There was something almost eerily tranquil about rucking in silence, as if each of the travelers was on a totally separate mission, which, oddly enough, was more true than not. Ulric was carried forth on his mission of vengeance and to curtail a war of aggression against a people who wanted nothing but to be left in peace to tend their groves and the game that flourished therein. Taipan was fully immersed in her role as Shadow, an extension of her Honor's will and household, bent on the advancement of his purposes and safety of his person. Despite the bygones and webs of decisions that had led to the two being on this trek, their tracks paralleled now and neither regretted the course nor its projected end. Such was the mindset of the soldier: Violence was needed to preserve peace, go to deliver it wholeheartedly for if it is done well enough, peace would come the sooner.
Monotonous vigilance has saved more warriors than armor. This was born out when Taipan froze and halted him with a gesture. Ulric statued behind her, not even putting down the lifted foot he'd with which he'd begun to step. His heart hammered in his ears. Heat washed down his limbs and he felt the movements of air across his clothes and shortened hair with incredible clarity, all the gifts of adrenaline given to keep him alive against all odds.
His eyes scanned the forest, narrowed as he tried to decipher what signs had brought the keen Huntress to a halt, resisting the urge to move or fidget under the effects of the fight juice. Iriel was dangerous, Elves lived an age, but few ever explored that dottage. Ulric had seen exactly two Elves with white hair in his months in the fortress.
There, eight meters away. Even as her gesture, two fingers towards the eyes and then towards her two-o-clock, informed him he saw a slight shuffle of snow just off the trail.
Slowly, with uttermost care, Taipan backed to where he stood.
She whispered so low that he had to more read her lips than actually listen to her voice.
"[Snow Wraiths], Ulric, just there.” She pointed ahead to a snow drift, one like a hundred they’d already passed by without drawing his attention.
In careful, hushed tones, she outlined the situation to him, “They burrow in drifts, next to trails. We are far enough from the cultivated lands that I expected to see sign of them, if not so soon."
Taipan's lasered focus told Ulric volumes about the danger such a creature posed, so he wasn't surprised when she continued to unravel the bad news.
"There are between three and five of them, they dig a narrow den and come out in single file, masking their numbers in one another's silhouette. Fast. Very fast, like an arrow shot. Their form is similar to that of an Eel, but with scale plates made of hardened Infrig and razored like your [Ice Blade] spell. If they bite you they will inject a bitter cold venom that chills the blood in your veins, slowing the muscles and dulling the mind, so do not let them bite you.”
He was in the act of asking if there was an antidote for the poison, as she carried a variety of them for her own personal use as well as panaceas for some of the more common toxins found in the Deep Wood, before she read his expression and shook her head “no”.
“I do not carry antidote for it,” Taipan said quietly, “Mostly, it is not necessary. The effects are temporary and not lethal. Besides, the body's warmth soon renders the antidote and the wraith venom itself, impotent, so, if you are bitten, try to stay alive and moving long enough and it will be neutralized by your internal heat." Taipan advised.
“If you are not eaten by then.” She immediately clarified, to his dismay.
"Can we not bypass them?" Ulric asked, surprised that Taipan would risk an engagement that could be avoided.
She paused only a moment before answering, "Perhaps, Glade Chief, it is not too late for that. But the creatures are crafty and, if they have indeed already detected us, if they have our scents, no good will come of leaving them be.”
A slight frown crossed her features as the Iriel’en paragon, steeped in the ways of the beasts of her home considered, “In my judgment, they have detected us. it is why they gave themselves away, moving inside their den to ready their attack. If we turn from our path they will burrow deeply under the snow and trail us until we sleep. We must rid ourselves of them here and now, while we know where they are."
Ulric thought about that for a few seconds.
"Are we trying to be quiet right now?" He asked.
"We are always trying to be quiet, Ulric, but not with any specific purpose other than avoiding prompting the wraiths to charge, at the moment." Taipan answered.
"Cool. Get your bow ready in case one of them lives." He recommended, an idea coming to him, and an opportunity to stretch his arcane legs.
Ulric had absolute faith in his Shadow's ability to cover him. He wasn't going to risk getting close to the creatures, not when he didn't have armor on or a bow of his own to sling arrows into them from afar.
The awakening had been a boon and a bummer at the same time. His old spell casting methods were compromised by requiring that he denature the Ceraun his awakened core naturally produced now before utilizing his previous methods. The process had to be perfect or residual harmonies would contaminate the spellforms. Some types of mana played nicely enough together that it wasn't an issue, Caelum and Incindere being particularly tolerant of Ulric's flawed technique. At least they had in the practice routines, he had to admit he hadn't spun up anything at full blast since the awakening. No time like the present to take off the training wheels.
So. [Snow Wraiths] don't like fire? Perfect. Time to bring back an old favorite.
One of his first spells, a simple gathering of flame, fed until it chafed under his will. This should be an easy one.
Ulric held the magic in his mind, the essence of fire, combusting, feeding on his mana and the air to burn. Imagined circuits, directed the mana inside his core. He could no longer mange the transformation of one mana directly to another, the lightning in his core was sticky, clinging to everything he touched. He redoubled focus, keeping the shifting shadows of the drift in sight as he crafted the spell, channeling it, allowing his core to build its potency to the limit of his control.
Months of developing fundamentals with practiced mages paid dividends, Ulric's image was clear as was his intent. Magic surged and Ulric initiated the trait of his core that he so rarely exercised, [Core Capacitor], opening the conduits of his body to unleash the fullness of his mana in a single wanton burst. His core responded to his will and the lightning mana surged.
A moment of almost panic came as the budding mage realized that, despite his best efforts, he was unable to reset his mana to a completely pure white, unaspected form before converting to Incindere, not with so much magic at once.
Oh shit oh shit oh shit, Ulric chanted silently while concentrating harder on scrubbing the mana cycling through his core even while he formed it to fire's aspect and fed it into his working, all simultaneously. Too much. The taint of Ceraun held onto it, creeping into his spellform. Just before the working came apart though, he felt an odd twisting in the magic in response to his distressed attempts to wrestle the spell under control, as if a gentle hand of overwhelming strength gripped his bucking magic and wrangled it into line. He wasn’t sure how he made it but the combination of willpower and months of lessons kept the magic together.
The almost dizzying manipulation, alongside his somewhat desperate attempts to hold onto the spell with every trick the Dragons of Iriel or Archmage Gother ever showed him, slammed the magic into place, mutating it even as it sprang forth. A brief flash of panic surged icily up his spine as he felt the thing squirm free of his control the full weight of his core behind it and the form new, unplanned, and riddled with potency. Like an arrow loosed from its string, he couldn't take it back and the magic roared to life.
Sometimes though, you fail upwards.
[Flame Crash] Override [Stormfire]
*PING*
Ulric dismissed the damned flashing window before it distracted him, even as his magic took form.
The normal fireball, writ large, ate itself in a violent explosion of sparks and leapt away reborn as a roiling violet cloud of fire webbed with ball lightning, tearing through the air along its intended flight, creating an ion channel as the sheer heat of Incendere paved the way for Ceraun to pull charge from the air itself into the spell. Incredibly, the working was consuming that ambient mana even as it generated it, and fed itself as it traveled. Slowly, at first, the fulminating orb as large as a refrigerator aggressively accelerated into a screaming streak, growing enormous as it did.
Ulric tackled Taipan to the ground on instinct and covered her while tucking his face down into his arms.
The hybrid calamity hit the [Snow Wraith] den and snow flashed to steam, a great white gout of obscurement, blocking view of anything except the rapid flashes of violet light that flickered inside the cloud. An unearthly wailing sound rose, high pitched, grating like nails on a chalkboard mixed with a wolf's howl, dying wraiths, abruptly cut off by an explosive roar as the spell continued on through the drifts boring a path through compressed ice until it hit the solid earth twenty meters past the den where it detonated.
Heat washed over Ulric's back and wind like a giant ran its hand over him, mashing the pair of them down as the blast wave tore past as a sheet of almost solidified snow cleared from the forest floor.
As the cloud dissipated, there was a massive melted path through the snow banks leading to the cratered impact site, snow blasted away to the bare earth below which still steamed with heat. The terrain had spared them the worst of the effects, the rises in terrain lifted most of the shock over them guiding it high.
Of the wraiths, there was nothing to be seen, not to his senses anyway. Except for a vague outline, like a shadow painted against the cleft of rock in the shape of a tangle of ridged eels where the den had been.
Ulric lay there, shock and stark terror at what had just occurred layered on top of the sudden mana exhaustion weighing down heavily on his mind.
Wow.
That was kind of a shitload of destruction over there. Just fuck that entire area in particular.
He glanced at his Shadow, who had retained far more poise and dignity in this moment than he did, even as she lay on her back with his weight pressing down on her. Lifting himself up, Ulric tried to gather himself, helping the Elf woman to her feet without looking at her lest he reveal that he'd done anything unexpected. He dusted the powdered flakes off his clothes, slightly more vigorously than perhaps called for.
All according to plan, just be cool Ulric, if you say anything right now she'll know you bolloxed it all the way-
"You did not intend for that to happen did you." Taipan stated, completely deadpan.
Ulric briefly considered a small white lie but decided his dignity wasn't worth her trust.
"I did not, Taipan. I did get a new spell though so that counts as a win right?" He hedged hopefully.
"You might have put us inside whatever hellscape happened over there Ulric, so, no, it is not a 'win'." She was approaching the site of what had been a den of monsters with a little more caution than was strictly necessary at this point. Or maybe not, clearly Ulric had misjudged a few things.
Kneeling, she rubbed a finger through the almost artistic imprint of a carbonized [Snow Wraith], rubbing the ash between her fingers consideringly. She looked up at him with fresh alarm in her features, a bit like a chemist expecting some organic solvents but finding the package wrapped in flash paper.
"It was impressively destructive, especially for how close we were to it."
There was just the faintest hint of accusation there, if he wasn't mistaken. The seasoned Hunter rose to inspect the cleared zone where the explosive force had cleared layers of compressed ice and snow with ease.
"Those creatures might be weak to flame but that was more than simple flame. It should not have sped up, where did it gain such power? I would give up meat to have Mother Shor here to explain this." She muttered darkly.
"Have you any idea what fuckery you have enacted?" Taipan inquired, a rare bit of profanity escaping her, which revealed the depth of her discomfit.
Taipan didn't normally resort to foul language, it was considered beneath her station. And she preferred to be more personal in her attacks, rather than use the low-hanging fruit of simple cursing. Ulric, of course, had little to no compunction about spicing up a conversation with a little colorful language. As rattled as he was right about now, he wouldn't be surprised if his mouth got away from him.
"Jury is still out on that one. If I had to guess? I think, somehow, the lightning magic buried inside my construct self-catalyzed it. I'm pretty sure the sheer bastard heat of the Incendere destabilized the mana in the air around the spell, ionized it, and then, Ceraun drew in the unstable charge, empowering itself as it moved until it hit the snow and blew the absolute piss out of everything. I'll get back to you when I've had some time to play with it a little more." Ulric said.
Taipan covered her face briefly, shaking her shortened hair before turning to level a somewhat direct gaze on him. He was beginning to feel like a child caught nicking sweets.
"Please. No, Ulric. I know mine words are thrown to the sky in vain but, for the love of the Roots and Leaves, please promise not to conduct ill-informed experiments with horrifying amounts of energy behind them." Implored the Elven beauty.
Ulric gave that due thought. Nope, can't do it he decided.
"Rejected. Sometimes scalability is a key factor to manifest certain properties, Taipan. Kind of like how I never got this result from the small test casts of [Flame Crash]. But. I will take your concerns under advisement for when I am about to do something possibly both of us will regret. I have to practice, I don't have years to improve I've got weeks. This new core is doing all kinds of fucky things to my magic."
At her frown he did offer a concession that should help satisfy her.
"Tell you what, no more [Core Capacitor] amplifications until I get things dialed in a little…ok, a lot more. Deal?"
The Elf ignored his forced cheerfulness to return her attention to the scalded crater. A moment later, she showed the first sign of trepidation, which was a moral victory for Ulric.
"Is it too late for me to return to Irielhos to guard mine brother?" His partner checked before sighing away his shenanigans.
Thusly reminded of the sheer stupid danger of Vardan magic, Ulric resigned himself to a bit more of an incremental approach to relearning his magical algorithms. It really shouldn't have worked that way, not from what he'd been taught by the so-called professionals. Then again, his magic was weird, carried an odd sort of flavor compared to the conventions of the Elven traditions. Perhaps a Human mage would be able to explain some of the, call it wildness, of his magic.
As the two of them took off again, at a slower pace now in consideration of the wicked headache and general malaise inflicted on Ulric as punishment for depleting his core's mana reserves, Ulric couldn't help but review the sequence of events.
He thought he'd had it nailed down, everything seemed legit. Just like his earlier practice, it was the initial scrubbing of mana, retuning it back to an unaspected form that was tricky, but he'd thought he managed it. That damned spell had worked just fine earlier, so why the sudden mutation? It had to be like he'd described to Taipan, an emergent property once some hidden threshold was crossed. Maybe even just traces of lightning flavored energy added to the spell's mana as his core passively generated it during the casting.
Shit.
That meant he would have to do like during the awakening process, actively harmonizing the mana even while it was being used to cast. He couldn't do things in sequence, they had to be actively maintained, simultaneously. It was incredibly difficult to split his attention like that, like juggling and saying tongue twisters.
Suppressing a sigh, he pulled up the new status panel and investigated it again. The details on what it was were there but nothing on the how. Damn.
Well, alright, he'd just have to see if he could reverse engineer the process. At least his hypothesis regarded why it grew and accelerated in power weren't too far off the mark. According to its description the spell really did feed on the surroundings rendered into plasma by its heat.
That right there was a fucking problem, he decided instantly. Ulric didn't want that thing anywhere near him, it was a live grenade. If that disasterpiece orb of fire and lightning got all juiced up and exploded next to him there was no way he got away unscathed. Worse, he didn't understand how he'd made it. Magic sort of ingrained itself in your brain, you could fairly well repeat a particular spell, if slowly, until you had mastered it. Making changes thereafter was also possible, refinements and minute adjustments that elevated its potency or utility as adroitness with the spellform increased.
Here though, Ulric truly had not tried to make this magic. It was spontaneous, a result of contamination. He'd had unintended outcomes before, but never in the actual process of casting a spell, only afterwards, when it was released and began to interact with the world around it. Ulric wasn't sure how he was even going to start manipulating that spooky cloud of fiery doom. He'd have to cast it again, with less energy this time, and dissect apart the weave and flow of mana as he did.
The training he'd gotten from the Ladies Iriel and Gother was going to have to pull major weight, Ulric wasn't even remotely prepared by his prior experiences in life to deal with this shit. What even the fuck was [Stormfire]? Self-catalyzing magic. He supposed it was similar to the [Wind Blade] he'd created in that the spell had a built in way to amplify its potency, a property baked in by how it interacted with the environment. Only, this here was an order of magnitude more hazardous. The scorch marks on the ground indicated that, in addition to the flame, there were potent electrical discharges as the super-heated air and vaporized matter ionized, kind of like how a volcano produced wicked electrical storms due to the charged particles in the pyroclastic clouds.
Why the hell hadn't it done this when he'd practiced his spells earlier?
There was something almost eerily tranquil about rucking in silence, as if each of the travelers was on a totally separate mission, which, oddly enough, was more true than not. Ulric was carried forth on his mission of vengeance and to curtail a war of aggression against a people who wanted nothing but to be left in peace to tend their groves and the game that flourished therein. Taipan was fully immersed in her role as Shadow, an extension of her Honor's will and household, bent on the advancement of his purposes and safety of his person. Despite the bygones and webs of decisions that had led to the two being on this trek, their tracks paralleled now and neither regretted the course nor its projected end. Such was the mindset of the soldier: Violence was needed to preserve peace, go to deliver it wholeheartedly for if it is done well enough, peace would come the sooner.
Monotonous vigilance has saved more warriors than armor. This was born out when Taipan froze and halted him with a gesture. Ulric statued behind her, not even putting down the lifted foot he'd with which he'd begun to step. His heart hammered in his ears. Heat washed down his limbs and he felt the movements of air across his clothes and shortened hair with incredible clarity, all the gifts of adrenaline given to keep him alive against all odds.
His eyes scanned the forest, narrowed as he tried to decipher what signs had brought the keen Huntress to a halt, resisting the urge to move or fidget under the effects of the fight juice. Iriel was dangerous, Elves lived an age, but few ever explored that dottage. Ulric had seen exactly two Elves with white hair in his months in the fortress.
There, eight meters away. Even as her gesture, two fingers towards the eyes and then towards her two-o-clock, informed him he saw a slight shuffle of snow just off the trail.
Slowly, with uttermost care, Taipan backed to where he stood.
She whispered so low that he had to more read her lips than actually listen to her voice.
"[Snow Wraiths], Ulric, just there.” She pointed ahead to a snow drift, one like a hundred they’d already passed by without drawing his attention.
In careful, hushed tones, she outlined the situation to him, “They burrow in drifts, next to trails. We are far enough from the cultivated lands that I expected to see sign of them, if not so soon."
Taipan's lasered focus told Ulric volumes about the danger such a creature posed, so he wasn't surprised when she continued to unravel the bad news.
"There are between three and five of them, they dig a narrow den and come out in single file, masking their numbers in one another's silhouette. Fast. Very fast, like an arrow shot. Their form is similar to that of an Eel, but with scale plates made of hardened Infrig and razored like your [Ice Blade] spell. If they bite you they will inject a bitter cold venom that chills the blood in your veins, slowing the muscles and dulling the mind, so do not let them bite you.”
He was in the act of asking if there was an antidote for the poison, as she carried a variety of them for her own personal use as well as panaceas for some of the more common toxins found in the Deep Wood, before she read his expression and shook her head “no”.
“I do not carry antidote for it,” Taipan said quietly, “Mostly, it is not necessary. The effects are temporary and not lethal. Besides, the body's warmth soon renders the antidote and the wraith venom itself, impotent, so, if you are bitten, try to stay alive and moving long enough and it will be neutralized by your internal heat." Taipan advised.
“If you are not eaten by then.” She immediately clarified, to his dismay.
"Can we not bypass them?" Ulric asked, surprised that Taipan would risk an engagement that could be avoided.
She paused only a moment before answering, "Perhaps, Glade Chief, it is not too late for that. But the creatures are crafty and, if they have indeed already detected us, if they have our scents, no good will come of leaving them be.”
A slight frown crossed her features as the Iriel’en paragon, steeped in the ways of the beasts of her home considered, “In my judgment, they have detected us. it is why they gave themselves away, moving inside their den to ready their attack. If we turn from our path they will burrow deeply under the snow and trail us until we sleep. We must rid ourselves of them here and now, while we know where they are."
Ulric thought about that for a few seconds.
"Are we trying to be quiet right now?" He asked.
"We are always trying to be quiet, Ulric, but not with any specific purpose other than avoiding prompting the wraiths to charge, at the moment." Taipan answered.
"Cool. Get your bow ready in case one of them lives." He recommended, an idea coming to him, and an opportunity to stretch his arcane legs.
Ulric had absolute faith in his Shadow's ability to cover him. He wasn't going to risk getting close to the creatures, not when he didn't have armor on or a bow of his own to sling arrows into them from afar.
The awakening had been a boon and a bummer at the same time. His old spell casting methods were compromised by requiring that he denature the Ceraun his awakened core naturally produced now before utilizing his previous methods. The process had to be perfect or residual harmonies would contaminate the spellforms. Some types of mana played nicely enough together that it wasn't an issue, Caelum and Incindere being particularly tolerant of Ulric's flawed technique. At least they had in the practice routines, he had to admit he hadn't spun up anything at full blast since the awakening. No time like the present to take off the training wheels.
So. [Snow Wraiths] don't like fire? Perfect. Time to bring back an old favorite.
One of his first spells, a simple gathering of flame, fed until it chafed under his will. This should be an easy one.
Ulric held the magic in his mind, the essence of fire, combusting, feeding on his mana and the air to burn. Imagined circuits, directed the mana inside his core. He could no longer mange the transformation of one mana directly to another, the lightning in his core was sticky, clinging to everything he touched. He redoubled focus, keeping the shifting shadows of the drift in sight as he crafted the spell, channeling it, allowing his core to build its potency to the limit of his control.
Months of developing fundamentals with practiced mages paid dividends, Ulric's image was clear as was his intent. Magic surged and Ulric initiated the trait of his core that he so rarely exercised, [Core Capacitor], opening the conduits of his body to unleash the fullness of his mana in a single wanton burst. His core responded to his will and the lightning mana surged.
A moment of almost panic came as the budding mage realized that, despite his best efforts, he was unable to reset his mana to a completely pure white, unaspected form before converting to Incindere, not with so much magic at once.
Oh shit oh shit oh shit, Ulric chanted silently while concentrating harder on scrubbing the mana cycling through his core even while he formed it to fire's aspect and fed it into his working, all simultaneously. Too much. The taint of Ceraun held onto it, creeping into his spellform. Just before the working came apart though, he felt an odd twisting in the magic in response to his distressed attempts to wrestle the spell under control, as if a gentle hand of overwhelming strength gripped his bucking magic and wrangled it into line. He wasn’t sure how he made it but the combination of willpower and months of lessons kept the magic together.
The almost dizzying manipulation, alongside his somewhat desperate attempts to hold onto the spell with every trick the Dragons of Iriel or Archmage Gother ever showed him, slammed the magic into place, mutating it even as it sprang forth. A brief flash of panic surged icily up his spine as he felt the thing squirm free of his control the full weight of his core behind it and the form new, unplanned, and riddled with potency. Like an arrow loosed from its string, he couldn't take it back and the magic roared to life.
Sometimes though, you fail upwards.
[Flame Crash] Override [Stormfire]
*PING*
Ulric dismissed the damned flashing window before it distracted him, even as his magic took form.
The normal fireball, writ large, ate itself in a violent explosion of sparks and leapt away reborn as a roiling violet cloud of fire webbed with ball lightning, tearing through the air along its intended flight, creating an ion channel as the sheer heat of Incendere paved the way for Ceraun to pull charge from the air itself into the spell. Incredibly, the working was consuming that ambient mana even as it generated it, and fed itself as it traveled. Slowly, at first, the fulminating orb as large as a refrigerator aggressively accelerated into a screaming streak, growing enormous as it did.
Ulric tackled Taipan to the ground on instinct and covered her while tucking his face down into his arms.
The hybrid calamity hit the [Snow Wraith] den and snow flashed to steam, a great white gout of obscurement, blocking view of anything except the rapid flashes of violet light that flickered inside the cloud. An unearthly wailing sound rose, high pitched, grating like nails on a chalkboard mixed with a wolf's howl, dying wraiths, abruptly cut off by an explosive roar as the spell continued on through the drifts boring a path through compressed ice until it hit the solid earth twenty meters past the den where it detonated.
Heat washed over Ulric's back and wind like a giant ran its hand over him, mashing the pair of them down as the blast wave tore past as a sheet of almost solidified snow cleared from the forest floor.
As the cloud dissipated, there was a massive melted path through the snow banks leading to the cratered impact site, snow blasted away to the bare earth below which still steamed with heat. The terrain had spared them the worst of the effects, the rises in terrain lifted most of the shock over them guiding it high.
Of the wraiths, there was nothing to be seen, not to his senses anyway. Except for a vague outline, like a shadow painted against the cleft of rock in the shape of a tangle of ridged eels where the den had been.
Ulric lay there, shock and stark terror at what had just occurred layered on top of the sudden mana exhaustion weighing down heavily on his mind.
Wow.
That was kind of a shitload of destruction over there. Just fuck that entire area in particular.
He glanced at his Shadow, who had retained far more poise and dignity in this moment than he did, even as she lay on her back with his weight pressing down on her. Lifting himself up, Ulric tried to gather himself, helping the Elf woman to her feet without looking at her lest he reveal that he'd done anything unexpected. He dusted the powdered flakes off his clothes, slightly more vigorously than perhaps called for.
All according to plan, just be cool Ulric, if you say anything right now she'll know you bolloxed it all the way-
"You did not intend for that to happen did you." Taipan stated, completely deadpan.
Ulric briefly considered a small white lie but decided his dignity wasn't worth her trust.
"I did not, Taipan. I did get a new spell though so that counts as a win right?" He hedged hopefully.
"You might have put us inside whatever hellscape happened over there Ulric, so, no, it is not a 'win'." She was approaching the site of what had been a den of monsters with a little more caution than was strictly necessary at this point. Or maybe not, clearly Ulric had misjudged a few things.
Kneeling, she rubbed a finger through the almost artistic imprint of a carbonized [Snow Wraith], rubbing the ash between her fingers consideringly. She looked up at him with fresh alarm in her features, a bit like a chemist expecting some organic solvents but finding the package wrapped in flash paper.
"It was impressively destructive, especially for how close we were to it."
There was just the faintest hint of accusation there, if he wasn't mistaken. The seasoned Hunter rose to inspect the cleared zone where the explosive force had cleared layers of compressed ice and snow with ease.
"Those creatures might be weak to flame but that was more than simple flame. It should not have sped up, where did it gain such power? I would give up meat to have Mother Shor here to explain this." She muttered darkly.
"Have you any idea what fuckery you have enacted?" Taipan inquired, a rare bit of profanity escaping her, which revealed the depth of her discomfit.
Taipan didn't normally resort to foul language, it was considered beneath her station. And she preferred to be more personal in her attacks, rather than use the low-hanging fruit of simple cursing. Ulric, of course, had little to no compunction about spicing up a conversation with a little colorful language. As rattled as he was right about now, he wouldn't be surprised if his mouth got away from him.
"Jury is still out on that one. If I had to guess? I think, somehow, the lightning magic buried inside my construct self-catalyzed it. I'm pretty sure the sheer bastard heat of the Incendere destabilized the mana in the air around the spell, ionized it, and then, Ceraun drew in the unstable charge, empowering itself as it moved until it hit the snow and blew the absolute piss out of everything. I'll get back to you when I've had some time to play with it a little more." Ulric said.
Taipan covered her face briefly, shaking her shortened hair before turning to level a somewhat direct gaze on him. He was beginning to feel like a child caught nicking sweets.
"Please. No, Ulric. I know mine words are thrown to the sky in vain but, for the love of the Roots and Leaves, please promise not to conduct ill-informed experiments with horrifying amounts of energy behind them." Implored the Elven beauty.
Ulric gave that due thought. Nope, can't do it he decided.
"Rejected. Sometimes scalability is a key factor to manifest certain properties, Taipan. Kind of like how I never got this result from the small test casts of [Flame Crash]. But. I will take your concerns under advisement for when I am about to do something possibly both of us will regret. I have to practice, I don't have years to improve I've got weeks. This new core is doing all kinds of fucky things to my magic."
At her frown he did offer a concession that should help satisfy her.
"Tell you what, no more [Core Capacitor] amplifications until I get things dialed in a little…ok, a lot more. Deal?"
The Elf ignored his forced cheerfulness to return her attention to the scalded crater. A moment later, she showed the first sign of trepidation, which was a moral victory for Ulric.
"Is it too late for me to return to Irielhos to guard mine brother?" His partner checked before sighing away his shenanigans.
Thusly reminded of the sheer stupid danger of Vardan magic, Ulric resigned himself to a bit more of an incremental approach to relearning his magical algorithms. It really shouldn't have worked that way, not from what he'd been taught by the so-called professionals. Then again, his magic was weird, carried an odd sort of flavor compared to the conventions of the Elven traditions. Perhaps a Human mage would be able to explain some of the, call it wildness, of his magic.
As the two of them took off again, at a slower pace now in consideration of the wicked headache and general malaise inflicted on Ulric as punishment for depleting his core's mana reserves, Ulric couldn't help but review the sequence of events.
He thought he'd had it nailed down, everything seemed legit. Just like his earlier practice, it was the initial scrubbing of mana, retuning it back to an unaspected form that was tricky, but he'd thought he managed it. That damned spell had worked just fine earlier, so why the sudden mutation? It had to be like he'd described to Taipan, an emergent property once some hidden threshold was crossed. Maybe even just traces of lightning flavored energy added to the spell's mana as his core passively generated it during the casting.
Shit.
That meant he would have to do like during the awakening process, actively harmonizing the mana even while it was being used to cast. He couldn't do things in sequence, they had to be actively maintained, simultaneously. It was incredibly difficult to split his attention like that, like juggling and saying tongue twisters.
Suppressing a sigh, he pulled up the new status panel and investigated it again. The details on what it was were there but nothing on the how. Damn.
Well, alright, he'd just have to see if he could reverse engineer the process. At least his hypothesis regarded why it grew and accelerated in power weren't too far off the mark. According to its description the spell really did feed on the surroundings rendered into plasma by its heat.
That right there was a fucking problem, he decided instantly. Ulric didn't want that thing anywhere near him, it was a live grenade. If that disasterpiece orb of fire and lightning got all juiced up and exploded next to him there was no way he got away unscathed. Worse, he didn't understand how he'd made it. Magic sort of ingrained itself in your brain, you could fairly well repeat a particular spell, if slowly, until you had mastered it. Making changes thereafter was also possible, refinements and minute adjustments that elevated its potency or utility as adroitness with the spellform increased.
Here though, Ulric truly had not tried to make this magic. It was spontaneous, a result of contamination. He'd had unintended outcomes before, but never in the actual process of casting a spell, only afterwards, when it was released and began to interact with the world around it. Ulric wasn't sure how he was even going to start manipulating that spooky cloud of fiery doom. He'd have to cast it again, with less energy this time, and dissect apart the weave and flow of mana as he did.
The training he'd gotten from the Ladies Iriel and Gother was going to have to pull major weight, Ulric wasn't even remotely prepared by his prior experiences in life to deal with this shit. What even the fuck was [Stormfire]? Self-catalyzing magic. He supposed it was similar to the [Wind Blade] he'd created in that the spell had a built in way to amplify its potency, a property baked in by how it interacted with the environment. Only, this here was an order of magnitude more hazardous. The scorch marks on the ground indicated that, in addition to the flame, there were potent electrical discharges as the super-heated air and vaporized matter ionized, kind of like how a volcano produced wicked electrical storms due to the charged particles in the pyroclastic clouds.
Why the hell hadn't it done this when he'd practiced his spells earlier?
