Just Add Mana

Threek seemed surprisingly stable in the divine void of the Black Vault, though Cale didn't think he'd seen them join in the training before. He wondered briefly if that had something to do with their clone magic—it was hard to say, since the clone aspect of mana could vary significantly depending on the mage.

Maybe Threek's magic affected their soul? That would explain their resilience. Every time they split, their smaller clones would accumulate experience and build upon their soul-fragments separately, allowing them to reinforce their soul at many times the speed other mages would be able to. What a fascinating thought! If that was how it worked, then there was an incredible opportunity here to explore some of the niches of magical development.

...Though Threek probably wasn't here for that. Cale really needed to watch out for how the divine void amplified his more distractible tendencies. The poor kobold seemed nervous, like they wanted to ask something but weren't quite sure how.

"Do you want to go outside to talk?" he prompted, the words friendly. He'd technically suggested he would only help those that proved themselves capable of adapting to the Black Vault, but he was happy to make an exception for Threek, considering how essential their help had been with the Abyssal.

"N-no," Threek said, shaking their head firmly. The topmost kobold did, anyway; the others were still hidden in the trenchcoat, though their shapes made their presence in it rather obvious. "You said you'd help train and answer questions for people who can withstand this place, right? I don't want to cut in line or anything... Besides, this place doesn't seem that bad."

"You'd be surprised. Everyone else struggles," Cale said, nodding at some of the darkwood students nearby. Right on cue, one of them rushed out, looking ill. "You've probably just got an exceptionally stable soul."

"Thank you? I think," Threek said, uncertain. They fidgeted for a moment more, and Cale waited patiently while they got their bearings.

"I'd like your help getting my magic under control," they finally blurted. "I can't make palewater like any of my friends. I've tried, but I think the fact that I'm split up all the time is making it really hard. And I can't... this is the lowest number of bodies I can have. I don't know what else to do, and no one I know can help."

"And ya think this guy is going to have a solution?" a voice drawled from the doorway as someone else stepped into the Black Vault.

Threek stiffened. "You told me you were going to stay out of this."

"Can't help it. I gotta take care of my little sibling, ya know?" The kobold that had stepped in now lounged back against the nearby wall. He was big, for a kobold; he came up nearly to Cale's chin and was remarkably well-built, with muscles that suggested he spent a lot of time doing heavy labor. Unusual, for a mage. "Can't exactly do that if you're gonna wander off to get advice from outsiders. Figured I'd at least make sure you ain't getting advice that ends up killin' you."

"Draak..." Threek made a small, frustrated noise. "I can handle this by myself."

"Seems t'me like ya can't, or ya wouldn't be askin' for help," Draak pointed out easily. He eyed Cale, darkwood mana flaring challengingly around him. "So? What advice are ya gonna give my little sib? Some mana exercises, maybe? Ain't gonna be anything we ain't already tried, I tell ya that..."

The large kobold trailed off, frowning. "Why're ya lookin' at me like that?" he asked warily.

"Oh, you have no idea how thankful I am that not everyone in this school is going to be calling me the Void Sage or some nonsense." Cale beamed. "I need a little bit of doubt to function, you know? How am I supposed to show off if everyone just thinks I can do anything? Listen, do you think you could follow me around for a bit? I need some skepticism to ward off the sycophants."

Draak stared blankly at him. "Ye've got somethin' wrong with ya," he muttered. "Trainin' in this garbage-feelin' room, and now this. Guess I shoulda figured. Ain't no mage with that kind of power that ain't a little fucked in the head."

"True!" Cale said happily. Draak narrowed his eyes at him, then grunted and shook his head when Cale showed no sign that he was upset about the accusation. If anything, he'd taken it as a compliment.

"I ain't followin' ya around," Draak said. "I got better things t'do. Maybe if yer knowledge actually helps Threek out, but I ain't holdin' my breath."

"Sounds good to me," Cale said, not the slightest bit offended. "Threek? Before we start, I just want to say: good job fixing that self-acknowledgement problem. I noticed your magic didn't flare up and split you as soon as you talked about having multiple bodies."

"Oh!" Threek seemed surprised, at first, then abruptly embarrassed. They mustered up a shy smile. "Y-yeah, um, I've been working on that. Thank you."

"It's a good sign," Cale assured them. "That said, I'm gonna need to know a bit more about how your magic works if I'm going to be able to help you. Every clone mage is slightly different. I need to know what kind you are and how you cast your magic."

Threek swallowed but nodded, though they still seemed a little timid. "Okay."

"Least ya know clone magic ain't all the same," Draak muttered, his expression still skeptical.

Cale just grinned. He had a doubter! All was right with the world.

That display against Astiviya had helped his reputation quite a bit, Cale reflected. Prior to the duel, there had been rumors about him—everyone knew about the Headmaster's new apprentice, after all, but most people were skeptical as to whether he actually had the level of power all the stories claimed. Mages with that kind of magic didn't just show up out of the blue, after all.

(Only they absolutely did. Cale had plenty of experience with the subject. Wyldfire mages were significantly more likely to show up out of the blue than any other class of mage. For a while he had thought it was a Thread of Fate thing, but it turned out there were a surprising number of peer-reviewed papers on the subject published in various arcane journals. Each one came to the same conclusion: there was no karmic or magical impetus influencing them. They just liked being weird, and Cale was absolutely no exception.)

After the duel, though, pretty much everyone in the school knew his name, and while that came with downsides, it also meant that mages like Threek were more likely to approach him in the hopes that he might know something that could help them. Cale supposed the power he'd displayed lent credence to the rumors floating around that he'd visited other realms.

All the same, it was kind of silly that they were rumors at all, as opposed to established fact. Cale didn't really do anything to hide the fact that he'd been around the Great Realms, but he supposed everyone that heard it found it hard to believe. They became a lot more believable once the entire academy saw him cast spells at the same level as a god. Alas, most of them had missed the best parts, since they'd been deep in meditation by that time.

Ah well. There would be plenty of other opportunities for them to see. The important thing for now was that mages like Threek were willing to approach him and ask for help! Even if their protective older brother was going to be glaring at him the entire time.

Threek's expression of clone magic was fascinating. Evidently their entire family and clan specialized in that sort of magic, but for most of them, the aspect presented itself traditionally. Draak, for example, could use it to replicate any spell he cast while it was still casting; his signature spell involved throwing a single [Fireball] and blasting it with clone magic until the entire battlefield was raining fire.

But Threek struggled to even attune their mana, and every time they tried to cast, their magic backfired and took effect on them instead of their target. Worse, the clones they made were imperfect. Rather than creating a complete copy of themselves, the spell caused them to split into lesser copies that each held a portion of the original's mind and soul. Each clone had a weak but persistent telepathic link with one another, allowing them to share the same continuity, but...

"It gets harder to think when I'm in too many bodies," Threek confessed, sniffing. They had removed the trenchcoat and were now seated against the wall, all three smaller kobolds holding hands. "Splits up my mind too much. If I split enough I can attune my mana and cast a spell, but by then my mana's too weak to cast anything good, even if I could think clearly enough to cast."

"Hmm." Cale's brows drew together as he thought. "Sounds like a classic case of a bound mana core."

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"Pfft. We knew that already. Any ol' healer coulda told us." Draak scoffed, though Cale noticed the tension in his voice. He wanted there to be a cure, even if he didn't believe there was one. "Can ye fix it or not?"

"Give me a moment," Cale said, waving Draak off. He'd encountered exactly this sort of problem before, hadn't he? Not with the clone magic, but he'd run into the occasional mage with a bound core. It was a rare condition that was typically considered incurable, or at the very least it was extraordinarily difficult to cure—the few cases he knew of involved the mage in question having their mana core utterly destroyed, and painstaking years of putting it back together.

That obviously wasn't much of an option here. Perhaps if Threek was truly desperate, but Cale doubted their brother would allow it, and he wasn't keen on putting the kobold through that kind of "treatment" regardless.

Something Threek had said struck him as odd, though. "You said you can attune your mana when you split enough?" he finally asked. "How do you know that?"

"Yeah." All three kobolds nodded, looking away in embarrassment. "It happened during Intro to Standard. We were supposed to cast [Burn], but then one of my classmates yelled about me being... you know, like this. And then I split and all my little selves set the classroom on fire."

Cale couldn't help it; he snorted. "Would've loved to see the look on your classmate's face when you set them on fire," he said, grinning.

Threek went wide-eyed. "You're not going to scold me?"

"Did you set your bully on fire?" Cale asked, and when Threek nodded, he reached out for a high-five. All three kobolds tentatively gave him one, after which he grinned broadly at them. "'Course not. You pulled off impossible magic just to teach them a lesson. Sounds pretty cool to me."

"They almost got suspended," Draak muttered, and Threek deflated slightly at their older brother's scowl. Cale rolled his eyes.

"You're their brother," he said, flicking him in the arm. Draak started and glanced up at him incredulously. "This happened quite a while ago, didn't it? I bet the Red Hunters still had their claws deep in this school at the time. You heard your classmates talking about how a wild mage almost killed their class, I bet, and worried yourself sick over them?"

Draak froze as the realization struck him, and Cale shook his head.

"I'm not gonna blame you for falling for whatever games those idiots were playing," he continued. "They gave you reason to worry about your sibling, so you worried. But it's a [Burn] spell, not a [Fireball]; it might scare some students, but it's not going to get through any of the wards. And think about it! Under pressure, they figured out how to cast magic, and set someone that was tormenting them on fire. You don't think that's even a little bit cool?"

Draak hesitated, looking at Threek. "...ain't gonna lie, I might've thought about lighting 'em up myself, once or twice," he admitted after a long moment, though he practically mumbled the words. "S'pretty cool that ya did it first."

Threek absolutely beamed at the praise, and the way they lit up told Cale they'd been starving for that kind of acknowledgement for a while. Cale grinned. "Be proud," he said. "You did magic! Fire magic! And you stood up for yourself—I mean, just to be clear, don't set people on fire because they annoy you. I've done that before and it usually gets me locked up, and sometimes people you like also get lit on fire. But as far as magic academy norms are concerned, you did great."

It was interesting that they'd managed it at all, though. A bound mana core should have prevented them from attuning their mana in almost any circumstance, and it was astonishing that they'd managed to cast a spell on top of that.

Corebound mages did tend to be intuitive casters. The condition was incredibly rare, but Cale knew why it happened. Mana cores were somewhat malleable in the early stages of development. If a mage managed to cast a spell before their core was fully developed, and if they kept casting that spell over and over again or if the spell suited them too well, their core could become bound—locked into the shape of the spell construct they were using. From that moment on, they were essentially maintaining a low-level version of that spell at all times, and couldn't attune or adjust their cores to cast anything else.

Despite that, some of them had mastered their one spell to truly remarkable degrees and were able to become archmages in their own right. Threek, on the other hand—

"Hey," Draak said suddenly. He frowned into the darkness. "Y'all see anything? Thought there was somethin' there in the dark."

Cale glanced up, but he hadn't seen or sensed anything. "Divine voids can cause hallucinations," Cale told the older kobold. "You should train in here when you get the time. See if you can cast a spell. You're going to need to make sure you can still fight if someone puts you in a void like this, with the dark lord rising."

Draak looked troubled, but said nothing, and Cale took careful note of where Draak had pointed just in case before he went back to his train of thought. Threek had managed to bypass their own core, or so it seemed, but what if...

"Threek," he said thoughtfully. "When you split enough to cast other spells like that, how do you merge yourselves again? Does the state just wear off after some time?"

"Oh! Um, yes, it does," Threek said. "Normally I have to try to concentrate and pull myself together, but if I split up that many times it just kind of ends after a while? Which is good, because I don't think I could pull myself together when I'm like that."

But that meant the spell ended when Threek split up enough. Cale's eyes gleamed. Threek's form of clone magic caused their mind, soul, and core to be divided amongst their smaller selves, but a spell like that had to be relatively complex, which in turn required a core large enough to sustain that complexity.

"That face yer makin' worries me," Draak said, looking disturbed. "Ya got somethin'?"

Cale waved him off impatiently. He was thinking! If Threek split up enough, their cores no longer had the volume needed to keep the spell going. That their condition returned after they merged again suggested each divided piece still kept some sort of mark that affected how the core was put back together, but—

"When you split and one part of you is hurt or healed, does the injury transfer back to your merged form?" Cale asked, just to be sure, and grinned when Threek nodded. "Okay, good. I might have a solution for you, then. It's not gonna be perfect, but you don't need perfect, do you? You just need to be able to advance."

Threek cautiously nodded, though they couldn't help the gleam of hope in their eyes. Draak, on the other hand, scowled suspiciously. "Ye better not be makin' 'em hope fer nothin'," he growled.

"You can't typically cure a bound mana core because it's not technically damaged," Cale said, beaming at them both. He was getting threatened! Draak was a good older brother, and it had been a while since he'd gotten threatened properly. The last few gods he'd fought didn't count. "So most of the spells and herbs that help reconstruct a damaged core have no effect on them.

"But your clone magic is special. When you split up, your core splits up, too. And when you split up enough, those pieces of your core become too small to sustain the spell that's bound into it. In that state they're basically stuck with an incomplete spell, so it will count as damaged. All you need to do is split up and have all your smaller selves imbibe the right potion and meditate on your core. Should let you start attuning and casting spells at least one level up from where you were, and if you keep it up at least three times a week you could get one level up from that. You'll still have a bound core, but you might even be able merge into one body temporarily."

Threek seemed overjoyed, but before they could speak, their brother cut in.

"What kinda potion are ya talkin'?" Draak asked, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. "Ain't heard of no potion that can fix core damage before. I gotta be sure this fix works before I let my little sib try it."

"Do you not have potions of core reconstitution?" Cale asked. "Huh. Weird, I figured you would. Guess the Gift minimizes the chance of core damage or something. Here, let me just..."

Cale pulled out a scrap of parchment and scribbled a recipe onto it. "Get an alchemist to look over this," he said, handing it to Draak. "Test it on a patient if you want. Works pretty fast and uses herbs common to all the Great Realms, so you should be able to get the ingredients easy."

Draak looked at the recipe, then at Cale. He seemed baffled at first, then incredulous once again. "And yer just... givin' it to us?" he asked. "If this does what ya say, ain't this stupid valuable? What's t'stop me from makin' a profit off it?"

"Nothing?" Cale shrugged. "Sell it if you want, but I'm gonna give it away if anyone else asks me for it."

"Stop questioning him!" Threek smacked their brother on the shoulder. "We can get Aunt Iak to test it! You can question him if it turns out not to work, but it's rude to go after him after he just helped us—I'm sorry, Cale. Thank you for the help. If this works, I'm gonna owe you everything."

"Nah, you'll owe me nothing," Cale said cheerfully. "Maybe send your brother back here though. I need people to doubt me a bit more often."

"We will see," Draak muttered. "Now let's go, y'hear? This place feels awful. Dunno how ya stand it."

"It's not that bad," Threek said.

They left, and Cale went straight back to his apprentices, whistling to himself. He wondered when the Gift would return to him. It was about time, wasn't it? He was starting to get a little antsy.

The next day, Cale was startled from his examination of the interior of the Black Vault by a bellowing voice.

"CALE!" Draak shouted. The large, muscular kobold stormed in, then immediately charged straight at Cale...

...to wrap him in a fierce hug. "Ya did it," he said, his voice emotional. "I'll be damned. Thought my little sib was gonna spend the rest of their life just dreamin' about magic, and ye've gone and given it back to 'em. All that realm-travel stuff ain't a lie, is it?"

"Nope," Cale said, patting Draak's back awkwardly. "Does that mean you'll come and be skeptical around me?"

Draak let out a suspiciously wet-sounding laugh. "Ain't no way I could doubt you after all that," he said. "But I did ya one better. I know a lotta darkwoods that don't like the idea of ye. Told 'em t'come here, learn a thing or two. They don't believe ye've got what it takes, so I'm sure yer gonna get plenty o' doubt."

Cale brightened. "Oh, good!" he said. "Even better!"

Behind him, his apprentices exchanged glances. "Is Cale some kind of a masochist?" Leo asked uncertainly.

"He's always been like this," Flia said, sighing. "More importantly, have you guys noticed the shadow that's been showing up around the Vault? People are whispering that it's the Lost King, you know."

"Please don't tell me the Vault is haunted." Damien fidgeted anxiously.

"Don't worry," Syphus said. It patted Damien on the back. "If any ghosts show up, I'll shoot them for you."