Chapter 4 – Learning

Callum estimated he had about two years’ worth of money after he paid for the house, give or take. Someone without any debts could be incredibly frugal, and barring any major surprises he was confident he could stretch his capital. He still had no idea what he’d do when things started getting low, but that wasn’t something he could afford to worry about in the near term. The immediate goals were to learn magic, and get rid of the damned tattoo. Considering the tattoo was magic, he couldn’t do the second without the first.

Moving in didn’t take much time, considering he’d left everything behind, but it still took some work to rearrange the house how he liked it. In the spaces between buying furniture and kitchenware and adding them to the place, he read the literature he’d copied from front to back several dozen times. Once he had an actual office and a place to relax so he could concentrate, he dove into the exercises in earnest.

The first thing was learning to reach out and find magic, to start integrating it into his sensorium. There was a lot of emphasis on mana sight, but it was obvious it wasn’t anything visual. The ogre had talked about smelling magic, so it was clearly either synesthesia at work or just a shorthand for some other sense that they didn’t have good words for. His bet was the latter, and he made himself a poor man’s sensory deprivation tank with his bathtub.

Unfortunately for him, there wasn’t much concentrated magic around for him to focus on. There was some in his tattoo, which was kind of irritating, but the main thing he had to use for practice was actually the arcane laptop. He found out while doing the sensing exercises there was a little blob of something inside the device. A bit of work with a screwdriver popped the cover and showed that there was a small crystal with glittering etchings on it in addition to the normal computer innards. Some kind of magic dongle was his guess, but he didn’t know enough to do more than look.

According to the spatial literature he’d copied, space mages were good at teleportation, portals, and enchanting things to be larger on the inside. That was it. Nothing else.

Callum didn’t believe it at all.

There was no possible way spatial magic hadn’t been thoroughly explored and exploited and every edge case figured out. Likely, all the more advanced stuff was locked behind GAR training, and what he had was aimed at kids, maybe even preteens, to let them know what they were in for. Unfortunately, poking around on the arcane internet showed him that anything advanced was proprietary, locked behind apprenticeship or guild or house status.

Spatial magic, specifically, was always appended with an exhortation to contact Archmage Duvall. Which Callum was not about to do, but the fact that she was always and only the one who was listed showed how monolithic things were. Still, there was enough foundational information available that he could have something to work with, so he did.

The first thing, in his estimation, was to reconcile mana sense with his glamour blindness. Considering that he’d had it for his whole life, he didn’t think he’d be able to unlearn whatever it was that let him see right through glamours, but he could try and see them with his mana sense, working backward in a way. Most people used mana sense to pierce glamours, not see them, but he had to work with what he was given.

To have something to see, he started in on magical workings. To his great surprise, it was actually quite easy to grasp his own mana. He figured it would take ages to go from vaguely shoving vis at things to structuring it, but it clicked almost instantly. When he started to try and move it around himself, he realized why.

One reason he’d gone into architecture was that he had an excellent, instinctive grasp of spaces and relations. Three dimensions were generally difficult for the human brain, but he’d never had any issues, being able to hold all the relations in his head. It’d made things a breeze, but he’d never felt it was particularly supernatural. Now he knew differently.

That sense was linked in with his magic. It wasn’t magic itself, not really, but he’d been exercising that part of his brain all his life, so maybe he wasn’t as far behind as he thought. Though obviously he had to work hard to get anywhere near where a mage would normally be at his age. One didn’t advance through an entire lifetime’s education in just a few months.

Once he had it figured out, he was able to cast his senses out into his surroundings, a sort of sphere of perception that wasn’t quite visual. It was more tactile, though even that comparison wasn’t exactly right. He could tell what everything was, and see right through it with a little bit of effort, but couldn’t see colors or painted images or anything like that. Magic stood out quite clearly with that sense, though the range was pretty limited.

“So, threads and fields.” He took a bite of a bagel as he made notes based on the most advanced instruction he could find for free. Which wasn’t much. Mages were incredibly secretive, even within the context of their own magical network. That, or everything about certain topics was censored. Callum didn’t know how much was due to culture and how much was due to oversight. He didn’t dare to make an account to post, since he wasn’t really a registered mage.

“Threads are structure, fields are fill.” Annoyingly, mage children were taught wrong to start with, only so they could be taught correctly later. The lies-to-children involved things like how vis was guided into a structure, and unformed vis was a waste. Probably to make sure that they didn’t learn sloppy habits. When they were older, they were told that unformed vis was actually important, and filled the spaces between structured threads for large-scale effects.

He had to wonder how many kids could never unlearn those lies and were terrible mages because of it.

The simple “spells” started out with abstract geometry. Things like fireball were fairly easy to shape, though of course he couldn’t make them due to his vis type. Putting spatial vis into the same shape didn’t really do much; even mana was better at shoving things about. But he kept at it, tossing space balls off his back porch until he was exhausted, then repeating until he was satisfied with the shape. Then he started doing it without using his hands.

In theory, magic was completely mental. In practice, it was far easier to make gestures that corresponded to some degree with the way he wanted the vis to go. There were a bunch of recommendations for beginning magic users to make things easier, but they built bad habits. Which was fairly usual, actually. The same was true with math and science and writing and any number of mundane topics, sacrificing accuracy for ease of understanding and forcing people to relearn things.

Some cynical part of him pointed out it was possible there was an even more advanced way of doing things, considering how purposefully hidden and constrained everything was. The masters of this supernatural tyranny had no reason to let the general public know about the really juicy stuff. His early experiments showed why space wasn’t considered an offensive school though; making a wad of space vis didn’t result in fires or ice or anything that the more elemental types of vis did.

In theory, he ought to be able to teleport easily enough, though only for short distances. That was what had happened in the gym, though he had no idea how he’d done it and he didn’t trust so-called magical instincts. If he was pulling things through space, he’d rather start with something that wasn’t likely to kill him.

According to his primer, teleports and portals needed some kind of anchor at each end. That was how the circles he’d gone through to teleport into the GAR headquarters worked. Though those apparently had more than just an anchor; they had the whole teleportation framework built into them, along with some way to make it so people could just push mana into them to make it work. He marked that as something to figure out in the far future and went back to fiddling.

When it came to manual teleports, he found it was easy enough. The structure shown in the primer wasn’t exactly complicated, and with the exercises that showed him how to push out spatial vis in the first place, it wasn’t long before he could form them. It seemed there had to be a connection between the source and the anchor, so he didn’t quite understand long-distance teleportation yet, but after less than a week he was able to teleport rocks across the yard.

He had a bit of a cheat, though. Not that he was any more skilled than the next mage, but he’d been working with buildings so long that he could just snap the idea of a room around whatever he wanted. Or rooms. Callum didn’t know if it was particularly relevant as practice, but once he managed to get one rock to shuttle its way between porch and yard, he started doing it with three, then five.

The hum of a motor and the crunch of tires on gravel made him stop his magical juggling. Just the sound of someone arriving made him feel a little panicked, like a guilty kid hearing his mother coming. He was out back, facing out into the woods for a reason, but it still wouldn’t be a good thing if he was too obvious about what he was doing. The divide between mundane and arcane was enforced, and someone would notice if he crossed it.

“Mister Hall?” Someone called from the front, and Callum had to remind himself that was his name.

“I’m on the back porch!” He called back, quickly teleporting his cane to his hand with a grin. That really wasn’t a trick he was going to get tired of.

The sound of footsteps preceded Jessica and her husband, Gerry. They’d been by a few times, apparently just as good neighbors, but he couldn’t shake his conviction that they knew about the supernatural world. Gerry, especially, had the habit of sniffing as if he smelled something, or was trying to. Or maybe he just had allergies.

“Hello, Mister Hall,” Jessica said, offering him a wave as the two of them appeared around the corner of the house. “How are you settling in?”

“You can call me Chase,” he told them, levering himself to his feet with the help of his cane and offering each of them his hand. As usual, their eyes flickered to his right wrist. “So far it’s delightful.” Which it was. It hadn’t started getting cold yet, so he couldn’t speak to how the house was in the winter, but it was a comfortable place despite its wear. “I was just putting together a list of repairs to make. Might as well, you know?”

“Yes, I know the old girl is a bit worn.” Jessica patted the porch column. “It’s nice that she’s not moldering away, though.”

“So what brings you by?” Callum asked, since this time they hadn’t brought food with them.

“Well, the kids will be going back to school soon, which means you might get some people cutting through your property. They know they’re not supposed to, but they might anyway.”

“Oh, I think we’ve all been that age,” Callum chuckled. “It’s fine, but the wooded parts are pretty overgrown. I haven’t gotten around to clearing them yet.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Gerry said. “Kids around here tend to be pretty good with the outdoors. Speaking of which, do you do any hunting?”

“Not for years,” Callum said. “Isn’t this place off-limits for hunting anyhow?” There were reminders about that pasted on half the signs between his house and the town center where he got his groceries.

“It’s restricted,” Gerry said, nodding to him. “Just wanted to make sure you know. We don’t have many people moving in so I wanted to be sure you knew.”

“Believe me, I’ll be mostly staying at home,” Callum told them. He felt like they were hinting at whatever supernatural goings-on were afoot, but he really didn’t care much so long as they didn’t bother him. Or report him to the authorities. “You don’t mind if I do target shooting in the yard though, right?”

“Just be careful not to do it when kids are around!” Gerry cautioned him.

“Of course, of course. I’ll be sticking to the yard, anyway.” They’d reminded him in a sideways way that he hadn’t kept up with his shooting. He preferred to practice at least a little, though he’d never had to shoot anything in earnest.

“I think we’re good then,” Gerry said. “Just wanted to swing by while we were in the neighborhood.”

“Don’t be too much of a stranger,” Jessica said. “I don’t see you in town much.”

“I know, I know,” Callum replied. “Still trying to catch up with myself, you know?”

“Oh, of course,” Jessica agreed. “We’ll be seeing you around, then.” She waved as she and her husband went back around the house. Callum frowned and cast his senses around, following them without looking, but also noticing that there was a bunch of what he could only describe as mana residue over the back yard. His vis use had disturbed the ambient environment, and maybe left a few fragments of itself around, which would probably be detectable to other people.

He needed to figure out how to, if not completely hide, at least suppress the signature of magical use nearby. There was no way that anyone could miss the presence of it in the yard, if they had the sensitivity in the first place, which meant that his cover was probably broken. Though to be fair, he was almost certain they’d suspected from the outset.

Callum cast his senses inside the house and teleported his pistol and holster to himself, grabbing them out of the air and belting them on. While he didn’t think to ask for concealed carry when he was getting his fake ID, the point was moot while he was on his own property, so it was better to be carrying.

He puttered around the back yard for a little bit, finding himself unable to concentrate, before deciding he needed to do something with his time. He did have a list of supplies he needed for repairs, so he went into town to find what he could at the hardware store. By the time he returned home, nearly two hours later, he was feeling a little more settled and sat down to work on his magic again, with an eye toward secrecy.

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Ultimately, his solution was just to draw from civil engineering and make vis-sinks that would absorb any stray vis he left lying around. He was fortunate enough to find mention of a vortex pattern for drawing in mana, and rendered in vis on a few steel stakes and a crowbar, it went a long way toward erasing the disruptions. It seemed to him that little tiny bits of vis were left behind after he dismissed his constructs, disrupting the mana field, and once they were gone it returned to normal on its own. It took him more than a few tries to make it work, forming the whirling pattern in threads inside the metal and holding them, but eventually he got a few to work. By then he was exhausted enough from using his magical talents that he needed to take a nap.

By the time he woke up, the yard was clean, so he just had to worry about the vis that was starting to build up in his own body making trouble as he walked around. As a stopgap he used the same vortex pattern on a ball bearing and stuck it in his pocket, but a more reliable way to shield himself went on his list. In fact, weaponization got sent to the top of the queue. The official literature didn’t have anything useful, but he had more than a few ideas.

Since he had to fix things around the house anyway, he decided he’d practice with wood and nails. While he was fairly certain teleportation didn’t run the risk of violating the Pauli exclusion principle, since he could pop rocks back and forth all day, there was no telling what would happen if he tried to teleport into a solid.

For safety’s sake, he went down into the unfinished basement and stretched his senses up to the porch above. Callum snapped a cage around one of the nails and guided a thread to his target board before pushing. While the official literature didn’t mention it, he had found it was easy enough to alter the orientation of things on the target end, so he could drive the nail in properly.