If a wizard conjures a globe of water, the water will vanish after the Will sustaining it fades. If someone were to drink that water, it would draw upon the Will of the drinker to maintain itself until it has left the body, whereafter it would vanish. Stilbore’s Decanter, an ensouled artifact able to create liquids, however, has no such limitations. This decanter, when filled with a liquid, will create a nearly limitless supply of whatever filled it, limited by the daily Will capacity of the artifact. The liquid generated persists indefinitely.
-Deckard’s Compendium of Ensouled Artifacts
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As soon as Kole was free from PREVENT, he sought out the first quiet study spot he could find. That ended up being the shade of a small tree on the green. Not his preferred study spot—but desperate times. Some might enjoy studying outside on a cool day in the shade with a nice breeze, but Kole would always prefer the quiet and dimly lit library to a park. The wind blew pages, bugs liked to crawl over you, and there were always people running around and laughing.
Now, Kole didn’t begrudge people enjoying themselves in a park, he just didn’t see why anyone would go there to do serious studying.
So, as comfortable as he could be given the circumstances, Kole settled down against a tree and opened his spellbook. As always, the magical book opened to the exact page he wanted—Mirror Image.
With the discovery of his spellbook’s ability to aid him, he’d gone about this all a little backwards. Normally, when reconstructing a traditional spell, one built the spell in one’s mind, following the instructions laid out in the spellbook. Spellforms, after all, hadn’t existed back then. Even with the invention of spellforms, the process of learning traditional spells remained unchanged. Everyone who sought to learn a traditionally recorded spell created it in their mind first, only writing it as a spellform once they confirmed they’d copied it correctly—and this only happened in the transition period where both tradition and modern wizardry were practiced side-by-side.
Crafting spellforms was a highly specialized skill set few wizards bothered to master. It involved knowing a vast amount of spellform components and having the patience to learn or create the ones you lacked.
But thanks to Kole’s spellbook, he had the spellform in front of him. Now all he had to do was copy it into his mental vault. The hardest part of all that was deciding which of his spells to clear to make room for the new one.
Kole had considered this all morning and had settled on removing the Will intent for his blasting rod. With the improvements he’d been making to Radiant Bolt, the rod would soon be obsolete, and was at this point redundant at best. The only thing in the rod’s favor was that the barely visible bolt of Force was a lot more subtle than the glow golden bolt of Radiant Bolt
Since he had the spellform for Mirror Image before him, he could always swap it out for the rune intent before the next hardball match, or even duel, if he needed. It was only when one was learning a traditional spell the—well—traditional way that stopping in the middle of learning a spell would be a large set back. The typical way of handling this was storing the work in progress spell in a gem, but Kole wasn’t exactly drowning in wealth.
So, with a thought, Kole dissolved the Will construct in his mind, and started building a new one.
Kole quickly lost track of time. It wasn’t until he felt someone poke his forehead that he opened his eyes to find Zale staring at him disappointed.
“I missed class?” he asked.
“You missed class,” she agreed.
“Can I borrow your notes?” he asked hopefully.
Zale let out an exaggerated sigh.
“Fine, but this new spell better be worth it,” she said, extending a hand to help him up. “Food?”
Kole joined Zale for lunch, and after spending the first five minutes sneaking glances at his spellbook in his bag next to the seat, she sighed.
“You can work on it now,” she said. “I’ll tell you when it's time to go to class.”
“Thanks!” Kole said, slamming his spellbook onto his desk and diving back into the process of copying the spell.
This would be Kole’s first second-tier wizard spell. Silent Image was a second-tier spell, which gave him the assurance he had the ability to learn it, but that spell hadn’t needed to be studied. His sorcerous instincts had simply discovered it in a moment of need. While wizardry and sorcery were learned through different means, a mage’s ability to cast sorcery generally correlated with their ability to cast wizardry—unless they were a bad wizard. While Kole’s primal nature made casting spells difficult, he knew he was a skilled in all the arts of wizardry. While he wasn’t a prodigy, he had more experience constructing spell templates that wizards twice his age, and all that hard work was finally paying off.
On top of the reassurances his sorcery gave him, his ability to store Amara’s blasting rod repair rune intent also confirmed that he was ready, as that had been beyond the difficulty of a first-tier spell.
He had no idea how long to expect this to take but was dedicated to pushing through it.
Sometime later, an hour and sixteen minutes to be exact, but Kole was oblivious to that, he felt another forehead poke.
“I’m so close to finishing,” Kole said, whining a little.
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“Feel free to skip class,” Zale said, gathering her own classwork she’d been doing while he’d stared out into space with his hand on his book.
As strange as that sounded, it was a common occurrence on campus, and even in the martial college dining hall Kole wasn’t even the only person doing the same. Many students had mental vaults, and used the time in the dinning hall to do some studying that required the use of them.
Reluctantly, Kole stowed his spellbook and went to class. Briefly, he tried copying the spell to his memory as he walked, keeping his hand on the spellform in his bag, but he was not yet proficient enough at splitting his awareness between his vault and reality to allow him to do it while also trying to learn a new spell. Which was probably for the best, as far as his having a social life went. If studying wizardry ever became that accessible, Kole would never stop while so long as he had the Will to keep going.
In class, they continued their discussion on the use of mental vaults as defenses against Mind magic, but they didn’t do any practical work. Professor Underbrook explained how the long term repeated repelling of mental attacks reinforced the walls of the vault, making them appear more real and lifelike.
For those untrained in mental defense, when they inspected the material of their mental vaults, they would see just a solid color, lacking any details such as wood grains or textures. The more Will a person poured into their vault as they built a defense, the more realistic it all appeared.
Kole had read something similar about bridges. When it first appears, it’s just a solid color that matches whatever motif the vault took on when created. Kole’s—like most people’s—was a wooden door frame, but the wood was really just featureless brown if he had the presence of mind to focus on it. Experiments in making bridges larger than necessary only had the tangible result of making them appear more detailed without conferring any additional benefits. A larger bridge didn’t make spells any more powerful, or aid in pathing.
“Please turn in your reports on the merits of your selected defensive spell on your way out,” Underbrook said as he moved to erase the board.
There was a report?
Kole was certain—well, pretty sure—there hadn’t been a written assignment. He looked around and saw everyone else in a similar state of panic, and relaxed.
A moment later, Professor Underbrook began to giggle to himself.
“That was a joke,” he said. “See you Wednesday. Bring the report then.”
Still, no one moved to leave.
“That wasn’t a joke. Now go.”
Kole took off, eager to finish his work.
It was just after dinner—a bowl of oatmeal eaten in his room—that Kole completed his mental construct for Mirror Image. He sat back, marveling at the shape of it. But only for a moment, for he was eager to move on to the next part.
He powered the spell with his Will, and threw it through his bridge, mentally chasing it to see its path through the Arcane Realm.
The spell immediately crashed into some obelisk of unknowable energy, and Kole added the first corrective component to his path.
He continued on as he had when pathing Radiant Bolt and Thunderwave, his spellbook not seeming to aid him with the task since he wasn’t writing in it. Briefly he tried crafting the spellform to use the book’s memory enhancement ability to help him draw on the knowledge within, but that didn’t seem to help.
After a few frustrating hours where his progress was good, but nothing special, he sat at his desk both in his room and mentally in his vault, thinking.
Part of him recognized how ridiculous his impatience was. He’d done months of work in days, and now was getting irritated by having to resort to his normal speed for pathing—a new ability in itself which had finally allowed him to become a real and proper wizard.
But even recognizing the ridiculous of it all, he still wanted to do better.
If only I could read the book in my vault. He thought. Maybe then I can...
Something tickled his memory. He left his vault and pulled out his nib. While he could now write in his spellbook by just running his finger across the page, he still liked to physically write at times. He found it helped him think.
He began writing about ensouled artifacts, letting the spellbook bring to mind readings he’d done on them after discovering he had not one, but two. He thought of mental vaults and their connection to the magical items, and suddenly recalled what had been at the edge of his mind.
Icons!
When one Bonded to an ensouled artifact, an icon would appear in your vault—a manifestation of the connection and potential access point to its power.
Kole dove back into his vault and looked around eagerly for his spellbook.
Flood, he cursed internally as he saw shelf after shelf of books, stacked as far as he could see.
It can’t be hidden, he thought, traveling through space.
After doing a lap and finding nothing, he stopped near the desk he used that sat before his bridge. He looked at a section of shelf next to his desk and willed his spellbook to be on the shelf there.
And just like that, a perfect representation of his spellbook appeared.
Well, that was easy, he thought as he walked over to it.
The book felt just as it did in reality, which was odd as there was normally very little in the way of physical sensations in the vault. He opened it up, and found it contained everything just as if he was reading it in the real world.
Is that all you can do? he asked himself.
He brought the book to the desk, opened it up, and began to rebuild Mirror Image and then sent it through his bridge. The spell took off, and he followed it again, watching it avoid a few obstacles before failing.
Back out at the desk, he thought over what he’d seen. As he pondered a way to avoid it, he considered casting the spell again to better see it fail, but realized he didn’t have to.
His spellbook could let him remember exact details if he wrote them down outside, what could it do in here where even without an ensouled artifact he could store memories for better recollection?
Lifting the book, and closing his eyes, blocking out all sensations in the real world and his vault, he tried to remember the spell.
And just like that, the memory flooded back into his mind. He saw the spell fall apart, and could slow down its destruction to examine it more closely. Over and over he watched the failure, and while doing so he caught something he’d never would have seen even after a dozen castings. While the spell hit some strange element of the Arcane Realm before falling apart, it had only clipped it. A slight alteration of the path would see the spell just narrowly missing destruction.
Kole thought through the potential modifications, and found dozens spring to mind with his spellbook’s perfect clarity.
Well... this is new.
Picking out the one that fit best, Kole added it, and tried again.
And again.
And again.