Unruly Summon Chapter 24: Scrying (Patreon)

"The trick to subvocal casting is actually pretty easy," explained Wendy, back in the courtyard. "To be honest, I'm surprised you haven't figured it out for yourself."

"Huh? Really?" I asked, holding out a closed fist, imagining the mana forming a ball of light and trying really, really hard to keep my mouth shut. The word, "Lux," escaped anyway, forcing its way up my throat and between my clenched teeth, echoing around the courtyard.

Wendy giggled, then held up her own hand, opening it in complete silence to reveal a ball of light. "Did you see what I did?" she asked.

"You didn't do anything..."

"Hah. It's nice to find something that your bull... uh... divine blessing doesn't let you cheat at," she said, flashing a nervous look at Mary at the midpoint of the sentence. Mary smiled back and gave her a thumbs up. "I did do something. Watch again."

I peered, wondering what I'd missed. She took a deep breath in and out, held up her hand, and then there was light. There was nothing special.

Oh...

"Is it really that easy?" I asked, before expelling as much air as I could from my lungs and holding up my hand.

The spell's name tried to speak itself. I felt myself mouthing it, my lungs attempting to expel air that wasn't there. The result was like the more painful kind of hiccup.

"Ow."

Wendy giggled again. "Well done, you got it. You'll never hold your mouth closed, but keep it slightly open and try to speak without moving your lips. The lack of air will keep it silent, and the ventriloquism will stop lip-readers."

"It's not great if you need to cast while running, or are otherwise exerting yourself," I pointed out. "Or have no skill at ventriloquism."

"No, but there are trade-offs for everything. If a sword was strictly superior to a spear, why would we have spears? Or if a spear was superior to a sword, why swords? There is a time and a place for subvocal casting, but there are equally times when it is not appropriate. Now, shall we work on your scrying? Prospectus."

The air in front of Wendy shimmered and twisted, a window opening up through which I could see my own back.

"Oh, that's pretty cool," I commented, turning around. There was nothing whatsoever behind me, though. "Maius Magus Visus?" I tried. "Ah, now I see it."

There was a shimmering disk of mana hanging in the air, the same size as Wendy's window. Waving my hand through it had no effect. Neither did walking through it, although without me in between the camera and the screen, the window in front of Wendy now showed the window in front of Wendy, ad infinitum. The effect was kinda like standing between a pair of mirrors.

"It's a spell for spying?"

"Kinda. I'd say reconnaissance rather than spying. As you've already noticed, mana sight makes it trivial to spot someone using it, which limits its usefulness if you're trying to be covert. It's also easy to ward against, although that works both ways. No-one's invented a one-way ward yet, so the reason I'm showing another point of the courtyard is because I can't project it through the castle walls. It's still useful, though. In the corrupted lands, for example, it's great for scouting ahead. Many monsters have natural mana sight, but even if they can detect your spell, most aren't intelligent enough to trace it back to the caster or understand what it means. Anyway, you give it a go."

"Not even going to give me a hint about the image?"

"Nope," she replied, grinning evilly. "I want to see what you can do."

Wishing I'd had mana sight active when she cast it, I did the best I could. How hard could it be? Just two disks of mana that were sort of connected in an ethereal, non-uniform way.

"Prospectus."

Yup. Easy.

"... There's a word for what you just did, but Mary will glare at me if I say it," whined Wendy, obviously disappointed that I'd succeeded.

"I'll glare at you anyway. You're being mean to Master," shouted Mary, who was indeed glaring.

I ignored them, choosing instead to peer into my little disk of elsewhere. I didn't see very much. I'd aimed the other end high up in the air, hoping to see over the walls, but all I was getting was black.

"Perhaps you're complaining prematurely," I called to Wendy. "I don't think it worked."

She peered over to check. "Weren't you listening earlier? The walls are warded."

"But both ends of my spell are inside them?"

"You still can't use the spell to look outside. You just see a black wall where the ward is."

"How does that make any sense whatsoever?" I complained. If I'd know that yesterday, Christine's claim that the demons had accurately targeted a window from the other side of the wall would have been obvious nonsense.

"That's just the way it works," she replied with a shrug.

"You know, I'm starting to suspect you lot don't actually know very much about magic."

"Well, no. It's magic. It does what it likes."

"Speaking of, why are spells so insistent on being spoken out loud, when things like body strengthening and battle aura involve manipulating mana without being named?"

"Oh, they are spells, by a textbook definition. Like I said, magic does what it likes, and all colours of magic have their unique characteristics. Grey spells don't have names, and the difficulty scales with distance far more sharply than other colours. It's why you can use battle aura to strengthen your armour, but not your sword. Unless you particularly want to harden the hilt, I guess."

"Grey, huh?" I asked. "I really wish you'd summoned me years ago and let me work my way through that academy you mentioned."

"Oh? A mere two sentences ago, were you not claiming we didn't know very much about magic?"

"Uh... Well, maybe I was a little harsh."

"Ha. I'd be the first to admit there are still many mysteries surrounding mana. I'd be out of a job if there weren't! Besides, you probably wouldn't need the full fourteen seasons; I'd bet you could clear all the practical classes in the first couple of weeks. Anyway, shall we continue? Exploratorem."

I waited, but nothing seemed to happen, despite the obvious spell-cast.

"Can't see it, huh?" asked Wendy, grinning victoriously. "You should be able to, with Maius Magus Visus, but if you aren't watching for it, it's still easy to miss."

"No, I didn't see anything," I admitted.

"Like I said earlier, everything has its strengths and weaknesses. The strengths of Prospectus is that it can be shared—anyone can look through the window that you open—and that the sending side has a vast range. The weakness is that the receiving side is bloody obvious to anything with eyes, and even the sending side is obvious to anything with mana sight. Exploratorem is the opposite. Shorter range, and the window it opens is layered over the caster's eye, invisible to anyone else. The sending side can't be seen at all with Magus Visus, and even with Maius Magus Visus is likely to pass without notice unless someone is actively looking for it. Exploratorem is a spell for covert spying. It does, however, share the weakness that it's trivial to ward against."

I looked around while Wendy was explaining, eventually spotting an out-of-place pinprick of mana floating in the air above us. She was right; had I not been looking for something out of place, it was very unlikely I'd have spotted it.

"Exploratorem," I chanted, giving the spell a go for myself. It resulted in a view of the other side of the courtyard plastered across one of my eyes, giving me a headache-inducing double vision. Another advantage of Prospectus; less chance of making the caster sick.

"Excellent," she declared. "Frustrating, bordering on embarrassing, but still excellent. Now, let's clear a few spells that need less explanation. Vita Visus, Calor Visus, Anima Visus."

She stopped and waited expectantly.

"You're going to need to tell me something," I complained. "I can guess they're all related to Magus Visus, but there's no way I can cast them without knowing what they're supposed to let me see."

"Oh? Are you sure? Not even going to try? You might surprise yourself."

"You're researching me, aren't you?" I accused. "You didn't quit your job to train me. You just changed its topic."

"I'm admitting nothing," she stated, despite wearing an evil grin that admitted everything.

"Well, I suppose the higher ups must have offered you something you considered sufficiently valuable to not mind joining a harem," I sighed, while wondering what other types of 'sight' there could be. There were plenty of options, starting with the scientifically plausible, like regions of the electromagnetic spectrum outside of the usual visual range, moving onto RPG staples like life or alignment, then more nebulous ideas like value, hope or opportunity. I could work my way through each spell, trying each idea in turn, and hope I hit on the correct combinations, but it would be far more efficient if she just told me.

"Huh? Why would they need to offer me anything to get involved in a fivesome involving a hero and a princess? Not to mention the humour value of watching Christine being incredibly awkward about the whole thing."

... Okay, so Wendy was firmly in the 'willing participant' camp. Duly noted.

But back on topic, maybe I could just use all the images at once, invoke the spells in turn, and use what I could see to deduce which one was which? I pictured a thin film of mana coating my eyes, letting me see anything and everything there was to see, then started to speak.

My tongue twisted, the words warping in my throat even as I tried to voice them.

"Omnia Visus!"

The words bounced around the courtyard, continuing to echo for long after they should have died away. It wasn't anywhere near as forceful as Miraculum, but it was still obviously abnormal compared to regular spells. Each syllable struck reality like a hammer. Small whirlpools of dust were kicked up from the ground, and loose chips of stone fell from the walls.

"Huh. That was unexpected," commented Wendy.

Meanwhile, I slammed my eyes shut, my vision flooded with far more overlaid images than I had any hope of coping with. Mere eyelids didn't help as much as I'd hoped, so I added an arm to my blindfold. Even with that, my vision was simultaneously glowing red, red and silver. How I could simultaneously be seeing the same colour twice was a contradiction I didn't have the mental capacity to deal with.

"Something else we've neglected to cover so far!" I shouted. "How do you turn spells off?!"

"Retexo," answered Wendy.

"Retexo!" I repeated, not putting too much effort into an image beyond making it all stop.

Thankfully, it stopped.

I gingerly removed my arm and opened my eyes again, blinking a few times in the sunlight. "Well, that was interesting," I commented dryly.

"Too damn right!" whooped Wendy. "Not only can you spell-cast without needing to worry about the detail or accuracy of your images, but you can even cast a spell without knowing its name! Congratulations on casting your first major tier spell, by the way, although I suppose Miraculum takes some of the lustre off the achievement. That one must have been ultimate tier. How's your mana?"

"Spells have tiers?" I asked. "And my mana is fine, surprisingly."

It really was, too. I didn't feel strained in the slightest.

"Hmm... If your capacity has increased again since yesterday... I wonder how many times you could cast Miraculum now without exhausting yourself? Oh, and remember Retexo; the range is short, but it can be used on other people's magic, too. It won't do anything to erase offensive spell effects, but if you ever find yourself in need of robbing someone of their mana sight, that's the tool you need."

"Just how many spells do you know?" I asked, feeling like I was drowning under all the names I needed to remember. "How do you keep them all straight?"

"How many words do you know of whatever language you speak, and how do you keep them all straight?" she countered.

"Language is something I use a lot, though."

"And that right there is your answer," replied Wendy, grinning as if she'd just imparted a pearl of great wisdom. "Speaking of which, let's go through those vision spells one by one, until you get sufficiently used to them to make use of Omnia Visus."

"Oh, fun. Mary? Perhaps you should get a sick bucket ready."

"Already did, Master!" she called from the sidelines, gesturing at a bucket.

Really? I, the supposed hero, had acquired a reputation for throwing up so often that a bucket was now a permanent feature of the courtyard?