The dungeon raid had ended long before Ravina finished her little bag project. Over the course of two months, the adventurers wiped out almost every monster in the dungeon, save for a few level 4s that were left alone out of fear of angering such powerful creatures. Still, despite their success, Ravina had none of her own.
She had already bought a few more bags, their leather stiff and unyielding, but she was stuck—not with anything as simple as the power gap or magical capacity, but with the magic formula that would create a "bigger on the inside" effect.
Shrinking objects? That wasn’t feasible; it would ruin most monster drops and destroy anything non-malleable. What about converting items into energy? Items like that had no way to record their original shape or value, so most would come back as something entirely different, if not worse; that idea had somehow even spawned an evil gerbil.
“Gipa Gipa?” the small black creature chirped from its new place in a metal cage, its beady little eyes glinting mischievously.
“Shut it, Frank!” Ravina snapped, casting an annoyed glance at the creature. He might look like a cute pet right now, but he was an absolute demon, as the many scrapes and scratches on her once clean and pure skin could now attest. The barely healed wounds throbbed as she ran a hand through her black hair, her fingers tangling in the strands as she paced the room.
Frank let out a puff of air with a cute little “tsk’ph.”
“Not helping,” she snapped back. “Oh, screw this! I’m a woman of science!” Ravina found herself shouting in frustration, her voice echoing off the walls of her study. Her purple eyes flashed with determination as she planted her hands on her hips. “I’ve got this—the answer has to be quantum nonsense!” It was a half-serious, half-joking declaration.
Her frazzled mind felt particularly mushy after so many failed attempts. It had to be something related to quantum… entanglement? That sounded right… Yet despite using science-y words, Ravina knew she didn’t actually understand what she was talking about, nor had she ever watched a science lecture; only the sci-fi channel, and she was sure those old scientists just made everything up.
“Stupid real-life fantasy,” she mumbled as she bit the tip of her thumb, chewing softly at the nail. With just one month left before finals, she still had no idea what to do anymore. She was trapped in the idea, desperate to see it through.
“I can use the evrýno sigil to make the spell widen… but what does that do in the long run?” she wondered, a bit desperately. She stared at the magic formula she had scrawled on a piece of parchment: Create, size, twice, forever, enlarge, space. The six runes stared back at her, mocking her. Currently, the spell did nothing but gather a bunch of hot air in the bags, and any adjustment to them would ruin the bags, so this was as far as she had safely gotten. Ravina leaned back in her chair, her mind whirling with frustration as she looked at Frank, now dozing off in his cage. “Little bastard,” she sighed.
“Right, coffee,” Ravina muttered after an hour of watching the sleeping rodent. With those words, she quickly stood up and fled the library once again. The crisp air outside was a welcome change, and she swiftly made her way to the coffee house, where young Emily would no doubt heal her wounded spirit.
The warmth of the coffee house enveloped Ravina as she stepped inside, and she could already feel the tension leaving her shoulders. The scent of freshly brewed coffee and baked goods mingled in the air, enticing her to take a deep inhale and gently close her eyes. She found her favorite seat by the window, opening her eyes to scan the room, and her gaze rested on the young figure of Emily.
Despite being only six, the young girl worked hard, her short hair bouncing with each step as she made sure every customer received their proper order. Emily had also lost her mother at a young age, but unlike Ravina, Emily didn’t have a bunch of ungrateful kids to watch over or a deadbeat dad drowning in alcohol, unable to function.
Clicking her tongue in thought, Ravina put on a smile and waved to Emily. The girl waved enthusiastically back at her and skipped over as Ravina sat down. “Morning, Em!” Emily called.
“Good afternoon, Emily,” Ravina gently corrected her.
“Same thing?” Emily asked.
“Please.”
“Got it!” Spinning on her heel, Emily rushed away. She ran to the small hole in the wall that separated the kitchen from the dining room. There, Ravina saw the young girl talking to her father—a handsome, older man who had gone gray early but still managed to keep himself fit. He shared only the girl’s brown hair, his blue eyes and rough, burned skin setting him apart.
Unlike her father, that man had done everything he could to raise her well, doubling down on his efforts to ensure she would be taken care of, even if he passed away as well. In fact, most of the customers in the coffee house were actually his old adventuring buddies. It was one of the reasons the coffee shop was rather empty, despite his skill with coffee. As a result, Emily was eternally safe in their company, allowing her to move around the shop without a care.
However, despite the many years they had known Emily, Ravina had something the others didn’t. This connection made it easy for the young girl to approach her whenever there was a lull in business. During these times, Emily would often take her breaks in the seat opposite Ravina. It made sense; the burly men who filled the coffee house were intimidating, and Ravina was the only woman who willingly entered such a shop with a hostile atmosphere.
“Are your feet tired?” Ravina asked with a playful smile as one of those lulls allowed Emily to jump onto the chair opposite her, her small legs swinging slightly above the floor. Ravina couldn’t help but feel a pang of smug satisfaction as she glanced at the other men in the room, silently gloating that Emily had chosen to sit beside her and not them.
“They’re okay,” Emily said cheerfully, her small legs swinging beneath the table. “I’ve stood for a really, really, really long time before,” she added, her tone bright.
“Ahh, so cute,” Ravina murmured aloud, feeling her fatigue melt away. Emily’s bright smile and boundless energy were infectious, lifting Ravina’s spirits sky high. As they continued chatting about one random thing after another, the conversation suddenly turned to Ravina’s studies, and she found herself accidentally revealing that she was training to be a mage.
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“A mage!” Emily cooed, her eyes widening with excitement. “Like Mr. Darby?”
“Uh, maybe? Yeah, don’t tell anyone, but I’m already a pretty good spell caster,” Ravina said with a playful wink, enjoying the look of awe on Emily’s face.
“Oohh, hey, can you make a stick?” Emily asked, leaning forward eagerly.
“Make a stick?” Ravina repeated, tilting her head in confusion.
“Yeah! Mr. Darby does a thing where he makes a big, long stick appear in his hands before using it to do the woosh-woosh spell.”
Ravina’s brow furrowed as she tried to piece together what Emily was describing. “Stick… woosh-woosh spe—do you mean his staff? Did the man summon a staff into his hand?”
“Yeah, staff! He makes it go bye-bye, then it comes back! Make the stick!” Emily cheered.
Ravina was momentarily lost in thought, her mind racing. She felt like she’d heard of something like that before, putting a staff away or something like that… but making it disappear and reappear… “Ah!” The realization slipped from her lips—she had heard of it before! It was around the second month of her school year when they explained it. No wonder she’d forgotten; that was ages ago! “Yeah, I know what you mean. I don’t have a stick, but what about this spoon?” Ravina picked up the small, used coffee spoon from the table, her fingers gripping it a little too tightly.
She hadn’t used many spells beyond the ones she had specifically learned in class—just one or two specific spells. Beyond that, there were a few she had either sort of made up herself or at least read about from a respectable source, though those spells often failed to produce good results. So instead, she relied on her… instincts. It was those same instincts that had allowed her to defeat the monsters in the dungeon with ease. So she should be able to use them to figure out how this spell worked… right?
One important thing to remember is that the school had not actually taught them how to use and manipulate mana into spells. Everything was theoretical—like learning how to design a building before trying to construct one yourself. A good idea, considering that anyone could throw wood together and call it a day. However, the school taught them how to start with a foundation, why you need X beams every Y inches to make a wall that would last through a storm, and other such details…
Ravina suddenly realized she was getting sidetracked, trying to figure out how to build a house when she hadn’t even held a hammer before. Cursing her ADD-riddled mind, she refocused on the spell itself and began to explain to cut the rather long silence that hung between them. “It’s called Anchor Point Banishment.”
“Anchor Point Banishment,” Emily echoed, her voice filled with awe. Ravina took a deep breath, feeling the weight of Emily’s expectations in her big, curious green eyes.
“Yeah… so you, uh, anchor the… uh—here,” Ravina said, pulling a cloth napkin from the table and tying it securely around her wrist. In theory—or at least if she remembered correctly—she could use her own body as an anchor, but she wasn’t about to experiment like that for a child’s amusement. Besides, she liked her limbs and didn’t want to risk making them accidentally disappear with some failed magic.
“Right, so I’m going to ‘drop’ the spoon into the Arcanian Expanse. Uh, basically trapping it between this world and a sort of null void… uh… something like that?” Ravina blinked as she explained, her voice faltering slightly as she realized it had been way too long since she last studied this. There were three planes in the world of magic: Zontanós Kósmos, ákyros, and the thin line that separated them all—the Arcanian Expanse.
Zontanós Kósmos was explained as the real world, while ákyros was basically a void or null reality. It both existed and didn’t, or something like that. Ravina was pretty sure she had taken notes… Anyway, the Arcanian Expanse was a plane that separated reality from the void… She was sure she wrote down notes about it, at least.
Ravina couldn’t help but laugh, a soft chuckle escaping her lips. Emily was too young to understand the complexities of multiple planes of existence, which was a good thing because Ravina wasn’t sure she remembered even half of it herself. The teachers had glossed over it anyway. “Yeah, that’s right,” she said, reassuring herself more than Emily. They were just talking about it because it had something to do with ancient magic. In fact, ákyros, or the void, was used heavily in ancient magics.
“Anyway, what I’m going to do is…” Ravina began, her voice growing more confident as she pushed mana into her hand around the spoon. She focused her magical energy to cover the spoon, like a malleable plastic wrap that she wrapped tightly around it.
“Seal it really tight in mana,” Ravina muttered through gritted teeth as she concentrated on the spell while trying to explain it. She knew she had to seal it tightly—so tight that nothing could enter or escape from the bubble of magic she was creating. “And then… uh…” She was thinking hard but realized that was always her problem with practical magic. “Instincts,” she whispered, not to Emily but to herself.
With a steadying breath, Ravina opened her hand. As the spoon began to fall, she just sucked it into the expanse, dropping it from this plane to another—a feat surprisingly easy. To the outside world, it looked as if the spoon simply disappeared, but in reality, it was tethered to another plane outside the real world. The spoon was anchored by the tiniest string of mana to the cloth napkin wrapped around Ravina’s wrist. The string was so small, so faint, that it would never be visible to the naked eye.
“Huh,” Ravina murmured, surprised at how easy it was. While she didn’t know exactly what she had done, she knew she had succeeded. “Yeah, instincts,” she repeated.
To young Emily, it seemed like pure magic—one moment the spoon was in Ravina’s hand, and the next, it had vanished into thin air. She cheered, clapping her hands in delight. “Bye-bye, spoon!” she giggled, her voice bubbling with excitement. “Make it come back, make it come back!” she demanded with a soft giggle.
Emily’s words brought Ravina back to reality, pulling her out of the euphoric haze of her successful spell. She smiled at the young girl, who was finally acting her age. “Alright, ready?” she asked, a playful grin spreading across her face.
Opening her hand again, Ravina focused on the magical string tethered to the cloth napkin, feeling the faint pulse of energy that connected the spoon to this world. With a gentle mental tug, she pulled the spoon, still protected by the magic wrap, back into the real plane. She quickly closed her hand around it, catching the spoon before it could fall.
“Yay!” Emily cheered, her eyes sparkling with wonder.
“Yay indeed,” Ravina replied, though her mind was already racing. “Yay in… deed…” She looked down at the spoon, her gaze narrowing as she studied it more closely. It was simple, elegant, and fit all the requirements she needed. The mana strings were so tiny that one could sew thousands onto a single small object, and the best part was that it was a neutral spell, usable by everyone regardless of their magical affinity. “All I need is to figure out how to make it automatic…” she whispered to herself, her thoughts spiraling into new possibilities.
“Em?” Emily asked, tilting her head to the side, her curiosity piqued by Ravina’s sudden seriousness.
“Ah, sorry, I was just thinking,” Ravina said, snapping back to the present with a warm smile. “Here, look! It’s gone!” She played with Emily a few more times, repeating the trick and enjoying the young girl’s endless delight. Each time, Emily’s laughter filled the air, making the room feel lighter, warmer.
Eventually, though, Emily had to get back to work, so Ravina paid for her meal before she scampered out of the coffee house. The cool air greeted her as she made her way back to the library.