, currency. The Gods had long since retreated from directly influencing the world and left their Demigods to rule in their stead. Those Demigods now found their influence degraded by the generation, not due to the rising magicians, whom they had always feared, but thanks to the growing tides of currency. Privatisation was the new order of the age. Property rights and contracts had taken the place of feudal lords and monarchs, and no knight in the history of any nation to ever exist had ever matched the terrible strength of a nineteenth century bank.

Right. Wealth could do just about anything in Garamon. I knew this personally, because I had recently acquired sufficient sums of it that I could probably have bought the clock tower I was sitting on had the thought struck me.

So I was making a mistake by solely visiting public or governmentally owned institutions, or even those private ones that were made available to the world at large.

The very wealthiest of Garamon’s citizens liked to isolate themselves from the common people. I had seen this first-hand by how desperate they all were to invite me into some private lounge or office each and every time I met with one.

So why, then, was I assuming that there would be no other collections of artefacts, ones less public, less official, and less legal?

There was an old saying in Garamon that went; ‘If there is a market for something, there is a black market for it that’s twice as large’. I doubted it was literally true, but I certainly knew from experience that the dealing of illicit goods was commonplace all over the Empire, and normally done with governmental approval, provided the right officials received some piece of the profits.

This had saved me in defending my refinery from the Vorets by providing a ready source of firearms and gunpowder, and now it might save my search for the artefact of Zameka.

But I had never gotten involved with black markets or criminal undergrounds of any kind before. When I had purchased my guns in Poloira, it had been through a certain associate. One with quick wits, a generally distrusting nature, and what some might consider to be a criminal mind.

I stood up, took one last look over the city around me, and then headed into the air as I flew back to the Vornholt Estate. It seemed that I would need the help of Dave Blakely for more than just protecting my sister.