Gio paced around his room. He stared at his reflection, looking at the three spells Rio had gathered. All of them were domains.

“Look… they are only reflections. Would you notice if one of your spells was missing its reflection? Especially one that you don’t use frequently like a domain.” Rio said, trying to calm Gio.

“I don’t know that I am a good example because of the mirror magic… but I probably wouldn’t. That’s not the point, though. This could be… bad.” Gio said.

Rio had even gone out of his way to list the details of the stolen reflections.

[Wizard’s Domain] (Tier: Upper Rare)(Schools: Enchantment, Arcane) (Type: Domain) Take possession of an area of realspace. Inside this area, Spells, Skills, and other abilities of the Arcane subschool will be amplified and discounted. Hostile Arcane spellcraft is inhibited within this area.

[Feast of Flames] (Tier: ULTRA Rare)(Schools: Conjuration, Fire, Evocation) (Type: Domain) Take possession of an area of realspace. Inside this area, Spells, Skills, and other abilities of the Fire subschool will be amplified and discounted. Consume fire-based constructs within this area to regain mana.

[Monolith Field] (Tier: Greater Rare)(Schools: Conjuration, Alteration, Earth) (Type: Domain) Take possession of an area of realspace. Summon and control earthen constructs to restrain or hamper hostile movement. Hostile mana shaping is slightly debuffed in this area.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment. But you didn’t discuss this with me, and I don’t believe for a second that these spells aren’t protected in some way. If I copy them, even if I do it with garbage materials, it would be putting a target on my back. Not only that, but it would also entail proving everyone right about mirror mages!” Gio ranted.

“So don’t copy the whole thing! You act like there’s nothing you can do. That’s not exactly true, is it? If you… we…weren’t so gullible, maybe we would have figured something out by now. I know that you know this, Gio. You bend under any pressure, so ready to adhere to every decree put over you, no matter who decides it. I didn’t bring you those spells to try and fix our problems in one fell swoop. I know what you know on some level, remember? I also know that you’re too afraid to let yourself even think outside the box. Now tell me- how could we use these spells without just plagiarizing them?” Rio signed, staring at Gio with a contemptuous smirk.

Gio reeled at the harsh words. True to his nature, Rio saw directly through him. Every word that Rio signed was true. He had been limiting his train of thought. It was scary to admit, but Gio could already break the rules. There was no magic contract or looming presence to stop him from just… looking at the spells that Rio had brought him in the reflection.

“What happens when you get rid of these reflections?” Gio asked, pointing to the pages.

“They start to fade back to where they’re supposed to be in the reflection. Keeping them here is a bit of a draw on my skill, but this class is pretty… robust.” Rio signed.

Gio looked at the three spellforms through the mirror.

These patterns… that’s just a mana-attribute filtering loop. And that there is some sort of spatial… enchantment? Huh.

“Okay, I’ll bite. You’re saying that I can study these spellforms to learn how they’re put together without actually inscribing the spellform into my own spellbook. That’s smart. If we were being really bold… I’d say that I could probably get away with scribing a temporary copy of the [Wizard’s Domain] to practice with… so long as I don’t try and bring it back to school.” Gio signed.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Yup. From what we know about how these sigils work, the one in that spell is probably over-taxed as it is, so it might be hard for them to trace a single new connection to it. Admittedly… that argument is being made using conclusions about things we only sort of know about. There’s a possibility that whoever made the spell already knows a mirror mage messed with it… so maybe hold off on doing that for now?” Rio signed.

“So… I should make non-infused copies of these spellforms. We’re doing it… we’re breaking the copy clause. This does beg the question though, how are we going to actually get a domain? This will probably be an invaluable tool in theorycrafting how we might make a domain spellform, but we can’t do anything without having one of those core sigils.” Gio said.

“Well… I don’t know. I honestly was unsure if I could even get through to you about this, so I am super unprepared for what comes next. You folded quicker than I expected.” Rio signed, looking slightly awkward.

“Oh, so now that you’re the one giving the decrees, you want me to grow more spine? This whole talking reflection thing has made me realize that we have a few issues that we need to work on.” Gio said, laughing.

_____

The next morning, Gio saw his siblings off to school even though they were able to walk themselves, and prepared breakfast for his parents before they headed off to their jobs. Unfortunately, just because Gio was taking time off, didn’t mean that his family could afford to do so as well.

Gio paced around his childhood home, trying to remember what he used to do in his free time before the academy.

It was just mana-shaping exercises, wasn’t it? I made it all the way to school without any real hobbies?

Having a slight existential crisis, Gio turned to one of his newer pastimes and decided to take a lap around the house to try and see if any of the houseplants needed attention. To his slight dismay, it seemed that they were all more than adequately taken care of by his mother.

The house is clean… plants are fine… schoolwork is done… what do I do now?

Gio went to his room, looking around for anything to get his mind off of the spellforms. He had spent all of last night pouring off the three copies, and was at something of a saturation point, and needed to take some time away from the daunting task to reset himself.

His attention turned to his old notebooks. He paged through the worn scribbles, trying to decipher his younger self’s ramblings.

“Grandpa - dragon magic - evil???” one note said.

Pfft, dragon magic? I’ve certainly always had an imagination. What did dad do with grandpa’s old notes anyways?

After a half hour of scouring through the attic space, Gio found a file folder with the initials “FBC” that contained re-bound versions of his grandfather’s notes. Gio flipped through the pages, admiring his mother’s personal touches.

Why did I never think to ask her to re-bind these notes? She even fixed some of the smudging!

Gio flipped through his grandfather’s notes with renewed fervor. While he didn’t find any grand revelations in the fixed areas, he was noticing details that hadn’t jumped out to him when he had previously read the journal in his youth.

Gio reviewed a fairly detailed report on the behavior of a particular type of dungeon sentry, listed in his grandfather’s notes as “T.K. Watcher. - avoid at all cost.” The entry detailed one of the eponymous Telechines of [Telechine’s Garden]. The humanoid monsters supposedly had wolf-like facial features and were often seen wearing rusted metal armor. Francisco’s journal described the watcher class of these creatures as fiercely territorial.

“That sounds a lot like it was guarding something. I can see why he thought that there might be treasure in that dungeon.” Gio muttered.

Rio grabbed Gio’s attention through the mirror, holding up a copy of the notes on a specific page.

“All signs from the dungeon archeology survey point to a pre-system era production facility of some sort. Dungeon would have had to form around some manner of confluence of mana. Possibly relic-based, or spiritspring.” the passage said.

Spiritspring. There’s that word again. What even is a spiritspring?

Gio went to retrieve a glossary from his mother’s small collection. He found the entry he was looking for:

“Spiritspring: An origin point for minor spirits, usually spawning sprites, motes, or other small spirits. Usually contains high amounts of mana relative to the type of spirits being spawned.”

Now that’s interesting. I wonder… is a spiritspring the same thing as a nexus?