The Abjurer: Chapter 32-33 (Patreon)

When I entered the enchanting class the following morning, Travis arched an eyebrow. 

“Mr. Tailor,” he said. “I admit, I didn’t think that you’d be joining us today. Especially when you left the last class with such a… Unique… display of power.” 

“Thank you,” I said. “I think? I’m not entirely sure, to be honest. But I want to learn more. There’s got to be more to learn. If nothing else, I have a lot of ideas as to how I can improve my own enchanting.” 

Travis took a long sip from his mug of… something… and then nodded. 

“Well, as I’m sure all of you remember, your task for this semester is to build something that can impress me. I don’t think this will change for anyone. I’m available to as a consult if anyone has questions.” 

He glanced at George and Jerimiah. 

“Oh, and make sure you actually build it yourself. Use the resources that you have, by all means. You’d be stupid not to. But… That doesn’t mean you should just copy exactly what someone else has already done, with one or two tweaks, got it?” 

I frowned. If that was the case, then I shouldn’t have been able to qualify either. All I’d done was take things from Archmage Roark, from the Hawthorne family library, from Rowan’s spells, from Travis’ notes, from Tara’s notes, and from the library and combined them into my cloak. 

Still, I at least knew better than to stare a gift horse in the mouth, so I sat down and started writing out a plan. 

Right now, I had about eighty percent of my defensive spells applied onto my cloak, and the rest on various bits and bobs. I wanted to fix that, if nothing else, which was one of the reasons I’d asked Aldvarri to send me a new cloak. 

The other was that I wanted to improve on the design.

Right now I had three sets of five. That was fine, but it could easily get better – namely, by adding symmetry. 

Three and seven were both numbers that had some degree of magical significance. If I’d made three sets of three, my enchantments would have worked a bit better. 

But that would have never had nearly enough functions to work properly. 

Seven sets of seven was more appealing, but I didn’t think I’d be able to manage forty-nine defensive functions. Most would probably wind up just being larger power banks to give the cloak some extra oomph. 

That wasn’t an inherently bad idea. I kept it in the back of my mind.

But there was a middle ground. 

Five sets of five. 

Five also had some magical significance, being the number of points in a pentacle. I thought that it was mostly used in druidic magic, but it shouldn’t fail entirely here. 

The other ten functions I wanted to add were easy – Mellt’s electrical cage was one, as was the temperature control bubble that Archmage Roark had used in his own designs to block both heat and cold. 

For a long time, I’d resisted including force armor in my cloak, the logic being that it was superfluous, since my iron cloak spell did similar things. 

The ward, in theory, should be able to stop anything too strong, while the iron cloak took care of the rest.

Having since fought against multiple people capable of killing me even through the iron cloak and ward, that opinion was now suspect. 

I’d be adding some force armor for sure.

A while ago, Wisteria had shown us spells to fend off weather, and I’d dismissed them too. But my legs had been shredded by an ice storm once, and it should also provide some level of defense against water and wind based attacks bg maintaining its bubble of fresh and calm air around me, which was nice. So that was definitely going on the cloak – albeit a tuned up version.

After some deliberation, I decided that I’d add a metal repulsion spell as the last one. I needed to look up designs for it anyways, to repay Awell Meddal for her help. 

I wanted to add earth spells, and something to deal with fluctuations in light, but five just wasn’t enough. 

What about the other five, though?

Maybe I could shift some things away that were more meta or independant functions of the cloak, like the switching recharge and the modular ward, and then go back and fill in the gaps?

I walked over to Travis and awkwardly hunched to look at him, since he was sitting at a desk, and there was no chair opposite him to sit in.

“There has to be more stuff you can teach me. Abjuration, maybe, or other defensive spells?”

Travis arched an eyebrow at me, but nodded. 

“There are. Did you think that all of abjuration was three spells? No, that’s the beginner’s version. There are planar interference spells, shaping disruption spells, direct power absorption, and even spell barriers and theif spells. Wardbreaking is a huge field in and of itself – not one enchanters really have cause to enter, since to do it subtly requires active adaptation. You already have a bludgeon. “

I already knew the last bit – I’d seen that when I’d robbed Travis’ mansion the year before, using spells that Tara had given me. 

But the rest? 

I leaned forwards, planting my hands on the desk.

“Show me.” I said eagerly. 

There was a spark in Travis’ eyes that slowly lit itself. He took a long, contemplative moment to think, then a confident smirk spread across his face.

“Most students I teach just waste my time. That’s why I don’t bother teaching until my second year. But you’ve surprised me. I’ll teach you more abjuration… If you can keep up. Try not to get lost.” 

I grinned back as fiercely as I could. Travis was a good enchanter, and a better abjurer. I was sure he wouldn’t show me any proprietary spell designs or anything of that sort, but that was fine.

After all, I’d stolen them from him already. I had the content, I just needed a guide…

“Let’s start with shaping disruption and spell barriers. They’re two sides of the same coin, and they’re both closely related to spell negation.”

“I’ve brewed a potion that makes it hard to shape aura,” I said. “And I saw a poison that did something similar.”

“A favorite of alchemist battlemages, and a good place to start, since it’s a good component for use in artifacts that disrupt spells,” Travis commented. “Now, shaping disruption is simple, but also annoyingly complex. All it does is search out aura and disrupt it. If you’re bottling that, fine.”

“But aura is all around us, all the time,” I said. “At least to some extent.”

“And therein lies the trouble,” Travis said with a nod. “You could try to target only human aura, but that creates problems when you fight a druid or extraplanar creature. You could have it work on everything, but that would make it absurdly expensive.”

“You want to add functions that allow you to define areas of effect, like a sorcerer,” I said. “But enchantments can’t do that.”

Travis grinned and pointed at me. This grin actually looked excited, as if he was finally happy to have someone who understood enchantments at his level.

Or at least near it. I wasn’t going to claim to be better than Travis.

“Yes, that. Exactly. But they can do that. You’ve already done some experimentation with how to mark friends from foes. You did it. Crudely, but you managed it.”

“There’s got to be better solutions than that,” I said. 

“There are, but not one spell. I use a three-part will-based mental signature system that…” Travis trailed off and shook his head, smile slipping some. “It’s proprietary spellcraft. But I’m sure you can find a way. Even your old aura mark system would work decently.” 

I didn’t argue with him, but I made a mental note to myself to use divination to look for mentions of his system.

“What do the spells look like? Not the proprietary ones, the abjuration side of things. Shaping disruption. I can guess, based on the potion, but…”

Travis gave me a strange look, and it took me a moment to figure out what it was. 

“I’m a diviner,” I said. “I already saw. Archmage Roark made me swear.” 

Travis relaxed, and then began to sketch out spell diagrams.

“Then you altering the aura in an area shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Great, takes a load off my chest.” 

We spent nearly two hours talking about the spell disruption fields, and as the next class period rolled over, we moved on to the spell barriers.

“That’s the basics of spell disruption. We’ll go more in depth next class, but let’s move on to spell barriers. They act as an in-between step of disruption and negation,” Travis said.

“Break it before it forms?” I guessed.

“Exactly. If you’re able to know what spell your opponent is going to cast, you can break it while it’s formed.”

“Isn’t that just… Strictly better than negation?” I asked Travis, who was quick to shake his head.

“Hardly. If they’re putting up defenses, then break them right before an attack. If you try and stop them from forming, they’re just going to keep working on forming it. It just becomes a battle of power. Which you’ll lose, more than likely. An attack, on the other hand… In a fight, each attack only has a few seconds to get off. If you can use shaping disruption to slow it, and spell barriers to compound that, they may be unable to get an attack off at all, and while there is some power contest, it’s not a direct strongarm.” 

“Oh,” I said, nodding along. “Different tools for different jobs. Sometimes it’s better to stop it beforehand, sometimes to negate it, sometimes to move it aside, and sometimes to reflect it. That takes a lot of skill to use the right tool for the right job, though.”

Travis’ dark eyes met mine and he nodded.

“Abjuration is not crude force magic, Mr. Tailor. It’s an art, an elegant dance where every motion counts.” 

That felt a bit poetic and overblown for my thoughts on the matter, but I did definitely acknowledge that it was a highly skill based set of abilities. 

But if power absorption, spell bottles, and spell blocking – I wasn’t going to call it a spell barrier, that was absurd, since there wasn’t any sort of barrier involved – were all things I wanted to integrate into my cloak. Not to mention some of the other things he’d mentioned, like planar defenses…

Maybe I should be using seven sets of seven. That would let me add in eye shielding and earth defenses.

I resolved to ask Tara if there was anything else I could do with my original fivefold. Maybe I could use more charm magic? Or even integrate Rowan’s, if I could find it.

I could even add some more agility – put the flight onto the cloak and maybe get some life-based agility to compound with the force.

I tingled with excitement. I had initially thought forty-nine functions, set into seven branches was far too many, but the more I looked at it, the more reasonable it seemed.

We spent the remaining class period going over some basic spell blocking information, and Travis promised me that he’d get some of his old notes on both topics for me to read through on my own time, which I happily agreed to. 

When I left the classroom for lunch with Osheen, he glanced at me.

“Don’t you look as happy as a lark. What happened.”

I took his hand and said, “Enchanting stuff. I think I’m gonna do some serious upgrades to my cloak again. But I promised that I wouldn’t get so sucked in that I neglected you. So, how was your day? What do you want for lunch?”

~~~
“No more pasta,” Osheen said. I frowned at him.

“Why?”

“You might be able to subsist off of just carbs and vegetables, but–”

“I eat loads of beans!” I protested.

“Sure. That’s why you’re scrawny…”

I laughed and shook my head. We both loaded up our trays, then headed for our usual seats. Before too long, Liam, Sarai, and Lynn had all joined us.

“How was everyone’s winter break?” Sarai asked immediately, since Lyn, Liam, and I were alll too uncertain to speak first.

“How was everyone’s winter break?” Sarai asked, slipping her hand into Lyn’s.

“It went okay,” Liam said before taking a bite. When he didn’t offer more details, Osheen shrugged and spoke up.
“Evan and I had the party. It was… Not really that fun. But it helped us get stronger at least, so that’s nice.”

“Nice,” Sarai said. “I’ve hit a bit of a wall, so I think I’m just going to graduate as an adept shadow and force sorcerer.”

I opened my third eye to look over the group. Lyn had three arch-stars: aura storage, rune compression, and an elemental alignment. The last was different to Osheen’s though, and the way it shifted vaguely reminded me of the lightning rune.

Liam had formed two arch-stars, one that I thought Kelsie had, and the other… I didn’t recognize at all. That was interesting, but not inherently suspicious, especially since his aura didn’t look like it had been increased or altered via a potion.

Sarai, on the other hand, only had the power storage arch-star.

I winced, but kept my thoughts to myself.

“Well, I’m thinking Osheen and I are likely to do the same,” I told her. “Do you have any plans for after?”

“Military,” Sarai said. “Lyn’s got a good position, and I’ve got an okay one. It should pay well and help keep the ties for House Chantal.”

“I’m going to stay here one more year,” Liam said. “I’m going to take some introductory classes for golemancy.”

“Do we even offer golemancy?” I asked.

“It’s mainly a subsection of potions,” Liam explained, “but it shares a lot in common with necromancy, so I’m able to skip some of that. Helps I already took the witchcraft class last year.”

I made a hmming sound, nodding along.

“You still owe me, Evan,” Lyn said.

“I know,” I said, nodding. “I’m going to make that during my next crafting session. Also something for Awell Meddal.”

“Who?” Sarai asked.

“A faerie that Evan met,” Osheen explained.

The five of us spent a while longer talking about the party, and about what everyone had done over the break before we eventually headed our ways for our next class.

Tara smiled softly when I entered her classroom.

“Hello Evan. I was glad to hear you were unharmed by the party.”

“Better than unharmed,” I said, giving Tara a smile that didn’t quite reach my eyes. “Let’s keep this conversation private?”

“After class, then,” she said.

I nodded to her, and we spent the class going through some scrying spells that I was able to knock out pretty quickly. Not that I was some amazing scrying master, but none of what we were learning was any more complex than the future sight spell, so it only took adapting to the new spell to figure it out.

I actually spent most of the class drafting out new potential options to fit into my cloak. I decided that I’d add some freestanding scrying into the sense and body enhancing parts of the cloak – those were two sides of the same coin, so I was happy to make it one of the sets of seven.

I wrote out a brief letter to Emilia using the pen, asking her for designs for body enhancement. My force enhancement was great for short bursts, so I needed something that would be better for more general movement.

I also sketched out something for Osheen. He was much more self reliant than I was, since he was a sorcerer, but I hadn’t done nearly enough for him, in my opinion. I’d made him a booster, and that was about it.

Maybe if I created a set of three sets of three, using his tattoos as a base? No, the tattoos were too complex for me to want to mess with them, especially since I didn’t know much about how they’d been set up. Something else, then. I did have a lot of water…

The class period flew by with me working on schematics, and when it was finally over and Osheen entered, Tara engaged the wards.

We spent a while going over the events of the party, and explaining both my impending – but delayed – doom, as well as my new arch-star. When she heard about it, Tara’s eyes grew wide.

“I’ve never even heard of an arch-star like that. It’s a total wildcard. If it’s still known by anyone other than ancient beings like Medb, it’s not in Paerus…”

She let out a soft laugh.

“You kids really are amazing. I might have made it to Archmage by stealing secrets, but you two got one fashioned by Medb herself…”

I frowned at the implication that Medb had just made the arch-star for me – I had very nearly died!

“Mine isn’t an arch-star, just a boon,” Osheen said. “But what fourth tier arch-star options have you stolen? There’s power hiding, but… I’m lagging. I need something to help me keep up.”

I frowned again – I was going to develop wrinkles at this rate – and took his hand.

“You’re not falling behind, Osheen. You’re amazing.”

Osheen just gave me a sad smile, and Tara let a broad grin spread over her face.

“I actually had already prepared the options for you and Evan when I broke Archmage Elide’s back. I stole a bunch of stuff from his library in that attack…”
Osheen shifted uncomfortably, and I couldn’t stop myself from doing the same. After all, it wasn’t exactly comforting to watch a woman smile while talking about someone nearly dying… Even if he’d probably deserved it.

“The one that the king had is probably what you want to go for,” Tara said. “It’s a contingency arch-star.”

“Is that how his armor spells were cast instantly?” I asked, and Tara nodded.

“It is,” she confirmed. “It starts out only letting you add in a simple contingency, but it’s able to grow, like all arch-stars. The king’s was probably set up to summon force armor whenever something touched a vital area without his permission.”

“That’s absurd!” Osheen said, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Any more absurd than being able to directly fuel a lifeline?” I asked. “Or being able to hide from the sight and detection spells of some of the most powerful people?”

“Point taken,” Osheen groused. “Still, it’s no wonder that archmage sorcerers are able to be so scary, if they can just build automatic castings into their arch-star. It’s like always having the perfect spell on the fly.”

“Once you build it up,” Tara said. “It’s not going to be that for now.”

Osheen nodded in acknowledgement of her point, then asked, “what exercises are there for it?”

“The base idea of it is simple. Kind of like a tuned up version of the rune compression arch-star. You build up a spell, focus your will intently on the idea of the contingency, and then try to crush the spell down into a tiny arch-star. Here, take a look at some of these…”

I went back to sketching more schematics to improve Osheen’s defenses while they worked over the exercises and diagrams. Once Tara was done helping Osheen, I put up my hand to get her attention.

“What’s up?” she asked, sliding over to look at my notes. “Oh. That’s complex.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I want to do a seven sets of seven defense. I’m thinking about making it a three dimensional spell. An absolute sphere of protection. Ever done something like that?”

Tara looked over them, then shook her head, then nodded, then made a so-so gesture.

“Not like that, no. But the setup for my archmage battle suit is actually a three dimensional spell. Not like this, though.”

“The one you used to kill the king?” I asked. “I saw that. It did wrap around your head and eyes, but more like a sorcerer than the kind of thing I was thinking about.”

Tara shook her head.

“You saw the result, not the setup. My setup…” Tara trailed off, then walked over to the wall and revealed the stairs to her secret library. I followed, kissing Osheen’s cheek before I left.

“Be safe,” I told him.

“I will,” he said. “The worst I’ll get is a puff of smoke and light from spell failure.”

I followed Tara down, and once we were in the library, she glared at me.

“You’re not going to tell anyone about this next step. Not even Osheen.”

I held up my hands in an ‘easy there’ gesture, and Tara moved her hands into the fireplace, then up the chimney. She fished around for a moment, then there was a click as the entire fireplace started to shift to one side.

“Your secret room has a second, even more secret room?” I asked.

“The secret room is liveable and has plenty of secrets,” Tara said with a fierce grin. “Anyone who finds it will assume they found the secret of my growth. They won’t look for a second secret passage.”

I wasn’t sure if that was true, but I hadn’t even considered that there might be another one, so what did I know?

This passageway was darker, and Tara lit her tiny. thin aura, swirling it into a hidden rune that caused several small braziers to burst to life in the hallway.
I followed Tara through, and into a large cavern.

It was beautiful. Not in the natural beauty sort of way, but rather, the beauty of a professional workspace.

Half of the room was covered in shelving and books, with papers scattered all about. I saw notes in Tara’s tight scrawl referencing spatial dilation, temporal dilation, and other, even stranger aspects of charm magic like causality and sympathetic magic. There were piles of books on divination, and a smaller pile about wardbrekaing spells.

The components that had been stocked in the shelves reminded me of Medb’s ritual room – high quality, but mundane ingredients. There was one shelf that held more clearly aura infused components, but it had a pair of glass shutters over it, with wardlines carved through the wood all around it.
The other half of the room, however, was dominated by the three dimensional spell that Tara had clearly brought me here for.

It wasn’t a sphere, like I would have expected, but instead a series of thirteen pillars, each one terraced into three steps. Inset into the pillars were several scooped out, shallow bowls where components lay, both clearly magical and more mundane. There were dozens of aura crystals, each one filled with Tara’s brown aura.

Lines of thick, multicolored thread ran from pillar to pillar, connecting them, with bits of paper glued onto the thread, often intersecting two or more different strings.

Every inch of the complex pillars, thread, and paper was coated in runes. Much like the thread, these also ran in multiple different colors, and every single one of the runes was as tightly compacted as could be managed without a rune compression arch-star.

“Wow,” I said, taking in a deep breath. “Tara, this is…”

I didn’t even know what to say. It was clearly a permanent and powerful ritual circle, like the one the king had used to summon beings from the Starless Night. Instead of taking up an entire sprawling stadiium sized space, however, it took up a few hundred square feet of floorspace. It had also been clearly set up to be used for its ritual many times over.

“This is my archmage killing suit,” Tara said with a smirk, putting her hand on one of the pillars fondly. “What do you think?”