It turned out that Phoebe knew more than a dozen different divination spells or rituals that would point at a spot on a map, depending on what she was searching for and how much information she had. To her, they were all different; they had different chants and gestures, and they didn’t share with each other. She only knew three of them well enough to cast them off the top of her head without refreshing her memory on the details.
Serenity suspected that some of the differences were there because spells that were too similar would lead to people mixing them together, which could lead to odd miscasts as the Intent took over the spell structure. The point was to control the spell; only someone practiced with Intent-based sorcery could or should use it without a reliable guide of some sort.
Serenity was still kicking himself for doing exactly that. He still hadn’t had a chance to talk to anyone other than Lancaster about what his spell had done, and while it didn’t seem to have directly harmed him, he didn’t have any idea what the long-term effects of a Fae core on a human would be.
He also didn’t know how the Intent he remembered would have had that effect.
Serenity watched Phoebe run through a minimum-power version of her ‘Find Direction’ spell again. It wasn’t specifically map-based, but it sounded like a piece of the overall spell he was building. He could see the spell formation as she formed it; there were some interesting cues at the edges, places where it looked like it was flattened to fit things that weren’t there. “Did this spell come from a larger spell? It looks like it’s been cut down and not reoptimized.”
The central section he was looking at would do very well for the ‘traveling sensor’ part of the ley-finding spell; it already had the guides, and he wouldn’t have to sand down the corners for the next piece to fit against it.
“You can tell that? I’m definitely introducing you to Red when we get home.” At Serenity’s quizzical look, Phoebe laughed then continued. “Red’s a cousin of mine - she’s a spellwitch instead of an oracle. I envied her lack of visions but not all the studying she had to do to learn magic. She’s the one that worked out that spell, it’s surprisingly useful. I think it came out of an old English grimoire, but honestly I didn’t care.”
Maybe Phoebe had had more of a chance to learn magical theory than Serenity had assumed. “I think I see what I need from that one. Let’s take a look at your Locate Person spell, I want to see if it has the bits I need for map-marking.”
“It uses a pendulum instead of sand, though?” Phoebe objected. She’d already said that she disliked Locate Person; it was too draining.
“Try to locate me. I’ll be standing next to you, so it shouldn’t take that much energy.” Serenity sighed internally. That much should be obvious; he’d already said that the power cost went up by the cube of the distance, wasn’t it clear that it wouldn’t be that draining if you searched for something nearby?
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It took a couple hours for Serenity to stitch together a spell that Phoebe could cast that would do the job. It was going to be far less efficient than simply making the spellform, but it was the best he could do. He honestly wasn’t sure he’d be able to build a better rote spell without a lot of study on how words and gestures shaped the spellform; it was harder than he’d expected to get the bits to stick together correctly.
By the end, Serenity was half-regretting his decision not to build a proper ritual. It would have been easier to do a ritual. The caster of a ritual mattered a lot less, and he might have been able to manage it even with whatever damage he’d done to himself, but it would have taken longer than stitching the spells together. Casting the ritual itself would probably only take a few hours, but he’d have needed to make a permanent set of ritual implements, and that took time. More than that, any ritual had to be performed at a propitious time.
Divination rituals in particular tended to have ties to the moon on any planet that had a moon. In a way, Serenity was grateful Earth only had one; it made acceptable times for rituals less common, but figuring out when they were was much easier.
Ley lines resonated with the seasons and the Sun. Even if it wasn’t the right season, he could get nearly the same effect by choosing the right time of day to perform the ritual. Mapping also had a day/night component, but that wasn’t the problem.
No, it was the connection between divination and the moon that was the issue. A divination ritual wouldn’t work well unless it was either the dark of the moon with no interference, or the full moon when all was revealed. The rituals were different, but either would work.
Oh, there were exceptions. Few things were completely cut-and-dry in magic, after all. Serenity was pretty sure he could put together a ritual that would find himself that would function at mid-moon, taking advantage of the properties of transience and crossover. Still, that wouldn’t work with ley lines; they were fully defined and solid. The new moon would be better than the full, but either could work.
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Unfortunately, they were four days past the end of the full moon. It was roughly a week before the ritual would work well; he might be able to cast it before then, but even so, it was better to simply use the spell he’d stitched together. If it didn’t work, the worst that would happen was a scorch mark and some destroyed paper. They’d still have time to try to get set up before the new moon.
Serenity strode to the map, next to where he’d laid out the bags of different-colored sand. He’d planned to handle dispersing them along with casting the spell, but Phoebe wasn’t going to be able to do that. Serenity still knew where in the spell the right points were, and he could see the spellforms as she made them. He’d still have to feel the spell as it cast to know when to start a new color or stop an old one, but that was easy enough.
Somewhere during the past few hours, Serenity had figured out how to manage moving around with Rissa’s eyesight and his own, even when he wasn’t next to her. All he had to do was concentrate on using his own. Opening the bags of sand reminded him that he still wasn’t used to using her sight, unfortunately; it took much longer than it should have as he fumbled his way through untying the knots more by feel than by sight.
He did need her sight to know which color was which and put them in the order he wanted. More than that, though, he wanted to learn how to use it. If the neural interface worked out and he was able to use a camera, it probably wouldn’t be directly in front of his eyes; while it could be - using the sunglasses (which he couldn’t see through at all) had told him that he didn’t actually see from his eyes - having his primary vision be from somewhere other than his eyes was disconcerting.
On second thought, maybe making the camera be from his eyes’ point of view wouldn’t be that bad; he could consider it his primary point of view. Also, they made some tiny cameras now; maybe he could do a headband or something, or even glasses without lenses.
That was a matter for a later time. Serenity finally had the bags of colored sand laid out where he wanted them, so he nodded at Phoebe. “Go ahead, I’m ready.”
Phoebe paced around the map until she stood at the north end, then started chanting. “Ahriftha lyhaes torina…” As far as Serenity could tell, it wasn’t actually in a language; it seemed more like nonsense syllables to set the caster’s mood. That wasn’t true of all of the chants she’d demonstrated, but it was true of most of them.
Serenity had deliberately avoided the ones that were from other languages. Language was a form of codifying Intent; while speaking a chant in another language would force you to direct it and channel the power, it still had an effect. Since he was adapting spells, cutting and pasting bits together, Serenity didn’t want to accidentally find out that he’d grabbed something that twisted the Intent he was trying to build with his cobbled-together spellform.
Serenity watched carefully. As Phoebe reached the correct point in the spell, she started walking around the map, towards the east. Serenity reached into the leftmost bag of sand for some plain white sand. It would be used for this ley line; he’d need to put more of it out there as the spell moved.
The sand seemed to float in the air over the map, but some was drawn to a spot near the center of the area shown. Even without looking closely, Serenity knew that that spot would be where they stood; the spell didn’t really have to do much for that to work.
As Phoebe took another step, Serenity reached his hand into the next pouch for some red sand. He carefully tossed only a little over the map; the spell could only hold so much in the air, after all, and he didn’t know when it would find the next ley line. This was what he needed Rissa’s eyes for; while he could tell the spell was searching by looking at the spellform, the red sand gathering on the map would be a far better indication of the next ley line than the slight dimming of the spellform as it had to use more of its power to trace a second ley line.
Serenity knew it couldn’t be far; they were standing nearly on top of a second - there it was. The red was starting to lay over the white sand. Serenity tossed some more of each onto the map, then a little of the blue sand from the next bag. The third ley line would be the real test; Serenity didn’t know how far it was. The odds were good it would be within the area, but it didn’t have to be.
By the time Phoebe had paced all the way around the map slowly, the ley lines had expanded about half a mile in each direction, but Serenity hadn’t needed to add more blue sand. As Phoebe knelt and put her hands on the map for the last stage of the spell - simply powering the completed spellform - Serenity saw the blue start to gather near the northeast edge of the red line.
Serenity kept feeding in more sand to let the lines expand and adding new sand colors as new ley lines were found. By the time the original white and red lines reached the edge of the mapped area, Serenity was worried; he had only the last color of sand left. He hadn’t expected more than four ley lines in the area, so he’d brought seven sand colors; they seemed far more bunched up than he’d expected.
“Can someone tear me some, uh, grass bits? Something light. I’m afraid we’re about to run out of sand.” When his vision from Rissa started to move, Serenity had to amend his instructions. “Not you, Rissa! I need you to keep watching the map.”
The map eventually finished with eight connected ley lines covering a decent part of New York City; it was twice what he’d expected, and the maps they’d brought hadn’t even covered the entire city, never mind the surrounding areas.
There wasn’t a good way to transport the map with sand on it, so everyone who could took pictures with their phones from different angles. Even Rissa was able to; there had been plenty of time for her father’s battery to charge her phone.
Raz simply stared at the map with an expression that seemed like a mix of hope and desperation.