Luncheon with Mage Werona soon turned into a more boisterous happening as the other Legranel with whom the traveling pair had met previously had returned from their goings. Prenya immediately added to the festivities by accusing Ulric of "having an affair on her affair" which properly set the tone of the afternoon.
To that razzing the Sauri woman hid her muzzle behind a hand and delivered a textbook princess laugh, "Oh hohoho, we should not leave treats lying about to be snapped up then should we young Farstrider?". He was liking this Ms. Autumnclaw character more and more, she was revealing a good sense for timing and taking advantage of a proper straight man.
The scarred Herdrider looked back and forth between Ulric and the tall theropodic woman with astonishment for a moment before declaring with a pointed finger "You harlot!" she slandered him jokingly, "It has only been one morning! And you, I trusted you to guard our catch, Taipan, how could you let this happen?"
To which his wife shrugged her reply before saying without sarcasm, "I cannot watch him all of the time. My Valin is tricksome and trouble finds him like water finds the bottom of a hill."
He had to grin. It was a true enough statement. It would help if he would learn to keep his trap shut and mind his own business. No more saving children in the forest, or hunting for spies in his woods, or dueling assholes, or breaking up slaving rings. No sir, not for this guy. Just sign me up for a whole helluvalotta sitting around a fireplace munching on venison and slurping root stews. Ulric had to admit that the trajectory of his life had been vaulted incredibly into unknown territory by his chance meeting with the Iriels. They'd all added their own spins to his story and that had sort of inevitably sent him careening off into the world. If he kept pinballing around like this, he might just find out that a life of adventure could be fun! A little murdery sometimes, but fun!
In spite of some amount of evidence to the otherwise, Ulric was not entirely without wisdom. Under the scrutiny of the unexpected third leg of a tripod Taipan had created, he recognized when it was best to practice the Art of Silence and Stillness, to blend into the background through the sheer will to go unnoticed. His Ninja-do failed him utterly, such was the power of the Elves. Somehow, the vengeful Prenya found a hole in his technique and settled down between him and Taipan. She then assured that his trained skills would prove futile by gluing herself to his side. The wrongfully accused was forced to pay penance by feeding her bits of some kind of pasta spun between chopstick style eating utensils.
Only a race as dexterous as the Aes'r would consider eating pasta with chopsticks, the sadists. His magical business partner displayed the wisdom of her untold years again by retrieving a fork from her belt pouch, ignoring completely the disdain of her lunch fellows. Ulric endured their laughing gazes and the smug grins for a few minutes until his fingers figured out how exactly the fuck these stupid sticks were supposed to work.
Once the games were over, everyone settled down to munch in earnest. Ulric managed some portion of vengeance by deliberately dropping noodles down Prenya's shirt while she was distracted by some conversation about wildebeest tracking with Taipan. Her squawk of righteous indignation was cut off by a brown hand fishing down her front for the noodles and making some rather unfortunate "mistakes" along the way. Joclyn made the ironic observation that his aunt had tossed herself into a cookpot full of hungrier travelers than she had anticipated, which drew laughs from the peanut gallery. Ulric was even gladder he hadn't killed Joclyn, the lad was proving to be an alright cobber.
It no longer seemed unusual to Ulric for his Shadow to be having fun, even away from her beloved woods. Hell, If anybody asked, Ulric had decided that he was having an absolute blast currently. The garrulous Legranel had some large part in that, the nomads, once they'd gotten over the initial circumstances of their meeting, were a hoot. As might be expected of people who traveled endlessly they had a rather carefree attitude and a love for experiences over things. Inevitably that led to the telling of tales. Trading embellished stories, which did not qualify as "lying" to their culture, proved a fantastically pleasant game. The real goal was to slip as many lies into the tale as possible without getting caught blatantly making shit up. He and Taipan won serious points when they told the Megaskunk story completely straight, being accused of heinous untruth at multiple times only to be able to assert with utter sincerity that it was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help us Watcher.
All too soon, they'd be on the road again, back amidst the perils of this vast world. For now, he was glad to be allowed to have this moment's respite. If he were a betting man, he'd chalk some of his partner's rather blatant wildness up to decompressing from the strain of their journey. They hadn't really taken a break, her least of all, since they'd left the Deep Woods fortress. Even their stays in Seinajok, and most particularly Trachn'ir were, unfortunately, not exactly restful. The great trade capital of Celestin had proven to be nearly as full of vicious animals needing put down as the hinterland around it.
Now though? Just right at the moment, the Moot was as safe a place as Ulric could think of. Even if they had enemies here they'd be hard pressed to navigate the thousands of virtually identical Legranel Yurts, that endless sea of canvas and support poles. Aside from his inclination to just sort of unwind and tinker, now that he had the time, Ulric didn't explore the Moot because he didn't want to risk getting lost amongst the rabble.
And a motley rabble it was. Not just the plainsfolk were in attendance any longer. From nowhere had sprung a seeming deluge of merchants that descended on the Moot from the surrounding Big Sky Country, defying the mud and coming war to beat the competition to the start of the trade season. The prospect of coin made men and women of the merchant classes go to insane lengths, it would appear. Increasingly over the last two days, Beastkin of all sorts, Humans from Prespang, largely ignorant of the greater happenings and doing as they had done for generations, and Elves of the different tribes of Orlethrem had come out from the wood works. Even the Iriel'en were beginning to be seen, passing through as they set up Brighteyes' network of scouts and the trade routes he planned to use to choke the life out of Prosper's economic domination. That was half the reason Taipan had sojourned out that morning, to find her kin and learn what doings had transpired while they had blitzed through the better part of fifteen hundred kilometers of wilderness.
At the conclusion of the storytelling, most of the Legranel were inclined to retire to their canvas homes for a time-honored tradition of an afternoon siesta. Taipan hauled Prenya along with her to their own. The serpent had her prey well within her coils now. You will be missed, Prenya, Ulric lamented. His Shadow did love her body pillows made of actual bodies. Preferably warm, but he had to at least suspect that had not always been the case. Taipan was Taipan.
Mage Autumnclaw appeared to think that break time was over, he noticed she was indicating towards the fireplace, which had a fresh set of shit bricks upon it. Tangy sage smoke wafted freely into the air to complement the tongues of flame that reached to the sky, their crackling little song of happy fire song fitting nicely with the atmosphere of the camp.
"Sorry about all the hubbub Werona, things can get a little lively around here." Ulric apologized, still speaking Elvish.
It had emerged as the most efficient way to communicate, he'd rather not use Taipan as a translator, her mind was better left free to examine the reasonings behind what was said, less the exact verbiage.
The muzzle parted slightly to show sharp predator's teeth, a razored smile that, under different circumstances, might have browned his shorts a bit. There was a brief moment when whatever was wrong with his brain almost convinced him to, on the spur of the moment, complement those "pearly white manslayers" but a second thought revealed that first one to be unfathomably stupid and he managed to refrain. Don't stare at them, don't talk about them, don't imagine them eating you, don't ask her how long it takes to brush them, don't stare at them…he chanted a ritual of antimoronic behavior.
"It is quite alright, your companions are a pleasant change from the border towns. I am always surprised at how open the Aes'r can be. My own folk are more restrained but it would be silly take offense. To each their own. Now, let us move our discussion to that which was bargained, the method for isolating the energies and drawing them from other's spells."
Once more the Sauri leaned forward and held out her large clawed hand, she could palm a basketball easily. Her eyes showed her concentration and a hollow sphere of menacingly hot orange light appeared.
"This," the Ash cored Adept declared, "is only flame magic. I will not use my Ash mana, Tephras is not required, though it has a sort of specialty for this type of manipulation. You said earlier, Ulric, that you were Ceraun awakened, yet you are able to use Incendere as well. By this I understand you have relearned to manipulate the unaspected mana?"
Ulric confirmed via a duck of the chin, before he replied, "This is so. It was only relatively recently but I believe I have solved some of the contamination issues that my awakening initially created."
He was a little bit proud of that, it was a nifty trick, if he did say so himself. And, he did, so there.
Werona's smile had faded when she began concentrating on her magic but a slight flash of the very subtly serrated ivory lining her jaws indicated her pleasure at working with another Adept who aspired to be more. Most mages sort of tapped out at this point, admitting that the path to recovering the ability to use magic other than what their core provided was beyond them. Gother had referred to such with a strong degree of contempt and had ruthlessly insisted on Ulric's recovery of his unaspected magics as soon as possible. No student of his would choose to be a cripple, was how he had phrased it, specifically.
"Good. So strange to encounter a Human of the barbarian clans with your level of progression, and so young. Truly, Varda's mysteries are uncounted. I know not your background, are you trained in standard structures and elastic manaweaves?" The slim woman gestured with her offhand to indicate the glowing orb of heat she was holding steady.
Ulric was. It was among the first lessons Shor taught, the protocols for manipulation of mana to externalize it into a spell under direct control of a caster or a ritual to activate according to preset triggering conditions. He'd made very little use of the latter, there just wasn't enough time. What had immediately come clear under the tutelage of the Crimson Sphinx was that Ulric's initial conception of casting and controlling magic being akin to writing code was not far off the mark.
There were typical archetypes for commonly used spells, specific mental constructs to achieve a specific aim that could be interchanged between different spells, like a library of functions, according to a paradigm based upon one's understanding of the objective and the forces involved with it. It was also true that two mages could achieve exactly the same results with wildly divergent methods, at times. They could also produce an outcome that was, to the observer the same, but one may do this with half the expenditure of mana and willpower, if they had a better refined understanding of how to accomplish their spell. These mental algorithms and mana constructs were where Ulric's magic differed greatly from his Elven counterparts; the knowledge he had of his old world's academic training paid dividends here. Where his Aes'r instructors were casting according to, let's say Python, Ulric was using C++. There were similarities between them but one was very different from the other. Sometimes to the good. Sometimes to the not so good.
Structures were the prefabricated functions that the mind used to weave mana in a specific way, to achieve specific, well-defined outcomes. Ulric's spells were all structured, he didn't have to reweave the spells, once he'd learned them, he just concentrated on feeding the mana into the algorithm and his core spat out magical nonsense. Elastic manaweaves were a whole other beast. These were the on the fly adjustments that could be used to manipulate the structures, tying them together in different arrangements. They had to be actively controlled, and demanded precision or else you could fizzle your spell, or worse, have it feedback and get a backlash into your core and mana channels. Shor had helped Ulric create his [Cinder Pearl] and [Cinder Shield] by use of elastic manaweaves to alter how the Incendere behaved. It was hard as hell and he'd only succeeded within the weeks of training because Shor was a godsdamned genius sorceress. It would have taken him at least twice as long to puzzle out the hows, even if he'd pretty easily grasped the whys after the fact.
"My teacher showed me both of these to create the spell you observed earlier, so yes. I am also not afraid to admit that elastic manaweaves make me a little nervous, especially for things I haven't tried before." Ulric admitted.
Werona waved his avowal off, "Anyone with a wit of sense is nervous to perform a novel working, especially at scale. The ones who aren't are roaming the wilds as living pools of water, or stone pillars that seem to change location at random or else they are fleshy bits scattered across their lab. Magic is dangerous."
Those were very nearly the same words spoken to him in warning by all three of Bald'rt's wives during his mage training with them, at some point or another. That all the people he respected said the same thing made it akin to gun safety training. When the range officer asks you if the firearm is loaded the answer is always "Yes". Ulric's one-time drill instructor during mandatory service, a two and quarter-meter giant of a black man with the frame of a pro-bowl defensive tackle had once demanded to know why Ulric had handed him a loaded weapon. It wasn't, the man had watched him not five seconds earlier remove the magazine and rack the slide back to show an open, empty chamber. Ulric, in his naivete, immediately replied "Because they're all loaded Drill Sergeant." The man smiled his feral smile and told the rest of the boots "See? He gets it. See that all of you do too. And give me fifty pushes for handing me a loaded weapon you scum suck asshole, I want to feel you sweating through MY boots." Ahh, good times, Ulric noted to himself.
"I hear and understand, Mage Werona." Ulric intoned solemnly.
Satisfied that he was authentic, the Tephras core'd mage began her explanation, with a blunt "Good. Attend."
Ulric couldn't help a long, slow blink at her use of the "A" word, which had been ingrained into the man to expect to be flung bodily through the air by Instructor Gother. No such happening manifested, and he allowed himself a small sigh of relief.
"There is a specific requirement for the structure of the spell that necessitates it to hold excess mana, imagine it to be as a bone, with many pockets and pores that may be filled or emptied without changing the shape of the working as a whole." The Sauri said, and her firelight globe expanded to appear meshlike, with dimmer orange geometric lines surrounding pockets of brighter yellow light.
Wow, neat. She's got this pyromancy thing down pretty well, he remarked.
The Sauri mage concentrated and Ulric saw those bright yellow regions grow even brighter and there was a distinct cooling of the air around her. The air started to move, a gentle draw of pressure as the thermal she was birthing displaced the column above her demonstration.
"The difficult aspect is, as you have no doubt suspected, the elastic manaweave that draws ambient Incendere, or, when you have mastered the technique, the concentrated Incendere in another's weave." Werona said, before releasing her spell, letting the glowing orb of fire magic fade away.
"To create a weave strong enough to pull apart the structure of another mage's working, without displacing your own structure is a challenge but you will get the knack for it with some practice. Starting slow, with just enough strength to draw ambient heat is a good place to start. I imagine a sort of barbed net for mine, catching, enmeshing, and binding the energies before drawing them in."
Each mage had their own distinct way of casting, their own mental pathways. Some things would end up being very similar. Other, more nuanced applications almost always ended up being very distinctly individual. The Ashmage's metaphor, her visualization, worked for her but might not be optimal for Ulric. Even so, it was an exceedingly helpful starting point. It also indicated that she wasn't holding out on him, giving away your mental constructs was as much as you can do, alongside explaining the underpinning concepts and specific outcomes of the spell, to teach another your own workings.
Magic was, as might be obvious, not definitively an art, as much as a science. There was some element of constancy and determinism to it in the experimentation, the application of principles, and measuring of inputs compared to outputs, but the act of creation itself was certainly more resembling a painter at their canvas. Ulric liked to envision himself writing a program that created the painting, working the functions, solving the relevant physical equations, rather than slopping around with the brush.
Ulric decided to start with his [Cinder Shield] as the basis, he was really just modifying an existing construct that already had all the elements necessary to incorporate Werona's methods. First the construct. He envisioned the formation of the jewels of flame, the crystalline matrix of mana that would pull Incendere inside and trap it. Then came the binding lines of mana to form the vertices that would make up the centroid, the focal point of magic at the center of the shield. Next, the entire structure was driven to spin, to cycle and complete the shield's interior, it also, in Ulric's mind, to shred incoming attacks and deflect their momentum. All of that was rigid, was structure. He frowned. The spell was "full" already, was filling its space with the power from the [Cinder Pearls].
He was up from his seat without thinking, pacing while the problem rolled around thoughtspace.
Carefully, Ulric concentrated on the binding lines of magic, these should be the elastic manaweaves, the ones that caught mana and drew it away into the crystallized magic, he might have to adjust those structures too…Wait! He realized that he could just pocket the incoming mana within his pearls, like interstitial depositions within the matrix, there was room already! He'd done better work than he knew with this magic.
Still, he needed to refine the…heatsinks. That's what he was making. Magical analogues to a heatsink, drawing in the energy and dispersing it to the reservoirs. Instead of solid bars, he envisioned hollow tubes, which then evolved into cylinders whose inner walls of Incendere were ridged, creating a regular grid of fans. It needed something else, something more. The spell was now far more complex, he was struggling to keep it together in his head. Something important was absent.
Fingers snapped absently at his thigh. He didn't see Werona's curious inspection. He didn't hear the bustle of the Moot around him. He was gone into his head, drawn into the kind of focus that blots out everything outside.
Years of engineering solutions, of poring over thermodynamic applications wound through his brain. His shield wanted to be a heatsink. It needed to pull the energy of a concentration of fire magic way, Incendere to draw itself inside the manaweave and something else. A working fluid! He smiled to himself when it came to himself. Something was needed to carry the energy from the heatsink manaweave to the [Cinder Pearls]. But what? What mana analogue? Delicate circuitry liked fans, could he use Caelum? No, he had a feeling that wasn't going to work, not with the kind of energies bastards like Captain Firecracker were throwing around. It needed to be better. Something to absorb and carry heat without being greatly changed by it.
Ulric wanted to hit himself. It was obvious. Water. Water? Ulric envisioned the entire structure of the heatsinks filled with Aquae drinking in the mana, carrying it to the crystalline matrix. Liquid cooling a fire shield, he could have laughed until he sicked up. This was the sort of insanity that he was all about. Gods where was a computer to create a model and run a simulation?
Carefully, Ulric prompted his core to generate the monopoles, opposite, and superimposed them to create the ground harmonic, pure white unaspected mana. Tuning it towards the merry burning notes of Incendere, He concentrated on the spell he'd been composing, willing its structure to form. Three rubies of flame spun into existence, hanging in the air before him. Lines of fire raced to connect them before they swelled into thicker conduits, the insides of the conduits melted and reformed into an array of bars. The entire thing began its rotation. Ulric was sweating, his focus tested. Now he just needed to…
"FUCK!" He shouted, startling Werona and a few passing Legranel.
He'd forgotten to make any Aquae with the white mana. This shit was hard enough to do, he couldn't hold the spell, and then create more pure mana, and then, on top of that, attune it to its water form. Dual elemental casting was already a massive task. He would need to split the initial load of pure elemental magic, two-thirds to fire, a third to water, then begin the construct holding the water in isolation within his core until the elastic manaweave heatsink was ready to fill. Watcher's Tits this was hard.
"What is the matter Ulric? You did something very interesting with your weave. Was there something more?" Mage Werona's thinly veiled concern sat atop a burning curiosity.
Irony there, Ulric remarked to himself before replying.
"Ah, sorry about that." Ulric scrubbed his hair and stared at the ground a moment before returning his gaze to the Sauri, "Frustration. The working is…well, I'll be honest, it might just be too damned much for me right now. There's a somewhat subtle manipulation and I'm not used to doing so complex a task. It requires two mana forms to be made, and a specific sequence of their use. Hard as all hell, but I think it's going to be incredibly potent."
Her tail swished back and forth, once, a reflex born of her excitement.
"It is no failure to be unable to complete the casting on first try Ulric. Just the creation of the spellform is a monumental undertaking. To actually manage a construct…how old are you, if you don't mind me asking?"
Ulric squinted slightly at her sudden interest in his age. He saw no harm, even if he didn't see how it would help him get this stupid spell wrestled into submission.
"Twenty-seven." Ulric replied.
"I did not manage a casting until I was twice that. Are you really a Human? I am almost so curious as to be rude enough to ask to use [Scan]." She commented meaningfully.
He'd almost forgotten about [Scan]. Shit.
Hurriedly, before she got any ideas, he waved a hand, "No no, not necessary. I'm as Valin as they come. I had the fortune of parents who wished only the best for me, and saw that I would gain an education, whether I wanted one or not. Mother knows best, I suppose." He babbled.
"Oh? Would your instructor be anyone I know? There are not so many schools for the arcane, not in these lands. I know of only two academies in all of Prespang, and, forgive my saying, the Valin are not so deeply impressive as magi as they are as Classers." Werona inquired.
Uh oh. Now he was in it. Ulric loathed untruths, especially amongst people he wished to know. One of the side effects of that was that he was absolutely terrible at lying. He needed a way out, a deflection. Where was a damned squirrel when you needed one?
"You might.” He hedged, “They're all Elves though, I'm afraid my kin don't really have much in the way of contact with the city-states of Prespang. Still less Prosper, with whom you might say I have something of a grudge."
No untruth there, not even much of a misdirection.
"That explains much!" Werona exclaimed, as if it really did, flashing those daggers and impinging slightly on his space and she closed in with an understated rapidity.
He didn't realize how much the Sauri naturally loomed until now. He didn't have a chance to move away before she gathered him up with one arm, her clawed hand encasing his shoulder entirely, patting consolingly and led him back to the fire.
"Sit, sit. Worry not about failures young Ulric, it is only natural to struggle in the beginning. Believe me when I say your talent will lead you to success sooner than later. What I would have given to have had your gift at your age. I'd have shown that puffed-up monitor Asgrid Dewcauda who trips over her own tail." the Sauri trailed off menacingly.
Having been placed like a child, the Beastkin mage sat on the adjacent stone bench. Soon after their arrival, before the trading of lies began, Ulric had been gently coerced into providing more benches for seating and a solid half dozen of them now encircled the burning dung bricks, each covered in a fur pad.
"Now, let us see if we cannot refine your approach. Sometimes an idea which can work is made needlessly difficult on first attempt. I may polish your scales a bit, if you take my meaning, if you explain but a few whats and whys for mine understanding." Werona coerced gently.
Ulric knew he was caught firmly. This Sauri woman had the same sort of deceivingly placid attitude as Bathe Iriel. Brighteyes' mother never yelled and only marginally ever elevated the tone of her voice, and yet, Ulric had never seen anyone actually do anything but what she, pleasantly, asked them to. Like a great wide river carrying you along with her will; struggling just brought you downriver drowned, it didn't change much else.
Oh well, he didn't mind feeding the beast, so to speak. He went over his idea and how the spell was supposed to function. Adept Werona's ridged eyebrows tried to climb to the top of her head when he told her what he needed with Aquae. She immediately dug at her belt pouch, throwing aside a few unimportant items like a pair of glasses and her coin purse, before she retrieved a small, for her, book. The pages of the journal-style book had its pages of some kind of exceedingly thin leather. Swiftly she also came free of the pouch holding a sharp nibbed pen, along with an ink pot and starting scrawling indigo notes with a practiced hand that Ulric couldn't read at all. When she looked up she had him go back over the whole process. And then again, while she made annotations in the margins of the page.
When, at last, she finished, she indicated that they should halt there.
"Now it is myself who has need to think this over. I do not know what led you to think of using raised scales to shed the Incendere or to make a flow of water magic to facilitate the transfer of energy. That alone is ridiculous, this behavior of Aquae to swallow and then spit back out Incendere is incredible! Such applications, I already have a dozen-" The Sauri woman coughed into her scaled hand with a sheepish effort at reeling herself back in, her tail, meanwhile was twitching despite her attempts to still it.
"Ehm, apologies. I must meditate on our lesson today. Shall I be able to find you here again on the morrow?" She inquired, trying to maintain an air of calm professionalism.
Ulric wasn't buying it. He knew how he got when he had a challenge before him and he saw the signs. The darting eyes, the claws grabbing at nothing, the lips muttering a thousand unsaid thoughts. Oh yeah, Werona was definitely nerd high. She needed to ride this out and sleep it off.
"Of course, it would be good for us both to take time to consider what might have been learned. Thank you again for your lessons, I hope you will find us again tomorrow. We will stay here, for now. I cannot promise how long I will stay with the Moot, but probably long enough for the last of the snows to melt and to avoid the insect plague I have heard follows the thaw. My partner has warned me it is not a thing to experience in the open." Ulric told the Mage before they wished each other a good evening.
Alone at the fire, he did some geeking out of his own. Magic was so fucking cool sometimes. And he was just getting started. A shield that ate fire and, if he could figure out how, maybe a lead on doing the same with other types of mana. Advanced materials science coming from the jaws of a fierce looking yet tranquil Beastkin mage. All of it new and exciting and so very complex. Having gone over the intended spell so many times Ulric was already plotting improvements.
He would need a sort of subroutine for generating unaspected mana, first of all. Having to dedicate precious noodle time to the task limited him greatly, put constraints on how much mana he used at a time and thus hard capped the scope and scale at which he worked. He had to commit ahead of time to the exact magical force needed, which meant overengineering the magic to ensure it met functional tolerances. Proper engineering protocol dictated a fifty percent margin of safety and that was as near to an inviolable commandment from god as Ulric was going to get.
Until night fell, Ulric sat by the fire working out the details of the exact procedure. His thoughts spiraled down warrens and tangles of light diffraction equations, wave equations, and interference filters. He was rewarded as the Twins fell below the horizon.
*PING*
Ulric had reinvented the single slit diffraction experiment, but in reverse. His core's crystal structure both the real and metaphysical matrix worked perfectly to stream the magic and create a singular node of cancellation that he could maintain actively. In layman’s terms, his core was designed to allow him to create a flow of unaspected mana from its native Ceraun, if only one knew the trick. Maybe a coincidence?
“No, probably not.” He told the dimly glowing embers of the neglected campfire.
Too many signs that cores, and the biota at large were being optimized, being assisted in their growth. The Akashic connection was, Ulric was now near certain, a tool for the acceleration and direction of evolutionary processes that had been entirely randomized and selected on the basis of survival rates and successful gene transfer rates to descendants on his good old Earth.
His concerns that he might be losing energy from the destructive interference were, thankfully, unfounded. The laws of energy conservation were in play, even if they maybe got a little fuzzy around the edges sometimes. The energy of the mirrored Ceraun streams was exactly out of phase, no slop, the energy in both was then completely converted to the unaspected form, just like two jump ropers swinging in opposite directions having their helical force transformed into a sinusoidal rotation. It was the same idea behind noise cancellation, actively applying the inverse sounds to detected frequencies other than the audio playback nullified them, minimizing heard sound except for the intended one.
One small step for Ulric, one giant leap for the Ohmic school of magic! He crowed internally.
The reforged man couldn't help but observe that physics was doing some heavy lifting for his core. Once again, he owed a debt to those masters of reality that had deciphered the laws of electromagnetism and wave equations and loved humanity so much as to write them down. The thought that magic might be related to quantum mechanics made his stomach churn a little and he idly wondered, as he rose stiffly from where he'd petrified deep in thought, whether the prime elemental Ceraun played dice.
Perhaps the reason for his reforging was so that the wisdom of his forebears was not lost when the humanity of his Before inevitably extinguished themselves. It might be that the Watcher’s payoff for dipping its preverbial toes into the timestream was to preserve that which was worth preserving and kickstart advancement of a perhaps stagnant world. Magic might be crippling certain schools of thought, stagnating them when other methods, though more difficult, might open doors yet unseen.
His brain hurt thinking over the implications even though he couldn't stop grinning like an idiot, even when he retired to his bedroll in the shared Yurt, stepping over the entwined form of Prenya being small spoon to his Shadow's big spoon.
Luncheon with Mage Werona soon turned into a more boisterous happening as the other Legranel with whom the traveling pair had met previously had returned from their goings. Prenya immediately added to the festivities by accusing Ulric of "having an affair on her affair" which properly set the tone of the afternoon.
To that razzing the Sauri woman hid her muzzle behind a hand and delivered a textbook princess laugh, "Oh hohoho, we should not leave treats lying about to be snapped up then should we young Farstrider?". He was liking this Ms. Autumnclaw character more and more, she was revealing a good sense for timing and taking advantage of a proper straight man.
The scarred Herdrider looked back and forth between Ulric and the tall theropodic woman with astonishment for a moment before declaring with a pointed finger "You harlot!" she slandered him jokingly, "It has only been one morning! And you, I trusted you to guard our catch, Taipan, how could you let this happen?"
To which his wife shrugged her reply before saying without sarcasm, "I cannot watch him all of the time. My Valin is tricksome and trouble finds him like water finds the bottom of a hill."
He had to grin. It was a true enough statement. It would help if he would learn to keep his trap shut and mind his own business. No more saving children in the forest, or hunting for spies in his woods, or dueling assholes, or breaking up slaving rings. No sir, not for this guy. Just sign me up for a whole helluvalotta sitting around a fireplace munching on venison and slurping root stews. Ulric had to admit that the trajectory of his life had been vaulted incredibly into unknown territory by his chance meeting with the Iriels. They'd all added their own spins to his story and that had sort of inevitably sent him careening off into the world. If he kept pinballing around like this, he might just find out that a life of adventure could be fun! A little murdery sometimes, but fun!
In spite of some amount of evidence to the otherwise, Ulric was not entirely without wisdom. Under the scrutiny of the unexpected third leg of a tripod Taipan had created, he recognized when it was best to practice the Art of Silence and Stillness, to blend into the background through the sheer will to go unnoticed. His Ninja-do failed him utterly, such was the power of the Elves. Somehow, the vengeful Prenya found a hole in his technique and settled down between him and Taipan. She then assured that his trained skills would prove futile by gluing herself to his side. The wrongfully accused was forced to pay penance by feeding her bits of some kind of pasta spun between chopstick style eating utensils.
Only a race as dexterous as the Aes'r would consider eating pasta with chopsticks, the sadists. His magical business partner displayed the wisdom of her untold years again by retrieving a fork from her belt pouch, ignoring completely the disdain of her lunch fellows. Ulric endured their laughing gazes and the smug grins for a few minutes until his fingers figured out how exactly the fuck these stupid sticks were supposed to work.
Once the games were over, everyone settled down to munch in earnest. Ulric managed some portion of vengeance by deliberately dropping noodles down Prenya's shirt while she was distracted by some conversation about wildebeest tracking with Taipan. Her squawk of righteous indignation was cut off by a brown hand fishing down her front for the noodles and making some rather unfortunate "mistakes" along the way. Joclyn made the ironic observation that his aunt had tossed herself into a cookpot full of hungrier travelers than she had anticipated, which drew laughs from the peanut gallery. Ulric was even gladder he hadn't killed Joclyn, the lad was proving to be an alright cobber.
It no longer seemed unusual to Ulric for his Shadow to be having fun, even away from her beloved woods. Hell, If anybody asked, Ulric had decided that he was having an absolute blast currently. The garrulous Legranel had some large part in that, the nomads, once they'd gotten over the initial circumstances of their meeting, were a hoot. As might be expected of people who traveled endlessly they had a rather carefree attitude and a love for experiences over things. Inevitably that led to the telling of tales. Trading embellished stories, which did not qualify as "lying" to their culture, proved a fantastically pleasant game. The real goal was to slip as many lies into the tale as possible without getting caught blatantly making shit up. He and Taipan won serious points when they told the Megaskunk story completely straight, being accused of heinous untruth at multiple times only to be able to assert with utter sincerity that it was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help us Watcher.
All too soon, they'd be on the road again, back amidst the perils of this vast world. For now, he was glad to be allowed to have this moment's respite. If he were a betting man, he'd chalk some of his partner's rather blatant wildness up to decompressing from the strain of their journey. They hadn't really taken a break, her least of all, since they'd left the Deep Woods fortress. Even their stays in Seinajok, and most particularly Trachn'ir were, unfortunately, not exactly restful. The great trade capital of Celestin had proven to be nearly as full of vicious animals needing put down as the hinterland around it.
Now though? Just right at the moment, the Moot was as safe a place as Ulric could think of. Even if they had enemies here they'd be hard pressed to navigate the thousands of virtually identical Legranel Yurts, that endless sea of canvas and support poles. Aside from his inclination to just sort of unwind and tinker, now that he had the time, Ulric didn't explore the Moot because he didn't want to risk getting lost amongst the rabble.
And a motley rabble it was. Not just the plainsfolk were in attendance any longer. From nowhere had sprung a seeming deluge of merchants that descended on the Moot from the surrounding Big Sky Country, defying the mud and coming war to beat the competition to the start of the trade season. The prospect of coin made men and women of the merchant classes go to insane lengths, it would appear. Increasingly over the last two days, Beastkin of all sorts, Humans from Prespang, largely ignorant of the greater happenings and doing as they had done for generations, and Elves of the different tribes of Orlethrem had come out from the wood works. Even the Iriel'en were beginning to be seen, passing through as they set up Brighteyes' network of scouts and the trade routes he planned to use to choke the life out of Prosper's economic domination. That was half the reason Taipan had sojourned out that morning, to find her kin and learn what doings had transpired while they had blitzed through the better part of fifteen hundred kilometers of wilderness.
At the conclusion of the storytelling, most of the Legranel were inclined to retire to their canvas homes for a time-honored tradition of an afternoon siesta. Taipan hauled Prenya along with her to their own. The serpent had her prey well within her coils now. You will be missed, Prenya, Ulric lamented. His Shadow did love her body pillows made of actual bodies. Preferably warm, but he had to at least suspect that had not always been the case. Taipan was Taipan.
Mage Autumnclaw appeared to think that break time was over, he noticed she was indicating towards the fireplace, which had a fresh set of shit bricks upon it. Tangy sage smoke wafted freely into the air to complement the tongues of flame that reached to the sky, their crackling little song of happy fire song fitting nicely with the atmosphere of the camp.
"Sorry about all the hubbub Werona, things can get a little lively around here." Ulric apologized, still speaking Elvish.
It had emerged as the most efficient way to communicate, he'd rather not use Taipan as a translator, her mind was better left free to examine the reasonings behind what was said, less the exact verbiage.
The muzzle parted slightly to show sharp predator's teeth, a razored smile that, under different circumstances, might have browned his shorts a bit. There was a brief moment when whatever was wrong with his brain almost convinced him to, on the spur of the moment, complement those "pearly white manslayers" but a second thought revealed that first one to be unfathomably stupid and he managed to refrain. Don't stare at them, don't talk about them, don't imagine them eating you, don't ask her how long it takes to brush them, don't stare at them…he chanted a ritual of antimoronic behavior.
"It is quite alright, your companions are a pleasant change from the border towns. I am always surprised at how open the Aes'r can be. My own folk are more restrained but it would be silly take offense. To each their own. Now, let us move our discussion to that which was bargained, the method for isolating the energies and drawing them from other's spells."
Once more the Sauri leaned forward and held out her large clawed hand, she could palm a basketball easily. Her eyes showed her concentration and a hollow sphere of menacingly hot orange light appeared.
"This," the Ash cored Adept declared, "is only flame magic. I will not use my Ash mana, Tephras is not required, though it has a sort of specialty for this type of manipulation. You said earlier, Ulric, that you were Ceraun awakened, yet you are able to use Incendere as well. By this I understand you have relearned to manipulate the unaspected mana?"
Ulric confirmed via a duck of the chin, before he replied, "This is so. It was only relatively recently but I believe I have solved some of the contamination issues that my awakening initially created."
He was a little bit proud of that, it was a nifty trick, if he did say so himself. And, he did, so there.
Werona's smile had faded when she began concentrating on her magic but a slight flash of the very subtly serrated ivory lining her jaws indicated her pleasure at working with another Adept who aspired to be more. Most mages sort of tapped out at this point, admitting that the path to recovering the ability to use magic other than what their core provided was beyond them. Gother had referred to such with a strong degree of contempt and had ruthlessly insisted on Ulric's recovery of his unaspected magics as soon as possible. No student of his would choose to be a cripple, was how he had phrased it, specifically.
"Good. So strange to encounter a Human of the barbarian clans with your level of progression, and so young. Truly, Varda's mysteries are uncounted. I know not your background, are you trained in standard structures and elastic manaweaves?" The slim woman gestured with her offhand to indicate the glowing orb of heat she was holding steady.
Ulric was. It was among the first lessons Shor taught, the protocols for manipulation of mana to externalize it into a spell under direct control of a caster or a ritual to activate according to preset triggering conditions. He'd made very little use of the latter, there just wasn't enough time. What had immediately come clear under the tutelage of the Crimson Sphinx was that Ulric's initial conception of casting and controlling magic being akin to writing code was not far off the mark.
There were typical archetypes for commonly used spells, specific mental constructs to achieve a specific aim that could be interchanged between different spells, like a library of functions, according to a paradigm based upon one's understanding of the objective and the forces involved with it. It was also true that two mages could achieve exactly the same results with wildly divergent methods, at times. They could also produce an outcome that was, to the observer the same, but one may do this with half the expenditure of mana and willpower, if they had a better refined understanding of how to accomplish their spell. These mental algorithms and mana constructs were where Ulric's magic differed greatly from his Elven counterparts; the knowledge he had of his old world's academic training paid dividends here. Where his Aes'r instructors were casting according to, let's say Python, Ulric was using C++. There were similarities between them but one was very different from the other. Sometimes to the good. Sometimes to the not so good.
Structures were the prefabricated functions that the mind used to weave mana in a specific way, to achieve specific, well-defined outcomes. Ulric's spells were all structured, he didn't have to reweave the spells, once he'd learned them, he just concentrated on feeding the mana into the algorithm and his core spat out magical nonsense. Elastic manaweaves were a whole other beast. These were the on the fly adjustments that could be used to manipulate the structures, tying them together in different arrangements. They had to be actively controlled, and demanded precision or else you could fizzle your spell, or worse, have it feedback and get a backlash into your core and mana channels. Shor had helped Ulric create his [Cinder Pearl] and [Cinder Shield] by use of elastic manaweaves to alter how the Incendere behaved. It was hard as hell and he'd only succeeded within the weeks of training because Shor was a godsdamned genius sorceress. It would have taken him at least twice as long to puzzle out the hows, even if he'd pretty easily grasped the whys after the fact.
"My teacher showed me both of these to create the spell you observed earlier, so yes. I am also not afraid to admit that elastic manaweaves make me a little nervous, especially for things I haven't tried before." Ulric admitted.
Werona waved his avowal off, "Anyone with a wit of sense is nervous to perform a novel working, especially at scale. The ones who aren't are roaming the wilds as living pools of water, or stone pillars that seem to change location at random or else they are fleshy bits scattered across their lab. Magic is dangerous."
Those were very nearly the same words spoken to him in warning by all three of Bald'rt's wives during his mage training with them, at some point or another. That all the people he respected said the same thing made it akin to gun safety training. When the range officer asks you if the firearm is loaded the answer is always "Yes". Ulric's one-time drill instructor during mandatory service, a two and quarter-meter giant of a black man with the frame of a pro-bowl defensive tackle had once demanded to know why Ulric had handed him a loaded weapon. It wasn't, the man had watched him not five seconds earlier remove the magazine and rack the slide back to show an open, empty chamber. Ulric, in his naivete, immediately replied "Because they're all loaded Drill Sergeant." The man smiled his feral smile and told the rest of the boots "See? He gets it. See that all of you do too. And give me fifty pushes for handing me a loaded weapon you scum suck asshole, I want to feel you sweating through MY boots." Ahh, good times, Ulric noted to himself.
"I hear and understand, Mage Werona." Ulric intoned solemnly.
Satisfied that he was authentic, the Tephras core'd mage began her explanation, with a blunt "Good. Attend."
Ulric couldn't help a long, slow blink at her use of the "A" word, which had been ingrained into the man to expect to be flung bodily through the air by Instructor Gother. No such happening manifested, and he allowed himself a small sigh of relief.
"There is a specific requirement for the structure of the spell that necessitates it to hold excess mana, imagine it to be as a bone, with many pockets and pores that may be filled or emptied without changing the shape of the working as a whole." The Sauri said, and her firelight globe expanded to appear meshlike, with dimmer orange geometric lines surrounding pockets of brighter yellow light.
Wow, neat. She's got this pyromancy thing down pretty well, he remarked.
The Sauri mage concentrated and Ulric saw those bright yellow regions grow even brighter and there was a distinct cooling of the air around her. The air started to move, a gentle draw of pressure as the thermal she was birthing displaced the column above her demonstration.
"The difficult aspect is, as you have no doubt suspected, the elastic manaweave that draws ambient Incendere, or, when you have mastered the technique, the concentrated Incendere in another's weave." Werona said, before releasing her spell, letting the glowing orb of fire magic fade away.
"To create a weave strong enough to pull apart the structure of another mage's working, without displacing your own structure is a challenge but you will get the knack for it with some practice. Starting slow, with just enough strength to draw ambient heat is a good place to start. I imagine a sort of barbed net for mine, catching, enmeshing, and binding the energies before drawing them in."
Each mage had their own distinct way of casting, their own mental pathways. Some things would end up being very similar. Other, more nuanced applications almost always ended up being very distinctly individual. The Ashmage's metaphor, her visualization, worked for her but might not be optimal for Ulric. Even so, it was an exceedingly helpful starting point. It also indicated that she wasn't holding out on him, giving away your mental constructs was as much as you can do, alongside explaining the underpinning concepts and specific outcomes of the spell, to teach another your own workings.
Magic was, as might be obvious, not definitively an art, as much as a science. There was some element of constancy and determinism to it in the experimentation, the application of principles, and measuring of inputs compared to outputs, but the act of creation itself was certainly more resembling a painter at their canvas. Ulric liked to envision himself writing a program that created the painting, working the functions, solving the relevant physical equations, rather than slopping around with the brush.
Ulric decided to start with his [Cinder Shield] as the basis, he was really just modifying an existing construct that already had all the elements necessary to incorporate Werona's methods. First the construct. He envisioned the formation of the jewels of flame, the crystalline matrix of mana that would pull Incendere inside and trap it. Then came the binding lines of mana to form the vertices that would make up the centroid, the focal point of magic at the center of the shield. Next, the entire structure was driven to spin, to cycle and complete the shield's interior, it also, in Ulric's mind, to shred incoming attacks and deflect their momentum. All of that was rigid, was structure. He frowned. The spell was "full" already, was filling its space with the power from the [Cinder Pearls].
He was up from his seat without thinking, pacing while the problem rolled around thoughtspace.
Carefully, Ulric concentrated on the binding lines of magic, these should be the elastic manaweaves, the ones that caught mana and drew it away into the crystallized magic, he might have to adjust those structures too…Wait! He realized that he could just pocket the incoming mana within his pearls, like interstitial depositions within the matrix, there was room already! He'd done better work than he knew with this magic.
Still, he needed to refine the…heatsinks. That's what he was making. Magical analogues to a heatsink, drawing in the energy and dispersing it to the reservoirs. Instead of solid bars, he envisioned hollow tubes, which then evolved into cylinders whose inner walls of Incendere were ridged, creating a regular grid of fans. It needed something else, something more. The spell was now far more complex, he was struggling to keep it together in his head. Something important was absent.
Fingers snapped absently at his thigh. He didn't see Werona's curious inspection. He didn't hear the bustle of the Moot around him. He was gone into his head, drawn into the kind of focus that blots out everything outside.
Years of engineering solutions, of poring over thermodynamic applications wound through his brain. His shield wanted to be a heatsink. It needed to pull the energy of a concentration of fire magic way, Incendere to draw itself inside the manaweave and something else. A working fluid! He smiled to himself when it came to himself. Something was needed to carry the energy from the heatsink manaweave to the [Cinder Pearls]. But what? What mana analogue? Delicate circuitry liked fans, could he use Caelum? No, he had a feeling that wasn't going to work, not with the kind of energies bastards like Captain Firecracker were throwing around. It needed to be better. Something to absorb and carry heat without being greatly changed by it.
Ulric wanted to hit himself. It was obvious. Water. Water? Ulric envisioned the entire structure of the heatsinks filled with Aquae drinking in the mana, carrying it to the crystalline matrix. Liquid cooling a fire shield, he could have laughed until he sicked up. This was the sort of insanity that he was all about. Gods where was a computer to create a model and run a simulation?
Carefully, Ulric prompted his core to generate the monopoles, opposite, and superimposed them to create the ground harmonic, pure white unaspected mana. Tuning it towards the merry burning notes of Incendere, He concentrated on the spell he'd been composing, willing its structure to form. Three rubies of flame spun into existence, hanging in the air before him. Lines of fire raced to connect them before they swelled into thicker conduits, the insides of the conduits melted and reformed into an array of bars. The entire thing began its rotation. Ulric was sweating, his focus tested. Now he just needed to…
"FUCK!" He shouted, startling Werona and a few passing Legranel.
He'd forgotten to make any Aquae with the white mana. This shit was hard enough to do, he couldn't hold the spell, and then create more pure mana, and then, on top of that, attune it to its water form. Dual elemental casting was already a massive task. He would need to split the initial load of pure elemental magic, two-thirds to fire, a third to water, then begin the construct holding the water in isolation within his core until the elastic manaweave heatsink was ready to fill. Watcher's Tits this was hard.
"What is the matter Ulric? You did something very interesting with your weave. Was there something more?" Mage Werona's thinly veiled concern sat atop a burning curiosity.
Irony there, Ulric remarked to himself before replying.
"Ah, sorry about that." Ulric scrubbed his hair and stared at the ground a moment before returning his gaze to the Sauri, "Frustration. The working is…well, I'll be honest, it might just be too damned much for me right now. There's a somewhat subtle manipulation and I'm not used to doing so complex a task. It requires two mana forms to be made, and a specific sequence of their use. Hard as all hell, but I think it's going to be incredibly potent."
Her tail swished back and forth, once, a reflex born of her excitement.
"It is no failure to be unable to complete the casting on first try Ulric. Just the creation of the spellform is a monumental undertaking. To actually manage a construct…how old are you, if you don't mind me asking?"
Ulric squinted slightly at her sudden interest in his age. He saw no harm, even if he didn't see how it would help him get this stupid spell wrestled into submission.
"Twenty-seven." Ulric replied.
"I did not manage a casting until I was twice that. Are you really a Human? I am almost so curious as to be rude enough to ask to use [Scan]." She commented meaningfully.
He'd almost forgotten about [Scan]. Shit.
Hurriedly, before she got any ideas, he waved a hand, "No no, not necessary. I'm as Valin as they come. I had the fortune of parents who wished only the best for me, and saw that I would gain an education, whether I wanted one or not. Mother knows best, I suppose." He babbled.
"Oh? Would your instructor be anyone I know? There are not so many schools for the arcane, not in these lands. I know of only two academies in all of Prespang, and, forgive my saying, the Valin are not so deeply impressive as magi as they are as Classers." Werona inquired.
Uh oh. Now he was in it. Ulric loathed untruths, especially amongst people he wished to know. One of the side effects of that was that he was absolutely terrible at lying. He needed a way out, a deflection. Where was a damned squirrel when you needed one?
"You might.” He hedged, “They're all Elves though, I'm afraid my kin don't really have much in the way of contact with the city-states of Prespang. Still less Prosper, with whom you might say I have something of a grudge."
No untruth there, not even much of a misdirection.
"That explains much!" Werona exclaimed, as if it really did, flashing those daggers and impinging slightly on his space and she closed in with an understated rapidity.
He didn't realize how much the Sauri naturally loomed until now. He didn't have a chance to move away before she gathered him up with one arm, her clawed hand encasing his shoulder entirely, patting consolingly and led him back to the fire.
"Sit, sit. Worry not about failures young Ulric, it is only natural to struggle in the beginning. Believe me when I say your talent will lead you to success sooner than later. What I would have given to have had your gift at your age. I'd have shown that puffed-up monitor Asgrid Dewcauda who trips over her own tail." the Sauri trailed off menacingly.
Having been placed like a child, the Beastkin mage sat on the adjacent stone bench. Soon after their arrival, before the trading of lies began, Ulric had been gently coerced into providing more benches for seating and a solid half dozen of them now encircled the burning dung bricks, each covered in a fur pad.
"Now, let us see if we cannot refine your approach. Sometimes an idea which can work is made needlessly difficult on first attempt. I may polish your scales a bit, if you take my meaning, if you explain but a few whats and whys for mine understanding." Werona coerced gently.
Ulric knew he was caught firmly. This Sauri woman had the same sort of deceivingly placid attitude as Bathe Iriel. Brighteyes' mother never yelled and only marginally ever elevated the tone of her voice, and yet, Ulric had never seen anyone actually do anything but what she, pleasantly, asked them to. Like a great wide river carrying you along with her will; struggling just brought you downriver drowned, it didn't change much else.
Oh well, he didn't mind feeding the beast, so to speak. He went over his idea and how the spell was supposed to function. Adept Werona's ridged eyebrows tried to climb to the top of her head when he told her what he needed with Aquae. She immediately dug at her belt pouch, throwing aside a few unimportant items like a pair of glasses and her coin purse, before she retrieved a small, for her, book. The pages of the journal-style book had its pages of some kind of exceedingly thin leather. Swiftly she also came free of the pouch holding a sharp nibbed pen, along with an ink pot and starting scrawling indigo notes with a practiced hand that Ulric couldn't read at all. When she looked up she had him go back over the whole process. And then again, while she made annotations in the margins of the page.
When, at last, she finished, she indicated that they should halt there.
"Now it is myself who has need to think this over. I do not know what led you to think of using raised scales to shed the Incendere or to make a flow of water magic to facilitate the transfer of energy. That alone is ridiculous, this behavior of Aquae to swallow and then spit back out Incendere is incredible! Such applications, I already have a dozen-" The Sauri woman coughed into her scaled hand with a sheepish effort at reeling herself back in, her tail, meanwhile was twitching despite her attempts to still it.
"Ehm, apologies. I must meditate on our lesson today. Shall I be able to find you here again on the morrow?" She inquired, trying to maintain an air of calm professionalism.
Ulric wasn't buying it. He knew how he got when he had a challenge before him and he saw the signs. The darting eyes, the claws grabbing at nothing, the lips muttering a thousand unsaid thoughts. Oh yeah, Werona was definitely nerd high. She needed to ride this out and sleep it off.
"Of course, it would be good for us both to take time to consider what might have been learned. Thank you again for your lessons, I hope you will find us again tomorrow. We will stay here, for now. I cannot promise how long I will stay with the Moot, but probably long enough for the last of the snows to melt and to avoid the insect plague I have heard follows the thaw. My partner has warned me it is not a thing to experience in the open." Ulric told the Mage before they wished each other a good evening.
Alone at the fire, he did some geeking out of his own. Magic was so fucking cool sometimes. And he was just getting started. A shield that ate fire and, if he could figure out how, maybe a lead on doing the same with other types of mana. Advanced materials science coming from the jaws of a fierce looking yet tranquil Beastkin mage. All of it new and exciting and so very complex. Having gone over the intended spell so many times Ulric was already plotting improvements.
He would need a sort of subroutine for generating unaspected mana, first of all. Having to dedicate precious noodle time to the task limited him greatly, put constraints on how much mana he used at a time and thus hard capped the scope and scale at which he worked. He had to commit ahead of time to the exact magical force needed, which meant overengineering the magic to ensure it met functional tolerances. Proper engineering protocol dictated a fifty percent margin of safety and that was as near to an inviolable commandment from god as Ulric was going to get.
Until night fell, Ulric sat by the fire working out the details of the exact procedure. His thoughts spiraled down warrens and tangles of light diffraction equations, wave equations, and interference filters. He was rewarded as the Twins fell below the horizon.
*PING*
Ulric had reinvented the single slit diffraction experiment, but in reverse. His core's crystal structure both the real and metaphysical matrix worked perfectly to stream the magic and create a singular node of cancellation that he could maintain actively. In layman’s terms, his core was designed to allow him to create a flow of unaspected mana from its native Ceraun, if only one knew the trick. Maybe a coincidence?
“No, probably not.” He told the dimly glowing embers of the neglected campfire.
Too many signs that cores, and the biota at large were being optimized, being assisted in their growth. The Akashic connection was, Ulric was now near certain, a tool for the acceleration and direction of evolutionary processes that had been entirely randomized and selected on the basis of survival rates and successful gene transfer rates to descendants on his good old Earth.
His concerns that he might be losing energy from the destructive interference were, thankfully, unfounded. The laws of energy conservation were in play, even if they maybe got a little fuzzy around the edges sometimes. The energy of the mirrored Ceraun streams was exactly out of phase, no slop, the energy in both was then completely converted to the unaspected form, just like two jump ropers swinging in opposite directions having their helical force transformed into a sinusoidal rotation. It was the same idea behind noise cancellation, actively applying the inverse sounds to detected frequencies other than the audio playback nullified them, minimizing heard sound except for the intended one.
One small step for Ulric, one giant leap for the Ohmic school of magic! He crowed internally.
The reforged man couldn't help but observe that physics was doing some heavy lifting for his core. Once again, he owed a debt to those masters of reality that had deciphered the laws of electromagnetism and wave equations and loved humanity so much as to write them down. The thought that magic might be related to quantum mechanics made his stomach churn a little and he idly wondered, as he rose stiffly from where he'd petrified deep in thought, whether the prime elemental Ceraun played dice.
Perhaps the reason for his reforging was so that the wisdom of his forebears was not lost when the humanity of his Before inevitably extinguished themselves. It might be that the Watcher’s payoff for dipping its preverbial toes into the timestream was to preserve that which was worth preserving and kickstart advancement of a perhaps stagnant world. Magic might be crippling certain schools of thought, stagnating them when other methods, though more difficult, might open doors yet unseen.
His brain hurt thinking over the implications even though he couldn't stop grinning like an idiot, even when he retired to his bedroll in the shared Yurt, stepping over the entwined form of Prenya being small spoon to his Shadow's big spoon.
