097, 2/2

Erick collapsed in his chair in the library, emotionally drained.

His mere participation in a very necessary criminal proceeding resulted in people getting out from a dangerous situation. He had no idea what their situation was, exactly, for the problem was between humans and incani, and it was either some complicated Quiet War bullshit, or some uncomplicated hatred. But Erick had rescued people from kidnappers; at least that much was true, wasn’t it?

… He would find out more from Teressa, when she got back, and if she didn’t know any more about whatever had happened to those people, or if she couldn’t say, then he would drop it, then and there.

And another thing! He honestly had no reason to mistrust Merit as much as he did; the woman had undoubtedly saved his life with her patrols around the district, and she definitely saved his life all the other times she worked in the background, making Spur a safer place for people like him.

And then there was the development of him having a ‘vote’ on allowing nobility into Spur. And he was part of the ‘ruling class’, according to Apogee. And he could control the weather and was apparently a ‘Hero of Veird’, according to his possible Abilities. He was already an ‘archmage’…

Erick wasn’t quite comfortable having this level of political power, or this much influence in city events, or any of that. Sure, he had the freedom to do whatever he wanted, but all this power also made life and the decisions he made much more complicated.

But he didn’t want to become a hermit…

Erick leaned back in his chair, and stared at the ceiling for a long time, as he listened to Ophiel chirp and sing in quiet violin sounds on his perch.

Was this the life he wanted? Or did he want something simpler? What ever happened to raining on the Farms and playing with magic?

Oh. Right. Shades happened.

Erick closed his eyes. He breathed. He relaxed. And then he opened his eyes and kept on keeping on, just like the song.

Mog’s rock was still in his pocket. He fished it out, sat up, and began experimenting with [Strike]. First, he tapped the rock with this thumb, normally. Nothing overt happened; he just tapped his finger against the alchemical iron and felt its weight in his hand.

He tapped the rock with a [Strike], and noticed a disconnect, somewhere between the thought, the action, and the effect. A weirdness, unlike he had ever felt before in his magic. But this wasn’t magic, was it? This was a Health-fueled skill.

[Strike] happened a fraction of a second before his thumb touched the stone, causing his finger to lurch toward the rock, like a sped-up video, jamming his thumb in a way that probably would have caused him pain; his [Personal Ward] flashed, the tiniest bit of white light. When the [Strike] was over, Erick pulled his thumb away from the stone. A small dent was there, but it was so small that maybe Erick just hadn’t noticed it before now.

He briefly checked his Status; his Health was still full. He had spent some HP to [Strike] the stone, but it had already regenerated. He struck the stone again, trying to get his timing down better.

Twenty [Strike]s later, he had figured out some of the skill.

[Strike] worked better when you were already on track to hit properly, when the usage of the skill was more like a part of the flow, instead of as a last second course correction, or an impetus to action. It could definitely act like a last second correction, though. The skill could even take hold of Erick’s thumb to hit the rock when Erick held his thumb back, but was ready to [Strike] if needed. Both of those methods of [Strike] seemed inferior to [Strike]ing correctly in the first place, and letting the skill empower your motion.

When he held his thumb back, and was not even looking to [Strike] anything at all, using the skill did nothing except make him a little more awake, and aware. Not aware of anything in particular, much to Erick’s chagrin, but more like an awareness borne of too much caffeine, and no need for that caffeine; an undirected desire for some unknowable direction, that would never come.

It was a strange experience.

The next experiment was channeling Health through [Strike]. Erick held his palm upward, like he usually did, and admitted to himself that this part gave him a bit of apprehension.

In all his other experience of channeling Health through anything, be it [Silent Movement] or [Perfect Hearing], the channeling of the skill brought nothing but static, or worse, to the parts of the body used in that skill. When Erick channeled Health through [Perfect Hearing], his ears filled with noise. Health channeled through [Ultrasight] brought static to his sight. Channeling through [Swift Movement] brought his body to a state of twitchy, explosive movement. [Silent Movement] caused his body to just plain stop, including his breathing, so he didn’t experiment with that one, much.

Channeling Health through [Strike] was an undirected, feeling-out-the-world in terms of ‘can I break this, or not’. It did not channel through his open palm. [Strike] channeled through his perception of the world.

Erick cut the skill. He took a look around him. Nothing had changed. He was still in the library, with the shelves of books and the comfy chairs and the overhead lights for easy reading, but it seemed different. Like he was feeling a memory violence in his sight, but not at all.

Erick channeled through [Strike], again. Once again, the skill did not come through his hand, though he had tried it that way; the skill came through his entire body.

He stopped. “That’s fucking weird.”

He channeled again.

Same weirdness. Same drive to action, but without an outlet. So he tried an experiment. He held the rock in one hand, and hovered his other hand over the rock, and instead of channeling the skill like he normally channeled through his palm, he pretended his hand was the ‘weapon’ and channeled through his rigidly held pointer and middle finger.

His paired fingertips fizzled with white light, and then the channeling was out of his control. The skill activated, without his desire to activate. His fingers struck the rock, as his entire mind filled with the need to injure. He blanked as the [Strike] finished. Everything seemed to turn calm, and happy. Like a dam had released, or a weight dropped to the floor. Or post-orgasm.

Erick laughed, and then continued to play with [Strike] until it was leveled.

 

 

The Skill seemed to never lose its level 1 form, but around level 5, the skill had started to allow for extra damage types. That was good for actual battle, of course, but a single tap of a Force empowered [Strike] had dented Erick’s alchemical iron rock. The rock was not meant for heavy duty [Strike]s. But as for [Strike] itself, the damage type was as easy to change as thinking in a different way.

It was a short hop from there, to testing out every damage type Erick knew of that was contained in Mana Altering. Erick discovered what many people had already known, long, long before him: the extra damage types of [Strike] were based off of Mana Altering’s options.

 

 

When Erick switched types, the Health cost of [Strike] reflected the new damage type. Setting it to Decay, gave Erick a [Strike] box that looked like:

 

 

Erick discovered an anomaly: ‘Chain’ did not work for [Strike]. Attempting for Decay and Chain gave no change, but Decay and Lightning, did.

 

 

Fire, Lightning, and Ice, made:

 

 

Erick got out a piece of paper, and with a lot more testing, worked some backwards math, and a formula. He didn’t work out the whole formula on his own, though, because halfway through, the math began to look familiar. He reached behind himself and pulled out a book from his library shelves, and sure enough, Erick had remembered correctly. What he was seeing here was the same formula for determining base mana costs for Mana Altering on tier 1 Force spells.

Bludgeon, Slash, and Piercing had a 1x multiplier. Every single ‘Variable’ cost was considered a base 1.25x multiplier in the book, but in practice it was not always that way, but for the first time, Erick saw why the book designated ‘Variable’ as ‘1.25’; they got that number from [Strike]. Decay was 1.5x, but that too was not a perfectly described multiplier, except for here.

The ‘Combine Effects’ was the tricky part. When you did that, you had to take the previous costs and multiply them all together, and then multiply it by 3, for each extra effect. The Expected Cost of a 3 Mana Altered Force spell ended up as:

[(A x B x C) (3 x 3)] x Base Spell Cost = Expected Cost

And what did a Fire, Lightning, and Ice [Strike] cost?

1.25 x 1.25 x 1.25 = 1.95

1.95 x (3×3) = 17.57

17.57 x 40 = 703

Exactly as listed under the Fire, Lightning, and Ice [Strike].

That was just the Expected Cost, though. In practice, spells never combined so cleanly, and outside of Mana Altering and tier one Force spells, things got very tricky, very fast. As a general rule of thumb, and as the vaguest of guides, dealing 200 damage for 50 mana was good. Anything past that was wildly hard to guess at the costs, but most learned mages could give you a rough estimate of what you would expect to pay for a spell to be considered ‘good’. That estimate was usually based on the costs of the spells you were combining, some difficulty multiplier for going up the tiers, and the complexity of your desired magic.

… And the size of the spell and the scope of the targets and how the spell avoided some targets or zeroed in on others, and a whole host of other variables.

That much math was apparently, and simply, not the case for the extra damage portion of [Strike].

Erick giggled, then said, “Warriors have it easy, eh?”

On a whim, Erick tried to combine [Strike], [Rebound], and [Ward], with the largest concern given to transforming physical damage into a wave and then turning it back on the enemy.

A blue box appeared.

 

 

Erick was not expecting success, and his expectations matched the outcome of his experiment. It was only a tier two spell, though. He tore it apart, letting the pieces of the combo fall back to their respective corners of his soul. He could try again tomorrow.

But [Strike] was pretty fun. Maybe he could make some other combos, in other ways?

How about a ranged [Strike]? [Conjure Weapon] for javelins?

He said to himself, “Sure! Why not! Let’s add another fun experiment to the ever growing pile.” He conjured a blackboard next to him with taunting words already written upon its surface. “Oh holy shit. I still haven’t done any of that.”

 

 

“Oh no! Wait. I did the rains.” Erick erased that from the board, and smiled. Then he lost his smile. With conjured chalk and an expertly controlled Handy Aura, Erick added a few more goals to the bottom of the list.

 

 

Erick read his list for a while, then thought about a melee reflection aura. It had Aurify in its combination, so he could try right now, instead of waiting another day. So he did.

 

 

Another failure? Maybe he wasn’t imagining [Strike] correctly. That was probably it. He tore apart the spell as he looked to the top of his list, at ‘Combat Experience’, and wondered when Kiri would be back. He could use some more sparring.

But for now, Erick looked upon his goals, and decided, “Time to knock out some [Teleport Spells].”

Ophiel twittered on his perch, by Erick’s chair, fluffing himself up before he let out a happy smattering of violin chirps, then blipped away, out to the Crystal Forest, happy for some action. Erick summoned another one to sit back down on the perch.

Poi walked into the Library, lightly holding a rod of [Treat Wounds].

Erick smiled. “Nice timing, Poi.”

Poi just smirked, as he sat down in the chair across from Erick. He picked up a book of his own, and started reading.

 

– – – –

 

With a dozen white wings, stretching out to catch the wind, Ophiel flew across the orange sands of the Crystal Forest. Clouds lingered in the sky above, and the day was not quite as hot as usual, but the air was still warm, and smelled lightly of static, and rain. Wind trickled through Ophiel’s feathers, as his eyes scanned the dunes below. Here was as good a spot as any.

Feathers, wings, and eyes, lined with light, bright and expansive, as Ophiel’s sight and senses competed with the minor shadows racing across the expanse below, cast by the clouds above. Ophiel won, pushing back the dim darkness, as he gathered light from everywhere and folded it around himself, forming a house-sized expanse of gently glowing brightness.

Ophiel dipped down to the ground. He was not fully light, not right now; merely lined in radiance given form and function. Wind still brushed against his body, but he no longer held himself up with air; there was no need. He picked up a clump of dirt with hands made of brilliance, and shaped it into a stone with a bit of other magics. When he stopped his shaping, the boulder was a good meter across, but Ophiel lifted it like it was nothing.

With a tug and a shift, the boulder moved into the light, dull orange rock flashing to neon orange, and held in place with a firm grip.

The neon rock flickered under concentrated thought, moving left and right inside Ophiel’s brilliant aura. And then it ripped apart, shattering through the space like a bomb going off, tearing apart light and ripping through Ophiel.

Wings disintegrated. Eyes cracked and broke like smashed marbles. Feathers vanished.

 

– – – –

 

Erick came back to himself.

“Hmm,” he said, before sending another Ophiel out into the desert.

 

– – – –

 

Ophiel hovered over a vast, bright land, much further north than before. Here, there were no shadows, only the bright, bright sun. He picked up an orange stone and turned it neon, again, but he also turned his entire self to light, as well.

Neon orange brilliance stretched into a possibility curve; it could be here, or there, or over there.

And then it was an explosion. Ophiel’s lightform body briefly pulsed away from the epicenter of the failed experiment, like a cloud of light cast into the wind, but he reformed almost instantly. There was no need to resummon Ophiel, this time.

 

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

– – – –

 

Again. Again. Again.

 

– – – –

 

Erick read the black book the Wayfarers had given him, looking for clues. Three hours later, Erick started making dinner. After Teressa came back and dinner was over, and she couldn’t talk about what happened to the kidnapping victims, Erick sent his Ophiels back out to the Crystal Forest.

 

– – – –

 

The sun hovered in the western sky, casting long shadows across the wavy dunes below, turning the world red, gold, orange, and many shades of blue darkness. Gentle winds blew from the north, as Ophiel, bathed in light and light itself, hovered over the twilight land.

At a touch of intent, boulders raised from the sand, to turn neon under Ophiel’s influence. And then neon stretched; here and there at the same time, like the world rippled at a point, light flexed back and forth. Neon orange was two places at once, its original and a new spot, not too far away.

The rock dropped outside of Ophiel’s influence. It was no longer made of light, as it crashed in the shadows below, cratering a tiny, tiny part of the world.

Ophiel trilled in violin harps, thrumming reality with a happy, fresh sound and light, that radiated in all directions like a minor second sun, for the briefest of moments.

 

– – – –

 

Erick came back to himself, to see two blue boxes hovering in front of him.

 

 

 

Erick picked up an unimportant book from the shelves; an easily replaceable treatise on weather patterns of the world. Holding the book in his right hand, he cast. The book appeared over his left hand. He caught it, and giggled.

The book blipped back and forth, from one hand to the other, a few times, before Erick turned his attention back to Ophiel, still out in the desert.

 

– – – –

 

Ophiel zipped through the twilight evening, back to the cubic meter sized boulder he had cast out into the world. The boulder was now in pieces; broken from the fall and barely distinguishable from the crater it had created. With a bit of [Stoneshape], the boulder came back together, for more experimenting.

A thousand arms of wind and intent reached out from Ophiel’s winged body. The [Familiar] touched the stone, holding its hefty weight into the air, as he supported the extra mass with a few more hands pressed against the ground.

Blip went the stone, passing from one side of Ophiel to the other, instantly reappearing in other airy hands, on Ophiel’s other side. Wings shifted as weight transferred, and Ophiel steadied himself.

 

– – – –