All doubts Agatha had about possibly enslaving agates and that her lone agate wanted her dead were set aside by the lovely date that Christie led them on all across Knight’s Ascent. Perhaps it was just a walking date with lots of stops at stalls to buy seasonal sweets, but that was more than enough. It was about the company and the warmth, not the time nor the setting. She even wore her overalls even if she was a bit cold because she only wanted to feel Christie’s warmth and not that of her body. But that was too shameful to admit.
What mattered was that all her idiotic thoughts had been washed away by her gorgeous girlfriend and now she could attend the next Agatecrafting class with a clear conscience and a focused mind.
“Where are we exactly going?” Shayla asked after the teacher had them leave the workshop the moment he arrived. “And why are they coming with us?” She nonchalantly and crude pointed at the fourth-year students that were trailing behind them.
“We are going to do some preliminary tests with your Autonomy commands, and any security and guarantees we can get is appreciated,” Sergi explained, he was facing them even if his floating chair continued moving forwards. Or technically backwards. “We need to find out what category each of your agates pertain to. If we are lucky, they all we be whimsical.”
“Wait,” Agatha interrupted. “Would it not be better for them to be inert?”
“That is a good thought, but one born out of lack of comprehension. Could one of my more experienced students explain why?”
The three fourth years looked at each other and they all failed to speak, so the one in the center sighed and scratched his nape. “Basically, erratic and aggressive are dangerous types. Especially erratic as it could be a latent agent and wreak havoc when you least expect it.”
“Yes, but then you can mistake any erratic for a whimsy,” Shayla defended Agatha’s claim. “Why would you then risk for whimsy agates when inert ensures you that they are not erratic?”
The student whose name Agatha hadn’t bothered to learn – if she had even heard before, which she didn’t think so – snickered. “There is no guarantee an inert agate is not an erratic one. That is why Sergi calls them erratic. And even if there was a guarantee, you cannot do animated golemancy with inert agates, hence the name and separations of animated and inert. That is why we aim for whimsy.”
““I see.”” Both Agatha and Shayla responded at the same time. And while their response was synchronous, the same couldn’t be said for their reactions as the merchant’s daughter grinned amusedly while the villager blushed shyly.
Oh, crown in the heavens! Why am I blushing? Agatha grew silent and shrunk, clasping her hands together in shame as she tried her best to disappear from everyone’s mind. She knew the answer to that question, but she feared putting it into words. For it was a horrendous answer that made her a horrible person.
“Well explained, Master Flores,” Sergi thankfully stepped back into the conversation, allowing her thoughts to direct elsewhere. Flores? Why is that surname familiar? “Inert agates would not be problematic, all being said, but I would prefer if all of yours were whimsical as that way I could teach you animated golemancy instead of only inert one.”
The group fell into silence, calming walking through the corridors of the academy, passing soldier and staff alike, plus the one class or two of students here and there. It was only a handful of more minutes before they made it to their destination. They had to go away into the gardens of the academy and enter into a mausoleum-looking building that led them to depths of the academy.
The stairwell was so long and deep that Agatha partially feared that they might end up falling off the island, but part of that fear was suppressed by seeing how Sergi’s chair was bobbling around. Control Anchor didn’t like stairs, but the Float command was even worse with them as it tried to lock onto different sets of steps, making it wobble back and forth. The golemancer seemed to use the Control command on his floating chair to reduce the shakes, and while that seemed to work by making them less violent, it also made them quite goofy.
The more they descended, the colder it got. On the surface it was early-ish spring, but down there it was full-blown winter. It wasn’t all that cold, especially with the academy uniforms whose skirts reached the ankles, but it was still chilly enough to see a whiff of vapor coming from someone’s mouth here and there.
Even though they were deep underground, no one summoned Light agates as there were occasional veins of agate deep within the natural limestone walls dimly illuminating the place. The term vein seemed more correct than ever as they looked like the very blood vessels of the earth, thin yet thrumming with energy.
I’ve grown desensitized to them, Agatha mused. And it wasn’t because Agatecrafting’s classroom was full of pillars of agate, but because the whole academy was littered with them. The corridors of limestone and marble had at least one transversal agate vein, and then her bedroom also had several to illuminate the place and make work the different water faucets of the bathroom, with different temperatures at that. Who would’ve thought that once upon a time chipping a pebble out of these walls would’ve awakened my Agatecraft? And it would probably been agate of higher quality than she had once gotten. This really is the best and most luxurious…
Hmm… That got her thinking, as her entourage wasn’t doing much talking. Didn’t René talk about this with me a year ago? Her eyes darted from one vein to the other. Each one getting ever-so-slightly bigger and thicker. That because this place was the best everything else was worse? Her sapphire thrummed a bit, as if infected by the latent – or rather, active – power of all these agates. Couldn’t all these agates be used to give high-quality agates to the whole population?
No, that wasn’t the actual question she had in mind. Most people, like ninety-nine percent of inhabitants of Crocheta, had agates and it wasn’t like they used them much. They only needed the occasional Combustion to lit up the fire, Light when it was dark, and Chill if the day was especially cold. Only hunters used Speed amongst the civilians, let alone more dangerous or complex commands. And that was only for hunting.
I mean, even if they had high-quality agates it’s not like people could use them, she giggled internally. Because to use them one would require higher Stra…
A voice from the past echoed in her mind before she could finish that thought.
The reason why students of the Skyscraper Academy are more successful is not because the students are of a higher pedigree or because we offer better instruction, but because of the cultivated atmosphere. People progress here more because they think this is the best there is.
René Dago’s words hit her harder than the behemoth. Agatha looked around in confusion, her mind had gone so far away that now they were practically surrounded by agate, yet that wasn’t what worried her.
It was the fact that she noticed she was an actress in one of the biggest plays ever. And all of that unknowingly, unwittingly.
Depths. Fractures. Fuck! It took her almost a whole year, but she finally got the meaning out of those words. Many thoughts run through her head, her heartbeat and breathing accelerated, and then…
Calmness.
Absolute, frigid tranquility.
Her mind had been moving faster than her body, yet it now returned to normalcy as the echo of the cavernous basement hit her ears. What was he even doing? Was this some sort of loyalty test to the crown or something else? She couldn’t come up with an answer, she wasn’t built for subterfuge. This was a type of intelligence that escaped her. And if it was… Does… does this change anything?
Her eyes looked in awe at the surroundings. Walls of agate. Ceilings of agate. Floors of agate. Pillars of agate. It was no longer occasional veins of agate. She was inside of the vein itself.
“Breathtaking, is it not?” Sergi amusedly exclaimed with his arms risen, completely unbeknownst to the dilemma inside of his student’s mind.
Agates… agates for everyone. Even me. That thought finally got a reaction out of her. Agatha of Malachite couldn’t be called an apathetic person, but she had always had her priorities set straight. Herself. She couldn’t bother to try to send a letter to her mother when she was in the first year, she didn’t bother making any friends in her village even if that made her miserable for years, she wouldn’t bother about thinking about anyone else. No students, no teacher, no villagers, no bystanders. Christie was the outlier. This wasn’t because her girlfriend had shown her the error of her ways, just the exception that confirmed the rule. Agatha’s dream wasn’t to become the world’s best lithorist because she wanted to be a hero lauded and praised by everyone or to save everyone.
No.
She wanted to be the world’s best lithorist because she wanted to better herself. Not necessarily be superior to everyone else and boast about it – though she couldn’t deny the pleasure in that – but because her priority was always herself. A stronger self. A mightier self.
The best.
The single reason she had to even get angry was because if she had to get a fingernail of agate, it was better to be one of high-quality and not poor one, yet otherwise, she couldn’t be bothered to care.
No, that term wasn’t quite right.
She couldn’t care. No fiber of her mind exploded in rage at the sheer unfairness that was occurring to millions of people. She only knew that they weren’t her. Her mind didn’t automatically care for them, and she didn’t bother to correct that fact.
Agatha of Malachite wasn’t an apathetic person, yet as he ruminated of the extent of René Dago’s suggestion, she felt an all-encompassing apathy. I should watch myself around him. That was her conclusion. She couldn’t care less about the system he had explained was in the works. Those people who were filtered out and kept weak. Because she had gotten past the filter.
And it was beneath her.
“Yes, truly a breathtaking view,” Agatha said with a warm smile as she took a deep breath and took in the views.
Literally nothing had happened, yet she felt completely liberated, more in tune with herself than ever. Being in tune with herself was an issue she had always had. That single intrusive thought made reality that resulted in her kissing Christie at the cliff by the sea had been the start of a long process of self-attunement. It hadn’t ended, it wasn’t nowhere close to finishing, yet each step felt megalithic.
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In both meanings of the word, slow yet powerful.
A retroactive change in her thoughts caressed her mind with a cool and soothing breeze. Intoxicating apathy. Intoxicating power. Intoxicating happiness. Her previous wariness towards René Dago was now substituted by mild thankfulness.
No one reacted to her smile. No one except Shayla. Agatha couldn’t say that the Intaksolfani had deciphered anything – for the dark-skinned girl couldn’t read minds – but she did pick up on something. Whatever it was, Shayla’s apathy was greater than hers as she simply snorted and looked away from her.
Perhaps that was the nature of her attraction, a kinship that she couldn’t feel with Christie.
No, Agatha. Bad thoughts, Agatha, she admonished herself. Not a good route to take. Shut the fuck up and pay attention to the lesson. Sometimes her mind was against her, and sometimes it was in the utmost objective correct course. Though the sudden change in cognition did leave her considerably unstable.
“Yes, yes, beautiful place,” Shayla growled dismissively, her voice faintly echoing cross the cavernous vein. “But why are we here?”
“All the agates you see here might be normal, stony agates, but because they are all commanded to keep the academy in the skies, they are far more durable than they should. A middle point between summoned and normal agates,” the greying teacher explained. “Autonomous agates can cause a lot of destruction, so this is the most robust place we have around. And no bystanders whatsoever.”
“What an oxymoron,” the Intaksolfani crossed her arms. “Are you saying that the academy’s most important place, the one that prevents this whole island from crushing us, is the safest one?”
“Quite,” Sergi snickered. “There are tons upon tons of agate here. No lapiloquist or golemancer could command them in a timely manner. And lithorists would have a hard time breaking through them. The academy’s ‘weak’ spot is its strongest.”
And that’s why there’s no security whatsoever, Agatha realized, and as she looked at Shayla, the dark-skinned girl seemed to think the same. The dirty-blond girl knelt down and pressed her hand against the agate floor. She might not be a lapiloquist and therefore incapable of prospecting, but she was on the first steps of being an agatecrafter – or golemancer – and after the last class, she had a bit of insight on how to read commands on foreign agates.
And she read a mess.
The agate veins present weren’t a megalithic entity, but a heterogeneous mixture of agate sources. The color itself revealed that as there was every type of agate – or agate-like stone – present, from onyx to opal. People were used to seeing them in small form, self-contained gemstones, but seeing these colossal swats of stone that spread all across the floor, walls, and ceiling almost gave them a liquid look. Not that dissimilar to Christie’s sea of stone.
Each vein wore its command, but it wasn’t the same command in every case. Agatha was able to read Control, Float, and Anchor with ease, but nothing told her against the notion of more hidden commands. It seems that they are here for redundancy.
“Could a golemancer treat the whole cavern as a single agate?” She tilted her head upward to look at Sergi’s floating position, her hand still pressed against the cold chalcedony.
“It could be possible,” he responded in a non-committal manner. At least that was what his tone told her. It could be possible, yes, but highly unlikely.
So it’s literally like Christie’s agates… Agatha caressed the stone beneath her deep in thought with a sense of appreciation. By giving several commands to different veins, a single command cannot spread throughout the whole. Hmm… A certain thought went through the petite lithorist’s mind, but she set it aside.
“Now that we have the questions of our current location out of our system, we can start with the subject that brought us here,” Sergi announced. “I want all of you to separate. Twenty meters at minimum. That should be more than enough for everyone to react.”
Everyone followed the golemancer’s commands, the steps of the whole class of five echoing through the lithic basement. It was a highly satisfying sound, the clinking of the hard soles of the uniform moccasins. Agate had far better acoustics than the average stone.
“As for the ladies that will have to use Autonomy. Use your lowest Strata agates. Though in Miss Malachite’s case… do you know the Duplicate command?”
Instead of answering, Agatha popped her lone agate out of her necklace’s socket… Ah~ She moaned mentally as she heard the most satisfying of pops, which then returned back to her ears with a pleasant echo. I love so, so much the acoustics of this place…
Duplicate. Duplicate.
Then she remembered the task at hand and duplicated her agate several times. Though she cautiously summoned first duplicated agates on her pocket, so no one could see it. As far as everyone else was concerned, she had only duplicated her agates once. They couldn’t notice anything due to the previous Control Compact series that obscured any details of her big sapphire.
“Perfect,” her teacher nodded. “Could you reduce an agate to the Second Stratum? Better safe than sorry.”
“Will it be okay? Will this not affect the result of this Autonomy command?” She inquired.
“Truth be told, I do not know the answer.” Agatha squinted harshly at his words. “What can I say? No one in the story of humanity has thought of using Duplicate and Autonomy together before. You are the first. But nothing in my experience and knowledge indicates to me that there should be noticeable mutations. Perhaps a margin of error as we are not dealing with a full agate’s worth of cognition, but duplicated agates are their own agates – if based on their parents – so there should be no noticeable issue whatsoever.”
The fact that the man had to give a long-winded and academic explanation instead of a simple ‘no’ brought her no closure in the slightest.
“Wait, why on the Second Stratum instead of the First one? Are we not risking ourselves needlessly?” She asked after noticing that small detail.
“Flores! Why have I said the Second Stratum?” Sergi shouted as the student in question was now a good forty meters away from him.
“Because otherwise we would not be able to see the agate’s behavior!” The male student shouted back.
“Ugh, what lousy students shouting at their teacher.” Sergi rolled his eyes. “No manners these days.” Air escaped Agatha’s nose as she softly giggled. Okay, that was a good one. Nothing better than a timely-placed conversational trap for great comedic effect. “If you are so unsure, let us start with Miss Belkadi. Are you ready?”
“Is a Third Stratum agate alright?” Shayla said with a raised voice. “All of mine are that level!”
“I mean, it is fine! Just more risk! You do not know the Duplicate command?”
“I do know of it! I have just never used it before!”
“Ugh,” the greying man groaned and pressed his back against his chair. “We will lose more time if you try to do so!”
“What if I put a command before Autonomy?” The dark-skinned girl suggested.
“Flores!” Sergi didn’t bother to explain anything this time and just beckoned for his top student.
“It is not common, but previous commands can affect an agate’s behavior!” Flores explained. “Furthermore, commands behind the slotted Autonomy are unalterable!”
“No one asked you to explain that!” The teacher shouted but then immediately scratched his chin. “Okay, I forgot to explain this.”
This time he spoke softly, apparently having grown tired of shouting as he summoned an agate and started speaking from it. The fact that the voice was loud and the agate was floating indicated perhaps the use of a Control Amplify Sound series. Agatha couldn’t be sure, but there were always clues for those who looked for them.
“I do not know if they have explained this to you, ladies – and even if they have not, I do not blame them as it is a niche thing affecting only niche commands – but command slots work on what we call a ‘pile’.” Sergi’s voice was clearer and more intelligible, no longer afflicted by an aging and coarse throat. “This can be seen in the order of commands like Control, whether you apply them prior or posterior one give command, but the presence of this pile is only noticeable with commands like Duplicate and Autonomy.”
Agatha could already guess where her teacher was going with this lesson. Yes, no one had put into words this phenomenon, but it was something almost instinctive. At least at her level.
“Duplicate makes it so commands prior in the command pile – or line, or stack, or array, or whatever you want to call it – are inaccessible and inalterable. Anyone who has used Duplicate can tell you that commands are, indeed, duplicated by the command,” Agatha nodded at that claim. “This happens because those slots prior to the command are now its property, not yours. The same happens with Autonomy. You lose access to all the commands to the left of the sentence, the top of the pile, or whatever you want to name it. They are now Autonomy’s slots. There are exceptions, but I will not go over them just now. Just have that in mind. Though I admit posterior commands are more important than priors. This is comparing one zero to the left to one in the right, after all.”
Though Agatha had a caveat or two with the explanation that the command slots became property of that given command, she had to admit that was an explanation she could get behind. But it was easier to understand with Duplicate than Autonomy as those were already given command that then had been duplicated rather than free command slots that Autonomy might make use of.
After all those impromptu lessons – which weren’t that impromptu considering this was a class in session – Shayla finally summoned her agate and chucked it on the ground as she was forbidden from giving it prior commands.
“Wait, how can I recall it if I cannot give it any more commands with Autonomy active?” The merchant’s daughter asked, and the petite villager had to admit that she hadn’t thought of that.
“You cannot,” Sergi stated plainly, if ever-so-slightly amused. That made Shayla frown harshly. “Do not fret, we are just going to forcefully recall it. Just hope that your agate does not decide to give the Protect Summon series with its free command slots.”
“That can happen?” She asked with a hint of exasperation, which was the most emotion Agatha had seen from Shayla. Barring smugness, of course.
“Physically? Yes. Statistically? No.” The teacher answered honestly. “Now get over with it! The lesson time is almost over, and I would like to be out of her by teatime.”
Shayla scowled at that, but after a deep breath, she finally gave the Autonomy command to the agate that was rolling on the ground. And… nothing.
“Do not get too confident,” Sergi spoke before anyone else did. “It might not be inert, but erratic. We will check the rest of your agates later, for now, let us see what your classmate has in store for us. Keep it summoned and make sure one of you at the back always have it in their eyesight!”
Agatha took that as the signal. She did the same as what Shayla had done and threw one of her many Duplicated agates on the ground. She didn’t apply Duplicate to all of her agates, only to the one she had to bring to the Second Stratum, so she still had several agates of significant Strata at her disposal.
She couldn’t deny there was a sense of dread overtaking her. Christie, her marvelous and lovely Christie, had convinced her that no matter how her lone agate might act, it wasn’t her fault. But her mentality was only one part of the equation. Her agate’s personality – if it could be called that – was still significant and could affect her path with animated golemancy. Perhaps apathy was the word of the day, but she couldn’t feel apathy if she was the one enslaving agates. Especially if those agates were her at the same time.
It was all a massive yarn ball that she had to completely untangle, if she ever managed to do so. So she focused on her task at hand.
One deep breath. One command.
Autonomy.
Her little, duplicated sapphire kept rolling on the ground just like Shayla’s did. Apparently inert.
“Oh, well. It is a bit sad if it really is inert,” Sergi spoke over his agate.
Her agate continued rolling on the ground. Hasn’t it been rolling for too long? I threw it on the ground almost a minute ago, so… She noticed the direction it was rolling towards. One of the four-year students. Then she realized. Aggressive agates do not necessarily attack their summoner, do they? Her mind recalled when Sergi’s agate had tried to attack her.
“Let us hope it is erratic,” the teacher continued explained. “Otherwise, you will be stuck with anima-“
The rolling agate suddenly shot several times the speed of sound at one of the students.
Agatha didn’t even think.
Not even reacted.
She predicted this would happen.
Invert Summon Range.
The petite lithorist coldly commanded at her high Strata agates with the series far faster than anyone else in the cavern. Every summoned agate was forcefully recalled. Her Autonomy agate, her Invert Summon Range agate, the rest of her duplicated agates, Shayla’s autonomy agate, and Sergi’s Sound agate, which resulted in his voice being cut out.
Agatha remained petrified at the sight even if everyone else reacted normally as they had expected this. But she saw something they hadn’t. That rolling wasn’t natural. It had been artificial. Perhaps even Control or Spin.
And the sheer implication lithified her blood.
Because her agate hadn’t just used a command series in an intelligent manner but actively camouflaged its capabilities to maximize its chances of assassination. Firstly, using one command to appear harmless and then changing said command for execution.
And Agatha…
Just felt apathy towards aggression. The corners of her lips slightly rose. She did feel something else when she saw her supposedly mindless agates execute all of those operations and plans in such a short span. Not the fear of slavery, not her apathy towards the world as a whole, but something warm and far, far worse.
Pride.
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