Serenity leaned down and rolled the expanded ball to Elder Lizven. That seemed to snap her out of her shock and she leaned over and carefully picked up the ball without letting her fingers dip into the openings. Serenity had the feeling that she’d had experience with people who’d worked the puzzle but not locked it into place; it looked like the sort of carefulness that happened after you’d made a painful mistake a few times.
It took Elder Lizven several minutes of examination before she gave her verdict. Her expression seemed confused. “The puzzle is completed properly. I see no signs of damage of any sort.” She handed the puzzle to Elder Ibken to examine, then turned her gaze on Serenity. “How did you solve the puzzle? You didn’t use the normal method.”
That made Serenity wonder what the normal method was. Perhaps it was moving the thin branches and seeing how the puzzle acted? That would explain Elder Inchabe’s confusion and why Elder Lizven had to ask. He shrugged before he answered. “I examined the spellform it’s maintaining. There are only a handful of inputs and the Affinities and spellform configurations told me which ones to use; they’re the only ones with singular inputs. The others have secondary input attributes for things like color or shape.”
Serenity was confident he’d read that much correctly. It was a very explicit spellform with very little room for Intent to alter things. For a puzzle, that made sense; you didn’t want people to finish a puzzle by wanting to unless you were specifically trying to train Intent. In that case, it shouldn’t be soluble without a specific directed Intent.
“You read the spellform.” Elder Lizven’s voice was flat and unrevealing. “And you’d never seen one of these before.” She took a deep breath, then let it out. “Where did - no, that’s the wrong question. What Affinity did you use?”
“Arcane, of course. I don’t have Life or Wood but I’m very good with Arcane.” Serenity sometimes wished he hadn’t leaned so hard into the Death Affinity when he first became Vengeance. It was a vague wish about a truth he’d long since accepted, but some of the most stable parts of Vengeance’s life were when he was experimenting with magic and runes, both tasks that drew heavily on Arcane instead of Death. They didn’t last, but he remembered them fondly.
The good times usually ended in Death anyway. In the times when everything went bad, his combat training and Death Affinity were far more useful than his magic practice. Runes took time, time he didn’t have when monsters or invaders of one sort or another overran the city he lived in. It’d happened more than once; he had to fight his way to a safer position before he could put his peacetime studies to work waging war.
“I see no signs of Death infiltration,” Elder Ibken interrupted Elder Lizven’s questioning. “I have no choice but to accept that his use of magic is sufficiently precise. The speed of the activation raises the question about sustained spellcasting.”
Elder Ibken handed the puzzle ball to Foremost Elder Omprek as he directed his attention to World Shaman Senkovar Et’Tart. “The skills you wish to teach him do require sustained spell use, I assume?”
Senkoval inclined his head towards the Elder. “Of course. Even if it did not, the payment you requested of preparing the land for another dome will. I expect that Serenity will perform most of the work; that is the best way to learn, after all.”
As long as he didn’t have to do the blank mind meditation thing Senkovar preferred, Serenity was happy with that. Putting what you’d learned to use was one of the best ways to be certain you’d actually learned it, after all. The last few months had been odd as he tried to learn what Senkovar had to teach him and adapt it to how Serenity preferred to perform magic; Senkovar didn’t really like that. He seemed convinced that his way was the best and would only back off when Serenity could show results with his methods that were as good as Senkovar’s. That wasn’t easy to achieve in areas where Senkovar was the expert.
This was the first time Serenity had heard that creating a new dome space was specifically payment for allowing him to practice on Berinath. He was pretty confident that Senkovar had told him it was the best way to practice. That still seemed reasonable, which made Serenity wonder if Senkovar had convinced the dryads to let him on Berinath by offering them the results of what Senkovar wanted to teach Serenity. It made some sense and also explained why Senkovar had only mentioned that terraforming was possible without getting into the details.
It made Serenity wonder why Senkovar was so set on traveling through Berinath. It didn’t make much sense; yes, the other routes were longer, but they were going to be spending most of the time they saved in travel working on Berinath. Lord Cymryn didn’t seem to have any issues with that, either, but he’d made it quite clear that Senkovar was in charge of their route and he was simply the facilitator.
That probably tied in with why Senkovar didn’t even consider using a spaceship to jump around Berinath. He muttered about the cost, but didn’t even want Serenity to find out how much it would cost. Every time Serenity brought it up, Senkovar changed the topic. Serenity hadn’t fought too hard; he knew he was going to be away from Rissa and Jenna for a long time but there was very little he could do about that. He’d have a chance to see them when they made it to Lyka, which was on the route not too long after Berinath.
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Elder Ibken did not look pleased at World Shaman Senkovar’s declaration, but at the same time Serenity didn’t think he’d seen Elder Ibken look pleased yet. “Then we absolutely must test his ability to control his Affinity leakage over long spells as well as short. I did not pre-prepare a test for this as I did not expect him to complete the puzzle without extended casting.”
“Accepted,” Foremost Elder Omprek stated. “Move on to the next item while we think about an extended casting test.”
“A combat test, perhaps?” Elder Inchabe proposed. “I expect Ibken has one planned; that should be a good time for an extended casting test. I accept that one is required.”
“Not during the combat test,” Elder Lizven objected. “That isn’t a fair representation of what he will be doing while he is trained. Complicated spellwork of some sort seems more appropriate, probably something that will take hours. In any case, I also accept that the test is required.”
Serenity wanted to be insulted by the requirement; of course he could control his Affinity leakage! If you couldn’t, it was a waste of mana and worse it would affect every spell you cast. That didn’t matter too much if your spells were all similar and based on a single Affinity, but Serenity commonly cast multi-Affinity spells. That meant he had to properly handle the inevitable residue so that it didn’t corrupt the spell.
The amount of mana he lost with any moderate to high Affinity spellcasting was small, small enough that it was completely negligible and could be handled by the world’s normal processes; only high-sensitivity things like rituals required additional cleaning. As far as Serenity was concerned, something like this room should never happen; it was the sign of careless, inefficient spellcasting.
It was probably common on Earth. It took time to become skilled at casting spells. The thought was somewhat depressing, but even then Serenity had never seen anything like this on Earth; even Rissa’s spare room that had held artifacts for years had pooled mana only when they were there and had it start dissipating relatively soon thereafter. That might be because of the sheer number of dungeons and ley lines Earth had. Was Berinath dungeon-poor like Zon, or had they deliberately located this chamber in a place with very little natural magic?
“Serenity, do you have a spell type you’ve been working on recently that is maintained yet relatively high power and does not use your Death Affinity?” The World Shaman’s question was unexpected; Serenity had expected the next question to come from one of the dryads.
Serenity had to think about that for a moment. “A long-duration spell that isn’t a ritual? Some shielding spells, mostly. Most of the others are cast and last until they’re worn out or are very quick effects. Well, other than portal spells; I can’t hold a portal for very long unless it’s very close or I’m in a ley line so I can draw on it for power.”
Serenity followed Senkovar’s gaze as he turned towards Foremost Elder Omprek. The Elder responded to the implied question with a nod. “First, I believe our Challenger has prepared to test your Vital Affinity using another method. After that, assuming you pass of course, will be the combat test. A sustained spell test will have to wait until we are past those.”
“It has been long enough.” Elder Ibken walked over to an edge of the tiled area that was off to Serenity’s right, opposite where Senkovar sat. The runic inscription on the floor created an eddy there, but Serenity still wasn’t certain what it was for; he hadn’t fully deciphered that part of the inscription yet. It was complex enough that what he had deciphered so far was partly through experience of its effects and partly through familiarity with some similar patterns, but that section was not put together in a way Serenity had ever used. It looked sort of like a place to connect in another rune or spell, but without that connection it was simply a weak point.
How much it was like a connection became even more obvious when Elder Ibken knelt next to it, extended a hand towards it, and muttered a few words as he made a complicated gesture with the outstretched hand. Serenity could see a spellform take shape; it was there and gone too fast for him to get more than a vague understanding of the spell, but it looked like a concentrated magesight spell of some sort. Serenity wasn’t certain why; there wasn’t really anything there to look at.
Elder Ibken frowned and looked up at Serenity. “There isn’t any Death mana here, but there isn’t anything else here either. Are you doing something to block the collection of your Vital Affinity?”
Serenity sighed. He could already guess where this was going. “Is that what the mana drain is for? I told you I didn’t like it when I set up the shield.”
“Of course it drains mana! That’s how the Insavi method works.” Elder Ibken looked annoyed. “Now we’re going to have to wait even longer for the test, once you get rid of that shield.”
“I think there’s something more important than that, Ibken,” Foremost Elder Omprek rose to his feet and made his way slowly over next to the other elder dryad. “Two things, really. First, if he can block the mana drain, the Insavi method isn’t reliable. We’re going to have to resort to the Echa rune. It’s fast, at least.”
Elder Ibken snorted. “Fast and dangerous if he’s lying. You know what the Echa rune does to undead.”
“That’s the point,” Elder Omprek pointed out. “It only works on undead, even if we still don’t know how Echa’s blessing manages that. I’m willing to let him make the choice. More than that, I think we have our result for the sustained spell test. There’s no Death mana here, I agree, which means his control is better than mine given the Death I can feel in his aura.”