104, 1/2

Lemon cookies scented the air with fruity sugar and a hint of sour, while coftea provided a pleasant dichotomy of bitter to the senses. Archmage Syllea had flavored her coftea with way too much milk, according to Erick, but after his initial suggestion to only put a bit of milk in the tea, and her turning her brown drink to the color of pale wood, he left off his suggestions, and paid more attention to the lesson unfolding in front of him. Syllea’s voice had gone from simple professional pleasantness, to happy, to awe, as she spoke of Mana Altering. The joy in her voice had become infectious.

Erick was almost as lost as he was interested. Thankfully, he had gotten his mental feet under him, and was beginning to keep up with her words. He would need to experiment a lot with Mana Altering and aura control on his own in order duplicate the effects Syllea wanted to show him, but he would get a taste of what was to come, right now.

Syllea said, “This first one is [Illusion Infusion]. It will make your Light-aspect magic act at unknown angles.” She held her hand up, and Erick felt a small weight on his shoulder; with Meditation’s ability to see intent imposed on the mana, Erick recognized a spell similar to his own [Flight of a Thousand Hands] touching him. She asked, “Ready?”

“This won’t affect my [Familiar]’s imbued magic, will it?”

“It should not affect your [Familiar]s, but tell me if it does.”

“Then I am ready.” Erick said, grinning at nothing in particular, happy to get back to exploring magic for at least a while.

“You’re going to want to try some small spell. Very small. Not [Greater Lightwalk]. Not at first.” Syllea pulsed with clear magic; Intent flowed down the connection from her to Erick.

[Illusion Infusion] took hold, flushing through his body like a distant roll of thunder, felt everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Erick gazed through the Ophiel still at Candlepoint, and saw no change at all to their [Greater Lightwalk] forms. They were casting those spells themselves, and keeping their own mana high by floating back to [Prismatic Ward]s to regenerate when they got below half, so that made sense. In fact, almost all of Erick’s magic was imbued into Ophiel, and since he never fully dismissed the [Familiar], except for that one time that he had been Mind Controlled by Messalina, they still had all of his magic inside of them. He came back to himself, and lightly touched on the mana inside of him. It felt different, but almost exactly the same.

Syllea waited, her bright eyes watching him.

Erick, for his part, felt very little change at all, after the spell settled down. He asked, “I just realized, your spell doesn’t have a duration.”

“It’s twenty thousand total mana, 5100 converted mana, or dismissal. The duration varies depending on how you stress the buff. Casting spells and using the buff is easier on your body than dismissal. If you dismiss it, then these buffs of mine will act like normal buffs when they expire. It won’t be fatal, but you’ll feel like you want to die.” Syllea ignored the heavy caveat she just dumped on Erick, saying, “But that doesn’t matter. Try something! Mana Altering is great! You can get some really strange magics, though, so try something inconsequential, at first.”

Erick glanced out his window. Night had fallen, and the moons were on their way to slivers, so it was rather dark, but he could still see his garden in the light spilling out from the large windows of the room. He asked, “How about [Tree of Light]?”

“Ohh! A fine choice.” Syllea smiled wide. “This is a very interesting interaction.” She glanced to the window with Erick, asking, “Maybe not near the other trees, though.”

“I can make that happen.” He stood up. “Shall we go to the back yard? We can stand on the back porch; no need to venture into the night, or outside of the [Prismatic Ward].”

Syllea stood, saying, “Let’s.”

There had not been a back porch in Erick’s original house plan, but after the Myriad Citrus came down and destroyed the whole back yard, Erick rebuilt it better than it had been before. In addition to evening out the experimental farm, and gathering up his compost bins and sorting them out, there was now a porch. It was not a large porch and it did not have an awning, but it served a function that had been missing. Namely, the function of having a porch.

Erick led the way into the night, but not too far, while Syllea, Bayth, and Poi followed. Teressa stayed just inside the house, for the porch wasn’t large enough to support three orcols. The lighting wasn’t that adequate, either. So Erick reached up and cast a lightward—

Syllea giggled, as the lightward came out wrong. For a brief moment, Erick thought back to the ones he had created when he was first experimenting with lightwards, almost a year ago. Instead of a spotlight, a ball of glowing fog spilled misty white light onto the ground, like a flood released, to spread out across the experimental garden. Light wisped into the night air, and was not like a fog at all, except on the edges.

He said, “I was not expecting that.” He stared at the land, filled with liquid, the night above, and the swirling mists between the two zones. “It’s like the surface of a lake; half underwater, except it’s clear light.” He looked to his feet. “My shadow is… odd.”

At his feet, his shadow was a splashed out bit of something darker, under the waves of light that came up to his waist. He lifted a foot, and the shadows came with it. He set his foot back down, and the shadows spread out again.

Syllea said, “[Illusion Infusion] makes all plain lightwards act different. Yours appears to act like a fog. Mine acts like a light with no source.”

“What about special lightwards?” Erick asked, thinking of a spell he almost used in his light slime dungeon.

Syllea paused in thought, then said, “Let’s do this one, first. [Tree of Light] has a rather special reaction with [Illusion Infusion].”

Mana Altering sounded more interesting with each new bit of information. With a thought, Erick directed the Ophiel on his shoulder to blip over to the garden. With another blip, the night air in front of Erick and Syllea flashed white and shadow, revealing a seven meter tall lemon tree in the center of the experimental garden.

Syllea said, “Ah. Uh. No. We need a sapling, or a new growth entirely.”

“It makes a difference?”

“Yes.” Syllea said, “A great deal. The reaction is not as great if the tree doesn’t grow with the spell active. It still works, but… It’s not the same at all.” She explained, “Trees grown under [Tree of Light] and its variants display a large affinity for the spell later in life, to the point where they could almost be described as magical plants. Trees buffed with [Tree of Light], later in life, are not capable of fully utilizing the effects of the spell.”

“… I made a myriad citrus tree with seven types of fruit, using [Tree of Light] from seven seeds. Seven trees became one tree.” Erick asked, “Is that a problem?”

“… Maybe not. Did you try to plant the seeds from the tree? Were they viable?”

“Yes. Three new trees, each with the same qualities as the original.”

“Hmmmm. Have they hurt anyone?”

Erick readily came to the defense of his creation. “Quite the opposite. They give fruits freely to people, though they do strike back when someone strikes them. The fruits are good, but I haven’t had one myself.”

Syllea scrunched her face. She said, “You made a magic plant, but it’ll probably be fine. You won’t know the outcome for years, but if they start hurting people, you will have to kill them. Since you made them with [Tree of Light], they won’t show their full power under normal [Grow] conditions.” She shooed her hand toward the lemon tree, growing in the garden in front of them. “Let’s see some Illusion!”

Fair enough; Erick had already suspected most of what Syllea said, and had resolved to do much of that.

Erick grabbed a lemon from the tree, and blipped the tree back to the normal garden; like it had never left that growing location. His Handy Aura made short work of retrieving the seeds from the citrus. Erick looked to Poi, and Poi reached up and set a [Weather Ward] across the group, while Erick conjured platinum rain from the sky. With his Handy Aura planting a lemon seed, in the center of the field, he cast [Tree of Light], while glowing rain descended from the flashing dark above.

The growing seed became a tree over the course of one minute, but it did not glow neon, like when Erick normally cast [Tree of Light]. It grew, and grew. The trunk thickened, turning from green to brown, as branches spread. Lemons popped out of brown branches. The tree looked like an entirely normal lemon tree, the whole time it stretched up, into the air. When it had reached a good seven meter height, it formed a perfect version of itself, with even growth on all sides and a perfectly straight trunk. Growth stopped, but Erick knew the spell was still active.

Erick tried to figure out what he was looking at, but he saw no differences between this tree and a normal lemon tree; besides the perfect symmetry and growth.

Erick asked, “What’s supposed to change?”

Syllea had smiled the whole time the tree grew. She kept smiling, as she said, “Hit it with an attack spell. A small one.”

Erick did as he was told, throwing a [Force Bolt] at the center trunk—

The bolt of white mana curved in the air, flowing through the body of the tree, to land in the soil beyond. The tree remained, untouched, even though [Force Bolt] had directly struck the trunk.

Erick hummed. The whole tree was an illusion, wasn’t it? Or was there something else going on?

Syllea smirked, offering. “Try something stronger.”

Erick conjured a [Flying Striker]; a two meter long sword, thin as a blade of grass, but strong as inflexible will. The sword flew at the tree trunk, horizontal with a great sweeping [Strike]—

And whiffed.

Syllea giggled. Erick smiled, both because of the unexpected magic, and because of Syllea’s uncomplicated happiness at seeing magic in action. Erick felt the same way. This was an interesting problem! What was going on here, exactly?

His next experiment was a simple poke with the tip of the sword. He scratched the bark, this time, but when he applied more pressure, the tree simply turned to illusions, and the sword slipped through. So weak actions made it through the ‘[Tree of Illusion]’ buff, but stronger actions did not? Erick tried a few more testing pokes, and his intuition proved true. And then he just went for it, with great, sweeping [Strike]s, flying the weapon through the canopy. The canopy was fake. The sword slipped through like it was touching air, or maybe thick light. But then suddenly, the sword caught the center, slicing the tree in half.

While a couple tons of greenery slowly left its support structure, the severed trunk flickered with light and shadows, like a sparking electrical cable. The illusory magic died, completely. The canopy fell to the ground with a great whooshing, crunching sound.

“So what was that, exactly?” Erick asked, looking at the blue box for [Tree of Light]. “The blue spell box didn’t change, either.”

Syllea said, “Spells affected by Mana Altering in this way will not change their Box Display. The only way to know their full effects is to experiment with them to see what the new effects are. In this case, I’ve already done all of that experimentation. What [Tree of Light] does, is enable the tree to activate itself as an illusion, in order to avoid danger. If you were to attack it with Light or Shadow, you would be doing half damage, but it would not be able to avoid your [Strike]s.” She added, “[Tree of Illusions] is incredibly difficult to get on its own, but with Mana Altering it’s easy to achieve this magic. This is a great spell for protecting Arbors from attack, though you never want to create an Arbor with this spell, since it will make that Arbor able to avoid most attacks.” She said, “Don’t make a magic plant with Illusion magic.”

“Seems prudent.” Erick said, “I’m actually thinking about making a tree [Familiar] but I’m hoping it won’t become an arbor for a long time. I’d like to talk to you about that, too, at some later date.”

“You are?” Syllea looked down at Erick. “That’s not a good idea. Magic plants made with [Tree of Light] are one thing, but tree [Familiar]s turn real faster than most.” She looked to Ophiel on Erick’s shoulder. “And you already have a [Familiar]?”

Ophiel trilled in violins.

Erick patted the little guy, saying, “He’s great. But I need some more stable way to defend locations, and provide rains.” He was also feeling the pinch of 10 maximum Ophiel, but he didn’t mention that; instead, he said, “If the eventual plan is to push back the mimics, then I’m going to need some way to provide for green spaces around the Crystal Forest.” He added, “Anyway: Particle Magic is still 40ish days from becoming a part of the Open Script. I’m not going to make a tree [Familiar] until I can use [Call Lightning], or maybe even [Gate].”

Syllea seemed to reevaluate her earlier statement, looking pensive for a moment. She said, “If you keep your tree [Familiar] to tier 2, it might take 50 years to turn real. That should be fine.”

“I calculated out 100 years?” Erick said, somewhat defensive. “I used the Compendium of Summons.”

“Ehhh.” Syllea frowned a little. “Your goal is a [Familiar] spell that is uncapped, correct? No limit of 3, or 10?”

“Ideally.”

“… We can talk more about that, later.” She gestured to the experimental garden, and its single, dead occupant, saying, “But: Back to Illusion. The general theme you should notice is that defensive Illusion is either not where it appears to be, or is incapable of being struck by physical means, while offensive Illusions will strike from unknown angles.”

Erick asked, “What about this?” He brought out the box for [Kaleidoscopic Radiance]. “How would that work as an Illusion?”

 

 

Syllea read the box, and almost said something, but she stopped. She read the box again, narrowing her eyes. She asked, “Permanent? I mean… It’s obviously a lightward. A specialty lightward, and those can be made permanent. But it has an effect… and…” She narrowed her eyes, curiously, asking, “You made an active spell out of a plain lightward?” She rapidly added, “Obviously not ‘plain’.”

“I thought the ‘support Light Essence creatures’ was the impressive part?”

Syllea shook her head, saying, “That’s just a rare variation on Rift magics not many people are capable of achieving.” She asked, “Did you put one of these up in your light slime dungeon?”

“No.” Erick said, “I got this while crafting the dungeon, with very complicated lightwards. The Headmaster did not want a [Kaleidoscopic Radiance] on his property.” As he said the words, he remembered that the Headmaster did not say that, exactly. “Ah. No. He said to put one or two up at the bottom, if I felt like it. But I did not.”

“I hear your dungeon is already producing a lot of slimes, anyway.” Syllea said, “I had thought the Headmaster had filled the place with Light Rifts, to speed up the process. But I guess not?” She said, “That’s what you can do with magic like this, when you have an under-performing dungeon. You put up rifts or other essence support magics, and more slimes will pop out.” She said, “How’d you make it permanent, though?”

Erick explained, “I’ve been working on permanent magic for a while. I’ve already got my artifact rings, and I’m working on figuring out the Grand [Prestidigitation] Stove variations, but the goal is permanent magics of any of my spells. Another of my long term goals is figuring out a [Renew] Basic Spell, or whatever tier it has to be, but something low. Something anyone could cast on an ongoing spell, to [Renew] the duration of that spell.”

Syllea looked off into the distance, thoughtful. “That’s a very interesting problem.”

“I was thinking that I would like your assistance on this [Renew] problem, too, if you’d like to have a discussion about permanent lightwards, and such, some other time. Your ability with buffs might be what I’m missing.” He gestured back to his house. “This [Prismatic Ward] is permanent, too.”

Syllea’s eyes had been glinting with an unseen light, as Erick spoke, but at his last words her eyes went wide, as she looked around at the dense air. Syllea said, “I can tell it’s Restful, but… Permanent, too?” She looked at him, asking, “Why do you want to make permanent magics, Erick?”

Erick almost laughed at Syllea’s questioning gaze, but she seemed serious, so Erick spoke candidly, “So I can protect people long after I’m gone, of course.”

Syllea looked away, thoughtful. “Ah.” She said, “We can talk more about permanency, later. With regard to your [Kaleidoscopic Radiance], it reads like a more subdued version of a Rift attuned to supporting Light Essence creatures. The wording on a spell like that usually reads like this.” She popped out a blue box, and handed it to Erick.

 

 

Syllea continued, “My spell uses basic language and says ‘empowers’, but yours uses words like ‘evershifting brilliance’, as well as stating it supports the growth of Light Essence creatures, but no nod to affecting magic in the area. Based upon that, I feel that your spell is likely of a higher refinement than mine. The ‘Radiance’ part of it means that you’ve dipped a short ways toward Fire, for some reason, and that’s rather interesting… The permanency effect is unknown to me —I never try for permanent buffs.” She added, “There’s not much use for your spell outside of dungeons, or raising specialty animals, either.”

Erick asked, “How about for use on shadelings, to bring them back to themselves?”

Syllea frowned, as she looked away, in thought. Erick waited.

Syllea said, “Spells like my [Light Rift] are used to heal and support the growth of those types of creatures.” She added, “It’s possible. I honestly don’t know what it would do to shadelings, though. You’d likely have to try [Kaleidoscopic Radiance] with [Shadow Conversion], in order to achieve the best results.”

Erick said, “I used [Tree of Light] on a grove of those fruit trees I mentioned, and the people seemed to like both the glowing fruits and the glowing trees.”

“They’re eating the fruits of your magic plant?” Syllea said, almost incredulously. “Well. Okay?” She added, “Conversion from Light to Shadow is rather easy. Some people find the action almost instinctual. That’s probably what’s going on with your [Tree of Light] trees and the shadelings. There’s entire groves of those kinds of plants inside Ar’Kendrithyst. I hear Treant, the Shade of the Garden, has enchanted his whole stretch of land with various growing spells.”

Erick asked, “What about going the other way? From Shadow to Light?”

“Difficult, but doable.” Syllea said, “It’s easier if you leave the direct path, and go from Shadow, to Void, to Starlight. The final step to Light is simple.”

Erick smiled. “You rattled that off, rather easy.”

“You get a feel for it, after a while. With regard to transforming Shadow to Light, you can go through Illusion, but I find the purity of not traversing through Illusion to be much better for most solid actions.” Syllea said, “I prefer solid spellwork, but it all depends on your goals, really. Do you want to hit hard, or do you want to be less present on the battlefield?”

“The second, for me.”

Syllea smiled, small. “Me too.” She thumbed back toward Bayth, standing behind them, saying, “She’s all for the former, though.”

Bayth huffed, “And it works!”

Syllea said, “Let’s go back inside. You’re going to want to try out the rest of your [Illusion Infusion] in a larger space, through your [Familiar].”

Erick smiled as he threw a [Cleansing Flame] on the remains of the tree, igniting it to white fire, casting shadows and light across the flat orange land of the Human District.

The rest of Erick’s experiments with [Illusion Infusion] involved sitting in the sunroom with Syllea, and casting spells through Ophiel, at raised stone pillars in the dark dunes of the Crystal Forest. Syllea watched through her viewing screen.

Ophiel held a wing forward, casting Light-aspect [Force Beam]s from the tip, but the spell did not just erupt from his feathers, but also from three different spots in the air around the [Familiar]. Each line of white zipped away from Ophiel, to hold in the air like the [Familiar] had dashed four different ways through the sky; but he hadn’t. Each burning line of light carved tiny furrows in the stone pillar, all of them going wide and then swinging back to target, like they were drunk Rookies, unable to aim properly. A few more tests of the same spell, now knowing what he was looking at, enabled Erick to throw the four beams around with a slight semblance of control. They were still drunk Rookies, but now they were drunk, focused rookies.

Erick was excited to try his next spell, but if he was honest with himself, he was also a little afraid. [Luminous Beam] would come out weird, for sure. But how weird?

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Ophiel held still in the dark air, his wings fluttering, his eyes trained forward. A ball of light flashed in front of him, casting brilliance into the night sky, shading wings and eyes into deep shadow and brilliant light, as the spell opened up like a raging river pushed through a pin hole. Luster and glitter instantly surged a kilometer forward; a cone of light and otherwise that crashed against the stone pillar and a good few hundred meters in every direction, obliterating—

Ah. No. That’s not what happened. [Luminous Beam] lasted five seconds, but it was only in the final moments that Erick understood what he was watching.

The original [Luminous Beam] moved at the speed of light. This one did not. That was the first major change Erick noticed. This barely moved slow enough to see countless blasts of light carve forward through the maybe-90 degree light cone. But half of those bolts struck the land, and did nothing. Another half struck the land, and burrowed holes into the dunes. Another half, somehow, were completely invisible, carving holes into the orange sand where no light had been. When the spell ended, the land was swiss cheese, and rapidly caved in on itself.

Syllea stared at her viewing screen, laughing, asking, “What was that!”

“Particle spell.” Erick handed Syllea the box for [Luminous Beam].

 

 

She read the box, disbelieving. She tossed it away with a laugh and a scowl, before quickly coming back to something that was mostly professional, but still full of disregard. “Light is not a particle.”

Erick smiled wide. “You are correct, but only on a technicality.”

“… Fine. I guess I can accept that one of the Elements is not exactly as I always envisioned it to be.”

Erick laughed. “What! You changed your mind that easy?”

“Well of course.” Syllea said, “The spell says ‘Particle Mage Only’, therefore it must be a Particle Spell. That’s easy enough to understand. The Script doesn’t lie, though it always obfuscates.” She added, perhaps a bit darkly, “On the other path, it could be that you’ve been lying to us about what ‘particles’ are, this whole time.”

“You didn’t think I’d give away all my secrets in one lecture, did you?” Erick asked, “Are you telling me everything you know about Veird’s Elements?”

“… Okay. I see your point. One lecture could never cover everything.” She said, “If everything is made of ‘particles’, then light must be made of particles, too? I can accept that. What about shadow?”

Erick waved his hand. “When I first came here, I heard from someone trustworthy that they didn’t believe shadow existed, in truth, but only in magic.” He said, “Honestly, I have no idea what Shadow is truly supposed to be.”

Syllea frowned a little, then asked, “What other Elements are actually particles?” She offered, “Fire is particles moving fast. Ice is particles moving slow—”

“Cold,” Erick corrected. “Not ‘Ice’. To me, Ice is not an element, but a thing that water becomes when it is cold.”