Chapter 31 — On the Move
There was a time for caution and careful experimentation, and then there were times to do magic. The completed cantrip adorned Rína’s soul, silently asking to be used, and who was Rína to deny such a request? All she needed was an appropriate target for her first proper spell; thus Rína only had eyes for the kitchen’s oh-so-far-away knife block that—
Rína only had eyes for the oh-so-far-away fabric scissors—
Rína only had eyes for the cutting board’s oh-so-far-away carving fork—
Rína only had eyes for the admittedly within-arm’s-reach throw pillow that was distinctly devoid of any sharp metal bits. It would lack a bit of flare, but Rína supposed the magic itself was all the flare she’d need.
Not sparing another second, Rína pulled aether from within her soul up and out through the base of the cantrip.
Contrary to projecting her regular aura, there seemed to be a kind of resistance as the aether flowed through the cantrip’s various segments. What’s more, as the aether flowed, it sort of itched. She normally only got a vague sense of her aether as it moved within her soul, but now as it flowed through the cantrip, she could distinctly feel her, well, self… changing, twisting with the twists and turns of the cantrip’s curves.
And by the time the aether left the cantrip, some fraction of its intent of self—her intent of self—had been warped, now giving off the same odd feeling she got from the arcanelles’ kinetic aether. But now instead of that kinetic aether being harvested from some animal bone, it came from her, it was her spell.
Her spell that descended upon the physical, on a collision course with the throw pillow of—
The throw pillow careened through the air.
“Ah!” Rína shrieked as it smacked her in the face, “...gods damn it.”
Yvette’s chuckling heralded the older woman taking a seat next to Rína.
«Congratulations on your first spell.» Her aunt wrote, pulling her into a side hug, «And here, I think you should have this.»
From behind her back, Yvette pulled out a mass of fabric and unceremoniously plopped it onto Rína’s head, covering her niece’s eyes.
«Thanks,» Rína snorted, «But what is this?» She asked, pulling the thing off her head.
What Rína was met with was nothing short of a witch’s hat, straight from some harvest festival play. It was made of rough black cloth fashioned into a broad circular brim with a pointy cone at its center. However, in a break from tradition, the hat’s underside was made of royal purple silk, with silver thread stitching out faux-mystical diagrams and equations throughout the brim.
«When did you even make this?» Rína wrote.
«Perhaps an hour ago, when you had your eyes shut and were building your cantrip.»
“Huh…”
She guessed she did have a bit of tunnel vision while she worked, and the few times she’d actually seen her aunt sewing… Well, it’s not that her aunt really sewed so much as used her numerous flesh threads to pull regular thread through cloth at blinding speed.
«It’s perfect,» Rína eventually wrote, «Thanks aunty, but you know there’s no way I could wear this in public.» Even as she wrote this, Rína found herself donning the witch’s hat with—if she were being honest—a bit of pride.
Yvette quirked an eyebrow, «Says who? And besides, in the worst case scenario you can use it as a sleep hat.»
Rína stared incredulously, «You mean a nightcap? Because a witch’s hat definitely wouldn’t work as one.»
«Not until you set a new trend,» Yvette wrote with a wry smile, «Fashion aside, why don’t you give the spell a few more tries?»
Rína shook her head as she drew aether through her cantrip’s structure a second time. Targeting the same pillow and—
Yvette’s hand whipped out, snatching the pillow before it could hit Rína’s face for a second time.
«Thanks,» Rína wrote, a sheepish look on her face.
«You are very welcome,» Yvette wrote, «But are you intentionally trying to hit yourself in the face?»
Rína faked a cough, «Yeah, no. I’m just trying to get it to move, I guess.» Rína frowned, slowly turning her head to her aunt, «Hey… You didn’t happen to give me a cantrip that only throws stuff in my face, did you?»
Yvette choked a laugh, «I did not, though I can certainly see a few masters pulling a prank like that.»
«So then… How do I stop it from doing that?»
«Simply by adding intent specifying the direction of motion.» Yvette wrote, «This is part of a different lesson, but your cantrip’s design falls into the ‘freeform’ category of spells: it simply creates a certain type of spell intent—kinetic in this case—and it is your responsibility to guide it from there.»
Rína nodded along, «So then…»
A third time Rína produced the spell, but instead of immediately sending the aether at the pillow that her aunt had dropped into her lap, Rína paused and considered. For lack of a better goal, she decided to just try to get the thing to hover in the air. All she needed was a trickle of ‘up’-ness. So Rína gingerly had the spell flow into the physical, all the while she mentally pressed upon it the idea that it would be going ‘up’.
«…kind of like this?» Rína wrote.
The throw pillow at first seemed to rock in her lap, gravity still holding sway over it. And as Rína increased the flow rate of the spell into the physical, it began to slightly kick up, only centimeters into the air. Rína increased the flow rate again, but instead of rising into the air, the unsteady hopping just increased in intensity, the pillow almost resembling a baked corn kernel.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Hmm,” Rína grumbled to herself as she tried to figure out what was wrong. She needed, or at least wanted, a smooth upward motion and yet there she was occasionally recentering the pillow onto her lap before it randomly jerked too far outside of her spell’s volume of effect—
Rína felt like smacking her forehead. That was the problem: the little throw pillow was moving upward, out of the spell’s volume of effect, so to actually do this right she’d have to move the spell along with it.
The spell aether of her third cast was nearly depleted so she restocked it with more from her cantrip and tried again.
A cackle rose up from Rína as the pillow unsteadily rose off her lap. It was far from perfect as the pillow still swayed in the air, with Rína having to constantly adjust the spell target volume to keep the pillow aloft. It reminded her of trying to balance an upright broomstick on her palm as whenever—
“Shit,” Rína cursed as the pillow jerked too far to the right and upward.
She shifted her spell right, but overcompensated. Now pillow left and low, spell even further left and low, pillow far right and away, spell even farther right and away, and—
Yvette’s hand and aura shot out, fizzling the spell and catching the pillow before it impacted Rína’s face.
Yvette gave Rína an encouraging rub on the back, «You’ll get there; it’s simply a matter of practice.»
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And practice she did. For the next few minutes the throw pillow was lifted, hovered, and—fulfilling its destiny—thrown about the wagon’s interior. It was gradual, but Rína’s comfort with kinemancy was growing, though not nearly as fast as the not-exactly-itching feeling. It was the one she got whenever she sent aether through her cantrip’s structure—that is, whenever she cast the spell.
At first it was just a minor annoyance, barely worth mentioning, but the feeling lingered, getting worse with every cast. Soon it wasn’t so much an itching, as a kind of… prickly feeling, like the feeling of one’s skin getting baked under a summer sun. And it wasn’t confined to just the cantrip structure, as it spread throughout her entire soul and was even starting to leak into her aura. Indeed the only places the feeling hadn’t reached were her soul stem and roots. But in contrast, within her soul threads the feeling was far more acute, bordering on actual pain.
“Hey aunty…” Rína began uneasily, «What’s with the weird prickly feeling I’m getting?»
«Oh dear,» Yvette wrote with a look of mock morbidity, «I was afraid of this. It would appear you are experiencing a rare allergy to magic. In response, your soul will warp and your personality will become far more vile. Following the parlance of the youths, I believe it is most accurate to say that what you describe as a ‘prickly’ feeling, will turn you into a ‘prick’.»
Rína gave her aunt a flat, unamused stare, «Speaking from personal experience?»
Her aunt’s morbid expression cracked, revealing a mirthful smile beneath, «No, but I have encountered several miscreants I suspect to have befallen such a fate» Yvette wrote, indulging in a chuckle, «What you are feeling is blight: a byproduct of all casting.»
Rína raised an eyebrow at that, «Blight… that sounds familiar. What is it? And, I guess more importantly, how do I get rid of it?»
«Your soul will naturally remove the blight over time.» Yvette wrote, «As to what it is, the best theory I have heard posits it to be the fraction of your intent of self that would have turned into spell intent—assuming the spell structure was one hundred percent efficient—but instead has been left in a faulty, half-way state.»
«Alright, but why does it kind of hurt, especially around my threads? And why can’t I just, I don’t know, pull the blight out of my soul like aura, or something?» Rína wrote, trying and failing to do just that.
«You can think of the blight—the faulty intent—as a broken cog in a windmill, unable to do its job and inhibiting the functions of the surrounding machinery. In effect, blight is unresponsive to the very type of intent you would use to manipulate it, meanwhile it interferes with the various intents of the surrounding crystal—intents including but not limited to cohesion—hence your feeling of discomfort.»
“Shit, is it…”«Is it dangerous to have a lot of it at once?»
«It certainly can be.» Yvette wrote, «Impaired cognition, an inability to form new memories, and outright loss of consciousness are all common symptoms of excessive blight. And the more blight your soul is inundated with, the less effective it will be at removing it; which can lead to runaway effects in some circumstances. But I guarantee you that your soul threads—or any other small, delicate soul structures—will shatter long before you experience any other symptoms.»
“Platinum lining…” Rína muttered before widening her eyes, «Hold on, this is what you were talking about isn’t it? Blight is the stuff that screws over Weavers.»
Yvette snorted, «I do not recall phrasing it precisely like that, but yes, you are correct: all spell structures will produce at least some blight and can be damaged by its excess, but relative to every other mage discipline, biomancy has essentially zero tolerance for it.»
«But there’s got to be a way to make spells less blight-y, or whatever, right?»
«Oh, most certainly.» Yvette nodded, «And it is universally good practice to design spell structures to be as efficient and thus bereft of blight as possible. But even the most outrageously efficient fireball would still produce at least some blight, and even if said blight is immediately expunged by the soul, it will be more than enough to destroy a Weaver’s threads.»
Rína silently chewed her lip as she considered her aunt’s words. She remembered months ago when her aunt told her that Weavers couldn’t use other disciplines of magic. And while Rína still felt a little disappointed about that, she had seen for herself that there were certain ways to sort of get around that.
«On the topic of spell efficiency,» Her aunt continued, «We may as well start on a brief introduction of aether dynamics.»
“Hm?” Rína’s eyes snapped to attention, «Oh yeah, sure. Especially if it’ll help me make my cantrip create less blight.»
«Very good,» Yvette wrote as her mannerisms became slightly more professorial, «Now the behavior of liquid aether will vary wildly based on the intent it carries, but in a perfectly idealized setting, flowing aether will adhere to the First Theorem of aether dynamics:»
Across Rína’s aura a monster of a mathematical formula appeared. The bulk of it was a nasty vector integral, but the rest of it was a scattering of bizarre symbols arranged in some alien notation. Though, as she looked at it, Rína couldn’t help but think that she’d seen it somewhere recently.
«As you might expect,» Yvette continued, «this is a gross oversimplification of real-world scenarios, but it will serve as a solid primer for what is to come. Now this first symbol describes the coefficient of interflow separation, or rather, the equation therein, as its value must be calculated dynamically.» As she wrote, one of the bizarre symbols in the equation extruded perpendicularly, turning into a similarly complex expression, «This second symbol relates the liquid aether’s meniscal tension to its static Astral weight, which again, is a dynamic value. This third represents the set of vectors that define…»
Her aunt carried on the impromptu lecture for the next two hours, though showed no signs of concluding her ‘brief introduction’. Rína could only stare at the conceptual diagrams and even more equations that had littered the surface of her aura. And though she asked as many clarifying questions as was humanly possible, it soon became clear that the material’s learning curve was less of a curve, and more of a sheer cliff at whose base she found herself.
Rína would be lying if she said she wasn’t intimidated, but learning all the theory and math didn’t feel like some chore, but more like a challenge. And she’d be damned if she wasn’t going to rise to that challenge, especially as its reward would take her one step closer to that ideal of magic she had grown up with stories of.
Idly, Rína’s eyes rose to the underside brim of her hat, and to the silver embroidery depicting the faux mysticism that—
That contained the First Theorem of aether dynamics.
It was a chance thing, but stitched among the various swirls and arcane symbols, Rína spied the formula. She frowned as that was the last place she expected to find such a thing, but with a bit of growing suspicion, she gave the hat a closer inspection. Sure enough she spotted the resistive flux relation that her aunt was lecturing her on at that very moment. It was yet another formula that was hidden among a mess of decorative swirls that, just a second later, Rína realized weren’t decorative at all, but were two-d depictions of four-d turbulence.
The various artsy fonts and the inherently abstract diagrams did a lot to disguise the actual content, but as Rína looked at it, it was clear that the underside of her witch’s hat was nothing short of an aether dynamics cheat-sheet. And seeing as the vast majority of its content still looked cryptic, it was a cheat-sheet that Rína would definitely be needing.