The next two weeks were agony. Hai endured injection after injection and spell after spell to repair his destroyed muscles, and he didn’t complain once. Nope, he complained a dozen times an hour to anyone who would listen. Definitely not just once.
But at the end of it all, he could move. Just enough to get out of bed and into a wheelchair, but to him, it was bliss. Cici took him out and gave him little tours of the small repair shop she ran with her brother Ricky, then through an elevator down to the much larger underground Cosu and spell research facility that was the real moneymaker. Her words, not Hai’s.
That was where the sound of mana had come from. And so much more than that.
“Hey, look who’s up and wheeling around!” Ricky laughed and lifted the welding mask inscribed with a simple light-filtering spellform and a milligram worth of Spire. “We didn’t think you’d be up for another three days. Looks like you showed us wrong!”
Hai liked Ricky. A lot more than he thought he would. The man was like the uncle he’d always wanted–cheery and supportive but with an edge of ‘don’t tell your parents’. When he’d been stuck in the room Ricky had visited him more than anyone, always bringing some trinket or spell he’d been working on once Hai had expressed interest in the man’s work.
I design and prototype the goods, then Cici perfects them. Ricky had said after Hai asked him about the work. He’d tapped a spell canister with what looked like a metal embryo in pale green goop for emphasis. She’s also the repair and diagnosis master–I’m terrible at finding where something’s gone wrong, and even worse at fixing it.
“Yep!” Hai said cheerily. “I’m only ninety-percent as messed up as she thought I was.”
Cici wheeled him next to Ricky’s workbench, then leaned in and gave him a quick hug. “I’ll come get you in two hours for your appointment with Kira. Dr. Kira. Dr Reiss–you know what I mean. Don’t let my brother fill your mind with too much garbage, and don’t use any spells he offers you. And you.”
She turned to Ricky. “Don’t fill his head with garbage, and don’t offer him any spells. I should be worried about him hurting himself, but I get the feeling you’re the one I should look out for.”
“Aw, what’s that based on? Decades of experience?” Ricky waved Cici off and turned right back to the contained waterfall of crystal-clear mana. “I won’t do anything to Hai.”
“Right.” Cici sighed and shook her head. “Two hours, Hai.”
Hai leaned in closer to Ricky’s work and nodded. “Two hours.”
Ricky glanced up at the sound of the elevator taking Cici out of the workshop, then grinned wolfishly and pulled a canister out from under the desk.
“I said I wouldn’t do anything to you, so how’d you like a demonstration of my latest masterpiece? It’s only blown up in my face four times so far! …And over the rest of my body a dozen times, but those don’t count.”
Hai had heard every one of those explosions. And he’d even had a roommate for a few hours while Dr. Reiss sewed Ricky’s elbows back on after one of them. Apparently pilots healed a lot better than regular people–something to do with Spire tolerance and absorbed mana. From the fact that Ricky still had fully functional elbows, Hai had no reason to doubt that.
“Why don’t they count?”
Ricky stood and grabbed the handles to Hai’s wheelchair. “Because I said they don’t.”
“Come on. I know you’re not an idiot.”
Ricky seemed oddly touched by that. “Aw, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s said about me in months. For that, you get the not-lie answer–making a new spell is a whole lot of trial and even more error. Until I get the spellforms and component ratios down, there’s always a chance the thing will randomly explode. How much did your mom tell you about this stuff?”
“She didn’t tell me anything.” Hai said bitterly. “But she gave Chris all the teaching he wanted. I thought she mostly just repaired spells, though.”
“That was one part of her job, yeah. The other part was researching new spells and improving ones that already exist–so pretty much what I’m doing here, but with a lot more theory and less explosions.”
There were definitely more explosions in Ricky’s work than in mom’s. She had one explosion a week at most, whereas Ricky seemed to attract them like flies on honey. Now if Hai went through a day without hearing something explode, he’d start to assume something was wrong.
“She did explode a lot less than you.” Hai said with an uncomfortable mixture of emotions.
Ricky nodded knowingly. “Enough of the reminiscing for now. Since you don’t know anything about how spells actually work, how about I give you a crash course on them when I get a break? I’m sure Cici would be happy to do the same for repairs when she’s not so swamped with work.”
Hai smiled eagerly. “I’d love that. Maybe we can work on repairing mom’s Cosu together.”
“Maybe. Stand back. My Cosu’s not the biggest thing, but it still gives off a little mana when it activates.”
“Wheelchair.”
“Right.”
Ricky looked around and found a safe place for Hai to watch from, wheeled him over to that spot, and positioned him so he had a perfect view. With a thumbs-up that Hai tried to return, Ricky hurried back to his workbench and slid a metallic crate out from under it. Hai vaguely remembered the Cosu, which looked like a suit of armor that had been made from construction equipment, but he hadn’t seen its inactive state before.
Most Cosu were easily movable so their pilots could put them on at any time and take them anywhere they went. Ricky’s was anything but that. He grunted and strained to get the heavy metal monstrosity out from under the desk, complete with mana hydraulics to help him move the suit, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with an exaggerated sigh.
He looked back and smiled at Hai. “I always forget just how heavy this hunk of junk is, even if I just used it a few weeks ago. You might want to close your eyes for a second–you’re still a little too light-sensitive for this.”
Hai pressed his eyes shut. The sounds of shifting metal and mana reminded him that his ears were still not quite in perfect shape, but in the ‘too weak’ direction. It was probably why he could stand all the explosions, grinding, and other noises that were a workshop constant.
“You’re good to look. Except I forgot to slot the spell in like an idiot.” Ricky’s words were followed by another series of metal and mana sounds. “Alright, now you’re actually good to go.”
Hai opened his eyes to a man in an extremely bulky grey and yellow Cosu with hydraulics on all of its limbs. The head and torso were one continuous piece, with a ring of dots around where Ricky’s eyes would’ve been that Hai assumed let him see. Bars around the suit’s shoulders were ringed with bright yellow mana that shimmered like liquid sunlight, with little dots inside that breathed in time to an unheard rhythm.
Ricky spread his arms wide, then turned and awkwardly gestured at his back. “Got enough space for four spell cylinders on this bad boy, and seventy grams worth of Spire powering it. Not quite as impressive as the one your mom had, but since I helped design that one, I’m taking partial credit.”
The four spells were kept in place with metal cages–a far more utilitarian containment method than mom’s Cosu. Three of them were dark for some reason, but the fourth–the embryo Ricky had been working on for over a week–was bright and bubbly.
“What does it do? And why’s the mana so green?”
“Excellent question!” Ricky snapped his finger and pointed at Hai without turning around. “This particular spell is a theory I’ve been working on for a long time–forcing the mana to take the shape of the original monster it came from. I took an embryo from a monster egg that got crushed and slowly calcified it, then tried a lot of different mana catalysts to get it working. I finally settled on goop-ified venom, and the embryo finally started making mana.”
He raised one hand and the spell began to glow even brighter. “Now, if I did this right, the spell should shape itself into a snake.”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Mana seeped out of the Cosu’s wrist in a thick green slurry. It wrapped around Ricky’s wrist like Hai imagined a snake would, but he had to use a liberal amount of imagination to see the long, formless blob as anything close to a snake. He frowned and expected a frustrated sigh from Ricky, but he couldn’t have been any more wrong.
The man whooped in childlike excitement and shook his hand, sending flecks of venomous mana flying around the room. “It worked! Look, Hai! The spell turned into a snake instead of a spray of venom!”
Hai held his tongue and just nodded. He’d seen pilots throw building-sized manaforged swords through hordes of monsters. He’d watched one specific pilot create a controlled singularity that sucked in all the mana in the area to make a temporary sanctuary. And he’d even seen a squadron of pilots put their spells together in a massive ritual that summoned a titanic Spire to make a permanent sanctuary.
In comparison, Ricky’s almost-snake was… well…
“It’s neat?” Hai offered, then winced at his tone.
Ricky didn’t seem to notice at all. His excitement didn’t dull in the slightest, and with a few more bursts of mana, he summoned more snakes around his three remaining limbs.
“You don’t get how great this is–I understand that.” Ricky said. “Autonomous spells are a thing of legend and only for the extremely powerful. But if I can make it a property of the spell itself, and not the person using it, I can revolutionize how spells work. Imagine a healing spell that doesn’t activate until it feels you get hurt. Or a fire spell that doesn't explode if it misses, so there’s no risk fighting in confined spaces or with bystanders.”
“Can’t spells already do that?”
“Well, I mean, yeah, I guess. But that’s written into the spellforms, and it takes away from the rest of the spell’s potency. If this works, then I can write a lot into the spellforms for pure power. Or efficiency. Or… well, anything else.”
Ricky took a tentative step toward a very blasted training dummy. He shuffled and took overly exaggerated steps, making little noises with every one. It reminded Hai of when Chris had spilled building blocks all over the floor, and had somehow turned them all invisible with one of mom’s not-quite-spells. Except there would be a lot more than sore soles if Ricky stepped wrong.
“Looks like the physical form is holding steady!” Ricky said with an edge of nervousness in his voice. “They’re hissing against my armor, but I can’t tell if it's the poison corroding away the metal or just… snake noises. I guess it could be both. Hai, can you tell if it's both?”
Hai tapped himself right between the eyes. “I can’t see very well, remember?”
“Right. Okay. Well, nothing’s started burning yet, so I’m going to assume the best!” Ricky slowly lowered his arm to rest on the dummy’s shoulder. “Test number one–simple, command-less input. A.k.a. Slapping the dummy with a snake.”
Ricky shifted his arm away from the dummy’s head. He took a breath loud enough that Hai could hear, let the mana ‘snake’ wriggle between his fingers, and gently gripped it. The mana squished a little under the constant pressure, growing the ‘head’ of the snake like an overfilled balloon.
“Huh.” Ricky noted as the snake glowed a little brighter. “That looks like it’s going to–”
Sploosh.
Chunks of mana fell like hail in a circle around Ricky, leaving little bubbling scorches on the floor wherever they touched. None came close enough to harm Hai, but the acrid and bitter smell of corroding metal more than assured him of the spell’s deadliness.
“Pop.” Ricky finished dumbly. “I guess I can still destroy the spell on my own. That’s not a good sign for the ‘don’t hurt bystanders’ part of the spell. You good, Hai?”
Hai answered with a thumbs-up.
“Nice. I’ll call that little failure test number zero, so now onto the real test number one.” Ricky said and lifted his left hand, which was full of snake.
He slapped his open palm onto the dummy. Sickly mana found itself between two different metals. It squished just like test zero, but at the point where that one had ballooned, test number one lost all form and splattered like gelatin. Green bits peppered the safety wall behind the dummy with little squelches, leaving little trails of slightly destroyed material as they went.
The rest of the snake that hadn’t left Ricky’s arm slipped away like a liquid. It pooled at the ground around his feet, emitting a visible cloud of green-tinged vapor that Ricky quickly stepped out of. He sprung into action and grabbed a cylinder off the wall, pulled the top off of it that was connected to the main body by a thin hose, and let loose a spray of cerulean foam that almost instantly killed the rest of the spell.
Ricky watched the two spells fight for a second, then nodded to himself and shifted the extinguisher like a sword. “Now that’s a success if I’ve ever seen one! The mana stayed in its shape until it didn’t, and it shifted almost seamlessly between forms! It’s still not good for the whole ‘no collateral damage’ thing, but I can work on that.”
He turned and flexed at Hai. “How was that? Impressive, right?”
“It smells. And if I was standing there, I’m pretty sure I’d be dead.” Hai pointed out. “That seems like a pretty big failure to me.”
“It’s a medium failure at best. And that’s just… okay, maybe that’s it for now.” Ricky shook off the snakes on his legs with a sigh. “The spell’s starting to overheat, and that’s not something it should do. Ever.”
“What happens when a spell overheats?”
Ricky stared at Hai for a few awkward seconds. “It explodes.”
“Right.” Hai laughed. “So now what? Do you go back to the drawing board, or can you modify the spellforms you already put on the canister?”
Ricky wiped away the last of the snakes, then stepped out of his Cosu like it was nothing. The thing collapsed into its slightly more compact cube when he was free, and he dragged it back to the workstation with visible effort. Hai wanted to ask why he didn’t just walk it back, but he held his tongue when he saw how tense Ricky was.
“Was that test more important than it looked?”
“How observant of you.” Ricky chuckled humorlessly. “Yes, it was. I’ve been working on this project for a lot longer than you’ve been here, and every time I think I’m making progress, I find ten more wrinkles to iron out.”
He pressed on his back and let out a groan of frustration. Hai watched and waited patiently for Ricky to keep talking, even as the silence started to creep in. He didn’t have to wait long.
“That’s enough self-pity for today, and I should really put this down for a month. Take a little time to work on some side projects that aren’t as infuriatingly complex.” Ricky walked over and wheeled Hai back to the workstation. “Do you mind if I talk at you while I work on this one? I usually use a rubber duck for this kind of thing, but you might actually learn something from my ramblings.”
Hai nodded so quickly he felt his neck kink up. “Ow. Ow. Yes. Ow.”
Ricky’s grin returned in full-force. He reached for a bottle of something cool blue, dipped his fingers in for a generous dollop, and put his non-goo hand on Hai’s shoulder. Hai grimaced and leaned into the numbing gel that Cici had used for the exact same purpose, but that didn’t make the initial shock of absolute cold any better.
“I’ll try to keep the excitement to a low level from now on.” Ricky smirked. “What part of the spellcrafting process do you want to see first? The canisters, the catalysts, the spellforms, or the mana itself?”
“Whatever’s the best place to start, I guess.”
“The canister it is, then.” Ricky leaned over and rummaged around in a box, then produced an empty canister. It was a slightly different colour than the snake spell, and it was a lot glossier. “The entire point of a canister is to connect the spell to your Cosu in a way that’s easy to swap in or out, while also being something that won’t interfere with anything. So each one has to be made out of a different material based on the spellforms and mana you want to put into the spell.”
He twisted the canister, and it hissed open with a little burst of air. Hai leaned in close to look at the lid Ricky offered, and saw a very simple spellform written inside of it.
“Do you have to open a spell every time you want to modify it?”
“Yup. It’s why repairing these little buggers is so hard–you have to get the spellform perfectly right, reproduce the conditions that made the catalyst produce the mana you want, and give it the right medium to propagate that mana.” Ricky explained eagerly. “This canister’s made of a standard rubber-iron alloy used for electric spells that have sharp edges. If it didn’t have any sharp edges, you’d want to go with a pure rubber canister. Putting it simply–you want your canister to perfectly contain your spell without tainting it in any way. And for weirder mana types, that’s a lot easier said than done.”
Ricky unlatched the snake spell from his Cosu with a wet pop and a metallic click. “Venomous mana is a real pain to work with. The weaker stuff gets tainted by almost anything you try to put it in, and the stronger stuff is pretty much just highly corrosive acid that can also poison you. So when you put those two together, you lose almost all the options you have. It’s why I went for a needleglass and diamond composite, which was a real pain to make but has been stable enough for all my needs so far.”
The spell’s mana had taken on a clear tint in certain places. As if parts of it had transformed into simple water as it consumed the mana inside of it. It reminded Hai of how the priority 10 spell he’d found looked.
“It’s really clear in some places. Is that because it used up some of the mana inside of it, or is it because the spell overheated?”
Ricky pursed his lips, then flipped the spell over. He ran a fingernail along the top cap until it caught with an audible click, then switched to rubbing his palm over it instead. After close to a minute of what looked like polishing the spell, Ricky removed his hand and pushed the spell close to Hai’s face.
“See how there’s a little crack right there?”
Hai squinted, and was just able to make out a hairline crack in the top cap. It almost looked like the spell was bloated inside of the canister, and the clear sides were straining out just a little too far.
“I see it.” He confirmed. “But it looks like it’s about to blow up again. Should it be this close to us?”
“Needleglass is pretty stretchy, so we’re fine. It’s the crack I’m worried about.” Ricky set the spell down on his workbench and reached for a piece of paper. “The spellforms are all set so they work perfectly in tandem–if one of them’s off, the rest won’t work right. And yes, a little crack like that’s more than enough to set it off. Normally the mana inside of the spell protects it from any harm, but if the canister was imperfect before that, then there’s going to be a weakness you can’t account for.”
Ricky finished writing something on the paper, wrapped it around the spell, and placed it in a pneumatic tube that sucked it up to the main floor. He leaned back and crossed his legs, then sighed.
“Well, I guess I can account for it, since I just did. But if you make a spell right, it won’t ever get damaged in a fight. We can’t fully contain them in our Cosu, since the mana radiation would mess with the suit’s own spell, so it’d be pretty dumb if we had canisters on us that screamed ‘break me’ to anyone fighting us.”
So that was why every Cosu had their spells slightly exposed. Hai hadn’t even considered that there was a reason for it, but now that he knew, he felt silly for ever thinking there wasn’t.
“Cool.” Hai whispered, then looked up at the pneumatic tube and hummed in thought. “When you want to make a spell, do you just take a canister someone already made and modify it?”
“If it’s a common one, yeah. No point innovating anything that’s not worth innovating.” Ricky grunted and spun around to sit facing Hai. “Even if I’m making something brand new, I always start with a canister someone’s already done a thorough study on. That way I can compare what I see happening to the detailed notes and go from there.”
Before Hai could ask any more questions, the sound of the elevator cut the conversation short. Ricky nodded over at the descending platform and offered a sympathetic smile.
“Looks like our time’s up for today. But how about you come back down here tomorrow and we continue where we left off? I’ve got a good chunk of wisdom from a lifetime of trial and error to impart on someone, and you’ve been a great listener so far.”
The very offer of learning more lifted Hai’s spirits to the highest they’d been in months. And infinitely higher than they’d been in the last two weeks. He sat a little straighter, even as his back warned him to take it easy.
“I’d love that.”
Cici grabbed the handles to his wheelchair and sighed. “Filling his head with nonsense, Ricky?”
“Unless you call spells nonsense, no.” Ricky answered easily. “Oh, did you get the stuff I need for that special order spell? The client’s been getting antsy, even though we told him it wouldn’t be ready for four months.”
“It’s all ordered, and Asdra just sent me a message saying he’s on his way to collect everything. Should be another three weeks, then you’ll have everything.” Cici said and started to wheel Hai over to the elevator. “Oh, and we got an order for eight standard ‘ball’ spells with eight different kinds of mana. I upcharge the guy a whole lot, so don’t use the cheap stuff.”
“But don’t use the really expensive stuff either.” Ricky said as if he was repeating it for the thousandth time. “It’ll be ready before I start on the special order. Maybe sooner if Hai gets well enough to help me out.”
Hai perked up even further at that. Cici laughed as his chair rumbled over the lip onto the elevator, then stepped back and waved goodbye. As the elevator lurched into motion, Hai heard what sounded like a playful smack and a snort that could’ve been from either of the siblings.
“If Hai’s in good enough shape to help you out before then, we’re going to owe Dr. Reiss a whole lot of money.” Cici said with mock concern. “Your paychecks small enough as it is, thanks to all the junk you buy. How’re you going to pay him for his work?”
“Haven’t you heard of unpaid internships?” Ricky replied smoothly. “I hear they’re all the rage in all the big companies now.”
Their voices cut off as the elevator rose into the repair shop, where Dr. Reiss stood with a pleasant smile and a medical bag Hai had never seen her open. He gulped and put on a brave smile for the doctor, fully aware that his appointments were only going to get more and more painful before they could start getting better.