A Practical Guide to Sorcery [BOOK 6 STUBBING JULY 24]

Sebastien

Month 9, Day 29, Wednesday 4:00 a.m.

In the privacy and silence of deepest night, Sebastien and Legion went through a series of increasingly powerful tests for her new void-shield. They made several discoveries.

Sebastien retained the ability to modify the void-shield’s form easily, so much so that calling it a shield seemed somewhat inaccurate. It could be a black tentacle, a raven, or even rise up in the familiar form of her frightening, beaked shadow familiar with its long clawed fingers and fluttering hood. However, the sensory input she could glean from the light her shadow absorbed had decreased significantly.

By testing increasingly powerful fireballs shot from an array set up on her bedside table, she confirmed that it could absorb as much power as she was able to send at it. She had expected that to be the limit.

However, Legion was greedy for more energy and reckless in the way only someone who had trouble truly understanding consequences could be. “We need to be able to protect against more than someone of your puny strength. Let us see what happens with a real fireball,” they said, speaking from a spot that felt like it was just behind her eyeballs. Legion was still too exhausted from their previous altercation with her to try to manifest outside of her head—especially without the protection of wearing her shadow.

“Do you know what happens to a human body if it gets hit by a real fireball, minus less than a thousand thaums?”

Legion hesitated for a moment, then sent her a flashing thought of a whole spitted pig roasting over a fire, its skin cracking and juices dripping into the flames below.

“Exactly,” she said. “Except more screaming. And might I remind you that you are also housed by this body? If I have no mind and memories to hold you, and my flesh is ruined due to being cooked, where will you go?” In truth, her warding medallion might shunt the spell into the walls, but they were made of wood, and blowing out her wall in a huge explosion was still not a viable option.

Legion paused for another long moment, then rallied boldly. “Who said you had to shoot the fireball at yourself? Are you stupid? Just shoot the fireball at that basin of water you use to bathe and place your shadow in between!”

‘That…might work.’ The basin was metal, the walls of her apartment were warded to the gills for privacy, so the sound would be contained, and if she layered a few temporary wards around the basin to absorb the damage, at most there would be a bit of mess and perhaps some warped metal.

Half an hour later, they tested it, and her shadow—and thus Legion—absorbed almost three times the amount of power that she could channel alone.

Over several more experiments, they found that this multiplier held relatively stable.

This confused her only for a moment, as she felt Legion’s eager presence in her mind encouraging her to continue the testing, giving off the impression of a greedy dragon licking its muzzle after devouring a haunch of tender steak. Apparently, at least for this specific application, Legion was able to boost her ability.

This meant little in the face of an attack by someone like Thaddeus, as the difference between them was more than one order of magnitude, but it could mean the difference between being killed and walking away unscathed by an attack from someone like Frederick Pendragon.

She tried to get Legion to boost her capacity for an offensive spell—anything other than her void-shadow.

They simply sent back the impression of a bug-eyed pug dog staring stupidly back at her. “I can’t. I don’t know how. What you’re asking doesn’t even make sense.”

“Is it because it doesn’t have anything to do with being hungry? With…Hyperiodax?”

She felt the mention of that name send a little fission of fear and longing through Legion.

Somewhat disappointed, she moved on to testing other things, like using a tentacle of shadow-void to freeze a glass of water. This accidentally broke the glass itself, which couldn’t withstand the sudden temperature change, and left behind a mostly cylindrical-shaped piece of ice, sitting innocently within a small field of shattered glass. “Is this how you injured Thaddeus?” she asked, remembering the time when Legion had attacked the man through the faceplate of his armor.

“Partially. When I take over your shadow, I am able to affect the movement of the matter within it to a small degree. That is how I form sound and such,” Legion said, its voice more like a memory suddenly recalled than actual sound.

Sebastien tilted her head to the side and rubbed her ear, still slightly discomfited by having something else so blatantly in her head. “What happens if I recast the void-shadow spell to absorb physical attacks as well as energy?”

Legion responded with nothing but a strong sense of blankness, and then a quickly propagating flare of curiosity, like a light-crystal switched on. “Let us continue experimenting?” They were no longer starving, but now they simply wanted to try the taste of something new.

She considered the necessary concept to modify her shadow-familiar in that direction and quickly realized a problem. She felt it was reasonable that a shadow could absorb light, and since light was just one form of energy, for it to also absorb heat and magic. The void was emptiness, and once it devoured something with the spark of life, that spark would never escape again. However, the spell wasn’t actually just absorbing the energy or causing it to disappear like some small avatar of entropy. It was a conduit of sorts, and the power was going to Legion.

If she absorbed a pebble, where would the pebble go? For that matter, what would happen to the air touching her shadow, which was technically also matter?

The spell was not meant to destroy or annihilate. The void was like the space between stars. It was close to the concept of nothingness, but it was not nothingness. It was emptiness, not non-being. And it certainly wasn’t some portal that directly teleported enemy attacks into outer space.

If she could cast the shadow-familiar spell with the concept of non-being, that would very likely work to get rid of the pebble, but it also contradicted the method for energy absorption, and she wasn’t sure how to mentally reconcile the two ideas.

Sebastien paced back and forth, but ended up stubbing her toe on the edge of her rickety bedframe, then hopping around on one leg while Legion howled with schadenfreude inside her mind, sending her mental flashes of slapstick characters from plays injuring themselves on stage.

“Shut up!” she hissed between gritted teeth. When her throbbing toe calmed down, she tried to think about the void-shield’s limitations from another angle. Sometimes, when casting a spell without a sufficient source of power, mass would begin to be draw from the Sacrifice area instead. This was dangerous, but didn’t necessarily indicate complete loss of control. It had even happened to her a couple of times, and she hadn’t died. So obviously, there was some precedence for matter being converted directly into magical energy, even at great loss of efficiency.

However, even that wasn’t the same as trying to devour a pebble with a shadow-void. The only way that she understood mass being converted into energy was the same way a stomach might do to food, or how a chemical reaction turned wood into heat and light. ‘No, both of those processes produce waste products. Even if I got energy out of the pebble, that doesn’t mean it would entirely disappear, right?’

In spellwork, clarity was important. For an experimental method like this, critically so. Trying to cast a spell based on a concept she didn’t understand at all seemed like a bad idea, especially when the newness of this magic was already enough to make it dangerous.

‘I wonder if theoreticians have any idea where the energy lost when converting physical phenomena into magical power goes, or what exactly happens to matter that is devoured to power a spell. If they do, that might be the key.’ None of her classes had even hinted at explaining the problem.

But that didn’t leave her entirely without options. If she couldn’t devour a pebble, did that mean her void-shadow was useless against it? That she’d been able to freeze a glass of water proved otherwise.

She didn’t think causing objects to explode on contact was necessarily wise, but she had a better idea. If she could absorb all of the heat from a pebble, why not also its kinetic energy? There was even a precedent for such spells, and it was the reason why some factories and mage towers were set up directly beside rivers.

Sebastien dropped her shadow-familiar spell and cast it again with this more robust concept in mind. She was even more meticulous than the last time, since kinetic energy was a more unfamiliar form of power to her.

She set up a small trigger on her bedside table to shoot one of the shards from the broken glass at her shadow-void. The razor-sharp fragment hit the surface of pure darkness and stopped as if it had met a physical barrier, then stayed suspended in the air. When she queried Legion, she found that they were not receiving any more energy while the piece of glass hung there, but there were also no negative effects like energy drain.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

She moved the shadow away, and the glass dropped to the ground. ‘Wow. Why doesn’t anyone else cast their shields like this? It’s so ingenious! Every move by my enemy will only make me stronger…’ Of course, other people did not have an Aberrant touched by a Titan’s concept of hunger living inside their minds, and most of them had probably never been intimately introduced to the concept of the void.

After they tested her ability to stop projectiles a few more times, she determined that Legion improved her potential here, too, but only by about twice her inherent capacity. She wasn’t sure if the difference lay with her understanding of the magic, or how well-matched the shadow-familiar spell was to the purpose, or even something about Legion themself.

But merely doubling her ability to keep herself safe in the worst-case scenarios was nothing to complain about.

By the time the sun rose, Legion was feeling over-stuffed with energy and desperately in need of returning to their hibernation to recuperate.

“What will you do with all this power?” Sebastien asked.

“Reinforce myself and hoard the rest. I am not allowed to act without your permission, remember?” They receded into the depths of her mind before she could ask anything else.

Sebastien reluctantly let them go and returned to the first book in Myrddin’s set of journals, which she had yet to finish reading through page by page.

After rubbing its leather covering reverently, she set it aside on her bed.

From her satchel and a couple of the cabinets where she had stored extra belongings, she gathered some metal, wood, and glue from her satchel and used various spells to created a miniature book half the size of her palm. The pages were made of her imitation orb-weaver silk, and once she’d done that, she got a little carried away with the details, refining the book’s binding and cover and adding some diamond and gold accents.

On the inside of the back cover, she even added her personal guiding light symbol, painted invisibly with seawater. The tiny book lit up as another beacon in her mind’s eye. It couldn’t be lost, now, even if she lent it to someone else.

The miniature book had the same dimensions—scaled down—as Myrddin’s journal, except with fewer pages, because even though silk was proportionately thinner than high grade parchment, the thickness couldn’t be scaled down to the same degree as the rest of the book. When she was satisfied, she secured it within a spherical metal frame that she engraved a spell array onto.

Sebastien tested this contraption a few times and found it easy enough to use the spell array to write on and turn the miniature book’s pages—even when it was tucked away in her pocket. Satisfied, she opened Myrddin's journal, passed the glyph test easily, and began to read from the beginning, using the third branch of her Will to transcribe everything into the miniature book in exacting detail as she went. Even things that looked like random scribbles in the margins might have been unusual glyphs, so she skipped nothing.

She had already transcribed some of this journal to give to Liza as payment, but understood the contents only slightly better this second time around. ‘This kind of exclusive knowledge would be a valuable enticement to others, too. Almost any serious thaumaturge would be irresistibly tempted by the offer. And as is obvious by what the expedition went through to retrieve it in the first place, many would even be willing to risk their lives for it. Even if I can’t understand them, these things will be immediately useful to me. Since I cannot, even more reason that I need to draw in those who can. My goals are too large to complete alone.’

The idea of delegation—which required ongoing management—was deeply unappealing, but she knew she couldn’t escape it. To make that feasible, she needed to share not only the work and the risk, but also provide benefits.

She managed to get through all three methods to create self-charging artifacts as well as the section designing what could only be considered an artificial household brownie replacement before discovering something new.

On a mere four pages, as if it were so easy that it came from his brain fully formed—or perhaps had already been developed and was merely being recorded here—Myrddin had given the design for a tiny reconnaissance “bug” artifact that looked like a fat-bellied sprite. This design was accompanied by the spell instructions for a function that directly transferred both image and sound to the user, as well as a recording function that was like nothing Sebastien had ever seen before. It etched encoded information as microscopic three-dimensional structures into a palm-sized slab of glass.

Myrddin noted that it could store at least a hundred hours of visual and audio impressions or the content of over one thousand books, but was too much of a hassle to personally inscribe without a standardized compression and display method that could be handled by the artifacts themselves.

Sebastien felt that Myrddin’s standards were too high, and instinctively looked up and to her left to share her expression of shock, but found no one standing next to her. Somehow, being shocked alone was less satisfying.

She tried poking Legion, but without the crown of madness, she wasn’t even sure if her mental poke did anything, since they didn’t respond at all.

With a sigh, she looked up through the window letting in morning sunlight through the angled roof to let her emotions settle. She didn’t quite understand how it was possible to store sound or a moving image in glass, but if someone were able to replicate the method from the succinct instructions written here, wouldn’t this be superior to any method of data storage currently available? After all, not everyone could read or have an artifact read for them, but books still sold en masse.

The various potential use cases almost made her dizzy.

‘Could sales of this be enough to fund a shadow organization?’ she marveled. ‘Oh, not just this, but Myrddin’s brownie-sized automaton design might appeal to the super-wealthy, especially if the nested behavior choices using all those sub-arrays are impressive enough. It’s nothing compared to what he developed with Carnagore, so I don’t feel like I’m losing out on much by releasing it.’

Unfortunately, as she continued to transcribe, she found Myrddin had dropped that project before completing all of the nested sub-arrays to control the automaton’s behavior, so she wasn’t sure if the project was actually viable.

By the time she finished copying out the first map in this journal—the one she suspected was compiled from the best maps Myrddin had access to during his time—her Will was growing fatigued, but she’d lasted much longer than she once would have been able to. She’d also filled the entire miniature book.

She removed it from the frame, made a few more blank copies for future transcription, then took an afternoon nap. When she was refreshed, she looked at the wasted time and made a trip to Liza’s.

Siobhan had stepped halfway through the front door when she froze, then tripped over the doorstep.

Liza was inside, pointing a battle wand straight at Siobhan’s head. The woman didn’t lower her weapon for an uncomfortably long time, which Siobhan thought was unwarranted, seeing as Liza had to recognize her, and was also the one who had given Siobhan access to her apartment.

Siobhan smiled awkwardly until Liza said, “Do you know how much hassle and gold you’ve cost me by neglecting to care for my plants and animals properly?”

Siobhan pushed out her lower lip and widened her eyes pitifully. “That wasn’t my fault. I was half-dead and fighting for my life. And,” she said, lifting one forefinger, “I never actually agreed to take care of the house for you. You just left me a note demanding free labor!”

Liza lowered her wand and looked Siobhan up and down. “Are you injured? What happened?”

Siobhan’s expression couldn’t maintain any levity. “I can’t talk about it, and you probably don’t want to know. For your own sake.”

Liza pressed her full lips together, sighed, and scratched at her frizzy, unkempt hair. “Well, fuck. One of those situations, huh?”

“Have you had a situation like that, yourself?”

Liza tucked the battle wand into her tangled mass of hair and turned to walk into the next room, waving over her shoulder for Siobhan to follow. “I was in a special operations team for the military,” she said, as if that were answer enough. “Why are you here?”

“I wanted to cast the sleep-proxy. But since I ran into you…” Siobhan mentally calculated the funds she had on hand, then gritted her teeth and put in an extensive order for emergency-preparedness artifacts, at such an exorbitant price that she almost spat out blood from the metaphorical blow to her wallet.

She could only console herself that she would earn it all back and find some way to exploit Liza’s labor in revenge. But since the woman then led her down to the level below and helped her cast the sleep-proxy spell again, she swallowed all of her ire down and thanked Liza sweetly.

Liza stared at her, eyes half-lidded over a steaming cup of tea. “Are you scheming something?”

“Always,” Siobhan admitted. “But this involves giving you access to more information from Myrddin’s journals.”

Liza’s mouth wobbled as if the woman couldn’t decide between a suspicious scowl and a smile. “What’s the catch?”

Siobhan looked away guiltily. “Let’s talk about that later.” She didn’t want to discuss it until she had ironed out more of the details. Otherwise, once she couldn’t answer the most basic questions, she would seem incompetent and lose whatever trust Liza might have for her.

Liza made a fake swipe for Siobhan’s head as she passed by, as if she were going to smack her in punishment, but Siobhan ducked and scurried up the stairs and then out of the house, holding back her smile all the way. She only realized after she was halfway to her next destination that she’d forgotten to ask about Liza’s absence.

She needed access to a well-stocked library, but she was still too afraid to visit the University, so she switched into Sebastien’s form and showed up unannounced at Westbay Manor instead.

The doorman recognized Sebastien immediately, and though none of the actual Westbay family members were home at that moment, his eyes softened and he let her in. When she explained her purpose, he led her to the library with a low-voiced warning not to ever mention it in the presence of Lord Westbay. “Shall I have some snacks brought up?”

Sebastien almost declined, but then changed her mind, and over the course of the next couple of hours perusing history books and outdated maps, ate the entire, party-sized platter along with a pot of tea.

With the references, she was able to approximately date the first map in Myrddin’s journal based on borders and what places were named. As close as she could narrow it down—as long as Myrddin’s knowledge of the world was up to date at the time of drawing it—he had written that entry somewhere around 1025 BCE, when the man was between 170 and 180 years old.

When she returned home, she practiced light-refinement, played around with creating lifelike illusions of difficult substances like running water, a field of grass blowing in the wind, and light reflecting off of and refracting through a spinning, faceted crystal.

With the sleep-proxy spell in place, she didn’t grow tired, so that evening she resumed her transcription work.

After the first map—and that strange question about whether magic might extend to the moon—Myrddin had left another note.

I look up at the stars and wonder what is beyond them. Is it possible to measure the size of the universe, I wonder? I believe it might be possible to make a spell travel faster than light with transmogrification.

Ah, no. What was I thinking? Even if I could manage it—and the idea seems increasingly outlandish the more I consider it—I realize even considering it is foolish. Who knows what might be out there, what kind of thing might notice my feeble attempts and grow curious about this tiny, bright little planet?

The words chilled Siobhan’s back, and she glanced around to ensure nothing was watching her from the corners of the room or from under the bed, even though she knew she was alone. ‘Surely, Myrddin didn’t have reason to believe that there was something out there. He was just speculating blindly about the undefined dangers of the vast unknown, right?’