RD404

077 (Patreon)

Published:

2020-03-16 20:48:32

Edited:

2020-03-17 18:06:44

Imported:

2021-01

Content

Jane slept in her hospital bed in the long term care unit of Oceanside’s hospital, under the power of a constantly charged [Sleep] rune. She wore the same thing that she had been wearing for the last 15 days; a simple white chemise. White bedsheets covered her body. It was not cold in here, like in the hospitals back on Earth; there was no need to keep the temperature low to inhibit bacterial growth. They had [Cleanse] on Veird.

Erick looked down at his sleeping daughter, happy that she didn’t have to suffer the indignity of soiled clothes, or strange smells, or her body failing her while she slept for days and days on end. Jane even looked peaceful, with her soft brown hair still looking soft, and her face still looking healthy. Even though the food they administered to sleeping patients like Jane was a simple grain soup, it was certainly nutritious enough.

“Knock knock.”

Erick turned to the open door to the room. He smiled, saying, “Hello, Doctor Alibeth.”

Alibeth, the human Mind Mage, walked into the room, saying, “Good afternoon, Archmage Flatt.” She glanced around the room, looking to Poi and Teressa, then back to Erick, saying, “She cannot be up for very long, but she should be able to speak for a little while. We had her up for ten minutes around noon and that was not too long ago, so we’ll only do five minutes for right now. She still has maybe 7 days of healing to go before we can extend that time to hours, but she is improving, exactly as she should be improving.”

Erick felt a great weight slide off of his shoulders. He said, “Good. Good. Can I talk to her, now?”

Alibeth nodded. She stepped over to Jane’s headboard, holding her hand nearer to the rune over Jane’s head, saying, “I’ll ask her some baseline questions before you can have the floor. It will take maybe 30 seconds.”

“Sure.” Erick said, “That’s fine.”

Alibeth touched the metal rune. Erick couldn’t really tell that the metal rune was glowing in the light of the room, but after Alibeth took her hand away, he could certainly tell that the rune was now a simple, dark metal. Jane breathed deep, as her eyes fluttered.

Alibeth said, “Jane Flatt. I am your overseeing doctor. Do you know who I am? Do you know where you are?”

Jane blinked, her brown eyes flickering open and shut, as she said, “Hello, doctor Alibeth. I’m in Oceanside’s First Sword Hospital, long term care unit.” She asked, “How long has it been?”

“Just a few hours since we last spoke.” Alibeth said, “Your father is here and he wishes to speak with you. He heard that you were able to speak at our last checkup, which was at noon of this day. I’ll get out of your way.”

Erick stepped right next to the bed, saying, “Hey, Jane.”

Jane smiled up at him, saying, “Hey, dad.”

“I got a [Polymorph] form just a bit ago.”

Jane chuckled, asking, “Which one?”

“A light slime.”

Jane closed her eyes, saying, “That’s good. You should eat that horn I got. Get [Lightwalk].”

“That’s your horn.” He said, “You should try for [Greater Lightwalk] with it. I got this light slime dungeon for my own needs. It’s almost done, too. Ten floors. Soon, Oceanside will have light slimes coming out of holes in the ground.” He rapidly added, “But not really. It’s all very organized. They’ll be selling or give out [Lightwalk]s for anyone who wants one, soon enough.”

Jane breathed for a moment, blinking and adjusting her arms as she wiggled in her bed. She flickered with dark blue light, a [Greater Treat Wounds] no doubt, and relaxed, as she said, “That’s fine. Good.” She asked, “How long have we been here? Two weeks, right?”

Erick paused. Jane had lost track of time. Of course she lost track of time; he shouldn’t be surprised. He said, “It’s been about 15 days. A week and a half.”

“Close enough.” Jane smiled, saying, “I was thinking in Earth-weeks.” She added, “I’ve had a lot of weird dreams. I’ve been playing D&D with my old highschool friends.”

Erick smiled, asking, “What did you play? A module or more of Larry’s campaign?”

“Amber ran a module.” Jane said, “Tomb of Annihilation.” She added, “It was a lot weirder than I remembeeEEred—” She paused, holding back a rumble in her stomach. She said, “Uh. I think I’m going to be si—” She heaved—

Alibeth quickly upended a glowing vial of white oil into the top of Jane’s headrest, as she put her hand over the dark metal [Sleep] rune. The metal glowed. Jane breathed out as her eyes closed.

Erick stared down at his sleeping daughter, and at the small trickle of oatmeal at the corner of her mouth. Alibeth said some things to him as she cast a [Cleanse] over Jane, spilling trace amounts of thick air into the room and vanishing the oatmeal on her face. Erick acknowledged Alibeth’s words, but he was not paying attention to her, at all. Poi took over whatever all of that was about, as Erick continued to gaze down at his sleeping daughter.

Jane’s chest rose and fell. Her eyes fluttered behind her eyelids, darting back and forth. She was dreaming again.

Erick looked up. Poi was the only other person in the room with him, and Jane. Teressa had gone out to do whatever, and Alibeth had departed.

Erick said, “Sorry. I wasn’t— Did Alibeth say anything important?”

Poi said, “She spoke of timetables and what to expect going forward. Jane is on track for a normal recovery. She’ll start recovering at a much faster rate, from here on out. Soon, she’ll be awake for a few hours at a time, and then it’s physical therapy for a few days. She’ll be discharged in anywhere from a week to 15 days. Then, she’s under strict advisement to not eat any other Unusually Large monsters unless she wants to be put in this position again.”

“Thank you, Poi.”

- - - -

Two days later, Erick put up the last kaleidoscopic lightward into the final alcove of the ceiling of floor ten.

Two hours later, while he was taking the time to rain on Spur, he carved the finishing touches out of a special delivery on the front lawn of Windy Manor. That special delivery was then loaded onto his [Teleporting Platform], and one blip later, Erick, Poi, Kiri, and three, three-meter tall statues of gods, directly entered the final floor of the only widely known light slime dungeon on Veird.

Rainbow light, bright and radiant, splashed around the final decadent floor of the dungeon, reflected off of every white surface as it tangled up in every rush of water and sprinkling fountain and diamond-crusted surface. Twisted reds and blues and yellows and greens, and every color in between, caught up on each other, turning the space mostly white, but also not white at all. In the center of this last floor rested three pedestals, each already carved by priests hired by the Headmaster. Erick didn’t even know the Headmaster had organized such a workforce; he had little idea about just how much the Headmaster had actually done with regard to this dungeon, anyway. Erick was the lighting guy, and the idea guy, but everything else was all the Headmaster’s ideas, or else his ideas as executed by Apell.

The godly pedestals rested in a triangle, each five meters from each other, each surrounded by a foot-deep moat, with a small raised island in the center of the formation. Most of the moats and riverbeds of the dungeon were only a foot deep. Slimes were supposed to be able to get everywhere they wanted, after all. And keeping with that theme, diamond slimes had been carved and placed around the base of one of the pedestals. This was Phagar’s position, for sure. The second pedestal was composed of four-pointed diamond stars, while the last was made of stacks of carved-diamond books. It was easy to tell which was meant for which god.

Erick guided his floating platform and its three statues toward the slime pedestal.

Apell blipped down into the waters, calling out, “Uh! Erick!”

Erick paused the platform. He had been working all day long on the place, putting finishing touches up here and there. He was going to just put the statues down and fix them around, as needed, but Apell seemed to have other ideas. So Erick slowed the platform, pausing to talk to Apell. Before he could get a single word out, the air blipped gold, though it was hard to tell in all the other light of the room.

The Headmaster appeared beside Apell, in the waters between the platforms. Erick was inexplicably glad he didn’t seem to care about getting wet. It made him seem more approachable, or something. Erick wasn't quite sure.

Erick said, “I was just going to put them into position. Is there a problem?”

The Headmaster sighed with a smile. He said, “No problem, because I caught you before you placed them however you wished.”

Apell stood aside for the Headmaster, splashing water as she moved.

The Headmaster said, “Since this is not a dedication to any specific god, we must place your statues all at the exact same time.” He looked up, beyond Erick, to the statues on the floating platform, and said, “You did well carving them so I feel they will be well received, even if they are a bit unconventional.”

Erick looked back to his statues. Sculpting in wardlight was considerably easier than carving in diamond, but he had taken a while to get these statues done correctly. A full week, here and there, in fact, with most of that time spent tracking down examples of ‘proper sculptures’, and what was normally done for this sort of dedication.

All three of his sculptures were made of crystal-clear diamond, and smooth as silk, except where clothes demanded a texture. Those textures were all heavily cut and faceted, and here in the brilliant light of the dungeon, they sparkled like glitter. They almost looked like ice sculptures, but they were obviously not.

The Phagar statue was a hooded person, with a body fully covered by a flowing robes, and a hood that covered almost his whole face, except for the bottom half, where a calm smile seemed to promise a gentle end. He stood tall and strong, but his sculpture had the most clothing of any of them, and because of that, he was almost completely made of sparkling, flowing diamond. His hands extended out of his full-robe, cupping together in front of his stomach, to hold a tiny slime with both of his hands.

Koyabez had the second least clothing of any of them. He was lithe and smooth, with hard muscles and a loincloth made of radiance. Tiny, hard-carved horns upturned from his forehead. He stood contrapposto, relaxed, while a slip of faceted cloth draped from his back hand to the floor near his back leg to provide stability to the sculpture, while his other hand held forward, and open; palm-up, and inviting the viewer.

Rozeta was a wrought shaped like a human, standing straight and tall, but because she was a wrought and her clothes were her skin, she was technically naked, and therefore almost completely smooth, even though she was ‘wearing’ a two-piece women’s blazer with a knee-length skirt. It was the perfect outfit for her in Erick’s mind. To balance out the statue with some glittering sparkles, Erick added a small tower of brilliant-cut books at her feet, to provide that sparkle, and to provide stability to the sculpture. She did not smile, but she did have a serene expression.

Each of the three statues were 9 feet tall.

Erick said, “Okay. I’ll take Phagar. Do you want… Rozeta?”

The Headmaster smirked, saying, “Yes.” He gestured, and Rozeta’s statue lifted from the platform.

Poi said, “I’ll take Koyabez,” as he telekinetically lifted the barely-clothed god into the air.

“Alright then.” Erick Handy Aura’d Phagar into the air, holding the weighty statue upright as he moved himself across the space, toward Phagar’s pedestal. In moments, the statue hovered over his resting spot. Erick looked up to see Poi and the Headmaster already in position. “So they’re all going to face each other, I was thinking. Is that okay?”

The Headmaster turned Rozeta to face the interior of the space, saying, “This is also an unorthodox methodology, but it is an acceptable arrangement.”

Poi nodded, turning Koyabez toward the inside of the three pedestals.

Erick said, “When I reach 3, we put them down?”

The Headmaster agreed, “On three.”

Poi nodded, holding Koyabez above the statue’s star-filled pedestal.

Erick counted. He hit three. The statues descended, right on time.

Erick got out a level from his back pocket. With a bit of [Stoneshape] and a reorganization of the carved diamond slimes at the base, Phagar locked into position, straight up and down; perfectly balanced. Erick flew over to Poi, next, to help organize the balance on Koyabez. Strictly speaking, this representation of the god should have had nothing at all in his back hand, but there were some allowances artists and Koyabez’s church had declared to be ‘okay’, when it came to making sure the statue wouldn’t break under its own weight. The cloth in Koyabez’s back hand, that led to the ground and supported some of that weight, was one such allowance. Koyabez’s statue was still the most fragile, even with this allowance, so Poi held the statue in place, while Erick fiddled with the balance.

When that was done, and Koyabez was locked to the white stone floor, Erick moved over to Rozeta’s statue. The Headmaster stood to the side, while Erick checked the statue over with his level. She was already perfectly stabilized. The Headmaster must have done that. He didn’t even use a level, but him not using a level to balance something as large as a literal ton of diamond did not surprise Erick as much as he thought it would.

Erick hovered himself, Kiri, and his platform away from the statues, to set down on an empty spot in the center of all three; a small island of raised stone. The water flowed around the bases of the statues, and around the little island in the center. Erick looked up.

Up above, was a smooth, white domed alcove, five meters across. No light had yet been cast into that space; Erick had left it for last. If Erick had been designing the mana flow system of this dungeon, he would have put the main intake right there, at the top of this dome. But that was ‘bad design’, according to Apell.

The Headmaster spoke, “If you wish to try [Kaleidoscopic Radiance] in this space, I would not be opposed. I could always erase it later if it turns out to be a problem.”

Erick thought about doing just that, but he had wanted to put something personal, here. The only problem with that, though, was that ‘something personal’ might mess up the dungeon space.

After staring at the empty ceiling for a minute, Erick decided against a personal touch. He had already made the sculptures, and they were rather unlike the ones he had seen when he was researching art history, and accepted designs. They weren’t sacrilegious, but they definitely had that personal touch, already.

… But there was something that Erick could do, that no one else could. Not yet, anyway.

He cast a lightmask into the air that gave off no light, but anyone looking up at it could tell there was something purple, about three meters across, hovering in the alcove. If anyone thought to Stat-enchant into that space, they’d find a fun little secret. He briefly considered putting down the individual lightmasks of his purple prize into the four corners of the dungeon, but no; that would make it too easy to guess at the real purpose of this floating, purple space. Besides, if someone tried to enchant a single Stat out of the space, that would be hint enough. Erick had already tested that experiment and found that he could use the same purple lightmask to enchant individual Stats. All he had to do was channel mana through a single Stat, instead of through all of them.

Erick smiled, as he looked back down.

The Headmaster looked up at the purple area. He did not frown. He did not smile.

Erick teased, “I know that you know what that is.”

The Headmaster looked back down to Erick. He said, “I’m surprised you decided to put that up there. And that you made it permanent.”

“It’s cast into the space, so you can’t really move it, anyway.” Erick said, “And besides! All dungeons have to have a prize, right? I doubt it’ll still be a prize in ten years, but it’s nice to think about the actions made today leaving a mark on history.”

Suddenly, a few blue boxes appeared. And not just for Erick. Everyone standing around him, including the Headmaster, paused to read the air.

Kiri must have read hers super-fast, because she exclaimed, “Oh!”

Special Action!

Your <dungeon> has been accepted by the Relevant Entities you have chosen to <respect>.

You will receive <3> benefits for accomplishing this rare achievement.

Divine Creation, <Koyabez>

A touch of the divine will enable the creation of an appropriate artifact.

Death’s Approach, <Phagar>

Become a being of untouchable mana for 1 hour, multiplying your base mana by 10, giving you endless mana, and instantly filling your mana pool. Your regeneration is damaged to a varying degree when the effect ends, cutting your regeneration to a fifth to a tenth of what it was before. Debuff lasts until you recover the mana spent while Death’s Approach is active.

Rozeta’s Boon.

Make a decision:

(1) Reduction.

(2) Resilience.

(3) Recovery.

While everyone else read their boxes rather quickly, Erick was still stuck on his. As moments piled up, and the initial excitement of an unexpected bonus died down, Kiri nudged closer to Erick.

Erick whispered to her, “Did you expect to get anything?”

Kiri said, “I’m not even sure what I got.”

The Headmaster spoke up, “It’s a rare thing for non-clergy to gain access to sacred magics. You should hold whatever you got in confidence, and share it with no one.”

Erick gazed up at the purple spot above. He said, “Is this what usually happens to clergy of a god? Spells and such?”

“Yes.” The Headmaster smiled under the radiant lights, saying, “All we have is each other in this strange New Cosmology, and the gods know this more than most, though they do choose to be slightly cryptic when handing out their boons. You would do well to think on what you might have gotten, before you use it.” He turned his attention to everyone around, from Apell to Poi, and Erick and Kiri, “The dungeon is made. The gods have approved. Merith and Calzin are being tagged as the Keepers of this space, while Apell is to return to normal duties, as soon as she is satisfied with the final flows of this dungeon.” He turned to Apell, saying, “Thank you for your time.”

Apell simple curtsied, nodding her head as she dipped to the waters swirling around her feet.

The Headmaster continued, “Slimes have already begun to spawn and crowd on the first floors. Soon, they will no doubt be tumbling down here, too. Are you interested in pursuing [Lightwalk] at this time, Erick?”

“Not right now, but I am going to pursue this option at a later date.” Erick said, “I need to develop this [Particle Scan] spell, then get back to Spur to join the search for Messalina. If I don’t make any headway on this magic in a few days, then I’ve heard Silverite has plans to search out nearby Cloud Giant cities. I’ll join one of those task forces and contribute however I can.”

“I think that is an excellent plan.” The Headmaster said, “I have heard that you have partially figured out [Blink]. I can only hope that the rest of your pursuits meet a similarly quick step in the right direction.” He added. “Windy Manor is yours now, if you so choose. I require my tomes returned to me when you choose to return to Spur, but they will be made available to you, through Krigea, whenever you wish. I would like to call upon you before you leave, so that we might discuss other possible beneficial arrangements. Please ensure that someone contacts the appropriate people to ensure this happens. Either through Krigea, or through the Elites stationed beside your residence.” He did not wait for a response. He blipped away in a shattering of golden glows.

Erick smiled. “Having a vacation home would be really nice.” He asked Apell, “What are the taxes like around here? Do I need to pay for the Elites beside my house?” He joked, “Did I just lose my 25% revenue stream from this dungeon?”

Apell grinned. “I doubt he would do that. He might own Oceanside, but he has other people run it. I doubt they’d try to drag you through the walls. The Headmaster has supported many archmages over the years, so they know what he prefers, so your daily experience likely won’t change.” She asked, “Have you ever been down to the courthouse, before?”

“No. But I can do all that later, I hope.”

Poi spoke up, “We’ll take care of it, sir.”

Erick nodded at Poi, then said, “Then I have spells to make.” He guided his floating platform to Poi, who adroitly stepped onto the stone surface to join him and Kiri. Erick turned toward Apell, saying, “It has been a pleasure working with you. I’m sure something will need to change here, going forward, so please don’t hesitate to ask.” He added, “I think we could do better on the front entrance, too.”

Apell chuckled, saying, “It has been a pleasure working with you. If you wish to adjust the front door, then you can do so whenever.”

“Maybe I will.” He added, “It has been a pleasure to work with you, too. Your class certainly was fun.” As Erick floated there on the platform, in the center of the last floor of the dungeon, he briefly considered taking off his sunglasses just so he could get a proper view of the place. But that would have been a bad idea, so he did not. He simply turned to Apell, waving as he said, “Later.”

A blip of white crashed through Erick, Poi, and Kiri, as the platform whisked them back to Windy Manor, just in time for sunset.

Across the ocean to the west, where the dark water met the orange, pink, and yellow sky, the sun descended on another day. Erick sighed, seeing all that water, and knowing that this sight would be waiting here for his return, after Messalina no longer threatened Spur. As to what ‘no longer threatened Spur’ looked like? Erick had a vague idea. Right now, if he could find someone through [Polymorph] and at a vast range, then one or two or ten applications of that spell would, hopefully, make Messalina leave. That would be good enough.

There was a lot of magic left to learn at Oceanside, after all, but he was needed elsewhere, for now.

Kiri stepped off of the platform first, onto the front lawn, saying, “I was not expecting a boon.” She rapidly said, “I know it’s rude to ask—”

“You’re right.” Poi said, “It is rude to ask.”

Erick smiled toward the sunset. He said, “I don’t mind being rude. What’d you get, Kiri? I’m trying to decide on Reduction, Resilience, or Recovery.”

Kiri turned back toward Erick. She paled slightly, then said, “Uh. Just the use of a spell.”

Poi stressed, “Sir. Please don’t tell anyone what you got.” He added, “It is a massive breach of security for anyone to know anything specific about any divine magics you may or may not have received from any specific deity.”

“Okay okay.” Erick asked, “What do you think Yetta’s divine abilities were, then?” He sarcastically asked, “Can I ask that?”

Poi sarcastically replied, “That’s a fine question.” He turned and walked toward the house.

Erick laughed.

- - - -

After dinner, Erick still hadn’t decided which of Rozeta’s Boons he would take, or which kind of divine, Koyabez-assisted artifact he wanted to make. As far as the item was concerned, he was leaning toward a Staff of Exalted Storm, just so he could make non-divine ones by copying whatever Koyabez decided to make. There were some obvious holes in that theory, of course. It was quite possible, that whatever came out of [Divine Creation] would be a one-of-a-kind item; impossible to reproduce.

Phagar’s spell was very clearly an emergency-only spell. Erick hoped he would never have to use it.

Erick went to his workroom to make some progress on his other problems; specifically, the [Scan] problem. The [Polymorph] problem was too much right now. He would have to do that later, after he had solved the initial [Particle Scan] problem. He started off with summoning a chalkboard, and sketching out an idea. It was a rough idea, because Erick had a rough problem.

He had no idea how radiowave imaging would need to be adjusted to work with the magic of the Script.

In his course of researching all the [Scan] spells he could get his hands on, when he wasn’t working on the dungeon, or getting waylaid by the math of it all, he discovered that all the known [Scan] spells worked based on the senses. Sight, touch, smell. Those were the big ones. Hearing and taste factored into the more nuanced searching spells, but not by much. But broadly, they all worked on what the scanner knew, or could find out.

He thought back to when he first heard of [Scan] from [Zago], the mage guildmaster of Spur. She had told him the normal recipe for [Scan], and it was [Find Target], [Force Wave], [Scent Tracker], [Scry], [Rebound], and [Identify]. [Force Wave] was there to provide the initial pulse of mana outward, which would then return with [Rebound], after it hopefully caught on the target, which would happen because of a combination of [Identify], [Find Target], and [Scent Tracker].

To do all this, [Scan] cost 5000 mana. It could only [Scan] out to 10 kilometers, too.

Going over what he knew now, Zago was correct in her spell work, but the [Scan] in the [Script] was something that any decent archmage could easily beat, and most mages could beat, too. [Alter Scent] would throw off the [Scent Tracker] part enough to fool the spell half the time, while a basic [Polymorph] would fool the entire spell, a hundred percent of the time.

A [Particle Scan] spell was going to be a different beast altogether, because he needed to have the [Particle Scan] itself, and the ability to recognize what it was he was [Particle Scan]ning without the use of normal magic. There was no [Particle Identify] right now, and Erick did not want to reinvent computers; he didn’t even know where to begin with that monstrous problem. He still didn’t have Particulate Force, either, the one Class Ability that would allow him to combine normal magic and Particle magic, and he likely never would. He didn’t want all those non-standard Errors, and besides, he promised Jane he wouldn’t put himself in danger like that anymore. It was a promise he intended to keep.

Erick stepped back from what he had drawn.

It was a simple idea of a RADAR; a lightward fashioned into a concave surface that would rotate in the air, and send out a signal, and then catch that signal as it came back.

Erick frowned; that wouldn’t do. He could do better. This was magic he was trying to work; there was no need for such a limited device, and he had to consider how the spell would display its results, too. Generally speaking, blue boxes only appeared for spell-usage, not for spell-display, meaning that whatever spell Erick came up with now would also have to have some other interface system for understanding the results.

This ‘understanding of the results’ was one of the more difficult aspects of [Scan] magic. According to Erick’s research, most [Scan] spells output a disk with dots, and it was up to the caster to understand what those dots meant. False positives were a problem, too.

… A disk with dots was good enough. Even Atunir’s [Divine Scan] supposedly output dots on a field, in addition to the blue box, though Erick had never experienced the ‘dots on a field’ that others apparently had experienced.

Speaking of which, he really should ping that [Divine Scan] box again, just to see what happens, but it was late, and the bright flash would be too bright, and it’d cause a stir, for sure. He’d ping that first thing in the morning after he told people what he was doing. For now, he drew up possible designs.

Erick drew up a sphere—

No! Not just a normal sphere. Erick quickly erased that image and drew another. This one was a sphere that stood high in the sky, that would passively emit radiowaves—

Shortwave radiowaves! Those were the kind that bounced on the ionosphere around Earth, that people used to talk to each other across the globe! Erick had finally remembered—

Ah. No. Maybe not shortwave? That would make what came next much more complicated than it had to be. He didn’t want to [Scan] the entire world—

… He did want to [Scan] the entire world, didn’t he?

… What was a ‘shortwave’ radio, anyway? He should probably just use all radiowaves, if he could.

… this was completely out of Erick’s wheelhouse.

“How did I get roped into making this spell, again?” Erick sketched out more half-baked plans, muttering, “Maybe… this— no. Not that.” He suddenly said, “Wait. I forgot the superposition-y thing.” He thought for a moment. He said, “That can come later. Maybe. But! Wait. Radiowaves do a lot with very little energy, but [Call Lightning] seems like it would demand much, much more energy than what I want here… Does energy matter, when it comes to magic? Obviously it matters a little… But maybe I don’t need that superposition for searching stuff right now...”

After a while, he stopped drawing. He stepped away from the blackboard. He looked to the window, and saw that it was well and truly dark. Whatever time it was, was good enough to serve as a bedtime. He was starting to get a headache.

He went to bed. Ophiel gladly curled up against him, trilling in soft violins, happy for the early night.

- - - -

Shortly after sunrise the next day, Erick stood on the grassy front lawn of Windy Manor, while a westerly breeze blew across the front lawn, carrying with it the gentle scent of the still-dark ocean, just beyond the cliffside. The salt-kissed wind mixed with lemon and cinnamon and other earthly vegetable smells of the nearby gardens.

Poi had already alerted Krigea as to what was about to happen. She then alerted the Headmaster, and whoever else she usually alerted for these sorts of things. An hour later, clearance had been handed down the line to Erick. Poi and Kiri now stood to the side, watching, while Erick prepared for an experiment.

Erick put on a pair of sunglasses as he spoke to the morning sky, still half purple with night, saying, “Thank you, Atunir, for helping to keep this world intact,” as he pressed his intent against Atunir’s [Divine Scan].

Strictly speaking, it was considered blasphemy to try and decode the magics of the gods, so Erick did not have any real help in understanding today’s experiment besides his own intuition. He briefly considered asking Teressa what her Mana Sense told her, but alongside a similar idea to ask Poi what his mental senses were telling him, those ideas were discarded. He would make do with his own senses, and [Hunter’s Instincts], of course.

As he finished pressing his intent against the Kill and Exterminate Quest, a bright yellow orb, two-foot across, flashed into the air in front of Erick, like a miniature sun glowing in the colors of the harvest. Hums, like a chorus, rose in power, as a bright gold ring flickered and settled horizontally around the center of the orb. Two more rings materialized; one above the first, the other below the first.

The sky cracked yellow as the orb burst with light in every direction, all at once. The orb was dissipating from the outside in, one infinitesimally thin, but also enormously powerful layer at a time. In a flashing instant, the orb was gone. The sky was yellow, as twilight temporarily retreated. As the golden glow spread in all directions at once, twilight came back.

It only took half a second. Erick was barely able to keep up with the spell, but [Hunter’s Instincts] seemed to make everything go slower, or maybe it made him go faster. Whatever the case, Erick saw how the spell worked. Understanding was already coming to him, too.

One minute later, the golden return flash coalesced onto Erick. He took off his sunglasses, and read.

Scan complete.

Denutha Odaari located. Map incoming...

No Daydropper Vines within 10,000 kilometers.

Burned 0 seeds and 0 adult plants.

Please supply 5000 mana or wait 24 hours if you wish to scan again.

The air flickered in front of Erick as a horizontal disk a meter across floated in midair.

It was a perfect map of Erick’s current location, centered around the center of Oceanside. It looked like a floating golden disk, but it was colored the colors of the land; blues and greens and browns. Oceanside was a large island in the center of that disk, but not that large at all compared to the lands north and south; the continents of Glaquin and Nergal.

Erick’s own position was a white dot on the map, on Oceanside. Denutha Odaari’s location was a red dot on the coast of Glaquin, maybe 6000 kilometers northwest, at the mouth of a river. The detail in the map was really quite something. Clouds even hung above some of the lands. Erick studied the map for a little while, trying to understand what he was seeing. The map, for its part, seemed to oblige Erick’s curiosity as he poked at the wardlight construction and his fingers touched nothing but air.

The first thing he noticed was that it was definitely a wardlight construction, because his hand passed through the surface. Erick even stepped all the way inside of the map, both to experience the map, and to see details up close. Except for a thin layer of color on the top, it was completely yellow; the color of Atunir’s magic. The underside was craggy and yellow, and not very well mapped out at all. Atunir’s [Divine Scan] seemed to only penetrate down to the barest surface of the Underworld.

Was that a limitation of the magic? Or a different sort of limit?

Erick stepped out of the map, and just looked at it. It was a good map. Erick smiled. Yes. This was a good map. He could maybe do something like this with radiowaves. The Script would have to do a lot of the heavy lifting, and there was probably going to be an Error, but he could bounce radiolight around to try and create a [Scan], couldn’t he? It wasn’t technically Particle magic, but it might be close enough?

Erick said to the map, and to Atunir, “Thank you.”

The map broke into pieces. In a blink, it dissolved into the ambient mana.

Erick threw a hundred mana and a question into the air.

In the early morning light, the second divinity of the day spoke sarcastically, saying, ‘It’s close enough to Particle magic for me. Go ahead and try. The worst you’ll get is an Error or a spell that takes a while to form an image.’

That was a good enough answer for Erick. He smiled as Phagar’s divine manafire wisped away on the morning breeze. Then, he prepared himself. He breathed. He organized his thoughts. He organized the spell in his mind.

He spoke to the sky, calling to the mana in the original, most well-trod rhyming scheme, shaping his intent into a radiating force,

“Search the land with light invisible! Return to here a map made visible!

“Sift through noise, bring understanding of this cascade ever expanding

“Search the land with light invisible, return to here a map made visible.

“Here lifts a light, a shining star, to pulse and find the near and far; [Radar]!”

High above, maybe a hundred meters in the sky and well clear of the tree line, a spot of white light began to shine, like a glittering star.

Erick sagged, dropping his arms and hands, as rushing noise filled his ears. His neck rolled as his eyes fluttered open and shut. He began to fall to the ground but someone grabbed him upright. A wash of healing started on his shoulder, then tapped a few more times across his back.

Sound returned.

Poi’s voice came softly from nearby, “—got you. I got you. You’re good. You can hear me now, right?”

Erick groaned out, blinking hard as he stumbled to put his feet under him. He held onto Poi’s arm, and Kiri’s arm, too. She held him up from his other side. Her eyes glanced to Erick, but she quickly turned her attention back toward the sky.

As Erick stabilized, he caught sight of a few blue boxes waiting for him, and a stacking pile of light hovering just out of reach. Still blurry-eyed, he tried to make sense of the boxes first. The first one was the congratulations for making a new basic spell. The others were more interesting.

Cascade Imaging 1, instant, super long range, <500 mana>

Gradually build up an image of your greater surrounding area over the course of 10 minutes per spell level. Recasting Cascade Imaging on the same location will extend the spell’s duration to the length of the new cast.

The resulting image will gradually become more precise the longer Cascade Imaging is able to run.

If you designate a <well known target> prior to casting, that target might appear on your resulting image.

<Particle Mage Only>

Rozeta thanks you for enriching the Script.

+3 ability points.

Other Relevant Entities are already bemoaning the restriction, but I’m going to keep it like that for the foreseeable future. I would have thought that spell would have cost a lot more than 500 mana, but for all their propagation, radio waves are rather low energy. Such is the benefit of actually working with the physics of this universe. ~Rozeta

Erick chuckled as he stood up under his own power. He sighed out, then said, “It worked!”

High in the sky, a meter-wide white orb shone like a star hanging in the blue sky. Halos of light released here and there off of the orb, like solar flares caught on an irresistible current, inexorably turning into invisible energy that flowed away at the speed of light. That was just a guess, though. Erick couldn’t see the flares once they got more than ten meters from the orb. Gradually, here and there, light returned to the orb like sparkles settling down onto the orb, like silt settling down at the bottom of a pond.

A surreal dance of light hung in the sky, while down below a similar happening took place.

Light crashed down from the orb above to land in a foggy, white air in front of Erick. The orb above carved that fog like a sculptor would carve a relief out of a wall, or maybe how a demolitions expert would turn a mountainside into what they wanted.

Rapidly, a meter wide stretch of fog directly in front of Erick turned solid, as the shape of Oceanside island came into view; roughcut and barely shaped like the island Erick knew, at all. The mountains to the south created a solid shadow in the lightward, directly in line with a normal shadow, if the orb above was the sun. This distortion in the map was like a ridge extending to the south. It was a radio-shadow. The spell was not high enough to fully [Scan] around those tall ridges.

But as the spell continued, and Erick recast [Cascade Imaging], renewing the spell to a new, longer duration, the shadow behind the southern mountains began to degrade, and eventually fully disappear. Radios bounced, after all. Erick smiled. It worked.

After ten minutes, most of Oceanside Island stood revealed. All 2500 kilometers of the long, thin island, had been reduced to a 5 meter wide map, with some shadows lingering where certain structures reached high into the sky, while the waters surrounding the island were a perfectly flat, white surface, except for the islands here and there, while the waters beyond the 2500 mark were a foggy, hazy thing. But even that foggy edge was gradually turning into flat ocean as the spell continued to work. While it worked, Erick walked through the waist-high projection map. The map didn’t seem to mind; there were no distortions at his passing. This map seemed to obey the same rules as every other lightward.

Kiri watched in interested silence, as she walked through the light with Erick. Poi watched in concern, standing outside of the spell.

Erick handed them both copies of the spell. He said, “I’m pretty sure I can [Scan] on a much smaller scale, too. In fact! I’m going to try that.” He cast the same spell up into the sky, closer to the house and well above the trees, while the first spell was still running. “Experiments are fun!”

As a second ball of light took shape up above, the first map turned into sharp shapes, like someone had glitched-out a TV signal, turning everything into sharp edges and broken spaces. Magical static rapidly degraded the first spell into ambient mana, while the second spell detonated like a popping balloon, before it could put out even the littlest bit of fog on the ground.

Kiri yelped, then quickly huffed out in annoyance. That got a smile from Poi.

Erick said, “I guess the spells can’t function so close together.”

Kiri said, “Do it again.”

Erick obliged. A [Cascade Imaging] took hold not seven meters up; just above the trees. As it began to put out light, and take in the resulting reflections, a white fog lifted from the ground. Light began to carve out of that fog, soon enough.

Erick and Kiri watched as a miniature diorama of Windy Manor appeared in the fog, along with the radio-shadowed trees all around, making the house look like it was on the edge of a massive, impassible hedge. But minutes passed, and the radio-shadows began to break apart, as more information gathered through the spell.

Erick watched as a little white lightward version of himself appeared on the map, looking down at the center of Windy Manor’s yard. The map itself was not repeated in miniature, but everything else was. Kiri stood beside Erick, watching her own miniature self lean over and look at a blank spot in the air, just like Erick’s miniature self was doing.

There was a problem, though. Ophiel was on his shoulder. Sunny was on Kiri’s shoulder.

So what was the thing flying around them?

Erick watched as a tiny, floating thing, appearing like a white orb, hovered around the floating map, maybe two meters from Erick. Erick looked up at where the floating thing should have been, at around head height, but there was nothing. He glanced back to the map. The white orb was still there. He looked up again. Whatever was floating right in front of his face, was completely invisible to visible light, but apparently not to radiowaves.

Erick got out, “Huh—”

Kiri reacted with a blast of fire aimed at the floating orb. She was slightly slower than Erick, but she did not catch her target; it was already gone. She did manage to catch the lemon trees on fire, though.

Poi reacted with a wide-range communication that came through much faster than it sounded, ‘Mind solidifying… Done. Minimal outside influences… Purged. Parasite testing... Clear.’

The groundskeepers, Vinsez, the incani man, and Powell, the human woman, who Erick had spoken to now and then, but mostly not, appeared in a flash to the side of the garden. Each of them were dressed in cream-colored robes and ready for battle. Vinsez held a spear, Powell held a sword and a shield.

Powell yelled, “I don’t see—”

Erick shouted, “He’s gone now!” As his heart began to beat slower, Erick added, softer, “No need to get concerned.” Erick pointed back down to the map. Vinsez and Powell were now a part of the resolving opaque-white lightward. The pixie, and Erick was pretty sure that it was a pixie, was gone. Or maybe it was just hiding out in the radio-shadows of the forest. He said, “Thank you, though, Vinsez. Powell.” He turned to Poi, “Thanks, Poi.”

Kiri blushed darker green as she waved her hand and put out the fire on the lemon trees.

Poi’s face held hard, as twenty intent-filled lines streamed from his head into the manasphere. But as moments passed, those lines dimmed. He said, “Nothing but a spy. I think.”

“Probably,” Erick agreed.

Vinsez said, “Apologies, sir. We—”

“No need to worry, Vinsez.” Erick said, “Thank you very much for your prompt reaction.” Erick joked, “I just hope that Messalina doesn’t think that this means I can find someone.” He added, “This spell is missing a lot.”

Vinsez nodded. Powell remained silent.

Ophiel trilled in questioning flute sounds, while a dozen eyes opened up across his tiny body; he didn’t notice the pixie at all, and if Erick was reading Ophiel right, he did not like not noticing the pixie.

- - - -

After Vinsez and Powell left, Erick spent the rest of the morning testing out [Cascade Imaging], to find out what it could, and couldn’t do. It did not take long to discover he could influence the distance the spell imaged depended on how high he cast the spell.

If he cast the spell ten meters up, it imaged an area of about one kilometer around him, and spread the resulting image over a three meter wide disk, that floated about waist-high. At this resolution, he could even make out himself standing upon the resulting map. If he focused on searching for himself, when he cast, his miniature replica turned bright blue on the map.

If he cast the spell 20 meters up, it covered a much, much further distance. Maybe twenty kilometers; Erick wasn’t quite sure, but it did manage to catch Oceanside in the resulting image. If he searched for himself, with the spell cast 20 meters up, he was a blue dot directly in the center of the map; his miniature self was too small to actually appear at that resolution. If he searched for ‘people’, the spell lit up bright blue dots all over the heavily radio-shadowed buildings and streets of Oceanside, and himself, and Poi and Kiri, and even more people out in the woods who where not near the house. Whoever they were, they were far enough away that their presence didn’t worry Erick. They were probably just doing whatever they were doing; Erick didn’t pry.

He found out rather quickly that if he came up with a target and cast the spell upon an already active map, to renew the map, the target turned blue. Erick could change up his targets and keep the previous map’s resolution, without having to wait for the map to resolve from the fog again, which usually took ten minutes. But if he wanted a different resolution, he had to recast the whole spell, and start from a scratch.

He searched for ‘stone’. The resulting image turned very blue. The same result, but visually very different in a very understandable way, happened when he searched for ‘trees’ and ‘water’, with the map adjusting each time he renewed [Cascade Imaging]. It was here, that he discovered the map was not perfect, at all. Some trees shifted to blue, but some trees that were in the heavy radio-shadows stayed white. This was that ‘the target might appear on your resulting image’ part of the spell, for sure.

He searched for ‘rads’. Sparkles of blue turned up here and there on the map, as radiowaves seemed able to penetrate through flesh easily enough. According to the map, and to what Erick already knew, there were some smaller monsters out in the woods, though that was normal. The monsters of Oceanside were violent, for sure, but the walls around Windy Manor were tall, and secure, and all of the crazy-violent monsters had been weeded out of the island’s populations centuries and centuries ago.

He searched for ‘animals’, and nothing happened. The category was probably too broad. What was an ‘animal’, anyway?

‘Spiders’ turned up way too many blue dots, absolutely everywhere, and even in the [Prismatic Ward]ed Manor. Erick would confront that weirdness later. When Kiri asked what turned up so many results, Erick told her, and she freaked out a little, going so far as to leap backward and say, ‘Shut it off! HOLY SHIT!’ Erick struggled not to laugh as he calmly explained that this [Scan] was likely missing many, many, many spiders, too small for radiowaves to catch. Kiri paled.

‘Cows’ turned up a small herd of the animals in Oceanside, near the [Husbandry] and lifestock buildings, which were just now coming out of the radio-shadows.

It turned out that Erick just had to let the spell run for a little while and it could penetrate most solid surfaces. Glass was not a problem. Stone was okay, too. Radiowaves were pretty sneaky about getting everywhere, after all. Tunnels remained hidden, of course, but soon enough, most of the radio-shadows of the trees around Windy Manor were mostly gone, revealing the solid surface of the land. The trees themselves were still nests of shadows, but those shadows were small, and constantly updating.

After twenty continuous minutes of running at the 20 kilometer resolution, and a small break inside the house, when Erick came back out to the map in the yard, all of Oceanside stood revealed.

From this angle, the city was a pile of organized towers rising out of the crescent remains of a caldera, while smaller buildings stretched down to the harbor, and into the forests surrounding the city. Erick watched as little ships plied the waters of Oceanside’s harbor, like ants atop a glass surface, because apparently [Cascade Imaging] was rather good at penetrating water down to a rather far depth.

And at the bottom of Oceanside’s crater, was flat land, dotted with underwater buildings.

Kiri noticed Erick noticing the submerged structures. She said, “That’s the mid-water training facility and marine biology laboratories. People go there to learn how to fight krakens and stuff like that.”

“Oh?” Erick said, “I didn’t know they did that sort of thing, here.”

“They do everything, here. I was invited to attend some of the classes down there, but I declined. We had the dungeon to make, and I didn’t have a waterbreathing form, anyway. One of the big things they do down there is that the instructors [Polymorph] into a bunch of different sea creatures and you’re expected to defend targets against them, or hunt and track them through a controlled environment.” Kiri added, “And they also study oceaneering. It’s like dungeoneering, but... not. I’m… not actually sure what oceaneering is.”

Erick joked, “Sounds sinister to me.”

He searched for ‘people who want me dead’. Nothing changed. This was obviously a case of ‘not well known enough’, or ‘not seen in the scan’, or maybe something else was going wrong. The monsters outside the walls might have been somewhat ‘docile’, in a very loose interpretation of the word, but they were certainly still killers. But those monsters did have rads, and that was a pretty clear indicator of ‘monster’ or not. [Cascade Imaging] probably couldn’t suss out mental states. That would be strange, if it could.

… He elicited Kiri’s help.

“Kiri.” Erick said, “I want you to think about killing me. Really mean it, too.”

“… I am not comfortable with this, and I will not be doing that.”

Erick bah’d, then turned to Poi. “Same request.”

Poi smirked. “Already doing it.”

“See!” Erick turned to Kiri. “Not that hard.” He looked at the map. Poi’s miniature person was still white. Erick turned to Poi. “Are you sure you really want me dead?”

“I’m more than capable of altering my mental state to a variety of needs.”

When Poi’s miniature did not change to red, or to anything else, Erick called off that test. [Cascade Imaging] was not able to read mental states, obviously.

‘Moths’ turned up a whole lot of the little critters, all over the forest. They liked to fly around the outside lights at night, but during the day they slept around the garden and in the forest. And just like the spiders, there were even a few inside the house.

Erick had never noticed the bugs inside the house until now. Maybe the spiders were doing a really good job of hiding, and bug killing? [Prismatic Ward] obviously needed more testing.

‘Parasites’ turned up nothing. But Erick remained undeterred. ‘Parasites’ was a very broad category, similar to ‘animals’. Erick knew about ‘Dream Worms’, though. They were slick, three inch long worms, and he had even had two of them inside of him, so far. Soon enough, ‘Dream Worms’ turned up a slew of dots at the hospital, and nowhere else. That made sense; they were studying and extracting them there.

‘Teressa’ turned up a blue dot in the hospital ward, exactly next to his next search, which was ‘Jane’.

He tested ‘souls’, and nothing happened. This was just as well. Erick had no idea what a soul actually was.

‘Gold’ revealed some coins in his pockets, and on Kiri and Poi’s person, and scattered throughout Oceanside like the people had been. Metal apparently reacted very strongly to radiowaves, providing a great reflective surface. It took no time at all for quite a few ‘gold’ blue dots to appear across the map.

Erick took the coins in his pocket and [Stoneshape]d them into the ground, to test the penetration of the spell. And then Erick cast the imaging orb inside of the ground. It worked. Used in this way, the map displayed above the orb. He could map the underground for about 20 meters in every direction. It wasn’t a very good image, but 65 feet was 65 feet, and the gold coins turned up like bright blue dots here and there, exactly where Erick had buried them.

How cool was that!

As Erick talked of buried treasure searches, Kiri threw a wet blanket over the idea. Erick’s methods were different than the norm, but [Stone Body] could be turned into [Stone Sense] by a skilled enough practitioner, and that could do a lot better underground detection than whatever it was Erick was doing. Erick knew of this method from his own time in Apell’s dungeoneering class, of course, but it was nice to have a voice of reason around.

‘Lemons’ turned up blue dots stacked against each other, next to Erick, growing in the garden. And also in a plot of land near Oceanside. It was Professor Rue Down’s alchemy gardens, of course. After an interesting discussion in Esoteric Magic, he had given her seeds from all of his plants, to see if she could use them as ingredients for anything. Neither Erick nor Rue expected anything to come out of lemons-for-alchemy, but it was nice to see that her lemon trees were doing well.

‘People using [Polymorph]’ turned up nothing.

“So much for an easy answer there,” Erick said.

Kiri said, “It’s an instant spell, anyway. You only use it to change forms. For instance, I wouldn’t say you’re currently [Getting Dressed]. You [Got Dressed] in the morning. The spell effect is over.”

Erick nodded. He searched for ‘People using [Personal Ward]’. A panoply of dots appeared everywhere; almost as many as when he scanned for ‘people’. Probably more, actually. [Personal Ward] was a specific thing that Erick knew rather well.

Kiri said, “It’s strange that you can search for ‘people’.”

“I don’t pretend to know people, but I certainly know their general shape.”

‘Person with one arm and one leg’ turned up zero results.

“Ah. Right.” Erick said, “Everyone would get that healed.”

‘People with horns’ turned up a smattering of results.

He searched for ‘blood’, and got a predictable amount of results from the hospital where people were wounded, of course, but he also got results from here and there in the rest of the city. It seemed that searching for ‘blood’ and thinking about exposed blood, returned those exact results. Searching for ‘blood inside people’ returned a similar number of dots as when he searched for ‘people’.

Kiri asked, “You know blood rather well?”

“It’s a spot of iron inside of a biological structure. So… Maybe?” He added, “But it’s much smaller than I would have thought possible to search for.”

‘DNA’ turned basically the whole map blue, but it also burned out the orb in the sky and the map broke apart. Erick could apparently use radiowaves and magic to search for things that were microscopic, and that he new very well, but a general scan for such a widespread item burned out the capacity of the spell? But it didn’t do that when he scanned for ‘stone’ or ‘trees’? Odd.

Erick recast the spell into the sky, then searched for his own DNA.

Smears of blue appeared on himself and all throughout Windy Manor, and even in his more well-visited places in town. Did [Cleanse] not clean up all of that? It should have, shouldn’t it?

Erick walked over into the Manor. He cast a [Cleanse] into the space, aiming for his room, which he was pretty sure he already cleaned today. When he came back to the map, it was still the same blue as before.

Maybe [Cleanse] only cleaned 99.95%?

Kiri offered, “Try ‘light essence’. You have at least one of those, now.”

Poi spoke up, “I think we’re going to need more guards.”

Erick frowned at Poi. He didn’t want to think about Poi’s very rational concerns, right now. He wanted to experiment. Erick turned away from his guard and mentally felt around inside of himself, searching for the tiny light essence that was supposed to be somewhere inside of himself; whatever that meant.

But he was too excited to go on such a spiritual journey right now. When he closed his eyes, he found nothing but darkness. He opened his eyes and searched for ‘light essence’, anyway.

Zero results.

Erick said, “I think the search capabilities are based upon my own understanding of what I’m looking for. A proper soulmage might be able to find people with souls.” He looked to Poi, saying, “A proper Mind Mage might be able to find the minds of who they’re looking for.” He added, “But that’s a very broad guess.”

Kiri said, “Probably not.” She offered, “It might only return a positive result for a physical object. [Ward]s are partially physical. Blood is very physical. Feelings and essences are ethereal.”

Erick looked down at the map of his surroundings, floating all around his waist. He searched for ‘Melemizargo’. Briefly, every single remaining radio-shadow everywhere on the map flickered blue, and expanded.

Erick quickly changed the search to ‘pixie’, calming his hammering heart, not bothering to explain his previous search.

Surprisingly, a few dots appeared here and there around Oceanside. Erick was more than willing to let this development fully occupy his mind.

Seeing a pixie outside of his window when Eduard was divulging the particulars of his search for Messalina, to Silverite, was apparently enough to count as a ‘well known target’. Or maybe the Headmaster’s description of their stature and capabilities had been enough. Whatever the case, the dots moved slowly as they flew around the city. Some of them were high in the sky. Some of them were darting in and out of deeper buildings; vanishing into radio-shadows, or reappearing from them.

Erick said, “Poi. Alert the Headmaster. He has pixies in his city.”

- - - -

The Headmaster stood tall in the crescent, white-map harbor of Oceanside, as he loomed over the miniature version of his city. Lines of telepathic intent flickered from his head, out into the manasphere. His amber eyes glowed dim gold as he tracked a blue dot as it floated through the city.

There were no pleasantries for today’s visit. The Headmaster had appeared in a flash of gold, and after looking up at the white cascading orb above, and at the white map below, he strode right into the map, and saw the problem that Erick had spotted.

He had not said a single word, yet.

Erick just stood to the side, waiting, as the miniature white forests of Oceanside ringed his waist. Kiri and Poi, as well as Vinsez and Powell, all stood well outside of the map. Kiri and Poi stood beside the lemon trees. Vinsez and Powell stood toward the cliffside.

The Headmaster tracked the blue dot as it flew into a harborside building.

The dot suddenly stilled, then flickered back and forth. At the scale of this map, the dot flickered maybe twenty meters at most. But then it stilled, again.

The Headmaster smiled wide. He said, “Got him.”

The tension of the moment seemed to fade like a breaking fog revealing a mountain of gold. The Headmaster smiled well and truly wide, as he laughed loud. The map flickered under the dragon’s mirth, as the Headmaster tossed his head back and laughed like a sudden hurricane. Erick felt his bones vibrate, but he kept his cool, as the Headmaster dispensed with his joy.

The Headmaster calmed down. He brushed away some happy tears from his eyes, then said, “We have pixies on staff, of course. They are a people, after all. They’re not unequivocally beholden to Messalina, but there is a stigma there, so they don’t like to make themselves known. That one, though… That one was not on my staff.” He sighed. He said, “He might have even been the one who wormed you, or not.” He added, “Or he might be a visiting relative. We’ll find out.” He gazed up, toward the flickering, cascading ball of light above, which was almost in line with the sun, then back down, to the white map. He said, “This is an impressive spell. I can hardly wait to see the equations that describe it all.”

Erick chuckled, saying, “Maybe in 50 years when someone else invents those.”

The Headmaster smiled, saying, “That is my expected timetable, too.” He added, “You seem to have this aversion to the math side of magic, but it really does help the rest of us to understand the unknowable. Magic is screwy. Math is a bridge, so that mortal minds might come to eventually comprehend the uncomprehendable.”

“… is that why Rozeta doesn’t tell anyone how magic works?”

“Partially, I’m sure.” The Headmaster looked back down to the map. He asked, “Could you please search for a few things for me? I would like to test this spells capabilities. The Problem of [Polymorph] might not be a problem for a spell like this, if you’re clever enough.” He added, “But I’m sure you will need to do something more to solve that particular conundrum.”

Erick said, “Sure. What’s the first thing?”

The first thing was ‘soul’, or more particularly, ‘Erick’s Soul’. This met with a predictable failure. Erick had no concrete idea what a ‘soul’ actually was.

“How can you not know what a soul is?” the Headmaster asked, smirking and disbelieving.

“I am pretty sure I have one, but beyond that… Where is it? What is it? Is it me, or is it a part of me?”

The Headmaster simply nodded, and moved on, repeating many of the same queries Erick had already performed, along with a few he did not think to test, like ‘people possessing [Polymorph]’. Of that query, the people all around Erick got a blue dot, because he was pretty darn sure that everyone here had the skill, but only one dot appeared all the way over in Oceanside; Jane’s dot.

‘Orcol’, ‘Incani’, ‘Human’, all produced predictable results.

‘Dragon’ highlighted the Headmaster, while the Headmaster was in human form. His was the only such dot on the map. Strangely enough, the Headmaster was also highlighted when Erick searched for ‘human’. Running through a few different tests with ‘light slime’ highlighted himself, while ‘unicorn’ highlighted Jane over in the hospital.

Identifying active spells, like [Ward] and [Scry] were easy enough, and those spells seemed to suffer no effects from being detected. Searching for [Telepathy] revealed a haze of magic layered over the city, and multiplied the radio-shadows so much that Erick might as well have started the spell from scratch; which he then did. This earned Erick a raised eyebrow from the Headmaster. Apparently [Cascade Imaging] could detect active magic that Erick understood; ‘understood’ being the keyword, there. Searching for [Invisible] turned up nothing. Erick had never experienced the spell, himself.

The Headmaster then asked him to search for several things that Erick had never heard of before. ‘Drakenslag’, ‘woodholly’, ‘Gnarled Pine’. Nothing showed on the map. When that round of tests were over, the Headmaster conjured lightwards shaped like trees. He indicated that drakenslag was a red tree with three-pointed leaves, with undersides of the brightest red; almost neon. Woodholly and Gnarled Pine were also trees. Once Erick knew what he was scanning for, blue dots appeared in the forests all around Oceanside.

The Headmaster eventually said, “[Cascade Imaging] seems to operate based on personal knowledge linked to form, in a standard [Find Target] sort of way, and with all those same assorted nuances. This is a problem, since you want this kind of magic to be a completely separate entity from your own understanding. You want more [Identify]; less [Find Target].” He added, “Without a proper [Identify] like quality, [Cascade Imaging] is more a mapping spell and a parlor trick than anything truly useful.” He looked up, adding, “And that orb is rather prominent, but I suppose it is necessary.” He looked back down to Erick, asking, “Do you want me to send you my books on [Identify]?”

“Yes. I’ll try to get through them tonight.” He asked, “But I’d much prefer the short, oral version.”

The Headmaster smirked, then said, “[Identify] is a major spell, much larger than you might think. A generalized casting of the spell would draw on your entire personal knowledge base in order to work, including whatever facts you might not fully remember, but used in this way, [Identify] is similarly as flawed as [Find Target]. The difference is, is that [Find Target] will just fail, while [Identify] might give you some clues as to what you are trying to understand, based on your own knowledge.

“If you want to [Identify] something properly, you must use something outside of your own faulty personal knowledge, and then you must enchant that item to use in your [Identify] magics. The Identinomicon, which is a yearly publication produced by the Arcanaeum Consortium, is specifically published for this exact reason. Each copy costs a grand rad, and it takes one more grand rad to enchant the book. Another, much more difficult method, is producing the spell [Libarium], which comes from [Identify], and then enchanting a suitable library space with this spell.”

“How is that different from [Find Target]?”

“Open the spell, and find out.”

Identify X, instant, touch, 50 MP

Discover the properties of an object.

Find Target X, concentration, close range, 5 MP + 5 MP per meter searched

Find a target.

“Ah.” Erick said, “They’re similar, but one is for understanding, while the other is for finding.”

“Exactly.” The Headmaster said, “They are used in conjunction a lot because they have a similar focus. Most [Scan]s eventually use both spells, but your [Cascade Imaging] already has a very well tuned ability to find. Now, you just need that understanding.”

“Can you link minds with many people in order to cast [Identify] with a larger knowledge base?”

“Ritual magic is common workaround when the need to [Identify] is larger than the resources on hand, but conflicting knowledge results in Errors for the person outside of the consensus, even if the minority is correct. This is why most people will [Identify] with knowledge that has been picked over by vetted sources and put down on paper.” He added, “The Identinomicon is one of the most rigorously researched and vetted generalized knowledge bases on Veird, but even that book is wrong sometimes. We do strive to keep those errors to a minimum, though.”

“Okay. Uh. Different question.” Erick asked, “How about if you wanted to find something— What about using a piece of the thing you are trying to find, to find the whole?” He added, “Sorry. I have the spells, but I never really practiced with them.”

The Headmaster nodded, saying, “In this way, you can track a target rather easily, unless they take any of a hundred different steps in order to evade such a measure. [Polymorph] is one of those steps, and by far the easiest.”

Erick threw out another idea, “What about enchanting a written account of what one person had done with [Identify], and then using that in a searching spell?”

“A poor [Polymorph] will not fool this method, but a middling [Polymorph] will.” The Headmaster added, “That is some nice lateral thinking. That method worked for about a hundred years in the beginning, but then people started training in [Polymorph] to avoid this failing, and now [Polymorph] once again reigns supreme. This book-making method is still routinely done to catch criminals if they stick around and make themselves a problem. It works, sometimes.”

“Okay… New idea: Can you search someone else’s notifications to see if they match the deaths of someone you know?”

“Sin Seeker uses this method. It requires touch and a subdued target. Attempts by accomplished Sin Seekers to nullify these requirement have always been met with Errors.” The Headmaster warned, “Don’t try to mess with your Class Abilities, or the Class Abilities of others. This constitutes as messing with the Script, and such an attempt at tinkering will always be met with an Error, at the very least.” He added, “The problem of [Polymorph] has gone unsolved for 1200 years. Your spell can already do a lot of the necessary, basic searching, but only with a physical target you know well. And, I see that you have no problems keeping up with the mana costs of the spell. These two facts are more than enough to give me hope that you can finally put [Polymorph]’s supremacy to rest, but it won’t happen through normal magic.” He offered, “Though normal magic might give you some hints? I’ll send you the books in an hour.” He said, “But, for now, I have a pixie in custody that needs to answer a few questions.”

Erick said, “Okay. Thank you, Headmaster.”

The Headmaster said, “Good spell, Erick. I look forward to requesting your help to narrow down the locations of some dangerous targets in the future. Not all targets require the solution to the [Polymorph] problem, after all. Most of what I would ask you to do would be looking for particularly dangerous monsters in particularly dangerous locations, but with your [Familiar], of course. All that these requests would require is an understanding of those monsters, which I have in abundance.” He added, “But as this is a major step in the right direction, I would like to add some more Elites to your surroundings, if you do not mind.”

Erick was feeling really tired of being a target, but the Headmaster was right.

Erick said, “Sure. Thank you.”

The Headmaster nodded. He vanished in a blip of gold light.

The sun dipped down in the west. Erick had spent the entire day in his front yard, trying to understand [Cascade Imaging]. The spell had already reached level 10. Now, it was time to rain on Spur, and for an early dinner. And to make a decision.

- - - -

Erick sat on his bed, in his room. The books for [Identify] had shown up hours ago, and he had already spent a lot of time reading, but he was tired. Stars shone outside his window. Maybe it was time to sleep? Maybe he should make this next decision in the morning.

He had apparently missed Jane’s ‘awake time’ while the Headmaster was here. He wasn’t happy about that, for multiple reasons, but also because he couldn’t ask her opinion on what to take with this ‘boon’...

But maybe he shouldn’t ask her for her opinion, anyway. This was his responsibility, after all. He didn’t want to saddle Jane with any possible guilt if her theoretical decision turned out to be ‘wrong’. Besides, he had grown a lot more confident in his magic and his choices since that time he needed Jane’s help to make a decision on his Class Abilities. He could do this on his own. He could do this right now.

Erick opened the blue box in question.

Rozeta’s Boon.

Make a decision:

(1) Reduction.

(2) Resilience.

(3) Recovery.

Jane had said in some of their talks that making your strengths stronger was one of the best ways to cover your weaknesses. For that reason, and because of his own ideas, Recovery looked like a really good option.

… They all looked like good options.

Erick had no idea what the words actually meant, but whatever they meant, they were all good things, right?

Right.

Erick thought no more on Reduction or Resilience, and mentally pressed ‘Recovery’.

Another box appeared.

This is a permanent option, with no ability to change later, unlike the vast majority of the rest of your Status. Are you sure you wish to pick Recovery? If you wish to proceed, then verbal confirmation is required, along with focused intent and the imbuing of magic into this box. ~Rozeta.

Erick smiled, piling intent into his words and pushing magic into the second box, as he said, “I pick this one.”

The blue box vanished. Ophiel trilled as Erick fell backward, onto his bed. His eyes grew heavy. He struggled to say awake, but his arms weighed him down, like he was at the bottom of a world made of honey. Ophiel fluttered into the air above him, concerned, with eyes opened up and wings spread wide, as he trilled in flutes.

Divine fire filled the room like a swirling storm; an intangible flickering of white and gold flames that caught on everything and nothing at the same time. And then it was over. The thickness of the air turned hot, then calm, then vanished altogether, as the divine fire swirled away.

For a brief, interesting second, Erick just felt… good. Healthy. Vibrant, even. Like he had just slept for a day and come out of the experience better for it.

Then Ophiel dropped down onto Erick’s chest like a five kilogram cat. Erick grunted. He gently patted Ophiel as he caught his breath, running his fingers through white feathers, turning the [Familiar]s flute sounds into gentle violins. Erick smiled, and another blue box appeared.

Rozeta’s Recovery

The sum of your Health and Mana Regeneration now applies to both Health and Mana Regeneration.

Immune to Health Fatigue and Mana Exhaustion.

Erick chuckled, whispering to Ophiel, “Is that why I feel good? Okay then.” He checked his Status.

Erick Flatt

Human, age 48

Level 65, Class: Particle Mage

Exp: 1,597,236,147,992,638/2,777,789,003,528,800

Class: 6/6

Points: 9

HP -- 2100/2100 --- 29,700 per day

MP -- 6900/6900 --- 29,700 per day

Strength - 20 / +50 / [70]

Vitality - 20 / +50 / [70]

Willpower - 65 / +50 / [115]

Focus - 65 / +50 / [115]

Favored Spell waiting!

Favored Ability waiting!

He said, “Oh. Nice. It’s like a constant [Rejuvenation]… or maybe a little less. And only while at Rest.” He spoke to Ophiel, “This saves me from having to buy a healing spell, though.” He yawned.

He yawned again.

Okay. Maybe he wasn’t fully awake, like he had slept for a day and come out better for it. He might be immune to Exhaustion and Fatigue, but apparently he was still vulnerable to exhaustion and fatigue, and he certainly didn’t want to go back downstairs to read more about [Find Target] and [Identify].

[Find Target] failed when knowledge was incomplete, but [Identify] could usually point the caster in a new direction of inquiry. That was easy enough to understand. Erick skipped through that book rather fast.

But the topic of [Identify] was just so dry. Reading about that spell was like reading about databases, and the classifications of objects, and how to differentiate one from the other. Erick had read enough. The gist was, was that the more knowledgeable a person was, and the more that their [Identify] target resembled what they knew, the better [Identify] worked. If [Identify] was cast as a group, the same rules applied.

That sort of group casting was actually called Ritual Magic, or Cooperative Magic. This kind of magic multiplied the cost of the spell with each new person added to the link, while simultaneously greatly increasing the spell’s power. Everyone needed to have the same spell, though, and they all needed to be linked together in a cohesive [Telepathy] for it to work.

(And it didn’t work with [Familiar]s, unfortunately)

And plus, it was hard to find a need for [Identify], most of the time. [Identify] was a niche magic that worked on a range of ‘touch’, and only told you what you might have figured out soon enough. In that way, you were just saving time. But if you weren’t very knowledgeable, you were wasting your time. Most people were often better off taking such stuff to an expert for exactly that reason, or using an [Identify]-enchanted encyclopedia.

[Identify] did have one major exception to the vagaries of its action, though, and that was with regard to magical items. If [Identify] was cast on a magical item, no mater the caster’s idea of what that magical item might be, it would return the nature of that magical item, and without fail. According to many of the books, this use of [Identify] was Rozeta’s personal influence on the spell.

But touching unknown, powered magical items was usually a very, very bad idea, so most people just wrapped them up in cloth and took them to a proper mage who might know the item without having to touch it.

Erick smiled as he got up and got ready for bed. Maybe, if he linked up a thousand people with the help of a few Mind Mages, he could brute-force [Cascade Imaging] into finding Messalina, or Messalina’s targets. Then he frowned. If it was that easy, they would have done it already. From everything Erick knew, Messalina certainly did not lack for personnel, or normal [Scan] magic. So. Yeah. Brute force wouldn’t work. Besides. Everyone need to have the same spell for Cooperative Magic to be an option, and no one else would have [Cascade Imaging] for at least a year.

As Erick got back into bed, and Ophiel took his position on the covers beside his hip, Erick considered the possibilities…

And then he remembered the four other Elites the Headmaster had set to watching Windy Manor. They were a mixed group of people and they seemed nice enough, but at least one of them would always be directly watching Windy Manor from now on. That got Erick to thinking about how Guardmaster Merit always had someone watching his house in Spur, and that got him to thinking about how he didn’t like being watched so much. Erick had made himself the center of attention in a lot of places, and while that opened a lot of doors, it also made him a target. [Cascade Imaging] was certainly a good thing, but the Headmaster had said, very clearly, that if Erick left Oceanside with this theoretical [Polymorph Scanner] and without Oceanside’s protection, that he would be dead within the week.

Erick wondered what life would be like, if he just made a hole in the ground somewhere and sent out Ophiel to do everything he needed doing—

Nope!

He would not become a hermit. No way. No how. Not happening.

… But how would he go about being a hermit, if that was an option?

Hole in the ground?

… No … Well. Probably not.