Liam sat with his legs crossed in front of the ashes of the campfire, his eyes closed, fingers tracing over the rope circlet as he redid the knot. The one Maridah had shown him to extract the iron and carbon from the dirt had thirteen intersections. For all intents and purposes, it was a spell pattern that could be classified as “substandard” in terms of complexity for any modern mage.
The spell Umira had used to melt part of the aqueduct had contained at least ten times the number of intersections, with sub-spells added into the mix. And she’d cast the thing with just one hand.
The moment he’d finished bending the rope into the right shape, he triggered it to seal. The rope started off nearly twenty meters, and once it locked in, the race began. Liam had to use his digits to carefully bend the shrinking rope and its knots. While there was rope to spare, the shape would always be too vague and laid about, with certain pieces of the rope overlapping or touching where they should not. So it was Liam’s work to follow how the rope bent and shrunk with his digits, almost as if he were sculpting the final design, setting into place the pieces that would no longer shrink or bend.
It was a twisted little contraption; it gave the impression that taking less time was a plus, but it was the opposite. The rope would achieve its “perfect” form on its own within seconds, and that was a sign that the “spell” had become unstable and blown up. Were it actual magic, then each failure could’ve probably cost him a finger or at least his eyebrows.
Accomplished mages could intentionally take simple spells and take longer to cast them just to show off their fine control.
The rope circlet was truly marvelous as a learning tool, not just because it gave him the option to safely practice the shapes, but in the finer details. The softness of its surface didn’t chafe or irritate his skin no matter how many repetitions he took, and the rope had an internal force of its own, slightly guiding his touch forward. A force that would step back and let him do it when he was getting it right.
Now and then, Liam’s gut would let out a pang of hunger, and he’d swipe a piece of shimmer-chicken from the pile he’d cooked in bulk that day (it tasted like bacon, which he was absolutely certain had been an intentional design choice on Maridah’s part. A fun little “secret”).
The mythical skillet of delicious meals was currently serving as a water pot for whenever he got thirsty.
It was a tireless rote repetition devoid of breaks or rest. Every second was spent pushing and bending the rope under his fingers, burning the proper form like a choreography for his hands. Liam’s long slender fingers caressed, pressed, pinched, and twisted the rope as if in a dance, a set of steps he burned into his memory.
Magic was not something innate to mortals; it was not something you were born with. People could have more or less talent in spells, but this gap was entirely born out of either comprehension or practice or both. There was no such thing as a special bloodline that granted special control or powers. To be a mage was not something predestined for one to stumble upon.
Magic was the fruit of study and training. And Liam was cheating his way forward by having the best possible teacher he could’ve hoped for.
There was no need for sleep; fire was only necessary for the sake of warmth, not to actually see what he was doing. By the first sunrise, Liam was doing it all through touch alone, his eyes closed because they’d been stinging for a while already. The second day came, and he’d barely reached halfway down the pile of meat, not that he needed much food when he barely moved from the spot.
And on the third day, the rope did something different.
As Liam pressed the knots’ curves, smoothing out areas and moving the intersections into the proper positions, using the tension of each twist and bend to keep it from shrinking into itself too quickly… it stopped.
It stopped shrinking. Where it would’ve normally pulled into itself until it was slightly larger than a basketball, now it remained still.
Liam’s eyes shot open, staring as the black rope had taken on a mild silver coloration. The moment of shock made his fingers slip, though, and just as quickly as it had stopped, the tension returned, and it collapsed before he could stop it.
He blinked at the walnut-sized knotted rope.
The color was different, not the light-sucking ever-black but a pale gray.
“Congratulations.” The Goddess appeared again, this time picking the form of a cougar, silently pacing around him. “It took you half the time I’d anticipated, but then again, I’d considered you would’ve done things like sleep or eat enough to stay healthy.” There was a definite chiding tone as the feline eyed the pile of cooked meat that lay cold at his side. Her fiery eyes returned to him. “Must I tell you of the flaws in your approach?”
Liam grimaced. “No, no, I… get it. If I were entirely alone, doing something like this would’ve meant I’d probably die at the first sign of trouble. My actions only make sense in the context of the luxury I am provided by being your guest, and in the safety of your domain.”
“As long as you are conscious of this, then I will not push the matter too much.” She scoffed. “It wouldn’t do if my faithful would just up and die because they were so focused on learning a new spell, they forgot they were in a viper’s den.”
“I hope I'll at least be a tasty meal.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“Hardly.” Maridah gave him a look, snorted, and rolled her eyes. “You barely have any meat on you.”
“Now don’t go around pretending you’re my grandma and stuffing me to the gills with food.”
“The… no, just no.” The Maridah-cougar scowled at him, huffing and shaking her head. “But we digress. You’ve learned the first motions of spellcraft—”
He excitedly bounced on the spot a little, grinning. “Do I get to learn how to extract mana from aether?”
“No.” She raised her chin. “You will continue with your shaping exercises. Expand the number of spells you can successfully knot; they must be of at least twelve pass-overs or more.”
“Shouldn’t I learn what they do?”
“Asking for the Goddess of Secrets to give you knowledge?” Maridah smirked. “Do not concern yourself with knowledge or understanding. Your priority is to acclimate your touch to the feeling of shaping a spell, to feel for the weaknesses, and where they might collapse.”
Liam knew of the various ways to learn magic, and the most popular was knowledge first. Mages were made to memorize countless spell patterns and what each of them did, having gone through hundreds of them before they were ever allowed to even look at aether up close.
The whole point of the approach was for the sake of safety. When practicing a spell, it was best to know the ins and outs beforehand. Particularly in the way that some spells going awry could be survivable if you knew the appropriate details. But really it was also in case the apprentice actually succeeded.
To cast a spell blindly was borderline suicidal if you didn’t know what it would do. What if you expect an earth-wall spell, aim it at the area in front of you, and then it turns out to be a fireball? It was one of the reasons why making new spells could often be seen as a more risky endeavor than going to war. It was also how many a noble family had made fortunes out of being the sole group of people knowledgeable in niche spells. So long as no one came along to copy it, they could have a near-guaranteed monopoly over the knowledge.
“Could you at least tell me if I have an affinity for something?” he muttered dejectedly.
“Ah, how could I forget.” With a sagely nod, Maridah stepped closer. “Bow your head.”
Liam perked up at that, a flutter of excitement as he shifted to a kneeling position, doing as she’d requested. Maridah-cougar softly touched the crown of his head with her paw, a shudder ran through his body.
“I sense…” She inhaled sharply, a half-gasp as she recoiled away. “Oh.”
“What? What is it?” he tensed.
“It’s…” Maridah hesitated, tail flicking nervously. “I saw that…” She lowered her voice, barely a whisper. Liam leaned closer, and she breathed the words into his ear. “I saw that you will have to hunt again before you get to mana training.”
“Gah!” He shoved her off.
Maridah laughed, rolling with the shove and getting back up to all fours with grace, as if she’d intended to get pushed all along.
“Playing with a young man’s heart like that…” Liam pouted, crossing his arms dejectedly.
Her lips parted into a hungry grin. “Oh? You thought THAT was playing with your heart?”
“Don’t,” he declared abruptly. “Just… don’t, please.”
She cocked her head at him. “And what do you think I was going to do?”
“Take human form,” Liam rubbed his neck, looking away.
“Afraid that you might be smitten by my beauty?” Maridah purred, though keeping the distance between them, respecting Liam’s clear need for space.
“The thought feels wrong,” he explained. “I… know too much about you.”
Liam had exacting knowledge of her deepest secrets, her deepest desires, her past, present, and even future. Maridah might be a Goddess that could unmake him from reality with but a gesture, but at the same time she had vulnerabilities and blind spots. It was a level of information that he actively tried not to consciously dwell into, but this situation had felt like it had led into one of those blind spots.
A situation where Maridah would’ve unknowingly exposed gaps in her armor.
Ones he didn’t want to have within reach.
“It’s not exactly… it’s off,” he shook his head.
“I would’ve questioned that claim were it anyone else,” she said as she lay down on the ground, curling into herself, staring at him as she relaxed. “Knowledge is power, and even with trust, that power can create imbalances, skew one’s own mind and views,” Maridah huffed. “Deities seeking mortal love cannot avoid participating in such imbalances after all. Many mortals can be so easily manipulated…”
“I don’t want to be like the Weaver,” the words came out with more firmness than they might have warranted. “I… I loved the secret of the rust-moss exactly because it was a surprise. Manipulating someone, controlling them, squeezing the freedom out of… no. I don’t want that.”
Liam’s words resonated with something inside him, something that brought a wave of shame and fear. He had once done exactly as he had described, done something horrible for the sake of control. It was all so vague and ephemeral that it made the guilt all the harder to process, the emotion just didn’t have anything to grasp at or understand. Liam felt a strange detachment to the him that had the memories of the past, wanting to understand even though some part of him kept insisting it was he shouldn't unbury it.
The Goddess hadn’t moved, her fiery eyes observing him intensely, carefully, looking through him. “Normally it is far easier for me to read a mortal’s moods and the reasons for them,” she said absently, then sighed. "Yet you remain annoyingly hard to puzzle."
“How…” Liam swallowed. “What ways do Gods have to not make relationships shitty when it comes to mortals?”
Maridah’s gaze lingered on him.
“I might be a Goddess of secrets, but I do not enjoy gossip,” she blatantly lied, her lips curled in amusement. “If you must know, then the only paths worth mentioning are those where the mortal becomes a demigod.”
“Because mortal lives are so short it could all just be a moment of indiscretion or passion in the eyes of a God?” he grumbled.
“Something to that extent,” the Goddess shrugged. “But it is also that a deity cannot be equal much less weak to a mortal. We are too old, too experienced, too powerful. If we are manipulated by a mortal, then it is because we allow ourselves to be or because another deity was involved.” With a yawn, she stretched out and stood back up. “Now rest, you’ve not slept for several days.”
Liam absently nodded, some part of him wishing she was right about that, but his mind was more distraught with other things.
Things like how he'd found out there was a bigger reason why Liam felt so strongly that he had to keep his past buried while around Maridah.
Something to do with her human form.