Three years later and Otonia ◐ and Krateros ◮ had made their way through the entire standard curriculum of elementary true magic. Some—well, rather few actually—of the spellforms the duo were already familiar with as simplified versions of the mana magic spellforms they could remember. Others though were familiar, likely simplified versions of mana spellforms they had seen before, but couldn’t entirely remember. The rest—which was a significant portion—were entirely novel as far as they could tell. But in so much as one of the key skills being taught at the College was how to study and memorize spellforms, and the pair were already very skilled at that, they still moved through them faster than nearly all of their cohort. Reaching the end of the standard elementary curriculum, they moved on to a few extra segments of elementary magic, until those too were exhausted.
Despite their rapid pace, their fine manipulation of experience was still somewhat lacking, and so they remained with their cohort practicing.
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At one point in their study, Otonia was taken by her parents to visit a very old family friend. At the ripe age of 162, his health had taken a turn for the worse, his soulbond mate having passed a decade earlier, and he was making his last goodbyes. Otonia didn’t know the man at all, but was polite enough during the solemn event.
As he took his last breath, her father whispered to her to reach out her sense for experience. Raising an eyebrow, Otonia did so quietly, and was surprised to see a huge mass of experience rise from the old man.
What gigantic spell could he be casting on his death bed?!
She nearly panicked, but her father saw her face, and whispered to her again. “That’s his soul, departing this world to return to the soul realm.”
With a new perspective with that tidbit, Otonia turned back to the mass and realized that it was not simply experience. Instead, there was a membranous surface, perfectly smooth, which contained the experience inside. The membrane was still fluctuating with internal waves as it finally fully departed the body, but within a few seconds, the waves had calmed, and the membrane was pulling together into a perfect sphere. It seemed to sit there, still, for several minutes, before it began to slowly drift away as if on the lightest breeze. Otonia sensed as it left the building, and slowly began to… fade was the best way to describe it. Over the course of fifteen minutes, her senses found the soul to become more and more indistinct until at last, a hundred meters up, she could sense it no more.
“Where’d it go?” she absently whispered as she looked up through the ceiling.
“To the soul realm,” her father simply replied.
“I guess that’s why we don’t have souls just floating about everywhere,” she replied absently, mostly to herself.
“They do leave in quite a hurry,” her father responded wistfully.
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After a year of further practice, Otonia and Krateros were ready to move on to their secondary, specialized curricula. Joining them from their cohort were two other soul-bonded pairs of children who had completed the elementary curriculum, though not any of the additional segments, which could be studied later anyways.
After speaking with the pair, Circe had planned a custom curricula for the two. Krateros had expressed his interest in melee combat, and though there were nearly no threats that faced the Fell, there always remained a dedicated core of Fell who, at the very least, enjoyed the physical facets of magic.
The core of his curriculum would be studying and, to a far greater extent, practicing the bodily enhancement magic—a combination of transformation and manipulation magic, with a hefty dose of metamagic to handle the whole thing. For unlike many other aspects of Fell magic, such magic required rapid, intuitive casting, maintenance, and alteration on the fly. And while enchantments could be applied to living things, there were no known ways to bind bodily enhancement magic in a way that still functioned, thus requiring that it all be cast. As such, practice was key to the field.
Peripheral aspects of his curriculum would also include:
* A select number of conjuration spells for creating weapons, which for Krateros mostly meant a lot of blades
* Illusion magic for various forms of stealth and setting ambushes
* Evocation magic to imbue magic into weapons and attacks for extra damage, and
* Select spells from the divination school to assist in perception related issues, such as locating something or piercing camouflage
Interestingly, Krateros learned that the illusion school had a number of spells which could be described as charismatic, interpersonal spells. But that these were limited to use by actors and other performing artists, as such use was otherwise a faux pas.
In the first several months of his specialized curriculum, Krateros received a lot of attention. For while he struggled with learning and applying the bodily enhancement magic as any normal student, though perhaps a gifted one, Krateros was excellent in actual combat, whether organized sparring in an arena or various exercises in the forest or mountain wilderness. While his prior lives may have had a great number of melee Skills, such Skills did not teach you how to fight, which was something to be learned separately altogether. And in all his lives, learn he did, in a large number of different body shapes, builds, and sizes.
And so it was quite the spectacle when, a few months in, he went to his first practice session in fighting. The tutor had him and a student who had been there a year already spar unenhanced, which quickly went downhill for the older student. The tutor then teamed him up with a student who’d been in the class three years, and was soon to transition to the advanced class, and after she lost the first round, she went after him using a speed enhancement, despite the tutor’s instructions to the contrary. But Krateros adapted quickly and was about to knock her back down, when she stacked on a strength enhancement. That drew out the fight for about another ten seconds, until Krateros tripped and pinned her again.
“Phoebe,” the instructor called out, “use all of your enhancement. Krateros, try and fight her without enhancements, but use them if you need to.”
As the pair prepared for another match, Krateros watched as Phoebe layered several enhancements on: speed, strength, dexterity, flexibility (a dangerous one), protection, slow-time. Krateros held back from casting, but mentally prepared the speed enhancement, the only one he had studied so far in any significant detail.
“Begin!” the tutor shouted. This time, Phoebe held back and the pair began to circle each other slowly coming closer. Krateros feinted, and Phoebe bought it, exposing herself, but the enhancement meant that Krateros was unable to exploit it. The two clashed for upwards of two minutes—remarkably long for an organized spar—until at last Phoebe knocked down and pinned Krateros, who hadn’t been able to trigger the speed enhancement in the middle of the fight.
“Kid,” the tutor began as he walked up to the pair. “You’ve got some incredible instincts on you. That’s the kind of shit I see out of fighters with a century under their belt. You almost fought to a draw a far more experienced opponent running enhancements while you went bare.” The tutor slapped him on the back. “Now we just got to get you used to using the enhancements in the fight, eh?”
And so went Krateros’ first year in his specialized curriculum, his veteran instincts allowing him to punch far above his class, and with each enhancement he mastered to use in battle, he lept forward in strength.
Otonia on the other hand, had a very different first year. Circe had planned for her an unusual curriculum in both spellform design and enchantment. It was unusual as, despite the overlap, the former was usually considered extremely difficult. But, to everyone else, they perceived Otonia’s skill with understanding spellforms to be a millennial genius. The hope was that with a proper understanding of the underlying theory, she’d be able to push the field forward with several significant discoveries.
On the other hand, enchantment was considered a fairly mundane area of magic, often learned by those who would become crafters—smiths, woodcarvers, artists—or who might become involved in building construction and maintenance—plumbers, stone masons, appliance repairers. Enchantment also almost always worked with the simplest of magics, though there were always a few eccentrics who would push the field in unusual ways.
The first several months were relatively quiet for her, as the attention she had received in primary curriculum faded and Krateros was making quite a scene. Which was fine by her, as she found the nature of spellform design tremendously interesting. And so she was quietly dedicated to her studies.
Until the eighth month when, frustrated with some of her long-form calculations, she off-handedly asked her spellform tutor, “Isn’t there a spell to help with mathematics?”
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“No?” the tutor replied puzzled. “How could that work?”
Otonia opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again. Setting aside her current work, she grabbed new parchment and began sketching it out. Loads of metamagical symbols linked together in a web of logic was the hardest part, but after working out number storage and addition, she was soon able to sketch out subtraction and had begun to have an inkling for multiplication. Flipping to the input, she added a touch of divination to grab the input from the targeted area, which was based on the caster’s line of sight. The output would be… how would she do the output?
She set aside the parchment, grabbing yet another fresh sheet. This time keeping it simple. Line of sight divination input, deconstructing the input, storing the numbers and the operation symbol, the logic for how addition worked in the Fell numbering system using metamagic, output storage of the numbers and—her crowning idea—a touch of illusion magic to create an illusory piece of paper—she decided on an unnatural blue to clearly show it was an illusion—which would output the answer into her field of view.
She proofread her spellform one last time, fixing one or two errors, then rewriting one section to be more efficient. Finally, grabbing yet another piece of parchment, she wrote down several simple math problems:
> 2+3=
>
> 11+28=
>
> 378+215=
She focused her attention on the first and cast the spell and, just as her mana filled it up, a blue square appeared:
5
Otonia grinned at the successful test, then flicked her attention to the second problem, and checked the blue square again.
5
Wait, what? Oh, it doesn’t clear itself for another calculation. But that’s just a minor detail. The proof of concept worked!
She quickly dismissed the spell entirely, then cast it twice more, once on each of the other problems to check if they worked. And, indeed they did. Rewriting the last problem by itself on another sheet of paper, she took it and the spellform to her tutor for her input.
“This is incredible,” she whispered to herself. “It’s a bit simple, but as a proof of concept… a thinking spell.”
“I wouldn’t call it that. It’s just mathematics, and really it’s almost all metamagic.”
“Yes, but most metamagic is about operations on actual magic. This is metamagic recursively operating on knowledge itself to create knowledge different than was inputted. I’ve certainly never heard of it before.”
Over the next few months, Otonia expanded on and refined the spell. Allowing multiple calculations on the same cast. Including the other arithmetic operators. Allowing calculations with more than two numbers. And error coding. Lots and lots of error coding. Especially after she started sharing it for testing. Eventually though, she was satisfied with her Arithmetic spell. It was, unfortunately, quite the doozy and difficult to learn and cast. But with the spell complete, she went about creating enchanted objects, using a very high quality quartz crystal and a silver alloy. One for herself, one for her spellform tutor, and then one enlarged master copy, which she sold for a substantial sum to the highest quality enchanting shop in the city. Relatively few were produced due to their expense and specialized nature, but they became popular in several technical occupations.
And that was just the start. Before even finishing Arithmetic, Otonia had already begun theorizing about other System Skills that had no Fell magic analogue that she could find and designing the spellforms from scratch. From [Elven Vocal Chords], Otonia created a transformation spell that altered the vocal chords for several days. From [Draft Schematics] and [Keen Eye], she created a divination / illusion spell that helped with straight lines and design aspects. From [Fox’s Dexterity] and [Mana Finesse], she created a metamagic / transformation / illusion spell that spent experience to improve finesse with manipulating experience. From [Mage Hands], she created mage hands, though given that most Fell were generally skilled with the manipulation school, this was mostly useless unless you had a specific reason for needing hands. From [Mirror], she created two spells: one a conjured mirror and the other a divination / illusion mirror that existed only in the mind’s eye. And having finally released these, she also began to release the mana-based spellforms, which she marketed as super-powerful versions of the baser experience based spells.
All of these only raised Otonia’s standing as the most promising spellform academic in centuries.
But these were only the public achievements. The achievement she was most proud of was kept a secret.
It began with [Magic Pen]. The Fell did use ink, especially for long term records, but they knew no spellform for conjuring ink, the consensus being that such a spellform would be far too complex. So, initially, as a substitute, she created a sublimely optimized spell for conjuring a pencil which, due to the nature of conjuration, ended with a core of graphite wrapped in soft copper. A few of these spells had preexisted, so she wasn’t entirely novel on the point, though it was an excellent execution and brought mild praise.
She was rather frustrated though. I want my [Magic Pen], dammit. And so she began to explore what spellform creation was required for conjuring new materials.
That ended up being a big disappointment. Creating new conjuration spells with Fell magic was largely a matter of trial and error, there being very little in the way of theory, but what theory there was having been fully explored to its (very small) outer limits. There were speculations that all materials could be conjured, but that the necessary spellforms were far too complex for most materials.
Otonia called bullshit.
She dove deep into divination theory, until she found exactly the gap she was looking for. The Fell had no conception on how to use divination magic to determine the makeup of a material. But with her background in the System, Otonia had an idea of how conjuration spellforms were related to materials and just how complex it could be. And after two months of continuous experimentation, she finally found the right spellform for this analysis: A divination spell that looked at what a material was and made an educated guess at the correct conjuration spellform.
It was crude, and rough, and liable to error or failure, but it would work for now. Combined with significant metamagic to repeat the spell and sort through the errors for an optimized form, and then to output the spellform into an illusion for the caster to see, Otonia created the first known spell that could create a spell: Materials Spellform Analysis.
With this new spell in hand, she cast it on ink and, after an afternoon’s experimentation, finally came up with the right spellform.
To say it was bloody difficult would be saying Kazuhiro had an easy time with the [Eldritch Elder]. The spellform was probably more difficult than anything she had ever seen ever, even in just passing. It was so difficult that it was at the very edge of her abilities and, if she had to cast it often, she quickly decided she would enchant it (or at least try to do so).
But, even so, she was just about able to put together a spell for Magic Pen.
Between Materials Spellform Analysis and Magic Pen, either would have established her as the greatest spellformist in a millennium. But, alas, she kept both private, sharing them only with Krateros. (Not that he could cast them himself).
With these new tools in hand, she turned to healing magic.
Healing magic was always an odd ball. Mana based spells did little more than accelerate the natural biological processes, which limited the extent of healing that could be undertaken, and so the very weak Skills were almost never taken by sapients in the System. Her [Divine] Skill—drawing on divine magic—for healing magic was much better, and did not draw upon the body’s natural reserves of material or energy, but it was still limited to the natural regeneration that the body could supply. Coming to the Fell, she was surprised that Fell healing magic was not much improved, and she could only speculate whether it had to do with the Fell’s relatively safe and non-martial lives.
But it is strange, yes? She had various growth Skills—plants, animals, herself—that while they would draw on resources as needed, didn’t have to, the material seemingly coming of out thin air. But how could just Skills figure out what it was that needed to be conjured and do so in just the right way to allow the natural process to proceed uninterrupted?
Otonia suspected very good divination magic. Or its System equivalent. After nearly a year working in secret on the side, she finally had what she was looking for. A spellform that would allow extended, supercharged healing/growing/aging. It was too complex to cast or even enchant as a single unit, but she had it designed. Breaking it down into three pieces, she made two extremely complex enchantments in two copper-laced quartz balls that she could hold, one in each hand. Then to use, she would cast regularly the third portion, which would take care of various administrative and guidance routines and bind the magic of the two enchanted objects to work together.
At first, she tested it on plants and then trees. Then came the animal testing. And then on Krateros, after removing a finger he wouldn’t miss too much if this didn’t work.
Which of course it did. Though given how insanely complex it was, combined with its incredible flexibility and power, she had trouble naming it.
Krateros ending up picking it.
Restore Life.
That though wasn’t really what she had in mind. Divination magic allowed a mage to send messages, but they were always displayed with illusion magic as either visual or audio recording. That was crude, to say the least. No. What she wanted to accomplish would require a hybridization of manipulation and transformation. And she didn’t want a spell that had to be cast each time. She wanted something that could be used with but a thought. An enchantment on the persons themselves.
From [Speak with Elves], she created Telepathy.
The pair broke down in tears as they shared thoughts once more.
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