52: Infernal Mana, Arcane Diagram
"I don't understand what you're talking about," Liam said. “If the problem is that I don’t have enough mana, then that means I didn’t fail, right?”
“It means I can’t tell if you did something wrong to fail drawing the spell diagram,” Albert said.
“I…”
Liam cut off before saying “I see” again. He figured that might get him another smack from the cat. Especially when even he could admit he didn’t see. Not this time.
"Run through the spell diagram again," Albert said.
"Are you sure that's safe? You're positive it's not going to blow up because I don’t have enough mana?”
"Not when we're surrounded by a bunch of arcana oak," Albert said. “Trust me. If the Inquisition doesn’t want you casting offensive magic then you’re not going to be able to cast any magic. Not unless you’re a much higher Ascension than you are currently.”
"And they won't be able to feel me doing this," Liam said.
"Possibly not," Albert said, but he said it after a momentary hesitation that didn’t have Liam feeling better about this. "It's always possible they’ll be able to detect it, but nothing ventured in life means nothing gained, right?"
"I suppose," Liam muttered, not liking the sound of it, but he also supposed he didn't have much choice.
So he summoned the spell diagram in his mind again. It didn't quite come easily. Never easily. It was as though he was trying to pull something out of the depths of one of the deeper ponds out in the Felwood, and whatever was lurking down in those depths didn't want to be pulled up. But eventually the diagram appeared, and it was a little easier than earlier when he was having difficulty getting it to appear in his mind at all.
He let out a relieved sigh. Again, he wasn't sure why he suddenly cared what Albert thought about anything, but with the cat there in his mind watching over everything, he did care a little more than he did before.
"Very good," Albert said. "Now begin."
So Liam began. He started painting with the mana brush in his mind.
"There," Albert said. "Why did you know to stop there?"
Liam paused at the end of a stroke he’d just cut off. The diagram in front of him seemed to pulse for a moment.
"Is it going to try to blow up if we don't continue?" Liam asked.
"I'm going to be brief about this, and I'm going to gloss over a lot of things that you would probably spend a lot of time learning if you were unfortunate enough to be taught by those preening prima donnas at the Academy," Albert said.
"Okay," Liam said.
"Which means I don't want you to be asking any annoying follow-up questions. Am I understood? I can explain all of this later if you manage to survive, but I’m only telling you things that are relevant to you living through the next day or so right now.”
"Okay," Liam said. "Sounds reasonable enough."
"I can feel the questions in your head even as you say you're not going to ask questions," Albert said.
"You're the one wasting time now," Liam pointed out.
"Fine. Normally when students are being taught this sort of thing for the first time, it's done in a room where there is spell dampening all around anyway. So actually, the Inquisition has done you a favor by putting you in here."
"That's a funny way of looking at what they've done," Liam said.
"You have an advantage borne out of adversity," Albert said. "Take it."
"Okay," Liam said.
"The other thing is that once you start working on a spell diagram, it will largely stay in place as long as you only put the bare minimum of mana through it to maintain drawing it."
"So why did the Slow Fall spell explode?" Liam asked.
"Because another common mistake people who are new to spell casting make, and a reason why they take precautions when they're teaching this sort of thing, is that the novice spell caster will try to put too much mana through something too early. It's a delicate balance you have to learn on your own. One of those things that's more of an art than a science, and part of the reason why those unimaginative geniuses forcing mana to do things with ridiculously stacked on and off states put those mana devices together in the first place. This is something you get a feel for. Not something you can be told."
"I see," Liam said, then winced. The cat didn’t make any move to smack him. "Like knowing where to put the proper stroke on the page."
"I suppose," Albert said. "I was never very much into artistry. Only spells and magic."
"Okay then," Liam said. "So if I put too much magic through, then this will explode."
"This one won't explode," Albert said. "You're in a makeshift dampening chamber. Certainly it's a makeshift dampening chamber that is designed to keep potential criminals from using magic to attack Inquisitors, but it's still the same idea.”
"Okay," Liam said. "So I started there because it seemed like the simplest structure in the diagram."
"Structure?" Albert asked, the question obvious in his voice.
"Well, yeah," Liam said. "If you look at the mana diagram in front of you, it's clear the thing is made up of smaller structures that form a whole. There is this, this, and this that have sort of a curved square shape, but then there's a little line that goes beyond it. And it makes sense that you’d start with the long line on the right and then move the brushstroke up top here.
Liam used the mana brush to highlight the points he was talking about, but he was careful not to actually put down any mana with that mental brush. He was surprised to realize he could do that. He’d just done it without thinking. Like moving a pencil over the page without pressing hard enough to leave a mark.
“I see," Albert said.
Liam resisted the urge to smack the cat for using the forbidden phrase. He didn’t think that would end well. Instead he continued on.
"And then you can use those smaller structures within the diagram to build towards a larger structure. I noticed the same thing with the other spells I put together, but I didn't have time to sit and think about the nature of the spell diagram in either of those cases. I have had time to sit and think about this one.”
“Fascinating,” Albert said. "So I'm going to go through this once, just to show you how I would do it. Release the mana, but bring back the spell diagram once it disappears.”
"Done," Liam said. He released the mana. The spell diagram pulsed once and then disappeared. He wondered if that meant it would explode under normal circumstances. Probably. With a thought he summoned the diagram again. It came easier this time, but still with reluctance.
Albert moved through the diagram, and he moved through it faster than Liam would have thought possible. He'd been spending all this time laboriously moving the mana brush in his mind across the various strokes in a way that seemed intuitive to him, and yet Albert did all of it in an instant.
"Did you see what I did there?" Albert asked.
"It was so fast,” Liam breathed out, in awe of the cat's ability.
"Are you kidding?" Albert said. "I slowed that down by a lot so you’d be able to see it."
"Oh, I see," Liam said.
The cat idly tapped him on the chest with a paw, then went back to it.
"Let me do it one more time, and I'll try to slow it down even more. Though this is second nature to me, so it's difficult to slow it down too much."
"Go ahead," Liam said.
"You don't give me permission to instruct you," Albert said with a huff.
"I bet you weren't anyone’s favorite teacher," Liam muttered.
"I'm going to ignore your sassiness because I want to make it through this with my consciousness continuing to exist rather than being reabsorbed into the mana around here," Albert said. "Gods know how long it will be before somebody else comes along if I get reabsorbed."
"I feel so sorry for you," Liam said in a tone that he was surprised to realize he genuinely did.
Albert paused for a moment. He could sense the surprise coming from the cat.
"Well, thank you for that," Albert said, and at least he had the good grace to sound embarrassed.
He went through the diagram one more time. This time it was slower, but it was still fast enough that Liam was having trouble keeping up. But it mostly seemed to be done in the same way that he’d been doing it.
"That's the same way I did it," he said.
"Exactly," Albert said. "Somehow you managed to intuit how to draw a mana diagram starting from the basic building blocks, and then moving your way to the larger structures. I don't know how you did that."
"Is that odd?" Liam asked.
"It's the kind of thing that usually takes..."
"...weeks of instruction for beginners,” Liam said, rolling his eyes mentally inside the void they floated in. "Yeah, you keep saying that."
"More like months for that one," Albert said. "And sometimes even years. There are some students who end up learning everything through rote memorization rather than actually bothering to learn the underlying structure of how everything is supposed to work."
Liam almost said "I see" again, but then he stopped because that seemed to get an irritated reaction from the cat every time he said it.
"Interesting," he said instead.
"It is interesting," Albert said. "Are you sure you've never studied this sort of thing?"
"I mean, there was some talk about runes in some of the books I read, but nothing that went into any great depth.”
"And any book about runes that was allowed in the library of some country squire would’ve been very vague and general indeed," Albert said. "The Academy doesn't like that sort of thing getting out.”
"There were also the books I used to learn how to sketch," Liam said with another one of those mental shrugs that wasn't even really a shrug from the middle of the void he floated in.
"Interesting," Albert said. "Well, either way, you seem to be doing a good job here."
"Okay, now what happens if I try this with infernal mana?" Liam asked.
"That is a very interesting question indeed," Albert said. "Nobody has ever tried that before, as far as I know.”
"So it's not a good idea, and I should avoid it," Liam said, pausing in the act of reaching into his infernal core and pulling out a mana brush.
"Oh no, not at all," Albert said. "This is the kind of experimentation I was hoping for when I created you."
"My parents created me," Liam said in irritation. "And they died because of you."
"Because of those assholes at the Academy and my traitorous assistant," Albert corrected.
"Whatever,” Liam muttered.
The mana brush started to move in his mind, but something seemed off. Almost like it was fighting him. Which reminded him of his experience with the infernal Ascensions, and the help he got from Ana in that process.
Which, come to think of it, felt similar to reaching out and finding Albert. He wondered if there was something o that.
"Is something wrong?" Albert asked.
"I just wish I had Ana here to help me with this," he muttered.
He moved to start painting the diagram in the same way he'd painted the diagram before with his arcane mana brush. He moved it around, trying to move through the diagram in the same way he had before, only he had to fight the infernal brush every step of the way.
He thought about what Ana had said. How he needed to take command with infernal mana, and so he very firmly took a mental hold on the brush, and suddenly it moved more easily.
He moved through the brush strokes the same as he had before, only at the very end he didn't put so much as a trickle of mana through the thing. It pulsed for a moment. It almost felt like that mana would like to explode as well, but he kept his firm hold on it. Told it that under no circumstances would it do that. So it didn’t.
Instead, something happened that was unlike anything he'd ever felt before. It was as though that power moved out from all around him, through the walls and into the surrounding area. It was very faint, but it was definitely there.
And there was an immediate reaction from the Inquisitors who he could still hear out there all around him. Cries of dismay and surprise, though it only seemed to be from the ones in his immediate vicinity.
He opened his eyes, surprised at what he'd just done, and turned to look at Albert who was staring at him with wide eyes.
"What was that?" Liam muttered.
"What was that indeed?" the cat said, his tail swishing in a manner that Liam could only describe as anticipatory.