spells
Samantha
A man appeared in her open door. “You look busy.”
Had she left the door open when she was changing? For her sake, she needed to get out of her head. “Not particularly,” she said. “In fact, I feel profoundly un-busy at the moment.”
“I suspect you have yet to be given the placement test schedule.” He was shorter than her, though she was unfortunately lanky. He wore an unadorned, blue suit and a red cravat. Had she put on her red dress? Yes, good. It was her favourite.
“Your assumption is correct, but your conclusion is not,” she said. “Do you know the phrase, ‘you can lead a horse to water’?”
“No.”
“You can stab a princess in the back and drag her, tied up, away from her supposed friends, but you can’t force her to be a… puritan student.”
“You plan to spurn your education out of spite, then?”
“Maybe. I haven’t—”
“I heard about the constriction, that’s terrible! I’d hate everyone involved for doing that, too.”
Blink. “Thank y—”
“Well, no, hate may be a bit far, but I would need to re-evaluate my relationships.”
Blink. Was he telling her that she was overreacting? How would he know? What did Roe tell him? “Are you trying to get inside my head?”
“What? No. Sorry, I’m a bit nervous. You’re a princess! It’s mad.”
“Yeah, uh, what part?”
“All of it! So undignified, being tied up, dragged up here! It’s a good place to be, and you’re going to get a great education, and the magisters are all so friendly and smart, but you should be guided by a whole procession, and there should be those instrument things people blow into, and you should have a ton of guards!”
“…Horns?”
“Yeah, those long blowy things. You should have those!”
“You, uh.” Maybe only talking to herself and a mimic mute for a week had numbed her social skills. Or maybe it was just him. “You’re Vincent?”
“Yes, Your Highness.” He bowed slightly. “Vincent Whiteclaw. Here to help with whatever you may need while at the Academy! I’m a student, too, have been for 6 years, and I gotta say, it’s extremely fun and rewarding!”
Instant concern. “6 years? Is that normal?”
“Oh no, most finish in 2.”
Blink. “Am I most?”
“I don’t know?” He smiled.
“Has anyone finished in 1?”
“Oh, yes, but they usually have prior education.”
“Has anyone finished in less than 1?”
“Well, yes, but it’s v—”
“Could someone conceivably finish by doing so good on the initial exams that there’s no class to place them in?”
His eyes widened, as did his smile. “Do you want to try?”
“Only if I know it’s an option, first.”
He left her to hang her clothes and read letters.
She began reading Anisa’s ‘Read First’ second.
Samantha. I hope you had a good trip.
I speak benevolently when I say, you deserve this. You should’ve been sent up to Northpoint rather than Penbarrow all those 7 years ago. Our ‘family’ is all too apt to put the cart before the horse with civic leadership. The rhetorical and logical skills I amassed at the Academy continue still to inform my actions, and they will increase your confidence in yours.
You will be made to feel shame for what you did to Lionel’s house upon your return.
It is convenient, however, to get you out of the country, to avoid assassination. You see, with the lack of a body, it’s suspected Quincy didn’t commit suicide, but was killed by
About what she expected. Unfortunate that Anisa, too, was being eaten by paranoia.
She knew he had killed himself because he had told her, verbatim, that he was going to do so. He had given her a letter (as he was wont to do). Being a Day is too restrictive. Penbarrow is empty and worthless. It would be better that the crown prince be someone different.
She had run to the hill and missed him. She had considered jumping off herself.
And everyone seemed to accept it. But now there were baseless whisperings about assassins…
Maybe that made her feel better? Maybe her friends (not that Anisa was a friend) were just stupid, and not also malicious. Trying to protect her from an assassin who didn’t exist. One would think they’d send more than just Roe, then.
…Oh, maybe they sent a wagon of guards ahead and behind them.
She twiddled the knife from the bag and idly poked herself with it. Blood.
Shiron’s blood, she needs to get out of her head. She found a bandage and wrapped her hand.
“Yes, it’s possible!” said Vincent, “though there have only been 3 cases of it, and in 2 of those, they instantly went on to teach.”
“And case 3?”
“Don’t worry about that one.”
She closed her eyes. “What do you know about rope spells?”
“What?”
“Rope spells. Spells to manipulate rope. I was tied up on the way here, I don’t want that to happen again.”
Vincent smiled. “Maybe this should wait for after the tests?”
“Nope.”
“Ah… okay…” he, too, closed his eyes. “Are you wanting to target a specific composition of material, or the general class of items which tie you up?”
“The latter.”
“I don’t know about ‘rope spells’ in particular, but there are a few different schools of thought with this sort of thing. If you knew the particular material, the easiest thing would be to target its phlogiston specifically. Are there particular knots you’d want to target?”
“All knots.”
“Uh, okay. You’d probably want a more animist approach then, to grant the rope some sapience to untie itself. You’d need to learn how to undo all the knots, though, and give that knowledge to the rope, and doing so will be really exhausting, and if the knot gets hurt, you’ll get hurt too. If you knew the exact amount and location of force you’d need to impart, though, then you’d—”
“Why can’t I just turn my body into knives?”
“Pardon?”
“Or just, phase Four-Dee and move forward.”
“4D travel is inconsistent, so—”
“Or make the space inside the rope bigger than the space outside, and fall out of them.”
“Those aren’t really ‘rope spells’, those are more general purpose.”
“Alright then.” Sitting on the bed, she leaned forward. “Take all the general purpose spells you know, weigh them by versatility and speed of learning, and give me a list to start learning.”
His eyes gleamed. He laughed, smiled, bowed, and walked away.
“Have you ever cast a spell before?” he handed her a wand.
“Not directly, no. I’ve seen people do it, and I may have helped channel energy into runes, but I haven’t used a wand.”
“Oh, channelling is the simplest spell!” He crossed off a line on the slate he held. “Casting spells is just turning magical energy into some other form of energy.”
“Or turning yourself into knives, or bringing a rope to life.”
“All different forms of energy.”
“No it isn’t. Energy has a precise definition, it’s force across a distance. How does that translate into turning yourself into knives?”
“…Uh. Well. Huh. Did you read the books you were delivering?”
“A bit.”
“Well, you’re right, magic is a bit more complicated than that. And energy is a bit more complicated than force-distance. A lot of it is visualization.”
“No, I know someone who doesn’t see any images in her head, but does gravitational manipulation purely geometrically. 12 noltons, 45 degrees downward.”
“I’m not a magic expert, but the way I had it described to me, you’re speaking some language to the universe, and as long as it understands you, you’re probably okay. And wands help cut down on the noise.”
“So, the ‘universe’ has some sense of ‘being’, then.”
“Well… yes. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.”
“But there’s a difference between me throwing a rock and me willing a rock to be thrown.”
“Well, one is more direct, and energy efficient.”
“No, more than that. We learn we can throw a rock, because we see a rock,” she picked up her knife, “we feel an arm,” she bent her arm, “and we impart force over a distance.” She halfheartedly lobbed it at the floor. Vincent cowered. It landed on its hilt and skittered to a stop. “But, say, there was a blind man, he’d learn to identify a rock by its feel. Or, maybe someone loses one of their arms and has to learn how to throw with their sinister hand. Would the universe consider all of these to be ‘throwing’?”
“Probably?”
“So there’s a god god, then, and they’re who decides what counts as a throw, and decides whether someone is correctly doing a throw spell.”
“Uh… well, not necessarily. There are some who believe each spell primitive is based on the effects of each action. If one throws a rock with a left or right hand, even if you’re blind, it still results in a rock flying through the air and hitting something. Because each of these actions had the same result, they’re grouped together as a ‘spell’ which can be discovered.”
“Do more physical instances of an action cause a spell cast in that way to be easier to do? If I were to repeatedly throw something over my shoulder, would casting the throw spell in an over the shoulder manner become easier?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how it works. Most people who study magic just grab a book, a wand, and start visualizing and waving. And if it works for them, it works, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”
And the list went:
V.W. 04/12/06 (Int. Thaum.)
Diagnostic/Utility (10 – 3 thaums)
- Clang – Will make the onomatopoeia ‘clang’ play in your head. Used to determine that indeed, your magic is working. Do not think ‘clang’ while casting it or you may get a false positive.
- Ratio – Get what percentage of your total storage you still have. Will manifest as a colour in your head, purple is most full, then blue, green, yellow, orange, red.
- Quantity – Get actual quantity of thaums you have at your disposal. Will also manifest as a colour, but is unbounded, and logarithmic. Red is empty, orange is around 10, yellow around 100, etc. Many experienced mages exceed the scale, instead seeing nothing, so will need modifications to cast it either on portions of the reserve, or visualize in another form. Often cast alongside Ratio.
Primitives (Merl-interpretation) (1 thaum(s))
- Channel (P₀₋₀) – Send magic outside your body. Thaums vary with precision, speed of channel.
- Conflux (P₀₋₁) – Receive magic. Arguably not a primitive.
- Bang (P₁) – Make a bang sound, like hitting a drum.
- Formerly called ‘Clank’, and made the same sound as ‘Clang’. To avoid confusion with the Clang spell, it was changed.
- Nicolai the Wizard was known to repeatedly employ ‘Clank’ to overwhelm the enemy and prevent them from knowing if their ‘Clang’ was working correctly.
- Heat (P₂₋₁) – Raise temperature.
- Generally does not start a fire on its own.
- Does not cool. Cooling can be achieved via a combination of Conflux/Channel/Heat.
- Light (P₅) – Shine a light.
- Yes-No (P₆₋₃) – Randomly say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ in your head.
- Research has yet to conclude if the result is truly random.
- Do not think ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ when you cast it.
- Aynaega (P₆₋₁) – Randomly say /aɪ/ (aye) or /eɪ/ (short for nay). Slightly cheaper.
- Speck (P₇) – Create a speck.
- Move (P₉) – Impart motion.
- Rotate (P₁₀) – Rotate.
“I notice there’s a lot of missing numbers between the primitives,” said Samantha. “You go P₂₋₁ to P₅.”†
“Yeah. Those are ones that are a lot more expensive, and not really beginner friendly.”
“Such as…?”
“Uh, P₃₋₁ would be stretching space. P₄ is lightning… P₈₋₁ and P₈₋₂ are time dilation… P₁₁ is an animism bridge… P₁₂ is conditional…”
“Conditional? What’s a conditional?”
“A different sound will play in your head based on something in the world. P₁₂₋₃.₈ says ‘Yes’ in your head if your eyes are closed, ‘No’ otherwise.”
The phrase ‘prophecy machine’ came to mind. “…Huh…”
“It goes up to 22 in the Merl interpretation. We get golems using P₁₂₋₇, P₁₄₋₂, and P₁₉. That is, Condition Zero, Loop Do, and Chain. Though, again, it’s super expensive.”
Blink. Blink. Blink.
“Uh.”
Blink.
“Samantha?”
Blink. Blink.
“I have a class to teach in 20 minutes, I’ll leave you to your thinking.”
“Vincent.”
“Yes?”
“Granted, this is expensive. Maybe it takes years of study to get good at, maybe it uses so many thaums it can’t be done very often before recharging. Maybe few people have interest. Maybe few people are actually literate enough to understand this, maybe they don’t have the ability to think abstractly about this.” She paused. That was Quincy talking. His conclusion would’ve been, ‘but, it’s doable, so it would’ve been done.’
“Okay?” Smile.
“I’m from Penbarrow. They excavate stone by hand and chop trees by hand. They grow wheat and corn and harvest by hand. And they bring these to Felkner, by horse, and sell it, and then head back and do it again. And people build buildings by hand and enforce the law by hand and collect taxes by hand.”
“Oh. Why aren’t they using golems?”
Blink. Blink. “You go to your lecture.”
“Okay!”
She sat in silence for a few minutes, glanced to her remaining letter(s), and decided to follow him.
† “/ju ɡoʊ pi tu wʌn tu pi faɪv/”.
“…previous lecture, a topological space T is ‘Hauwitzer’ if each distinct point has a disjoint neighbourhood around it. If you can pick 2 distinct points, but can’t give them nonoverlapping neighbourhoods, they’re not. A few examples: the trivial topology is vacuously Hauwitzer; the real number line, with standard topology, is Hauwitzer, as is N, Q, products thereof…”
Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. Abstract nonsense. These academics, playing with their letter numbers and number letters, having the means to make things better but wasting their time. And they wanted to waste her time with this.
“Saw you watching. You have intense eyes,” said Vincent, upon completion.
“Yeah. They’re my mother’s.”
“What’d you think?”
“What’s a set?”
“Uh… a mathematical primitive. An object such that one can ask if another set is contained in it.”
“Oh, that explains everything, then. I didn’t understand anything, but with that, it all slots into place.”
“I’m glad. I try to be clear.” Pause. “Sarcasm. You are a very weird princess.”
“I’m the daughter of a king. You shouldn’t have any expectations from that.”
“But I do! That’s what being the daughter of a king means! You learn how to rule, and curtsy, and direct troops, and tell the people to build buildings!”
“I can curtsy.”
“Can I see?”
“No. And no, that’s not what being the daughter of a king means. It means they assign you an empty sliver of land to manage, inconsistently send you a stipend, and gradually forget your existence. I agree that being a princess should be more than that. That’s another thing, actually, do you have an explanation why we haven’t been invaded when we don’t have a standing army?”
“We?”
“…Yes. Brune.”
“Is Northpoint Brune?”
“Oh my god… forget it, forget it.”
Blink.
“I can flip 4D,” said Vincent, as if that made up for his not knowing basic geography (yes, Northpoint was Brune).
“Oh, cool, one of my brothers can do that, too.” Well, if he stepped into the hyperspace chest he had. And if he wasn’t dead.
“Is he a topologist?”
“No.”
Did he mean topography? Was that what the whole lecture was about? At a stretch, maybe, Quincy was a topographist. ‘Topology’ and ‘topography’ felt like another ‘psychology’ and ‘psychomancy’.
The conversation had petered out and neither of them particularly wanted to be the one to start it back up so they left.