MicroChange Magic

"No, soon after the hell inhabitants were breaking out and being taken down, kingdoms and empires, which we're still trying to repair itself after the Dragon Apocolypse, found how useful their bodies were in crafting entirely new items with powers they had never seen before. Soon, instead of repairing the cracks, they began protecting and even enlarging the tears to hell. It's not until fifty years and many many deaths before they were forced to repair the gaps. But by that time, the hell inhabitants had done nearly as much damage as the dragons three decades ago."

"So you want us to destroy all hell escapees and repair all the cracks? How many leakages will there be? And isn't the gate one place, shouldn't they all come from the one gate?"

"Hell is a place that takes all curses or contracted souls. The entrance needs to be everywhere at all times, the gate is the entire world so breakthroughs from hell can come from anywhere. Which of course means we're not gonna do it alone, that is far too great of a task. We will find people that are up to it and won't seek to satisfy their personal greed. Or those that we can easily demolish if they do try to backstab us for the riches."

"Do you know where they will all appear?"

"No, but there is a pattern that I know and I can guess, with 90% certainty, where the next shall appear. We will meet the next break soon, soon after we get to First Dwarven. We will have to hunt them down after letting the others get away. We don't want another Meda."

"Right. Don't want another death." He said, thinking back silently.

"Hey, do you want to learn how to use ice magic? It's rather simple once you've got water magic." Page asked.

Zeeth was sure he was thinking back to the last fight he had with Karkov when he tried to freeze him and his snakes as he was and he hurriedly said, "yeah."

"Great. Gror, would you like to take part as well?"

"What? I don't think so, I hardly use water magic."

"This isn't just for water magic, you use a lot of metal and possibly fire magic, right? This can help enhance your controls on those as well."

"Yeah, I'm good with fire and a little better at metal magic."

"Good, let's all pull out a bit of magic, Zeeth you'll use water and as for Gror, you should use a bit of metal magic. Fire magic is kinda dangerous in such a carriage.

Right, now take what you've conjured and carefully shape it into a sphere, as perfectly as you can get it," Page said.

It didn't take long for Zeeth to make a ball of water a foot wide and Gror had a slightly harder time but the ball of steel he made from a pile of dirt was swirled into the size of a handball.

"By the way, Gror," Zeeth started, "why don't you use that talent more? It seems so useful, you could probably make it rich by selling steel from things like dirt."

"I can't, it is not exactly making anything into steel. My ability just allows me to take the electrons, protons, and neutrons from the surroundings around me to make the steel and it takes a ton of work. I always feel super tired and old afterward."

"Yes, you have what is called MicroChange magic, often seen only in talents that people are born with because it is nearly impossible to learn. It saps away energy from your own body to move all those tiny atoms to such precise places so that the user is often tired out for hours, possibly days, if too much is used.

Normal spells only use the user mana, this uses the very energy, things like carbs or sugar from the user. This is also why the people who use such magic are often big eaters, to compensate for the incredible energy spent."

"So you can convert food and other materials into steel? That's still pretty cool."

"Yeah but it's super tiring and kinda painful so I hate doing it."

"Right, back to the lesson before you lose control of your spheres, now try to concentrate as much as you can into the center. Keep pushing, keep pushing…" by the end of a half-hour session, Page taught Zeeth how to form a magnificent ball of ice and taught Gror how to heat up a ball of steel without flames.

Once they understood the basis of the temperature change, they could do so with much less movement and steps, producing more in a fraction of that time. Zeeth made a simple ice sword, a long blade and a single handle, too dull and brittle to actually work and melted easily, but it reflected light through its icy blue blades and dazzled brilliantly.

Gror had a much harder time, trying to mold steel rather than water. He made them into cubes or pyramids.

First Dwarven was nothing like any of the other towns or cities he's been to. At first, it seemed like a massive, empty green plain with small mounds on the ground and mountains in the distance. There were grassy doorways on the mounds that blended in so well he wouldn't have noticed them if Gror hadn't shown them to him. The dwarves all lived underground and the entrances were the mounds.

upon getting out of the carriage, the first thing Gror did was knock on someone else's hidden door. a female Dwarf, with arms twice as large as Gror's already large arms, opened the door and came out, looking around. he told her, "there are merchants here who wish to trade, but they also want to stay so keep them around. I will explain to the elders and determine what to do."

"stay? human merchants want to stay?" she said suspiciously.

"Please, they aren't like the humans on the other side. I met them on my travels, I can vouch for them."

"fine," she said, but she didn't look secure, leading the large carriages away.

Gror hopped into another entrance and said, "Come in, guys. This is my home, I belong to the Upper Dwellers. Right, you don't know about that, we Dwarves are split between Upper, Middle, and Lower Dwellers. Those higher up focus on more intricate things like small gadgets and helpful tools. Like the little golem thing that I had that broke. It was my fifth creation. The Lower Dwellers focus more on larger things, like swords, shields, and whatnot. The Middle Dwellers don't fit anywhere, they either like both but don't excel, or are only good for delivering things."

The inside of Grors house was small but it was filled to the brim with odd scraps of metal, wood, and appliances. When the door opened, a small mat flew in the air and hit the wall right above the doorway.

"Damn, missed by just that much," said Gror when mat fell down and he went to the spring bouncing up and down and cranked it around with an old wrench.

"Was that a prank?"

"No, the mat has thousands of little claws attached by a moving part so that when it hits, the claws dig into the face of the intruder and they're forced away."

"And that was supposed to hit us?" Page asked.

"Well, no. I set it up to keep people away from my place while I was out and I just forgot about it. I was just disappointed it didn't hit. Don't worry, I could remove them with a bit of cold water."

"That would still hurt, wouldn't it?!" Zeeth exclaimed.

"Anyway, I should tell my elders about the place I found. Wanna come along?"

"Umm, I'm not sure, Page do we have the time?" Zeeth asked, conveying that he was thinking about the hell babies.

"Yeah, we have another day," he responded.

"Great, then lead the way, Gror!"

"Have another day for what? Are you leaving in a day?"

"Don't you have something to tell your elders?"

"Right!" he said, jumping up, "follow along! This will be great news, perhaps I could get a raise!"

He pulled open a wooden door on his floor and hopped down. Zeeth saw a rush of Dwarves, like a rush of streaming water flowing all over the place. They were all about as tall as Gror and they all had burly strong bodies. The dwarves rushed around but occasionally, some would look up and see the two humans, stare for a moment and rush away again.

"What are you doing? Come down." Gror called and the two jumped down onto a little platform the other Dwarves avoided to allow them down as the light shone on it. They jumped down, followed Gror, and rushed away, fighting the stream of Dwarves as the door shut behind them.

Following down a tunnel that Gror led, the dwarves thinned out until it was just them and a few others walking in the same direction. The tunnel was wider than it was tall and books decorated the walls. They had all sorts of coverings, some were made of thick leather, others of shiny metal, and some more were simply scales, yet none of them had titles. They were proudly presented in the light and safely guarded with thick glass and statues armed with weapons of the Dwarves guarded them.

"Come along, now." Gror said, "straight through this door. Now, make sure you don't talk about their age, their wrinkles, or anything that has to do with their old looks. Very sensitive folks."

"Gror, I heard that!" a man yelled through the door. "Get in here! What have you got to say?"