Nothing attacked them that first night. And the next morning was almost peaceful: a simple egg-and-bacon breakfast as snow lightly fell down around them, taking down the tents, piling them back into the trailers, and just driving in a straight line for hours on end. Maeryn even remembered to send Jacob a Wind Whisper with her morning update.
However, the Glacial Expanse grew colder the further they delved. By noon, the air had grown from cold to borderline toe-freezing—even despite the thick woolly socks that everyone now wore. Even Maeryn was starting to feel the chill try to permeate her bones. The tiny snowfall had rapidly whipped up into an almost blinding snowstorm, and the sun was nowhere to be found. Everyone had quickly put on their goggles, covering their faces with the cloth masks Dan had provided with their winter gear, as they ventured onwards into the white void.
Maeryn had no idea if they were even going the right way anymore. She had nothing to navigate by. She could feel Veronica shift behind her periodically, checking some tool, before the cartographer would point in a slightly different direction. She could only trust her and hope.
The others followed closely, no doubt fearing they’d lose sight of each other in the storm. Maeryn wasn’t too worried, though. They had three wind mages on the team: Dan, Terrance and herself. If the worst happened, it wouldn’t be hard to find each other again. But still, better not to have to.
Eventually, as the sky started to dim slightly, Maeryn slowed to a halt and dismounted. Realizing they were done for the day, the others followed suit. With the howl of the storm, there was no chance of being heard at all, so the eight of them worked together to erect one of the tents. They struggled for several minutes just to keep it from flying away, and Maeryn’s arms strained as she tried to hold her corner down against the wind blasting them all. Much stronger, and the tent would act like a sail or balloon and just carry them all into the sky.
She just needed something to block the wind for a while. There had to be something she could use! She looked around frantically, then blinked as she realized that she was literally surrounded by what she needed. Ice and snow.
It was the work of seconds to shift to ice magic, and she stomped the ground hard, sending mana to enact her will. “Ice Wall!” The ice around her rumbled to obey her command, forming a two-meter tall barrier between the wind and herself. Maeryn stumbled backwards as the force she was fighting against suddenly ceased to be as strong.
She saw Dan smack himself in the face, and ten seconds later another Ice Wall emerged in his corner, further reducing the strain. The two of them quickly repeated the feat a few times, creating a circular enclosure large enough for the others to assemble and secure one of the tents. Maeryn waved her arms inside, and everyone quickly followed her. Thankfully, the inside of the tent was chilly but not overwhelmingly so. She tugged her cloth mask down and lifted her goggles so she could properly see everyone. “Well. That sucked.”
Terrance was the first one to join her. “We need an anti-wind enchantment,” he stated flatly. “The Ice Walls are great in the short-term, but if this is just going to get worse then they’re not going to be enough.”
“I know the theory for Wind Resistance, but I don’t know anyone who’s managed whatever the inverse for wind magic is,” Dan told him, slumping in place.
“It can’t be that hard, can it?” Veronica cut in impatiently as she rubbed her arms, trying to warm up. “I mean, it’s not like it’s a forbidden element like necro. Surely somebody’s done it before.”
Dan ran his hand down his face, obviously stressed out. “It’s a conceptual problem. Wind has three elemental concepts behind it: Freedom, Movement, and Breath. So the opposites would be Incarceration, Stillness, and… what? What’s the opposite for Breath? Is it Death? But that would fall more under necromancy or holy, right? Since they deal with the metaphysical concepts of mortality. Nobody’s ever figured out what Breath’s opposite is, so it’s been impossible to attune.”
“Well, the opposite of breathing is not breathing, so maybe it’s the idea of suffocation,” Terrance muttered darkly.
“You just want to strangle someone right now,” Ernesto chided with a half-amused half-deadpan expression.
“And?” Terrance raised an eyebrow at him. “Tell me you wouldn’t like to have some embodiment of our troubles here to strangle to death.”
Ooble, who had only removed his cloth mask to speak and was otherwise still completely covered, nodded his head vigorously. “I too would like to violently end whatever is responsible for our predicament.”
Frankie raised her hand hesitantly. “Just so we’re clear, you’re trying to describe something where air not only doesn’t move, but can’t move?”
Dan nodded at her. “Yes, exactly.”
“Then, um, doesn’t this have an obvious solution?” Everyone stared at her, and she bit her lip before continuing. “Well, it’s a vacuum, isn’t it? When there’s no air at all. Everything’s locked in place. Completely still. Isolated. Holding its breath, so to speak.”
She gestured outside. “I mean, that’s how we got the SPATTs to work, remember? Vacuum insulation. To keep this place from super-freezing the steam engine?”
“A vacuum?” Dan echoed blankly. “I… Wait. Hold on.” He rubbed his temples in consternation. “A complete absence of air does make some surface-level sense to be wind’s opposite, but… Ugh. I might have the wind affinity, but it’s not my strong suit. Maeryn, Terrance, you’re better with wind magic than me. Does it make sense to you?”
They glanced at each other. “The idea of Breath is kind of entangled with Movement,” the rogue began slowly. “Everything that lives, breathes and moves. Maybe in small, impossible-to-see ways, but it does.”
“Breath is also about expelling the old, and taking in the new,” Maeryn continued, her brows furrowed as she spoke just as carefully. “A vacuum would prevent all of that. It actually sounds like a variant of ice magic’s Preservation concept.”
“Which lines up,” Terrance said with a nod and a frown. “Wind and fire are complements. It would make sense if their inverses are too.”
“But the concepts themselves… Incarceration, Stillness, Vacuum… what would that even be?” Peter pondered, reaching up to scratch the side of his head.
“Does it have to be anything?” Ernesto questioned lightly. “It might even be the idea of nothing at all. Remember that necro and holy are both ideological magics at heart.”
“But how would anyone possibly relate to Nothing enough to attune?” Maeryn challenged.
“No, no, hold on.” Terrance held up a hand. “I think you’re on to something. Let me think.”
Frankie glanced outside. “Unless we want our SPATTs to be buried underneath a mountain of snow, I think we need to hurry up and get them behind our enclosure. Can the rest of this conversation wait a bit?”
Everyone looked at Maeryn for her decision, and she took a deep breath before nodding. As much as she wanted to stay here where it was at least starting to warm up, they had work to do. “Alright, people. Masks up, goggles on. Dan, you and I are going to be expanding our enclosure for the other tent, with enough room for a campfire. Everyone else, get that other tent raised. Survival first, debates about anti-wind magic later.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Yes, Captain.”
Terrance said nothing as he mechanically inserted a pole in through the fabric sleeves, planting it into the metal circle in the corner to lock it in place. His mind was racing through half-formed ideas, utterly consumed by the idea of wind magic’s opposite. Because the truth was? He could relate all too well.
He had spent years on Cloudreach. Years, unable to do anything at all. Unable to seek out the one who had killed his family. Unable to contribute to ending the Mist issue. Unable to revive his family name. Unable to even begin trying to become the next Nightingale. Unable to convince Lorn, his guardian, that he was suffocating on Cloudreach, that he needed to do something. Anything.
It felt like his brain was on fire with how perfectly it all aligned. With how much sense it made.
Incarceration. That flying city had been his inescapable prison until Maeryn had set him free.
Stillness. He’d been held still, unable to move in any direction at all towards or even away from his goals.
Vacuum. The world had gone on around him, and he’d been unable to do or touch anything, unable to leave even the faintest mark outside of his prison.
It’d been like his soul had been holding his breath, for years on end, desperate to find release. To get out and matter. Which was why he’d reached out to Maeryn that day, all those months ago. Ready to make any deal at all, so long as it meant he could finally be free. So long as he could escape from the void of Lorn’s suffocating prison.
Because that’s what this magic was. Void magic. Terrance had never been more certain of anything in his life.
The world shifted. Or maybe it was Terrance. He didn’t know. But the mana within him, the wind that whipped gaily through his body… stilled. Collapsed on itself. The emptiness pulled on him from the inside out, and it felt like his body was stretched too long, too wide, like he needed to somehow shrink to reduce the pressure of the gnawing nothing within him.
It felt like… holding his breath. He could bear it, but not forever.
His eyes flared a distorted purple, and he raised his hand towards the roaring winds that still threatened to deafen them all, despite the Ice Walls Maeryn and Dan had erected. The mana pattern was simple. Obvious. Intuitive. Perhaps sharing the void would lessen the ache within. “Barrier.”
All sound lessened, then ceased as Terrance painted almost transparent, purple-tinged void mana around the ice walls. And the air that touched it… moved around. Funneled away. His insides felt a bit looser, a bit more comfortable now. He’d been right. Using the void, inflicting it upon the world, made it so much more bearable.
“Terrance?” Maeryn asked hesitantly.
“Finish getting the second tent up,” Terrance ordered, his voice flat, but with an underlying edge. He felt so… hollow. Drained, and yet tense simultaneously. Was this what Maeryn experienced, when her flame vanished? This awful, pulsing nothing within him?
He wanted to care. But he couldn’t. So he just gestured with his other hand, the hand not keeping the Barrier going. “This is a channeled spell,” he explained. “The vacuum will collapse the moment I stop focusing. So get the job done.”
“Got it.” Maeryn asked no further questions, and just got to work.
Five minutes later, everything was as good as they were going to manage in the short term, and Terrance dropped his hand and allowed his soul to breathe. The void within burst, exploding into movement, and for a few moments Terrance experienced a gale of wind mana pushing outwards against every part of his body, filling the emptiness he’d forced upon it.
Uncomfortable? For a few seconds. But incredibly welcome nonetheless.
Dan pulled him into the tent a moment later. “Tell me everything,” he implored, eyes bright with wonder and a maniacal thirst for knowledge. “How did you do it? Could you explain the concepts in your own words? What were the principles behind that spell you used? What kind of mindset do you need to attune?”
“I, uh,” Terrance floundered. The alchemist had never looked at him like that before, like he was itching to create mind-reading magic and pluck all the answers out of his brain directly. It was incredibly off-putting.
Maeryn scooped up Dan by the collar of his coat like he was a naughty kitten, and the alchemist instantly went limp. “We just talked about this,” she told him exasperatedly. “I get that it’s a new mana element, and that you’re desperate to chronicle everything and see if you can do it yourself at some point, but you need to let him breathe. Attuning to something new can be draining, and you know that.”
Dan huffed a sigh, but reluctantly nodded. “Sorry, Terrance.”
“That said…” Maeryn turned towards the rogue as she lowered her friend back to the ground. “We would like some answers. If we can use your new attunement to power Wind Resistance enchantments, we could make our future campsites a lot easier to manage.”
Terrance nodded agreeably. “That’s fair. So… yeah. Frankie was right. The third concept is Vacuum. Put it together with Incarceration and Stillness, and you get void magic.” He flexed his left hand thoughtfully. “The mindset is about total separation more than anything else. Complete isolation from the world.”
Dan frowned. “That would explain why I’ve never heard of anyone ever achieving it. Anyone who managed it naturally wouldn’t have felt connected enough with other people to tell them. And the alchemists who tried to learn it at home are all part of a community, so they would never have managed it.”
“Wait, then how did you?” Maeryn asked Terrance curiously.
He sighed. “I drew on my experiences back on Cloudreach, from before we met,” he told her quietly. “We’ve talked a bit about it before, and I don’t want to revisit it.”
“Yes, I can see how that kind of thing would be difficult to talk about,” Dan muttered, obviously remembering the night on Zephyr where Terrance had come clean about his history. “I’m going to brush up on the Wind Resistance theory. We can try to get one working later, if you’re good with it?”
“Yeah, sure.” Terrance mustered a weak smile and lifted a closed fist. “Rogues and alchemists?”
“Amazing synergy,” Dan finished, bumping his fist with a smile before retreating to a corner of the tent to scribble into his notebook.
Maeryn, though, reached out to take the rogue’s hand. “Hey. You okay?” she murmured, looking him in the eyes.
“I’m fine,” Terrance tried to dismiss, but she gripped his hand harder.
“No lies,” she warned him sternly. “Don’t let your pride get in the way of me helping you like you helped me.”
Terrance fell silent for several seconds as he swallowed every reflex to deflect and redirect. “Not really,” he finally admitted in a hoarse whisper. “I… I hate how I had to relive those feelings to attune. I feel raw and stretched out. And I’m scared that I’ll need to do it every time I switch to void magic.” He squeezed her hand tightly, but she didn’t flinch. “Tell me I don’t need to,” he begged, his voice cracking. “Tell me it gets easier. Lie if you have to. Just don’t let me see it.”
Maeryn inhaled sharply, but then her expression melted into empathy. “It does get easier,” she told him quietly, but firmly. “After the first time, changing your paradigm is… more abstract. You don’t need to remember how you got there. Just set your focus on the version of Terrance from today.”
“The one who held his breath, but knew there was an end,” Terrance mumbled.
“Yes.” Maeryn placed her other hand over his, rubbing gently. “Just think of it like that. I promise, it will get easier with time.”
He searched her expression intently, and found no sign of deception. “You’re not lying, are you?”
“No,” she said simply. “I don’t like to lie. I’ll only do it if I have to. And you’d see through it anyway.”
That, more than anything else, settled his insides, and he felt his racing heartbeat start to slow. Yeah. Okay. He could do this. “Thank you,” he told her sincerely.
“Anytime.” Maeryn glanced at the rest of the team, who were watching them curiously. “I’ll ward the others off. Tell them that attuning is very emotionally draining—because it is—and you need some space. Take either first or last shift tonight, whichever you like. You don’t have to decide now. Just let me know after dinner.”
A swell of affection and gratitude surged through Terrance’s chest, and a sardonic smile pulled at his lips as Maeryn walked away. How could anyone ever compare to her? Zephyria was going to have a hard time finding a fiancé who understood him like his best friend did.
He shook his head, pulled his hood back up, and went back outside for some fresh air and solitude. He didn’t have any romantic feelings for Maeryn, but he wasn’t naive enough to believe that couldn’t change. Especially if she kept reading and protecting his heart like this. “She’s gonna leave a trail of broken hearts if she keeps this up,” he murmured. “Skies above, I need to find a girlfriend so I don’t start pining. Blighted night, that’d be embarrassing. Me, pining after a girl who’s trying to get with someone else? Wouldn’t matter how amazing she is, that’s just pathetic.”
