205 — Book 4, Chapter 49 — Baking Magic, Pt 1

When the time came, it was Damien that ushered everyone else away. He knew without asking that this final moment between Cale and Vital was one they needed to have alone. Cale shot him a grateful look as he called for everyone else to leave and return to the uppermost floor of the Temple.

Damien didn't know what they shared, exactly, only that Cale would never again speak of it. Whatever memory they had created was a memory only for him, and Damien could see that in the sad smile he offered when he emerged, in the long breath he exhaled, like he was letting go of a burden he had held for millennia.

After that, Cale took them home without another word. He didn't seem as sad as Damien thought he might have been, though. If anything, it seemed as though something within him had healed.

And for that, Damien was glad.

The kitchen in Brightscale Academy smelled like warm bread and browned butter. Cale and his apprentices sat in the corner for now, watching as more mages filtered in. The ones that were already there murmured to one another in excitement, gesturing at the many tables upon which a truly staggering variety of baking equipment—both magical and mundane—had been set up.

Most of them did, anyway. A few were less-than-enthusiastic, which was understandable. It was probably a little overkill, this gathering, but once Cale had seen so many mages working together for the assault on the Vital's Temple, he hadn't been able to get it out of his mind. If they could power their way through the Red Hunters like that, what would they be able to accomplish if they put their minds together on the greatest of magics?

Which was baking magic, obviously. He'd gone to Akkau with the suggestion, and the old dragon hadn't even blinked, which clearly meant he'd been thinking the same thing. Alina, too, although she hadn't been present at the assault. It was her kitchen they'd be using, though, and she was immediately all in on the idea as soon as Cale explained it.

So! Today was the first officially designated Baking Day at Brightscale Academy. To mark and accommodate the occasion, Alina's kitchen had been expanded with a comprehensive set of spatial charms that allowed it to handle the massive group of mages and scholars gathered within.

And it was a truly massive group. It wasn't just the mages present at the assault that had gathered, although almost all of them had agreed to attend. Many of Brightscale's best and brightest had shown up as well, along with no small number of curious students, traveling scholars, hardened criminals...

Cale wondered idly if they were still considered crime lords if they were magic. Did they prefer a different name? Were they crime mages? Crime wizards? He needed a better name for them, because if any of them could read minds they would not be flattered by the trains of thought running through his head.

Anyway. Akkau had put out a call for any interested mages all across the realm to attend Brightscale's very first Baking Day, and he'd been very clear in stating that any interested mages could show up, no matter their background. There would be no fighting or arrests conducted on Brightscale grounds for the duration of the event, courtesy of the supercharged wards that had been installed all over the school (thanks in no small part to Cale's newest spell evolutions, which he had developed specifically for this event.)

Apparently, Brightscale was far more exclusive an academy than Cale had thought, because the next thing he knew they were receiving confirmations of attendance from mages all over the realm. Granted, not all of them were attending because of an interest in baking magic, but that was fine. Who knew what knowledge they would bring? Perhaps one of them would even be a master of baking magic, who had long ago become a wanted criminal and had spent decades on the run!

Granted, Cale wasn't really sure what the odds of that were. Considering all the things he knew baking magic was capable of doing, though, he wouldn't exactly be surprised if one of these hardened criminals here had been forced to go into hiding as a result of bread-related crimes.

He surveyed them curiously, looking for signs of baking magic. Alas, as best as he could tell, there were none; the mages he thought were probably on the run seemed to treating this as something of a vacation, more than anything else.

That was fair, too. Cale would have done the same, if he'd been forced into hiding and then caught wind of an announcement calling for any mage to attend a baking convention with both a guarantee of safety and free transportation. How long would it have been since he'd had a good, warm loaf of bread? It was probably the same for these mages, who were eyeing one of the tables of baked goods with no small amount of greed.

"Um," Damien whispered, tugging at his sleeve. He glanced nervously at one of the more evil-looking mages, who was in the midst of burping a blast of green fire into the air. "Are we sure this is safe?"

"First of all, we can't judge mages based on the fact that their magic looks evil," Cale said severely, ignoring the fact that he'd been doing exactly that. "For all we know, he could be one of the most respected scholars of the land!"

"He's not," Flia said. "That's Barbatos the Wyrm. He's known for attempting to consume an orphanage. He failed, mind you, but only because he choked, and then he was forced into hiding by their very angry caretaker. I think her name was the Silver Matron?"

She gestured to another nearby mage, who was leaning against a wall and glowering at Barbatos. This other mage was a diminutive, frail-looking woman with silver skin and a small crowd of children gathered around her. She didn't emanate much power at all, but Cale knew immediately that crossing her would be a bad idea.

"Well," Cale said. "Anyway! This is all perfectly safe, is my point. Gathering the realm's strongest and most eccentric mages into a relatively confined space to perform experimental magic no one can perfect? It's a wonderful idea. Nothing could possibly go wrong."

"I hate that you just said that," Leo said. "Genuinely."

"It's fine," Cale said, waving away Leo's concerns. "We just rebuilt Brightscale's wards, remember? Even I'd have trouble getting through them."

"That's because you're powering them," Leo pointed out.

"Exactly!" Cale beamed at him, and his minotaur apprentice let out a groan and rubbed at his temples.

"I hope they start a fight," Syphus said thoughtfully. "You know what I've never witnessed? A food fight. This kitchen would be perfect for a food fight. With this many mages, we will no doubt be able to make more than one battle-ready bread construct. And then we will pit them against one another, for honor and glory."

"Syphus," Damien said, his brows furrowing with concern. "What do you think a food fight is?"

"When mages animate their food so that it can fight?" Syphus asked.

"No," Damien said. "No, um... Leo, Flia, can you take this one?"

Leo and Flia both adopted an expression of infinite patience. They took Syphus aside, then sat down next to it, placing their arms around what passed for its shoulders. Then, taking turns, they began quietly explaining to it what exactly a food fight was.

Damien, meanwhile, had returned to watching the gathering of mages nervously. "It's just... a lot of them don't look like they're here to do magic," he said, fidgeting.

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Cale glanced at him and raised a brow. "What do you think they're here for, then?" he asked, his tone encouraging. "You're the one that's good at reading people."

Damien blinked, recognizing when Cale was testing him. "Um," he said, surveying them again, and without his nervousness interfering with him, it took him only moments to recognize what he normally would have already.

The fugitive mages were gathered around the more isolated tables, drinking and laughing amongst themselves. A few were experimenting a little with baking—the equipment was there, after all, and they needed something to do with their hands while they talked—but many seemed like they had no intention of joining in. They were here only to take advantage of Brightscale's hospitality, so to speak.

But as Damien watched them, some of the tension bled out of his shoulders. "Oh," he said softly. "This is the first time they've been able to rest in years, isn't it?"

Cale recognized the small spark of the Verdant Flame that flickered through Damien's eyes. That was happening more often, lately—every so often he would catch a glimpse of some understanding or the other, and the Verdant Flame would ignite within him, burning a little brighter.

"Yup," Cale said with a small smile, joining his apprentice in watching the mages.

A whole crew of skeletal mages were gathered around a table. They reminded Cale a bit of the Grand Magus, but they didn't seem to mourn his disappearance, if they even knew about it. Instead, they were clacking their teeth loudly at one another, laughing, and pouring entire mugs of beer through their jaws.

They couldn't really drink the beer. It just poured down their spine and onto the floor, creating a mess. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, though.

It wasn't only them, either. Barbatos the Wyrm eventually ground his teeth together and approached the Silver Matron, and although Cale couldn't hear what either of them were saying, it seemed clear that Barbatos was apologizing. The Matron didn't seem especially receptive to the apology, but the children seemed happy to forgive him.

There was a plant mage of some sort who was standing near one of the windows, staring up at the sun; another one who simply sat at one of the baking stations with his eyes closed, taking in the aroma of freshly-baked bread; a third who wept as she embraced her husband, their foreheads pressed together as they reunited...

Cale wondered what their stories were. Perhaps he would have the chance to find out, one day. He hoped he would. No matter how long he lived, he would never tire of these smaller stories, where the world was not at stake but people still tried, in their own ways, to live their lives.

"It's the point, isn't it?" Damien asked quietly, wonder in his voice. "The whole thing is the point."

Cale grinned. "Got it in one," he said, nodding toward the crowd. "Baking magic works best in an environment like this. You get together a bunch of different minds and different people, and you know the one thing they all have in common a vast majority of the time? It's food. Most often some kind of bread, even if it's something like flatbread, or just wrapping things up in dough.

"It shows up over and over again, somehow, across a bunch of different cultures and almost every realm imaginable." Here, he smiled a wry smile. "Of course, you have to expand the definition of baking a bit to really accommodate everyone. Some realms don't even really have grains. As always, it's really more about... the symbolism..."

Cale trailed off, frowning for a half-second before he shook his head and continued. "Baking magic—or more specifically, what it represents—connects all kinds of cultures and all kinds of people. It's not perfect, but it's almost as close to a universal magic as you can get. Something that means something to everyone, everywhere. It's not the kind of magic you can advance while locked up in a laboratory, pumping mana into spells or scribbling out runes."

"I hadn't thought of it like that," Damien said, looking out at the crowd of mages. "No wonder you like it so much. It's the greatest magic, huh?"

"The greatest." Cale gave his apprentice a friendly nudge. "But I might be a little biased, since I also just really like bread."

Damien laughed softly. "I hadn't noticed," he said lightly.

Cale smiled at him, then turned back to watch the crowd, hiding the flicker of guilt in his eyes.

It was nice that they were able to have moments like these again. Ever since the assault on the Temple of Vitality, it felt like there was a wall, of sorts, between the two of them. It was a thin one, only present because there was something left unspoken between them, but since neither one of them knew how to approach or acknowledge the gap... well, there it remained, hovering between them.

He hadn't said anything to Damien about Kelegas Thornblight—about who his father was, where he was hiding, what he was doing. He knew, now; he'd paid enough attention to where he'd appeared that he could fly his way back using his Fortress, if he wanted to.

But that would draw a great deal of attention to Kelegas, and though there was a tentative sort of understanding between, them, the influence of the Lesion meant that Cale couldn't reliably predict how the dark lord would react to being discovered while in the midst of a magic academy full of vulnerable students.

And perhaps more importantly, it would take from Kelegas his right to figure out how to talk to Damien again. How he wanted to approach him. Cale could have told Damien about him, but he wanted to give Kelegas the chance to decide how to do it himself.

That meant not telling Damien, at least for now. Cale was willing to give him some time, but if that letter for Damien didn't arrive soon, Cale was going to go find the dark lord again to have some words with him.

For now, he was willing to wait, even if it killed him inside to do so. He didn't enjoy hiding something so important from his apprentices, and with Damien in particular it felt like something of a betrayal.

There was the other side of things, too, though Cale wasn't yet certain what he felt about that. It seemed sometimes as though Damien was hiding something from him, too. More than once, he'd seen the dreadshade get a look in his eyes, as though he wanted to say something but wasn't quite sure how.

Always, he would withdraw after a moment, looking conflicted, and always Cale would be tempted to push the matter—only, he didn't know if he wanted to.

He still didn't know what Damien and Vital had talked about. Damien's reticence probably had something to do with that, and if it was, Cale didn't think he wanted to know. Damien would tell him when he was ready, if that time ever came, but Cale...

He didn't know if he was ready to hear it. So if Damien was going to delay the matter, then he was more than happy to pretend it didn't exist.

Maybe he wasn't fully over his habit of avoiding things that were emotionally difficult. Bah. It was a work in progress!

He shook off the thoughts, deciding instead to survey the kitchen. Baking magic, at long last! The kitchen was thrumming with all sorts of attempts at it already, though the event hadn't officially started yet; more mages were still filtering in to join the crowd, and that, in turn, drew more curious students and mages to participate.

Thanks to his ranks in draconic resonance, he picked up a number of new spells from sheer proximity, several of which he was already eager to try:

You have learned [Knead]!

You have learned [Controlled Batter]!

You have learned [Double Dough]!

The best part was that some of these were legitimate baking spells! [Knead] was technically not; it was a massage spell that could be applied to dough, and [Controlled Batter] was more a highly specific temperature spell than anything else.

But [Double Dough] was a true baking spell, low-tier as it was. It instantly leavened any dough that needed it, causing it to double in size. Alas, it couldn't be used more than once, or Cale would have found a way to make Syphus's dreams of creating some sort of deadly bread construct come true.

Maybe he still could. After all, there was the question of what would happen if he tried evolving the spell... but he'd promised Akkau not to do any spell evolutions until the very end of the event.

He couldn't wait.

Right on time, Akkau's voice boomed out across the kitchen.

"Welcome, esteemed guests, to Brightscale's first baking magic convention," he said, his magic causing his voice to resonate through the massive hall. "Please see Alina for spell orientation if you have not already. She has a package of basic spell-tokens created by Professor Graystalk. You may use them to cast the few baking spells in active circulation, if you do not have the spells yourselves.

"Experiment! You are here because of your unique insights and experiences, and we ask nothing of you except that you mingle and learn about one another. Perhaps with your assistance, we will finally take a true step to understanding this, the true frontier of all magic. After all...

"I have it on good authority that in this, all realms are equal. Any discovery we make will be a true discovery of magic, and it will filter down into all the Great Realms. If ever you have wished for your magic to be known and remembered, then no matter how small it may seem, this is your chance."