GRIMOIRE MADE OUT OF LIGHT

Lily took a deep breath and slowly let it out as she reviewed her spell in her mind. There were three parts to casting a spell. Five, if she was creating a new one like she was today. The first one was the intent. Spells were extremely subjective when a person first created them. After they were created, then it was more literal. You cast the spell and it did its job. The person who was doing the creating had to not only visualize how the spell worked, but what they wanted the spell to do. It could be the most frustrating part of creating a new spell. She called this step the intent.

The first part of creating, after figuring out the intent, of a new spell took a really long time, but she told herself now was not the time to think about that. A quick peek at the protection spell she had running both on her and around her told her everything was in its place and working perfectly. Feeling very nervous, she sat down. Biting her lip, she started the process.

She mentally searched for her center. When she first started all this, way back when the world ended, she had to meditate to find it, nowadays she just needed to think about it and, bamb, it was there. Her center was not in her stomach or her chest, like she had first thought it would be way back when, but behind her eyes. It was the place her soul sat in her body. Well, kind of. She could feel her soul throughout her entire body, but the majority of it sat behind her eyes, looking out at the world.

Once she found it, she kind of switched perspectives from her body to her soul. Sort of like looking out through a window then turning away to look at the same view on a TV. The view from her soul was very limited when she viewed the world, but that wasn’t why she switched perspectives. Instead of looking out, she turned to look inwards, to view the inside of her body. 

Here, her vision was so much better. She could see what she called her mana well deep in her chest. She quickly looked away from the mesmerizing sight. The longer she looked, the deeper she saw. She called it her mana well because, while on the outside it looked like a blob of bluish-white light that looked somehow like a drop of water suspended in the dark, it was so much more.

Inside of the blob was very different. It was a huge place that was full of exploding stars that came in many different colors, some not visible in the outside world. The area was extremely vast - so much so that she had, in the past, lost her way and spent a very long time trying to find her way out. She knew better now than to look too deeply into her mana well. She was terrified that someday she wouldn’t be able to find her way out.

That wasn’t why she went looking for her mana well, though. Her mana well was surrounded by root-like things that branched off of it. Here, she found what she needed to cast her spell. She mentally reached out with her soul and grasped one of the roots. She could feel the warmth of the root throughout her very soul as she tugged on it gently, pulling the root towards her shoulder.

She had to tug it a few times, as it sometimes got stuck on things that she couldn’t see. That was not her only problem; the root itself wasn’t a straight line either. It had sharp bends and twists in it as it was slowly pulled out from her mana well. She had to keep an eye on it as it came out of the mana well, so that she could free it when it got caught on the mana well’s outer edge. When it did get stuck, she had to gently twist and tug it so that she could free it from where it had snagged. 

She had gotten a lot of practice over the years and it only took her a second or so to pull it all the way from her chest to her end goal in her hand. Once there, she focused on the shape she wanted it to form as she pushed it from her hand out of her body. This process had taken her a really long time to learn. At first, she couldn’t figure out how to get her mana out of her body. Then, when she figured out how, it took forever for her to learn how to shape the mana. She guessed that it took her a couple of years to do it, but it was hard to figure out the time when there was no sun to mark the passage of time. There was only a white light that never went away.

She quickly shaped the mana into the shape she wanted it to take, which was fourteen balls with very specific designs inside them. She couldn’t do them all at once. She had to do them one at a time because it took a lot of concentration to just do one spell ball. That and everything changed from one ball to another one. That was step two - creating the spell balls. Each ball had a different feeling to it, which changed depending on what ball was placed next. Each and every ball then changed again and again each time she put a new ball in place.

This was why creating new spells was so difficult. The spell balls changed as she added new ones to the line of the spell. The good news was that they changed the same way each time she put a new ball in place, so that she could go back and repeat part of the spell line that she knew was right and replace the failed part. The problem was that she had to keep the intent of what she wanted the spell to do while she did that, and the changes to the spell balls changed as she added new ones depending on the intent. So while, yes, she could build on her past mistakes, she could only do so for that one spell. The combination became useless when she started working on a new spell because the combos will have changed because the intent had changed.

It was extremely frustrating, but she had the time. She had all the time in the world. Well, she was working on changing that. Hopefully, if this spell worked, that would all change. She hoped her theory was correct.

She concentrated on what she was doing as the mana flowed out of her palm and formed into the first mana ball. The mana ball felt like heat. Not the heat that came from a flame or a hot object - it felt like heat from the summer sun beaming down on her from above. There was a bit of wetness in it, like the humidity that came like a heavy blanket in the deep summer days.

She was not really worried about what the spell ball was giving out as it would change when she added a new one. She quickly created the second ball. This one felt like the slickness on a hard but smooth surface. To her it felt like the time her father had somehow got shaving cream on the bathroom mirror and she had wiped it off with her finger. It felt just like that. 

The wet heat from the first ball changed into a rough feeling in her mouth. Like she was running her tongue over the skin of an orange. It didn’t taste like an orange skin, but the feeling she was getting from the change in the spell ball was what she remembered it felt like. The second ball changed as soon as it was added to the spell line from the slickness to a feeling of something echoing in her chest like the reverberation of really loud fireworks.

The next spell ball smelled like her old baby blanket. It was her favorite spell ball to create so far. It made her hesitate before adding it to the spell chain just so she could enjoy the smell for a bit longer knowing it would change as soon as she added it to the chain. It also made her think of how strange and odd magic was. Up until she created the spell ball she had forgotten that smell, but the moment she created it and smelled it she knew what it was. In the past, when her isolation got to her, she created the spell ball just to feel better. It kept her somewhat sane during those times.

The second ball changed to an odd feeling of boredom. The emotion came from outside of her, and didn’t really affect her that much. When she first discovered that spell balls could feel like emotions it really confused the hell out of her. Now, though, she was experienced enough to not let it affect her that much. Still, it was odd to feel an emotion that didn’t come from inside of her. The first ball changed to the feeling of looking at something red. The spell ball wasn’t red. It didn’t have a color, only a shape that was visible only when she looked out from her soul. It was like her brain was telling her she was looking at red even though she wasn’t. It wasn’t rational or logical, but it was what she felt from the spell ball.

She added another ball and everything changed once again. She kept on adding spell balls until she reached the eleventh ball. This time, she stopped to mentally take note of how everything changed. She committed all the changes to memory as the ball was added. Then she added the next ball. Once more, she made sure to memorise what she felt as the spell changed. So far everything felt right, and like the spell was still working on changing in the right direction. Two of the three spell balls had changed so that she was feeling the same thing from both. That, she knew, was a very good sign she was on track.

She carefully added the next ball and the first six snapped together with the same feeling. That was an extremely good sign she was about to create a new spell. She added the last ball and everything snapped into place, but something was wrong. The spell felt off. All the spell balls were giving off a feeling of breaking a barrier, but it didn’t feel like what she had wanted to create. She had only felt this feeling, the feeling like she created something, but it wasn’t what she wanted, three times in the past. Each time she felt that feeling, it was when she created a spell that was kind of like what she wanted, but not exactly.

Since she still hadn’t cast the spell yet, she started on the next part of creating a new spell. The spell balls were lined up in a row going from left to right. It didn’t really matter what direction they were going, she could have lined them up from top to bottom and it wouldn’t matter in the slightest. The only thing that mattered was that they were in a line and in the correct order, one after another.

To cast the spell once the spell balls were in place, she had to move the balls until they aligned so the mana that connected them would flow from one ball to the next. She raised her hand and pushed on the second spell ball. She raised it above the line and watched as the mana between them appeared. The mana looked like a faint blue line that connected the second ball with the fifth ball and the ninth ball.

She moved each ball out of the line and saw how each one was connected. They didn’t all connect with each other, but they did connect to at least two more balls. She noted that she had four different parts in the spell after she was done moving the balls around to see how they were all connected. She then started to move them until the faint blue line became brighter. She worked on the smallest section of the spell before working her way up to the bigger sections.

As she moved the first ball downwards slightly so that it would cross between two other spell balls, the final part of the spell lit up before the entire spell merged. She had about a second before the spell went off to add more mana to increase the spell’s power or slow the mana down to hold it at this point. Since this was a new spell, she knew better than to add any more mana to it.

A second later, the spell balls collapsed into one big ball and the spell went off. Two things happened as soon as her spell went off. First, she felt her Personal barrier spell break and a soft woman’s voice spoke. She also felt the protection she had placed on her home take a hit, but not break.

You have created a new spell. Name your spell.

The soft voice told her in the back of her head. It didn’t come from outside, like someone was talking to her, it came from inside her mind, like someone was talking to her telepathically. It only spoke when she created a new spell, and it always said the same thing. Even after all the spells she had created, she still wasn’t sure if the voice was real or if she was just imagining it.

She ignored the voice as she looked around. The spell had broken her Personal barrier spell and hit her all the spells she had on the walls of her tiny home. Her Personal barrier spell was just gone, like she had dismissed it. Normally, the only way to break it was for some beast or monster to hit her hard enough that it overwhelmed the spell. When that happened, it hurt - like a loud sound had exploded just next to her ears. It sort of sounded like glass was breaking, but much louder, and it hurt her ears. This didn’t feel like that - it felt like someone dismissed the Personal barrier spell instead.

Looking at the walls, she realized that the spell not only dismissed her Personal barrier spell, it also tried to dismiss the spell protection on her walls. As she looked at the walls, she saw that only a few of the spells were affected, as they slowly powered back up to their normal strength. The spells, she noted, had to do with physically preventing anyone from passing through them.

“Spell breaker: Physical.” She said out loud.

Do you want to name your new spell ‘Spell breaker: Physical’?

“Yep.” She told the voice.

Do you wish to share this spell with the rest of humanity?

“Yes.” She replied once more. She always said yes. She didn’t know if anyone else was still alive, but, from what she had seen before she became trapped, she knew they needed help.

And that was it. She had created a new spell. The voice was gone again, but she knew it would be back once she created another spell. It only spoke to her when she created a new spell and it was always the same thing, over and over again. Once, when she was angry, she told it no when it asked her to name her spell. It had gone quiet until, a few sleep cycles later, she relented and named the spell. It was then she realized it was always listening, because it immediately asked if she wanted to share it.

Wanting to test it, she had said no. Then she waited a little while, before she said she wanted to share it. The voice then repeated the question, ‘do you wish to share the spell....’ This time, she said yes. After that, the voice stopped talking to her until she created a new spell. It never answered any of her questions. It only asked those two questions, no matter what she did. There were times she had threatened to kill herself unless it answered her. It never did.

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Feeling hungry, she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a white mushroom. It was the only thing she had eaten since she got trapped. There was no other food, nor was there a source of water, even though she was right next to a river before this all happened. The river was gone now. Only dirt and what was left of the garbage that had been sitting on the river floor before the water had disappeared, remained.

Out of habit, she patted her coat pocket only to frown as she realized it was flat. She looked down and pried her coat pocket open to see that it was empty. She let the pocket go and looked around her tiny home. It was a hole she had created a long time ago with one of her first spells, before she created her various barrier spells. Back then, it was all she could do to survive when a beast or a monster suddenly appeared in her little bit of hell. It was a godsend when she discovered the spell. It had been the first time she was able to get some sleep without worrying about dying.

The hole was a bit longer than five feet. She only knew that because she created it so that, when she laid down, she was almost touching the walls on either side of her when she was curled up in the fetal position. It was tall enough that she could stand up, though. It wasn’t always that way - at first, it was much smaller, but, as time went on, she enlarged it time and time again until it reached its current size.

The walls of the hole were solid rock, which she was sure had been created by the spell. Going by what was all around her tiny safe haven, it had been just dirt before. There was a ladder cut into the rock on the right side of the hole. She had used a lower-power version of the spell to cut into the rock to create the ladder. It wasn’t the best ladder in the world, as the spacing between the ladder cuts were not the same size, nor were they the same distance from each other. It looked crude as hell, but she was so used to it she didn’t even notice it anymore.

There was a four-foot gap between her hole and the basement of her home. In between the two floors was solid, grey rock with bands of black stripes in it. The not-so-regular ladder steps cut in the side of the rock worked their way right up to the next floor. The basement was slightly bigger than the hole in the ground. It was also completely dark, but, as soon as Lily climbed out of the hole, it lit up with soft, yellow light. The light was from clear crystals embedded into the ceiling. The crystals themselves weren’t giving off a glow, but Lily’s spell, which had laid dormant until she climbed out of the hole, turned on.

Lily looked around the basement, looking for anything out of place. It was an old habit. One that had saved her life many times since she had become trapped. The walls and the ceiling had the same protection as the hole in the ground glowing softly on the wall. Lily looked around at the walls, spotting the small, blue crystals that were embedded in them. She made sure they were all glowing, which told her all her protections were active and working. Again it was a long habit that was burned into her psyche. This time it was more important, since she had set off the new shield breaker spell.

The basement was taken up by a small single cot with a three-inch mattress on it. The mattress was covered in the soft, golden, furry skin from a long-dead animal. There was a small table beside the cot that had a bowl on it. Lily checked the bowl for white mushrooms, but it was empty, like her jacket pocket. She wasn’t put off yet. There was still the top floor she could check.

She climbed the four cement stairs to the bright-green, wooden door that led outside. She cracked the door and bright white flooded into the basement. It turned everything she was looking at an odd bluish-white color. She quickly looked around for trouble, but she didn’t spot anything out of the ordinary.

Right in front of her was a road that led to a wall of bright light. She looked away from the wall to her right and to a road that went across half of a drawbridge. There were a bunch of rusted-out hunks that used to be cars. Most of them showed signs of being damaged in some unusual fashion - like the top of the car or rather what used to be a minivan, right in front of Lily that had been crushed by something really heavy that had four, thick claw marks that started where the windshield used to be and ended at the bottom of the driver’s side door. 

Lily ignored the familiar sight and looked for beasts or monsters that were capable of the damage that was shown on the cars. She didn’t spot anything so quickly exited the basement and walked up the three stairs to the room above the basement. The tiny complex used to be the control room of the drawbridge, back before the end of the world. Aside from the hole in the basement, the tiny complex looked brand new. The top floor was a glass-encased room where, back in the day, a bridge controller had worked to raise and lower the two sides of the bridge. There was a console towards the far wall with a couple of buttons and some gauges. Like the building itself, the console looked brand new. To the left-side of the room was a small, old-fashioned, metal desk. It was covered with a bunch of carvings that were meant to track Lily’s sleep cycles in a poor attempt to track her days. She hadn’t added to it in a very long time.

The walls of the room were covered in blue-tinted glass, so that the operator could have an unobstructed, 360-degree view of the world around him or her. Lily took a moment to take in the view. The tiny complex was sitting at the base of the bridge. To her right was the bridge. To her left was a dip where the river should be. Behind her was part of the road that led onto the bridge from one direction and into the wall of light in the other.

The road itself had been a two-lane highway before the end of the world. The road was clogged with rusted out shells of cars that were all facing the same way - towards the tiny complex. There was a wall of light that completely circled around everything that Lily could see in a dome shape. It also enclosed a part of the bridge and some of the land to the sides of the bridge. Lily had once walked heel to toe from where the wall cut off the bridge to the other side of the wall of light. She had taken two hundred and fifty-four steps. She made the calculation from her shoe size that the length of the road she had walked was about 168 or 169 feet. It wasn’t as accurate as she liked, but it was the best she could do.

Inside the office, there was a really old-fashioned chair with wheels on it by the desk. Lily sat down in the chair and started going through the desk. There were six drawers and each one of them was empty. She sighed as she realized that she would have to go and pick some new ones. She looked up through the glass towards the end of the bridge near the wall. There was a clear spot near the wall where a bunch of mushrooms were growing. It wasn’t the only place they grew, but Lily had long ago learned it was the safest place to harvest the mushrooms.

“Before we go.” She said out loud and quickly dropped into her soul behind her eyes. With quick, easy movements she found a root of mana sticking out of her mana well and pulled it to her right palm. Once it was she was done, she waved her hands and nine spell balls flowed out of her palm. She didn’t bother to check if they were the right balls, as the spell she was about to use was one of the spells she used most often. As soon as the balls appeared, Lily quickly moved them into the correct position. Unlike when she was untangling the spell she had just created in the hole, she knew exactly where these balls needed to go.

As soon as the spell balls were in place, she pushed some mana into the balls and a book made out of light appeared in front of her. She called this spell Grimoire. She quickly grabbed the book before it could fall and randomly opened it. She knew from long practice that she didn’t need to find the last page as the grimoire would always open to the page she needed. It was a neat spell she had created years ago. She placed the book on her desk and, with her finger, wrote out her new spell. She first wrote the spell balls she had used in her new spell and how each felt as they changed and then she added her thoughts on the spell and what it did. Once she was done, she stopped adding mana to the book and it faded from her sight.

She stood up and looked through the windows again. She took her time as she scanned the area, looking for any signs of life besides her own. Aside from a few white mushrooms here and there, she didn’t spot anything out of the ordinary. Taking a deep breath, she pulled a huge red and blue bag out from under the drawbridge console. She had looted it from one of the cars on the road years ago. It had been full of hockey equipment at the time. Now it was her mushroom bag. Even though the bag had to be several years, if not decades, old it looked brand new.

She swung the huge strap over her head and down her chest before pushing the bag itself behind her. Then, using her left hand, she quickly pulled a root to her palm and, with a sweep of her hand, pushed out nine spell balls. With practiced ease she quickly pushed them into the correct position before they collapsed into a single ball of red light.

Unlike the spell she had created in the hole a few minutes ago, she held the mana in a delicate balance with just enough mana to keep the spell in a single ball above her hand, but not enough to set it off. It had taken her a really long time to figure out that trick, but it had been worth it. She now didn’t need to take a few seconds to set the spell up. She just needed to push enough mana to set it off, or, if there was no target, let the spell collapse without going off.

It took about four seconds to set the spell up and get it ready. As soon as she was done, she pulled a root out from her mana well to her right palm. Once it was there, she waved eleven spell balls into existence and, as it was collapsing into a single ball, she quickly pulled her root back towards her mana well, but did not allow it to completely fall back to where it had been. Instead she pulled it so that the root was at the very edge of her sternum in her chest. As soon as it reached her chest she pushed the spell into existence with a huge load of mana. A dark orange light flickered over her then faded. Like her Grimoire spell, she needed to keep a flow of mana to the spell or it would collapse. It was her go-to combat defensive spell that she called Mobile spell barrier. Unlike her Personal barrier spell which was extremely strong this spell was weaker, but she could move around unlike the Personal barrier spell which required her to remain in place.

She stepped up to the door and opened it with her right hand, while she kept her left hand ready in case anything decided to attack her. There was a large, open space by the stairs that led up to the tiny office and down to the basement. She knew from past experience that this was the safest place outdoors. It wasn’t completely safe, by any means, but it was safer than on the bridge or near the cars. She knew if something jumped at her she usually had time to retreat to one of the doors and to safety.

She stopped at where the stairs split to go either upwards or downwards. With her right hand she pushed out ten spell balls. Without taking her eyes off her surroundings, she blindly put the spell balls in the correct places. The balls collapsed and, pointing her hand upwards, she released the spell. It shot upwards like an invisible firework and exploded. If she had been looking out from her soul right then she knew she would have seen small, sparkling lights falling down towards the ground in a thirty-foot or so diameter around her. Instead she saw nothing, but she did feel the spells mana all around her as it went off. She called this spell Area of sight.

Immediately after the spell went off, she knew she was the only living thing besides a few hidden mushrooms in the thirty-foot diameter around her. The spell easily penetrated the tiny complex behind her as well as the hunks of junk that used to be cars on the bridge. She didn’t see anything, but she knew everything, inside and out, in the area that the spell was falling. It was like she was hovering over everything and looking down with X-ray vision, but without using her eyes. It was an odd feeling, but she was used to it.

She started walking towards the edge of the bridge where the mushrooms were growing. She stopped a few feet from the edge of her spell and took a few seconds to fire off a second Area of sight spell. She waited until she could feel the first spell end and the second one start before she moved forward again. It was then that she felt something move inside the area of the spell.

She could feel its presence as it moved, twisting towards her. It took half a second for the picture of a worm to appear in her head, but as soon as it did she backed away and raised her left hand towards the thing. It was crawling through a car just ahead of her, heading right towards her. It stopped just out of her sight, just below the car’s driver’s side window. Then it seemed to puke, but instead of liquid vomit it vomited a bunch of snakes that flew up and over the car window. Lily aimed her left hand and set her spell Greater flamethrower off while at the same time using her right hand to recreate the same spell, in case the first one wasn’t enough.

Fire exploded out of her hand in a wave of purple flames. The fire swept over the snakes, and, after a few seconds, she saw them turn bright orange for a second before they turned black and crumbled away. The flames from her spell, she knew from past experience, only burned living things. They completely left the car behind the snakes alone. As soon as all the snakes had crumbled to ash she cut the mana to the spell in her left hand off. She resisted the urge to wipe the sweat off her forehead from the heat of her spell and quickly reached inside her chest to pull yet another root towards her left hand. She was still pulling the root to her left hand and at the same time finishing the spell, Greater flamethrower on her right hand when the worm exploded through the car door and leaped at her.

In the split second the spell took to collapse into a single spell ball in her right hand, it felt like she had all the time in the world to examine the worm. It was about two feet wide, maybe slightly more. It had three flaps covering its mouth that opened wide, exposing row after row of sharp, pointy teeth. Tentacles, from deep inside its mouth, rushed out towards her. She pushed her right hand forward and pushed out a huge amount of mana - much more than she had used on the pile of snakes. A torrent of purple flames rushed towards the worm. It tried to dodge the flames, but the river of flames was much faster than the worm.

The river flowed over the worm, completely encasing it. Lily moved her hand, as she kept the mana flowing to her spell. She kept her hand pointed at it to keep the worm from escaping, as it tried to roll away from the river of purple fire. It gave up after a few seconds and curled up on itself. At first Lily thought that it was curling up to die, only to lean back as it jumped at her through her flames. In panic, she pushed her left hand forward and set off the second Greater flamethrower at it. The second river of purple fire hit it and, to her relief, pushed it backwards. The worm bounced off the car it had tried to ambush her from and fell to the ground. It tried to move away, but the flames were slowly overpowering it.

Before it could slide too far under the car, it started to turn orange and flakes of black ash started to fall off it. Lily kept the flames on the worm until it was completely burned to ash. She pinched the mana off to both her spells, but she didn’t let her guard down - if there was one beast then there might be more. She quickly pulled another root towards her left hand. Once she had her fire spell prepped, she used her right hand to fire off another Area of sight spell. She fired it upwards again and waited until it showed her that there was nothing living around her.

She quickly ran towards the mushroom patch by the edge of the wall of light. She crouched down and started to quickly gather up as many mushrooms as she could, while keeping her left hand ready for any beasts that were still looking for a human snack. She swiftly gathered all the mushrooms in the patch and stuffed them into her bag. As soon as the last mushroom was plucked, she started running towards her home. She stopped several times to fire off the Area of sight spell to make sure nothing else wanted to ambush her. Then she was at her tiny complex.

She rushed up the stairs and pulled the door open. Only when she was inside and the door was closed did she let the fire spell fade from her left hand. She took a deep breath and set the bag down on the floor. It wasn’t the first time she had been attacked by a beast, but it had been the first time in a while. The beasts seemed to just randomly appear once in a while. She had even seen a few appear out of nowhere since she had become trapped by the dome of light. One second there was nothing, then there was. The first few times she had seen it, she thought she had gone crazy. She learned better as time went on.

 She knew that there was no way in or out of the wall of light. Anything that touched it disintegrated. Nothing could enter or leave the dome of light.  She had been looking for a way out since she first discovered she was trapped. It was why she had been working on that spell down in the hole. She had been looking for a way out. So far she hadn’t found it, but she refused to give up.