Olivander shifted his small rituals so they were hovering over one hand.
"Here and here," he said, pointing out spots on the ritual that Gregory would call nodes. They were parts of the ritual that didn't quite flow into the rest of the diagram. "The parts of any ritual that are directly involved in shaping the magic are the places where rituals can be linked. It requires practice and intuition, but if you practice on relatively straightforward rituals you can get the hang of it with minimal risk."
He drew connections between the rituals.
"There, these are joined now. We're going to be doing something a little tricky next. You, Cooper, already know this spell completely," he pointed at the first ritual. "It's written on your soul in a way I cannot know without years of practice. That means you don't actually need to try to cast or complete this half of the ritual. You'll power this new ritual, and once it is at full capacity, focus on the first and activate your ability once more."
"What does that do?" Gregory asked. It was fascinating to hear about ritual magic, even if he wasn't the quickest student.
"His natural ability to use this spell will merge with the half completed copy, and the connection to the second ritual will come with it. He'll get the merged spell in its entirety. He then just needs to focus on me to pull my intent out. Don't accidentally think of something you want to find. Your own intent will use the skill first. Got it?"
"I think so."
"Then be my guest," Olivander said, holding forward the rituals.
As Gregory looked on, the amulet with the Eye Cooper was wearing began to glow. Then Gregory could feel power gathering, but it wasn't quite the same as normal mana, and it wasn't quite the same as when Olivander used his grimoire. It was less wild. Restrained, he would say if he had to put a word to it.
Cooper's eyes began to glow orange. Then all at once, the power was pushed into the ritual. It flashed and vanished.
"Did it work?" Gregory asked Cooper.
"Yes! My head hurts though…it was almost too much for my amulet."
----------------------------------------
Contained Eye of the Dark Magus
* Corruption 92/100
----------------------------------------
"As you adapt to the power, it will hurt your head less. And the corruption rate should slow as you grow stronger," Olivander said. "For now it worked better than I could have guessed! I assumed you would only be able to pull through fifty or sixty mana at the most. You must have a natural connection to the Realm of Madness."
"I hope not."
"Very wise. Now, you know where we should go?"
"Follow me!"
Cooper started padding off, moving slowly enough that the others could keep up.
Gregory walked behind Olivander for a time, but he decided to move when the man's repelling ward kept making branches whip at face. He used healing touch to fix a black eye before it could finish forming. He was becoming more and more proficient at changing classes. Most of his abilities could only be used while either his Guardian or Magician's Apprentice class, not both, so he swapped between them when he needed healing or spells and switched back since his Guardian class was much better at mitigating unexpected damage.
The strategy also had the advantage of allowing him to level both classes without actively thinking about it too much. He knew he was growing stronger, but he needed something to push himself. The dungeon race had been fun, but the stakes weren't as High as when they had fought in Serin or out on guild contracts. He was happy with his progress, but Olivander was right, the levels were coming more quickly than he had imagined, and he wanted more.
Gregory Temerin, the Resolute
Age: 19
Race: Human
Standardized Level: 18
Combat Class:
Lesser Guardian (Uncommon)
Level 7 (30%)
Magician’s Apprentice (Uncommon)
Level 4 (61%)
Non-combat Class: None
Health: 130/130
Stamina: 110/110
Mana: 105/105 (95 +10)
Strength: 11
Dexterity: 6 (7 -1)
Constitution: 11 (10 +1)
Wisdom: 9 (7 +2)
Intelligence: 10 (9 +1)
Skill Points: 0
Free Attribute Points: 0
Skills:
Endure
Strike
Abilities:
Will of the Sculptor
Magician’s Quest
Spells:
Mana Bolt
Healing Touch
He was staring at his status when the next branch was released by Olivander's ward, snapping back and hitting him squarely in the face. The world swam as he found himself looking at the sky.
"Eyes up, Gregory! The jungle is no place to navel-gaze."
"What does that even mean?" Gregory called, climbing back to his feet and trying to catch the group.
"We're here," Cooper said, breaking up the conversation.
They stopped in a small clearing of trees. There was a simple and crude stone arch made from stacked rough stones. A serene feeling of peace pervaded the clearing, and the constant background sound of jungle life seemed to hush as they passed into the empty space.
"This is curious," Olivander said, walking forward and around the stone arch. It was a little taller than he was.
Gregory cocked his head and stared at the stones. It reminded him of something.
Then he remembered Olivander rescuing them in the bowels of Serin. The stone gate that led to a Realm that could unmake the mimic that was trying to kill them.
"Is that like your abyssal door thing?"
"Ahh," Olivander said with a wince. "Not my 'abyssal door thing,' but yes it's a similar construction. The primary difference being that one was made from conjured materials and temporary, and this gate is permanent."
Gregory and Cooper both took a few steps back.
"Should you be that close?"
"This one doesn't go to the Abyssal Realm. It goes somewhere else...I'm not sure where."
"That doesn't sound safer," Cooper said, grabbing Fezzic's shirt and pulling him back as well.
"I suppose it doesn't. There's one way to find out. Sous, I might need to resummon you, but I've saved your current configuration."
"I feel like I should object to this. Can't you summon a different golem?"
"It does seem like the job for a personal assistant, besides, you'll probably be fine."
The golem grumbled a little, but finally agreed to some plan that Gregory was still unaware of.
Finally Olivander drew out a ritual that encircled the entire stone arch. He stopped to close his eyes periodically as he drew. Gregory wanted to ask what he was doing, but he also didn't want to break the man's concentration. Cooper, it seemed, had no such problem.
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"What are you doing?"
"I'm drawing out a simple power ritual. It should power the archway's natural functions, but I need to use mana balanced towards the Realm that it's accessing, or it will fail immediately. That is difficult since I don't know where the archway actually goes, so I'm doing it by feel."
He opened his eyes and drew a smaller ritual on the ground that attached to the larger one at that point.
"I'll draw mana from Fae Realm for this. Fae is almost always good for balancing. It touches almost every other Realm I know of naturally, so it's widely compatible. Power from the Divine Realm would be better, but I don't have a ritual for that. Not that I would use it anyway. I'm not in the business of offending gods unless they trap me in a dungeon first."
Olivander made his way around the circle, but he only had to draw out two more rituals.
"There we are. Ready, Sous?"
Sous rolled up imaginary sleeves. "I am! But I also don't know what I'm doing."
"Just go through the portal when it opens and then come back."
"Oh, that doesn't sound so bad."
"You'll be destroyed immediately if the Realm doesn't support physical forms."
"Maybe we should just leave?" Sous asked hopefully.
"Sorry, this is important. You won't feel anything, and if I have to resummon you, your memories will pick back up a moment before you went through the portal."
"Fine, fine. Let's do it."
Olivander focused for a moment, then power flowed into each of the component rituals. He chanted some incantations about binding the power of other Realms. Little pinpricks of power that Gregory could just barely sense moved into and out of his awareness like a flash of light from a distant storm. Olivander spent a minute just standing with his eyes closed.
The ritual activated all at once, and the arch filled with a green light. It looked the same as Olivander's portal spell with the color being the only difference that Gregory could perceive. Without any more buildup, Sous flew into the portal.
A few moments passed, and he flew back out.
"Huzzah! I wasn't destroyed! It's very green there — lots of plants. Didn't seem dangerous though."
Olivander walked up to the portal and touched it with a hand.
"Stable. It should stay open for a week or longer, unless I or someone stronger than me closes it. Who wants to take a look inside another Realm?"
When no one volunteered he shrugged and stepped through the portal.
"This seems wildly unsafe," Gregory said.
"I dunno Gregory. Would he have gone in himself if it was?" Fezzic asked. It was a fair point, but Olivander was far more durable than any of them.
Sous floated over. "Don't worry, it's perfectly safe. Probably."
"I feel like you're just guessing."
"It's not as much a guess as a statement that I want to be true. Olivander let me read some books. In one of them it said that if you believed in something enough, you can make it true."
Gregory had looked at one of the books from Olivander's collection that belonged to a genre that the man had described as 'self-help.' He had put it back immediately.
"I'm not sure you should take those books literally."
Olivander stuck his head back out of the portal. "Come on. Seriously, it's fine. Honestly, you're safer in here with me than out there. If you have forgotten, there are still pirates out there."
"Now that he says it, yeah, I don't really want to run into pirates again," Fezzic said.
"Alright, come on Cooper," Gregory said, walking towards the portal.
* * *
All of the smells that Cooper commonly associated with dense plant life, the jungle, and the forests he had traveled through vanished as soon as he stepped through the portal. Sure, when he emerged there were plants everywhere, but everything smelled wrong.
"It doesn't smell right."
Olivander met the group next to a familiar looking stone arch in a familiar looking clearing. The sky was no longer a bright blue, instead looking like a murky gray. Gregory sniffed the air and shrugged. The man couldn't help that he was nose blind.
"There are probably two reasons for that," Olivander said. "You can smell magic, and this magic is different from most of the magic you've smelled before. The second reason is that while these plants look similar to what we saw in the jungle on the other side of the portal, they are quite different. Try not to forget we're basically on another world here."
Cooper took all the details in. Now that he focused, it really was the difference in the way the magic smelled that was giving him the most trouble. The plants did smell different, but they still generally smelled like plants.
"The magic smells…toxic. It wants to get inside me and break me down."
"It is a rather nasty magic. I'm honestly not sure what this Realm is. The magic has a huge amount of life energy, which I expected. I should catch you two up."
Olivander gave them a quick overview of what he found in the mimic domain, and the idea that it was a planar stone like an Eye of Madness. The fact that they traced it to this Realm practically proved it.
"So the life energy that the stone could pull was enough to allow the mimic heart thing to grow?" Gregory asked.
"That's my current theory. It makes sense. I'm not sure if there are other aspects here that the mimics can make use of. I'm going to take some samples. To be safe, let's stay in this clearing. I don't sense anything dangerous, but a little caution is never unwarranted."
Olivander, Fezzic, and Sous began collecting materials on the side of the clearing and talking about the plants around them.
For his part, Cooper was happy to sort through the new smells, but he didn't really want to explore this place, especially since Gregory seemed so on edge.
"What's navel-gazing?" Olivander had said the phrase earlier, and Cooper had no idea what it meant.
"I think it just means focusing on something and not paying attention to what's happening around you."
"What were you focusing on?"
Gregory was more excited to talk about this. He perked up and stopped worrying about the jungle around them.
"Oh! I was checking out my status. I haven't really paid attention to it recently. Things are progressing nicely though. How does yours look?"
Cooper hadn't really thought about his own status much either. It had been a novel experience when he first gained the ability to look at it, but it didn't change much and he could sense everything on it without too much trouble anyway. Still, it did make it easier to show others how he was doing.
Cooper the Resolute
Age: 3
Race: Dog
Standardized Level: 14
Combat Class:
Canine Striker (Uncommon)
Level 6 (12%)
Storm Magician (Uncommon)
Level 2 (67%)
Non-combat Class:
Dog (Basic)
Level 4 (70%)
Health: 90/90
Stamina: 110/110
Mana: 40/40
Strength: 9
Dexterity: 18 (16+2)
Constitution: 7 (6 +1)
Wisdom: 8 (7 +1)
Intelligence: 10
Skill Points: 1
Free Attribute Points: 0
Skills:
Bone Crusher
Abilities:
Reverse Telepathy
Relentless Striker
Advanced Search
Voiceless Casting
Spells:
Lightning Bolt
"Oh nice. You're slowly catching up! Three classes is awesome though. I need to figure out how to get a non-combat class. Oh, you have a skill point too. Waiting until you get something better?"
"I have so many options now, it's just hard to choose. Olivander said if I can get my mana up higher first, I could get better spells. He thought with voiceless casting I shouldn't bother with another cheap spell."
"Ahh!" Fezzic let out a startled yell.
A vine had wrapped around his arm, and Olivander cut it away with a simple conjured knife.
"I told you not to touch that one."
Cooper relaxed when he saw it was just a small accident.
"Do you think you'll get access to anything unique with your new amulet? It's like a mini grimoire. Without the rituals I guess."
"Maybe! I'll have to ask Olivander what he thinks. I don't really…" he trailed off as he noticed something odd now that he focused on his amulet.
"What's wrong?" Gregory asked, tension coming back. He started glancing around.
"Olivander, there's something weird happening with my amulet!"
Olivander stood up and dusted himself off. "Be right back, don't touch the pokey ones."
"Don't worry my furry friend," he explained while walking over. "We can't touch the Realm of Madness here. It doesn't seem to touch or intersect this Realm. I could feel my grimoire lose its connection as soon as I passed through."
"I don't really understand how that works. How can Realms touch or not touch?" Gregory asked.
"It's rare that I don't have an answer for you, but I do not know that," he tapped on his chin thoughtfully. "Some Realms just do not touch others. Perhaps their powers are anathema to one another, or perhaps there is some cosmic geography that we can't comprehend. My favorite theory is that—"
The ground rumbled beneath their feet, cutting Olivander off.
Olivander closed his eyes. "Whoops. That's bad. Back through the portal everyone! Thank you!"
Olivander basically grabbed Cooper and tossed him through."
He ended up in a pile of bodies as everyone was tossed through the portal.
Olivander stepped through and his hand glowed for a moment. Cooper saw him pull the power out of the arch and disperse it to dissolve into the ambient mana.
"Ughh. Greg, you're stepping on my arm. What the heck was that, Olivander?" Fezzic asked, rolling over once Gregory moved his foot.
"Sorry about that. Much closer to death than I anticipated. The important thing is that we all made it back safely."
"Death!?"
"It turns out we were on top of some kind of giant beast. Basically just fleas in its scalp. It was about to scratch us off its head. Probably."
Gregory shuddered, and Cooper felt the same way. He didn't not want to be a flea. He hated fleas.
Cooper saw Fezzic stiffen as the goblin looked behind him. He turned to see a big man with what he assumed was some unfamiliar weapon pointed at them. The man, a pirate no doubt, was flanked by two others who also had their weapons drawn.
"So, you thought you could just take the treasure and thought we'd be none the wiser, did you?"