Jason was standing on the edge of the roof, atop a skyscraper in the Sydney CBD. Shade was beside him as they looked towards an adjacent building. To normal sight it was unremarkable, but to magic senses, the building was lit up like a candle. The top floors were a dancing flame of overlapping enchantments.
“I see what you mean,” Jason said. “It does seem like a lot of trouble to go to if it isn’t their headquarters.”
Shade had been watching the people who had investigated the hospital incident. Jason’s suspicions about the existence of native magic were confirmed when Shade spotted a pair of essence users. Their iron-rank senses had no chance of detecting the stealthy familiar and he had followed them to the building Jason was now looking at.
While Shade could evade even most bronze-rank senses, he didn’t risk approaching the enchantments in place on the building’s upper floors. They weren’t very advanced, falling easily within Jason’s level of ritual magic expertise. It was a combination of basic protection and detection enchantments, made permanent through artifice no greater than Jason’s skill book-derived skills.
What the magical protections lacked in individual sophistication, they made up in the complexity with which they were interwoven. Having so many effects laid over one another without mutual interference was an impressive feat. Breaking through or sneaking past any individual effect would be a breeze for Jason, but doing so without triggering three others would be a whole other task.
Jason postulated that the simplicity of the rituals was not from lack of proficiency, but a need to work with the weakness of Earth’s ambient magic. Whoever devised the protections made the most of the restriction to low-rank formations and integrated them together in ways not possible with more powerful effects. Jason might have been able to recreate any individual effect that he saw, but whoever designed the integrated array of ritual magic as a whole had far more expertise than Jason.
The more Jason examined the magical emplacements, the more impressed he became. The cumulative effect of such basic abilities would be surprisingly tricky to deal with, reminding Jason of Clive’s insistence that he gain a deeper understanding of magic. Based on his early knowledge of ritual magic, coming from skill books alone, Jason would have dismissed the danger of the simple enchantments. He might well have made the decision to try and infiltrate the building and blunder into the overlapping defences. In a way, the seeming simplicity of the individual effects was a trap.
“What do they have in the way of numbers?” Jason asked. Shade had tasked one of his bodies with watching the comings and goings since finding the building.
“I have, thus far, noted eight different bronze-rankers, almost two dozen iron-rankers, and one silver.”
“A silver,” Jason said, frowning.
“Their auras all show signs of heavy monster core use,” Shade said. “It seems to be the primary method for advancement, here.”
“Where are they getting monster cores?” Jason wondered aloud. “I can understand how I didn’t know about the secret society of magic people, but I don’t think I’d have missed monsters spawning all over the world.”
“It would appear that your world has mysteries we need to unravel.”
“So it would,” Jason said, fishing his phone from his pocket to check the time.
He would have preferred to keep the phone in his inventory, but that would have cut it off from the networks. This was not just a factor of the dimensional displacement of his personal storage space, but also the state of stasis objects entered while in his inventory. It was the reason watches needed to be enchanted so they didn’t stop while stored away. He would have liked to experiment with the technique for his phone, but he didn’t have the materials.
It was almost time for the appointment Hiro had set up for Jason with the leader of Hiro’s criminal organisation. Jason didn’t know how the local organised crime was structured, but he didn’t much care. He had been surprised that, rather than some clandestine meeting spot, the meeting was in the heart of the city, in a building not far from the one he stood on.
Jason leapt off the roof as his shadow cloak formed around him. He had, in his personal opinion, grossly underutilised the ability to glide that it acquired at bronze rank. The only properly tall building he had encountered after obtaining the power was the tower in the astral space, which he’d been a bit busy to take advantage of. He’d only had one opportunity to jump off it, and instead of being held aloft by his cloak, he was weighed down by the nest of stone spikes impaling his body.
His cloak spread out wide, like a pair of giant wings made of darkness and stars. Shade glided alongside him, a second shadow spread out in the sky. From so far up, the sounds of the street below were distant. Mostly, the only noise came from the wind.
“This is a decidedly indiscreet practice in the middle of the day,” Shade pointed out.
“What’s that?” Jason asked. “I couldn’t hear you over the sound of how awesome this is.”
“Mr Asano, I’m not physically capable of giving a weary sigh, but if I were, I would be doing so quite pointedly in response.”
Jason laughed as he tested his control over the glide. As with most powers, he had an instinctive proficiency. While he would improve with practice, basic control came to him quite naturally. He quickly got a handle on turning in a curving arc, descending to gain speed, and even catching updrafts to regain a little altitude. After playing around for a while, he opened his map ability and set a waypoint for his destination.
As he neared the ground, Jason projected his aura in a directed fashion that normal people could sense. He did so to two points, well to either side of his chosen landing point. He tried to be subtle yet attention-grabbing, so that all eyes turned to them as he dismissed his cloak and dropped the last few metres into a silent landing. The momentary flash of aura passed, leaving the people on the street looking slightly disoriented.
“This is not a reliable method for avoiding attention,” Shade said quietly enough that only Jason could hear.
“You worry too much. If someone sees me, they won’t believe their eyes, especially if I gaslight them a little.”
“I am your shadow, Mr Asano, not your conscience.”
“Yet here you are chiding me,” Jason said merrily as he tugged his jacket into place. A suit generally wasn’t the best hang-gliding outfit, but Gilbert’s suit, as always, was easily up to the task. The design had more flair than a design from his own world, but Jason didn’t hate being a little flashy.
He made his way into the nearby building entrance, across a large and pleasantly light-filled atrium to the reception desk.
“Jason Asano for Victor Tollman,” he said.