Draith
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Chapter 35 - Flowery Language
🕑 Added 2025-03-10 14:00:08 +0000 UTCIt took me a few minutes to pull myself back together.
Seeing the car again had broken me in some ways. Reminded me of my loss. When I’d first built it, the car had been a reminder that it took work to keep my connections alive.
Now, it reminded me that those connections still existed, if only in my memories.
After a quick pat on its hood, I left the car behind. Then I lowered the buggy off the hoist, taking it outside to park alongside the 'vette. I spared a single glance for Fang, then went back inside to my work table, cleared it off, then pulled out my journal again.
The journal shouldn't have been there. It didn't fit. It was an artifact of Ro'an, not Earth. Even the knowledge I pulled from the scanned books had conformed to more Earth-like bindings.
But this was my Memory Palace. And the journals were a tool, much like any other in my shop. So they belonged. I'd created the journal on instinct. I'd recreated the 'vette with intention and familiarity.
Now… I was going to try something else. Something that, if possible, would elevate Memory Palace to the most powerful tool any mage could ever have.
A test track. Or test Palace, as it were.
The basics were easy. Jotting down the design, copying it and checking for mistakes. Next, I needed the medium. Summoning my grimoire was easier than the 'vette, and it appeared in a burst of sawdust and rustling pages less than a minute after I started.
Nexxa and I had designed several spells we thought might be possible. Spells neither of us had tested because the cost in materials was just too high to waste inscribing them. So I started there. With scribing one of those spells into my newly summoned grimoire. I even made sure to imbue it with mana.
It didn't work.
Still, I didn't know if that was because it wouldn't work. Whether the limits of Memory Palace were too strict, if I’d fumbled the process or if we'd simply mussed up the spell and hadn't known it.
So, I tried with a spell I knew worked in the real world. One I had in my real grimoire. Mana Draw. Once more, I attempted to scribe the spell into the blank grimoire, working from memory.
Once more, it didn't work.
Wondering if maybe the source might be the problem, I summoned a duplicate of my grimoire, and set to work copying the spell from one to the next.
This time, I succeeded.
I had an exact copy of my spell.
My initial rush of exhilaration gave way when my eyes drifted over to the copy of my grimoire. My full grimoire of existing spells. I'd already summoned it successfully without needing to copy it.
Not ready to give up, I continued my experiments for another hour before conceding. I couldn’t actually bring a spell I didn’t have in my grimoire into my Memory Palace.
I couldn’t use it to test spell designs. Not as it was. I felt there was still potential for my spellcraft, but it might require tweaks to the Memory Palace spell itself to succeed.
So, it was back to working on my Astral form.
Astral… Form…
…
That was it. I'd been thinking of it as a structure, but it was a form. Not only did I need to account for the affinity differences, I needed to accommodate my physical body. Double checking my notes, I confirmed this was hinted at, though never outright stated.
It didn't help that all the books on it used metaphors like 'Bloom forth like the Spring Wind Lily, pressing outwards to encompass the fullness of your being.'
I could kinda see how that might mean, 'push your Astral form to fill your body,' but how was it helpful to obfuscate it? Even Nexxa hadn't realized that was what she’d done.
Damn genius prodigies and flowery language.
Understanding that one truth greatly simplified my designs. I still had to account for my affinities, but all that meant was making sure I kept the form interwoven and balanced. Not an easy feat. Especially since it would need to be able to move and shift with my body as it moved. A task that took most mages decades as they mapped everything out.
Next to impossible to do in less than ten years.
Or it would’ve been, if I couldn't create full size models. And those wouldn’t have been nearly as useful if I didn’t have nigh on unlimited hoards of knowledge from both Earth biology and Aranor healing archives to draw upon.
I used several different density materials and had each of them stand in for part of my Astral form. When it was done, it looked a bit like one of those biology cut outs I'd seen when doing janitorial work at the high school.
Well, not done. I still needed to get the final ratios exact. But I'd be shocked if it wasn't enough to get me through my third and fourth slots. The final slot would take a lot of fine tuning, but that was normal for most Astral-souled. The fifth slot usually represented the last five years of progression, if not more.
Satisfied with my work for the evening, I saved the model, then started taking down notes, writing all the ideas I’d had into another blank journal, just in case.
Finally dismissing Memory Palace, I opened my eyes to the real world to discover everyone but Vaserra had gone to sleep. She was sitting with her back to the fire, her eyes on the door. For a second, I wondered what she was doing.
Then it occurred to me that she was keeping watch. Not once had we needed to do so. My journey up to Nexxa's had been with entire crews around me. And then we'd joined up with Inertia, who didn't lose awareness in her rest state, and didn't mind watching over the rest of us mere mortals while we slept.
There'd been no discussion of shifts, at least while I'd been aware enough to hear it. I was about to ask Vaserra about it when a light snore made me realize Tresla was curled up around my ankle. She was holding it a bit like a teddy bear, and had her face mushed right into my leg. Even now, I couldn’t see any of her features under her hood.
Somehow, Vaserra must've heard the snore, or maybe I moved, cause she looked back. Her gaze met mine, and she gave me a small smile before nodding and looking away.
Deciding that I'd make sure to talk about watch duty the next morning, and that they could just wake me up for mine, I returned my attention to my Astral form. Working on it felt like pushing jello into a soap bottle with a spoon. The world's largest soap bottle and a spoon from a children's tea set, at that.
Still, for all that, it felt faster and smoother than my efforts before. I was certain that once I got used to it, I'd be shoveling that Astral jello faster than Calbern could race Fang across the high road.
After half an hour, the day caught up to me. I nuzzled against Snow Patter, giving Tresla a gentle pat on the head, then went to sleep.
I woke with a mouthful of hair and a sweat soaked leg. Despite that, it had been the best sleep I'd had since we left Nexxa's domain.
Gently, I pried the still sleeping form of Tresla off my leg, replacing it with a large tuft of Snow Patter's fur. Tresla grumbled, but accepted my offering, allowing me to stand. Careful not to step on her or anyone else, I moved over to the low burning fire where Vaserra's companion, Engrid, was stirring a pot of breakfast.
"Morning," I spoke in that not-quite whisper reserved for early morning conversations.
"Morning, Magus Dominus," she grunted out, each syllable sounding like an effort. The smile she gave me contrasted the tone, so I simply nodded back as I took a place near the fire, drying my soaked leg while working with my Astral form.
It wasn't long before everyone was up and we were on our way once more.
The road was rough, and while we weren't making the same time we were on the high road, it was still better than our ascent the day before. Roughly half an hour after we'd left camp, we crested the rise over the nearest vale.
Down in the vale, far below us was a town. It sat peacefully along the riverside, the residents just starting their day.
Not a small town either. While it never strayed more than a few hundred feet from the river, it stretched the entire length of the valley, with rough wooden bridges every mile or so. The bridges were little more than logs strung together, many of them not even having railings. The buildings weren't much better, simple lean-tos with leaves woven together for a roof.
The people I could see were wearing the same leaves, woven into simple skirts.
It was primitive, but it was definitely a town. Thousands of people a few days away from my domain, simply going about their lives.
"Ah, good," Vaserra said, riding up next to me on Frost Lily. "The sheep haven't seen us yet. We should cross before the rest wake."
It took me a second of searching the valley, with no sign of fluffy animals before I asked, “are they living in the huts? Is that sanitary?”
“They need shelter as much as we do,” Vaserra said with a snort. “Even father would not make them shelter outside.”
“What about their coats,” I said, holding my own coat up and holding the woolly collar forward.
“Do you see any coats on the sheep below?” Vaserra said, gesturing towards the town.
Once more, I looked down. But I didn’t see any sheep. All I saw were the folk going about their lives. It took me several long seconds before I got what Vaserra was saying.
"Wait… the sheep are… people?"
