--- ELIAX ---
I leaned back in my chair, making a mental note to ask Fora later to see if she could find a better one at some point. This one was absolute heck on my back.
After leaning precariously on the chair until my back popped, I immediately went back to leaning forward. Hunched as I was over the notebook, it was a miracle that my back was still working at all.
I sighed at the blueprints and pulled a pencil out of my hair, scribbling all over them again.
The problem with having so many focuses, so many abilities and so many things that might be considered talents, was that I never really got to focus on any one in particular. Sure, I could cobble together a decent design or plan in an afternoon, and it might be better than the average person’s design. But it wouldn’t come close to an expert.
I was to architects and infiltrators as those magic bag peddlers back in Reiaran were to me and Fora. I could make things, but they were absolute garbage compared to what real masters could make.
I hadn’t expected this to be a wall, my professional pride said I had to do all this on my own. But I was horrible at it compared to where I needed to be. I felt my mind wander again, drifting from thought to thought and then toward a solution. It probably wasn’t a good solution, but I’m too stubborn to be a perfectionist.
I sighed, sending out a mental checkup on Fora and wondering how to word this newest request. She was usually happy to help, but she had her own crap to do. Even if it was just annoying earth dragons.
I hesitated.
Was I really considering sending Fora to find professionals on infiltration? Sending Fora to delve into the black market and subtly sway the people there to my cause? She… didn’t really do subtle. Never in a million years would those black market people ever trust me if I sent someone so loud to talk to them.
I banged my head into the table, contemplating again if it was a good idea to try making a clone. Last time I’d needed one I’d talked myself out of it. It just seemed like a horrible idea for someone who wasn’t actually real to make a clone when my real self wasn’t shoving her mind inside it.
Why did it always come back to this…
There was no way I was leaving Eternal River though, there were too many ways to die outside of this room.
I stared at the desk beneath my face for several minutes before finally contacting Fora. ~Hey… do you think I could make a clone? After Astral taught us the better spell we aren’t really limited to one anymore.~
Fora stopped in the middle of what appeared to be desecrating a statue. Stunned at the very thought. Apparently she hadn’t noticed that. We’d always stuck to one clone in the past because of it, and Fora did often get stuck on things like that. She hit the world with a single minded intensity equivalent to a very very large boulder. Sometimes it was admirable. ~Do it! I want to see what happens!~
I hesitated at the phrasing, ~you don’t mean…~
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~I’ll be there in a minute or two, let me pack this stuff up!~ She sent an image of the painted statue, it had a very unflattering blue mustache, a yellow unibrow, and she’d coated the whole torso in orange paint for… some reason. She didn’t seem to be done with it, but if she cared enough she’d be back regardless of the amount of fines or sentences the city of starlight threw at her.
I was never going to be able to show my face there without people running away in terror, was I? As the thought drifted through my head, Fora popped into existence beside me, peering down at the scribbled out schematics. “Wow wow, what are you doing here?”
I groaned in my chair, covering it up before she read any of the nonsense it contained. “Failing. I decided to give up on that a few minutes ago.”
“It looked pretty.”
I grunted, closing the book and standing up. “So you just want to watch? The clone is probably just going to be another me. Or are you hoping something else will happen?”
Fora shrugged, climbing onto my desk—which was cluttered plenty with various notes and objects. She probably wouldn’t break anything, but I wasn’t going to bet on it. “I don’t know what I expect, magic is weird.”
I pushed the chair in because Fora didn’t seem inclined to use it and there wasn’t that much room in this place anyway. It was just a tent we’d gotten from Starlight after all. “Well I expect to regret this, that way if I don’t I’ll be pleased.”
“Don’t be so pessimistic! It’ll make you sad all the time.”
“I’m not pessimistic.”
“And yet you had to ask me permission for something like this. If it works do you think I could make a legion of clones? I think that would be super useful.”
I frowned slightly, “Can clones make clones?”
“Probably. I’m sure the magic doesn’t care.”
“Ah… we can try it but I don’t think it’ll work like you’re imagining.”
“See? Pessimist!”
“That’s realism, I don’t see anything negative about either outcome, just outcomes.”
“Come on, cast the spell already, you’re only talking to delay!”
I grunted, not dignifying that with a response, but she was essentially right. I frowned at the desk for a moment, making sure I’d weighed the options correctly, but I didn’t think I’d missed anything.
And so I lifted my hands into the air, shaping the spell. It was just as difficult as I remembered, the portion that was time magic didn’t like to cooperate with me. But Astral’s spell seemed designed specifically to overcome that, to avoid the use of time magic as much as possible.
I moved my hands slowly, focusing on the structure of the body and the soul. It didn’t actually make a new soul, but it did make a sort of copy of my own that wasn’t quite as vibrant to my soulsight. From there it built the body, and then the mind.
The whole process was just a few minutes, and soon there was a perfect copy of me standing there, blinking. Even the clothes were copied, which was a piece of the lesser conjuration that I didn’t quite understand enough to modify in any appreciable way.
She blinked at us for a few more moments. “I… think I’m stable? I feel stable.” She flexed a hand.
I smiled, “I see. On a scale of Eliax to Fari, who do you think you are at the moment?”
She hesitated, glancing between me and Fora, “Eliax? I think?”
I relaxed marginally, finally looking at Fora, who was staring at the clone with her soulsight. “What is it?”
“Hey, did you ever notice that on the bottom bit on the soul. You see, there to the left of the Dimensional affinity… does it look different on the two of us to you? I think it does, yours is a bit more oblong than mine. I don’t really remember that but it’s so small…”
I blinked, looking back at the clone and then at Fora. How did she even spot that? It was different though. “It looks the same on me and the clone, right?”
Fora nodded. “Definitely. I thought for a moment it might be the switch, you know, for clones to dissolve themselves. But it can’t be.” she frowned. “Does that mean that when we’re both in the same body it changes depending on who’s more there?”
“It very well might.” The clone said, her eyes adopting a thoughtful look. “But is anything else different in the soul then?”
We all glanced at each other, the clone looked between the two of us and I just stared off into space, thinking of implications. “Not sure.” Fora said, “But we really should memorize our entire soul one of these days, shouldn’t we? I feel like that’d be helpful.”
I nodded absently.
“Sounds like the perfect boring job that Eliax would enjoy!” Fora grinned, “You already spend all your time reading and stuff.”
I scowled.