Sand's Not Real

Sand's Not Real is set on Anastis, five years before Mage Errant.

And of course y'all picked the shortest, weirdest story this month. Though maybe you just missed Anastis?
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“What do you mean, there’s no such thing as sand?” Hepthet Dras demanded. The hive mind of mites shifted their house-sized beetle host body irritably in the direction of Verrifax, then dramatically shredded one of the attacking mages with tiny localized sandstorm. 

Verrifax sighed heavily, then used his own sand magic to suffocate several more raiders on one of the ships circling them. “I know it sounds bizarre, but…”

“Is this just the whole thing where sand is just rocks of a specific size?” Querulous Yohanna asked, from where she hovered in her cloud of lightning-anchored fulgurites, like some bizarre, hallucinatory sea urchin. She only sounded mildly interested, which was fair— most of her attention was on launching the fulgurites to impale enemy mages and soldiers.

“No, or at least mostly not,” Verrifax said, then spat fire at another enemy sandship. It deflected off the windshield, but it did get the ship to swerve away a bit. “Anyhow, I didn’t say there was no such thing as sand, I said that sand wasn’t a thing.”

“What’s the difference?” Hepthet Dras asked.

“Basically, I’m saying that sand affinities aren’t a material affinity,” Verrifax said, then rolled out of the way of a ballista bolt. He was on the small side for a dragon, he’d never been able to just shrug off siege weaponry. 

“That’s hardly a new affinity, I’ve heard scholars claim it was a structural affinity like crystal before,” Dras said.

“They’re surely wrong though, because crystal and sand overlap so much,” Yohanna said, ducking several fireballs.

“Why can’t two structural affinities overlap?” Peryn the Fourth asked, finally joining the conversation. The illusionist seer wasn’t actually with them— his body was hidden in one of the Tomb Guards’ lairs, while he monitored and directed the battle with his farsight, light, and windtalking affinities. 

Unlike most windtalkers, he claimed to have an actual windtalking affinity, and certainly, none of the other Tomb Guards had ever seen him using any other form of wind magic.

“I’ve heard that crystal and fiber affinities overlap at their edges, with certain fibrous minerals,” Hepthet Dras offered, as he tore the crew off an enemy sandship with a particularly vicious dust devil.

Verrifax sighed as he picked himself up out of the sand. “No, I’m not saying sand affinities are a structural affinity. I’m saying they're a process affinity, like flame.”

Everyone paused a bit at that.

Paused in the conversation, that is, not in battle. They still kept slaughtering the intruders that had sailed over the prison of the Sleeper Beneath the Sands. 

Not that they slaughtered intruders by default, most of them they just firmly escorted out of the area, but these intruders had attacked on sight, so…

“Alright, you’re going to need to explain that one,” Yohanna finally said.

“So, the standard claim is that sand is just rocks of a specific size, right?” Verrifax said.

“Particulate of a particular size range,” Hepthet Dras said. “There’s also often bits of shell, a small portion of organic detritus, bits of glass, and so on.”

“Sure,” Verrifax said, then launched himself up into the air. “That aside, I’m looking at the reasons sand is in a particular size range and tends to be clustered together.”

“I mean, sand is just what society collectively decided to label that particular range of soil type,” Peryn said. “Other societies might have subtly or even not-so-subtly diverging definitions of sand- they might split it into two or three substances.”

“Also true, but still not what I’m getting at,” Verrifax said as he ascended. “I’m saying that sand tends to fall into that size range because it’s the product of very specific mechanisms— weathering mechanisms, erosional mechanisms, and sorting mechanisms. And those processes never truly stop— the wind blows the sand about, and sand grains grind against sand grains, and each is worn down over time. And the bits that grow too small become dust, and blow away over the ocean, only to be replaced with new grains of sand eroded down out of the mountains. Sand is ultimately impermanent, just a narrow view of a larger process. It’s a painting of a a single moment in time, in between rocks and dust.”

Conversation was interrupted for a moment when Verrifax slammed down from the air onto the deck of an enemy ship and began tearing apart sailors with tooth and claw. 

“Wait, so you’re saying that what we call sand is just a specific stage in the erosional process, and that’s what you have an affinity for? A specific stage in the erosional process?” Yohanna asked.

Even with the distance between them, Peryn effortlessly maintained communication, so they could converse uninterrupted.

“Essentially, yes,” Verrifax said, though his voice was muffled by the screaming sailor in his mouth. He bit down, then spat out the corpse. “Fire affinities are, after all, just affinities for a specific stage in a type of alchemical reaction, and it’s unquestionably a process affinity.”

“Yes, but fire is in constant flux, changes in front of your eyes. You can’t see sand changing in any reasonable time-frame,” Dras said, his beetle host body crushing a sandskiff beneath it and ripping into a second with its jaws. Since Dras didn’t use the beetle to talk, it didn’t affect his speech at all.

“Well, that’s the thing, there’s no reason why a the process of a process affinity has to progress at a particular speed,” Verrifax said. “It’s just custom that makes us demand specific time-frames. Erosion is a slower process, to be sure, but it’s no less a process than combustion.”

“But by that standard, what wouldn’t be a process?” Yohanna asked. “Stone would just be a magmatic process, water would just be a climatic process, storms, even plants would just be an ecological process. That would make nearly everything a process affinity.”

“Yes, that’s precisely correct!” a voice interrupted, clearly having overheard Peryn's voice projections.

Verrifax blinked, then turned to stare down the deck of the ship towards the speaker.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Pretty much all affinities are process affinities!” the speaker said. “At least, almost all material affinities.”

“Peryn, could you include this gentleman in our conversation?” Verrifax asked, then began slaughtering his way across the deck of the ship towards the speaker in question. “And you, repeat what you just said.

“Pretty much all material affinities are process affinities,” the man said. “At least, they are if you play with the timescales involved, usually by stretching them out. For that matter, most process affinities can also be counted as material affinities if you shrink the timescales you’re using.”

“That’s absurd,” Yohanna asked. “Also, who are we speaking to?”

“I’m Yohann of Yldive, a scholar at Yldive’s university. We might not be as large as we used to be, but we still do good work.”

“No way, my name’s Yohanna!” Yohanna said. “Small world! And yes, I’ve heard good things about Yldive’s university.”

“I’m happy our reputation hasn’t faded entirely!” Yohann said. “Also, I’d like to point out that I’m a prisoner of these pirates, and politely request that you not kill me?”

“You shut your mouth, or I’ll kill you myself!” a pirate shouted at Johann.

Verrifax silenced the pirate with a quartzite spear he’d crystallized out of sand. The dragon wasn’t a crystal mage, but he could use a remarkable number of crystal magic spells compared to most sand mages— at least ones relating, of course, to sand.

“That does explain why you’re tied up,” Verrifax said. “Would you like assistance?”

“That would be lovely,” Yohann of Yldive said. “I’d very much appreciate it.”

“Don’t mention it,” Verrifax said. “Now, you were saying about process affinities?”

“Ah, right! Simply speaking, the entire framework of affinity types— material, process, structural, and meta-affinities— is a fundamentally artificial taxonomy, a series of categories that exist purely for the convenience of sentients. They’re unquestionably useful, but this one, like all taxonomies, is riddled with exceptions, edge cases, and confusing factors. Taxonomical categories that only stay consistent under particular frames of reference are one of the most frequent failure modes of taxonomic systems.”

“Hold on, aren’t all taxonomies fundamentally artificial?” Peryn the Fourth asked. “It seems a bit redundant to speak of artificial taxonomies.”

“Well, yes, but the degree of artificiality varies,” Yohann said. “Taxonomies have greater or lesser degrees of correspondence to physical reality. Never perfect, of course, but often quite good. Some of the most dangerous taxonomies, though, are those who have some of the least correspondence to physical reality, but are treated as though they were the perfect truth by their adherents.”

“This seems a little off topic, but taxonomies like what?” Verrifax asked curiously.

“Mostly taxonomies that divide people into opposed groups,” Yohann admitted.

The collected Tomb Guards all made noises of agreement at that.

“To get back on topic, of course, you can easily make convincing, truthful arguments shifting almost any affinity from one type to another, merely by changing the frames of reference you use to discuss the affinity, whether those frames are temporal, as you used, or deal with divergent environments or physical conditions, or even linguistic parameters,” Yohann said. “It’s a puzzle philosophers have confronted since pre-Ithonian times, albeit not one of significant interest to most of the public.”

“Huh,” Hepthet Dras said, as he tore another sandship to shreds. “So I guess Verrifax is right, sand really isn’t a thing.”

“Under the right frame of reference, absolutely not,” Yohann agreed.

“Huh, you know what?” Yohanna said meditatively, while impaling one enemy soldier after another with her flying fulgurites. “I think I’ve just thought of an argument for sand being a meta affinity.”

“Fascinating!” Yohann said. “I’d be delighted to hear it.”

“Likewise,” Verrifax offered.

“Hold a moment,” Peryn said. “Before we get back to that, two things— Yohann, would you like to come stay with us as a guest of the Tomb Guards for a time?”

“I’d be even more delighted,” Yohann said. “It certainly beats my present accommodations.”

“I’ll get you untied in a moment,” Verrifax said, apologetically, through a mouthful of dead and dying raiders.

“And second,” Peryn said, “I have to ask, do you know why these idiots are attacking the prison of the Sleeper?”

“Oh, that’s easy enough. They’re just pirates, kidnapped me to help them find a way through your defenses because they think the Sleeper is made up, and that you’re actually protecting a big pile of treasure.”

“Hah, called it!” Yohanna said. “Pay up!”

The others all grumbled at her winning the bet, especially Verrifax, who’d been betting on the raiders having some magical device they thought could control the Sleeper. “Anyhow, you were saying something about sand being a meta affinity?” Hepthat Dras asked.

As the Tomb Guards slaughtered the last of the attacking pirates, they resumed their rambling, esoteric conversation.

After all, there wasn’t much to do in the depths of the sand sea, besides killing invaders and discussing random questions of philosophy. 

It sure beat spending their time contemplating the monstrous, city-eating, unkillable terminarch imprisoned thousands of feet below them in the depths of the Endless Erg.