On Cosmic Tides

“The Fisher Collective is going to reject any applications without blue or green ink. You were a licensed scribe, you know this.” Annette and Adam were hunched over the desk evaluating the most recent application.

“This is blue, bring the light crystal over so you can see. It’s from the store in the Garion District that uses squid ink as an ingredient.”

“Hmm. What are we doing for the gift?”

“Watch this.” Adam turned to where Laurel was studying a healing technique she had found to help with Annette’s father’s condition. “Laurel, we need a treasure of the sea for our Fisher Collective application.”

Laurel put the technique tablet down. She found what she was looking for among the late Master Draven’s possessions in her spatial storage tatoo. With a twist of her wrist for some added flair she produced a jade box and tossed it over to Adam. He deftly caught it out of the air and opened it to reveal a pearl the size of a large marble. It was emitting a faint iridescent light.

Annette gaped at the sight. “What is that?” Then she turned a glare on Adam. “You were complaining about my asking salary when she can pull magic pearls from thin air!”

Sensing another argument in the making, Laurel hastily stepped in. “It’s a Deepwater Pearl. A cultivator with a water attunement can process the energy to give them the ability to breathe underwater. Light or shadow cultivators would sometimes use them for vision enhancements but that’s a waste, in my opinion. It is most definitely a treasure of the sea though. They are usually hoarded by spirit beasts in underwater lairs, which are not fun to raid if you can’t already breathe down there.”

“Well they will forgive the wrong ink if we apply with that.” Annette had recovered from the shock.

“I told you it’s dark blue ink!”

They went back to squabbling until the chiming stone Laurel had installed above the door went off. A young man entered the shop. He was better off than most of the people that came in seeking help, with no evidence of malnutrition. In fact he was well-muscled, with neatly trimmed brown hair and clean fingernails. The injury he presented was a long, but shallow, gash on his forearm that had been wrapped in a clean strip of white linen. It was far too even to have been inflicted by accident.

One glance at Adam and Annette told her they had reached the same conclusion; this man had been sent as a test. She smiled and made a show of examining the arm while Annette engaged the young man in small talk, where he stumbled over questions about how he got the injury and where he worked. Once she was ready, Laurel healed his arm with the same lack of fanfare as with all her other patients.

“It's actually healed!” he exclaimed. He poked the spot of the incision several times, as though expecting his flesh to pull back apart.

“Of course. Avoid straining the arm too much for the rest of the day, and be more careful next time.” Laurel played along with the charade, treating the soldier just the same as her other patients.

They waited until he was down the street and out of sight before breaking into matching grins.

“So,” Laurel said, “do we take bets on how long until we finally hear from someone important?”

“Next rest day.” Annette was confident. “ They won’t want to cause a scene so they’ll send someone early morning before any foot traffic picks up”.

“I think it will be tonight. They know we’re here now and they won’t want to give us time to run or prepare,” Adam countered.

“Tonight if he was army, rest day if he was city police.” Annette conceded.

“There’s no way he was city police. Too clean-cut to be anything other than an army boy. Who else would be willing to give themselves a cut like that because their boss told them to?”

Laurel listened in on the back and forth. The past week had seen these two become thick as thieves. Apparently acerbic banter mixed with criticism was the standard way of expressing camaraderie amongst those raised in Verilia.

Anticipation rose as the day drew to a close. Conversation became stilted and fell off entirely by the time they closed the shop. All of them were wound tight when a handsome, middle-aged gentleman walked in. Laurel guessed he was about Adam’s age and well-used to charming anyone he came across. She aimed for a pleasant smile but Adam and Annette both gasped.

Annette recovered before Laurel had a chance to speak, “Welcome to our healing practice, General Skycrest.”

The general grinned. “I see the anonymous stranger angle is out.”

“What can we help you with, General?” Laurel said. They had discussed their strategy for when they were noticed by someone with some authority, and had decided to treat it as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. “Do you have an injury you need healed?”

“We’ve been hearing some interesting rumors about your practice here, down at the fort.” The general began in a leading tone. Laurel continued to hold what Annette had told her was called a ‘customer-service smile’.

The general let out a small sigh. “Are you able to heal using magic? And have you been healing people for free?”

“Well, I don’t love the term 'magic', there is actually quite a lot of theory and complexity involved, though I can admit it's useful as a paradigm -” Adam cut her off with a discreet cough. “I mean yes, I can use magic to heal and have been doing so for free.”

“May I ask why? You could charge a fortune for something like that.”

“We don’t need the money at the moment.” Annette’s mercantile heart had almost given out when she realized just how not in need of money they were, and had taken it upon herself to manage their liquid assets.

“What do you need then?” The general replied.

Laurel narrowed her eyes at Skycrest and mentally thanked Adam for dropping the name. For all the papers lauded him as a hero of the common people, he knew how to play the game. “We need open discussion with people in power. Whatever cultivators” - another cough from Adam - “magic users, that you have working for you would have noticed something unusual going on with their magic recently. I can explain this.”

Laurel had taken a gamble that matching the general’s directness would pay off.

“Very well. We would like to invite you to a briefing at the palace tomorrow morning. Be there first thing at seventh bell and present this to the gate guards.” The general produced an elaborate seal carved out of a chunk of gold-veined marble.

“We’ll be there.” Laurel confirmed, catching the general off guard after what had likely been intended as an individual invitation.

“Very well, until tomorrow then.” With that and a curt nod the general departed.

They ensured they were alone before they started celebrating, watching until the General turned the corner at the next block up the road.

Laurel produced a bottle of wine, one of the better vintages she still had in storage. As they passed cups around they all felt bone-deep relief that the plan had worked. “You know, I was beginning to doubt.” Laurel said. “I was thinking we maybe should have gone with the monster fight idea instead. I’m glad we didn’t though.” She gestured towards Annette, “we wouldn’t have gotten to meet and help any of these people if we did it that way. I think when we petition the king to allow us to build a new citadel and access the city’s mana infrastructure, we should build it in the Flats, way out on the edge.”

Annette looked scandalized. “Monster fight? Never mind, I don't want to know. More importantly, no one chooses to build in the Flats if they can afford to be higher up the hill.”

“The only people who stay in the Flats are the ones that don’t have another choice,” she tacked on.

“Exactly! We’ve been able to help these people in the last few weeks. If we stay here, we can continue to help these people. If we move up the hill, do you think any street kids are going to be able to come in for healing? No. Plus we’ll be improving the areas that need it most first, and will be able to come and go without justifying our movements constantly. ”

“So you’re not aiming high, just for a total social revolution then?” Adam snarked, though by the expression on his face, Laurel thought he was considering her idea.

“Not a revolution, but the world is on the precipice of some big changes no matter what we do. The sects have always understood the importance of the mortal population. Symbiosis between cultivators and the mortals is necessary for a healthy society.” Laurel was practically reciting one of her early lessons and smiled at the nostalgia. “It’s also been great for my cultivation and will be good practice once we have some capable students.”

“Cheaper real estate down here,” Adam added. Laurel toasted the observation.

They continued to discuss plans for the future while they enjoyed the rest of the bottle. Annette was pleased they would continue healing, while Adam was salivating about getting his hands on the world's most unique library. By the time they had finished they were both giggling about how they would extort other members of the Scholar’s Guild and Historical Society when they came looking for access. Laurel realized she might have chosen something a bit strong for the mortals as they staggered upstairs to sleep it off in preparation for the next day.

Laurel sat on her bed and dropped into meditation. She hadn’t lied to Annette. The weeks of finely controlled mana manipulation during her healings had been excellent for her personal advancement. Her mana was flowing back at the speed she was accustomed to, and all of the small-scale work meant she created an even finer mesh of channels reinforcing her own body.

In her own time it would still have been decades, if not centuries, before she would have been asked to interact directly with a City Core. Now, with no one else at a high enough cultivation level, it was going to fall to her to not only lead her order, but to teach this country and then the rest of the world both how to cultivate and how to shape the mana flows of the world to keep society from falling apart.

Knowing the royal audience was pivotal and she would need all the information available, she decided she was as ready as she could be and reached deeply into the mana surrounding the city.

An ocean during a storm. Riptides and crashing waves of mana battered against Laurel’s spirit, pulling her deeper. She wrenched herself back out before she got stuck cultivating and missed her appointment. The situation was becoming dire. It would take months of work to get the city in any kind of order if she started now. If the meeting at the palace didn’t go well, Laurel would need to do something drastic.