Dawn playfully air-boxes in vaguely my direction, without her fists making contact with me. She laughs as she comments, “Anyway Rej, glad to hear you still sound like you. We’re somewhere new, right? Coming up on the mystical Hidden at the Heart of the Wilds or something, right? Lotsa rumors and lore about them, even from way back. I’m kinda giddy.”
I chuckle as the left half of my face is dragged into a wide smile. Nodding, I estimate, “We are getting pretty close, yeah. Looks like Teuila needed a break though, we’re slightly in the mud on a bank of the river and it seems like she got tuckered out in the last couple minutes.”
I ask, “Do you want to give rafting a go if I shove us off back into the river? Or should we just wait for Teuila to wake up?”
Dawn scratches the back of her head while answering, “I dunno if it’s a good idea to have me navigating anything Rej. Let’s just wait for Boss, yeah? You can keep studying or get a snooze in or whatever. I won’t bother ya.”
I fight a sad frown, wearing a neutral face as I explain, “Dawn, you, glp, you’re not a bother. You’re a friend. You know that, right? We care and we like having you around because you’re our friend. At least, I feel that way, and I’m certain Teuila does too.”
Dawn glances around, avoiding eye contact in embarrassment. She respond, “Yeah, sure pal, no biggie. Really though, I’m good. But you and Boss, yeah, definitely, friends, for sure. Uh, you too Percy. I think. And the hyper nervous little blue guy, Dippy, and his pal, Zippy. Only knew them for a few hours before they were fighting a whole cult basically for me and mine.”
I nod while wearing a forlorn half-smile. Dippy really was willing to just put it all out there for people he had just met, based on whatever sense of their character that he got.
I feel like his thought process was something like, “Not dwarves? Probably not out to intentionally kill us, maybe try to not kill them. These not-dwarves helping with some big problems? True allies. Innocent dwarf lady bleeding out? Let’s put a stop to that. These not-dwarves have a quest, and pick up a friend of theirs along the way? Another true ally.” I mean, that’s how he came across anyway.
I gulp and gnaw the inside of my cheek as I avoid eye contact momentarily while we both stew in a short bout of embarrassment. Dawn gets slapped in the face by a rolling, still-asleep Teuila while not paying attention. Dawn appears grateful that Teuila strips down to her night-clothing before sleeping, since one of Te’s soft hands is a lot better than being slapped in the face by a Valkyrie gauntlet. The both of us chuckle momentarily at Teuila’s sleepy rolling. At least it’s not tossing and turning in a fitful sense. Te simply reorients occasionally so that she’s better equipped to let each muscle group rest an equal amount of time over a night.
Hm, speaking, or rather, thinking about being better equipped, or well, appropriately equipped for a situation. We all know my draconic form is far more resilient than any of my Reggie-forms. Not quite as resilient as my mite-hulk-king form, but the jury’s still out on if I can risk checking to see if King has really died. If he’s still in there, how much of him needs to be alive or regenerated to be able to try a contest of wills with me? Could he somehow sense it if I’m struggling to take eight minutes to change back out of the form? Could he overwhelm me, take me over, replace my mind in the span of eight minutes? It’s too terrifying to comprehend.
Now, there’s definitely a bit of anti scaled-species behavior from a fair number of people on Rayileklia by the sounds of it. Most of which seems predicated on dragons being around that, long ago now, were driven away to a place called the Spine of the World. I think it’s a long mountain range near the northern edge, or pole of the world. Or at least, as far north as anyone has explored, and survived long enough to return from in order to record their journey.
But, we have this hat that is capable of generating a fairly powerful illusion that cloaks someone in a full glamour. I have no idea what it would look or feel like if one of my wings accidentally smacked someone while I was glamored to look like a human. I gnaw on my lip, trying to decide if it’s worth risking facing prejudice, by anyone who can penetrate illusions. Teuila likes my mammalian forms better for cuddling, but we might not be able to cuddle each other until we free Dawn of her curse anyway.
Glancing at Dawn, I flick an eyebrow to a curious position, and she nods, so I try to ascertain her opinion, “Do you think I should adopt my draconic form, and simply keep it disguised with that one hat’s illusion magic?”
Dawn’s face contorts for only a moment before she settles on a thoughtful expression. She rambles towards a conclusion, “Hm, that. That’s a tough one Rej. Draconic could mean a lot of things, though I figure you mean scales, wings, a tail, sharp teeth and claws. I think Boss said it was still like a human though, so kinda two legs and feet, two arms and hands, rather than four legs and feet. If you’re tougher that way, I kinda want to say right off, why the heck not, why even be any way else? Because, I mean, the entire time I’ve known you you’ve been fighting off one thing or another. Generally, really rough stuff.”
Dawn pauses for the shortest beat before continuing, “But then I realize you’re you, and like, you’re not even scared to not be your toughest self. Death doesn’t scare you for you Rej. Naw. Death only seems like a regret waiting to happen. Without the illusion thingy, I figure, yeah, maybe stay your regular self just in case, to avoid trouble that could become regrets. But ya’ve got a magic hat Rej. You can stick around longer for Boss, for, um, me I guess, and for those other friends of yours, more easily, the tougher you are. You should totally do it. Only, not just yet, maybe wait til we’re no longer crammed four tight in a small carriage? Heh.”
I let my jaw hang slightly slack and my index finger struggles to decide whether it’s pointing, or curled back. In an effort to call back to a funny moment Dawn and I shared a while ago, I retort, “Erm, point taken.”
Thankfully it has the desired effect. Dawn smiles and laughs both at my response, and at my expression. It seems like such a rare, valuable thing, Dawn’s joy. It’s also simply adorable in an odd fashion. I don’t know whether it’s because of Dawn’s unique mixture of androgyny, masculinity, and femininity that makes her joy seem so special, or if it’s because of how precious I worry that our time is together. It could be something else entirely that gives the expressions and moments their own charm. Or, even if it is because of how worried I am that our time together is limited, still, Dawn deserves every moment of happy memories we can help her create in our time together.
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Still, Teuila’s resting, and we’re at a stop, I should either be resting, or reading. I think I’m awake enough to get some reading done. Let’s see, black stained glass, silk scriptures or whatever, what is this mess of runes on this page? Okay, velocity, cone, arc, voluminousness, viscosity, Ph. This is an acid conjuration effect. Okay, okay that could definitely see some use on Rayileklia if I can figure out how to wield Rayileklian magic. Short range, incredibly short-lived, but up to a rather high potency of acid.
Hell, I can come up with a few ideas off the top of my head where this would have been handy recently, yeesh. Seems like it wouldn’t have whatever magic is required to allow it to melt powerful magical equipment, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Gruesome as it might sound, melting someone out from inside their magical equipment is all the better for us if they’re someone hostile and well-equipped. It leaves us the chance to hopefully find a better opportunity for their gear. Something better to use it on than hassling us, or doing evil.
What else is in here? Okay this one is pretty much the simplest spell possible. It simply puts a small amount of nearby mana on the ultraviolet spectrum for only the duration of its contact with the staff. It doesn’t even spend anything. It literally just causes the nearest waves, or particles, of mana, to shed light. I’m still not sure if mana is particles, waves, or some other esoteric concept entirely. The runes generally don’t go into that sort of depth on the underpinnings of the physics that they utilize, or are breaking. A bit like Can’Z’aas in that way. My family was a bit confused on why they knew the definitions of a few things, and weren’t quite sure what to make of my more insistent memories about those things. Physics and natural cycles being some of those things.
It turns out, I may have been right. The land didn’t show any signs of even being able to have tectonic activity, erosion, glaciation, rain patterns, nothing like that. It also showed only homogenous plant life until we started to specifically look for other plant life. I know it’s not proof of anything to go from a forest with only one type of trees for miles, to suddenly start seeing other sorts of trees. Probably a bit silly to still be getting hung up on this. Can’t be sure if we’ll ever get back. I can’t afford to go down those thought trains though. I need to focus.
Alright, so the light spell at least teaches me that you can interact with Rayileklian mana without needing to be native, or empowered by something from here, or anything like that. I mean, I might still qualify for some manner of draconic-empowered sorcery since I accidentally imbibed dragon blood, saliva, and maybe some of Kozzurth’s heart’s essence. Gahh, doing this magic though, urgh. Hellspit. Milbert was right. Sort of. You definitely need a limb to be drawing runes. He mistakenly said hands, meaning more specifically fingers due to their dexterity. He didn’t know the truth underlying the matter. Runes simply have to exist in the appropriate shape in nearby solids, vapors, gases, liquids. Touching them in the appropriate order will activate them.
By and large, with the aura vision spell, one should theoretically see traces of runes that have been passing along on the winds, or long ago etched into nearby stone. Even touching those fleeting memories of the runes is enough to begin stacking mana particulate in the right order. Still, without having an instant picture taken in order to analyze all the nearby runic memories, it’s hard to make use of such a method. Unless one were to have, say, perhaps an accelerated thinkspace. When in thinkspace, I could quite possibly draw a mental line through all the nearby runic memories to activate a spell, or even better, spot a pattern in the air currents that will lead to the entire spell’s runic line being in a nice straight clump. Theoretically there should be plenty of those floating around as well, especially in locations where battles have been waged that wizards and the like partook in.
Either method is going to take intense training and focus. I’ve never tried to essentially read the past as it floats by on the wind. Nor have I ever practiced calligraphy in order to draw runes in the air. I wonder if my magic hand is more dexterous than me, or if it might even be able to interpret a command that means ‘draw these seven runes consecutively’ and do so. Rather than me controlling it down to the most minuscule muscle movement.
My tail tapers out pretty thin in my draconic form. I think Dawn’s right, I should probably go draconic when we’re no longer bound to the inside of the carriage for a while at least. I’ll see if I can train my tail to draw runes as well as or better than my hands. Since it’s more of an unusual set of muscles, it seems receptive to training on how I want it to respond to my impulses and needs.
Alright, we might have a plan. A start of one anyway. If we can begin working Rayileklian magic, we can hope to stumble on to spells dealing with souls, if I can’t find any in all this writing of Milbert’s. What’s up next? A spell that has runotypes for nearly every material ever conceived. It’s incredibly complex, a massive, vast web of spellwork. But it requires almost no mana to power it. Instead, it has a strict series of limitations. It can basically stitch fabric, or set splinters back into wood enough to join a broken piece of lumber. Basically it fixes, or mends things. I’m starting to understand a bit of how spells can be done with only a few runic hand motions too. There’s no way this spell would ever be cast in someone’s lifetime, if they tried to draw or even just press all the runes necessary to explain the spell.
Instead, it’s sort of like the cryptographic equivalent in magic of doing something like interpreting lengthy strings as much shorter strings, using a sort of unique key or seed. In a way, with a long enough seed string, allowing for each seed to in essence be its own table, as well as a length of characters before the next unit of the seed is interpreted as its own table, you could end up being able to describe everything in say something like two sets of sixteen characters. Even if the seed tables are only something like two hundred fifty six entries per character. With sixteen to the sixteenth power sets of two hundred fifity six entry tables, well, yeah. Something like eighteen and a half quintillion combinations of possible iterations of seed tables. Then all of that again, you end up talking something like, eight with forty zeroes after it. Something like eight undecilion descriptors while only allowing for strings of exactly sixteen characters. Ow, my head. Where the hell did all that math come from?
Regardless, yeah, it seems to only take at most thirty two runes to activate even an incredibly complex spell, for the most part, with a leading rune to tell the spell you’re building to refer to upcoming runes as a sort of script to hash out. Even still, those could easily take an entire minute to cast if you can’t find the precise runic histories floating around, due to carefully drawing the runes and all.
I’m beginning to understand why a wand might only have a single spell in it, even if it has the power to provide that spell basically endlessly. Or the same with a ring, or floating head-orbital stone, or other thing only having a single effect. A staff that contains a dozen or more spells all at varied levels of power and ability and competency must be incredibly rare. I mean, what we defeated to get it was pretty hellish. That thing had impressive mastery over several magics. Hm, including necromancy. There doesn’t seem to be any necromancy in the staff. Is that why it wasn’t able to use any of the staff’s spells on us?
Is Rayileklian magic similar to Can’Z’aas hostiles’ magic? Could they have been limited to mostly only being successful in one school of magic? Would the schools be described as specifically as they are in my Fakeworld memories though? Maybe there’s more overlap in the schools than fantasy media from Earth might guess at. Illusions and Necromancy and Enchantment all leaning into one another’s domains seems pretty plausible back home at least.