Chapter 12
Chaotic Dreams
Eadwyn was exhilarated. She banked and soared on stabbing waves of magical energy as she rode the surge of the vortex storm. Coruscating curtains of pure mana exploded around her in a riot of over saturated colors. Incandescent tendrils writhed over her leaving glittering trails of sparks that stuck to the fabric of the air and dripped slowly, fading to red and then black. The conflagration of force buffeted her like a leaf in a hurricane as eddies and swirls pulled her first one way, and then another.
Between her and chaotic destruction was a disk shaped field formed by a tightly woven pattern of rectifiers. The same magical pattern that they were trying to use to harvest the force of the vortex storm. Here it was used in a protective sense. The incoming waves of energy were adsorbed, re-routed, and recycled. The more powerful the chaos, the more powerful the protective force against it. Apparently the first discoverers of the New Magic had used it for this, not thinking of using it to harvest wild energy. However, it had the same problem their harvesting efforts had: there would eventually be a spike of energy to massive and fast for the pattern to adsorb and it would fail. It was just a matter of time.
What little leaked through made her skin crawl with chaotic sensations. The feel of spider silk might suddenly change to the small biting pings of sleet, and then to the suckers of an infinitely large octopus tentacle. The smell of lamb's wool might meld into rotting food, then burning Sulphur or something between cinnamon and grass. It was not as a dream: where the chaos experienced was that of memory. The random energy of the vortex played directly with your senses and produced sensations that were completely unique.
She rode the storm; high and low, fast and slow. Her belt contained a series of crystals automatically scanning the surroundings and recording their patterns. By deflecting the protective disk, Eadwyn controlled its reaction to the surrounding force and could propel herself in one way or another. Nominally she kept to what she thought were the low intensity areas. However it was hard to tell for sure, and she mostly pursued the sheer euphoria of it.
Vortexes had enthralled her from when she had first heard of them. A raw recruit into the magical college of the first empire. She had intentionally taken duty on the far frontier for a chance of seeing one and was assigned to the 9th army. The original 9th army. It was a depressed and despondent regiment. Searching the outer waste for an enemy who wasn't there. Getting hammered occasionally by vortex storms was not good for morale either.
Eadwyn was not a particularly good soldier. She lacked discipline. She would stalk vortex storms across the waste, searching for the origin and operation of the magical storms. Often she would return to charges of desertion or being absent without leave. The commander, a taciturn Dwarf, thought she was mad, but possibly mad enough to gain some useful information.
And she did. She discovered the positions of several vortex fonts. Odd and disturbing holes in reality from which occasionally erupted the vortex storms. She even discovered some elementary spells, in the old magic, that could be used to precipitate a vortex from a font. That nearly earned her time in the brig, but the commander commuted it based on the potential tactical use of being able to unleash one in the wake of a pursuing enemy. He hinted strongly that it would be even better if she could control, even if only slightly, the direction a vortex storm traveled in.
And so she had unofficial leave to continue her research. They wouldn't wait for her if she went astray. But they wouldn't reprimand her if she missed a few mess calls. Until one day she was caught in the edge of a storm and walked out of it several hundred years later.
Suddenly there was a searing flash and the taste of hot peppers in her mouth. She found herself wrapped in tight bands of sepia and felt herself falling, falling through a sensory deprived world. After a moment's panic she realized that the fail-safe system had kicked in. Since an overwhelming surge was unavoidable, there was a hair-trigger reactionary spell. As soon as the rectifying field was sensed to be in collapse, it would bring up an anmanic inner field. Similar in principle to the rectifying field, they had discovered it while researching the former. But instead of deflecting magical energy, it was totally impervious to it. Physical energy too.
Eadwyn felt the impact when she hit solid ground, but being frozen in all but mind, did not suffer from it. Now all she had to do was to wait out the storm. When it passed they would scan for her, pick her up, and nullify the field.
It was impossible to track the passage of time from within the stasis of the field. The simplest thing to do was to just go to sleep. If you woke up naturally before the shield was broken, odds are it was a bad thing.
However, such was not the case. Eadwyn had a rude, but welcome, awakening being shocked awake suddenly finding herself sprawled on the cold floor of the waste. A pale figure bent over her, blocking the stars. “Ah. Goatha. 'tis you.”
“Yes Goatha” she said simply. “We should move. The storm is just past, but you know how they can change direction.”
“Quite aright,” said Eadwyn, accepting her hand and getting up. Despite having been immobilized for an undetermined time, her limbs had not had time to stiffen. They took a sighting on the storm and started an easy jog in the opposite direction.
“Was it a long ride?” asked Goatha as they moved through the night.
“Aye,” said Eadwyn. “Least far as I known.” She felt her belt and ran her hand over the crystals in it. “Eight it seems.”
“Good,” said Goatha. They were then silent until they had moved a good distance from the storm.
They caught their breath, and then Goatha summoned up a sphere of thin mana filaments, like a ball of dandelion fluff. It swayed slightly in the direction of the storm, but showed no warning fluctuations. Goatha scooped it up again and said “Looks flat. Let's teleport.”
Eadwyn nodded and offered Goatha her arm. She took it, did the incantation, and ended up back in their local camp some distance away, near the vortex font.
Eadwyn unslung her belt and laid it across a large, flat rock. She ran her hand along it and started pulling out patterns from the crystals. Each one locked into place in the air and overlapped the previous one along her route. Slowly the picture filled in.
Goatha scowled as she looked at the emerging picture critically. “Same as before,” she said shaking her head. “There's nothing there.”
“Nay,” said Eadwyn. “There's somewhat detail here.” She gestured towards one region of the aggregate scan from which could be seen stalks of bifurcated trees.
“That's only because you have incomplete scans of that area,” said Goatha. “It fades into the general quagmire of general peaks and troughs on the edges where you have more information.”
Eadwyn sighed and looked at it. “There be something in it,” said she stubbornly. “I've sailed anon. I feel when I glide. There aught more than randomness to it.”
“I just don't see it,” said Goatha.
“Aye,” said Eadwyn. “I can no argue that.” She waved at the scans. “This is a right mess.” She dismissed the images.
“More scans will give us better parameters for maximum field strength,” said Goatha. “But I don't think we'll find an approach vector that minimizes flux.”
Eadwyn shrugged. “Coddle me not. Besides I enjoy the scans, still see no need to seek the fruitless.”
“I do not,” said Goatha. “This was your longest ride yet. I see no evidence of a pattern, but based on your increasing proficiency of prolonging the experience, I am not ready to write it off yet.”
Eadwyn nodded and laughed. “What, eh? You have me tow a string of collectors like fish hooks from me behind!”
Goatha shrugged. “It may be better than just making thousands of them and leaving them in the path of a storm to collect what they can, and explode when they can't.”
“A right expensive way to garner free energy,” said Eadwyn.
“It's the best we've come up with so far” said Goatha.
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“Aye, tis so,” said Eadwyn. “Tis so.”
Goatha crossed over and picked up the belt. “I will take these to Miasma to consolidate with the other scans. I'll get an array of prototype collectors and we'll summon another storm in a day or two. You can ride it and we'll see how many collectors survive.”
“I'll take my rest till then,” said Eadwyn. With a wave Goatha was gone. Eadwyn unrolled her bedroll but did not immediately lie down. She sat for a while more watching the vortex storm pass, aurora like, beyond the horizon.