Trying not to stick his tongue out, Orton traced the runes on the paper with careful and exacting precision. The process was slow and painstaking without expending power on a servitor process; he was used to such work, but it was a bit like having to get out and push your very expensive sports car -- even the very enlightened experience a little resentment when forced to do something they feel they shouldn't have to do. Nearby, Enna and Jiann sat and stared at each other over the restaurant's uncomfortably tiny table -- the three of them were sitting so closely together that the awkwardness was almost physically painful.

After a while, Jiann cleared his throat. "Girly, if'n you wanna ask me somethin', you ain't doin' a very good job."

Enna picked at her food -- greasy french fries and sausage on a styrofoam plate, smothered in ketchup. And we hiked ten miles for this. How is this ethnic cuisine? Still, I guess it could be that lootfish stuff Orton mentioned. "Sorry. I just... I don't know where to begin. I just met you, and apparently you used to be a bad guy, or something? And also wearing another bad guy's body like a hat, and you're dead?" She munched another french fry morosely, looking down at her plate. "My life hasn't exactly prepared me well for these topics of conversation."

Jiann shrugged. "Ain't no different than me. I spent my first seventy years in the same town, studyin' magic an' sellin' artifacts, then alluva sudden I'm a dead man who's also a passenger in a scruffy white poser's noggin." He jerked his head in Orton's direction, who was not listening at all and wouldn't have taken notice if he had been. "I spend aroun' forty years like that, then find m'own self back in my body again, only it's dead and fallin' apart, so I hafta figure out how to make that work fer me." He sighed. "And just when I get the hang of it, this steer-slappin' sucker comes along and burns down errythin' I've worked for an' kills me again, so I gotta start all over, only in his body." He rubbed his neck uncomfortably. "So trust me, I know all about feelin' awkward in weird-ass situations."

Enna shuddered. "I mean, at least you're alive -- uh, undead -- to complain about it. I don't think I'd view getting killed as a pain in the ass, because I'd actually be, you know, dead."

"Huh." Jiann paused. "S'pose there's a little wisdom in that." He shrugged. "Anyhow, I think we're s'posed to be talkin' less about our insecurities an' more about sorcery."

"Bleh. I guess that's as good as any a place to start." Enna shoved her food as far away as she could on the tiny table -- which wasn't far at all -- and hesitantly raised her gaze to meet Jiann's milky white eyes. "What is sorcery, exactly? Orton says it's just 'being good at intuitive magic', but that doesn't actually tell me much."

Jiann scratched his chin. "Well, that ain't wrong, exactly -- but, as usual, leave it to Orton to tell you the truth an' tell you nothin' useful at the same time." He grunted, then spread his hands; a web of crackling white lightning sprang up between them, dancing between his fingers. Enna jerked back, but the display was over almost before it began, and Jiann folded his hands again. "Now, ask me how in th' heck I did that."

Enna gulped. "Um... okay. How did you do that?"

Jiann shrugged and smirked. "Ain't got the faintest. Jus'... felt my way through it." He grinned at Enna's ensuing scowl, but raised a hand placatingly. "Settle down, settle down. Now, that don't mean there weren't no lore involved -- I had ta visualize all kinds'a structures an' linkages an' whatnot -- but that stuff's all secondary to sorcery." He pondered for a moment, then raised a finger to illustrate his point. "When you decide what yer gonna say, do ya decide what th' predicate o' yer sentence is? Do ya determine what conjugations an' what prepositions yer gonna use are? Or do y'just... talk?"

Enna opened her mouth, stopped, and closed it again. Slowly, she looked down at her hands, rubbing her thumbs against the tips of her index fingers, then brought both hands together into a steeple where each finger was touching its opposite. In her mind, something was happening -- half-remembered science class experiments with Jacob's Ladders were linking up with images of a bolt striking a clock tower in Back to the Future and the the snaking yellow-orange glyph of The Intention to Know -- and abruptly, everything came together into a seamless whole, and she drew her hands apart swiftly and decisively.

A massive bolt of lightning the circumference of a two-liter soda bottle erupted between her fingers, crackling and snapping wildly; the radiance and heat were so intense that she jerked away involuntarily. Instantly, the bolt disappeared; she sat there dazedly until the waitress hissed "No flash camera!" in heavily-accented English in her ear, then bustled away at her murmured apology.

Jiann nodded. "You get it now?"

"No!" hissed Enna furiously. "That didn't tell me anything!" She fought down the urge to hurl her food across the restaurant. "Why is this so difficult?!"

The revenant chuckled. "'Cause it ain't easy, obviously." He sobered, tapping the table with a bony finger. "Missy, you happen to be approachin' this all bass-ackwards. Yer askin' why it's hard, instead o' askin' what you should be askin'."

Enna rolled her eyes. "And what's that, exactly?"

"Why it ain't harder." Jiann's cloudy eyes bored into her. "Orton 'n me been studyin' magic fer about a hunnert times longer'n you've been alive, and yer snappin' at our heels power-wise after a handful o' years o' half-ass study." He leaned closer. "Now, I don't claim to be no expert, but seems ta me that somebody in that there kinda situation should be tryin' ta unnerstand their situation, not complainin' about how it ain't easier or more convenient."

Enna sighed, wishing there was enough room on the table to lay her head on her arms. "I know, I know. I already got the lecture from Orton on how I'm a spoiled, lazy brat."

Jiann nodded. "An' y'are, but that's sorcerers for ya." Enna looked up, blinking; Jiann chuckled again. "Comes with th' temperament for sorcery. Hell, I'd imagine we all look lazy an' ignorant compared to yer typical wizard who spends all day in a library an' never gets laid."

"Go fuck yourself," commented Orton without looking up from his scribing.

Jiann grinned wider, then turned back to Enna. "So if'n I was you, I wouldn' trouble m'self about tryin' ta be more like Orton, an' instead focus on fillin' in those missin' pieces o' yer own relationship ta magic. What things do ya wanna do that ya cain't?"

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"Hmm." Enna ticked off what few parlor tricks she had on her fingers. "Well, I can invoke, I can do that 'pushing on entropy thing' -- vaticinophrasty, I think Orton called it? And I can cast formal spells, if I have the formula in front of me and I have the time to concentrate and I don't get distracted." She ran a hand through her coppery hair in frustration. "But I only know a small handful of those, and I don't know any of that cool magic karate you guys have. Somantic arts, right?"

"Somatic," corrected Jiann. "Means 'of the body'." He rubbed his bearded chin with one hand, pondering. "Well, them sorta things take years an' years o' study, trainin' an' practice, which we probably ain't got. But I reckon I can help you a lil' with the spellcastin'." He tapped his temple. "How much time you spent up here?"

Enna looked confused. "What? I mean, I live in my head all the time, but probably not the way you mean."

"Expected about as much." The revenant folded his arms across his chest. "If'n you wanna be much of a spellcaster, you better get comfortable up there. Didn't Trenchcoat Mafia over there teach you no meditation or lucid dreamin' techniques or nothin'?"

Enna squirmed guiltily. "I, uh... might not have been very diligent about practicing them."

"Well, start." Jiann rolled his eyes, the effect of which was somewhat ruined by his lack of pupils or an iris. "Th' power o' controllin yer own mind -- noephrasty -- is th' magus's real strength; train yer mind well enough, an' you'll be able to do stuff ya literally cain't even imagine right now." He pointed a finger at her. "Start spendin' yer sleepin' hours in yer noodle whenever y'can. Get used ta th' dream realm, try out scenarios, an' learn ta partition yer mind. Once ya can do that reliably, ask one of us ta teach ya about servitors -- that'll get yer spellcastin' up ta speed lickety-split."

Enna sighed. "So now I get to do homework in my sleep, too." She stretched, then shrugged. "I guess the payoff might be worth it, though, if it comes with phenomenal cosmic power."

Jiann chuckled. "Th' other thing that'll be useful t'ya is gettin yer feet wet with semioturgy -- th' process o' linkin' together symbols with yer intent." Dabbing the tip of his finger in the ketchup on Enna's plate, he traced a circle with a dot in the middle. "That there's th' alchemical symbol for 'sun' or 'gold'. By itself, it ain't nothin' more than a doodle -- but if'n you chain it together with some other runes an' symbols for somethin' like 'fire' or 'greed', y'can make a more powerful effect than by will alone."

Enna blinked. "Wait. Something like that happened just now, with the lightning. I started free-associating some of the thought-forms and memories I have about... I don't know, pop culture stuff." She waved her hands aimlessly. "It felt lame, but it obviously worked."

Jiann nodded again. "Th' more lore y'know, the more content you'll have ta draw on when makin' those linkages, an' the more easily you'll be able ta retain formal spells. Runes, sigils, an' mythological resonances -- any o' that sorta thing will give ya that much more expertise an' capability."

"This will also help you," cut in Orton, handing Enna the spell diagram he'd been working on.

Enna squinted at it -- it seemed a lot like a bunch of squiggled runes in circles and a bunch of lines linking other runes together, plus a hefty seasoning of mathematical symbols. "Orton, I can't read this at all. What am I supposed to do with this, eat it?"

Orton opened his mouth, paused, closed it, and shook his head. "Not this time, anyway. But no, you're going to cast this spell and teleport us to Shrewsbury, England."

"Teleport?!" Enna jerked back, almost dropping the diagram in her plate of fries and ketchup. "Orton, are you nuts?! I can't do anything like that!"

Orton shrugged. "Maybe not, but neither can I at the moment -- I'm so tapped out on power that I couldn't teleport us outside this building."

"Don' look at me, neither," chuckled Jiann. "I used up a good bit o' my mojo freein' you folks. An' that's even if I could teleport, which I cain't."

"What?" Enna turned to stare at Jiann. "Why can't you?"

Jiann shrugged. "Teleportation -- establishin' a spatial isomorphism between two points -- is a fourth-tier power, lil' lady. An' I'm only third tier -- nearin' the top o' the third, mind, but still only third."

Enna stared down at the paper, feeling lost. "And me? What tier am I?"

Orton shrugged. "Beats me. You don't seem to obey the rules the way we do -- and maybe that's something we can use to our advantage." He tapped the diagram. "If you can get us there, I can scrounge us an artifact I happen to know about, which should restore our power -- and we'll be safe during the duration of the travel."

"What duration?" Enna began to study the paper again. "I thought teleportation was instantaneous."

Orton shook his head. "For us, sure -- but not for the rest of the world. You can't get there in any less time it would take you to travel normally -- that would violate causality so badly that you could never have enough power to shift the entropy it would require. But you can 'skip over' the actual traveling part as long as everything comes out correctly in the end -- and there will be train tickets and plane flights and video recordings if anyone bothers to look, but nobody will be able to attack us or divine our locations in the meantime. It's pretty much the only option we've got."

"Uhm. Okay... I guess." Enna folded the paper carefully and looked up. "Do we do it here, or...?"

"You wish, Red." Jiann's grin was wide and unsettling. "Hope you ain't afraid o' the dark."

----------------------------------------

"I swear to God, Orton, you do this shit on purpose." Enna stared at the van in abject horror.

Orton rolled his eyes. "Yes, you've caught me, all the setup and mayhem and nearly getting killed all those times has culminated in this, my master plan to get you in my sex van for a threesome with my undead buddy."

Jiann wrinkled his nose. "Hey now, I ain't comfortable with that."

Orton kicked him in the shin. "Don't you start too." He turned to Enna, trying his best to remain calm. "We have to be in an enclosed space, in darkness, with no observers, and this is the best I could do on short notice. A van like this one is likely to be somewhere near the target destination, so it'll make a reasonable superposition -- but if it really bothers you, I could try to find something else, like a public bathroom or a portable toilet?"

Enna shuddered. "Eugh. No, it's fine, we'll go with the sex van." She clambered in, trying not to gag at the smell -- the vehicle had obviously been abandoned for some time.

"I'm glad you approve." Orton gestured for Jiann to follow, then clambered in and shut the doors behind himself; the interior of the van was pitch-black and freezing cold. "Now, you've memorized the diagrams, I've explained the mechanics of everything to you, and --"

"Shut up, just shut up." Enna elbowed out in the direction of Orton's voice and was rewarded with a grunt. "I'll do this my way." Either Orton was convinced or too annoyed to argue; she didn't hear a response, anyway.

Closing her eyes (pointless in the darkness, but it felt correct), Enna started to concentrate. Her first instinct was to try to think through the things Orton had explained about the spell one at a time, but something else in her told her not to bother with that. Instead, she just held the ritual in her mind, as a whole, and did nothing with it; stubbornly, she resisted the urge to contemplate it, follow it, or interact with it in any way. She simply let it exist, within her mind, and appreciated it for what it was, marveling at its complexity and intricacy. Then, almost by accident, she understood it -- all at once, without having to struggle or think or build up to anything. It was the easiest thing in the world to raise her hands just so, to chant this sequence of words in a language she didn't remotely understand but somehow knew that would provide the critical impetus for this space to become similar enough to that space that she could treat them as the same, and then to do so by a sheer effort of will. The power surged through her, and abruptly she was dizzy, disoriented, and drained. She staggered, bumping into someone ("Hey, now!" -- apparently it had been Jiann) and sat down heavily. "Ugh. Oh, lame." She sucked in a breath of stale van air, trying not to vomit. "Well, I feel super gross, so it better have worked."

Orton fumbled for the door handle, then opened the van's rear door again cautiously; a welcome breeze of fresh air snaked in from the outside, somewhat less bitterly cold than she'd been expecting. He turned to her and grinned. "Congratulations. We're not in Finland anymore, Toto."