§099 Mata'ari (Patreon)

What, then, is the difference between a dark lord and any other person of great power? There is a strangeness that obscures their purpose from other men. We understand the conqueror, even as we hate him. But a Dark Lord is unknowable, even among those who follow him.

— Types and Archetypes

"How do you get a meeting with Mata'ari?"

"Good afternoon to you, too." Saria was lounging in her stream in Twilight, which meant she was presently in her water elemental form. "It's hot today. Cool yourself in my water." She didn't swim. She was just there, a distorted outline of light beneath the surface. Her voice came from the stream itself, all hundred yards or so of it he could see, and sounded like she was everywhere.

"I suppose I could put my feet in. I'm sorry to bother you when we don't have anything scheduled."

"Aren't we friends? And, I am not presently engaged."

Taylor sat at the bank with his shoes off, the stream running cold against his bare feet. Some of the tension he felt washed away with the heat.

"See? Now, what has you in such a state?"

"I think I stumbled onto something alarming, and it might be important to Mata'ari. Remember that princess who summoned me? Well, she has a sister."

"Did she also blast you with mana?"

"No, actually. Her enticement was that she needed help healing some people from corruption." He told Aria about his latest trip to Avimore.

"You're worried because Avimore sits on the Sunglaze. If corruption comes from there, or from nearby, it could affect all of us who are connected to him."

"Do you think it's worth bringing to him? Or should I write a report and hope he sees it?"

"You should see him personally. Given who you are, you can get an appointment. However, given who I am, I can summon him."

"Can you really? That seems extreme."

"All that he is comes from his tributaries, and I am one of them, by way of Fingers Lake. If one of us should call, he must answer. And it is ever so much more convenient than going through that secretary of his."

"If you think the situation warrants it, please call him."

The stream laughed. "My dear Taylor. He has almost arrived."

Seconds later, a serpentine form dropped down on them from the sky, fifty feet long and scaled in blue and blinding white, with a red stripe down the centerline. His head was vaguely crockadillian, with a ruffle of horns where it joined his body. His four legs looked underdeveloped compared to the rest of him, but the fingers on his front legs were nimble enough to handle tools, and the claws retracted. The back legs looked like they could lift a grown bull and fly away with it, or rip it in half.

Even the spirits' dragon forms were oriental. On Earth, Taylor had never traveled that far east and didn't know anyone who had, but Japanese motifs had been popular for most of his first life, and he knew an oriental dragon when he saw one. It couldn't be accidental. At some point, at least one other person from Earth had come to Aarden and left Japanese culture behind him. The academic in him wanted to know when elves stopped living in mud huts, or when Mata'ari obtained his dragon form. He briefly wondered how Europe had fared after the Great War, but it was hard to ruminate with fifty feet of dragon landing in front of him.

Mata'ari settled himself into the small stream without asking permission. "Ah! Glacier melt," his voice soothed flowed deep and took its time, "from Bakarik's heights, with a little spring water for good measure. You were lucky to grow up by such a pleasant stream."

"I'm very grateful, too," Taylor agreed.

"Saria, you have never had cause to summon me, not in all the ages we have been tribute and primus. Is it whimsy or danger that brings me here?"

Taylor explained his encounter with Mariella. But when the questions got awkward, he had to recount his first summoning from Rebecca.

Mata'ari lauged so hard, he rolled over where he lay in Saria's water, splashing it over her banks and drenching Taylor up to his thighs.

"That is rich beyond all counting! Dux Twilight is summoned by twelve-year-old girls and becomes a slime! And the good princess named you Miss Wibbles! Ha! The other greats are going to love it!"

"I'm glad this is so entertaining for you. But shouldn't we focus on the part where an extreme form of corruption is in the capital, and the capital is sitting by your water?"

"I wish I could, but I can barely feel that part of myself. It isn't dead, not yet, but that branch is so polluted, it's barely part of me.

"The pre-imperial kings understood the value of keeping their river pure, so they widened an offshoot, routed it away from the main channel for several miles, and built their city there. It's narrow compared to my vastness elsewhere, but it is still a part of me. Yet, the last few emperors allowed anyone and everyone to drop their trash there. If you found corruption in the Avimore branch, I couldn't even say that I'm surprised. The imperials don't live next to the branch waterway, so they see no reason to care, even if the river is the source of their wealth."

This was starting to sound harder than finding a single source and taking it away. "Even as a branch channel, that's still a lot to clean up. And it might not be the source of the problem."

"It is not. That level of corruption requires contact with a potent source. If it were in my waters, I would be cut off from it entirely. But I remain concerned. A source of potent corruption nearby should not be allowed. Are you planning to investigate?"

"Of course. "

"Of course," repeated the greater spirit. "Then, while you are there, ask whomever runs that part of town to clean up their mess. I won't do it for them, but if they make a concerted effort, I will lend them my power — through you.

Quest: [Clean the Avimore Banks]: Clean the Sunglaze River where it passes through Avimore.

Taylor deferred accepting the quest until he could learn more about the situation. Not every quest had to be taken.

"Before I leave, show me Slime Time!"

"I don't want to."

"Don't be so stingy." The dragon's eyes grew wide with pleading. "You have no idea how much boring work awaits me today. It would give me a great lift."

"You just want to laugh at me."

"I'll try not to!"

"Can you promise not to laugh?"

"I … I can't deny that I might laugh. I may laugh a little. But surely you're not above amusing a greater spirit, for just a minute?"

Saria giggled. "Oh, go ahead and show him. It'll make him happy, and it costs you nothing."

"I'm not so sure about that. But since it's you asking…" Taylor popped into slime form, a somewhat larger one than usual.

"Nice!" Mata'ari patted him experimentally, careful not to use his claws. "Good firmness, nice rebound." He scooped Taylor up into his palm and squeezed until the slime distended between his dragon fingers. Then he released and squeezed again. "This is very soothing. I like this." He rolled the slime between his two palms while Taylor chimed notes of protest, like a bevy of angry bells. "And musical! I could do this all day!"

Saria emerged in a watery, feminine shape perched on the banks. "Okay, Mata'ari. You had your fun. Put down the slime. He's still my summoner, you know."

"Yes, yes." He placed Taylor gently on the ground. "I have so many urgent tasks to do, but this interlude has been most charming."

The dragon's head dipped toward Saria and then toward Taylor. "Good day, Tribute Saria. Good day … Miss Wibbles."

He was in the air with roar and a laugh before Taylor could declare his complaints.

The path home was not a straight one. Taylor picked up finished carbon-fiber cloth from weavers in Sunglaze Basin in exchange for several spindles of new thread and a heap of delicacies from two different towns in Aarden. Several sheets of cloth went to another Twilight town, where a circle of whispering grass spirits embroidered his circle designs. They were paid with heaps of mana marbles, blank cloth, and spools of metallic thread of several varieties. When it came to portable magic circles with durability and power, Taylor doubted anyone had invented a better solution. If they had, he wanted to see it.

His next stops were in Rosebeck and Wovenhall, two provincial capitals a thousand miles apart, to purchase rare minerals, coveted pastries, and other supplies. The minerals' value came more from collectors' curiosity than from any particular use, and supply was limited. With his latest find in Wovenhall, Taylor likely exhausted the known supply, but he needed it to make orichalcum.

While he was in Rosebeck, Taylor happened to drop in on an auction where crates of used weapons were being sold off. Unlike so much of the empire, the Duchy of Dimmik was lenient about people walking around armed. Many of their towns were so rural that monsters were a constant worry, which ultimately led to a thriving market in second-hand armaments. Taylor bought two crates of spearheads and one of swords. About half the weapons were on the verge of breaking, but there were enough sound ones to make the boxes worth his while.

From Dimmik, he passed back into his portal park full of statues and odd markers for the places in Aarden he could go. He ignored them, walked past a hot spring he would have liked to stop at, and out of the park completely. A short hike brought him to the workshop, a long stone building surrounded by a colonnade, topped by a rounded roof of patinaed bronze. It wasn't a real building, strictly speaking. It was conjured there by Taylor's will. Like the rest of the Other Place, it was sustained by draining mana from vents all over the empire.  He could change it with only a little concentration. Sometimes, it changed if he happened to think about it while he was sleeping. He put some extra will into the basic dimensions, so he couldn't accidentally remake it in his sleep and destroy all of his projects, but the details tended to rework themselves. Right now, the tall windows were all stained glass.

Inside, he had several Alchemy stations running. He loaded charcoal into a hopper that fed the carbon fiber line and checked the contents of the other hoppers. Diagrams of alchemical symbols and formulas, plus some minimal machinery, worked together to purify inputs, shape and change the purified elements into their new forms, and spin the resulting thread. Taylor took the finished spindles and loaded empty ones.

He had a crystallarium running, one large enough to produce gems the size of cookie sheets. The resulting planks of red beryl lacked the clarity of valuable gemstones, but they were structurally perfect and could hold shocking amounts of mana, far more than normal mana stones harvested from monsters. He stacked some of them into large mana supplies, while he broke others into smaller cabochons for personal use. The new one wasn't done cooking yet, so he left it alone.

Another, smaller crystallarium made twined chrysoberyl gems, but wasn't doing a very good job of it. As the gems grew larger, gaps and inclusions appeared in the seams where the twined formations met. The latest sample was no exception, but Taylor continued to let it run anyway. Maybe he'd learn something by letting them grow large enough to see the flaws with the naked eye.

The last line he had running was orichalcum. Nearly everyone thought of it as a pure metal, but in fact, it was an alloy. Rarely, a copper vein would include just the right impurities that, with careful processing, could be refined into the mythical metal. There was a rumor that all known sources had been exhausted. If true, then all orichalcum on the market came from melting down something else, which was no easy feat considering its melting point. That was one of the reasons orichalcum was worth fifty times its weight in gold and was used sparingly, if at all. Typically, the "sacred metal" was added to a weapon's alloy to make it reactive to divine and purification magic. Taylor refilled the hoppers feeding lines of chemical reactions, checked the waste bins to make sure there wasn't anything new or unusual in them, and collected finished ingots the size of postage stamps. Those went into a spinning machine that mingled a small portion of orichalcum into thread for embroidery.

He had barely started manufacturing, and already Taylor was spending too much time chasing down basic materials and carting them around. Tomorrow morning, he needed to run some of the same routes again.

Before leaving for home, he emptied his mana into the power stack: a literal stack of gemstone slabs for storing mana, separated by thin spacers to leave small gaps between them. It powered everything in the room, and it was as good a place as any for Taylor to deplete himself.

Finally, he returned to his portal park. Rather than go home immediately, he sat for a few minutes and listened to the whisper of poplar leaves. Today wasn't sustainable. He couldn't do his own training, help a princess, do his important work, spend time with Kasper, and shuttle goods all over the empire and Twilight. The problem was going to get much worse once he had a steady stream of goods to ferry across.

He needed help, from spirits who were willing to travel through gates and from mortals he could trust to know about his Other Place. He doubted he could find very many of either.

When he portaled himself back to the tree in Midway, he still had half the afternoon left, but he was already tired.