133, 2/2

Lunch was a nice assortment of thin-sliced beef and vegetable wraps, sweet iced-tea.

Lunch was over, but Tenebrae had yet to dismiss them, because—

“You owe me several answers!” Tenebrae demanded, with a smile.

“… Of course.”

“Let us have a discussion of gridwork and you can go further into debt. And to that end:” Tenebrae turned to Jane, asking, “Do you have any questions about all the gridwork I saw you doing?”

Erick almost mumbled something, but Jane’s excitement was more important.

Jane still took a half-second to look toward her father, but Erick just nodded, and she turned back to Tenebrae and happily asked, “Can you somehow turn a grid into a working artifact? An enchantment, or something? How is gridwork connected to enchanting?”

Jane had come to Erick first with her question, but he had no real answers for her. Enchanting, as far as Erick had tried, did not seem to use the grid-system that Tenebrae had outlined.

Tenebrae said, “Enchanting a gridwork into a workable spell is to create what is known as a manacycler. This is difficult to do, mostly due to size and fidelity concerns. You see: A [Force Bolt] is barely larger than a human thumb. The manacycler for [Force Bolt] must be of the same size, or not too much larger. Attempting otherwise leads to gross inefficiency. While the gridwork can be of any size so it is easier to see and work with, magic itself works best at appropriate sizes.” He paused. He continued, “Manacyclers are not good items to focus on. There are so many issues with manacyclers. You can only make basic spells like this. Mostly Force spells. A few single Mana Alter spells, perhaps, but only in extremely well-made manacyclers. Can you guess at some of the other problems?”

Erick had an instant answer. But Tenebrae had not asked him.

Jane smiled, excited. Her guesses about gridwork and enchantment had been correct, but both she and Erick had no idea what the resulting ‘enchantment’ would look like. Such enchantments had a name, though: ‘manacycler’.

Jane calmed herself, and asked, “I want to answer that, but first: What does a manacycler look like? I’ve never touched one. I didn’t even know they existed.”

“Ah. Yes. You didn’t know, did you?” Tenebrae lifted his hand toward the kitchen. A fork flew into his hand, becoming a small ball of silver metal along the way. He concentrated on the ball, his eyes flickering grey. The ball expanded, a fraction. A protrusion came out one end, while several slits appeared in the steel. It was a whistle, maybe? He set it in front of Jane. “A whistle of [Force Wall]. All one need do is blow mana into it and the spell structure will activate. This is a crude method, but it works. I could have made this cycler such that you could channel through your hands, but that is a whole different problem that I need not get into right now. Suffice it to say that mana released in the lungs and then blown out is physically stronger than mana channeled through the hand. So: a whistle. Go ahead. Try it. Blow away from the table, please.”

Jane picked up the whistle, poked at it a little, then turned to the side, pressed it to her lips, and blew. Dark blue mana shone out through the slits in the whistle and a barely-there shimmer of solid Force appeared in front of her; a circular shield two meters across. It was a shaped [Force Wall].

Jane held the whistle in her hands, her shadow flickering into the whistle, inspecting it. She frowned. She said, “Okay. I see inside, and… Yeah. That’s complex. That’s why you can only turn basic spells into manacyclers? It gets too complex otherwise?”

Tenebrae nodded. “And let’s not forget that this whistle is based on single-input spellwork; there’s only one hole to blow into. Higher tier work requires input from a thousand angles at once. This is something that you can naturally do with aura work but not with simple mana expulsions. But! There are some good things to be said of manacyclers. In this application of gridwork I have made an item that cost me no rads to power, and which anyone can use. You can make endless numbers of these for very little cost. With enough use, the mana flowing through them will imprint the item in the manasphere in such a dense and purposeful manner that they can sometimes become minor artifacts in their own right, if only because they become near-unbreakable, what with all that exposure to Force, and all. But still, they are worthless. Can you guess why, now that you have seen one?”

Jane set the whistle on the table in front of her, asking, “You can use this as many times as you want?”

“Yes. As I have said. It is very rare for a manacycler to break through proper use; they only get stronger.” Tenebrae added, “And you can even use it more than once per Script Second, if you blew really hard. The result of this particular manacycler is almost as good as a [Quick Wall], but with this you do not have the ability to put your [Quick Wall]s exactly where you want them. If you stuttered your exhaled mana into that whistle, you might even be able to shape the resulting [Force Wall]s that come out of it.” He digressed, “But there is a problem.”

Jane frowned. She glanced at the air, likely checking her Status, then glanced to the whistle. Her eyes narrowed, then went wide. “Oh.”

“Ah!” Tenebrae said, “You see.”

Jane said, “It cost me 54 mana to make that one [Force Wall]. That’s 4 mana more than the base cost of [Force Wall]’s 50 mana cost. This whistle still costs mana to use. Clarity or Favored Spell or any spell cost reductions… They don’t matter.”

“Exactly. All manually cast spells are like this. They cost full mana to use. When manually casting a spell, it is only through personal skill that you can attain any of the efficiency of Clarity, or any other such ‘spell cost reductions’. ‘Spell cost reduction’ is primarily an aspect of the Script.” Tenebrae said, “That is why these whistles are nothing more than toys. Even if this whistle enables a person to bypass the Script Second, you would be better served with a bandolier of wands. Just tap-tap-tap the wands, and the resulting [Force Wall]s spring up as fast as [Quick Wall]s, and for much cheaper than you could with this little whistle. Oh, sure, there’s a set-up cost to those wands and a risk of theft negating all your hard work, but preparation and scenarios where that preparation will not get stolen from you are more common than not.” He added, “But still: gridwork is good to learn in the same way it is good to learn how to move your arms and legs while you run; all for the sake of efficiency and power. This is the true power of gridwork. Once a person puts their understanding of a basic spell into a grid, it is easy to pick apart, and for an expert to see where, exactly, their casting has gone wrong, or inefficient. It is in this way that you can manually reduce the cost of your spells and ‘manually’ gain the benefit of the Clarity Skill.” He trailed off, “For a certain attainment of Clarity, anyway. It’s complicated.”

Jane, with a small frown, asked, “But what if we’re unsure where to even start with gridwork? How does it all come together into higher tier spells? How high can you go with gridwork?”

“Simple math is where you start. You can simply add the gridwork for various spells together, while following the rules for such additions, and thus find out how best to combine your starter spells in order to make a new one.” Tenebrae said, “You could theoretically go all the way to tier 7 or higher Force Spells with gridwork, but by then you’d be working with a million by million by million sized grid. Or larger! No one does that. Stopping at tier 3 and then learning other maths for the higher tiers is much easier.

“Or! You could try sympathy magic with Ancient Script, which is also a valid way to progress through the tiers. If you have luck with Rune work, then you should pursue that methodology and become an enchanter, since enchanting through Runes is easier than other ways, but usually only wrought are truly capable of truly good Rune work.”

Jane looked skeptical as she asked, “How do you make Rune Magic work? Is it useful for understanding the rest of it? I tried it… but nothing ever came of it.”

Tenebrae smirked, and it was a genuinely happy expression. For a moment, Erick thought the older archmage was actually enjoying his professor-like lecture. Maybe he truly was. But then he looked to Erick, and his expression soured.

“I feel I have talked enough.” Tenebrae asked Erick, “Why don’t you enlighten us what you know of Rune Magic? Succeeded much there, have you?”

Ah. Now they were back on the topic of Erick’s failures.

“I’ve tried Rune Magic for enchanting…” Erick said, “And what you do is create the rune inside the wrought-quality metal item, and then all the channels necessary to allow magic to spark into existence from the mana contained inside the metal and inside of the… Okay. First you have to have the words for your spell inscribed in Ancient Script inside the item, and then you have to fill in those words with rad dust, and then you solidify that rad dust and all the mana channels and all of that with the first casting of the spell contained in that dust. I can make a basic wand of [Force Bolt] using the Ancient Script, but it leaks mana and breaks after only ten to twenty uses.”

Tenebrae sighed in contentment. He almost said some truly unkind thing, Erick was sure, but then he smirked, and the words that came out of him were likely less harsh than they would have been, “Leave the Rune Magic for another day, for that is a field of expertise that is best learned well after the basics of gridwork, for good gridwork will help you with your runework. Even if Runework and gridwork are not the same, all magic has connections to all other magic, and the connections between Rune Magic and Enchanting and gridwork are deep, but also diffuse.” Tenebrae said, “I have decided. You still have many questions to answer for me, Erick, but aside from that, we will have a little contest: The creation of a proper [Fireball], made through gridwork.”

Erick suddenly had a lot of reservations about whatever was going on right here and now. Jane looked skeptical, too.

Tenebrae continued, “I’ll have Rocky give you some proper materials on how to manually combine [Force Bomb] and Fire, and you will study them. We will have another discussion over dinner in several hours, where you and your daughter will show me how you would use gridwork to make a [Fireball], then you will make that [Fireball]. A friendly contest after dessert, let’s say.”

Jane’s skepticism vanished as her eyes glittered, but then she looked to her father.

Erick was already saying, “I’m not competing with my daughter—”

“You’re right! You’re an archmage. You will be competing with me and my [Fireball] that I perfected seventy years ago!” Tenebrae looked to Jane. “Everyone else will be judged according to their own skill.” He looked to Teressa and Poi. “Would you two like to participate? I feel you two have been left out.”

Teressa said, “No, sir. I am not about [Fireball]s or any magic like that.”

“Thank you, but I must decline as well,” Poi said.

“… Unacceptable.” Tenebrae declared, “Erick. Make your people participate. I will count it against your reciprocal questions if they agree. By my count, I have racked up thirty seven questions, and you are deep in debt.”

Erick exclaimed, “How are you even counting to thirty— You know what? Okay.” He looked to Poi and Teressa. “You have the base spells, right? Just play along.”

“Yes yes! We are just playing!” Tenebrae said, smiling.

Teressa frowned. “… Okay.”

Poi said, “Acceptable. I agree. I already have [Fireball], so I will make [Frostball]. How many questions is Erick getting from this?”

“[Frostball] is fine.” Tenebrae said, “And let’s call it 15 fewer questions owed.”

Like he wasn’t just making up those numbers on the spot.

Poi nodded. Teressa briefly looked like someone had kicked sand in her dessert, but she agreed, too.

Jane, however, was bright-eyed and excited.

Erick said, “Okay then. It’s a contest.”

“Good!” Tenebrae nodded. “Now. Tell me: Why do neither of you two have [Fireball]? I can understand Poi and Teressa’s reluctance, but you’re an archmage, and Jane has experience with magic, and everyone tries to make [Fireball]!”

Erick frowned. “They do? It never occurred to me to make that spell. It always seemed so… Pedestrian.”

Tenebrae narrowed his eyes, then relaxed. “An unexpected answer, but understandable.” He looked to Jane.

Everyone looked to Jane, who looked like she had bit into a lemon.

Jane blurted out, “I tried! Okay? I tried.” She frowned, staring down at her empty plate. Then she raised her head, and said, “Every time, every [Fireball] was a 250 mana monstrosity with wildly differing numbers of anywhere between 10+2x Willpower, to 75+1/2x Willpower. The base [Force Bomb] spell is 50+2x Willpower damage. That Basic Spell was better than any Altered version I made. I have no idea what I was doing wrong.”

Teressa nodded in understanding, and so did Poi to a lesser extent.

Erick, however, felt like he was at the bottom of an abyss of terrible shame. He was an archmage, technically, so how had he not been able to help his daughter with her magic? This was somehow all his fault, for sure.

Tenebrae had a very different reaction. He exulted with brief laughter, then said, “There we go! That sounds like normal aspiring-mage problems! Finally!” He asked, “And you never had problems with [Teleport]?”

Jane went from rage at being laughed at, to sudden questioning. She ventured, “No? Never any problems with [Teleport].”

Tenebrae looked to Erick. “And all you ever had trouble with was [Ward]?”

“… And making Ophiel and [Prismatic Ward] and a lot of other things, but not as much trouble now, no,” Erick said.

Tenebrae relaxed with a sigh. “Okay. That sounds better. Much more normal. Particle Magic is a major outlier, but this sounds more normal.” Tenebrae said to everyone, “I never placed much faith in the ideas of exposing children to extreme mana experiences, but it seems we have an anecdotal case supporting that idea, right here. Maybe for you, Jane, this is what has caused all of your problems, for Spatial Magic is unlike almost all other magics. For Erick… I have no idea from where his success springs, aside from uncommonly well thought-out Intent, and sometimes that is enough.” He looked to Jane. “The only way anyone ever overcomes maligned magic issues similar to yours is through hard work and restructuring their entire approach to magic. We will begin some of that restructuring with a proper introduction to gridwork and [Fireball]. We will rebuild you from the ground up. You will learn. Teressa, you seem to have some of the same issues, so you will relearn, too.”

Teressa forced a smile, and pleasant words, “Thank you.”

Tenebrae said to everyone, “We will have a day or two more before we reach the Green Labyrinth, but we will likely have lots of time once we are there, while Erick sees what he needs to see regarding the Gates. These lessons need not end once we arrive, for I suspect we will be fighting off hordes upon hordes of monsters as we race for exits in the Vision, and then we will spend a great deal of time waiting for the Vision to calm down. That is what usually happens.”

A Rocky walked into the room, carrying a wide, thin book. Erick guessed it was barely over a hundred pages long. He set the book beside Tenebrae.

“Ah! Good.” Tenebrae set the book beside Jane. “Mage work for all of you. Only one book, but you can share as needed. It shouldn’t take a half hour to read this whole thing.” And then he spoke to Jane, directly, “Teressa, Poi, and your father have their own paths, so I don’t care if they fail, but if you’re not dedicated to this then I will stop teaching you the second I feel you are not worth my time.”

Jane, wide-eyed and seeming happy, gratefully took the book, saying, “Thank you, archmage. I can learn!”

“Good. See that you do.”

Erick wondered what would have happened if Kiri had been here. Would his apprentice have gone gaga over private lessons with another archmage? Maybe she would have, a little. Jane was certainly happy, and that was both worrying, and wonderful to see. Hopefully Tenebrae’s gridwork would help her more than Erick’s own methodology.

– – – –

After lunch, while Jane sat in a conjured chair in their rooms with the book in her hands, Erick read over her shoulder with an Ophiel. Jane read fast, for much of the book was rather easy to read; it was just a primer. Erick had his turn with the book next, but found that actually reading it himself was mostly unnecessary for he had mostly read it all through Ophiel. Intelligence was a boon that allowed near-perfect recall, and while that disturbed him a bit, he got over it. Teressa got the book next, and then Poi. Poi didn’t seem to need to refer to the book after the first read-through, but Jane and Teressa shared it between the two of them as they worked on their own grids.

Meanwhile, Erick sat in a chair in the courtyard, applying what he had read to lightward gridwork, but not for [Fireball]. He had already moved onto something else. Something more important.

He had never tried to recreate the Basic Particle Spells he had made so long ago, like [Call Lightning] or [Luminous Beam], but they were Basic Spells, and therefore able to be mapped to gridwork.

Theoretically.

Problems arose right away when the idea of gridwork just couldn’t account for the sky-spanning change that [Call Lightning] called forth. The most Erick could grid was the interaction of electrical charge and Force, the most basic Element of mana. (Force was totally an Element. Tenebrae was wrong.)

[Call Lightning] was only truly possible because water still had polarity, and through the power of magic nudging nature just a bit, a mage was able to take the moisture in Super Large Area of air and cause it to coalesce and then rub against each other, stripping electrons, moving them from one side of the cloud to the other, causing that cloud to become polarized. That same magic further allowed the mage to designate a point where a balancing of that gathered electrical charge could occur, causing a lightning bolt to connect most anything to most anything else.

So… The gridwork for such a spell was, at its most basic…

“Water molecules rubbing against one another?” Erick mumbled as he sat in the courtyard, shaping a lightward of gridwork that might have described [Call Lightning], or maybe only a very, very small part of it. “And then there’s a separation of— Oh. No.” Erick wiped away that lightward, and cast a different one. “It’s all about charge generation; yes. Which means…”

He cast for a while, imagining and reimagining [Call Lightning]. After an hour, he still wasn’t quite happy with his gridwork. [Call Lightning]’s existence was easy to understand, as a whole, but hard to put into a box, if only because the actual spell took place over an absolutely massive scale.

And there was something rather… maddening about magic being shoved inside a box, at all.

But gridwork was not about tackling the problem from the end result; Erick had read that, of course, but he had not internalized it until he had tried his own methods for a while. Gridwork was about the initial cast of the spell. What did that look like? What shape did that take?

That initial shaping was just a packet of Intent.

It was a thought that spread out, replicated X number of times.

… Which had interesting implications when one considered the Propagation Ban.

Oh.

Ah. Okay. So that’s how this works.

Erick dismissed the gridwork he had made, and started over, focusing on what was necessary for [Call Lightning]. Primarily, you had water drawn from the air. Then you had wind, or rather, the tumbling of water. So right there, you just had tumbling water out of air. That was easy to do. The next item was charge separation based on that tumbling, with electrons flowing downward through the space. From there, you had target designation.

A three part spell, with a fourth part, which was just ‘repeat this process as far as my 500 mana will go’. The electrons did not move to the bottom of each part of the spell, but instead moved through every single space without stopping at any individual border. In this way, one piece of the spell was replicated over a Super Large Area.

And that limit was only there because 500 mana seemed to be the limit of what a Basic Tier Spell was able to do. That limit had to be there because of the Propagation Ban.

Erick sat upright. He might have just discovered something that other archmages already knew. The Propagation Ban halted the unrestrained repeating of magic, but if your magic had a limit, then the Propagation Ban did not come into effect.

Maybe 500 mana was the ‘natural’, Script-imposed limit to ‘how far’ a Basic spell could go. Erick’s [Call Lightning], and many of his other Basic Spells, were simple replications of natural forces taken as far as they could go. That meant hitting that 500 mana Propagation Limit.

“Huh,” Erick muttered to himself.

Erick continued to refine his idea of [Call Lightning]; to take the mystical and put it into little boxes.

Before he knew it, it was dinner time.

– – – –

Tenebrae sat down at the table, smiling. Before anyone else could speak, he said, “Erick played around with spells that were not [Force Bomb] or Mana Altering to Fire. Jane practiced what I asked her to practice. Teressa and Poi had middling success. Unless you have a good reason, Erick, I will consider your goodwill spent, and I will no longer help you or your daughter with your magic. What say you, in your defense?”

Erick easily answered, “I was working on [Call Lightning]. I think I got it worked out, too. It’s basically Force magic, and it is only tier one, so maybe I could even make a whistle of [Call Lightning]. How cool would that be? And this is the gridwork for how I would do [Fireball].” He held up his hand and cast a grid into the air. “What do you think?”

Erick had only worked for a few minutes on his gridwork for [Fireball], but it was well-made, in his opinion.

[Fireball] was derived from [Force Bomb], which began with a packet of gathering intent in the center of a hundred-by-hundred-by-hundred grid. He could have gone with a 100x100x99 grid, but that type of grid felt unbalanced, for there was no ‘perfect center’ that he wished to gather around. The inner gathering of this gridwork was a small sphere-ish space that served as a separation and a condenser. When the mana for the spell went into the gathering, that separation protected it from randomly exploding until it touched a target, and that gathering membrane was actually broken. There were also some nods toward etherealness that would prevent the gathering from exploding on any random stuff that might get in the way, and other nods toward other effects that Erick wanted to achieve.

A second gathering was attached to the central gathering, on the caster’s side of the [Force Bomb]. This second gathering was shaped like a cone. This second gathering would produce the propulsion effect. The size and shape of the second gathering, and even the shape of the [Force Bomb]s main detonation packet, denoted how the spell would move through the air. Would it wobble, or would it fly true? Erick’s design would likely fly true, due to the stabilization fins and a few other items that he had put into the working, though he would likely have to experiment with some wind tunnels to get the whole thing rather perfect. He was not a rocket scientist. Yet.

This was good enough, for now.

To change the basic [Force Bomb] to [Fireball], all of the designations for Elemental Force had been switched over to Elemental Fire, though, again, there were nods to etherealness here, too.

Erick still wasn’t sure how to manually make Force become Fire, and the book Tenebrae had given them had not said how, but Aura Control was outside of his current skill set, and the Mana Altering Skill took care of that Elemental shift anyway.

Erick had manually cast [Force Bomb] before today. He knew how to flex his lightform in order to cast this spell. But before today, Erick’s manually-cast [Force Bomb] had been a one-off thing, just done in order to complete the Remake Quest, and get that point. But in being forced to put his own manually-cast [Force Bomb] down into a quantifiable imagery, he had identified many minor issues that surely led to a loss of power. From the shape of the charge, to the shape of the propulsion, to the size of the gathering, to the way it cut through the air and could be made to ignore crosswinds; there had been a lot of room for improvement.

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He hadn’t actually made his ‘theoretical [Fireball]’ yet, but he was sure that this gridwork version would turn out well.

The question was: Would this [Gridwork Fireball] be as good as a [Sound it out Fireball]?

And would he be able to make both of those theoretical [Fireball]s, or would he have to destroy one in order to make the other? Would a bit of Mana Shaping allow for him to have multiple different [Fireball]s inside his Status, and overcome the Script’s limitations for combining spells? Erick would try that sort of experiment with a different spell. [Ice Ball], or something. He would leave [Fireball] for Tenebrae to ‘help’ him with.

Tenebrae’s eyes darted across Erick’s gridwork, his expression turning from ‘smug bully’ to ‘relaxed teacher’ in a matter of moments. He even managed a small smile. But then he realized he had smiled, and discarded that obvious show of emotion. He pretended reluctance, saying, “Passable.”

Erick nodded. “Thank you.”

Tenebrae turned to Jane. He waited.

She cast a grid into the air. It was a good grid! Looked fine to Erick. Jane looked ashamed, though.

Tenebrae said, “Good gridwork. We can work on visualization and actualization after we eat.” He looked to Teressa, and Poi, sitting on the other side of the table from Erick and Jane. “And?”

Teressa produced a passable grid that might have been better than Jane’s, but Erick would never voice that aloud. From what Erick had read, Teressa’s gridwork was pretty much a basic [Force Ball] but switched to Fire. Poi did the exact same thing, except for Elemental Ice.

Jane steeled herself, and did not slink into her chair, though Erick could tell she wanted to.

Tenebrae just smiled. “Good work, everyone.” And then he breathed in the smell of the dinner sitting before him, underneath [Heat Ward]s. “Good cooking, Palodia! Thank you!”

It was some sort of eel, wrapped like an ouroboros and stuffed with breading and sausage, sitting on a bed of rice. Everyone got one ‘eel donut’ except for Teressa. Teressa got three.

Palodia called out from the kitchen, “I don’t appreciate you putting my food under [Heat Ward]s!”

Tenebrae said, “Let us eat,” then he canceled the [Heat Ward]s over all the food, and dug in.

Teressa smiled as the subject turned away from magic, and followed the old archmage’s lead. Poi was right behind her. Neither of them had qualms about eels, and even Jane seemed interested in the food sitting before them. Erick, however, had been trying to avoid eating, once he saw what was for dinner.

It was… good.

Erick had the stuffing, the rice, and only some of the eel. And then he had the rest of the eel. It was quite good, actually. Dessert was more chocolate cake, and that was wonderful. Palodia really knew how to cook!

– – – –

To the west, the sun set over the darkened, endless Forest. To the east, the sky was already purple with night and stars. Below, the shadowed Forest flowed away as Tenebrae’s Castle flew north west, at a slightly slower speed than they had been flying at the start of their journey. They had to go slower, after all.

Four times today, Tenebrae’s Stone Men had needed to adjust course and speed when monsters had flown up from the Forest, trying to attack. Those four times, Rockys had taken their places on the battlements and cast siege magics at a flying tangle of gore-ridden wyrms, then at a flying Forest Hydra the next time, then at some ghost-like things of which no one knew about and which didn’t actually die (no notification boxes), and then, finally, to beat back another tangle of wyrms.

During the day, and for the most part, the Rockys remained on high alert on the battlements as the Castle flew, while Erick, Jane, Poi, and Teressa, had busied themselves with gridwork, down in the courtyard, and elsewhere.

Now, at sunset, Erick, Jane, Poi, Teressa, and Tenebrae, stood on the southern wall, overseeing the darkened Forest below, as it flowed away under the flying castle.

Teressa went first.

She pointed. She cast. A brilliant sparkle of grey magic flew out of her hand. It touched the [Air Shield] a good thirty meters away and detonated in a conflagration of grey-tinted fire that was quickly washed away by the tearing winds just beyond. She read the air, and startled. “Huh. It’s never been that good before.”

Tenebrae happily demanded, “Let us see!”

Teressa handed out her box for [Fireball].