Draith
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Chapter 23 - Memory Palace
🕑 Added 2025-02-27 14:00:12 +0000 UTCBy the end of the day, I was surprised at how fluent I'd become. I'd been right about having the pieces, and working with Tresla had helped me sort through them. I still wasn't a master, but when Tresla said something, I could pick out every other word.
It was amazing how big a difference it was.
Enough to pick out the underlying meaning most of the time. Which Tresla assured me would allow me to pick up the rest faster.
With my rapid progress with Elinder, I finally allowed myself to indulge in my grimoire.
And then I remembered I had access to Memory Palace. I hadn't even asked if Nexxa had used it to improve her Elinder. It had gotten hard to ask her anything since we’d arrived, she’d been so busy running around with Hash.
I wasn't able to cast it that night. Just moving it into my second order slot was going to take most of the day.
So instead, I restored my standard loadout, though I decided to go with Eagle Eyes instead of Bloom.
It had been a month since I last attempted to cast it, and I was shocked at how different the experience was now that I could control it properly.
Calbern helped me test the spell, comparing what we could see before and after I cast it on each of us. Which is how I discovered his eyesight was exemplary. Even without the spell, he was able to pick out details that I needed the spell to notice.
Including Inertia circling around the valley, and occasionally diving for no apparent reason.
Once I cast the spell on him… well, it didn't make nearly as big a difference for him as it did for me. The atmosphere got in the way after a certain distance. That the atmosphere was his limiting factor made me consider a redesign of the spell. But it was a first order spell, so there was a limit to what I could do with it. Even higher order spells had limitations.
The spell had an unlisted benefit I wouldn't have noticed without him. As long as it was running, it allowed our eyes to refocus faster. A definite advantage, and once we figured that out, I subjected us both to a brilliant Flash.
As we stood around recovering, the spots quickly faded. As I’d hoped, Eagle Eyes helped our vision recover quicker.
Not as fast as casting Minor Heal, but Eagle Eyes was designed to be kept active for long periods of time, including when the caster wasn’t prepared. It had a high up front cost with next to no maintenance unless in active use.
I suspected the non-advertised aspects of the spell would end up outweighing the value of its magnification in everyday use. And the contingency components would prove useful in other spells.
When Nexxa returned, I managed to steal her away long enough to talk about spells.
“Uh… I hadn’t thought about using Memory Palace for… Elinder,” Nexxa admitted, her voice low as she glanced over at Hash.
“What?” I asked, following her gaze.
“I… just don’t really want him to know I have Memory Palace.”
“Ah. I understand. Some secrets are too important,” I said, nodding in agreement.
“What? No, it’s nothing like that. I’m just sure he’d make me use it for training.”
“What’s this, the prodigy flinching at a little training?” I asked, unable to contain my grin.
“Oh, shut it,” Nexxa said, shoving me away, though she was smiling. “I’m used to setting my own schedule. Having someone else give me orders is… it makes me feel… ugh, I don’t know. I just don’t like it.”
“You like Hash though, yeah?”
“Yeah. He’s great,” Nexxa agreed, looking twoards where Hash was making our evening dinner. “Even knows how to cook. Great mentor.”
“Then tell him about your complaints. It’s not like you don’t have good discipline. Tell him how you want to do it,” I said, pulling one of my notebooks out of my pack. “After all, he’s here to help you learn, not to take the reins. We’re supposed to be in charge. That’s part of our oath.”
“I… hmm, I’ll think about it,” Nexxa said, her eyes drifting towards my notebook. “What’re you- Hey, I’ll check it in the morning!”
Nexxa’s objection was because I’d been making a note to try Memory Palace in the morning to see if I could hasten the learning process that way. I waved Nexxa off. “It’s fine, I want to slot it anyway.”
“I’m still going to check,” Nexxa said, stealing my pen to write down a note to herself.
In my notebook.
A small smile crept across my face as she added another note to herself to slot the spell first.
Because, of course she didn't have it prepared either.
Then her she noticed the notes I’d made about my experiments with Calbern.
“Is this real?” she asked as she tore the book right out of my hands, flipping back to see the rest of my notes.
“Yep. Calbern and I-“
“This is gonna change… so much. This is exactly what we were looking for!”
“Uh… it is?” I asked, leaning forward to look at my notes again.
“Can’t believe we had the answer right in front of us,” Nexxa said as she busted out her own notebook, jotting down her own ideas in both books.
Sighing, I pulled another notebook out of my inventory, handing it to her.
“We can combine this with Detect Mana,” she said, her eyes still fixed to the page as she jotted in the new book.
“Was thinking the same,” I lied, grabbing my notebook from her during her moment of inattention.
Then we started sketching out how to adjust Detect Mana.
It was nice talking spells with her again. Nexxa clearly felt the same as we talked right through dinner, both of us thank Calbern as he brought it by. We ended up staying up long into the night, neither of us wanting to call an end until I realized we’d accidentally added a dispersion glyph to the start up sequence.
Which would basically just end the spell the second it started.
Still, it’d been good.
The next morning came late, at least for us. The sun was already past its zenith by the time we emerged from the cabin. Neither of us regretted it though.
After a quick lunch, I threw myself into swapping in Memory Palace while Nexxa went on patrol with Hash again. I caught her gazing at me before she left and I shot her a thumbs up. Hopefully they’d have that talk.
In the meantime, I had my own work to do.
By the time dinner rolled around, I was finally done slotting Memory Palace. My first second order spell.
I joined the others for dinner, though Nexxa and Hash hadn’t returned yet. I was so eager to test my spell, I didn’t mind their absence. Rift, I didn't even taste the food.
Soon as I'd handed off my dishes, I cast the spell.
I emerged in… well, it was a little disappointing. With a name like Memory Palace, I expected something a bit grander.
Instead, I was in a mechanic's shop. Not a generic shop though. Nope. It was the same shop I'd spent three decades of my life in. The same one I'd taken over after my old man kicked the can.
My first instinct was to leave. To just cancel out of the spell and never use it again. There were a lot of bad memories in that shop.
But…
It wasn’t that shop. Not really.
His shop had been a mess, piles of spare parts and broken tools in every corner. The loft overhead had been rotten, stacked to the brim with old garbage and paperwork.
And there’d been the old Ford on the second hoist, that he’d always sworn he’d get around to fixing one day. Rusted out heap had sat there my whole life.
None of that remained.
Instead, it looked exactly how I left it the day I’d… died.
That's what made the difference. It wasn’t his shop, it was mine.
I walked over to the little corner office, and inside was the rebuilt bookshelf where I'd kept magazines for customers. Not that most of them ever checked them. But I had a couple oldies who did. And that zoomer kid. He'd loved reading the 'rags'. It was so ‘retro’.
Yeah… this shop, it had some good memories. I walked over to the mini-fridge, and to my surprise, it was stocked with carbonated beverages.
Not something I'd had since I'd arrived in Ro'an. I'm sure they could make them, if anyone thought to. Heck, maybe they were out there, and they just hadn't made it to the corners I'd been in.
The cultures on Ro'an didn't seem to be as monolithic as they'd felt on Earth. Guess having a bunch of demi-gods running around changed things.
Who could've guessed.
Taking a long sip of Cola, suspiciously free of any namebrand, I let out a sigh of satisfaction. Exactly as good as I remembered.
Maybe Memory Palace was an appropriate name after all.
Going back out into the shop, I noticed a couple subtle differences from my shop. The tool chest had several runes on it I was fairly sure hadn't been there before. And the bathroom door was shut, which normally only ever stayed that way when someone was inside.
Pulling open the top drawer of the tool chest first, I came across a collection of unfamiliar tools. Just inspecting them, I knew they were the books I'd scanned with Review Scroll, each one shaped in a form that I intuitively associated with their contents. The second drawer had more tools, these ones representing all the spells I'd studied.
The third drawer had memories of videos and articles I only half remembered from Earth.
As I slid the third drawer shut, I took a moment and sat down on the rolling chair I kept next to the tool chest. I'd hoped… I'd seriously hoped, that Memory Palace would give me exactly what was in the third drawer. And I'd been prepared to suffer through a lot to gain access to them.
But the spell had laid them out neatly. There might still be some stuff to work through, but I wouldn't have to wade through it totally at random.
With the mystery of the tool chest solved, my eyes moved towards the bathroom.
Did I dare set foot in there?
Instinctively, I knew the answer was no. I wouldn't like anything I found behind that door. There was one thing I did in a bathroom. I got rid of the waste I didn't need anymore, then cleaned myself off to get on with my life.
This was my Memory Palace, and it worked on my rules.
Standing up, I opened the top drawer, opening the first book on Elinder. Then I recalled… everything. Every word I'd never read.
Nexxa had said there was no indication of how much stress reading a book this way would put on us. But my Memory Palace clearly wasn't playing by the same rules, because as soon as I was done with the first book, the thick red fluid in the old thermometer hanging on the wall slid up several degrees.
Again, I instinctively knew that each and every degree would result in a greater and greater headache. Still, I'd only moved the fluid a bare smidge.
So I took the second book, and 'remembered' it too.
This time the fluid slid up by another dozen degrees. Guess it wasn't an exact science.
Deciding I'd learned enough, I sat down on my rolling chair once more and looked at the closed rolling shop door. Unlike the bathroom, thermometer or tool chest, I didn't feel anything specific when I looked at it.
It almost felt like it was… waiting. Waiting for me to figure out a use for it, maybe. Or maybe… just waiting for me to open it.
Whatever it was waiting for, it'd have to wait a little longer. Taking one last pull off the Cola, I ended the spell and returned to the waking world.
