The Abjurer: Chapter 34-35 (Patreon)

“Your archmage killing spell?” I asked, eyebrows raising at the phrasing.

“If I can’t have a little bit of drama for this, when can I?” Tara asked, a small, mousey smile on her face. I nodded my head in inclination, though I didn’t necessarily agree.

“I thought you kept those spells in your spell storage arch-star,” I said instead.

“I do,” Tara said. “But I’m not an enchanter, stuffing a spell like this into a single item. I need a setup for the spell. Instead of re-building the spell every time I need it, I created a permanent array that could handle dozens of castings of the same spell.”

I slowly paced around the spell, opening my third eye. Oracle manifested and swooped around the spell as well, so we could examine it from multiple angles.

I thought that I understood the logic, somewhat. I wasn’t a charm expert, so the exact details of the subtle connections were lost on me.

Still, I was able to figure out some things.

The pillars seemed to actually form the core of her armor – altering various charm and physical forces to keep her safe. It also seemed that each of the steps on the pillar was dedicated to sympathetic connections, luck manipulation, and a force that I’d only seen on Rowan’s sword – causality, I thought, though I understood even less about that force than the others.

The divination sections were easy enough for me to parse, since they were almost entirely on the strings. Tara was still the better diviner than I was – I would have been hard pressed to create the spells – but I didn’t need to be her level to parse them.

They seemed to primarily be forecasting local futures, like the danger detection spell that I’d seen, but far more advanced, actually letting Tara peer forwards at possibilities. A huge amount of the array was being used just to defend her mind from the onslaught of possibilities and sieve through them for the most likely situations.

Then, where the strings connected to the pillars, there were the spells that created her whip. It was incredibly elegant – instead of just creating a containment unit for the luck and letting it out over time, like Rowan’s spell did, it shaped the luck into a weapon, lined it with multiple other effects relating to sympathetic concepts of death that were bordering on faerie magic, and channeling her will through the shape.

Tara didn’t need to be a master of a whip to use the whip. She just needed a basic understanding, enough to will the whip to move as she wanted. Each strike would unload the negative luck she’d accrued, enforced with death.

Each of the components in the shallow bowls were incredibly precisely chosen, with the kind of exacting detail that I’d never managed to understand with components. I thought that even the dye of the strings had been done via potions carefully selected to help enhance the spell.

The runework… It was absolute mastery. While I thought I could manage to do runes at that level, I wouldn’t be able to reasonably improve.

“This is incredible,” I said, letting my breath out slowly. “I…”

I trailed off. I didn’t know what to say, actually. It was absolutely absurd. Beautiful. Incredible.

“I think I have a better understanding of how you were able to kill King Thomas,” I finally settled on. “I knew your armor was complex, but seeing this… I have a much better appreciation. It’s a true masterwork.”

Tara gave me a small smile at that and inclined her head.

“I’m glad you’re suitably impressed. So, let’s have a look at the design you had?”

I nodded, but first I strode over to her own spell. I tapped the whip design.

“Is it possible to rework this into a general sphere?”

“Absolutely,” Tara said. “It’s just a bad idea. Without being able to selectively target, you’re going to wind up hurting your allies.”

“Or innocent people,” I said idly, “but I’m going to be working on selection spells. Professor Hawthorne let it slip he has some sort of mind-magic, will-based selection spell, and I’m going to dig through the books for it.”

Tara’s eyes widened slightly.

“I’ll help,” she said. “You’re thinking of redirecting the bad luck from Rowan’s amulet to make an extra defensive layer?”

“Exactly,” I said. I moved to the pillar where I thought, though I wasn’t sure, that time magic warped the flow of time through you. “And I may add this in too. It should combine well with the mental and physical enhancement spells…”

Tara nodded in agreement, and then cleared a space off on her workspace, where I lay out my plan of fourty-nine spells.

Between the fifteen I already had, the ones I was planning to get from Tara, Emilia, and my armband, the ones I was stealing from Travis, and the ones I’d planned to add for elemental resistance, I had seventeen-ish slots of the forty-nine left to fill.

Ish, because Travis had implied that the mental selection spell wasn’t just one spell, so it would take up multiple slots, I just didn’t know how many.

I decided to scrawl in ‘freestanding scrying’ under the mind and body enhancement section of the cloak. It would strain my mental ability to process all the information some, but the increased speed of perception from the time section should hopefully offset it, and the Mind Bubble spell would stop it from overloading my mind too much. If it failed, I’d have to unstitch the spell and rework it.

And hey – there was a lot to be said for being able to see behind the enemy, and behind yourself as well. Not to mention all of the out of combat utility that freestanding scrying had.

Tara frowned when she saw it, meaning she didn’t approve, but the fact that she didn’t protest meant she didn’t disapprove strongly enough for it to be worth disagreeing. That was fine for me.

Tara bit her lip, then tapped one of the empty sections of seven.

“Why not spellbottles? It could attach to the metafunction set, which would hold the redirection spell, and then could attach to the abjuration section through the z-axis of a three dimensional spell, letting it strengthen both parts.”

“I don’t want to carry around a bunch of bottles,” I said, and Tara looked at me. I looked back. She looked harder, and I blinked.

“Then don’t,” she finally said.

“Don’t?” I asked.

“Don’t make them bottles.”

“But the spell relies on the shape of the bottle…” I said.

“As a sympathetic containment component, yes, that’s the standard and most effective shape, but others are viable, just not as efficient as pots or bottles. You’re putting this all into a new cloak, right?”

At my nod, she continued.

“Well, then you could make seven interior pockets, allowing you to use abjuration to break apart the spells and reassemble them under your control, but instead of being forced to instantly release them, you could use the metafunction to store it in a pocket. Then just let it free from the pocket when you want to use it.”

“I’ll have to look up a new design that can be used for pockets,” I said, “But yeah, that would link well. Travis actually brought up talking about thief spells, which I’m guessing are similar to this?”

Tara nodded.

“We once had an exhibition duel, and he used a spell bottle that sucked in one of my spells and let him store it for later. I’d be willing to bet it was something like this.”

That, in a weird way, made me feel better. Tara had experience to see them used that way, it wasn’t just something that I should have already known but didn’t.

“He also talked about planar disruption,” I said, tapping the last empty section. “I was saving that for here. I don’t know how complex it is, but worst case, I’ll just cut off connections to the elemental fields, attached to the selection spell.”

When Tara tilted her head, I explained.

“The phoenix that Archmage Roark has,” I said. “Also, there’s the archmage that had the metal bird, that was almost certainly an elemental too.”

“I see,” Tara said after a moment, then nodded. “Maybe if we connect that to the elemental attack magic blocking sections… And have the defense at your core…”

Oracle slipped back into my aura and pinged me mentally with an image of Osheen. I nodded, then looked at Tara.

“Are there any things we absolutely need here?” I asked. Tara considered, then pointed.

“These are the only books I’ve found about three dimensional spells, stolen from several different family vaults. I’d say we need them, since your seven sets of seven is fundamentally different from my thirteen sets of three and one hundred and thirty seven strings. I can guide, but this is a spell-by-spell basis, not a general set of rules.”

“Then let’s bring the spells up, and study them in the room?” I asked. “I don’t want to leave Osheen up there alone. I spent too much of the first semester ignoring him.”

Tara waffled back and forth, muttering about her wards and counter-scrying measures, before she eventually sighed and nodded.

“We can. But if I tell you to sprint for this room, do it. I don’t think – think – that they’re actively looking for these sorts of books, but if even one of my countermeasures alerts me, we need to get them back behind stronger defenses.”

I could agree to that – I didn’t want to gather any more attention from the nobility than I’d already gotten, and being found in the possession of dangerous books would definitely do that.

I glanced at Tara.

“Have you set up defenses around our room? You gave us copies of the books that we stole already…”

“I have,” Tara said.

That was both creepy, and reassuring. And perfectly in character for Tara, who’d already woven spells into me without my knowledge before.

“Thank you,” was all I said. Creepy or not, I saw why it had been necessary from her point of view.

I helped stack up the books and carried them back into the normal classroom. Osheen brightened when he saw us, and I smiled softly at him.

“How’s progress going?” I asked. He wouldn’t make an arch-star in a single night, but I still wanted to know.

“Honestly, not terrible,” he said. “In a weird way, the work we did on larger, more ritualistic spells has put me in the right mindset to create contingencies.”

I put down the books and slipped into the chair next to him. He reached down and took my hand, and I gladly squeezed back. Tara put her books in, and the three of us started working on my advanced armor spells.

Without actually knowing everything that was going into the completed cloak, there were limits on what I was able to add in, but it was good progress.

It also gave me some theories for what I was going to do for Osheen’s three sets of three. Since I had the water from Medb’s party, I was thinking of putting a secondary layer of water armor that would be able to form on top of his force armor, the same life enforcing spell that would pair with the force enhancement spell, and… Something. I didn’t know, but each of these would serve as a reinforcement of his tattoo, an extra, external layer. Probably something that could interface with his tattoo and let him channel power to refuel the reserves of the artifact without much efficiency loss, since the tattoo already had a complex spell to allow for stripping Osheen’s aura of the fire rune for its use.

The other two circles… One would have a copy of Mellt’s cage, since absurd lightning protection was incredibly useful, then the vision protection, and the weather protection orb, since that could give him some fresh air.

The third and final circle would cover the weaknesses he had – a mind bubble, ghost plate, and future sight.

I slid the papers over to Osheen, to see what he thought, and he added some suggestions of his own. Tara made her suggestions too, and as the night ticked on, we worked on the designs of both spells, and on Osheen’s arch-star.

It was still magecraft and enchanting work, yes, but I wasn’t shoving Osheen away like I had been in the first semester. We were together. And as the night ticked by, he never let go of my hand.

~~~

The next several weeks flew by in a rather similar manner, with me getting instruction from Travis and Tara both, but always making sure to eat lunch with Osheen and my friends, and making sure to rope Osheen into the conversations that Tara and I had. I made sure to eat dinner with Osheen at our table, rather than working through the night, and I thought I was starting to get a handle on balancing work and life better.

I used the potion crafting club to brew potions that would be of some use for my improved cloak, like the shaping disruption potion, and dug out the mental spell that Travis had hinted at.

It took three spells to manage, which wasn’t too bad. Better than the worst case I’d prepared for, but not as good as the best case. The first spell used lots of will related magic that actually slightly reminded me of will-based triggers that I integrated into enchantments, but it also had perceptual magic that I didn’t understand. It fed the results into another spell, which reminded me of a memory bank, but had some strong differences that I didn’t understand. The removal was a third spell entirely, and I wasn’t sure why – it seemed odd to me. Surely there was a way to combine adding and removing?

But I wasn’t about to try and improve on magic I didn’t understand, so I let it lie.

Osheen and I also spent some time working on his new spell designs. After the stress test that Medb had forced him to undergo, we had some seriously useful data on which parts of the spell worked, and which didn’t. I used some divination spells to look for what the notes from the Hawthorne family had to say on the subject, but I couldn’t find a lot – they were a witch family, so that wasn’t surprising.

Still, there were some things. Travis’ own notes on flame foci turned out to be of some use to Osheen, giving him some ideas on how to improve the spells that he already had.

One weekend, Osheen and I flew out to the Yesgol ritual sacrifice site, both to gather more blue bloodcap, and for a small project that I had in mind, suggested by Tara. If she was right, it would be the perfect addition to the spells I was preparing.

This time, Osheen was calmer about the site. Not happy, of course, but I brought some picnic baskets of food that we could eat, and did my best to keep his mind off of it.

I started preparing to call in the first of the three favors the spring king owed me, writing out a list of components that Tara and Osheen suggested, as well as ones that I had in mind.

With the free time, I also made Awell Meddal the spell she’d requested, as well as the one for Lyn. Awell didn’t appear herself, which was mildly disappointing – I’d been hoping for another chance to speak to her.

But when I checked over the functions that she’d built into the arm bracer to let me call her, I noted they weren’t gone. In fact, they only needed a touch of aura to activate them.

I’d save that for later – getting her to look over the weather spell would be a useful boon, as long as the price wasn’t too high. Maybe I could even incorporate some of the Court of Air’s magic into the spell.

The weeks weren’t the kind of explosive progress of Medb’s party, but they were important progress nevertheless, allowing us to slowly catch up.

One morning, however, Travis broke from the usual pattern.

“Alright,” he said, leaning back. “You’ve gotten about all you can out of my instruction on spell barriers and shaping disruption fields.”

I had to disagree there – there were obviously several things he was holding back, and if I didn’t have the books he’d written, I might have pressed him for more details. Instead, I just nodded in faux-agreement.

“What’s next? I’d love to learn about those… Thief spells. Based on the name, what I’ve been able to throw together, and what I’ve found in the library…”

I took out some paper and showed him some toned down version of the spell I’d already looked up in the Hawthorne notes and that Tara had suggested to me.

“Then implement it and reflection to make a spell that you can trap in a spell bottle,” I finished.

Travis looked over the diagrams and raised an eyebrow.

“Well, kid… Yeah, this is mostly it.”

He went on to make a few corrections, most of which were to Tara’s portions of the spell. That was interesting to me – they didn’t necessarily increase the efficiency or power, but they were a slightly cleaner way to use it for enchantments.

After we finished though, he grinned at me.

“Already figured out planar abjuration? Or can I still teach you a few tricks?”

I shook my head.

“I haven’t had time to search the library for those and thief spells, and my other projects.”

I thought Travis actually let out a small sigh of relief at that, and I had to stop myself from smirking.

“Now, the thing about this sort of magic,” he said, “is that it’s halfway into druidry. You’re already dancing that line well enough, so I expect you should be able to make great use out of it.”

That sent a pang of anxiety through me, and I had to put on a fake smile. Travis didn’t seem to notice, though, and just kept talking.

“This is adjacent to portal magic. But while that involves using the chaos between worlds to link two points, this involves using that link to push them apart. At its most basic level, it can weaken the effects of ley lines on the ambient magic in a space, slightly decrease the power of familiar vessels, and weaken all power drawn from any nonhuman plane, but that’s essentially the shaping disruption of this side of magic.”

“I’d like to see that,” I said, “it sounds useful for if I have to fight a druid.”

“True enough,” Travis said, sketching out the spell, or at least, a toned down version. I planned to get the real thing from his notes later.

A week and a half later, once I’d completed that spell to his satisfaction, we moved on.

“Now the interesting thing with the more advanced version of the spells is that you can, in theory, create a spell block for aura being drawn from a plane. Naturally, this is more limited – you need the core of a familiar vessel from that plane, for one.”

“You can just… Block out the interference of an entire plane?” I asked. “That’s absurd. You’re telling me I could just stop the Silver Queen from bothering me?”

Travis shot me an odd look, then nodded.

“Ah, I forgot you two had the whole… Whatever it is you have. But no, and yes.”

I gave him a flat look.

“Nothing is absolute. Not in life. Not in magic. But by increasing the distance between their plane and our own, you can make them expend far more magic than you are to achieve the same effect.”

“Isn’t that just getting into a contest of raw power?” I asked dubiously.

Travis shot me an annoyed glance.

“First, there’s nothing wrong with contests of power.”

I grunted, not agreeing, but not willing to fight him.

“Second… Yes, and no. You’re paying a constant price in power, but they have to expend more power for the more power they’re sending. If they want to just create a small light, the extra cost you’re imposing will be low, but if they want to manifest fully, that’s going to impose an absolutely absurd cost.”

He showed me the spell diagrams, and I had to admit they were complex – more complex than I could understand, in all honesty. I got the most basic theory, but there were clearly elements that were completely different from any magic I’d ever studied. It wasn’t just that it was more like druidic magic than other magic I’d used. It clearly had sympathetic elements that I didn’t understand, too, and maybe other magic that I couldn’t even really guess at.

Worse, there were entire sections of the diagram he drew that were left blank. Not just a small bit either – almost half the spell was missing entirely.

“What’s that?” I asked, tapping the huge blank spots

“Magic from that world, provided from a source. There’s a reason that I said you needed a familiar’s core. That’s the easiest way to get a source of otherworldly magic. You then need runework from that world that is their description of our world, and acts as a mirror to the sections I showed.”

I nodded. I’d search for those in his books, but if I couldn’t find them, I wasn’t sure what I’d do.

“What about the wandering path?” I eventually asked. “It’s a dead plane. Nothing there is alive, so there’s no magic I can insert there.”

“There’s no magic there?” Travis asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Okay, there is magic, but no runework.”

“True,” Travis agreed.

I eyed him, annoyed, and he gave me a broad smile.

“Why don’t you figure it out? I’m sure it would be a good strain of your enchanting.”

I turned the problem over in my head. Presumably, I could use a connection to the wandering path, like the one I’d gotten last year, or the ligature knot, as a substitute for the magic. He was right, there was magic there.

But there wasn’t any runework.

Eventually, I wrote a few runes into the space – old Bradlewyr text, speaking of the emptiness of a vast plane, and how empty space could never touch a filled space, how they were diametrically opposed. Then, I connected those runes in the same line and structure arrangement as the half that Travis had already provided, but in reverse, as if holding up a mirror to them.

“A bit more poetic than I like, but I shouldn’t be surprised, coming from someone who’s got as many faerie connections as you,” Travis said. “It’s… Acceptable. Not good – you should refine it. But it is barely passable.”

I’d look up the one he had in his family records later, but I actually thought mine might be a better fit if I was going to use an extra ligature knot – I was pretty sure that I’d be able to pick one up from Clara, while I had no idea where I’d be able to get access to the magic any other way, given how expensive that sort of artifact was.

The ligature’s knot was fae magic, though, and like Travis had said, I used a fair bit of faerie magic. Using old Bradlewyr and poetic language might actually increase the efficacy, rather than decrease it.

While Travis and I ran through the spell diagram, looking at how specific bits of it worked, I had only two thoughts.

The first was amusement. I’d always been told magic was dangerous, and you needed to understand everything you were doing, but from my very first artifact, I’d been in over my head. I didn’t understand how the Assassin’s Cloak worked then, and even now, I didn’t entirely understand every aspect of it, though I had a much better idea.

This was the same. I didn’t truly understand the powers I was working with, but I’d bend them to my will anyways, and I’d use them to make what was more than likely the most powerful magic item that I’d ever create.

That was funny, at least to me. The ignorant four arch-star mage, who simply stumbled his way into great power by clicking together the pieces that others who had actually understood magic had created.

The other part of my mind, however, was categorizing. If I had a general planar lock, then put a lock for each of the six planes, I’d be able to effectively slow down and maybe even stop magic from all other planes.

Well. Maybe not all of them. There were still deep planes, and the world was wide. Maybe on one of the small islands on the other side of the planet, they’d have access to planes that I’d never even imagined.

But all of the known planes, at the very least.

I’d have to connect them to the mental selection function, in order to allow Oracle, Brigette, and any other allies from another plane to avoid the ill effects, but that was fine.

The third iteration of my cloak was slowly coming together.