The first lesson took place not inside the library, but out in the field. Mahdi the merchant had given one look to Patia and decided that it was perhaps better to store his delicate wares inside a metal coffer. Karla had decided not to come with, as she rather wanted to test the limits of animated straw man than listen to a lecture that might literally make her bleed from her ears. The Wolf was nowhere to be seen, as he only tended to pop up and mock Rye (or Elia) whenever they set their minds to practical pursuits.
Rye wistfully looked at the merchant and where she could trade in the knight’s soul for one aligned with her spirit. Surely, it seemed only reasonable to stack every advantage she could get if the trade of casting magic was so perilous.
Patia swatted her greedy hands.
“It is better to know what you have,” she said. “You should not be building your future upon a temporary foundation.”
“But it would make it easier.”
“Yes, it would. And you would be learning to rely on a crutch for walking.”
In the end, Rye gave up, with the promise that when she was sufficiently done, she could get one that would augment her strengths or iron out her weaknesses. With little reason to believe her a liar, Rye followed the instructions to a T.
“Now, since we are on the topic of crutches, you said you had a spell-boon.”
“Yes. Had.” Rye nodded solemnly. “Not anymore.”
“Good.” Her teacher’s frankness was like a slap to the face. “A boon is a boon because it makes the impossible possible. A spell-boon makes the possible trivial, and no one has ever learned from trivial exertion. Conjuring is an art of flexibility and adaptation. A boon is static, never changing. However, in exchange for this, they are one hundred percent safe. Now, if your spirit were a vase filled with water, what could you do with it?”
Rye turned the question over in her head. “You can pour it out. You can pour more water into it. You can pour something else into it. You could color the pot, smash the pot, throw the pot–”
“Yes, yes, I know the analogy is imperfect.” Patia sighed. “But there are similarities enough for you to imagine it. For magic, it is quite simple: Your Spirit’s reservoir is the pot itself, the channels running through your body are the shape and amount of necks and the flow is how much those channels can output in totality. Now, what does this analogy tell you?”
“That there is both strength and delicacy in spell casting.” She hummed, looking for anything else. “Well obviously, I cannot cast a spell forever. Eventually, my pot will be empty.”
Patia frowned. “Yes, and no. When you cast a spell, as a conjurer at least, you are not creating something from nothing. You are pulling with a force at an object from a greater place down to us and it does not want to stay, nor does it want to follow your every whim. Imagine here a piece of wood floating on an ocean. If you pull it under, it will want to float back up. Your hand is your spirit. Your reservoir determines how much energy you have to resist this desire before you have to let go.”
“And if I don’t have any energy, I can’t pull it under?”
“Yes.” Patia paced. “No. Consider this: Your spirit is a pot, but there are certain measures in place. If you were to empty it completely, you would pour yourself into the world. You would perish.”
Her teacher stopped pacing, standing a bit longer than was perfectly normal.
“But you shouldn’t worry about that. Your Spirit is quite adept at keeping itself and by extension you alive, though we will have to bend some of those instincts. For a normal Spirit, you won't ever go below sixty percent capacity, and even a good sorcerer isn’t trained to go below thirty for other reasons, better reasons than simple self preservation.”
She conjured a ball of ice in her hand, perfectly round, steaming, and, as Rye thought noteworthy to ask about, without using a focus.
“There are three parts to a spell, aptly named call-cast-calm. Now, this is the first part of casting a spell, the call. I have called a mote of ice from a constellation both safe enough to take from and aligned with the influence of…” She turned it back and forth so Rye could catch a peek. “Of Ice. It is a sphere of ice. And as a simple sphere, I must feed it from my reservoir for simply existing. Frankly, the way it is now it is quite useless.”
She threw the ball. It thunked to the ground like any normal ball of ice before quickly melting into flakes. Within seconds, she had a second ball conjured.
“Now, let me show you what happens when I fill it with a force of movement from, let us say, the amethyst river.” Though nothing outwardly changed, Rye felt the ball suddenly take on a great amount of… nothing. It didn’t even glow as her teacher let it guide her like a puppy on a leash. “The ball pushes in every direction, and I am pushing back. Yet it is pulling me forward because…”
Rye blinked. A question. “Because your force is weaker on one side?”
“Exactly. Like opening the door to a cage. Opening that door is how you cast a spell, how you make it affect your target after having called down the forces to do what you want. Now, watch and learn.” The ball stopped pulling her. It spun like a top before coming to rest within Rye’s palm.
A shock ran through her, and she batted it away, heart hammering in her ears. The white-scaled woman simply watched her. Was she expecting more input?
“That was dangerous,” Rye said.
“Oh? Was it?” A question posed as a challenge. “But I had it under control. The sphere had force, yet my force was greater.”
“What if you lost control?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry. I am an experienced conjurer with hundreds of years of experience. A novice spell like this is no challenge, I could keep it conjured all day and – oh dear, it seems I have slipped and accidentally cast a spell.”
Patia turned to a creeping vine in the distance and sent the ball flying on a straight path. It detonated with a crack, the force tearing the vine into ribbons.. Rye jumped an inch, recalling how she and the legionnaires had been hit by those. What was left of the plant was coated in a layer of hoarfrost, and there wasn’t much left in the first place. The message was clear: don’t lose concentration on a spell, even a beginner one.
Rye raised a hand as Patia massaged her own.
“When the ice cracked, the force escaped outwards. Is it possible that this reaction is intentional, for some spells at least?”
A rare upward quirk of her lips flashed across her teacher’s face. “That it is. While the shell’s integrity was greater than the force inside, there was a balance. When calling down the forces, you always call the shell first. After that, all you must do is mix and match for effect while keeping in mind a balance of forces. Once the calling is done, you release a portion of control and hopefully your spell does what you intend it to. Both mixing influences and ‘letting go’ are called the cast. Both test your preparation and theoretical knowledge.”
“Now, when you don’t balance the amount of forces, or create a mixture that reacts much more potently than its constituents, you will have a problem. The spell could detonate in your face, it could fly somewhere you did not intend, or you could realize that you channeled from the wrong constellation and instead of ice, you have conjured a runaway reaction even while the shell still holds for the moment. Their interplay can range from reacting like oil and water, to like boiling oil and boiling water. These results are all well and good because they are the harmless type of failures, the ones that weed out the impatient and the fools from the careful, serious conjurers.”
Rye made a face showing just how serious she meant it. No casting spells without understanding the forces behind it. She could already see the mountain of homework piling up in front of her. Though one thing she had to know as she raised her hand again.
“How can something that might kill or maim the caster be considered harmless?”
Another smile. Rye was starting to dislike those. “You may have noticed that we have only spoken about the first two steps of conjuring a spell, call and cast. Calm is often relegated to tertiary importance, for it is a mundane and simple set of gestures easily memorized. Let me tell you how underestimating the need for calm is a mistake. Because above the sky, behind the pinprick doors we call constellations, is a sea so dark and unfathomable you do not want to gain the attention of what prowls its depths. You may have noticed a sign I have been frequently making. This is the sign of calm. It is the first thing you will learn and the last thing you will forget. Every spell cast is a ripple in the water. Too many ripples – too many unhidden tracks – and something might just decide to peek below the surface and find you.”
Now that both frightened her and roused her curiosity at the same time. Was the sea above like the ones they had along the coast? Was she a shark, or rather as an apprentice was she more of a mackerel?
Her hand shot back up again. “But if the energy I need to pull something down and hold it is equal to its desire to resurface, how much noise does it make to conjure a single small ball? Why worry so much about the small ones?”
The mood darkened with a snap. “Because every spell, no matter how small, is a door. When conjuring a spell, you are entering the domain where neither mortal nor petty god are meant to stay. When you leave the house of a stranger, you do not slam the door. Especially if you were not invited.”
Quibbles made a small, worried croak.
I agree, this might be a bit much to get into. Then again, we have time to waste now that we’re in a place where Rhuna can’t find us.
“Now, let us start with the sign of calm. Find your center, yes, precisely like that. Feel your breath flow in and out, feel your flow follow, let the channels guide it.”
Is this meditation magic? It sounds nice and all, but when are we going to start casting magic?
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
A good question. “Teacher, when will I learn my first spell?”
That earned her a slight squint of the eyes. “I won’t teach you a single spell if you cannot succeed at the simple calm sign. A normal acolyte has three months. I expect you to be done within the week. I refuse to set another danger into this world. It is plenty flush with them already.”
While it may have been cruel, Rye wouldn’t want any idiot like her brother Marcus running around casting spells all irresponsibly. At least with magic, no one could malevolently promote her. It would all have to come from her own hands and both the victories and the defeats would be her own.
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The next day Rye and Elia agreed on a plan. After waking up, they would attend lectures from Patia and focus on feeling the flow of their spirit or what other practical feats she decided to demand. In the midday, it was time for martial training against an animated straw dummy Karla had found, whom Elia had named ‘Todd’ under great protests from Rye. Quibbles also voted for Todd and seeing that it was two to one, she threw in the towel and practiced getting floored by the wood and grain construct.
The Wolf was not gentle in his advice, nor did he fail to mock her whenever she tried and failed anew. Elia was having much more success in beating Todd the straw dummy, so much that at one point the Wolf declared him ‘dead’ and Elia a ‘ferocious wildcat with too little to learn and too much to gloat about’. Rye thought he meant that as a compliment. When they returned the next day he led them into a nearby building only to lock the door behind them with a single word.
“Oh, eff you!” Elia yelled at the cackling form of the Wolf. She banged the door but oak was oak and the hinges weren’t rusted through. “Goddammit. Fuckin great education system here. ‘I don’t know what to teach you so go in that box and teach yourself something’. What am I supposed to learn in here? All we have is bowls, wood, some lockpicks, a toad…”
Uhh, Elia…
Elia of course immediately zeroed in on the toad, trying her darndest to get it to talk to her. Even putting Quibbles next to the ugly yellow thing didn’t do much more than incite a toad-battle. After much grumping and swearing, she picked up the lockpicks and proudly pronounced herself the goddess of picking locks.
The actual god or goddess of lockpicking was likely not amused, because the first lockpick simply snapped when Elia tried to apply it and the second one took ages to get unstuck.
“Goddammit, I was good at this once! I had sets, I had a hobby!”
Sets? Sets of what?
“Of locks of course.” She wrestled with the door again before finally fishing out the broken pick. “You get them mailed to you and you can practice opening and closing them.”
… your culture is weird. But you can do it Elia, I know you can. Go Elia! Go, go, go!
Elia emerged one day later from the house with a smile on her lips, bloody fingers, and a very broken lock picking kit which she threw at the Wolf’s ethereal feet before challenging him to a duel. She was good. So was he, and with his height and range, he made every approach a coin flip. As duels went, it was interesting to watch Elia get frustrated over the Wolf’s constant parries, counters and flourishes leading to small but in the end lethal cuts to her arteries and tendons.
Theoretical cuts. He couldn’t solidify any singular part of himself for more than a split second. It still didn’t keep Elia from becoming more frustrated, but at least she had found a sparring partner worth his salt. Rye would keep to Todd, though she sucked in every ounce of experience as she watched the Wolf shave the rust off of Elia’s techniques.
“You fight less like a cat, and more like a snake!” he called after deflecting a throwing knife.
Elia grumbled a lot more on the days she lost. She seemed to be improving by leaps and bounds, though his taunts wouldn’t have let her guess as much. It only seemed to fire her on and Rye had to watch how the distance further widened between them. Eventually, after not-so-subtle hints of the Wolf, she gave up any hope of learning sword fighting in an appreciable timeframe and instead took up a much easier to learn weapon, the spear.
It was also much safer. Reach trumped everything besides initiative. Rye liked safe. She liked it very much.
In the evenings, after all the bruises were drunk away, they chose to swap between spending it in the library or going out with Karla and exploring the nearby area for loot to sell or replace their own lost equipment. Souls too were gained, though, seeing that Rhuna was as serious as she was consistent in sending a text-message after every time they died, even Elia was convinced to play it carefully and not gain too much attention.
After six days, Rye managed to complete the calm sign. It was mostly due to her prior experience in mediation and her newly invigorated spirit doing a lot of heavy lifting. Having two people learning the same lore, rules, and sundry in shifts certainly played a part as well.
After that, it was time for studying. Formulas, calculations, history and even mythology were par for the course in conjuring. Every constellation had a history and most were linked to some myth or old legend which could provide a more or less accurate picture of how one ought to treat these places.
Elia was having a hard time studying, whereas Rye took to it like a fish to water.
Goddammit, I fucking hate astrophysics. None of this is right and it’s all because you whackjobs are still stuck thinking geocentric.
“Language,” Rye gently admonished her. “We have reason to believe it true. After all, the entire discipline of conjuring is based on our knowledge. How can you say it is wrong?”
To that, Elia could only grumble.
Regardless, after Rye completed ten sets of ten signs of calm with only two minor mistakes, she was almost surprised by how easy it was to both call down the components of a spell and cast it. It was little wonder then that this kind of knowledge was only taught at state-owned lycea, or distant temples under empire jurisdiction.
On the other hand, any idiot with a crossbow could probably do more damage with even less time and pointers given.
Regardless, the time came to choose a soul. As Rye had to trade her knight’s soul for it, all she’d have to pay for was investing into the souls themselves.
“This one I show you because it seems good, up until it is too late to regret it. You do not want to increase your strength for casting while reducing the subtlety of your spells at the same time. The calm sign helps, but it can only do so much with a leaky vessel.”
[Spirit] Soul of a moonstrider [Common]
Soul of a moonstrider, dripped from the moonwell in the sky. To gain the moniker of a strider, this creature galloped across the moonwell and through from the other side.
0/??? Minor increase to channels
0/5000 Moderate increase to Flow and minor decrease to Subtlety
“It reduces an attribute? Is that even allowed?”
Mahdi gave her a disaffected shrug. “It looks pretty.”
Right. That was his metric for interest in these things. Rye looked over the assorted souls. There wasn’t much choice if she wanted ones specifically for the spirit. The next one was even split on that front.
[Spirit/Mind] Soul of a crystallized conjurer [Uncommon]
Soul of a conjurer who in his pursuit of immortality failed to keep up the correct balance. His soul remains and perhaps it will serve better than a chunk of screaming ice.
0/3900 Minor increase to Reservoir
0/2800 Minor increase to Channels
0/??? Moderate increase to Concentration
“This one I can recommend. Concentration may be a thing of the mind, but you will find yourself being less distracted by whizzing arrows and the like, reducing your chance of miscasting a spell.”
That was true, but it was expensive to upgrade and more than that, it was uncommon.
“How much for an uncommon soul?” she asked Mahdi.
“An equal uncommon, or a common and fifteen thousand souls.”
She couldn’t afford either. That constrained her options considerably. A last soul caught her eyes, a thing like a jagged armadillo curled upon itself.
[Spirit] Soul of a glazed lizard [Common]
Soul of a glazed lizard. Among those creatures that live in the frigid wastes of the lost capital of the Vili, glazed lizards have adapted well, channeling the eternal ice to a frill of spines upon their backs.
0/3800 Moderate increase to Reservoir
She looked up at Patia, who squinted at it. “You cannot go wrong with more reservoir. If anything, I feel the choice should be yours, even if this is a bit… boring.”
Rye huffed. Boring. As if casting more magic could ever be boring. She traded for the Soul of a glazed lizard and had the attendant both integrate it into herself and buy the increase to her reservoir.
As the days went by, they chose to visit Crossroad Temple with two of the three nuptial offering feathers they had hoarded, one for the journey there, one for the journey back. A quick visit to Harris confirmed that he was as shifty as ever, but also that he couldn’t be Mahdi since they had sprinted into one bowl and out the other, leaving him no time to even change clothes.
Unless he can teleport. He could teleport between temples, then teleport his clothes on and off. We’d be none the wiser.
Yes. Right. Everyone could maybe do everything if they had the right boon.
Avice of Viln was being as down as ever and even the offer of accompanying them on the way back to Loften was met with one of her ineffectual ‘hm’s. At least her mood didn’t seem to be deteriorating. If she was content to lie and think about the gods and the world then Rye couldn’t exactly pick her up and throw her out into an adventure.
To both their surprise, they met Pascal the metal carver. He had walked all the way from Glenrock and found a nook where he could open up a small service for smithing, stone carving, and what have you. A familiar face was with him as well.
“Theo!” Rye cried, squishing the cockerel in between her arms. “You look… different.”
Theo cooed. Maybe it was the hat that looked awfully similar to Simon’s. Maybe it was his eyepatch, or the glint of wisdom in his eyes. Either way, she was glad to see him safe.
“If I’d known you’d be here, I’d have visited sooner. Oh, I’ll bring you some good pedecud with next time as an apology.”
Theo cooed as she scritched his wattles. All was as it should be.
They handed the large crystal bowl with the essence of conjurer Yewen to the dreg that kept repeating its need for its ‘ball’, or sometimes ‘orb’, or ‘pearl’. There was a short gust of wind as the fog inside seemed to leak out a crack and flow up the dreg’s nose before he collapsed, his body draped over the orb.
“Is… is he dead?” Rye asked.
Maybe? Plonk him in the bowl of respite and lets skiddadle.
They left, Rye guilty that she had possibly killed another dreg, Elia because she had more important things to do than watch a man ponder his orb.
Hey, Rye.
“Hm?”
Can we visit The Old Maiden? I… I want to bury her.
“Of course. You should have said so sooner, you know.”
Yeah. I should have.
They walked all the way back to the Forlorn giant even though Elia had claimed she would never backtrack. Rye felt a leg seize as they crossed the threshold into the maze.
“You scared of going back?”
I… what? No, no. Just a bit uncomfortable, seeing those walls again.
The Old Maiden was still there among the other dried corpses. They lifted her into a nearby sarcophagus where Rye gave her a bundle of the least desiccated flowers she could find. They both stood for a few moments of silence.
Eventually, they had to leave, and Rye felt the weight lift off a different part of her mind.
Alright, you can go have your not-safe-for-work massage now.
“Elia! This is absolutely not the time nor place for that. Read the room for Ruthe’s sake. I’ll do that eventually.” She looked up at the clouds, seeing no sign of the rocs nor the one that had been standing on the temple’s roof. “We ought to get back by tomorrow. Patia cannot stand untimeliness, though the Wolf will surely mock us either way.”
That’s life, though I guess this is a bit of the ‘high life’ people keep on talking about. Man, I love having a bed.
“Me too, brain buddy, me too.”
Gasp! You said the thing! That means I get to say ‘oh beans’ now, and ‘eep’ and ‘eek’.
“That’s not… I don’t sound like that at all! Do I?” Rye before letting the looming giggle overtake her. “Oh no, look at me, I’m Elia and I say fffudge and swear all day!”
And so, time passed for the two until an all too different challenge crested the horizon.