Chapter 9: Why are you casting spells with your armpits?
“Invocation for Gentle Currents, Mark II,” Fabrisse announced with all the pomp of a court herald and none of the authority. Mark II didn’t mean that he could cast a higher-level spell, it just meant that this low-level spell had been updated to a newer version.
“You didn’t bring any scrolls.” Dubbie looked up at him from her perch on a slanted boulder, her cloak bundled tightly around her knees. They had moved to the windward side of Reflection Knoll, where the hill thinned into a patchy ridgeline, offering a clearer view of the valley below—and, more importantly to Fabrisse, slightly better airflow. A proper breeze was essential for an air invocation, especially for those with limited innate resonance.“That’s correct.”
“So you’re just going to guess a Mark II pattern?”
“I will reconstruct it from my attentive studies.”
Dubbie narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t know what a Mark II pattern is supposed to look like, but that sounds like a very bad idea.”
Fabrisse rolled his shoulders. “It’s only bad if I mess up the phrasing, the gesture rhythm, the resonance timing, or the symbolic intention. Which I won’t.”
Dubbie watched him sketch a rough glyph shape into the air with his hands, then mutter under his breath and pause.
“Well?” Dubbie asked.
“I’m assembling a resonance trap,” he said as he crouched to scrape a shallow divot into the dirt. “A physical invocation vessel for symbolic anchoring.”
Resonance traps were a fallback technique. He’d learned them not because they were elegant, but because they were for people who couldn’t do it the normal way—who couldn’t stir the aether with raw emotion or command it with a strong enough internal pulse. When you couldn’t feel your way into resonance, you could try to build it.
Instead of channeling grief, fury, joy, or anything powerful enough to spark aetheric sympathy, you constructed a symbolic offering. It was the equivalent of saying to the aether: notice me, master.
He began stuffing the small dip with dry grass, a few stray leaf bits, and, for flair, the singular flower he’d picked earlier. It looked less like a magical focus and more like something a squirrel might reject for being too unstable.
He sat back, gestured grandly, and declared, “There. A ritual bowl for a god of drafts.”
The breeze promptly blew the whole thing away.
Fabrisse froze.
The System chimed in:
| [TRACE ELEMENT DETECTED: Air] — Air: Registered (3/5 elements held) — Begin resonance period: Awaiting Aetheric Impression. [WARNING: ‘Air’ has already been held in aetheric connection. Attempt to ‘contain’ Air may cause self-concept dissonance.]
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