I woke up the next day to the most heavenly scent. The heady aroma of fresh coffee and hot pancakes tickled my nose and woke me up faster than my Flesh Sorcery jolt of energy ever did. My mouth watered. I smelled BACON! My eyes sprang open and I almost dropped the stone lamp on the floor in my excitement. Sitting up, I swiveled my legs and stretched, finally registering the fact that right in front of me sat a breakfast fit for a southern king right in front of me. Biscuits smothered in gravy were on their own little plate. The main dish contained a stack of pancakes thick enough to kill a young man and two piles of scrambled egg and thick cut bacon wafted their beautiful scent over me. To top it all off, a cup of cold milk sat next to a jar of honey with one of those ribbed honey dipper sticks.
Even the power of my Flesh Sorcery could not prevent my eyes welling up with tears. One might have even leaked out, I couldn’t tell due to how blurry my breakfast became.
“Good morning!” Stephanie bustled her pregnant self into the living room with a pair of plates that she put on the dining room table. I opened my mouth to speak but she snatched all of my food and put it up there with her and her husband’s. “Join us! I figured that would be enough to wake you. Been trying for half an hour!”
Coughing to hide my inability to speak, I stood up and engulfed the kindest angel I’d ever met with a big hug. I ate my breakfast as slow as humanly possible. Each bite melted in my mouth. My pancakes were fluffy with a savory bite that reminded me of hazelnut. The bacon and eggs brought true rest and comfort to my soul. Biscuits and gravy with the milk filled me up for the first time in months! I did my best to keep my moans to a minimum but this meal satisfied me in a way that even my Flesh Sorcery had no way of replicating. Sometimes, a good hot homemade breakfast made by someone who genuinely loves cooking is medicine all by itself.
I sat there at the table, belly distended with pure joy. If I had a belt I would’ve loosened the damn thing. I tried to say thank you but the words couldn’t leave my mouth without me choking up. Instead, I reached my mind into Gungnir and pulled out two mana batteries that were the size and shape of common bricks. Grabbing them both, I compressed the structure of the mana battery until they were discs half the size of a CD but an inch thick. I used only my Mana Sorcery for the enchantment I laid across the battery discs, weaving in a runic structure devoted to protection, healing, and illusion. The illusion and protection runes, a Roman tower shield embossed with the symbol of a closed eye, adorned the front of the disc.
On the back of the disc sat several runes overlaid on top of each other. The Yin Yang symbol, the cycle of the Dao and representing its balance, formed the base of the enchantment. Within it, set into their respective sides, were the simple yet extremely important healing rune. The other side encapsulated the disc management portion, a whirlpool rune. This particular rune had two purposes, to first siphon off the excess mana from a person’s natural mana regeneration when they’re full, and second, to pull mana out of the disc as needed.
Both Toreen and Stephanie gasped as I laid the medallions on the table. The intense glow of condensed mana was unmistakable. They knew I had just whipped something incredible, their eyes, out of thin air and then turned it into something just for them. I didn’t want to wait so I pushed the medallions closer to them.
“Here, uh, Toreen, work your wood-shaping magic and put these in armor or make necklaces out of them. Keep them on your person.” I mimed putting one under my shirt. “They’re both the same thing and runed by Sorcery.” As Stephanie tried to get the words out, I shushed her. “I like y’all too much, and I couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to either of you so that’s what these are for. The runes on the front can project a shield powerful enough to stop a tank round and the illusion mana is primarily to hide the mana signature so no one can find you due to the medallion itself. The backside of it should be as close to your skin as possible because that’s where the healing rune is. They also shouldn’t really run out of mana because they’ll drink up the excess mana you produce, basically the stuff you don’t use it will store up for you at a later point in time.”
Stephanie’s eyes welled up with tears and my heart began to crumble even more deep inside. Reaching into Gungnir, I pulled out another mana battery and made a third medallion, pushing that one towards Stephanie as well. “This one is for your little gremlin. I know I didn’t really tell all of you pregnant women the gender of your babies except Lovera. You Stephanie, you’re going to have a boy.”
It took an hour to extricate myself from that house. Five minutes in, it was just too stuffy. The emotions of the pregnant woman, the overly abundant thanks and gestures of gratefulness from the proud father, it got to be too much. My inner hermit was screaming at me for some damn alone time. Of course, I didn’t get what I wanted. I got what I needed.
Cassandra found me up in a large willow tree overlooking the river. The branch had been shaped by the children with their Nature wands to be a long platform, clearly for diving into the river or for fishing. I loved it, the view from here was simply spectacular. More than a score of trees along the riverbank had been altered, magically pruned and shaped to act as platforms for the kids. A few had their root systems altered to act as docks for fishing boats or to dam up part of the river. With those new dam systems in place, I could see small, magitech hydroelectric generators using the current to convert kinetic energy from the river’s current into a consistent source of mana.
“Quit daydreaming!” Cassandra said, snapping her fingers in my face. “Wake up! You got learning to do!”
I blinked a few times, pulling myself out of my reverie. “Okay! Okay!” I said, surrendering to my drill instructor. “Hold on, thought I earned a bit of a break cause of the spellbooks?!”
She kicked my boot with her own, the hard leather making a dull thunk sound. “No you overpowered dummy! You got the spellbooks to help you catch up! If anything, you have even less time to screw around! The only reason you were allowed to go off and do enchanting work was to give you a sense of how the Centauri rune-script worked with different applications! And that’s just the base layer of education regarding enchanting! You haven’t learned how to liquify pure mana and use that to enhance the longevity of enchantments, or what materials provide a better base for different enchantments? Or how to segment enchanted parts and then put them together with a cogent overarching theme???”
I leaned back against the willow’s trunk. “So, I’ve barely scratched the surface, huh?”
“DUH! And then there’s miniaturization of runes for precision work-”
I held a hand up. “I got it! I got it! Okay, sorry, can we just get to today’s lesson?” Cassandra’s glare lightened just a bit. Her brilliance and passion shone through as toughness but I wasn’t offended. She had a job to do. Holding back a quick laugh by disguising it as a cough, I wondered about Cassandra. The slight brunette had filled out, putting some meat on her bones without coming across as pudgy. She seemed taller to me than I remember, she was one of the first people I saw from the group that became the pioneers of New Richmond. My bet is that she took a trip or two to the Flesh Golem to overhaul her body. What really surprised me was her lack of Sun Aelf. I woulda’ guessed that she would’ve been a prime candidate for nabbing one of those men.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
I put my errant thoughts away as Cassandra launched into her lecture, first extolling the myriad uses and virtues of the spell. Paying attention wasn’t that ready mainly because the spellbook had already implanted most of this in my head anyways and my Consciousness Sorcery had been working on it all night. The new piece of information that grabbed my attention, I almost missed it.
“The Centauri, for all their flaws,” Cassandra lectured, her finger pointing in the air before waving it all around. “They understand a precise, ordered approach to magic. And THIS is a solid basis by which we can learn how to manipulate one of the fundamental forces of the universe.”
In front of her, a shimmering veil of pure mana manifested all around her, barely catching the afternoon sun. It was a wonder to watch her work, Cassandra’s ability to manipulate pure mana the result of years of practice and hard work. It was akin to muscle memory, the way she shaped runes and sequences to seamlessly merge within the mana construct until it just appeared in front of her. I knew she was slowing down the process for my benefit. In just under a minute, the most complex ‘Monocle’ spell I’d seen yet floated in front of me.
“Basic spells, sometimes known as ‘Gray Magic’ in remote quadrants of the universe, are built off of a runic language, understanding of mana, and the effects of the elements as well as how they interact with each other.”
The floating ‘Monocle’ spell morphed until it resembled a clean mirror and then wavered to become a window into Cassandra’s memories. “At their very core, most of these basic spells are related. The ‘Mana-Bolt’ is the ‘Monocle’ spell with changes to the ‘location’ part of the runic structure. Manipulate the runes to contain elemental particles without a container and it then contains the ability to run unrestrained and cause harm. Put container sequences and input greater visual light control and you get the ‘False Mirror’ spell.”
I leaned forward with excitement. “So the ‘Shield’ spell is just a different form of these basic spells?”
Cassandra nodded. “And how would you go about morphing the ‘Monocle’ spell into the ‘Mana-Shield’ spell? Or the ‘False Mirror’ spell into a ‘Mana-Shield’?”
I began building out the ‘Mana-Bolt’ spell again before stopping halfway through, allowing the built-up mana to peter out. “Hold on, isn’t it way easier to use the Dwarven version? It’s just a rune that means ‘Shield’? Can’t I just use that?”
I didn’t appreciate the glare being thrown my way but Cassandra answered me with style and class. She created both spells at the same time and they floated next to each other. In her left hand, the Centauri version of the ‘Shield’ came into existence one second later than the Dwarven version. Clearly, the Dwarven version was stronger than the Centauri one but the edges of the shield were a bit wavery as this one required a consistent flow of mana, will, and visualization to exist. The Centauri version floated there even when Cassandra cut it off from her active attention.
Cassandra let her hands drop and the Dwarven mana-shield vanished as the mana weaves unraveled. “Different purposes! The Dwarven one is perfect if you’re surprised or if you just need a plain mana-shield to soak up different kinds of damage and you’re not sure what to anticipate.”
“And the Centauri version is more malleable.” I finished, nodding along as I kept reading the rune sequences making up Cassandra’s shield. “So if you have a second to prepare and you’ve practiced, you can make a more efficient shield designed to counter a specific attack or type of mana.”
Cassandra grinned. “Exactly. You can build in angles to deflect projectiles making your shield more efficient. With a few extra sequences and a storage gem, you can create a shield to drain the enemies’ laser and produce mana for you. If you properly use the water element with extra manipulation runes in a ‘Mana-Shield’ spell, a whole host of options become available in physical combat. Imagine a shield that grabs a sword and tries to yank it out of the enemy’s hand or a shield that unexpectedly fires icicles. Your imagination is the only limiter if your grasp of the Centauri rune-script is good enough!”
She was right. In fact, playing with the ‘Mana-Shield’ and ‘Monocle’ spell builds turned out to be so much fun that I didn’t get to sleep until four in the morning. I made Cassandra show me her versions of the ‘Monocle’ and ‘Mana-Shield’ and she had so many that I had to write them down in my mental library. With my Consciousness Sorcery working overtime, I was able to create perfect replicas of Cassandra’s work and then use them as templates. I could’ve started from ground zero but I didn’t have to.
“You humans really are resourceful,” Kraken said, floating around my latest spell attempt in circles. “I can tell you didnt’ come up with this one, it’s too ingenious.”
“Shut up!” I laughed, recreating another version of Cassandra’s homemade shield spells. “I earned these! I didn’t have to make them.”
Kraken chortled. “Puh-leese! You ‘bought’ the spells. I know you made her a special wizard staff and stuck a storage crystal in it! You just gave her a tool to make her one of the most powerful wizards here in this pitiful little town!”
“A win is a win!” I insisted, going through the motion of building the spell from the ground up. The ‘Monocle’ spell differed from the ‘Mana-Shield’ spell in several key ways. First, the maintenance rune sequences built into the outer edges were different, requiring connection lines to the center which served as a focus for handling the mana powering the spell. Second, the visual rune-scripts were switched out for stability rune-scripts so that the shield wouldn’t move out of the way or dissipate when hit with a projectile. Cassandra’s version also included extra anti-dispelling wards built within the shield so it would be extra durable against spellcasters.
And I had to be fair, the Centauri ‘Mana-Shield’ had far more versatility compared to the Dwarven version, but the latter more than made up for it in terms of raw strength. If you had mana reserves like I did, then the Dwarven version would be the go-to. One rune and a blast of mana infused with will and VOILA! Powerful shield at the ready. If I needed to be protected against bullets and only bullets, it made more sense to build the Centauri shield spell designed to be anti-bullet. Magically speaking, it’s the powerlifter versus the bodybuilder argument. One can clearly lift more weight while the other is proficient in more exercises and putting on muscle. They have different goals, different uses.
“I can make these better.” Kraken said, pulling on my stores of mana and manifesting several versions of the ‘Mana-Shield’ spell.
I looked around the clearing we were sitting in. It was dark and nobody was awake. Kraken and I were forty feet from the edge of town and the sounds of very early morning were the only reminders we had that we weren’t alone. Small animals rustled around using the cover of night to gather food while mutated owls hungrily looked on from their branches high up in the trees.
“How about this?” I turned to look at Kraken as he hummed to himself. The ‘Mana-Shield’ and ‘Monocle’ spells he was creating kept popping up and then vanishing out of existence as he worked through them. “You work on the basics and I’ll create fantastic versions for you to actually use. They’ll be excellent springboards for you to learn from and serve as templates for future spells. I already like this Centauri rune-script, it seems to fit my nature the way that everything is ordered so nicely with the myriad control parameters.”
I yawned. “That’s fine. You innovate while I learn and we’ll make a helluva team. Like we always do.”
My spirit familiar had already tuned me out, flipping through the pages of notes filled with all the runes I knew and their many, many uses. His murmurs weren’t enough to keep me awake. The last thing I heard before knocking out were his conjectures about combining Dwarven block-runes with Centauri rune scripts.