Chapter 08 : Runic Alteration

Nikolaï was getting ready to test his new spell. He cleaned up his desk and stored the trophies from yesterday’s mission. The fruits had brought him a small payment of money and tokens which was probably going to be spent in the Tower library. He although had cleaned the small dozen pebbles found in the mangrove and put them in a small wooden box.

Nikolaï sat down at his desk with a book and some notes in front of him. He joined his hands and created a Sigil between them. The Sigil was the one from Spectral Hand but on it had been added another one, the Runic Alteration Sigil. The blending of the two didn’t work properly on Nikolaï's first try.

From the spellbook explanations, the caster was supposed to overlay the spell Sigil on another level 1 or 0 spell. In order to do it, Nikolaï didn’t just follow the instructions but was using the active state of his Third Eye to look at the project Sigil between his fingers. Nikolaï tried different things, even voluntarily doing things wrong to train his eyes.

Half an hour later Nikolaï found how to perfectly incorporate the two Sigils and also illustrated a lot of the things he had read in the spellbook instructions. Nikolaï finished all of the casting steps and successfully created the Spectral Hand.

The spell was complete but didn’t show any sign of alteration except the imprint on the back of it. Nikolaï put his right hand on the imprint and tried to alter it. Normally trying to modify a Sigil after the spell being projected would most certainly collapse it but it was the purpose of Runic Alteration. By adding it, it became possible to re-edit the Sigil.

Nikolaï focused and tried diverting the ether flux inside the Sigil. The spell collapsed under Nikolaï's dumb look. He didn’t understand what had happened. He picked back the book that he had copied and looked for what he had done wrong.

He rapidly found his mistake : he had tried to alter the main branch of the Sigil, the one thing that he couldn’t do. He cast the spell again and this time he avoided making the same error. By tweaking the other parts of the Sigil he made the hand grow larger or expanded his existing time by making it weaker.

After several minutes of testing, Nikolaï realised that the spell could be more practical than he had thought at the beginning. He could not change the amount of ether in the spell after he had been cast so if he changed the size of the hand, its tangibility and strength were going to be weakened. With a bit more experience Nikolaï thought that he could maintain the tangibility by making the spell consume his energy faster.

There was room for improvement but even on a theoretical level, it was beneficial. Runic Alteration relied on the stacking principle and was a good way to illustrate it. The final shape of a Sigil was not random it was the blending of other shapes or parts of them which had to be added in the right order, as if they were piling on each other. The first one was always the main branch, it was the foundation of the Sigil, and the rest needed to be aligned with it or grow from it.

That was what the visualisation part of casting was about. Not just remembering the Sigil but picturing it being assembled before projecting it.

Nikolaï thought about all kinds of future applications for Runic Alteration but before that, he needed to strengthen his foundations and master the spells he already knew.

***

The next day, just after his morning meditation, Nikolaï was ready to practice on his second spell : Impalpable Wall. It was the one he had had to demonstrate at his last exam and was lucky to successfully cast it on his second try. After that, he had continued training and could do it on the first try even if he didn’t completely master it.

Nikolaï was standing in the middle of his room and joined hands while activating his Third Eye. He had decided to fix his mistakes as they came and realised quickly that there were a lot of them. He spent the next hour fixing the evident flaws but also the tiniest mistakes.

He finally cast the spell and a transparent shape the size of a common door appeared in front of him. In its centre was floating the Sigil used for his creation and Nikolaï started to circle around his spell. Looking throw the results.

The level 1 spell was meant as protection but he didn’t belong to the barrier family because of its static nature. Barriers were, in most cases, cast as a bubble surrounding the caster and moving with him. Even the common barriers were at least level 3 spells so only Aspirants closer to becoming Arcanist were able to use them.

Impalpable Wall was not considered a shield either because he didn’t require constant casting. Once created it was going to stay up until it ran out of power (which could take around 2 to 3 minutes) or be broken by external forces.

Nikolaï unsheathed his sword that he had kept not far and struck at the wall. The blade bounced on it but cracks spread on the surface as it would do on broken glass. Nikolaï put his hand on the wall, trying to grasp the inner flux of Ether. By the look of it, the wall could not cash another hit like that but that didn’t mean that Nikolaï was not impressed by its current state.

Before what happened with Orsana’s experience, when he performed the spell, the surface wall had been more blurry, almost milky. Now it looked like quality glass and was more resistant than what Nikolaï remembered. He moved his hand to the Sigil, focusing on it more than the overall flow. He hadn’t added the Runic Alteration on it but was definitely going to try it in the near future.

It was not just that he could alter the shape of the wall by doing so but because it could allow him to tweak its structure and repair it in a way.

After another hour, Nikolaï’s experimentation didn’t go far. It was not because of failure but because the spell was way more demanding in energy. Practising it was taxing from Nikolaï who hadn’t yet raised his level to his former self.

Reluctantly he gave up for the day on took his last pay with him before going to the library. He was looking for a better way of meditation now that he could perform more subtle variations on his Ether. In the past, he had searched a lot on the subject, like many Aspirants, but rejected a lot of his findings because of his lack of control or insight into Ether handling. He hadn’t become an expert either but he had now a larger field of possibility.

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Nikolaï arrived at the library and spent hours looking for the books he remembered and the one quote in those books. He didn’t find the miraculous method he was dreaming of but found an interesting one which required draining elementium coming from arcanic creatures. The method had several defaults, especially regarding elementium poisoning but explained different ways of limiting it. Nikolaï was particularly interested and surprised by what was called the “draining effect” and had never thought it was possible.

He rented a desk and used it for copying the method along with a level 0 spell from a Grimoire. Once he had done it he went to his room to get his equipment for a short excursion into the garden.

Nikolaï was heading to a pond close to the safe area. In it was a species of fire toad that could be a real pain to catch even if they were not dangerous. For Nikolaï it was not that complicated, thanks to Spectral Hand. He didn’t have to fear the sparks they produced when they were cornered. Having mastered the spell to another level Nikolaï caught four of them before the daylight started to diminish.

He didn’t lose his time and went to the open market. Close to the gathering warehouse were tables that could be rented for 15 bronze pounds and used for butcher creatures. Nikolaï did it rather quickly and without damaging the most important part.

Nikolaï’s father was an avid hunter, not that he really shared his passion with his last son but in an attempt to win his approval, Nikolaï had learned how to handle his trophies as a child. It didn’t achieve what Nikolaï had expected but he had learned the basics of skinning, butchering and tanning.

For an Arcanist, it was seen as a useless and vulgar skill but it had allowed Nikolaï to have a good job when he started in the Tower. Even after he left the tannery he had used his knowledge to make the best of the creature he had to gather and hunt.

Why cutting the third toad, Nikolaï asked himself if he would not be more skilful by using his Spectral Hand. Being able to move freely all around the specimen or even inside it without dirtying yourself with gut and blood felt like a good idea. Sadly, Nikolaï had used a lot of energy today and was not sure he was able to perform his spell correctly.

He finished the fourth one, the regular way, and only kept the eyes and hearts of his hunt. He sold the rest to the warehouse for a silver pound and went back to his room. Dusk was coming and he wanted to wash before his meditation session.

***

The next day Nikolaï woke up with excitement. There was a lot to do and without waiting he went to his desk where the eyes and hearts of the toad were resting on a wooden plank. Yesterday evening he had smeared them with a specific varnish to keep the energy inside them and slow their decay.

The varnish was dry and Nikolaï left them on the side while looking for a bit of bread. He had kept a bit of food for when he wanted to not stop at his work to go to the dining hall. He took a light breakfast and started his short morning meditation session. He didn’t push himself and was looking more at focusing his mind.

After doing so he took the new spell he had copied the day before. The spell belonged to the Incandescent Arcane and was called Palm Flame. It was a level 0 spell that simply created a small flame inside the caster's palm. The spell was a continuous kind of spell, which meant that as long as the caster supported it with energy the spell would endure.

Nikolaï followed the instructions and relied a lot on his Third Eye to be able to perform the spell as quickly as possible. It took him 4 hours to do so and Nikolaï couldn’t stop gloating about it. Sure it was only a level 0 spell that most Aspirants could learn, not just the one familiar with Incandescent Arcane, but none of them could do it in a matter of hours.

Nikolaï's current mastery was enough to do it in the comfort of his room but he didn’t need to be higher for what he was searching to do. What was important was that the flux of the spell didn’t have major flaws and, thanks to his Third Eye, Nikolaï was sure of it.

After so much progress, Nikolaï took a break. He went to the dining hall and ate his lunch slowly to clear his mind. He didn’t eat a lot, not wanting to waste his energy on digesting and went back to his room.

There he sat down on the floor, in the position described by the method he was trying. He took one of the toad hearts and followed the book's instructions to absorb the elementium inside it. Using his Third Eye helped him to find the way to do it and a better understanding of what was asked of him.

The elementium coming from a creature was denser than from the atmosphere but the target of this method was not just elementium. It was the residual ether that had belonged to the creature. Ether could only be contained by a living creature but after it dies some of it could be trapped in the elementium inside the flesh. It will only take a few days before those residuals were gone but it could be slowed by the use of certain compounds, like the varnish used by Nikolaï.

It couldn’t work on every creature. In fact, a stronger creature would have a more powerful ether that could not be contained by the leaning elementium.

The toads had been killed quickly without giving them the chance to use the elementium inside their body so Nikolaï was confident that a small portion of ether had been trapped in the major organs. Eyes and hearts were where the Ether could be found, that’s why Nikolaï had focused on them.

He started to feel some of the meditation effect but also the poisoning effect. It was sooner than he had expected but Nikolaï didn’t stop yet. When he finally decided to do so he was feeling light-headed and slightly feverish.

By using the Third Eye Nikolaï could see the fire elementium in his arm, not yet entirely dissolved in his Ether. In a way it was why he had chosen fire for his first test of the method, his affinity being one of his lowest there was a certain rejection slowing down the absorption.

Before it happened Nikolaï started to cast Palm Flame the most efficiently possible. The well-created structure was allowing his ether to flow smoothly from his body to the spell. The link being established, the incandescent spell was also draining the fire elementium in Nikolaï’s body.

The “draining effect” explained in the book was taking place under Nikolaï’s Third Eye. It could only work if the level of execution of the spell was enough and Nikolaï drained every particle of fire elementium that he could before repeating the all process with another organ’s toad.

Nikolaï had spent the entire day using his new method and was now in the dining hall with a headache and a bowl of soup. His body was sore due to the poisoning and Nikolaï would admit that he had overdone things a little. He could have spread the absorption on two days but the excitation and need to do things fast had pushed him.

Yes, he suffered from weak poisoning that was going to linger for a day or two but he had also earned the equivalent of 1 week of regular meditation in just one afternoon. The benefits were huge and Nikolaï wondered why the method was not more popular.

The draining effect had a certain elegance but it was true that the conditions to work were hard to meet for a beginner. Learning the basics of a spell was taking weeks but mastering it enough to be used for the draining would be a matter of months. He could even take more time if the person didn’t have the proper elementium affinity for the spell he was trying to learn.

Someone with high affinity could choose the right creature and wouldn’t require draining but that itself could be rather complicated. Nikolaï had a way to improve his control on his Ether which made him a special case.

In conclusion, the method could only create major progress for beginner Aspirants but the big majority of them were too inexperienced and insensitive in handling their own Ether to pull it off. It was the flaw of this method because once they would have raised to the appropriate condition they would have outgrown the possible main benefits of it.

Shortly after, dusk was coming but Nikolaï didn’t make the best of it. Having meditated for most parts of the day had put a toll on him and he shorted his usual session. He went to bed early and concluded that the method was working and that he needed to test it on a more powerful creature with an elementium less invasive for him.