combinatorial explosion | Glowfic Constellation

rockpaperscissors

The strangers have six casters, in their group, that Qiri can count. Qiri's group has four counting him, and they got split up awhile ago when the strangers started that earthquake. Qiri is stuck with Master Huo. Master Huo is dying, but since Qiri is chained up he can't use that to escape, or attack Master Huo. The master's magic is uninjured, and he can reach Qiri's from where he lies, and Qiri is sitting there, goosepimpled, enduring it. He wonders if Master Huo might be in enough pain to distract him, if Qiri tried to wrench his magic away, but he doesn't think so. He can squirm around a fair bit under Master Yu and Master Zao if only one of them is using him for a spell - and if he wants to earn himself a beating - but not Huo.

He doesn't get nauseous anymore, like he did when he was a kid. So there's that.

Huo's casting a healing spell, moving Qiri's magic around this way and that to set it up. Qiri assumes it's going to target Master Huo, but spells don't know who anyone is. Qiri can't distract himself, not with his spine tingling and all his magic cringing under the slide of Huo's. Instead he tries to concentrate on something less directly sensory: how's the spell targeting? How is Huo going to make sure it heals him, and not Qiri's irritated skin under where the chains sit, the injuries to his fingers from the last time he irritated Master Yu, the probably broken toe sustained in the earthquake?

He figures it out when the spell is probably almost over: it's going to target the most injured person, and Qiri is a little banged up but Master Huo's got an arrow to the gut and a slice through his thigh that's probably going to bleed him out before the abdominal wound can kill him. It's objectively pretty impressive that he can concentrate enough to make his magic force Qiri's through the motions he wants.

Then, dimly around the cloying sensation of Huo's magic over his, Qiri notices a group of the stranger mages approaching, standing close together, back to back to back, doing something -

And he and Huo are banished somewhere else.

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rockpaperscissors

"Okay, but why do you want to be one? You still need some farmers, right? And other stuff?"

"Yeah, lots of stuff. But if I think I'd be good at being a soldier and at being a farmer then I should be a soldier, probably, and let people who'd make bad soldiers be farmers."

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"Do you think you'd be good at it?"

"Dunno, I haven't done most of the VR practice yet because my friend said it was scary and I thought I'd better wait until I'm older."

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"How old are you?"

"Thirty eight."

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"That's pretty old for a human."

"Huh! How old are you?"

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"Sixteen."

"Wow. An Elf who was sixteen would be tiny. This big." She gestures below waist height.

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"Weird! I don't know how fast strangers grow, I guess, maybe they're different too."

"Orcs grow the fastest of the people I know of, then humans, then Dwarves, then Elves here, then Elves in Valinor."

rockpaperscissors

"How fast are orcs and Dwarves and what's being in Valinor have to do with it?"

"I think orcs are grownups in ten years, maybe less. Dwarves are forty. Elves are sort of grownup at fifty but really grownup at a hundred. Valinor's magic so everyone grows slower there, lots slower, ten times slower."

rockpaperscissors

"What does sort of grownup mean?"

"We're not actually done developing but we look mostly grownup. We're allowed to do some things but not all of them."

rockpaperscissors

"Which ones?"

"We're allowed to work. We're not allowed to marry. We're not allowed to swear oaths, we're allowed to go anywhere open to the public, we're not allowed to be in combat roles though we can still be soldiers because there are soldiers who don't go out into combat zones."

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"What do those soldiers do?"

"Well, the guards outside your door, those are soldiers like that. Or they do operational support from a distance or are on our submarines or train other soldiers though someone who was fifty wouldn't be doing that."

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"What's a submarine?"

"They are ships that go deep underwater. They're important but I'm not sure for what."

rockpaperscissors

"Huh. How do you make a ship go underwater, I thought the point of ships was to float."