A Concept of Apathy

Chapter 8

“I’d say that took no effort, but that would be giving you too much credit.”
-Gotered, Artificer King, Maker of The Blade

I was up early along with my mother, Kaeo, and Madam Lie. Not that Madam Lie counted as she didn’t need to sleep, but still she was the only one to join us. I considered how to bind the other concepts closer to the family, because they were family in some sense. The only real problem was that most concepts didn’t use human ideas. They didn’t eat, most of them didn’t really feel warmth or cold, and creature comforts held little sway over any of them. Perhaps my father would have something to say about it.
We all got excited as we saw three people walking towards the house, although I noted that my mother froze for half a moment when she saw what my father was wearing. He was in his robes, the ones that lingered in your vision, and as he got even closer I saw that blank look on his face.
He had two people behind him as well, both of which looked like concepts. One had a fragile kind of strength to her, and the other had an almost inverse to that. A strong kind of fragileness? It was closer to something that looked weak but was strong.
My father had no expression on his face as he approached, and that is when I knew something was very wrong. It was still early, and I saw rings around his eyes and I wondered how hard he had pushed on the trip. That or he might have a way around sleep.
His eyes were shining a brilliant blue, and he eventually stood in front of all of us. Slowly, he breathed in and out, and his shoulders dropped in relief. My mother walked over to him, taking his hands. He let go of his staff, which just hung there in mid air where he left it. He hugged my mother for a while, sighing. His face never left perfect neutrality, and it was starting to worry me.
“Dad?” I asked, and reluctantly he let go of mom. He walked over to me, and picked me up in a tight hug.
“What’s wrong, love?” My mother said, resting a hand on his shoulder. He set me down, and ruffled Kaeo’s hair without much thought, which seemed to please and sadden her. He offered Madam Lie a nod, which she returned with a full on theatrical bow.
“Please, Madam Lie, if you could collect Mister Sharp and Mister Reclamation and meet us in the dining room.” His voice was also perfectly serene, but something was up. He moved his way into the house, and into the kitchen. Kaeo ran ahead of him, and as he sat down she gave him a plate of food. He offered her a smile, ravenously eating the food.
By the time the collection of Mister Sharp, Mister Reclamation, and Madam Lie had entered the kitchen he had finished eating. He took a deep breath, standing from his chair and pushing it in. Slowly, he walked over to the two new people, and from his cloak pulled out a piece of paper which disintegrated in his grasp.
“First things first, I have two new members to serve for the family. They will be the caretakers of the twins, when they are eventually born.” He gestured the one with fragile strength forwards, who began to speak.
“I am Madam Strength, pleased to meet you all.” She smiled at us all, confident but I felt if we pushed too far she would break, and break everything else with it. She took a step back, and the other one stepped forwards.
“I am Madam Weakness, I hope to know you all.” She had a quiet voice, which was underlined by strength even as it sounded weak.
“Amazing,” My father began, “This is my wife, Nomiki, my son Sylin, his friend Kaeo, my son’s caretaker Madam Lie, and two of his tutors, Mister Sharp and Mister Reclamation.” He waved a hand at each of us in turn, and I dipped my head in greeting. Kaeo cheerfully waved with Madam Lie, and my mother offered a small smile. I could not see the other two as they were further behind me, but I felt I heard a wave and a bow.
“Sylin, Kaeo, if you two would please go upstairs to one of your rooms. We will come talk to you shortly.” It was phrased like a request, but I knew it to be nothing of the sort. I gave a nod, and stood up with Kaeo who had a sour expression on her face.
“What do you think is going on?” She whispered to me as we walked up the stairs. I threw a glance back at them, but I could hear nothing even as they looked to be talking.
“Nothing good, but I have no doubt it will be handled.” I decided for the next little bit I would be sleeping with my knife under my pillow. I would have asked Kaeo to do the same, but I knew she had at least one on her at all times.
We went up to my room, and I started to pace. Kaeo joined me, and we walked in a circle. She seemed amused, and I minorly was as well. She walked slowly to keep on the opposite side of the circle from my limping gate.
“Should we try to listen in?” She jokingly asked.
“Who says I’m not trying right now?” I replied, which got a snort out of her.
“Do you think that they’ll tell us what’s going on?” She asked more seriously.
“I don’t know. This seems very serious, whatever it is.”
“Mmmm.” She hummed in agreement.
We got into less serious topics as we walked in that lazy circle, her laughing much more than me. We eventually got bored enough waiting to push stuff to the edges of my room, and started to spar. I had a duplicate wooden sword in my room, and she went to her room to pick up her wooden knives. I was glad at that, getting stabbed hurt.

***

My father walked into the room and let out a soft chuckle. That was likely because I was currently getting destroyed as Kaeo had managed to pin me to the ground. She “slit” the back of my throat just to make sure I knew I lost, then helped me up to my feet. My father had already pulled a chair away from the wall, sitting on it. He had gotten rid of his robes and other stuff, now in much more common clothes. The only thing he still wore was a glove on his left hand. He casually waived his right hand and two more chairs from the side of the room were pulled in front of him.
“How’d you do that?” I asked, limping over to the chair. Kaeo had beaten me there, already sitting in one.
“My wedding ring.” He said, holding up his hand to show a gold and black ring.
“I’ll ask more about that later, but right now I think both of us are dying of curiosity.” I sat down in my chair with a small sigh of relief. My fathers face was still smiling, but I could see the edges of that ever present calm approaching.
“There are going to be some new rules. You two are not to leave the house unless accompanied by me, my wife, Madam Lie, or either of the twins. When you do so, you will be carrying one of these.” He handed us each a chunk of what looked to be limestone. It fit nicely in my palm, and I pocketed it. “Further, you will also each wear one of these amulets, and will arm yourselves whenever you leave.”
The amulets were a cord of twine with a small smooth rock at the end, and felt a bit rough around my neck. I nodded along in agreement with what he said while Kaeo gave more verbal acknowledgements. This was likely just the start of it all if I had to guess. He paused after talking, which had Kaeo ask something.
“What’s going on?” She asked, leaning forwards. My father let out a sigh, and I saw fear on his face for such a brief moment I was almost sure I imagined it.
“Both me and my wife have many… enemies. Some of these enemies would try to get to us in any way possible. It seems that a group of people will be after us, including you two.”
“That raises more questions than it answers.” I pointed out, which earned me a shrug.
“We can talk about it more later. For now, I’m going to go take a nap.”
“Sleep well.” I said.
“Don’t let the bed bugs bite!” Kaeo tacked on.
“I’ll try. Wake me up when you’re ready for your more magical studies, okay Sylin?”
“Yes sir.”

***

It was with great pain that I limped my way up to my fathers room. Kaeo was getting noticeably stronger and faster with every day at this point, whereas I was not. I had asked Mister Sharp if I learned some new tricks if I would be allowed to bring them in, and he had told me as long as they were close combat tricks. I was hoping to get something here soon, although I doubted it would be today.
I knocked on the door, and I heard a grumble and then someone walking over to the door. It was with bleary eyes and the same clothes, although more rumpled, I had seen him in earlier he opened the door. He blinked slowly, taking in my presence, then shook his head.
“Let me get my shoes on, then we’ll head out.” He said, turning.
“Okay, I’ll be in the kitchen.”
“Mmmm.”
I wondered my way to the kitchen, sitting down to at least fix the bruises on my good leg. I was glad my other leg could not bruise, not that I was sure my bad leg could even break. I had noticed things that would chip it, and the chip would fly off but the leg would still be perfectly the same. I should likely ask my mother about that at some point.
I closed my eyes, starting to fix my leg. I had gotten faster at healing, although to say I was fast was perhaps a bit much. Instead of taking tens of minutes to fix a bruise, I had sharpened it down to two give or take. I was very proud, although it was dampened when I saw Kaeo casually fix a cut along her arm in a matter of a second.
I heard someone sit down next to me, and the crunch of an apple, but I did not stop my concentration. After I had healed the bruise on my shin, I opened my eyes to find my father eating an apple, holding a thin stack of papers in front of him.
“You ready?” He asked, not taking his eyes off the paper.
“Yes sir.”
“Let’s go then.” He stood up, still reading but walking around like he could still see.
We walked over to the door, and I made sure I had all of my stuff. My mother and Kaeo waved at us, and I waved back. My father waved with his apple, still not looking up which seemed to get my mother to roll her eyes. They looked to be working on my mothers saprolings, which she had recently gotten.
We walked out of the short stone wall that was around the house, and my father dropped the papers he was reading. They vanished into thin air, and he looked over to me with a twinkle in his eye. He took the last bite of his apple before tossing it to the side. I almost said something about littering, but that was just an apple core so it likely didn’t matter.
“Do you want to see something cool?” He asked me, with a smile on his face.
“Yes, I would upon thinking on it.” I replied. I was interested in what he deemed to be cool.
He picked me up in one arm which I was somewhat impressed he could do to a seven year old, and with his gloved hand reached into his pocket. He pulled out four pieces of paper with writing on them. They all seemed to start with the same thing; The two parties of this agreement will be held to all the writing on this contract. All four pieces of paper disappeared, one burned, one disintegrated, one was shredded into thousands of pieces that were blown away by a sudden wind, and the last one looked like it was being eaten by thousands of ants.
Suddenly, a pale horse rode up next to us. It was easily the biggest horse I had ever seen, and like it was the easiest thing ever my father jumped up on the horse as it rode by us. He set me down in front of him, and looked relieved. He patted the horse’s side, who let out a low whinny.
“This is my horse. He was my first major working, and the working that put me on people’s radars.”
“What’s the concept?” I asked. I had learned not to look at summoned concepts too closely with the Sight, or at least not the ones that were very pure concepts.
“The concept was Death-Ride. His name is Thanny, and he acts more like a really smart dog than a horse.” He sounded fond, which seemed reasonable about a super death horse.
I heard a snort, and for the first time noticed just how fast we were moving. It was easily forty miles per hour, if not faster, and “Thanny” did not seem to even be straining himself. I ran my fingers through his mane which was very soft, and I noticed that the horse seemed to have six sets of ears, and antlers which seemed to wrap all around its head.
“Why don’t you use him more often?” I asked, looking at him. I had a feeling that he would love to be used more, as he seemed to be having fun with the run. We were almost already at my fathers tower.
“It’s about respect. He is a very powerful creature, and deserves it. He will likely be staying with us for a while however, as he is a very safe mount to ride.”
We were brought to an immediate stop outside my fathers tower, and I do mean immediate. We were running at full tilt, then perfectly still like we had always been still. Thinking back on it, the only sign that I had been on a giant super horse was the wind on my hair. There was no clomping of hooves, or bouncing motion at all.
I looked down, trying to figure out how to make the nearly eight foot drop, when my father just jumped off. I shrugged, doing the same and it felt like the most natural thing ever. It barely even felt like I landed on the ground, and once we were both off Thanny turned to look at us. He had six eyes that were like staring into nothing, the end of everything, and rot itself. He lowered his head, and my father moved by his giant head to scratch behind his ears. I also noted he had gotten his robe and other stuff from somewhere.
“This is my son Thanny. It seems that my family may not be very safe, so I could use your help.”
Thanny let out another whinney, watching me. He trotted over, lowering his head and I scratched behind his ear. He seemed pleased by this, and I was fairly sure if I could see his tail it would be wagging. I laughed when he turned and tried to lick me, which did not feel like how I expected. It was like being blasted by nothing, like nothing made into a feeling.
“He likes you, I think.” My father said smiling. “Thanny, I have to go and teach him. Hunt for malicious intent.”
I did not like that, the use of the word “hunt” there. Thanny lifted his head back up, made a short circle around us, then started to run. He disappeared, and my father had a grim and satisfied smile on his face. He turned back to me, looking at my reaction, and shook his head at whatever he found there. He turned back to the tower, walking in with me trailing behind him. He sighed, tapping his foot on the ground, then turned to me.
“I’m about to turn the tower on, so don’t touch anything unless I give you permission, okay?” Yeah, that didn’t sound ominous at all.
“Okay.” I said, and we started up the spiralling stone stairs.
We went to the very top of the tower, where in the center there was a giant glass cylinder which reached from the floor to the ceiling. There were windows all around, like a lighthouse, and my father went to the glass cylinder. He pulled out another contract, this one disappearing in a flash of multicolored light and suddenly there was something in the center of the glass. It looked like liquid fire that slowly rotated in color, and the tower came to life.
The mortar between each brick began to glow like the liquid fire, and slowly what looked like spirits came out of the walls and floors. They started out formless, but slowly they looked more and more like people just made of the same fire. They turned to my father, who nodded at them all.
“It’s been a while, aye?” He started, getting answers in the affirmative. “Well we are not going to war, it does seem like my family, and my home, are being threatened. I will not take that lying down. Protect the town, and keep a watch for intent. You all know what to do.” He got laughs, and the spirits danced away, some through walls, some down the stairs, some started working different panels here.
One came up to my father, smiling. He looked like a bear turned into a man, his hair and beard turned into fire. “Sir, it’s good to have you back!” He slapped my father on the back, and my father laughed.
“Good to see you too, Rath. This is my son, and I’ll be teaching him here.”
“Ahhh, good to meet you son.” He said, squatting down to be closer to my eye level. He stuck out his hand and I took it, holding it for a moment and squeezing like I had been taught.
“You as well.” I said with a nod.
“We’ll keep the city safe Sir.” He said, turning back to my father. “How bad is it?”
“Well, they were sent specifically to kill me and my wife, so likely bad.”
“Good.” Rath grunted, smiling. “It’s been too long since we had some amount of fun.”
My father laughed, turning back to go down the stairs. I gave a small wave to Rath who wiggled his fingers at me and ran to catch up with my father. It was to the second level we went this time, and this one was like his study in the house, but more. More books, more things floating around that just looked more magical, and also what looked to be a painting on one of the walls of me and mom.
“Sit down somewhere. Move books if you have to.” He said, and I looked at the possible seats. He said if I had to, but I saw no way to sit anywhere without moving books. I went over to an armchair, moving books off of it and sat.
“You ready to start?” He asked, rummaging through his desk.
“Yep.” I said, keenly interested.
“Okay. Do you feel weaker than Kaeo?” He asked, which took me off guard. “It’s fine if you do, I know how you feel.”
“You do?” I asked, utterly confused.
“I’ve known your mother for a long time, and it wasn’t till I went to school that I could come anywhere near matching her.”
“What can she do?” I asked. I knew she was strong, but she didn’t have the same stuff I had seen my father do.
“In short, she controls organic matter, and some minerals. She doesn’t need to touch them, and has an insane amount of power.”
“Oh.” I said. What else was I supposed to say? I was starting to see why people might want my parents dead.
“I used to spar with her when we were younger, with weapons. I have always used a quarterstaff, but she always favored a hooked spear. Not that she needed it, quite often she would just come in bare handed, and I would still lose.”
“That’s how it feels fighting Kaeo.” I conceded.
“I don’t doubt that. She is insanely skilled, and atop of that has been given more ability to strengthen her own body. We don’t have that luxury.”
“So what do we do?” I asked, and he smiled.
“Math, at large. I also have to phrase contracts, but you won’t be a binder. You’ll be an artificer.” He finally found what he was looking for in his desk, and pulled out a rock and a feather.
“I want you to make the rock more like this feather. Tell me when you’re done, but for now I have a letter to write.” He gave them to me, then went back over to his desk pulling out some ink and paper.
I looked at them, then used the Sight to look at them. They were just a normal rock and feather, and I started to concentrate. I didn’t really know what I was doing, so I took the different strings of the concepts and tied them to the feather. Immediately, the rock became lighter, and opened my eyes, not that I remembered closing them.
I tossed it up into the air, and it went further up than the rock should. It fell back down, and I caught it. It somewhat hurt my hand like the rock was still as heavy as the rock, despite feeling like the feather.
“Oh, you finished?” My father said, standing up. “Well done.”
“What did I do?” I asked. I understood what felt like had happened, but perhaps he could give further insight.
“You did the easiest concept transfusion. In short, the rock will act like the feather in terms of carrying it, but will still act like it has the weight of the rock when thrown, swung, you get the point.” He held his hands out for them, and I passed them over. “There are harder ones to do, but this one I wanted you to do because it is infamous for being easy to do. Pretty much everything else will need to be powered, which is where the actual study comes in. Different concepts require different types of power, but once done it will stick.”
“So in short, I will get to use power to make things act like other things?”
“Yep.” He smiled, and already I was starting to plan.

***

My mind was spinning with the numbers my father had shown me as we ate lunch. Thanny had brought it back for us, which my father had rewarded him for with a dead sheep. It was the first time I noticed that the horse had razor sharp teeth, which was both neat and terrifying. The lunch was from home, and evidently my mother had been using Thanny to send lunch to my father for a very long time.
My father had told me it was pointless to memorize them, as it was better to look at the book. After all, if you got it wrong you could waste tens or sometimes hundreds of thousands of golds worth of resources for nothing to happen, or it could blow up. I was fine with that, and my father had even brought me the main book with all the coefficients of the most major substances I would be using.
“Okay,” My father said after we ate lunch, “From what I understand about your use of the Sight, you can actually do some more minor direct workings.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, eyes narrowing.
“You can perform what most people call nudges, which can do a lot. In short, you can apply very minor forces to pretty much anything, or heat things up, or cause things under tension to snap.”
“How?” I asked, which seemed to make my father amused.
“The first step is practice.” He set up a very light book at the edge of his desk. “I want you to push this off my desk without walking over.”
He went back to his work, and I started to mess with the Sight. I needed to book to move, so I needed to push or pull it. He said to apply a force, and so carefully I grabbed the threads of the book as a whole, and just moved it. The book moved in turn, and I almost jumped.
“What.” I said, looking at the book. My father looked pleased.
“Most people have a much harder time with that.” He said.
“Can you do it?” I said, still surprised that it worked.
“Nope, I have a very poor Sight for acting with anything directly, it is why I am a binder. I have a very good sight for doing that job.” He grabbed something else from inside his desk, and this time it looked to be butter in a cup. “Melt the butter.” He turned back to his work, and I let the Sight take me again.
The first thing I tried was just very quickly moving it back and forth because heat was just movement, but that didn’t work. It likely heated it up, but not enough. I focused on the butter, its concepts, but that felt like a trap. I carefully moved another book next to me, and I noted that the book seemed to push on me when I pushed on it. That made sense, everything had to have an equal and opposite force, so that likely meant I needed heat from somewhere.
I looked for a fire, but found none. With both the windows in here and the glowing mortar, I saw why more light may not be needed. I used the sight to look at myself, and slowly started to siphon heat out of me and to the butter. It almost immediately started to melt and I was feeling a bit colder.
“Well done!” My father said, looking at the melted butter. “Glad I got this then.” He reached under his desk and pulled out a short bow. “Break the sting.”
I sighed, once more entering the sight. This one seemed like it would be the trickiest of all of the three. I didn’t know about anything I could put myself into that would let me break tension, although it was a force, and I had something that seemed to care very little about force. I felt at my leg of bone, and applied force to the bow. I could see the channels of force, where they wanted to go, and channeled them into my leg. Two scores were put into the bone which instantly fixed itself, and the bow unbent as it was no longer under tension from the string.
“You are rather talented at this.” My father said with pride in his voice.
“Thank you.” I said with a dip of my head.
“So, one of the things I have seen tinkers do is make dolls or similar things that they will shove injuries into. I know that healing is not what you are best at, so you may want to start thinking of alternatives like that.”
“Well, that is interesting. Okay, I’ll see what I can find.” And I could likely find something, there were a lot of books in the tower, and in the study, for me to look through. All of the math here looked like integrals of sorts, which I already knew how to do. It seemed the real thing to learn was energies or powers or whatever they called charging up the magics.
Although it sounded like I could power some degree of magic by myself, but it sounded like personal power was limited even if it could be high. It was also somewhat genetic, but it could vary. It was more a guide line, although I had high hope. Evidently one of the reasons my mother was so ridiculous is she had an insane amount of power to pull at, along with some work around with energy.
There was still so much to learn, and I smiled. I had some plans, and I might even manage to win against Kaeo. I stayed at my fathers tower till it was time for dinner. I practiced applying forces, and found I could also take heat from things, or have things push on me. Neither of those seemed very powerful however, and I saw why they were called nudges. I likely could not apply more than twenty pounds of force on anything, and heat was very slow to move around. Tension had no other tricks I could find immediately, although it did look like I could cause things to explode if I was willing to have my leg experience a similar force that I was applying.
The ride back was fast, and evidently Kaeo had taken a liking to Thanny. She had evidently been grooming him with a brush she had borrowed from the stablehand. My father gave a pointed look at Thanny who ignored him. I had a feeling they would have a conversation about hunting people down, which I found amusing to no end.
Dinner was a simple affair, just a potato stew, but good nevertheless. My father fell on it like he hadn’t eaten in days, and I once again wondered how hard he pushed himself to get back to us. It was nice, and my father still had no care Kaeo was here which she seemed wary of, but less so with every passing moment. My father went to bed as soon as dinner was finished, and my mother tried to clean up but was shoed up stairs with my father by Kaeo and the three Madam’s.
“Kaeo, would you be willing to spar?”
“Learned something new, did we?” She asked, smiling.
“Something like that.”
“Bring it.” She smiled.
We went outside into the dwindling daylight, going back to back and taking our five steps. I gave my nod, and we were off. It started as per usual with her flicking a knife trying to end the fight before it even began in earnest. I moved it over to the side, and was amused to see her eyes narrow.
She was still wicked fast, and instead of a thrust I went for a downwards flick at her arm. She moved her knife to block, but it would be a poor angle for her and she knew it. I tried for another cut, but she had already moved back far enough it was child’s play for her to slap it out of the way with a throwing knife she had gotten from somewhere with her other hand.
It got thrown at me once again, and I once again moved it out of the way. She made a thoughtful noise, and I came in with a thrust at her chest. She pushed it to the side, coming in on the outside of my arm. I smiled, and moved my sword with force, letting it hit my leg, and Kaeo’s eyes widened. She likely would have gotten there in time if once again I forced it to move faster again. It landed against her neck and she froze. She let out a sigh, and I pulled my sword back.
“You win. Are you faster? And what are you doing to my knives?” She asked, going to pick them up from around the ground.
“My father told me about a few tricks, and I can apply force to things now.”
“Well, that sounds like it’s going to be a pain.”
“I can’t do that much without exacting a price, although that price is lessened for me I think.”
“How so?” She said, making her knives disappear once again.
“I need the force to come from somewhere, and it would usually be me. It would hurt me, but I can put it on the bone leg which will repair itself.”
“Huh. Like, how much force?” She said, squinting at my leg.
“I don’t know.” I admitted, leaning on my cane.
We spent the rest of that afternoon blowing up watermelons.

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