by Rick Field
She had succeeded!
Looking up at the others in the room made her blink. Amy looked deeply worried, but less so now that she saw that Liane would be alright. Milor seemed agitated, yet was calming down as well. Dars, instead, was looking at her with an expression of both awe and fear.
She stumbled to her legs. They felt weak and powerless, as if she had overtaxed them somehow. “My Lady,” Dars spoke, breaking the utter silence. “I wish to tender my most sincere apologies. I was unable to perform my part of the ritual.”
She blinked. Did he fail? She vaguely remembered taking some parts of the ritual into herself, a distant memory that was now flowing away from her like a wisp of a dream. “Yet we completed the ritual, My Lord,” she spoke. Her throat hurt, and her voice sounded very gritty when she did so.
“You were able to take over the moment I stumbled, My Lady. You proceeded to double-chant both your and my parts, before you taxed my magic for added assistance in stabilizing the ritual. I did not believe such feats were possible, yet you were able to perform them in front of my very eyes.” He bowed. “I am honored to have witnessed it, My Lady.”
She was silent, not really understanding what he was saying. The performance of the ritual was slipping ever further away from her, ever since she surrendered totally to her magic, allowing it to perform as it had wanted. “You were still in the ritual, My Lord. The power sharing aspects allowed me to tap your power as if it were my own,” she spoke, somehow realizing and knowing what had happened, even if she was no longer consciously aware of it.
“It was an unusual sensation, My Lady, but not at all painful. Not as I had felt when my Proctor drew magic from me,” he admitted.
Liane's eyes flashed to Amy before settling back on Dars. “I will never perform such an act, My Lord. I had the option to do so now and I dismissed it.” She blinked. “I think I dismissed it. The entire ritual seems to flow away from me. I think I realized that the power sharing aspects of the ritual would make the process painless.”
Dars nodded, looked at Amy as well, then back to Liane. “I wish I had a Proctor such as you, My Lady. Perhaps then I would have contemplated taking an Assistant as well, rather than dismissing the notion out of hand.”
Liane dipped her head in acknowledgement of what he had said, then summoned the fire dust into a container. “Do you wish some of this, My Lord? You participated in the ritual; you should be allowed to have some of the results.”
Dars shook his head. “I failed in my part of the ritual, which nearly resulted in total failure. It would not be decent of me to accept after you fulfilled the ritual on your own. Being able to participate and watch you in action is enough.” He nodded a greeting to Amy and Milor. “My Lady,” he finally said to Liane, dipping his head deeper, and making to leave.
Right before he reached the door, he turned back to her. “I honestly cannot wait until you are a full Magus of the Student Council, My Lady. My only regret is that I will be graduated, and be unable to witness it.”
She gave him a faint smile, and Dars walked out.
For weeks, she worked on the ritual, trying to simplify it, trying to streamline it, making it more readily accessible to one person. Using every bit of magical theory she knew – and quite a lot of theory she didn't know and had to research – she made drastic progress.
But always, there was the problem of her magic resonating with the element being worked on, and the subsequent emotional turmoil it caused her. In hindsight, fire had been the easiest. It had merely made her angry and stubborn, both serving as great motivators. Air, on the other hand, was flighty and fickle and had caused her thoughts to continuously wander to different subjects. She had needed all of her mental faculties to keep focusing during that one.
Water was fluid and malleable, and had caused her to analyze what she was feeling and how the ritual was progressing, rather than focus on the ritual itself. Again, she had needed quite a bit of focus to keep herself on task rather than thinking through tangents... although the Water ritual had taught her quite a bit about the ritual she hadn't considered before, and it had helped her progress her work on it in a remarkable fashion.
Earth was patient and frozen, it did not move unless under severe pressure, and it had caused her to lose all nervousness and emotion, and stuck to the letter of the ritual. A downside in itself, as rigid adherence to rules and regulations caused her to almost lose her grip on the ritual when things started to go out of control and her mind was only able to realize that the problem wasn't in the ritual description. Thankfully, she had amassed a great deal of experience by then and was able to compensate after a few tense seconds of indignation about the ritual not sticking to the scripted plan.
It annoyed her still that her magic was so sensitive to outside forces, and was able to influence her own mental state and emotional stability in such a dramatic fashion. More and more often, she turned to the silver fountain, to contemplate its ever changing shapes.
One day, after lunch, she was once again sitting in front of the fountain. Morning courses were over, she had no afternoon courses, and she was done with her homework and preparation for the next day. Being always on top of her work was helpful that way. As she sat, she glanced at the work Amy was doing.
She had set her Assistant the task of doing some runic equivalency calculations, working out the required materials and power needed to get the desired effects. The younger girl was now working over the second of five problems, and Liane turned her focus back to the fountain.
Deciding that she might as well do some work herself, Liane sent an ansuz rune at her core. As per usual, it replied with a nonsensical answer. To her surprise, the fountain changed. She sent another rune. The fountain changed again. She sent another ansuz rune. The fountain switched back to its previous form.
Liane blinked, then could have kicked herself. The fountain was Magic to the Wielder; it reflected the essence of the magical core of the beholder. In her case, she had no essence in her magic, except for what her magic was doing at that precise moment, so of course the fountain would reflect that. It would be an external indicator of what her magic was doing.
Why had she never thought of this before? This was probably her greatest breakthrough in trying to understand magic since she invented the pulsing exercise in an attempt to learn how to read and predict where her core would go!
Rapidly, she worked her way through the runic alphabets she knew, staring at the fountain while her core sent back nonsensical replies. To her surprise, the fountain made a weird sort of sense; even though she could not consciously explain it. The forms taken by the fountain were weird and outlandish, and had nothing to do with the runes themselves nor with the runic responses her magic sent back.
And yet they still made a weird sort of sense on a subconscious level, as if she realized yes, that is an ansuz rune.
She needed to know more. She needed to know what the fountain would reflect during magic, during her magic's actual use. Holding one palm up, she whispered the spell to create light; a small glob of pure white light bopped up and down above her palm, matching her heartbeat.
The fountain reflected with a weird shape that she would say meant light but was unidentifiable as such on a conscious level. She closed her hand, snuffing out the light. Feeling excited, she cast the same spell.
Her excitement reflected in her magic and the fountain changed to a different shape; still light, but different. Stronger. More aggressive, just as the glob of light bopping up and down was harsher and more powerful than before. Trying to contain her emotions, she drew a few deep breaths, and cast the spell again.
The light was softer, more like the first time she had cast it, and the fountain reflected it. This was more like the first, but still different. Focusing on the fountain instead of her magic and herself, she tried to get it to match the first reflection, cast after cast after cast. Slowly, she started to get the hang of it, getting the hang of both her magic and getting the fountain to
reflect it.
Easier than just trying to match power and intensity in a floating ball of light, the fountain served as a mirror, a mirror that would reflect the depths and intricacies of her magic as she used it, a mirror that would show her what she wanted and needed to know.
A small smile crept on her lips and she shifted, folding her legs underneath her so she sat in a meditative position on the bench. Lacing her fingers together, she formed a cup with both hands and placed them upward in her lap.
She would work magic and she would see how the fountain reacted. Out of the corner of her eyes she noticed quite a few students watching her; they had seen her play with the ball of light. To them, of course, the fountain had not changed shape and so they did not realize what she had been doing, nor why.
But then again, she was the MagicWarper. Nothing she did surprised them anymore. They had either seen or heard of her stopping a Death Magic kill-strike when she was in her second year. They had heard of her getting into a fight with a Warlock, and winning; a proper fight, not just a duel. They had heard of her friendship with the aspiring Necromancer, Lord Pertogan.
And they knew her as the two-times Prime Student, as one of the students in Deep Secrets and Ancient Lore, and as one of the Vice-Magi of the student council.
But they still stared when she shifted to sit in a meditative position, only to start casting while she stared unblinkingly at the fountain.
Milor drew a breath when he returned to the Academy. After four hours of combat training, he was looking forward to a hot meal. Thankfully, showers were provided at the practice fields so that no Warlock would need to return in a less than dignified manner.
When he entered the courtyard, he was surprised to see a large group of mages congregate around the fountain. Curious, he joined them.
To his surprise, he could see Liane, sitting in meditative position, staring at the fountain while chanting a spell. It was a magic control spell, a spell that would shape magic in the image described by the caster.
Milor listened to her spell. It was describing a single line. Above Liane's upturned hands, a ghostly image of the line appeared. The chanting continued, and the line described became the description of a triangle. The magic changed the shape into the one described, while Liane kept staring at the fountain.
“May I ask what is happening, My Lady?” Milor asked one of the witnessing mages.
“The Lady Liane has been casting magic all afternoon, My Lord. She keeps staring at the fountain for some reason, but the magic has become increasingly intricate as she goes,” the mage replied respectfully.
Milor nodded. “Thank you, My Lady.”
By now, the triangle in Liane's hands had become a square. The chanting continued, turning the figure from a cube into a pentagon. On and on Liane chanted; more and more sides were added. The pentagon became a hexagon, which in turn became a heptagon.
By the time she had reached 12 sides, Liane's initial magical chant arrested, the dodecagon hanging above her hands. Her mouth closed. She licked her lips. Finally, she opened her mouth once more, and started chanting. The two dimensional dodecagon turned into a dodecahedron, a three-dimensional figure sporting twelve identical pentagonal faces.
Milor blinked, feeling rather impressed at the ease with which Liane had turned a flat figure into a three dimensional one with a single short chant that had been barely more than a regular incantation. Again, she closed her mouth to lick her lips, obviously determining her next step.
The chant that followed made Milor goggle; his knowledge of mathematics and geometry was extremely limited, and yet even he understood the significance of turning a three dimensional figure into a four dimensional one. The hyper-dodecahedron that formed was projected into three-dimensional space, and Milor's eyes and head hurt as they tried to make sense of the jumble of superimposing lines.
Liane's voice did not waver nor halt this time, and her chant continued. The facets created by the four dimensions present in the figure started to fill in, one by one, slowly and meticulously, into a separate color. Each of the 720 separate facets present in the four-dimensional hyper-dodecahedron got its own unique color, one by one.
She did not blink, not wanting to miss the shift in the fountain. As she casted, the fountain reflected the inner workings of her magic. Indescribable as they may be, the forms made subconscious sense to her, and Liane felt she was finally starting to understand a fundamental part of her magic, an aspect she had only ever scratched the surface of.
By the time her hyper-dodecahedron had been completely colored along its many multi-dimensional facets, she felt she had never understood her magic better than she did on that moment.
“Create,” she whispered.
A flash of magic formalized the figure she had created, using the ground and the dirt around her to create a statue of the shape and color created by her control spell.
Her legs protested as she unfolded them, yet she did not notice as she stared at both the figure in her hand and the representation by the silver fountain, a silver fountain that now looked exactly like the hyper-dodecahedron she was holding in her hands. Slowly, a triumphant smile spread on her lips. The next hurdle to knowing and understanding her own magic had been cleared!
*****
Liane and her Assistant entered the Council chambers a few months before the final exams. Liane's schedule was picking up now as she and Amy worked hard to clear the hurdle. The low thrum of talking people ceased upon their entry, every pair of eyes focusing intensely upon her. Not all Council members were present, and Liane was grateful that Fylian was absent. He had been making snide remarks ever since she joined the Council, and it was wearing on her nerves.
She graced the present members with a faint smile yet no explanation, and chose a private booth for herself and Amy, a booth that was soon filled with Dars Earthcrafter as well. The privacy screens went up.
“It seems congratulations are in order, My Lady,” Dars said amicably, looking intently to the strange... thing... that was curled around Liane's neck like a long and ornate necklace.
“Thank you, My Lord,” Liane said, tapping her new accessory. Her tap rang like a clear bell, as the glass tube that was coiled over her shoulders and around her neck turned transparent, an inner fire that had not been there before shining forth. Right at the front of her throat, the tube budged, the smooth material parting.
In front of Dars' astonished eyes, the smooth tube turned into the head of snake; a head that had been biting its own tail moments earlier. “My Lord, meet Ouroboros,” she said as the construct's glass body shifted to allow its head to gaze upon him.
“A pleasure,” Dars told the magical glass snake, which eyes glowed like hellish coals. A forked glass tongue slipped between glass lips as the snake stared at him. “Ouroboros is a combination construct,” Liane said, her finger idly scratching underneath the snake's chin. “The result of working on my master piece.”
“Incredible work, My Lady,” Dars said, starting to reach out, then stopping himself. “May I touch it?”
The Prime Student nodded. “Of course, My Lord.”
The young man reached out, and slowly dragged his finger across the top of the enchanted snake's head. “Incredible. It feels warm.”
“That is the fire element, My Lord. Ouroboros is the result of a combination construct, both Fire and Earth, in this case,” Liane explained. She stopped petting the magical snake. “Go back to sleep,” she told the snake, which obligingly bit its own tail, transforming itself back into a glass tube, coiled around her throat.
“It took a great deal of magic and effort to construct, but the results are worth it,” she said. “I found only one reference work on combining elements in the creation of a construct, and that book had been written 600 years ago and was then forgotten. I am writing my dissertation on this lost form of magical constructs.”
Dars just nodded, not knowing anything about the subjects Liane was working on, yet willing to support her r
egardless. She had been an apt pupil in the arts of diplomacy and politics, and he had found himself enjoying her company, even if she was too much into magic and theory to consider anything but friendship from him.
Turning their attention to matters of the student council, they debated the various petitions for close to an hour before finally suspending the privacy screens. The voting was about to begin, so Dars took his place at the Council table, while Liane took her Vice-Magus seat, Amy standing in her designated spot behind Liane's right shoulder.
The time it took to debate and vote on various issues was quite short. Most of the Council members had little time or patience and settled quickly on the various petitions, with only Zaia Icecrafter and Zelila Metalmistress, the fraternal twins, debating ferociously against each other.
Liane smiled faintly. Just like in academics, the twins refused to lose to each other. It made things lively, yet drew them out longer than most Council members were comfortable with. Liane could see Fylian's disposition darkening with each passing minute.
She wondered why he had chosen to sit on the Council if he didn't want to be there. She turned her attention back to the meeting itself, rather than studying the people present.
“The last point of today,” Lesili Firemistress, the Mage Magus, read from her paper. “A complaint has been lodged against the Lord Seth Windworker, second year student in the Arts of the Warlock, by Lillian Woodworker, second year student in the Arts of the Mage.” The Magus then proceeded to read the testimony provided by both the Mage and the Warlock, as well as various witnessed.
“I vote to dismiss,” Gonaro Metalmaster, the Warlock Magus, stated coolly.
“My Lord Magus always votes to dismiss when the complaint is against a Warlock,” Lesili replied. “From the testimony, it is quite obvious that the Lord Seth Woodworker has been harassing the Lady Lillian Woodworker. It surprises me that she has not challenged him over it, it would be within her rights to do so.”
