Prismatic Education Begins With A Spark 21 (MTG/Multicross)

Prismatic Education 21

One of the Oriq mages thrust out a hand, sending a dangerous-looking bolt of purple magic at me. I quickly sidestepped, returning the attack with a spell of my own, a crackling orb of lightning-infused fire. It exploded against a hastily-erected shield, sending the mage stumbling back slightly.

The other one drew out a wicked-looking dagger, which he used to slash his palm. The red blood was enveloped in a blackish aura, and he flicked it at me with a snap of his arm. I didn’t know what sort of spell it was, but I suspected it was some kind of contact curse, so I distanced myself with a flame-propelled leap.

“Free me! Quickly!” My captured prisoner ordered. 

“Lyric,” I ordered, my voice clipped, “Suppress, pacify, permit no defy.”

My loyal inkling whipped into action, shifting from its winged form into that of an arachnid, landing on the back of ‘Lydia’s’ neck. It bit down with inky fangs, piercing through the gap in the Oriq armor. Instead of the emotion-terrorizing despair that inkomancers normally inflicted, I fueled peaceful tranquility instead, causing her struggling to become muted, then go still. Until the spell affecting her was broken, she would just wait docilely.

That leaves two, but I don’t know if they have any more… or mage hunters. I watched my enemies carefully, prepared to react to anything they might pull. That curse guy’s a Witherbloom… the other might be a Lorehold?

They attacked again, with different methods this time. The purple magic user suddenly duplicated himself, trying to distract me with illusions. His partner smeared his blood on the dagger, turning it into a whirling crimson whip. That seemed like a recipe for anemia.

Rather than waste time trying to find the real one among the illusions, I resorted to the simple solution I had learned from fighting goblins in Midgard: area of effect spells.

Shield-Lightning-Lightning! The three elemental spheres appeared around me, before merging together in the patterned rings of light in my free hand. Multiplier, added! Coordinates, set! Exclusion range, set! Activate!

Crushing the shaped magic with a clench of my fist, pillars of crackling electricity appeared all over the area, turning it into an electrical hazard. Some of the illusion figures ran into them, and got dispersed by the contact. However, I was looking for the ones that dodged, narrowing down the real one to only a few.

“Get rid of these!” The illusion mage finally spoke, his voice coming from each false form. 

His partner threw something at the ground, which shattered and released a rust-colored cloud of smoke. Instead of spreading out, it moved according to the mage’s gestures. Where it passed, my lightning traps weakened and eventually extinguished. Meanwhile, his other hand continued to swing his blood-coated dagger, trying to strike me with his bloodwhip. 

[Prismatic Magic: Violet Aegis]

I nullified his red-colored attack with an opposing violet barrier, the contact causing the blood to evaporate. The moment it dropped, I fired back a beam of my own, clipping the mage in the side despite a hasty dodge.

“Die!” His partner shimmered into visibility a short distance from me, glowing fist pulled back for a punch.

Maybe it’s the tempering, but doesn’t he seem kind of slow? With my free hand, I pointed off to the side.

I saw the moment he froze, realizing he had forgotten about one other fighter from my side. 

“RILL!” My elemental, crackling with imbued lightning from passing through my traps, bowled into his side.

“GYAAAGGGHHH!” He screamed as he went flying.

That was a heavy hit, but he’s definitely not out just yet.

I quickly refocused on the remaining one, who had renewed his blood-formed weapon, and was sending his mana-disrupting cloud as an opening attack. Unfortunately, I had already finished my next spell, fuelling it with mana from my land bonds.

A ruin grinder materialized in front of me in a burst of light, serving as a barrier against the cloud, which failed to penetrate its solid surface. It began to move, jerkily as its mana reactor sparked to life.

I had heard about how the Oriq used forbidden and unconventional magic, which was why I was fighting defensively most of the time. That description also included their armor, which helped them resist the effects of most of my spells, or retaliate with searing hot beams from the eyes of their helmets. However, their main spells, while deadly, didn’t seem like they were easy to cast. For every one they were able to fire off at me, I was firing back with two of three, making them struggle hard.

That said, these two aren’t pushovers… I’ve just gotten too used to fighting mage duels, I realized as I deflected another spell with one of my own, That, and they aren’t working together properly. 

Unlike me, they were at a disadvantage, because the longer our battle wore on, the chances of other people coming to investigate the commotion increased. Yet they continued to attack, trying to either kill me or free my prisoner.

A flurry of bolts was intercepted by Marill blowing a heavy stream of bubbles in their way. Charging illusions were blocked by a wall of curse-spewing rock. Meanwhile, the whip user struggled to avoid my automaton’s heavy flailing, his own attacks leaving gouges in its shell but failing to damage its internals. His attempts to stain me with his cursed blood were countered by sprays of water, which I followed up with zaps of lightning.

“We must retreat!” The purple magic user eventually cried out, one arm hanging uselessly after having sacrificed it to avoid a sudden ink spear from Lyric. “The Dragonsguard will soon arrive!”

Next to him, his partner nodded. “Agreed. You have won this one, Staff, but the Oriq will-”

A gauntleted fist smashed into his face, knocking him to the ground and leaving him twitching in shock. 

“Eh? What did I just-?” The first Oriq mage asked dumbly, his working arm having moved on its own to strike at his partner with a backfist to the face. “Wait, what is this!?”

His head lowered slightly, looking at the odd twisting on his shoulder. A flare of magic stripped away the illusion, revealing the spinning green ball stuck there. Just because I relied on evocation most of the time, didn’t mean I couldn’t use illusions. 

“Your next line is, ‘When did you do this, curse you’.”

“Wh-when did you do this, curse-!”

His extended arm twitched, then swung the other way involuntarily as the Spin forced the muscles to move. The metal-coated fist went downwards, and made contact with a very sensitive spot.

“HWOOOGHGK!” The mage’s deep voice went up in pitch with the sound he made.

Timing was a bit off, but can’t complain about the results. I watched as he froze, then keeled over facefirst onto the floor. The ball came free, rolling back over to my feet, where Marill picked it up. Next to me, Lyric made the sound of a ringing bell, as though announcing the end of the fight. 

The magical clash had left the place in shambles, though most of it was my fault thanks to my destructive spells and the ruin grinder I summoned. Just as I was wondering what to do about that and these three people, several mages arrived on the scene, in the familiar uniform of the Dragonsguards. Thinking quickly, I dismissed the ruin grinder.

“Quandrix student, cease your magic and submit yourself for questioning!” One of them ordered.

“Wait, those uniforms! They’re Oriq!” Another officer pointed out.

“Oriq?! Here? Take them into custody, now!”

“Yes, sir!” 

Several mages moved to do as instructed, binding the three Oriq mages with an assortment of magic and physical binds. They easily undid the ink trap binding ‘Lydia’, replacing it with enchanted shackles of their own. 

“As for you,” The one in charge turned to me, “We have a lot of questions for you.”

I could only nod. My project work schedule is going to be pushed back a bit more than planned. But I can’t say I didn’t enjoy this.

…

“Was there a need for you to risk yourself like that?” Nivall asked me archly.

“Um… ah… no.” I admitted sheepishly.

“And why didn’t you warn anyone else about what you were doing?” She followed up, raising one eyebrow. “What if they had mage hunters? Those things are known mage killers.”

“I had warning and escape spells prepared in case anything went wrong.” And if things had gotten bad, I would have Planeswalked out of there.

“Are you sure that would have been enough?” She pressed. “Was there any better way you could have handled it?”

I squirmed. Even with Silverquill’s linguistics lessons for hopeful eloquents, I doubted there were words to properly defend myself in face of Nivall’s stern questioning.

The Dragonsguard questioning had finished quickly, with me only having to repeat details a few times to ensure consistency. They released me after that, without even a warning to keep quiet about it. Instead, their parting message was a request to consider joining the Dragonsguard in the future after graduation.

My friends had learned of the altercation, and cornered me to ask me for my side of the story, hence my current predicament.

“Hold on,” Nivali interrupted, “I’ve read about such mind-altering potions. How did you realize what she dosed you with?”

I grabbed onto the offered lifeline. “As part of my project, I needed to monitor my base stats, so I was making use of a medical monitoring spell, modified with Quandrix computational magic. The moment I drank it, the spell notified me of the change.”

“What was it like?” The Witherbloom student asked curiously.

“Reduced inhibitions, more inclination to oblige requests,” I answered, “I assume she was going for subtlety to maintain her cover. After that, I purged myself and made sure to have the appropriate defenses every time I met her afterwards.”

‘Lydia’ had been quite free with her offerings of food and drink, and not only to me. Now that I thought about it, it did explain why I saw more freshmen coming to me for help; their skill with magic was adversely affected from being drugged. As far as Oriq subterfuge went, this was just one of the typical ways they tried to expand their recruitment pool of dissatisfied students, offering to ‘improve their skills’ if they joined. The Dragonsguard were already taking action, judging by the free health inspections that were being offered to students of each dorm, starting with mine.

Perhaps I should have reported it to the faculty earlier…

A finger in my face grabbed my attention. “Hold on, I’m still not done with you yet.”

“Yes, Nivall,” I said resignedly. This is gonna hang over my head for a while…

In spite of that event, daily life at Strixhaven continued on as per normal, with classes, extracurricular activities, field trips, and exams, plus the project work on top of them all. If the curriculum had changed to focus a bit more on improving our observation and investigation skills, I couldn’t tell; they were all engaging in their own way, even Arcane Herbology.

Witherbloom Professor Verelda Lang had brought out a few plants that were similar-looking, but were actually different. She pointed out how some required different handling methods, or exhibited different arcane effects when used in spells, making it crucial for both the gatherer and the user to inspect the herb properly. Some of the differing characteristics were so easy to miss, that only a few students out of the entire cohort managed to spot all of them.

In Dean Shaile’s place for the lumimancy class, Professor Helioz taught how to use the right words to challenge obfuscations and concealments, in combination with revealing light upheld by instituted rule. For the practical part of the lesson, the class was split into two, each side taking turns to be the liar and the questioner, with the latter given a set of ‘laws’ to utilize in the spellwork. I absolutely enjoyed that class, especially when I got to point at my assigned partner and yell ‘OBJECTION!’, causing them to flinch back from the imposed shock, just like the memory of the game I played before.

It’s akin to curse magic in a sense, incurred by breaking the taboo of the law. I thought back to the examples the professor had given of mages who made frequent use of that magic. Contract enforcers and interrogators, huh…

In contrast to that, Dean Kianne presented several calculations designed to detect danger and counter them in her Applied Arithmancy class. There were over a dozen reactive formulae for the class to learn, each providing a different effect in response to whatever triggered them. Magical teleportation for emergency evasion, risk detection and mitigation, or even straight-up spell disruption. Many of my classmates complained of cramping hands by the end of that lesson, due to the amount of notetaking we had to do. I generously offered to help them using the Spin, and earned a lot of goodwill that day.

As for Applied General Magic, we had field trips to observe magical systems in action. Perhaps it was a coincidence that security systems were included.

“Alright, class, let us enter this house to observe its magical effects,” The female assistant professor instructed, before following the guide in charge of leading the group.

The house in question was more of a mansion, with three separate sitting rooms for guests, and a guardhouse manned by a pair of guards. However, everyone’s attention was captured by the systems in place; temperature control, cleaning implements that acted of their own accord to clear any mess, even an auto-cooking one that followed written instructions on a paper. The professor explained the various magic spells that went into each of them, such as how they were woven together to achieve the effect we observed.

The cooking one was of particular interest, as the guide demonstrated that it could detect anomalous ingredients and instructions. 

“For example, let’s say I place a vial of supposed poison on the pantry shelf, where the spice for the recipe is meant to come from.” The human male in a butler uniform did as he said, before stepping out of the pantry. “Ma’am, if you please.”

The professor placed the recipe paper on the table, which triggered the cooking sequence. The moment the vial crossed the threshold of the door, it halted, trapped in a red aura. At the same time, one of the bells on the wall nearby rang repeatedly, and a guard came through the door.

“Ah, the poison detector test?” He asked the butler, who nodded. “Alright, carry on.”

The guard used a wand to stop the bell ringing, before retrieving the vial and returning it to the butler. The man nodded to our female professor, who took over the conversation again.

“How many of you here know about the text-reading dragon statue in the Compendium? Raise your hands.”

I lifted my hand, and noticed that all the other students did the same. That was to be expected, after four years at Strixhaven, they would have seen all of the commonly-utilized things in the Biblioplex. The statue she was referring to could read out loud text from books it was presented with, which helped when dealing with texts in unfamiliar foreign languages.

The professor nodded approvingly, “Good, some of you might not know about it, but the statue can also detect texts carrying verbal curses. The type that affects the reader if spoken out loud.”

She handed a different recipe to the nearest student, with instructions to pass it around. After it had passed through the majority, the professor asked if anyone had figured out what was wrong about the recipe. I had no idea what was wrong with this mushroom and vegetable soup, but one of the Witherbloom students in the group provided the answer.

“The combination of ingredients prepared using this method would make a slow-acting poisonous soup.”

The professor nodded. “Correct. Now observe what happens when I put the recipe on the table.”

She did so, and the paper was marked with a green glow, before it was thrown off. She caught it before it hit the floor.

“As you can see, the magic assessed the recipe and marked it as potentially poisonous, before rejecting it. Now watch as I try it again.”

She placed the still-glowing paper on the table once more, and this time it was crushed into a paper ball before getting thrown off again, with the same alarm bell ringing. The teacher made no attempt to catch it this time, and it was quickly swept up by a passing broom. The guard, who had remained in the room, deactivated the bell again.

“Any staff who would ignore such a warning is suspicious, hence the bell to summon the guards,” The professor explained.

“Couldn’t there be a spell to capture such people?” Another student asked.

“There could, but such spells are difficult to mix in on top of everything else that’s present. There’s also the issue of what might happen if it was triggered accidentally.”

The field trip continued on, showing off more convenient functions within the house, like a self-running bathtub, or an automated laundromat.

Security magic systems definitely sound interesting, starting from assessment and monitoring spells, involving computational magics to program the appropriate response. However, trying to create a combination with capture or suppression spells is much more complicated. 

Though it wasn’t strongly related, Professor Alaric had been right when he said that this class would help my project work. I now had a few ideas on how I could further fine-tune my body-tempering spell, and I was itching to text them out.

“Do keep up with the group, Mr Staff!”

“Yes! Sorry!”

Afterword: Fight scene part went quite well, but the later part took more time, since I was trying to come up with how it affected Strixhaven going forward. End up falling back on classes and stuff as usual, which makes sense given how long Strixhaven has existed; they pretty much roll with things and continue on. I took a bit of inspiration from the Syllabus of Sorcery text about the lesson idea, expanding on it with my own idea on the shift in lesson material post-Oriq attack. 

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