“I want to try the spell, too!” Zanie said. She took the notebook and read over the spell, her eyes moving slowly across the page as she concentrated on casting it. Jeremy tilted his head in thought as he watched the spell manifest around her. As soon as she finished casting it, she looked around with a sparkle of excitement, obviously tickled that her script had worked.
Thus far, their spells had consisted of fairly simple arrangements of runes, certainly nothing as complex as the script. These more complex spells would be significantly more difficult to remember, especially if they started including goddamn math equations in them. Which meant people would need some type of pocket guide. But casting from that, especially if faced with an enemy, was inefficient and impractical. Yet another reason for them to figure out how to create an enchanted crystal that could automatically provide a readout when infused with a little bit of mana.
“Do you guys memorize all of your spells?” Jeremy asked Hazel. The elf knew about runes and putting together spells, so it wasn’t as if elves just visualized their magic all willy-nilly all the time. They had an actual system of runes that they had to study to learn.
“No,” he gave Jeremy a small smile, like maybe he was letting him in on a secret or admitting something he should not. “Our instructors try to get us to when we are in basic schooling and we do memorize a lot of the runes, but most do not bother to remember spells. Outside of school It is common just to keep a book of commonly used spells, anyway.”
That sounded a bit like teachers trying to get their students to memorize math equations in high school, while the students just complain that they will never need to have them memorized. The internet was at their fingertips. They could print out a list of equations and hang it above their desk at work if they had that kind of job, and nobody would care. Sure, they might eventually memorize the equations they use the most, but there was no reason they couldn’t have a list of them for a high school test.
“I guess you end up memorizing a lot of them just through using them,” Jeremy wondered aloud.
“Mages and others who focus more heavily on spellwork do,” Hazel agreed.
That piqued Jeremy’s curiosity. He nudged Hazel for more information. “As opposed to…”
“Well, warriors who focus more on physical skill or crafters.” Hazel hummed after that, turning his eyes to the ceiling as he mulled over his thoughts for a beat. Zanie had begun scribbling again, either fixing something on the spell or maybe adding to the script to get the rings to show up as numbers, too. Once she was finished fiddling with it, Jeremy also wanted to give the spell a go.
Hazel had finally gotten his thoughts in order and continued. “Crafters use their own systems, but that does not mean they don’t memorize those formulas. And just because someone practices alchemy doesn’t mean they do not utilize spell work. The same goes for warriors. So I suppose everyone would memorize their most commonly used spell work.”
He had put far more thought into answering Jeremy’s questions than Jeremy had expected. And had only created more questions by doing so. What was alchemy? What kinds of things did the crafters make? Maybe he was talking about people who enchanted objects.
“What kind of…what do you do?” Jeremy asked. “Are you a mage?”
“No, I am a warrior,” Hazel answered. Jeremy waited for a couple of beats, curious to see if he would expand on that, but he remained silent. Apparently, he did not feel the need to share.
“What exactly does that mean?” Caleb asked, looking up from whatever he had been fiddling around with on his phone. “You’re good with like combat? Does that mean you don’t actually practice magic, or are you a warrior mage.”
Jeremy thought it was pretty obvious that Hazel practiced some type of magic to reach the level he was at, especially since he was able to cast and maintain the translation spell.
“I am not considered a warrior mage necessarily.” Hazel said slowly, “If the translation means what I think it does. I do not use spells for combat, I use weapons. I also do not tend to enchant my own weaponry, although if I am in a bind I can do basic stuff. I, like every other elf, am able to use basic spells and have practiced enough to use things, such as the translation spell, but most of my cultivation has been directed towards physical attributes."
But before Jeremy could voice any of his questions, Zanie cleared her throat and held up the notebook to try the spell again. Jeremy turned to watch her cast again.
She did add a script for turning the rings into numbers, which was simply to shift the ring to Arabic numerals. The runes and English script that floated around her slowly faded.
“Did it work?”
“Yeah.”
“You know what else you should add,” Caleb said,” Something so that the runes show up. They would be useful to see as well.”
“That would have to be an addition to the modifier on the radar rune,” Zanie nodded, putting the notebook back on her lap and clicking the pen a few times. “Do you think if I just write, detect runes it would work?”
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
The air conditioner suddenly kicked off, settling down into the quieter background hum of the fan. They could hear the sounds of traffic from outside of the hotel room and a group of people walking by below their window. It all sounded so very normal, and from within the hotel room, one might never have guessed that the whole world had turned upside down except for the fact that they were sitting with an elf and creating a spell.
“Only one way to find out,” Caleb told Zanie, “Try it.”
“I think you would also have to modify the illusionary rune somehow to have an output because the scripts you have now are specific to the spectrum of concentration and to the rings.”
“That makes sense.” Zanie put the pen against the paper and hummed before thinking out loud, “Do you think I could somehow translate the runes into English equivalents?”
“I doubt it.” Hazel jumped in. “None of our translation spells are able to translate runes into elvish because they are not simply a language. Plus, you are starting to make the spell quite complex. If you add too much onto it, eventually you will not be able to cast it unless you practice to become more efficient at spell work.”
All the more reason for them to try to find some mana crystals and figure out a way to turn the spell itself into an enchantment. Zanie nodded along to what Hazel was saying, then wrote something else and held the notebook up again. When she cast the spell, Jeremy could see that she added show runes to the illusionary rune, as well as detect runes to the radar rune.
“It works,” she told them. “It really is not all that difficult to adjust these spells to do exactly what you want, is it?”
“No,” Hazel agreed, “It is just a matter of what you are capable of casting at your experience level and making sure you are specific enough. You seem to have some experience in figuring out how to word your language to specify exactly the output you want. Others might not be so successful.”
Zanie smiled at the compliment, then set the notebook aside and put her hands behind her to lean back on them. “I’m starting to feel it a little, though. I think adding on the last two modifiers for the runes definitely made it a little more difficult.”
Jeremy stood up a little to stretch across the bed and pick up the notebook so he could look down at it. He read over the spell, pouring mana into it and visualizing the runes taking on life because of the mana, then looked around. Sure enough, in front of all three of his companions were the little numbers, but also with labels in front of them. Zanie and Caleb each had rings: 1 and spectrum: 1, while Hazel had rings: 5 and spectrum: 9.
They were little numbers that appeared clearly in front of their overlays, similar to how the runes in their overlays appeared. Except they hovered slightly in front instead of being actually incorporated into the overlays. The spell showed the runes in the same way, which meant they were simply duplicated in his eyes.
Except there were far more of them.
“Oly shit,” he said, “There’s a ton of runes that this spell is picking up that I cannot see.”
“Oh?” Zanie sat forward again, interested, “I thought you would be able to see all of them.”
“No, just the unique personality trait ones, but there are a whole bunch.”
“Those are probably your attributes,” Hazel said, kind off off-hand, as though it were not a big deal.
“What are those?” Jeremy asked.
Hazel frowned, clearly trying to come up with a different word for them or a good way to describe them. Probably in his language, the term was self-explanatory. Or elves were simply so familiar with the schema of these ‘attributes’ that it was difficult for him to figure out how to explain them.
“They are like traits that everyone has which you can improve through cultivating and breaking through what you are referring to as levels.” Hazel explained.
There was that term again. Cultivating. Jeremy was going to have a long conversation with Hazel about what he meant by that and what these attributes were. But as the output from the spell faded from his eyesight, he felt a wave of fatigue crash over him. The spell had not taken that much out of him, so it was probably just due to the late hour after the long day. They really needed to figure out a better sleeping schedule now that the days were so much longer.
“This is literally better than even what I can see,” he said, looking down at the notebook.
“We’ve just got to figure out a way to make it accessible for everyone now,” Zanie said. “I mean, we can put the spell up online for people to use, but I think it would be better if we tried to turn it into an enchantment so that even beginners could use it.”
“We have to find some mana crystals for that first.” Jeremy stood up so he could place the notebook and pen on the desk. “Maybe tomorrow morning, we can ask around to see if there are any high concentrations of monsters around. Whether or not there is a dungeon, I bet if there are a lot of monsters, that means there is a concentration of mana. Hazel, you said that was usually where you could find crystals, right?”
Hazel nodded.
“It would be good to keep fighting stuff and leveling up too,” Caleb pointed out, “I mean, Hazel, you said that only people who were level five or above could come to Earth from your world, so I think that as citizens of Earth, we should probably strive to get to at least level five.”
“I do actually need to log some more dungeons to show that I am making progress with my research,” Hazel added his two cents, “As fascinating as it is just working through a spell with humans, I do need to continue my project.”
Sometimes, it was easy to forget that Hazel was literally another type of creature—not human. Sure, he had pointy ears and strange, light-colored eyes that seemed to stare straight through you when he looked at you, but his mannerisms and English were so human sometimes. Then he called them humans, obviously not including himself in that group, and it reminded Jeremy that he was, in fact, a creature from beyond one of the gates.
“Didn’t you tell your parents that you were headed in their direction, though?” Zanie pointed out.
“Well, we can see if maybe there is something in their direction,” Jeremy said. “If not, we can just go that way and maybe hit something along the way. And if there is a dungeon off in another direction,” he shrugged, “I didn’t give them an exact timeline, so it’s fine if we take a little longer. I think it’s important to try to get this figured out.”
Zanie nodded, and after a few more little straggling bits of conversation, she and Hazel left to go to their respective rooms for the night.
“Man, it feels so nice to sleep on a bed,” Caleb said as they turned off the lights and settled in for the night. Jeremy snorted and shuffled over onto his side, be he had to agree.