She’dalmostsaid boyfriend, but confident as she was feeling right now about how things were going, that felt like a bridge too far. The UN team looked impressed in any case, probably because they’d only met Julius, Council member and Usurper of Bethesda, not Julius the Nice Dragon. Personally, Marci far preferred the latter, but she wasn’t above riding on his new coattails, especially since Sir Myron was finally looking at her with something like grudging respect.
“I’m happy to hear you’re not beholden to a dragon,” he said at last, folding his hands on the table in front of him. “How much do you know about Mortal Spirits, exactly?”
“Not as much as I’d like,” Marci admitted. “When Amelia explained it to me, she said that when lots of humans believe something, it creates an impression on the magical landscape. When this impression fills with magic, it becomes a spirit of the idea the same way magic collecting in a lake or mountain creates a spirit of the land.”
“But far, far bigger,” Sir Myron added.
Marci nodded. “She said that as well. That’s why we haven’t seen any Mortal Spirits yet, because the indentations that create them—the big human concepts like death or love or whatever—are so big, so deep and so wide and so huge that the last sixty years of magic simply hasn’t been enough to fill them yet.”
“That is all technically correct,” the UN mage said, nodding. “Though I don’t think you quite appreciate just how much bigger we’re talking about. The relative level of the manasphere is a difficult concept even for theoretical mages, but I think the water metaphor works best here.”
That sounded like the same analogy Amelia had used, but Marci didn’t want to interrupt Sir Myron now that he was finally explaining things, so she just motioned for him to continue.
“Magic pours into this world like a stream into a wetland,” the mage said. “A thousand years ago, something—we don’t know what—stopped the stream’s flow, and the result was a magical drought so severe that spirits, mages, and other creatures and phenomena that relied on magic all but ceased to exist. The wetland became desert, so to speak. When the meteor hit sixty years ago and brought the flow back—again, we don’t know how—the influx of new magic was enough to fill the cracks and bring back all spirits of the land and animals within twenty-four hours. By contrast, given the current rise of ambient magic around the world, my lab’s best calculations estimated that the ambient magic level would not be enough to support Mortal Spirits for another forty to fiftyyears. In other words, the gusher of magic that was enough to bring back spirits like Raven and Algonquin in a single night will have to flow for a century and then some to fill even the smallest vessel of the Mortal Spirits.”
By the time he finished, Marci’s eyes were round. She’d known there was a difference in scale, but she hadn’t realized until this moment justhow muchbigger they were talking.
“You don’t have to make it soundthatuneven,” Raven said, insulted. “We had a boost because we were already well established. But Mortal Spirits rely on human ideas, which are a far more flimsy foundation than land formations and animals. There are always ravens, but not every person has the same vision of death.”
“That’s true,” General Jackson agreed. “But Myron’s point—which we learned fromyou, I might add—still stands. Once they become fully formed, Mortal Spirits are exponentially larger and more powerful than any other type of spirit. So much so, in fact, that mages of the ancient world didn’t even call them spirits. They gave Mortal Spirits an entirely different set of names.”
“What was that?” Marci asked, almost leaning over the table in her excitement.
“Gods,” Sir Myron said grimly. “They called them gods.”
Marci supposed she should have guessed that from the start. What else could you call something like the Empty Wind except divine? But while all of this made sense in the historical context, she still didn’t see how it explained her situation now. “If that’s the case, then why is Ghost here now? Amelia also said that he was fifty years early, which agrees with your calculations. But if it’s supposed to take over a hundred years of magic to fill out a Mortal Spirit, how do you explain him? Is he a runt or something?”
Sir Myron smiled politely. “To answer that, it would be helpful if you’d tell us what he’s the Mortal Spiritof.”
He paused expectantly, but like before, Marci’s mouth clamped shut. When it was clear it was going to stay that way, the general sighed. “I’m sure you have your reasons to keep his true nature to yourself,” she said. “But the point you bring up is exactly what we asked you here to talk about. As I’m sure you’ve already guessed, the arrival of what is basically a god fifty years ahead of schedule marks a massive change in the power balance of the world.”
“Oh, come on,” Marci said with a nervous laugh. “Not to downplay my own cat, but I’ve seen him in action. Ghost is pretty intense, but he’s not global-scale.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” General Jackson said, nodding toward her partner. “Three days ago, the nightbeforeAlgonquin attacked the Three Sisters, Myron’s teams at the various magical research stations all around the world simultaneously detected a disturbance in the Earth’s deep magic.”
That didn’t sound good. “What kind of disturbance?” Marci asked. Because three days ago would have been the night they’d defeated Vann Jeger. “Could it have been the collapse of a spirit?”
“It was far bigger than that,” Sir Myron said, his voice taking on a lecturing tone. “As the UN’s lead sorcerer and world’s foremost expert in Tectonic Magic—” He paused to give her a skeptical look. “Youdoknow what that is?”
“Of course I know what it is,” Marci said, giving him a cutting look of her own. “I wasn’t lying about reading your books. Tectonic magic studies the movements of magic at its deepest, most primal state, before it rises from the ground and becomes usable.”
“There’s more to it than that,” Myron said defensively. “Tectonic Magic isn’t just about looking at magic before it becomes usable. It’s the study of thecreationof magic as it wells up from the deepest core of our plane. But this welling doesn’t happen uniformly. Like the plate tectonics it’s named for, magic at the tectonic level is highly volatile with its own fractures, eruptions, hot spots, and so forth. We’ve yet to feel the true impact of these changes since the Earth’s relative ambient magical level is still far lower than it was before the drought, but as more and more magic flows into the world, disturbances in Tectonic Magic have the potential to be every bit as devastating as the volcanoes and earthquakes they’re named after. This is why we study and track them, but the tremor we detected three days ago was different.”
“Different how?” Marci asked.
Myron scowled. “It’s difficult to explain to someone who isn’t familiar with the normal numbers, but the best way to describe it is that, three days ago, something deep in the Earth’s magicmoved. Somethingverylarge, big enough that the tremors were detected simultaneously by sensors all around the world.”
“And you think it was Ghost?” Because given what he’d just said about the relative size of Mortal Spirits, that was the only thing Marci could think of that’d be big enough to cause such a phenomenon. The timing lined up perfectly, too, since that was the night she’d fed Ghost all the magic she’d pulled out of Vann Jeger, giving him the oomph he needed to regain his name and become the Empty Wind. But while all of that made sense to her, Sir Myron was shaking his head.
“Again, there’s more to it,” he said, placing his hands on either side of the transparent cat on the table. “Despite his current deplorable condition, I’m sure your spirit was quite large at one time, though still not as big as he should have been. The ambient magic of the world is simply too low to support a fully-fledged Mortal Spirit just yet. That said, I do believe the tremor was related to his appearance. Or, more specifically, to yours.”
Marci blinked. “Me?”
He nodded. “The night of the disturbance was the night you bound him, correct?”
“Well, technically, I bound him over a month ago,” she said sheepishly. “But that was the night he changed, so—”
“Changed?” Sir Myron asked sharply. “What do you mean changed?”
