Sell you a Bridge chapter 159

February 7th 2011 New Genesis 12:00 AM EDT

Zee  was in love with corner pup. She named him Patches, despite his lack of  any sort of patches or even color for there to be patches of. Her  shriek had also woken up Dreamer, and now the two of them were lavishing  the little pup with affection and cuddles as I perused my ridiculously  complicated book. I'd tried to get started on the second page, but I  realized that there were three concurrent spell formulas there when I  looked hard enough and trying to parse even one of them was making my  head hurt so I had to take a break.

Apparently there were  an exponentially increasing number of spells written into the book on  each page. The first page had one spell formula, but if you paid  attention there was a second much larger overarching formula whose  underlying structure was hidden throughout the first spell. That formula  seemingly spanned the entire book from what I could tell, making this  whole thing one giant fucking spell once I eventually finished it. The  second page had it's own spell, the portions of the overarching  underlying spell, and a SECOND underlying spell that was hidden in only  the first two spells.

I let my head slam into the table.  This ridiculous spell mechanic was independent of the stacking  information mechanic of the symbols that created a multiplicative amount  of base information, and was strictly related to the structure of the  formulas. The combination of the two facets, and possibly more, meant  that side from a massive libraries worth of raw information there was  also a second libraries worth of actual spells, though from what I could  tell you would need to finish completely deciphering the whole book  before you could start on anything but the initial layer on each page.

It  was no wonder this horrible clusterfuck of a book had cost a hundred  thousand points. It was basically a fucking magical database. I could  educate a fucking society on Void Shaping once I finished learning it.  Sadly even with my advantages that seemed like it would take fucking  years. For now I would just practice the infinitesimally small fraction  of void formulas I'd managed to learn by figuring out the initial  formula on the first page.

I heavily suspected this book  was actually meant to be read in more dimensions than a human or even a  devil like me could perceive. It would explain the ridiculous and overly  complicated structure of the text better than the explanation that void  mages were bastards who wanted everyone to suffer. If this text was  meant for someone who already had access to the void that meant skipping  that first step and not connecting like they had might actually have  hurt more than helped me. That said I wasn't connecting to an abyss of  endless nothingness just to make my bedtime reading easier, so I'd deal  with the extra homework and leave my brain intact and non ruined, thank  you very much.

It took Zee about an  hour to calm down and stop fussing over the puppy, handing him to  Dreamer to come over and check on me. As she got closer she noticed the  book and beamed at me excitedly. "Is that a new grimoire? Can I see it?  Is that how you got the spell to summon that little cutie?" She snatched  it up, opened the book and then...stared at the first page. "I...have  no idea what this means." I snorted at that and she rolled her eyes.  "Can you teach me some of it please? this whole thing looks amazing."

I  shook my head. "Honestly, no. I can barely read it myself. The symbol  language is insanely dense, like a thousand plus characters. Aside from  being massively contextual it's written in some sort of crazy stacking  pattern that can be read in multiple different directions and needs to be fed  into itself in like a dozen ways before it's understandable." I tried to  explain it to her as best I could, both the spell stacking and the  crazy exponential nature of the actual symbols and information, and by  the time I was done she was nodding.

She  closed the book. "It's Mobian. I've never even seen a book in Mobian  before but I HAVE heard of them. It's a higher dimensional text, famous  for being sort of a primer for more complicated dimensional languages.  Lots of human books on higher dimensional magic are written in Mobian because  it allows people with human perception to come into contact with  dimensional principles. That said, entry level dimensional source code  IS still dimensional source code, and the majority of people can't  manage anything with it."

I  blinked. That was...interesting. "I'm surprised my power used something  that exists already. Normally it would have made something out of  nothing and just retconned it in." Though realistically that may have  been what did happen, who knew if Zee had known anything about Mobian  before this book showed up. A hundred thousand points was bound to cause  some big changes.

To  my surprise Zee shook her head. "That isn't surprising in this case.  The Void is everywhere, and connects to all realities. Methods to  interact with it are pretty much the same in every universe. You power  probably gets at least some of those items from other dimensions and then shoehorns them into our world. It makes more sense than just point blank making  them. If that's the case than any void info you go through it would be  identical for the most part to stuff you would find natively."

I  shrugged. "Fair enough, regardless, you can try to learn it if you  want, I'll sketch out some symbols for you when I have time, but it  isn't going to be fast or easy. It's going to take me years to make any  progress, and I'm cheating pretty hard with all my reading and mental  boosts." It made me want to get some more brain improvements. Regardless  I had the one spell I knew, and I could repeat the process in my Outer  Body trance over and over to study how it worked. Once I perfected every  aspect of the magic I should be able to get a better grasp on void  shaping.

I  mentioned that to Zee and she nodded jealously. "Oh yeah, that'll be a  huge help honestly. I wish I had a way to test magic without ever  running out of power or experiencing any risk. Don't suppose you can  teach that one?" I blinked. I'd never actually considered that. Outer  Body wasn't an ability though, it was a skill, albeit an extremely  complex one. It didn't use up points so chances were it didn't have a  power source, and I remembered the learning process perfectly, so I  should be able to show her how to use it.

I  was a bit concerned about the energy from the talisman being necessary  to teach her, but when I thought about it harder I should be able to  help with that. My points could become any kind of energy. I remembered  exactly what that energy felt like and how it needed to be applied to  teach the skill. I wanted to try. "Ok. I'll give it my best shot, come  over here and sit down with me." Teaching Zee the Outer Body trance  would be a huge step, both in her capabilities and understanding my own  powers.

We  walked over to an empty space on the floor and sat down. Dreamer kept  Patches over by the bed but watched us with interest as we sat down  cross legged. I put out my hands, placing them flat against the empty  air and waiting for Zee to do the same with mine. She pressed her palms  against my own in mid air and I closed my eyes, focusing. I spoke as I  concentrated, leaving my eyes shut. "Ok Zee. This is going to be tough  for me so no talking. Just feel the energy as it moves into you and  follow the directions I'm going to send over our bond."

I  could push the energy into her, but the guidance the talisman gave me  is another story. Luckily our tantric bond lets us send emotions and  desires through it. I was going to use that to help project the  knowledge from my own time learning Outer Body to help her get a hold of  it. I focused on the energy, and at the same time on our bond, pushing  an exact memory of the feeling that helped me learn to channel the  energy into her. I felt some resistance at first from my points, but as I  pushed I could feel them slowly changing.

The  energy efficiency of the stuff from the talisman was ridiculous sadly.  It took me hundreds of points to create a replica. I had a thousand left  after my big purchase for the book and  over a third of it was devoured  as the points shifted to become the same stuff I'd felt before. I had  to portion the stuff out and send it in slowly so she could adapt and  process the information through the bond. As she interacted with it she  began to shift the energy like I'd sent, trying to create the same  effect I'd had before.

I  realized as we worked that this was much more efficient than the  original talisman, mostly because I could sense how she was approaching  the power and her reaction to my information and make slight adjustments  as we went. As she tried her best to learn the skill I altered the  feedback to perfectly tailor the lesson to her, and she got more and  more efficient at trying to recreate the energy pattern, until finally,  she completed the cycle and I felt the power click into place.

Feeling  my energy merge into her like that was an eerie sensation. The power I  was sending in sort of merged into her soul, creating a new pathway for  her magic to take. I didn't know what the hell that energy had been but I  heavily suspected my points were the only source of it. I focused hard  on the  stuff, trying to sense something, anything about it, but I  couldn't get any more info from just meditating.

Still,  when I opened my eyes I smiled as I saw Zee sitting there, eyes closed  and in a lotus position as she tapped into the Outer Body training  method. I was ecstatic. This was a huge step, I'd never been able to  mimic what my power could do outside of emails before. Sure it was a one  off that required a bunch of coincidental circumstances to be possible,  but it proved that my ability wasn't just some cosmic vending machine. I  could USE my power, I just needed to learn how.

Zee's  purple electric eyes flew open wide and she squealed with glee, hurling  herself at me for a kiss. "Baby that was AMAZING! I just cast the  biggest most destructive spell I knew in there and I'm fine! I'm not  tired or hurt or anything! Do you know how huge that is? It means I can  learn to use and control spells that were too dangerous for me to cast  before. Big complex magic that I couldn't touch in the past because I  was worried about doing something horrible by mistake!"

I  laughed as she showered me with kisses and helped her to her feet.  "Well I'm glad. I learned a lot from this too, so it seems like a win  win. Now, let's get my new book put up in the spacial ring and head back  to bed. We have Dreamer's friends arriving tomorrow and I don't want to  be all tired when they get here." I gave her a soft kiss, chuckling at  her pout, but once she realized we could cuddle the puppy when we went  to sleep her tone changed real fast. Settling in between my girlfriends  with my new dog curled up close I had to smile. My life was pretty  great.