[NR] Chapter 127 - Ritual in the Dirt (Patreon)

Dinner has finished and the group discuss the watch schedule. Jason volunteers for the mid-shift as the interrupted sleep won’t negatively affect him. The other two are fine with that but have a problem with their own shifts. Mostly because neither have much of a preference as long as they don’t need to do the mid-shift. In the end they go with two out of three at rock paper scissors with the winner taking first shift. Rosha starts strong and beats Courtney’s paper with her scissors. Then Courtney turns it around and wins the next two rounds by throwing scissors twice more. Rosha sulks at this and punches her shoulder while complaining that she always does that.

Courtney does an exaggerated shrug at this and turns to Jason, “Your little bells are a nice warning system but I think we can do better.” Jason makes a face like he just sucked on a lemon before he responds that, “I had meant to get something better. It appears this slipped my mind. Next city we hit make sure I remember to do that. Anyway, what do you suggest?”

With a big toothy smile Courtney spreads her hands out while she wiggles her fingers, “Why magic of course! I am not just a healer, you should remember my talk about the kitsune.” Jason facepalms and sighs, “right, illusions.” Courtney shrugs, “I can’t make it look like we aren’t here. Mostly because we make noise and anyone with a nose can smell the campfire. What I can do though is set up a small ritual to make your bells invisible. It would let me set up a silent image but to last through the night I would have to put most of my mana into it.”

Rosha raises her hand and waits. Both Courtney and Jason turn and look at her. She sits there for a moment in silence. As she starts to twitch Courtney gestures at her, “yes Rosha?” She giggles and asks, “when you say you won’t have much mana, how much healing is that?” Courtney raises an eyebrow, “hmm, a good question though a little hard to answer. It depends on how fast I need to do it. I should be good for ten or so in combat but if I have a few minutes that can be stretched to a good 30 hit points.”

Jason nods, “That should cover the night. We haven’t hit the point that hp starts to inflate. Of course by then you should have better spells or more mana to make up for it. I say go for it.” Rosha agrees with a thumbs up so Courtney gets down to her ritual. As it only needs to last the night, she just carves it in the dirt. To cap it off, she places a tiny gem at the end of a thick line that snakes through the whole thing. For a moment it glows with mana but soon fades though a tiny flicker remains at its center. All around their camp a number of small bells and a string disappear from view as the magic takes hold.

With their defenses now settled Rosha settles into her sleeping bag and dozes off. Jason however wanted to learn about the whole ritual thing and stayed up a bit longer. He knew the basic breakdown. Magic has rituals, Qi has formations, and Energy has workings. The specifics however escape him. As luck would have it though Courtney is fine with explaining so they both sit down across from Rosha and she whispers to let her sleep.

“What I just did would be classified as a simple ritual. This covers any ritual that only needs a power source and copies a low level spell. That ritual over there copies my silent image spell and uses a tiny mana crystal to power it. I could manually power it which is useful except I do want to sleep tonight. You can cast attack spells through a ritual but most don’t bother doing so with a basic ritual. Sure rituals are more efficient which is why that one can keep going all night. However they are slow and with a spell that are not continues like an illusion there is a long reload time.”

“That brings us to regular rituals. These all require special materials to use. This could be as simple as having it carved into stone instead of scratched into the dirt but it matters. What it allows for is worth it though. Whether it is to use a high power spell, keep a ritual going until it is no longer powered, or to modify a spell this is how you do it. However this is not enchanting. To enchant something you are putting the magic in that item. Rituals are the thing that puts magic into stuff. High level enchantments are generally placed by special rituals so as to reduce mistakes as a magic user can check over the ritual before using it.”

“To make it even more confusing, you can enchant a ritual. This is popular with any rituals that are meant to last. An example of this is teleportation rituals. Twisting space is not the most healthy thing for solid matter like the material you carved the ritual in. To counteract this, they will enchant teleportation rituals to be sturdier. Stretches their lifespan from a decade at most to centuries or even longer if they keep the enchantments repaired.”

“Anyway, rituals are very free form if your rich. You can take a fireball, make it ice based, contract instead of explode, and then bonk the enemy on the head. Problem is at that point the material costs of the ritual would be so exorbitant you would be better off finding a spell closer to what you want. In fact, this brings in the last category of rituals. It fits under regular rituals but is not based on any specific spell. Witchy types love this sort of ritual. Most magic based curses that aren’t a spur-of-the-moment thing, like a death curse, will be ritual based on some level because of this. There is of course a lot more to it but that would go much too in depth on it.”