Orphan At The Edge Of The World - 231 The Fool 36

Orison looked between the two. “This one is a complex and high end conjuration and that is a rather low to middle ground transmutation, though?”

Stefen looked at him oddly. “Any referencing system works as long as it’s inclusive enough, I suppose. But what does that have to do with a spell? Would you be surprised to see me use an ingredient for an elaborate casserole in a soup? It’s just salt… That one pushes you all the way out, this one only pushes you a little bit. That one is designed for the unwilling, this one only works on the willing… and so on.”

The young mage felt a part of his comprehension grow unstable. Oddly enough, it didn’t feel like what he was understanding was structure poison. It felt more like something that had always been a placeholder was about to be replaced with something more permanent. Ages ago, when ‘the boy’ was slowly taking in the greater part of Al’s loose soul stuff, they had reconstructed a spell model that had elements of both restoration and destruction within it.

Because of that, Orison knew that complex spells COULD have connections to other schools or disciplines within them. He just hadn’t seen such a clear example that they could also have overlapping parts that crossed the neatly tabbed divisions for magic that he had made. It spurred him to move to a clean space of Cave floor and begin doodling out all the old models still swirling around in his mind.

Connection after connection could be seen but that wasn’t the interesting part to the young mage. He could start to see the overlaps. It was confusing and nearly overwhelming but he slowly reordered by those connections and overlaps, seeing an emerging ‘cosmology’ of magic with huge gaps and stretches. Even with the selection he had, he inevitably had to move from a 2D ‘map’ of models on the cave floor to a 3D model in his head. It didn’t take long for it to escape what his imagination could encompass.

It was a bit of a work around with limitations but using the ‘interface’ eternium motes that was connected to the crystal matrix, he removed some of the higher end structures to make room for a model map. By the time he had reached the point where the need for the ‘extra-dimensional’ layer to continue on became necessary, several hours had gone by. He looked around to see that his little invisible house cleaners had started climbing the walls to clean reachable parts of the ceiling.

He took a moment to update Stefen on the rest of their group’s activities, oddly brightening the dhampir’s mood up. The small gesture of being treated as one of the group in such a small way had ended up being more meaningful than Orison had particularly intended it to be. Noting that, he made a quick sweep with his spirit sight to make sure everything was as it should be. Afterwards, he returned to the increasingly difficult process of reorganizing his concepts with the minor but incredibly important revelation Stefen and the banishment circle had illuminated.

In truth, he was at the point where any other mage would be forced to stop and spend agonizing years trying to tease out. But Orison had one thing they didn’t, a spirit sight that could ‘see’ in an extra direction. Since he could see it, he could imagine it as well. The amalgamation of models that he was delving into building would have looked like overlapped chicken scratch to anyone else but that was because perfectly flat surfaces moving through an extra direction would only register visually as pulled taffy lines and warped, distorted scribbles to everyone else.

An added bonus that he hadn’t expected was slowly showing its usefulness to his ramping mental and creative challenge. The memory storage of the crystal matrix he was working with was First Family magical tech. It was designed to be compatible with their other extra-dimensional devices. So, it could, if at great cost to memory space, hold the imagined added layer doodle that Orison was drawing with his imagination and intent onto its ‘drive’.

At first, the practical use of what the young mage was doing seemed little more than the exercise in minor extra-dimensional thinking he was acting out, limbering and toughening up his mind to the rigors that such a thing stressed it to do. That quickly changed the moment he managed to find the first functional overlap between two very different models. Upon seeing what he’d done, the practical application wasn’t only obvious, it was monumental.

Unbeknownst to himself, he had slipped into a half trance state to better facilitate the superior ability of his soul’s creativity and memory retention with his physical mind’s more refined logical processes. He hadn’t registered his own sharp intake of breath or Stefen’s more subdued one. He was only subconsciously aware that the dhampir had sat down close by and began flipping through the ever changing models in the spellbook that had been made by the young mage for Hunter.

Under Stefen’s gaze, the spell models and explanations written with Orison’s spirit essence augmented blood began shifting. Within the young mage’s spirit consciousness, successful connections of overlaps quickly revealed parts of the ‘super’ model that were structurally sound and parts that were patently false. Sadly, the revelation was coming to an end because he was running out of models to add.

Suddenly one, then another model appeared in his mind that he had never seen before but not wanting to look the gift horse in the mouth, he quickly went to work finding out where they went in the ‘super’ model. A handful more hours went by before surprise models stopped flowing into his mind to be slapped in and invalidated except for the relevant and ‘real’ parts.

Orison snapped to with a screeching migraine and a fatigue that reached his very soul. He looked wearily over at Stefen. The dhampir was looking at him in amazement and horror.

“You broke all of my magic!” Stefen said.

The young mage blearily said, “Sorry?”

“No, I mean… It’s just… What do we do to protect ourselves until I can rebuild them? I think what happened here is a wizard’s dream but I’ll have to relearn from scratch. I can’t unsee the truth but I don’t want to!” the dhampir said in excited agony.

“We’ll figure it out,” Orison said with a shrug before losing consciousness.

He stirred to in the early hours of the morning. His head was still pounding but a healing and some medicine had him in decent standing as Stefen prepared to take his turn in peaceful temporary oblivion.

“Wait, let me see the grimoire,” he said.

Stefen hesitantly handed it over and said, “Wake me when you’re ready to break some more magic, please. I don’t want to miss that. I was learning so much.”

Orison nodded. “It’ll take me some time to memorize a few well enough to add them anyway. It’s a good thing that I don’t really have to be able to cast them to do what I’m doing or that would have been the end of the road for awhile.”

While the dhampir slept, he looked at the spellbook he’d made for Hunter. The journal-like book had undergone a little growth at the expense of long term integrity. The ‘blood’ ink had spread so thin it was almost invisible. To add pages, it had cannibalized leather, latex and silk to the point of moth wing fragility. Since it was Stefen’s way of following along, Orison took what materials he could and reinforced it.

“Well, Roy. Wherever you are, thank you for the sacrifice of your collection of ‘trophies’ and safety practices that made this spellbook possible. From here on out, it’s a job for the crystal matrix and a little creative substitution,” Orison muttered.

Before he started flipping through the grimoire for more spells to break, he reviewed the spellbook to see just how ‘broken’ the magic in it had become. Two of the simple ones weren’t too bad off but spells that he had managed to find overlaps for were terribly invalidated, only having chunks of strokes spotted in one place or another.

Orison sighed. “Look how far I’ve come. So much more knowledgeable and my power has grown to the point where I can barely cast a novice spell. I’m beginning to see the despair archmages must feel. A lifetime of magic study and they’re faced with the choice of ignoring the small snippets of truth they’ve uncovered to maintain their acquired power or starting from the beginning. Hell, some probably can’t because the loss of growth would equal instant death when their false tier fell.

“Forced to live a lie or die… No wonder those old mages look so haggard and bitter. Even the best of them probably would be filled with wisdom induced depression. Maybe it really does take a kind of stubborn masochism to be a climber. They should call it ‘Texas Two-Stepper’ instead, seeing how many times a person has to go backwards to find a way forwards again.”

With a sigh of aching nostalgia, the young mage began memorizing the forms of the models without much interest in what they actually did. In doing so, he was reminded of Lily’s words. Studying magic really was worthless to a climber outside of the theory building and momentary conveniences. The moment laws became the goal, all the ‘good stuff’ was nearly stripped away but it was the path he had taken.

“At least I haven’t spent decades learning it, sacrificing my ability to enjoy life to extend it out beyond a century only to reach the point I’m at now. I think I really would give up,” he muttered as he continued to memorize.

Nearly two days later, as a single forgotten invisible ‘person’ continued cleaning while doing simple mending and repairs, Orison had finished ‘breaking’ every spell in the grimoire. After a nap to readjust his mind, he stretched out and limbered up his stiff body.

Stefen, working through some swordsmanship practice of his own, said, “What are the others on about? The disagreeable woman was gone for merely a moment.”

Working through the martial meditation drill he had pieced together, Orison said, “The barrow that stone doorway lead to was running significantly faster in time when she went. Cray told me that she had spent nearly four days when she had went. That time is slowing down and they are having to make several detours that she didn’t have to when she went on her own.

“They’ve already transplanted the dryad’s tree and are returning now. In another day or two, they’ll be back. Three at the most.”

Slightly stumbling as he felt an unseen presence pass by him, the dhampir said, “Why haven’t you dismissed the pest? This cave isn’t going to get any cleaner.”

The young mage shrugged. “Well, once the little guy’s gone, it’ll be awhile before I could make another. They’ve been getting upgrades as I’ve been going along too. Keeping them up and running hasn’t been that strenuous and small little subconscious whims of mine have been motivating them to make a few nice changes to the place as well.”

Sighing, the dhampir added. “When the options dwindle, what’s an honorable to do? An annoying chambermaid is better than none at all… So, what are your plans moving forward, ‘Oh, worthy mentor’?”

Orison smirked. “What is there to do? I examine the abomination I’ve created for something usable. From there, I fill in blanks and start reconstructing spells again until I get more models to break, I guess.”

Stefen staggered again. “H-how many times have you done this?”

“Notably? Three, maybe four times. I used to be able to summon golems the size of dire bears. Of course, at the time, I was in a place you’d hardly consider real if you were there. At least, if you were there when I was,” the young mage said.

“Heavens above and hells below. I was speaking of casseroles and soups while you have toiled to create the clearest of consomme. I can only imagine the potency and masterwork of magic constructed from such labor,” the dhampir said, losing himself in daydream.

The young mage chuckled. “Well, you won’t have to wait for very long. If I wasn’t eager to create a purely ‘super’ model validated spell off my current understanding, you’d already have ‘Ignite’, ‘Degree Shift’ and ‘Fire Shot’. I seriously think that the lich who that grimoire came from planned on suicide by sublime fire evocation magic.”

Stefen glanced at the nearly rendered useless grimoire and said, “Belphagius was a self loathing sort before his conversion if I remember stories correctly. That loathing increased afterwards. Many feared that he planned a coup. His penchant for magic that was the most dangerous to undead kind did little to ease those rumors.”

The young mage shook his head. “His only neighbors were undead and ocean. People tend to plan their defenses around the most likely threats. Believe me. He had plenty of contingencies to deal with water based adversity too.”

After they had completed their personal physical fitness routines, Orison broke out one of the last high quality bars that the mystery lady had left him and Cray. After relishing the rare treat in preemptive celebration, the young mage opened up the complex ‘super’ model and began studying it for the first time instead of adding more. He was tempted to go for the easier victory of ‘Ignite’ as his first ‘pure’ concept spell but there seemed to be an importance to the event that had him looking at his magical ‘first love’ instead.

Tearing his gaze away from the tight cluster of fire and heat related model pieces, he focused in on where ‘Mend’ was. Though not as tightly clustered and illuminated, over half the models he had known connected to or overlapped into its area in some way. Even the lost and regained innate ability of healing he had reversed engineered into a spell model was intimately entangled with it.

“If I can get this one, then I have a real foothold into a large chunk of my concepts. Due to that old and almost completely invalidated hunter’s spell, I even have a tie in back to heat. Mending to healing, to positive energy, to radiation and blam. Anyway…” he thought before clearing his mind to focus on the task of filling in the small remaining gaps.

He hadn’t expected it to be easy but half a day later he had to take a break with not even a third of the remaining holes filled. Without references to help him, he could have floundered on it for a lifetime but every validated connection he found, the next came a bit faster. After another small nap and another light meal to stimulate his mind, he returned to the task.

“So, how much longer til we are bestowed the magnificent power to light candles and start a campfire?” Stefen said cheekily.

Without diverting much attention, Orison said, “Can’t sleep. Clowns will eat me… That’s on the to-do list after Mend.”

The dhampir sighed. “The ability to fix a ripped shirt takes precedence over the ability to survive winter conditions with heat, warm meals and bathwater that won’t cause a person to catch deathly chills? The frivolous aristocrat in me applauds you, truly.”

In annoyance, Orison slapped unverified connectors on the three fire based spells so that the dhampir would have something to study and stop pacing around. “The slightly paler parts aren’t confirmed. Have fun learning garbage that’s ‘almost’ right.”

Stefen chuckled. “Wizards spend their whole lives relearning garbage that’s ‘almost’ right. That doesn’t stop their magic from destroying things.”

With the dhampir distracted, the young mage returned to his labor of ‘love’. What he didn’t take into account or even really think about was the fact that Stefen was, first and foremost, not a wizard but a pact caster. In the past, the man had thrown imitations of hell-rime and brimstone fire around. He wasn’t without his own insights.

As connections fell into place, Orison sunk into half trance and then deeper into a full meditative state, as if he was contemplating some mandala of profound magnitude. That wasn’t particularly wrong either. Considering the nature of his ‘super’ model, hole riddled and sparse as it was, it was chalked full of other mage’s hard earned wisdom.

Entranced as he was, he missed the moment where Stefen completed the Ignite model’s missing completeness with personal understandings. Such an event was far more meaningful than simply being handed a complete one and resulted in a step baptism. Had the dhampir been handed a previously completed version or had the completed version already been completed in the world they were on, such an event wouldn’t have occurred.

Through their connection, a small share of Stefen’s first baptism wandered over to Orison, his ‘due’ as patron. Under its stimulus, the young mage made a sudden intuitive leap and finished the last handful of connections at once, completing Mend while under meditative contemplation of his ‘super’ model as a whole. For the briefest of moments, he sensed a law.

There was a possibility it would have happened anyway. After all the work he’d poured into constructing the visual representation of all the magical progress he’d made, completing a small but crucial spot of it may have been enough. It no longer mattered as he was immersed in a second fourth step baptism along with officially becoming a fourth tier. It was a special moment that no one was particularly witness to but the world, a world that didn’t welcome a newborn demigod level power not under its control.