The Archmage: Chapter Twenty-Three (Patreon)

Whoops, I had it at 8pm. Sorry for the delay!

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Going back to work after three nights with almost no rest wasn’t fun, but after a full pot of coffee – much cheaper now, thanks to some of the new initiatives that Eira and Dormer had been pushing – I was able to at least somewhat function. I fumbled through my lectures, and was immensely grateful I wouldn’t have any office hours until Friday. 

That night, I finally got some real sleep, and my Tuesday lecture went off much smoother. By the end of the week, I’d managed to put myself back together again, and on Friday, I was actually excited to start office hours again. 

Several students dropped by to get me to look over their homework, and help them with some of their designs, but a few people came in with more interesting things to work with. 

Willow continued to work on expanding her multi-section array, and I was tempted to show her the combination of printing and sympathetic linking that I’d used to mass produce and mass enchant my one use spells. 

Those were a little complex, though, so I held off for now. 

Still, the girl had a real gift with combining multiple layers of enchantments, and I wanted to foster that as best I could. Picking up a pen and pulling out a sheet of paper, I gave her a curious look. 

“You’re clearly building up to some sort of idea in your head. What is it? I can promise I won’t share it with your fellow students, or use it myself.” 

“I…” Willow said, her eyes darting around, clearly nervous. 

“You don’t have to tell me,” I said. “That wasn’t an order, and if you want me to drop it, I will. But I can only help so much if I don’t know what your goal is. You’re good at this, and I want to help.” 

The last bit was added to try and reassure her. She was clearly nervous, and I did think she had some form of social anxiety, not unlike myself. Willow met my eyes, searching them for… something. 

She must have found something to push her into deciding, because she took a deep breath, then pulled a notebook out from her bag. 

“I want to work on something that looks like I’m using a lot of really bad burners, when I’m not,” Willow said. “That’s the part I’m having trouble with. I want to throw out a strip of paper and have it shoot off a force bolt at someone, and they think that’s it. But it isn’t. There would be a second copy of the spell in the air, just not fired off, and when I got the right activation, all of the second attacks would launch at someone.” 

 I felt my eyebrows raise. That was clever. It felt a bit wasteful to me, since each one could still only fire two bolts, but if she worked on upgrading the finished product to artifacts, it could be a good trick. 

There were also spells to recall items to a specific point. It wouldn’t even be that wasteful if the spent artifacts just flew back into her bag, like my own knives did after I threw them. 

But that was all for later. For right now, I thought she’d best be served by fixing a problem I’d had at her age. 

“Good idea,” I said, making sure to praise her, both because I felt some kinship with her anxieties and knew it would have helped me, and also because Travis had been rare to give any praise, and I wanted to set myself apart from the noble man.

“I think the main thing you’re missing is something to draw the attacks into the person,” I said. “Now, I use faerie magic to guide my spells. That’s not a reasonable option for you, so don’t worry about it. Here’s a solution I did use, though. I want you to look it over, modify it for your own use, and see if you can find something better on your own, or improve on the design…” 

I sketched out the aura-clinging spell that Victoria and I had used to select who would be caught up in a force dome, and who wouldn’t, alongside the basic trigger to fire off the spells in the direction of the aura sample. It was a bit slipshod, since it would require her to first hit them with an aura-clinging burner, but it was workable, at least. 

I’d gotten more use out of the aura-clinging spell than I expected, honestly, and made a mental note to look it up, and see if there were any publicly known stronger or more versatile versions I could share with the class. 

The mind magic selection spell that I’d stolen from Travis and used in my cloak would have worked even better, but I wasn’t about to go advertising that I’d stolen the contents of the Hawthorne vault. Not yet, at least. The thought did spark an idea in my mind, but I already had a lot of projects. I’d get that done if I could, but I wasn’t going to bank everything on it. 

Willow worked through integrating the spell into her own work well, and I grinned at her. 

“Great! Just remember, there’s more than one way to get a result. Just because I used this method doesn’t mean it’s the best one.” 

Not long after Willow left, Isadora came in. The noblewoman was still outfitted in enough finery to make a jeweler jealous, but she’d been performing well in the enchanting class, and she’d not put up a fuss when I’d made her do some enchanting herself. I resolved to be as fair with her as possible. 

The first thing she said did immediately test that, but I steeled my resolve. 

“Show me how to make this into an enchantment,” she said, holding up a scroll. 

“I don’t even know what it is,” I said, and she rolled her eyes. 

“It’s a spell from my family’s vaults, but it’s meant for sorcerers. I tried to put it on a burner, but it was too strong, it just burnt the wand. I know there’s a hard cap on how much power a burner can have. So I want this as a foci or artifact.” 

“I see,” I said neutrally, and she just raised an eyebrow. 

“I thought you’d be excited to see a secret spell,” she said. 

“I’ve seen more secret spells than most think,” I said. “One more isn’t going to have me foaming at the mouth. Tell me – what does the spell do, and why are you unwilling to just wait until we move on to the foci and burner parts of the class?” 

“It’s a fire spell,” she said. “I want it for my duel.” 

“Duel?” I asked, and Isadora gave me a surprised look. 

“You didn’t hear?” she asked. “Maira got caught breaking into my room to steal my light manipulation class work. She denies it was her, but there aren’t any other light and sound sorcerers in the school.” 

I didn’t know who Maria was, but Isadora spoke with such confidence and vitriol that it was clear she assumed that I did know. 

“There’s Elaine, but she would have no reason to,” I said. 

“Whatever. Anyways, she keeps denying it, so I’m going to duel her.” 

I wondered if Maria, whoever she was, had come from a rival noble house, or if she was a poor kid trying to get ahead. Or maybe she was really just a cheater, trying to steal class work, and I was projecting my own experiences into the duel from memories of my own. 

Either way, it was clear Isadora was upset, and didn’t want any help, she wanted someone to do the heavy lifting for her. That was disappointing. 

“I see,” I said. “I’m not going to just lay out the steps for creating the enchantment. I’d be happy to give you a preview of foci or artifacts, and see if you can reach the level of skill, but…” 

Isadora had stood up and was already leaving the office. I just shrugged. I had no skin in this duel, her family, or her as a person.

A few more students came in, one of them Donnovan, who started asking questions about chaining burners together as well. I assumed it had something to do with his ward-enchantment project, but I was happy enough to help him work out the methods. 

Eventually, though, my hours were over, and I headed to get dinner with Osheen, after which, we went to Tara’s office, before the three of us headed up to the summoning array. Osheen charged the wards up while Tara chanted them into activation, and I chanted out the summoning spell for Gwrach Freuddwyd. 

Unlike the last time, when nothing had happened after the spell’s completion, this time a small, shaky tear in space started to appear. It slowly grew and spread until a moment later, the hag stepped out. 

She looked… different… from how she had in my dream. Rather than a one-toothed, hunched old woman, she was young, with a medium build, curves, pale skin, and lustrous black hair. Her eyes were normal, brown, but a deep brown, and very pretty. 

Too pretty, in fact, and as I studied her, I suspected that she was using some sort of mental charm on me to try and see her as prettier than she was. 

It didn’t work. The spell, in fact, didn’t seem to have enough grip on my mind to even activate my mind bubble, and I had to chuckle. 

“Bah,” the hag said, and the illusion vanished. “I should have gone for a male form.” 

“It wouldn’t have worked,” I said. “But it would have at least been able to touch my mental defenses, I give you that. The Silver Queen sends her regards, by the way.” 

The hag appraised me with her black eye, while her one purple eye swept over Tara and Osheen. 

“Tell me what you want,” she said. “And then we will see what I can do, and if you can afford to pay for the services rendered.” 

I gave her a smile with confidence that I didn’t feel. 

“We are working on a series of remote, sympathetically linked relays,” I said. “These relays would then reach out to the minds of anyone in reach and deliver an information packet, but we do want to ensure that we’re not going to kill someone by delivering it at a bad time. We need your assistance improving both the spell that will hold the information, so we can shrink it down, and the parts of the spell that will deliver the information. I have access to a pool of human witchcraft and faerie change magic, so if the solution can work with those, that would be ideal.”

The hag considered this, biting her nails until they bled, then licking up the blood, before she finally answered. 

“I can help with this, aye. Compressing the memory packet is simple. The latter is… Harder. I do have a suggestion – free of charge. Consider it a balancing of the scales between us for the nightmares inflicted.” 

I nodded to her, and she continued. 

“Send the information out all at once, but don’t have it enter into their heads. Build a shell around the knowledge that will keep it dormant until they fall asleep…”