Chapter 34: Cutting Corners

Wizards can use their connections to their ensouled artifacts to empower their magic. When Bonded, the soul of a wizard and their artifact are joined. As far as magic is concerned, the artifact and the wizard are one and the same. The cantrip Conjure is the most common exploit for this connection. While the cantrip normally only allows the caster to summon an object already on their person to appear in their hand, the cantrip allows the caster to summon their ensouled artifact to them from anywhere in the Realm.

-Deckard’s Compendium of Ensouled Artifacts

—

Kole woke up to loud banging on his door. He was exhausted, but despite himself, he was excited to go about his day.

“Coming!” he shouted, getting out of bed and changing quickly.

Before opening the door, he cast two quick spells, and then stepped out of his room.

“Why are there two of him?” Doug asked.

Rakin squinted, and looked between the two identical copies of Kole that had emerged from the room.

“There’s only one,” Rakin said. “But I can’t tell which is real.”

Zale’s eyes glazed over a little as she activated her Willsight, and she stopped looking from one copy to the other and then looked straight between the two and smiled.

Kole smiled back, as shown by the two illusory copies, and they both waved to Zale. Rakin then came closer to examine the two copies, but as he got close to one, they both leaned in and poke him on the nose.

“Boop!” Kole said, as the contact broke his Invisibility spell, revealing him in the center.

While the copies all moved identically to Kole, they did orient themselves correctly. So, as Kole looked at Rakin and reached toward his face, both visible fingers converged on the same point. When he looked at something far away, all their eyes fixed on the same point.

Kole’s Uncle’s Mirror Image, as granted by his primal abilities, allowed him to freely control each Illusion. While this was probably something Kole could replicate someday by creating a higher version of the spell, the standard one he had would serve him just as well.

Rakin didn’t react to the boop, only furrowing his brow deeper.

“That was clever, but I'll get ye back,” Rakin said, and then smiled.

The smile looked out of place on the dwarf’s face and Kole felt suddenly uncomfortable.

“I know you said you were close,” Zale said, “But I didn’t expect you to finish so soon. How late did you stay up?”

“Only ‘til one or two,” Kole said. “I didn’t expect it to go that fast either, but I learned to use my spellbook in a new way.”

Kole went on to explain his discovery of his spellbook’s new ability to help him learn magic.

“I don’t know much about wizardry, but that seems like kind of a big deal,” Zale said.

Kole nodded.

“It is, and it isn’t,” he said, shaking his hand in the air. “It’s extremely useful for learning traditional wizardry, but I doubt anyone but me and some magical historian will care for that. The bigger aspect is improving the efficiencies of spells. If any other wizard in the world—and I mean that literally, any other—had this spellbook, they could make breakthroughs in spell efficiency by amassing a large library of spellforms and optimizing with those. But, for anyone else to have this book, I’d have to be dead, and I’d prefer that to not happen.”

“I would also prefer that,” Zale said. “Do you think it's a risk letting the knowledge out?”

“Your uncle already told me not to tell people I have this,” Kole said, holding the book up. “Underbrook, Tigereye and Lonin know, but I feel that’s not a concern. Maybe I don’t tell them about this new ability though.”

“Why not?” Rakin asked, “Didn’t ye want him to be yer mentor?”

“I did, but he made his conditions on that very clear,” Kole explained. He’d thought on this long last night and decided against it. “He’s already offered to take me on if I fail to find a mentor, and he was very clear he’d not support me in this program. If he knew about this, he’d only be more determined to snatch me away for a life of research.”

“Oh no,” Rakin said, deadpan. “How would ye ever survive being trapped in a library, being forced to study spells day in and day out—ow!”

Zale swatted Rakin.

“It's the principle,” Kole said. “I’m learning wizardry for a purpose—to help people, my parents and others—I want to be an adventurer. I like it, and I think I’d be good at it. I could become a fabulously wealthy wizard and pay peasants like you to do all my bidding, but that isn’t what I want.”

“You don’t want to be fabulously wealthy?” Zale asked.

“Well, I’m not against it. I’m sure we’ll stumble on some hoards here and there once we set out on real adventures,” Kole said, inadvertently expressing his desire to stick with his friends as a formal group after graduation.

The topic had never come up explicitly. Only a small number of teams stuck together after graduating, most people instead being recruited into an established team as a rookie member. 

“Let’s hold off plans for our futures until after we actually enter the program,“ Zale said diplomatically.

Kole knew Rakin had spoken of returning to the dwarven city where he grew up occasionally, and Zale’s mother had expectations of her. He didn’t take the awkwardness as rejection, but only as his friends being unable to commit. Their parents were famous adventurers in their own right. They likely had connections and plans for them beyond this school. He didn’t take it personally, but he vowed then and there that he would strive to be a wizard worthy to tag along on whatever elite futures Rakin and Zale had ahead of them.

Kole took to Martial 102 with a new vigor. While he knew he was nothing special with the quarterstaff, he also knew getting hit in the side of the head with one by an invisible opponent flanked by two illusions was a very effective form of attack, and he wanted to improve.

Unfortunately, he still wanted to keep his ability to turn invisible under wraps, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t use it if his life depended on it. Upon his first casting of the spell, he’d discovered that he could will the illusory clones to appear anywhere he wanted relative to himself within about 10 feet, and he could make them move closer or further away as the spell remained active.

Kole’s renewed enthusiasm for learning the quarterstaff didn’t apply to his class of Spacial Magic. Despite having the ability to think of distance as a suggestion, Professor Tailor was able to make magic seem mundane and dull. Even Kole struggled to pay attention, and that was even with him having not one, but two strong personal reasons to learn more about Space magic.

With his parents missing in a pocket realm and portals opening to other pocket realms all over the planet, the knowledge was directly useful to him, but still he couldn’t focus.

Also, he realized. I have two friends with unstable connections to the Font of Space.

Kole was under no illusions that he’d learn something in a 100 level course that would help Doug or Theral, but learning more about the magic that afflicted them was something he was very interested in.

So, despite all the deeply personal reasons Kole should be able to pay attention—on top of the fact that he just generally liked learning about anything, but particularly magic—Kole found himself in his mental vault, planning to write notes from the lecture later with the use of his spellbook.

He reviewed the spellform for Radiant Bolt, with his new abilities in mind. With Mirror Image, Kole had used his spellbook in two ways to path the spell. The first, filling the book with lots of copies of the spell to quickly draw to mind relevant path components, wasn’t immediately available to him as he sat in the lecture

The other, reviewing the spell's destruction with perfect recall, was. On top of that, Kole already had hundreds of failures in his mind, ready to review. Kole spent what felt like hours in his vault reviewing failed attempt after failed attempt of casting Radiant Bolt. He wasn’t looking to create a new path for the spell, only improve the efficiency of the path he’d formed.

In his mind, he reviewed every failure and then the success that followed, finding he’d often greatly over compensated with his spell path to avoid an obstacle when a slight nudge would have done just as well for less.

He took the spell, and removed the last part of the path that guided the spell the last bit into the Font, guaranteeing that it would fail to cast no matter what improvement he made. Then, he left his vault to find that he still had half the class left.

Kole then began modifying the spell as his memories found flaws. At first, he only made a single tweak at a time before testing it, but when his first four modifications worked on the first try, he began to do more at once. Occasionally, Kole would look around to see if anyone could sense what he was doing, but in a class full of first year students—most of which weren't even wizards—no one had the ability to sense his failed castings.

By the time Kole the class was dismissed, Kole had performed all the improvements he could from the spell without trying to fundamentally alter the route the spell took through the Arcane Realm. Eager to test it, he ran out to the spell range.

When Kole got there, his first thought was to wonder why it was so busy. All the ranges were occupied by students, staff, and mixed groups of both there on lessons. It took Kole a moment to realize that this was the first time in a while he’d been here during the actual day, most of his other visits being after late night breakthroughs.

“I might have a bit of a problem,” he said quietly to himself, though he wouldn’t admit as much to Zale.

*If I did that she’d probably give me a bed time.

He eventually gave up trying to find an empty stall, and just waited to take over one which contained a particularly exhausted looking wizard a few years Kole’s senior. As he waited, he watched as the older student cast Firebolts at a target sixty feet away. His aim was good, and Kole used the opportunity to try to sense the Fire magic. He failed.

As a sort of grand finale, the student started casting a higher tier spell, and Kole almost thought he felt the touch of the Arcane Realm for the briefest moment. Then suddenly a tiny mote orange light flew across the range where it hit the dummy, exploding into a massive ball of fire.

All around students gave polite claps at the large explosion, and the wizard gave a mocking bow before vacating the stall for Kole.

Kole didn’t feel like he could compete with that—not that anyone was expecting him to or even still watching—so he decided to make this fast.

He built his improved Radiant Bolt, and then realized he’d never repaired the final portion. Quickly he pulled out his spellbook, reviewing that section and repairing it. Once done, he rebuilt the spell and sent it out his bridge.

A flash of golden light flew out of his hand, striking the golem, briefly wreathing it in a gold glow.

Kole closed his eyes to get a better sense of his remaining Will, and judged that the spell that had cost him 7 Will to cast this morning, now cost around 5.

That much for an hour's work!? he marvelled.

He’d struggled for weeks to reduce the cost of Thunderwave as much and still hadn’t hit his target the last semester. Even now the spell still cost him 8 Will.

The realization hit him light a bolt of lightning.

“I can do it again!” he shouted.

Without even looking to see if anyone was weirded out by his outburst, he ran to find the nearest place to work. Once more he found himself beneath a tree, but he didn’t care as he returned to his mental vault and began to review his memories of pathing Thunderwave.