Nathan Free, Natalie Bound Chapter 156: Eruption

It is genuinely shocking that I got through the first nine without anything going awry. Everything started fine, I bored in, got the empty space I needed, and then set the first charge. The singularity started warming up, bringing in all the matter it would discharge violently as soon as I released the magic. I was working by the numbers, everything running smooth. If I had been getting overconfident that would have been justified, but instead I was just proud that this job was only going to take one day, even with all the delays. It's a damn good plan that can stay on track even when the unexpected happens. I swept up and across and down the V I had prepared, the boreholes to guide the detonation. Into each one, a conjured wooden rod, very insulative, with a copper knob on the end. Then back to the X, the bottom-center. I sighted down the larger borehole, and cast a singularity into that space. The ta black hole began swallowing air, gravel, dust, and whatever its gravity well could reach. I curved stone with one hand conjured copper filings with the other. The sparkling dust flew from my hands along the rising wind, streaming like pixie-dust in the slanting morning sun.

Essence of peacock assured that the audience, far off, would see a dramatic display of glittering cloudy magic flowing into the rock wall. The peacock knows what people can see. I counted off the seconds, and then I released the magic grip that was maintaining the compression. All that matter exploded back into the proper form- and instead of blasting out a corridor-like tunnel that would accommodate three singularities in formation, it all just sort of crumpled. The bottom cracked deeply but did not blow out, it only sagged in place, and the jagged fractures stretched far upwards. They were licking like lightning hundreds of feet up, spreading about, and both crossing and re-crossing the marks where I had been intending to make starter cracks to guide the pressure. Like perforations to tear paper. Instead, it's already scratched up. So geological feature, back where I can't see it, disrupted the impact. Probably a do or reservoir that absorbed the vibration and damped it down and spread it out. Sothing I didn't have ti to check for because the fucking duke wanted to put his party pavilion directly on top of my project site and would not fucking move it even after I showed him that I'm blowing shit up epic-style. No, he had to fuck around and change the conditions for and now I'm working on a section of wall that I could only give a cursory exam. And it failed. When I was planning, I had run so math for the contingencies if this was to happen. Not this precise scenario, but sothing near to it. If the seismic impact spread further than I intended or did not excavate where it was supposed to. So, I do know roughly what the right move here is at this point. Not to belabor all the differences between trying to run a shaped-charge impact through solid stone versus partially-broken stone, but it is a very big change. Now, in a case like this, the answer is never "try it again exactly the sa and hope it works this ti". And the answer is never "try it again but twice as hard this ti". But would you believe three tis as hard? Honestly, I'm having a hard ti acting like I'm disappointed. My plan was for everything to work the first ti. But doing it this way is going to be aweso. And ti-consuming. I sighed, and started re-doing my bore-through. Instead of a two-inch excavation, I needed about a foot wide. I concentrated, and the stone responded. It changed its shape for , moving like a stop-motion special effect. The hole opened up like this was just soft clay, and lded out to lock the nearby stones in place so they would not slip loose and fall into the tunnel. I took my ti, getting it shaped correctly. One-two-three I generated the black holes. They hovered in the air without moving, locked to their place. I started counting off the seconds, and I started dissolving my hold on the stone around them. The rock caved in, and was yanked into a gravity well. The stones did not shatter or powder, they were pulled in whole. Under that much gravity, physics gets weird, and starts doing stuff you wouldn't expect. These are a lot stronger than what I unleashed in Byeview. My Strength score was much lower then, and that affected how much matter the gravity wells could consu at a ti, how hard they pull, how wide their range is. The Strength score provides a hard limit to how much damage a sorcery effect can do at one ti, after all. But there is no such system limiting how much damage a spell can do when it is turned off, and that is the loophole that has turned into one of the most impressively destructive sorcerers in the world. While one hand was splashing lightning up and down the rows of copper rods, I slashed through stone with magic, rendering it down so it would collapse as boulders into the singularity. They fell, they distorted, and they were consud entirely. The stones looked like they were being shrunk down to nothing or cast far into the distance, you could see them foreshortening as they collapsed inward and bent like a funhouse to swirl around and fall into the center like a whirlpool. More stones dropped in, and the tunnel started to open up, started to look more like the others. But there was still the matter of all the cracked stone above, the fractures and baps would absorb much more impact and stress, rather than transmit it straight. So for that, we had to compensate. Seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five... That's the point I would normally release this thing, the maximum I would allow the singularities before I triggered the collapse. Eighty-one, eighty-two, eighty-three... And this ti I kept going. Bigger. More mass. The more matter was compressed into the voids, especially incompressible matter, the harder they would explode when released. Ninety-nine, a hundred, a hundred-and-one... I smirked as I started streaming out water and salt into the physics-bending appetites of the voids, mixing volatile chemicals into this reaction. Go big, dammit, go real damn big. A hundred and sixty, a hundred sixty-one... Stones tumbling in, water and salt, and a constant roar of wind as the displaced air rushed to fill the spaces. This was gonna be a hell of a show. One-hundred eighty-nine, one hundred ninety... I curved the void to form a portal, and when I stepped out of it again we were at two-hundred. The pavilion, the party, the VIPs. I was a half-mile away, nowhere near safe distance. The majordomo was staring at . I gave him a grim smile. "So, as it turns out, the area that I relocated to? Because of you? It's not nearly as stable. This is going to be much bigger." "Bigger?" he said, eyebrow up. "About three tis bigger," I said, not even pretending to be upset about this. "And we're too close for a regular explosion. Understand? Now, I'm going to build a wall of air to keep us all from dying. Could really use your help here. We are way, way too close. And if your magic is not at least as strong as you have implied it is, we're all dead." He gripped the air like gathering invisible threads and then he heaved at them with his bare hands, and sothing in the air pressure changed. All sound dampened, and it suddenly beca very hard to move. I tried to gasp for air and failed. I counted out two more seconds, and then finally released the pressure. Let's see what happens. This ti, we're close enough for everyone to see with the naked eye. Flas burst out of the borehole, but they also shot through the whole two-mile wall. Every crack and crevice and broken cleft in the cliff all lit up with a seething molten orange for a second, the fires of this tad hellstorm glowed out of every surface. And then the shock hit, and the whole crag erupted. Sodden half-lted boulders flew out, tumbling, filled the air like a flock of startled cardinals. They glowed in the sunlight, foundry-heat rocketing through the sky. The shattered cleft behind them glowed like a devil's maw, a wide-angled slash of a mouth cut into the stone escarpnt. And that open, glowing mouth roared. In the distance between us, I could see the small trees and scrub bushes explode directly into ash, burnt and pulverized instantly. The expanding wall of ashes rushed in every direction, including straight towards us. I clapped my hands over my ears, and the shockwave hit the wall. Impossible forces strove against each other, my explosion versus his wizardry. I stumbled back, a laugh bubbling out of , unheard. The noise was titanic, all-consuming. For a few seconds, it was impossible to form coherent thoughts, the noise overtook all. This continent has no volcanoes, except the one I just unleashed. Magma-hot boulders slamd into the plains, tumbling over each other and fusing the ground to glass. The cliff sagged away from the smoking crater, and smoke poured away from the edges in a stream. There was no rocky dust obscuring the air, just a howling gale of wind, the heat's updraft was pulling all the smoke and particles into a vast upswelling cloud like a mushroom, leaving us in a calm, breathless silence like the eye of a storm. The massive wall was gouged out, molten claws had dug out a trench and spilled lted stone in a river that poured out across the adows, gelling as they cooled. When I glanced to the side, I could see the majordomo was struggling against these forces, forcing back the wall of lethal heat and the annihilating shockwave, keeping the air breathable and the air stilled, instead of lifting us like a tornado, or shredding us to pieces. All around us, voices raised in wonder and celebration, screams of delight at the magnitude of this show. They applauded. Standing ovation, like I should take a bow. The clouds above us were glowing, incandescent like banked coals, letting off a sullen red light that replaced the sun. Finally, the pressure equalized, and the majordomo let himself rest, collapsing to the ground, panting. His heroic efforts had just saved us all. I floated over to him, my hair wafting about in the gentle updrafts. I slowed and stopped before him, expectantly. He groaned as he brought his head up to look in the eye. "When I fucking tell you that I've got an unprecedented feat of magic and force, I'm not fucking around," I snapped, arms crossed in front of . "Your smartassed disdain for sorcerers ca within inches of getting all of us killed. Find every wizard you can, and you tell them that Lady Natalie Harigold is no less than their equal. Make gods damned sure they believe you. And then, make sure they understand how fucking far I will go just to make a gods damned point." He nodded, exhausted, and I swept away to my adoring public. What he doesn't need to know was that it wasn't anywhere near that close. Like everything else today, this is theatrics. While he was striving to hold the entire explosion at bay so its overpressure would not destroy us, I was curving air in a much more controlled manner. I had built two bubbles around the pavilions, one inside the other. In between them was not a perfect vacuum, but very close. If he had collapsed imdiately like I expected, the insulating vacuum would only let our temperature go up by several degrees, and the difference in pressure might have caused nosebleeds. I had it covered. But I want him to think I'm crazy enough to let us all die. He doesn't need to know that I'm actually deeply impressed he was able to wrestle that shockwave the way he did. I had underestimated him, just as he underestimated . But I prefer him to tell the other wizards that they need to stop talking shit about . I joined the crowds, with a joyous and carefree smile. I was free to listen in on conversations, while I stood and waited for the dust clouds to clear. Everyone else seed to think the show was done and they started chattering about it, but for I wanted to know if my results would speak for themselves. "- like the ground itself just dropped away for a second!""I've had a close call near a wizard and it wasn't as -""That was actual lightning, but it just kept going and going, right in her hand!""- absolutely worth the price of admission, and I simply must ask the duke if -""Damn ripoff we couldn't get closer than this.""Ah muddle I think he's going to give another speech..." And then Duke Quoissi did in fact get up to give another speech, a very gracious and eloquent number that hit the high points and did just what it was supposed to do, and the individual words did not really matter. Best of all, it did not sound like any of the audience was disappointed and demanding a refund. That ans I get to keep all the money he promised . Or if he tried to stiff , I just might see if I can actually nuke a duke and get away with it. Maybe? Turns out, I don't need to find out. He signed out the promissory and handed it off, and it's a hell of a lot of money, contingent on my finishing the rest of the agreed-upon sites. I slid the paper IOU into my pocket dinsion, and went to schmoozing his guests. Most of the onlookers were convinced that this had been a demonstration of weather powers sohow. They have very little experience with explosions, those are basically just my thing and nobody else has any experience with those. So to them, I threw a bunch of lightning around, and then the thunder ca all at once and smashed the cliff until it broke open and spilled fire like heart's blood. As far as they were concerned, I'm not as much a sorceress as a wizardess who can use my powers at point-blank range without annihilating myself. And to them that's even more impressive, so I spend the rest of this morning letting them all believe that. True to my word I spend ti schmoozing around afterwards, chatting with Quoissi's guests, and discussing how exactly the feat was accomplished. More than one patronizing prick wanted to know "the secret how it was done", as if I had hidden a canyon up my sleeve like a playing card. While I glad-handed the bourgies, I was minding my manners and playing the part, behaving exactly as a future duchess should. I kept all my annoyance with Duke Eyellon carefully quietly inside myself. When the liquors ca out I begged off, explaining that I have several more demolitions to do that day. This should have worked, but I had sohow forgotten that fucking nothing can ever be easy. "Oh, you'll be doing more of these?" said the minister of transit. "I should rather like to watch those as well!" "Ah ha ha!" I said. I could not make myself laugh at that, but I could say the sounds. "Oh, I'm quite sorry, but these projects are each dozens of miles apart, and to get them done before end of day I will need to move quite quickly." A senior review judge spoke up from my other side. "Well, how will you get from here to there so fast? Could you take us with you?" And that was when the duke appeared, grinning broadly. "Well, I don't see why not! The princess here can bring passengers along, she's becoming known for it at her school. I don't see why this party could not hit the road!" "I can't move this many people," I said, looking around. "That's why not." He scoffed. "Well, if you just make a few trips-" There were about a hundred guests. That many bodyguards. And another hundred servers, porters, chefs, entertainers, valets and a few personal escorts. Not to ntion seating, shading, food, drinks, and the various materials. "Dozens of trips," I said. "For each leg. Your Grace, if you double my commission I will bring a second appearance at the second location. Triple for a third." He scowled without heat, but maybe a little admiration? "No deal, ya cad. So you don't like renegotiation? That's all right. We can leave the deal as it stands." He grumbled a bit more and made his way to a nearby clique to chat up so donors, and I turned to answer so questions about the demolition process. So were people without a technical background trying to ask technical questions so they could feel like they were engaging as intellectual equals. So were interested in the show, the staging. And others were more focused on and my reasons. I was smiling for soone asking the sa question I had answered for a dozen other people so far. "Well, for one thing I am being paid a significant sum, and that money can help a lot of people. For another? Blowing up sothing this hard is really fun, but I would pay vandalism fines if I was doing this without local sanction. And of course, the newly-built roads are going to help a lot of people. That might help make famous for the ages, but it also ans a lot to the locals and the rchants and all the people that will benefit from this." A barrel-chested beer-breathed man sidled up right into my personal space. "Hah," he huffed, with a red-cheeked smile. "And I'm sure a sweet little thing like you knows all about the gratitude of the people, yes?" And that was when the funniest thing happened. The whole world turned red, glowing and hot. And I was having a hard ti seeing anything, and I could not feel my body at all. But I did see my hands reach out and grab him. One at the shoulder of his jacket, the other bunching the fabric of his trousers. And then my hands yanked him off his feet. The world around us started to spin, I was whirling around in place with this man dangling from my hands. Once, twice, and then with a heave I released him, on a high upward trajectory. That was when the red cleared out of my vision and I had a stupefied mont to realize I had just grabbed hold of a count and hamr-threw him about fifty feet. That was potentially a really major mistake. I stared as he tumbled in the air, spinning with all four limbs splayed wide. Duke Eyellon was only a few feet away, saw the whole thing. He laughed, and signaled his bodyguard. The bodyguard flared mana through her necklace and shot away at high speed, arms out to catch the falling count. And then soone else stepped way too close to from behind , practically breathing into my ear. "Was that guy bothering you - whoa, oh shit." His chivalrous opening line was interrupted when he realized what happened to the count, and I turned with a glare. "Of fucking course it's you," I snarled. "C're." I grabbed Casser Swamman by the lapel and dragged him with , away from prying ears. "Did you seriously get that guy to co hassle just so you could swoop in as a savior?" I demanded.