Adamant Blood

Mark threw hands with Quark in his little study room on the third floor of Sigaldry Manor.

Down below, people gathered from all over Mage Society. Some came for remedial lessons, others for advanced lessons, and others for actual conversations. Mark felt all of that down there, and also inside his own soul, as he made hand signs in a bunch of different ways with Quark.

A Union of Understanding tied them all together, with the most proficient among the group faltering a bit and the ones who didn't understand anything suddenly finding themselves, like Mark, capable. Each person learning was a raindrop, and the ocean was rising fast.

Mark swam in the flood, learning, perhaps, the fastest of all.

It was sort of like sign language, which Mark barely knew about, and which the first book in the 8-volume series somewhat touched upon. Before the Reveal, Sign Language had had a big impact on Earth, for the deaf, but not anymore. Earth had magical healing. Sign Language never happened much on Daihoon; they had always had magical healing. If someone on Daihoon learned 'sign language', that meant they were learning Sigaldry. There were hand signs for squad and army work, though, and that stuff was still used these days, and outside of Sigaldry.

Mostly, people did not use sign language outside of Sigaldry, because to use your hands to talk was to invoke very old, very powerful actions.

Mana was ephemeral, intuitive, counter-intuitive, and solid, all at the same time. It was like an invisible partner out there in the world, just floating around, doing its thing. And you could communicate with it, with your astral body, which was attached to your actual body, and, just like how Shapers used their body to influence their kinesis, a person could use their body to influence their astral body, to communicate with the mana. It was all connected.

In that way, Sigaldry was 'manual magic', and it was best used for short, small things, like increasing the volume of one's voice, temporarily.

But before you could do that, you had to learn how to communicate without actually communicating, thus the hand signs, because if you tried communicating with magic directly you often had A Bad Time. This was because it was very possible to make shapes with your astral body and cause effects. Small effects, usually.

The open palm facing forward was the first step. It was the ward-sign. The 6-sided hexagon; 5 fingers and also the palm. Defense.

The open palm facing sideways, eyes looking down the length of the hand at an opponent. That was the second step. That was the directional focus. An 'attack', somewhat.

From there it was a whole lot of different hand positions and angles and fingers crossed, or focusing on just the fingers or on just the palm and how the palm laid this way or that. Every shape was important. Every shape had actual meaning. Sometimes the shapes used the heart of the caster as the center point, and that meant something. Sometimes the shapes used the brain as the center point, and that meant something else entirely. There was even a libido-focused center point in the crotch, and that gave every hand-shape entirely different meanings. The stomach center point was yet another option, and that was all about consuming and taking in and digesting.

None of this was a language as Mark understood it. Not exactly. It was a language that the mana understood, through the lens of the person making the sigils, and how those sigils were expressed.

Mostly, for now, it was memorization. Tiring memorization.

Mark needed to do a few different Unions, switching up as he ran into personal issues with making hand signs. He was not used to moving his hands like this at all. A Union of Flexibility/Weakness helped him overcome some of his flexibility issues, which also helped a bunch of other people in the house who were having similar issues. A few rounds of basic healing helped a lot of older people with arthritis issues and Mark with a developing soreness that just got worse as he kept going. Sure, he healed it away, but the soreness still came back.

And the soreness came back, again.

Mark had gotten through all of Book 1 with Quark, so maybe it was time to stop, for right now. Book 1 was a whole bunch of memorization, and not much in the way of actually 'speaking'. Books 2 through 8 were actual sentence structures, which were kinda similar to normal language, but not really. It was all directional, circumstantial language. The tilt of a hand when focused on the heart, or the balls, or wherever, all meant very different things. So while there was subject/verb/object/adverb stuff going on, and you could make a sentence like 'Protect the Heart from Fire and Poison', and that was a basic buffing spell to systemically protect the body from heat and toxins, all of that was pretty lax in definition, and you would NEVER want to actually cast that spell.

Maybe you'll stop inflammation, or maybe you'll treat heat in the body as a poison and purge all the heat from yourself, and that would be Bad. Cause of death: Self-induced hypothermia caused by indefinite definitions. 'Perhaps he was thinking about something else halfway through the casting', the coroner would write on the death certificate.

The state of mind was very, very important when using sigaldry.

And Mark's mind and body were kinda worn out.

Mark read through the beginning part of Book 1 again, checking out if he had gotten the idea of the 'centers of the soul' down properly, and he realized he had missed a few other centers that were not discussed at all in the rest of the book. Ostensibly, those other centers would be confronted in later books, because most of book 1 was about the Gut center, with small forays into Head and Heart and Sex (which was different depending on what you had going on down there! Womb-birthing and balls-seeding were very different fields of Sigaldry!), but the full list of centers was a bit different than Mark had recalled.

'Gut' and 'Sex' were the safest centers to mess around with. If you fucked up in the Gut or Sex, then you had time to find a healer. If you fucked up in the Brain or Heart, then you had a lot less time.

Mark read about other centers, not touched upon in the main parts of the book.

All of the senses were a Center. Eyes, or rather 'Sight', was a big one. Anything that 'saw' could be the center for Sight, including Mark's Unionsense… maybe. Ears and Throat were a Dual Center. 'Throat' meant mouth/tongue/throat/lungs, not just 'Throat'. Ears and Throat were all about ritual casting, too, so that was not covered in book 1. 'Gut' actually meant 'All digestion', including Liver, which was all about cleansing.

Mark's eyes felt tired as he read that every organ could be a center…

Mark's eyes crossed a little, and he waved a hand and closed the book.

He sat back on the couch, closed his eyes, and beat his heart with Good and Bad, and the people downstairs noticed. The people downstairs could tell that Mark was switching to Good/Bad quite often, too, which is probably why Whaler's vector focused more among all the rest, and Whaler decided to walk up and out of the party, up to the second floor, and then the third floor, which was mostly still empty. Some people were out in the kitchen out there, but only because they had to be. They were purposefully not bothering Mark, but there wasn't a lot of space left downstairs so they came upstairs.

Whaler walked into view, eyes locking with Mark's. The wiry old man grinned. "Want to come join the party? We have skill levels of all kinds!"

"Yes," Mark said, sitting up, and then standing up. "What's the most used Center? Is it really the gut?"

"Oh yes. The gut is great. You can do 90% of Sigaldry using the gut. It's easy to communicate with others with your gut, since that's all rather gut-feely. Communicating through sex is best for partners or people who wish to become partners, and brain communications are rather cerebral, while heart to hearts are not for the faint of heart!"

Mark grinned a little at all of Whaler's little jokes. He stepped out of the room, asking, "How do the phrases for the rest of the centers go?"

Whaler led Mark to the party as he said, "You can learn throat communication for a song, though not everyone has the ears for it, while sight sigaldry has a lot of point-of-view problems because most of the time two people simply aren't in the same place in life..."

Mark got to the party and met people he had never met before, and while they communicated with words to start, Mark tried to speak with his hands, and he felt very, very clunky, but he was in the center of Sigaldry in the settlement, and everyone was doing the same thing, and so, Mark fell into a Union of Life with everyone learning and working in the same directions. Mark learned. Others helped. Others learned. Mark helped.

Mark's earlier exhaustion vanished, as he got to actually talk to people.

Eventually a lot of people showed up.

The party spilled onto the third floor, and then outside onto the street, and everyone was learning Sigaldry all over again, and Whaler confessed to Mark, around midnight, that he hadn't been so thrilled to be in a Sigaldry house in decades. He had done so using his hands, and his heart-center, and Mark barely realized that Whaler confessed a real, complete truth, done through Sigaldry. And it was true-true. Not just true-in-the-moment.

Mark made a heart-center based response that was several quick hand signs that said he was glad to be here, too… and then he felt queasy.

Whaler grinned, and spoke in Xerk, the primary language of the settlement, "You put too much mana into your words, and so it will make you feel weird if you lie at all with Sigaldry. You don't believe what you just said from your heart. But try it from your gut or brain, and you'll be more in-line with your intent. Try again."

Mark angled his hands a bit differently, and then he signed out, 'From-gut-being, I-self, like-pleasure, here-place, action-being, reflected-intent.'

Mark smiled. He had just said 'I like being here too!' and there was no queasiness that time!

This was so cool.

And then Whaler said, "That was a wrong statement, too, but you didn't feel it because it was from the gut, and the gut can hold a lot of shit."

Mark laughed.

Whaler signed back, 'Cerebral-see, attempted-failure. Example-thus: From-gut-being, I-self-reflected-intent, like-pleasure, action-being, here-place.' And then he spoke in Xerk, "What you said was 'From my gut I don't like being here'. What I said was, 'From my gut I also like being here'." He made some signs in the air, going over what he had just signed as he said, "The placement of this sign can reflect the intent of the entire string depending on where you put it, or it can be used to flow through what another is doing. Generally, putting this sign at the end is a reflection, like you put a mirror up, since the sign is a mirror. But putting the mirror at the beginning is an indication that you're seeing through the reflection with another. You're sharing their POV. That's a pretty deep dive into the junction of sight-center talk, though, but might as well have it now, yeah!"

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Mark nodded, his eyes going a little wide in comprehension. "I see! Thanks! Yes! That makes perfect sense!"

Whaler smiled. "Someone is grilling fish over there and I'm gonna get some. You want to join me? I think I see a few people over there you should know, too!"

Mark smiled and said, "Sure."

While eating fish tacos, Mark met some professors for some classes he was not thinking of taking at all, but they were happy to meet him anyway, and Mark was happy to meet them. It was good to meet new people…

But that got Mark thinking about his team.

Shit.

They were all out there, weren't they. It was already midnight— Actually. Mark checked the clock and it was 1:38 AM.

Okay. Uh… shit—

And just like that, Mark's Union of Understanding kinda faded away. It started at the edges and unwound here and there, plucking out of people like stitches releasing, and then it flickered through Mark, and threads came undone.

Mark realized he was pretty fucking tired, actually.

A lot of people out there were very tired, too. Someone was playing music and the music had hit a sudden snag, but then the music kept right on going, but the party was winding down, for sure. Mark made some excuses and said farewell to a few people, and to Whaler, and then he walked away, through pools of lamplight on the streets, and past people still out and about at this late hour, trying to get to the party before it ended. Some of them saw Mark leaving, but he wasn't wearing his black scales and it was kinda dark, so no one really noticed him. Those that did notice him mostly paid him no mind.

Some people did look at him weirdly, though, with concern if he was going to… attack them?

The fuck?

Mark glanced back at those guys who were concerned about being attacked, and their eyes locked with his and they walked a lot faster. Mark burst out laughing. The guys ran faster, toward all of the people up ahead. There was safety in numbers, after all. Probably while they were walking around in a pair, too.

Mark called out, "Buddy system is done with, guys!"

A lot of people here and there heard Mark, and they were either dismissive of the crazy person, thought Mark was a fool, had some other emotions, and one pair of women actually recognized Mark, for Mark.

"Oh my gods! Mark Careed! Are you a mage now?!"

Mark smiled and bowed. "I guess I'm trying to be!"

"Good luck!" the other girl squealed.

Mark smiled as he walked on.

Mark got on the tram, headed out of Mage Society.

He was back on the road headed home soon enough. Eventually he neared their house and he felt that Isoko was still awake, but Eliot and Sally were asleep. Isoko felt his vector and she flickered her own vector in excitement/recognition. Mark smiled and walked inside, kicking his shoes into the corner of the front room and raced upstairs.

"Hello, stranger!" Isoko called out to him when he got to the fourth floor. She turned. "Well aren't you happy!"

"I had one of the best days. It was just… so great!" Mark saw that Isoko had ice cream and a paused superhero show on the screen, and Mark wanted all of that, too, so he went to the fridge and started getting his own ice cream. "It was language learning! Simple stuff but very complicated— Hey! Did you get your Agreement stuff settled with Elaria yet?"

"Yes!" Isoko was happy as she said, "I was told about 3 hours ago that I'll get my badge delivered in the morning and I can go to classes tomorrow.

Mark said, "We need to get Eliot signed up for Mage Society, too, and Sally's…" Mark paused. Sally was already signed up for Mage Society through the Executioners of Drakarok, according to Grand Mage Rekaro Solari, so she could go into Mage Society right now, yeah? But she never had… As far as Mark knew. Had she ever done any Mage Society training at all? Maybe not? Maybe all of them needed to go in and Mark could help all of them learn languages… But Eliot needed to be signed up, too— Holy shit, Eliot needed a Mage Society contract. Mark got himself a bunch of vanilla ice cream and topped it all over with maple syrup as he said to Isoko, "I'm glad I held out for the best Agreement available, because there is no way I would have been allowed to do what I did tonight without that, but Eliot can get a good one too, for sure… Probably." Mark set his adamantium on the floor next to the couch and plopped down next to Isoko, saying, "Eliot is kicking himself in the head not going for an Agreement."

Isoko was highly focused. "You think so?"

"Absolutely. There's just so… so much, Isoko. So much. All I did was get the basics of one magical language today and holy shit, Isoko. Everything makes so much more sense. The Binding. Mapping the Binding… There are a whole lot of shapes I still don't recognize, but I know what they mean, now… vaguely."

Isoko was thrilled, worried, and focused. "I hope tomorrow goes well for me, too."

"I got a whole list of stuff I have to do. 7 shelves full of books, each with 8-ish rows apiece. Some of the books are really big but some are small, and I gotta learn all of them." Mark added, "But the first shelf is all languages I have to learn, and I imagine I'll be doing that a lot. It ended up being a block party. Everyone was learning. And if you got languages to learn, then I'll be there doing a Union of Understanding for you, too, Isoko."

Isoko smiled softly. And then she chuckled and laughed and squealed and tackled Mark in a hug, and Mark laughed as he hugged her back, making sure he didn't spill his ice cream. Isoko smiled brightly, eyes shimmering with tears, as she sat back down, sniffling, and saying, "Thanks, Mark."

"OH!" Mark suddenly remembered. "And I told you, right? Walaria wants me to make some Swords of Empire for you and Sally and maybe even Eliot, but he doesn't use any weapons at all so I don't know what I'm gonna get him, but you two are absolutely getting the best damn swords in the known world… As soon as I can make them. Adamantium swords that grow with you! Each one is supposed to allow you to act as a… a real big power… Uh." Mark stopped talking, because Isoko was crying happy tears.

And then Isoko picked Mark's bowl out of his hand and set it to the side and hugged him, laying on top of him, holding him on the big couch, saying, "Thanks, Mark."

It was all so sudden and nice.

Mark wasn't sure what was happening, but he was really happy about it. Isoko was soft and happy. Mark smiled as he laid there, with Isoko laying on top of him.

It was good.

Mark softly said, "I'll have to make it a wind-based sword. No idea what that means or how to do that, though."

Isoko chuckled, tears soaking his shirt. "You'll figure it out."

They watched the show.

Mark got to eat his ice cream when Isoko let him up to go to the bathroom, which was an excuse as she could have just done a Union of Purity/Impurity, but they were both aware of it and she wanted a moment alone. Mark dug into his ice cream, though it was a bit soupy, and that was fine.

Isoko came back and sat closer to him than she usually did, and her vector was on his ice cream.

Mark… pulled his ice cream back, saying, "Mine."

Isoko snorted as she laughed.