DearSpellbook
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Chapter 32: Hideous Laughter
🕑 Added 2024-11-25 10:00:04 +0000 UTCWhile it is not possible to confirm this, it is theorized that ensouled artifacts are still able to draw upon the lost Font of Creation even though all attempts by wizards to find or draw upon the Font have ended in only failure. This is evidenced by the fact discontinuous ensouled items can create materials that remain even if the Will connection to the item that created them has been severed.
-Deckard’s Compendium of Ensouled Artifacts
—
Several hours later Kole was done. He’d place all three versions of the spell into his spellbook and copied all the components over, one by one, imbuing the intent after each.
While copying the intent for his seventeenth component, he felt a flicker of recognition in his mind and a part of Galok’s mirror image spell came to him.
Is this it? he thought.
He finished copying it, and then willed the part of the text to appear below the spellform on the page.
“Tangental segmented hemispheres under the moonbow of a sixth band,” he read aloud to himself as he examined the component with his Will sense.
It sounded like utter nonsense, but the words resonated with the spell component. It matched.
Eagerly, he flipped back to the copied entry of Galoks, and he willed the line he’d just discovered to erase. But then in a moment of panic, willed it to reappear.
He sighed in relief. It wouldn’t do if he could erase that permanently. It could always be copied over, but that would create extra work and introduce room for error.
One line of thousands done, Kole got back to work copying.
As we went, more and more components began to resonate with him. He didn’t bother with any parts of the spellform pertaining to the path or gate components, and by the time he’d finished the first spellform, half of Galok’s entry was erased.
Moving to second, it went much faster, as a large chunk of this spellform was identical to the last and he could simply copy it over to the new page instantly. By the end of that spellform, only a quarter of the spell’s text remained.
He did the third, and that went even faster, but this left him with still about ten percent of the spell unfinished.
Kole jumped to his feet, and then lost his balance and almost fell as the blood suddenly rushed to his head. He steadied himself, and moved to check the time, before stopping himself.
Knowing the time would only give me a reason to stop, he thought. And, judging by his empty stomach, he really ought to take a break.
But, he couldn’t. He was so close.
He ran to the spellbooks again, and pulled three more copies down and returned to his desk. With no hesitation this time, he ripped out the pages and shoved them into his spellbook, and began to copy once more.
It took two more trips to the shelves, but eventually he had it. He’d created a complete spellform record of a traditional wizard spell in....
How long? he wondered.
“Definitely less than a day, but more than 10 hours,” he said, answering his own mental question. “Probably, less than a day at least.”
He was very, very tired.
Regardless of the hour count, he’d just done in a day—likely—what had taken him two months to do with Radiant Bolt.
Yes, he still needed to map the spell, but looking at the relevant copies of Mirror Image he’d just copied, he suspected there were some insights to be had inside their paths.
He suspected that once he got close enough to the Font, the final parts of these paths could see him through the tricker sections.
He was tempted to start right then, but his stomach let out a loud protest, and he realized he should probably go.
Without checking the time, as that would only make him feel worse, Kole left the library. The campus was deserted, and he made it home without seeing a single soul. Inside the common area a plate of food was waiting for him with a note.
I hope you had a productive day. But, don’t miss PREVENT tomorrow or I’ll see you make up for it Tuesday morning.
-Zale*
The food was just some bread and cheese, but Kole devoured it quickly, pocketing the note before falling asleep the second his head hit his pillow.
The next morning, Kole was literally dragged out of bed as Zale sent Rakin and Doug in to wake him up. Kole felt slightly betrayed by the Dahn that it let them in, but didn’t make a stink over it.
What am I going to do? He wondered, Kick the wall?
“Drink more,“ Zale said, refilling Kole’s coffee cup for the third time.
He didn’t particularly like the stuff, but when Doug had said the same, Zale had seemed offended, so he just politely choked down the bitter brown liquid. He didn’t want her to look at him with the disappointment she’d shown Doug, and some gross mud water was a small price to pay.
His thoughts kept going back to the night before, and he was eager to try to start pathing, but he hadn’t slept well and hardly had regained any Will.
As Zale poured him a fourth cup of coffee, something inside him snapped, and he came to a decision. He pulled out his last potion of clarity and downed it in a single gulp.
His mind suddenly cleared, his exhaustion fading to a mild drowsiness that was manageable, and his Will returned full to him. Along with that came clearer thoughts.
That was probably a big waste, he thought, looking at the empty vial.
But, the regret vanished as soon as his mind returned to his discovery the night before. He was eager to get back to work, and the day would have been lost without the potion.
Besides, he hadn’t spent any money since the end of last semester, and didn’t foresee needing to. He could probably buy another potion in town, and send for cheap ones from his uncle via Meech—or find a door back to Illandrios and go buy them himself.
“Much better,” he said.
“A bit extreme isn’t it?“ Rakin asked.
Now with his full faculties, Kole found the sudden desire to explain what he’d discovered.
“I had a breakthrough with my spellbook last night,” Kole said, with excitement bordering on manic glee.
He flipped open the book to his Mirror Image spellform and showed them all proudly.
“That's... really pretty?” Zale said, complimenting the arcane shapes.
“I made this last night,” Kole explained. “All of it. I copied a traditional wizard spell and recreated it as a spellform That took me two months to do for Radiant Bolt.”
“That’s good then?" Zale asked.
“Very. I expected this to take me another two months. Now I just need to path it, which I expected to take another month, but I might even have it done by the end of the week if the rest goes as well as this.”
His friends nodded appreciatively at his words, but it frustrated Kole to no end that they didn’t fully understand the implications of what he’d just revealed. A part of him wanted to go tell someone-anyone, who would appreciate the gravity of it.
His mental list consisted of Theral and Tal, who were both missing, Professors Lonin and Underbrook, and Gray.
The people he most wanted to tell were missing. Underbrook would definitely be interested, but not excited about the discovery. He wondered briefly if this would change Professor Lonin’s mind about taking him on, but didn’t want to get his hopes up again. The head of the college of wizardry would certainly be interested in the discovery though, and Kole vowed to show him. Eventually. First he had to use the discovery to its fullest.
He debated the rest of breakfast if he should tell Gray, but decided against it. They’d definitely mended the bridge that had been burned last semester, but he wasn’t going to go share any actual secrets with him.
“Mental defenses,” Tigereye said before the assembled class after they’d gone over the performances of the weekend’s hardball match.
Professor Underbrook congratulated Gray’s team for winning an uphill battle, and admonished the Leaves of Ava’s to work on their teamwork, reinforcing Zale and Doug’s assessments of the match.
Tigereye’s words caused a groan to go up through half the class, causing the other half to look around in confusion.
“Everyone must learn to defend against mental attacks,” Tigereye explained. “So, let us practice.”
The professors divided the group into two groups, those with mental vaults, and those without. The ones without mental vaults were led to a corner of the room with Professor Underbrook, who gave them a brief rundown of mental techniques to use to push against assaults without the aid of a vault. He then surprised them all by casting Hypnotic Pattern. Without exception, the entire group became enthralled, and he pulled out a book and began to read as he maintained the spell, waiting for the students to break free.
Tigereye—surprisingly enough—provided more detailed instructions, none of which were new to Kole or Gray as they’d gone over this in WIZ 205. They paired up once more in front of smell in runic devices meant to attack the other’s mind, and took turns defending.
Kole was surprised at the number of students that had mental vaults. All the primals it seemed had them, as well as a good handful of the pure martial students. Zale had joined the mental vault group with a little apprehension. While she’d gone through the steps to create one under the guidance of her uncle, hers hadn’t exactly turned out as expected. Seeing as her mentor was the leader of this group, and knew the details of her condition and didn’t stop her, she judged it okay.
She paired with Kole and they sat across from each other with the stink rune between them.
“I’ll go first I guess,” Kole said, and Zale agreed.
She closed her eyes to focus, and then gave him a curt nod to signal she was ready.
Kole activated the devices, and watched as Zale’s nose wrinkled at the imagined smell. He thought it was adorable, but refrained from saying anything.
“You take me on the nicest dates,” Zale teased him. “Where are we? The sewers?”
Kole’s eyes bulged, and he almost dropped the effect at Zale’s comment.
She’s teasing you idiot! he told himself. Say something!
“Um, well...” he began stalling for time to think up a rejoinder. “I thought I’d surprise you. Sewers aren't so bad. I hung out in a few, back home. And besides, you only ever take me to the training yard.”
Eye's still closed, Zale’s brow furrowed in concentration as she tried to martial a defense against the magic.
“That’s not true,” she said, “I took you shopping, to a tavern, a play, and an extra dimensional realm.”
“I’ll concede the shopping and tavern, but we took you to the play because Harold stood you up, and if anyone brought us to the extra dimensional realm it was Amara—or maybe Amintha.”
“Fair,” Zale said.
She bit her lip in focus, and then opened her eyes.
“There!” she said triumphantly.
“There what?” Kole asked.
“I destroyed the effect,” she said.
“You what?”
“I don’t really know,” Zale said, giving a shrug and smiling despite her words. “It took me a while to find you intrusive Will, but once I did, I sent a little wisp of Will at it. As soon as it touched yours it shriveled up and died.”
“That sounds really useful,” Kole said. “Can you try just flooding the vault with a thin fog of your Will?”
While they hadn’t learned how to do these, they’d gone over a high level overview of the advanced mental defense techniques in WIZ 205. This was one of them.
He figured if simply touching his effect with her own Will destroyed it, she could just make her mind an impenetrable fog of corrosive Will.
Zale chewed her lip, considering, then closed her eyes. After only a minute she spoke.
“Try again.”
Kole did, and after a few moments Zale asked, “Did you do it?”
Kole had, and said as much.
“Well I guess that works then,” Zale said proudly. “Thanks for the tip! But don’t think you're off the hook. Next date better smell nicer.”
Kole focused on the magical discovery to avoid over thinking her words that were almost certainly a joke.
She’s joking... right? No, stop.
“We really need your uncle to come back,” he said.
“Yeah,” Zale agreed. “He’d definitely want to know about this.”
“My turn,” Zale said, and then frowned.
“Wait, you can’t use this thing at all can you?” Kole asked.
“No. I cannot.” Zale said. “I could break it pretty easily though.”
But, just before they could do anything, Tigereye came to their group and handed Zale a small wand.
“Here,” he said, quietly handing her the device so as not to draw attention to her particular weird Voidling Will situation.
While Voidlings didn’t interact with Will in any way similar to the way the natives of Kaltis did, Zale hadn’t fully inherited that trait. She had Will, it just seemed to be, for lack of a better term, negatively charged. Whenever she tried to imbue it into a runic device, she caused it to fail.
“Can you use a wand?” Kole asked.
Zale nodded.
“Mom taught me,” she said, spinning the thin device in her fingers.
Wands, unlike blasting rods, were not runed devices. They were enchanted. While a blasting rod was simply a piece of alchemically treated material with runes engraved in it to produce a singular effect, wands contained in themselves the magic of the effect they produced.
Blasting rod users provided one hundred percent of the Will used to power then, wand users simply willed the wand to fire the effect already within.
“Ready?” Zale asked.
Kole entered his vault, and then nodded, bracing for the smell.
But, it wasn’t a smell that came, but the sudden urge to burst out into laughter.
It was so unexpected that he couldn’t control it even a little. As everyone around him was retching and gagging, he started giggling and then laughing.
Zale looked at the wand, then Kole, and then at the class around them, and activated her silence aura, leaning in close so Kole’s mouth was within range. Lost in his magic induced hysteria, Kole didn’t notice, but he would have appreciated the gesture if he had.
Eventually he regained his focus between gasps for air, and he found the thread of orange that had wormed its way into his mind. He brought the full force of his Will down on the thread like a hammer, and suddenly felt in control of himself.
He opened his eyes and took a deep breath and saw that Zale’s hand was held up just in front of his face.
She noticed that he’d stopped convulsing, and let her aura lapse.
“You silenced me?” he asked.
Zale chewed her lip and looked around, then said in a low tone, ”You started out giggling, but eventually started braying like a donkey.”
Kole looked around, and then put his head in his hands and rubbed his face.
“A little warning about the effect would have been nice,” Kole moaned, trying to bury the embarrassment. "
