154, 1/2

Erick had promised that he would stay in his guest house for a week, which meant 8 more days of relaxing and preparing for the next part of the Worldly Path.

As one day off turned to two, and then three, Erick realized that he desperately needed some time off.

Taking that next step along the Path…

Searching for the dragons…

Erick would rather play with magic a bit more. And so he did.

He had gotten nowhere with [Draining Elemental], itself, except to run into Errors from the Script. So he went to some bookstores and grabbed up all the texts he could find on the Propagation Ban. Mages had been running into that limitation ever since the Script laid down the Foundational Bans, and so, they had been writing about that annoyance and cause for Errors ever since the Script saved Veird from the Sundering of the Old Cosmology.

After that research, Erick decided that, yes, [Draining Elemental] was directly against the Propagation Ban; it was a magic that made magic, with no limit. Of course it was against the Ban. There were some ways around this limit, though, and one of them was rather obvious.

If Erick wanted to make a living elemental that cast the spells he wanted, instead of a spell that cast spells, he probably could have done that, but to do that would be to make a living being that only did what he wanted to do. Such a creation would likely run him afoul of the anti-Slave parts of the Script, and then his creation would likely do something that he didn’t want it to do. Like attack and kill him.

To be fair, whatever [Draining Elemental] he eventually made would probably not be powerful enough to kill him, but many a mage had said the same thing about their own magics, and many a mage had died when they pushed magic just a bit too far. Heck! Erick had already almost died countless times to his own magic. (Thank the gods (literally!) for Healing Magic!)

But even if he couldn’t make [Draining Elemental] how he wanted it to be, there was still the necessity of learning how to make [Drain Ward] painless.

After some private discussion from Patriarch Tsung Red Ledger, and the man begging off because he was extremely busy with the restart of the school year, Erick decided to have Ophiel attend a class at the University. Classes had restarted yesterday.

With Ophiel sitting in the very back, trying not to be a distraction to the other students, Erick listened in as a professor spoke of preparing patients for surgery with what was perhaps a bit too much of a focus on [Drain Ward]. After hearing an offhand comment by some student pointing out that the spell diagrams for [Drain Ward] resembled, in a little way, the diagrams for Elemental Void… Erick had an idea.

After that class ended, he set up an experiment of his own.

– – – –

In the third floor room of his temporary house, Erick channeled Mana Altering for Elemental Void through his hand, and listened. It was the sound of desolation; a silent, tearing sound. He handed that sound off to Ophiel. Then he listened to [Draining Void]. It was much the same as Elemental Void, but with an edge. It was a bit tougher to suss out the sound of [Drain Ward] from the generalized spell of [Ward], but… Yes. He could hear the Elemental Void in that one, too. It was a lot less present, but there was Void in there, too.

So Elemental Void was already in [Drain Ward]?

… Sure. Let’s go with that hypothesis.

So what else do we know?

Elemental Void was harmful to people; it naturally injured, because it attempted to make ‘nothing’ out of ‘something’. But it was possible to make a [Drain Ward] that did not harm as it stripped away resources. So, back to the main question: How was this harm made non-harmful?

Erick went to some of his books to read about his Elements, to see if he was missing something obvious in the Elemental Chart.

To locate Void as it pertained to the other Elements, one must first look toward Water, and then down, toward Shadow. Abyss was the joining of Shadow and Water. Void was an offshoot of Abyss, with a nod toward Destruction. Void was, contrary to expectation, not Destruction. Destruction was anathema to everything. Void was still a ‘thing’.

This was because Void had connections to Water, or more specifically, to the absence of water. Back in the Old Cosmology the Mana Ocean was an ocean, literally, but just as where there was life and solid ground in that ocean, there were Voids, too. Past the deeper waters, past the Abyss, where mana switched from highly pressurized to a primordial soup of nothing, lay the Void. In this way, Void was the idea of the absence of Water, taken to the Nth degree.

There was a flow to this ecology, though.

This flow was not discussed in the arcanaeum approved books, though. Erick had to read about it in a book he got from the Library of Ar’Kendrithyst.

In that book, it explained that mana flowed from the solid parts of the Old Cosmology, from the life that created it, down into the depths. This flow was ever present. Ships could sail those mana waters but those sky rivers always flowed away from sources of mana. If a ship wasn’t careful, if they got stuck in the currents that flowed down into the depths, they would invariably reach the Abyss, which was the final warning not to go any further. If a ship reached the Void, they were almost never seen again.

For past the Void, lay the Darkness; The source of Wizardry, as well as the source of Creation and Destruction and Paradox. It was theorized that the Void of the Old Cosmology was actually the barrier that the Darkness erected in order to protect the lifeforms in the mana from its own destructive existence.

And wasn’t that a heavy thought.

Erick switched back to the other books, looking to the Elemental Chart. He looked up from Water, toward Light, toward Elemental Healing, because Healing Magics rarely ever felt harmful.

There was something there… Some way to make a [Drain Ward] painless, for sure.

Erick wondered…

Could he just take this whole idea, whole cloth, and replicate it in a spell? Could he mimic the now-gone Mana Ocean, and make the space in the center of his [Drain Ward] feel like Healing waters, but have the edges continually sucking away at the mana in the center? Or, to say it another way, could he make a rim of Void that pulled out everything in the center, without having that Elemental Void be in the center, where that Void would directly harm anyone inside? The pull of the Void would still work, even if a person wasn’t directly exposed to it, right?

Tsung had spoken of how Healers naturally figured out how to make their [Drain Ward]s harmless, while Harmers never figured it out, but the man had no real idea how to do this. All he could really say was that the ability to make a [Drain Ward] harmless was the sign of a good Healer.

Maybe… Since mana responded to people’s desires, maybe that’s all that was happening there? Maybe Healers naturally utilized Healing Magic in their [Drain Ward]s that were already Void-aligned?

Time to test that theory.

Erick went back to his experiment room, and cast a [Drain Ward] in the space, instilling the center with ‘neutral’ desire while he cast the edges with Mana Altered into Void, to pull at everything in the center. A shadowed [Drain Ward] appeared, like a spherical dimming on the shader of reality. He stuck his hand inside the dim sphere.

He thought of [Draining Void]. Erick had made that spell with way too much hate on his mind. That spell felt like a thousand bees poking his skin.

This one merely felt like a hundred bees poking his skin, with more bees poking at the edge of the Drain, and less in the center. Bees were still strewn all throughout the spellwork, though.

He took his hand out of the space. This one was a failure.

… It might be a failure because Erick already had a spell that combined the [Drain Ward] function of [Ward] along with Elemental Void. [Draining Void]. Maybe there was no way to make this work without breaking apart that spell first?

… But on the other hand, Erick had Mana Altered for Void in this spell, while [Draining Void] was just cast with hate on the mind. He shouldn’t need to break apart his first spell.

One of the good things about Mana Altering was that you could play around with different spellworkings without actually creating a new spell, as long as you didn’t go too deep with the Alter. Erick was well within that tolerance.

Erick tried again, mixing up the ideas behind his magic, instilling the edge with Void, and allowing the center to be pulled a bit harder. A shaded sphere appeared, again. He stuck his hand in. Still more bees. More bees on the edge than in the center, though.

A few more tries later, without getting anywhere, Erick decided to shift around a few things. Instead of shoving the Void to the edges, he shoved the Void to the side, producing a shaded sphere that was darker on one edge and more like normal air on the opposite. He stuck his hand in the deeper parts and felt the bees again. Then he moved around, and stuck his hand in the lighter part, and felt… Not much. Pin pricks, at the most.

Maybe this was the proper way forward?

He checked his mana to see the Drain rate of the spell. From the lighter side of the spell, he Drained at 15 mana per second. From the darker side, he Drained… at 17 per second? He checked again to be sure that he was seeing what he was seeing. And… Yup. Well. There was some degradation from the spell, because it was sucking up mana and thus losing cohesion, but the Drain from both sides was functionally close enough that the difference of a few points did not matter. What mattered was that it was working… Somewhat.

So what did this sort of spellwork look like when taken as far as it could go? When taking into actual spell creation territory?

In an instant, an idea appeared.

Erick imagined the entirety of the [Drain Ward] as a miniature ocean.

As soon as he had the idea, he knew it was a winner.

Almost the entire [Drain Ward] would be a neutral ‘ocean’, but even the shallows of this spell would fall to the Void, and in that depth, the mana would be transformed by the pressure of the Abyss, then finally, it would become the Void, which would reinforce the whole spell with deepening power. The shallows of the spell would feel like shallows, but even in that space—

Oh! And that was another good idea, actually. The ‘shallows’ of the spell would be the calm, neutral mana ocean. Duh. It might even be a bit Elemental Healing aligned, so that the occupant wouldn’t recognize the danger they were in. And since it was Healing aligned, that should make it painless. Erick didn’t want to actually heal anyone with this spell, though.

This spell would catch someone in an undertow, and if they didn’t escape, they would be relegated to the Void and stripped of all of their resources and—

Erick paused.

This spell included Light and Shadow and Water in its working. Therefore, maybe it naturally included Illusion, too?

… No. There were a lot of distinct Elements here, with half of them aligned to Light and the other half aligned to Shadow, but none of those Elements were Illusion.

Perhaps if this didn’t work out, then he would try it again with Illusion. That would be a different spell altogether, though, so he wouldn’t need to wait a day to make that one if this one failed.

“I need a bigger experimental space,” Erick whispered to himself, as soon as he worked through the entirety of his idea.

So he moved to the roof.

It was a bright day, with barely a cloud in the sky. Erick stood upon the northern edge of his temporary house, feeling the wind against his skin, hearing Ophiel twitter on the railings all around. He spared a glance backward to see Poi come up to the roof, then he turned his attention back north, and with Meditation, he gazed upon the flow of mana rolling across the world, following with the wind. The free mana crashed against [Prismatic Ward] under his feet, and upon the other spellworks atop the clan mountain, like those spells were rocks in the world and the mana was a river. The free mana barely cared for the physical world, though it did slow down a bit when it struck the mountain. Mostly, the mana flowed on, ever traveling, moving to its own rhythm that existed alongside physical reality.

Erick began channeling.

To the left, an Ophiel trilled in a muted song of Healing, and the mana around him turned calmer, and more conducive to life. To the right, Ophiel sang of Abyss, and the mana around him turned darker, hinting at depths unknowable. Directly in front, Ophiel sang of the Void; the hole at the bottom of it all where mana fell and transformed, and thus the Ocean grew just a bit more. The mana around that Ophiel began to slow, to sink, to vibrate with ancient history, and a depth of power.

Fully envisioning the Ancient Mana Ocean would be a spell worthy of a Propagation Ban, though. So Erick pulled back his spellwork to something more manageable. Reinforcement was okay. Propagation was not.

Erick cast into the mana-filled air before him, molding Elements and magic together into a miniature version of a Reality that no longer existed.

In the instant between his cast, and the appearance of the spell, Erick felt a tug on his soul, like nostalgia, but deeper. It wasn’t his emotion. It came from somewhere else. Erick didn’t have to wonder where it came from, though; it came from the mana, for sure.

And then his spell appeared.

White light coalesced into something that was not what it appeared to be, for what it appeared to be was a drop of water the size of a small lake, floating in front of him. The shallows at the top of the floating ocean flexed and tumbled with light, like the underside of waves. The depths were deep blue, and then deeper. At the very bottom, was Void. In that liminal space it was as though the world had inverted, and Erick was looking at an ocean’s surface on a moonless night. He knew, almost instantly, that those depths could be at the top of the sphere, or at the left or in the center, or wherever he wanted them, for the real Mana Ocean had no ‘up’ or ‘down’, and therefore this spell was free of gravity, too.

The spell settled into his soul like a loved one returning home. Erick felt a tear roll down his face. He wiped it away, just in time to see a blue box appear.

Erick went, “Ah huh!”

Okay. That was better than he could have imagined.

It read well. It read really well.

But how did it work?

Erick reached out and stuck his hand in the calm waters, and it felt like touching nothing at all. He glanced at his Status and saw that, yes, he was being Drained. But he didn’t feel like he was being Drained.

He smiled wider. Yes; this was a good spell. He had made a painless [Drain Ward] (half of it was painless, anyway). It had taken some convoluted thinking, tied to an ancient source of symmetry in the Mana Ocean itself, but he had done it.

Erick spared a single thought toward the implication that he could not have made a painless [Drain Ward] in the normal way, through normal, non-harmful intent, like a true Healer could.

– – – –

It wasn’t till later at night, when he was laying in bed, that he realized…

He might have just solved [Renew].

Well.

A certain type of [Renew], for sure. Not a generalized [Renew], but an edge case that he could pull at, to see how the magic unwound.

– – – –

Bright and early the next day, Erick sat in the middle of the third floor room, his hands surrounding an unmoving [Shooting Star]. He was also channeling mana through the part of his soul that was [Shooting Star], to produce [Shooting Star] mana, then funneling that power through a hundred tendrils of [Greater Lightwalk], into the energetic ball of light. He had done this a hundred times already, so he was getting rather good at it, in his opinion. But it was difficult work.

His tendrils stabbed into the lightball, reinforcing every errant break in the spellwork, his Perception stressed to the max, his mana sense focused completely. He ignored the sweat dripping down his face. He ignored the laughter of the little ball. He igno—

Six-point-two seconds after casting [Shooting Star] (in his estimation) the ball of light puttered out like an ice cube melting all at once, making a little ‘phbbt’ sound as it went, along with a near-silent laugh.

Erick’s thought train derailed.

… Did it…

Did the spell just fart at him?

Perhaps it had!

Erick sat back, annoyed.

And then he went through the numbers. Checking his Status, he had spent over a thousand mana, nearly four times original mana cost of [Shooting Star], and all he managed to do was to get the ball of light to stick around for a singular extra second. Erick deflated. This was getting nowhere.

Well.

It was working, but only for a very loose definition of ‘working’.

Erick sat back, and pondered.

Eventually, he said, “Maybe the problem is [Shooting Star] itself.”

So Erick decided to try something else.

He went back to the drawing board, but not too far. Maybe the problem was that when he made [Shooting Star] he had put absolutely no effort into making it last forever, or be easily repairable. Thanks to his success with [Draining Undertow], and with a fair bit of Permanency practice, he knew what ‘easily repairable’ spells looked like. So Erick decided to try making a few more ‘easily repairable’ spells.

It wasn’t [Renew], but if he could combine [Draining Undertow]’s framework with, say, [Force Wall], then he could cast a [Force Wall] that could repair itself.

Theoretically.

Nothing to do but try!

He had his Ophiel gather around and then handed the sounds of the Mana Ocean to one [Familiar], and the solidity of [Force Wall] to another. He listened to…

It was the sound of an ocean floor; a delineation.

In himself, he combined that spellwork—

He stopped. There was not enough space in this small room.

He moved back to the roof.

After Poi and Teressa both followed him back onto the roof, Erick looked to the clear blue northern skies, and with Ophiel singing all around him, he cast.

The mana responded.

A white wall manifested in the sky, forty meters across, and ten meters tall. And then the whiteness faded, and what was left was a shadow. A depth upon the world. That depth radiated a pull far in excess of its size. With Meditation active, Erick could see that pull. In fact—

Erick switched his senses to an Ophiel who was already running [Mana Sight].

The Void in the [Force Wall] was not a Rift. It was clearly a wall. But now that he saw it as such…

He should make an ‘Undertow Rift’, shouldn’t he? Like with his [Pure Sunlight Rift], an [Undertow Rift] might be really good—

“Erp!” Teressa sputtered, from five meters behind Erick.

Poi instantly said, “Turn it off!”

“What— Oh?” Erick saw the problem.

He was Draining mana from everyone! Whoopsie!

A blue box appeared right as Erick was canceling the spell.

As the abyssal wall faded into the manasphere Erick read the spell he had made and his eyes went wide.

Some quick math told him that in the twenty seconds that the spell had been active, and at his 161 Willpower, disregarding how Constitution worked to lessen the Drain…

A single person in the area of effect of this new spell would have lost 6440 Mana, and 3220 Health. Most people did not have that much Mana, and only warriors had that much Health, but disregarding that fact… The wall had gained 9664 resources from every single person nearby. Erick had Constitution so he wasn’t affected too much, but he was still down almost 500 Health.

If it weren’t for everyone on this roof having Constitution, the wall would have gained nearly 29,000 resources, which meant that, in 20 seconds, the wall could have been worth 145,000 points of defense.

His own [Prismatic Ward], when cast himself, with all his modifiers, was worth a million points of defense, but he could only have one of those active. Erick’s singular cast of [Prismatic Ward] was wrapped around his house back in Spur.

When Ophiel cast [Prismatic Ward], it was worth nearly 60,000 points of defense, and Erick could only have 10 of those because of some weird quirk of each Ophiel being able to cast his own Solid Ward.

But with this spell!

An Ophiel could cast this and make a barrier against attackers that was worth… way too much.

Millions of points of defense. Perhaps billions, if the targeted group was large enough.

Erick spared a glance with his mana sense to the room below, where he had been given the City Shield to study in detail. That magical item was decent for protecting a city from a monster horde, but Erick could cast [Undertow’s Edge] around any border in preparation for a monster horde, and it could ‘feed’ off of the resources of the monsters…

Could that work?

Had he just invented a better City Shield?

—No. Maybe this spell couldn’t be Shaped to only pull from the enemy side of the wall? If it couldn’t, then that ended this idea before it got off the ground.

So Erick turned back to the sky and cast the spell again, this time Shaping it so that the spell effect was directed away from himself; if such a thing were possible, anyway.

A dark wall appeared, and on the other side, laid the figment of an ancient ocean. Erick checked his mana… No Drain!

The spell had been pointed away, successfully.

Teressa gave a tiny, startled gasp as the second [Undertow’s Edge] appeared, then she relaxed; she was checking her Status and must have seen that the Drain was gone. Poi almost said something, but then he refrained.

Okay. So. That worked.

Erick canceled that spell and cast again, Shaping it into something different; something self contained.

[Undertow’s Edge] appeared like a shadowed sphere in the sky, six meters wide; about the same size as a medium sized area. There was no blue box this time. There was also no widespread Drain. The spell was completely contained. Erick knew that with a shift in Shaping, he could invert that sphere; he could protect himself inside the space and Drain every single person around him of their resources.

He had not solved the problem of [Renew], but…

He had solved something that was almost like [Renew].

Using the methodology for [Draining Undertow], Erick could possibly create a ton of world-wide defenses against monsters, or whatever, and protect people long after he was no longer around.

It was exactly what he wanted to be able to do… Ah. He deflated. This was great, except not at all.