Dear spellbook volume 2.., p.28
Dear Spellbook, Volume 2: Wizard - A Time Loop Progression Adventure, page 28
“Torc’s stones, that was odd,” Dagmar commented afterward. “Go on, tell me what you think happened. I’ll admit, I’m a bit curious. I know you have a theory.”
Dagmar gave me too much credit. I’d yet to put the pieces together, but I began to muse aloud.
“Hmm. I’m not sure. The wand exploded for me after the spell stored inside had sat in my mental vault for some time. The failure was reminiscent of accounts I’ve read of failed attempts to create spells by incautious wizards. If I had to guess, I’d say something disrupted the spell in the wand.”
I paused to consider what could have caused this before continuing.
“This must be related to the Dahn. The duplicate of Spellbook fell apart when I ripped a page out of it. The effect that caused that may have disrupted the spell inside the wand, destabilizing it.”
Dagmar let out a vaguely approving “Hmph” and went to collect Fanos’ blades.
“Cast a spell,” she ordered as she walked back toward me.
I conjured a Light fixed in front of her and watched as she swiped the disrupting blade through it. The floating ball of white light vanished as the sword passed through it, and Dagmar inspected the blade.
This time, her “Hmph” was more curious than approving. The amount of nuance the dwarf could pack into simple grunts and sighs is amazing.
Interpreting this mutterance as a question about my theory, I said, “Assuming my theory was right, I’d guess the reason that sword still works is because the spell inside has already been cast and is maybe more stable. The spellform in the wand was potential, waiting to be sent into the chaos of the Arcane Realm.
“Any alteration of a spell construct can be deadly, but spells themselves, once brought into the world, are more stable and less susceptible to whatever mechanism causes duplicates to disappear. Which, from my prior study, I theorize is tied to the Font of Creation not being involved in all this time nonsense.”
“Good enough for me,” she answered, handing me the spellbook she’d recovered from the wizard along with the sword. “I’m going to go bang this against some rocks until I’m certain it won’t disintegrate on me. This dispel weapon didn’t have any effect, but I felt the Will drain sword activate when I struck the golem. It’s doing something, so I’ll keep using it, but swords are terrible weapons against a golem. I’ll retrieve a war pick before I come and get you from town.”
“Bring one for me too, I suppose,” I said, avoiding looking at the messy remnants of the wizard. “It doesn’t seem I’ll have my wand today.”
We gathered the fallen pairs’ belongings into my satchel. I made a failed attempt to remove the magical pockets from the wizard’s robe, but the enchantment failed halfway through my cutting. The remaining content suddenly appeared in the now-too-small pocket, ripping it at the seams and destroying the more fragile items.
Those pockets were fascinating. I’d heard about such items existing long ago, but like many magical arts, the knowledge of their making was lost in the Flood.
We walked back to the Kituh after that and made our way back to town. Aside from desiring to study in the peace and quiet of the library, I wanted to ask Levar about a few of the items we’d found. I’d hoped to show him the wizard’s pockets, but bringing him a freshly bloodied wizard robe seemed a bad idea.
Maybe once I learn Clean.
Levar’s shop was open by the time I made it back to the town. Inside, I saw the man behind his counter, with hundreds of potions laid out before him alongside a ledger.
The bell above the door rang when I entered but, lost in his note-taking, he didn’t notice me until I plopped my bag onto the narrow patch of exposed counter.
“Oh, Mage Theral! I didn’t hear you come in. How can I help you? If you’re here to check up on that strange script, I’m afraid I’ve not yet received a response.”
Strange script? What is he—oh!
It has been four months—for me—since I let Levar copy the Bookish pages, and somehow he’d not brought it up once in our dozens of subsequent encounters. Interrupting his post-theft inventory seemed to have thoroughly thrown him off script.
It was refreshing, in a way, to know that people can still surprise you no matter how many times you’ve repeated the day. People and wands, I really wasn’t expecting that to blow up either time.
My father would have tried to weasel a pithy saying out of that sentiment, though I sense my current predicament is not likely one shared by many, though that wouldn’t stop him. He loved to repeat little nuggets of supposed wisdom about very narrow circumstances like they were applicable to everyday life.
“The best bookmark is the one you have—though do make sure it’s dry.”
“Heavy is the hand that holds the quill with truth.”
“When the whales fall, feasts follow.”
“Never tell your wife how to row when she grew up on the sea and you were born below.”
I never understood the last few, but the last one always made my mother smile.
I focused my attention back on Levar and his question.
“Oh, no. Not that. I forgot about that months ago. I have much more pressing questions you might be able to help me with,” I said, gesturing to my bag.
“What did you bring me? I could use something to distract me from the theft,” he said with a sigh and a gesture to the arrayed potions.
“Theft, you say?” I asked, feigning ignorance. I’d taken over the potion thefts from Dagmar and hoped my more subtle method would go unnoticed, saving Levar from the trauma of a break-in. Apparently I’d failed.
“Yes, yes. Look here,” he said, picking up a copper disk that was emitting a faint light. “This disk is runed to detect magic. I picked it up from a dwarven adventurer, if you can believe it. He made it for me in lieu of coin for some potions, though the gem set inside it alone would have covered the cost.”
He held it up for me to see the runes carved into the copper disk. My recent experiences gave me the sense that these runes were crudely drawn, but the light they emitted proved their efficacy.
I closed my eyes for a moment to focus and bring on my Willsight while Levar continued to talk. With it, I saw that the gem set in the disk held an aura of the same bright yellow as Levar’s. That same aura flowed through all the runes, and I saw it leaking through the imperfections, much like with my first attempts at imbuing a rune. Aside from the light-emitting runes, I didn’t recognize any others.
“This device lights up when magic is used in an area,” Levar continued. “I keep it on my person all day and check it when I suspect customers are trying to pull one over on me through magical means. At night, I leave it down here to let me know if I have any unwanted visitors. Last night, it appears I had one, though I’m not yet sure what it is they took.”
“Fascinating. Does it give you any indication of the magic user’s identity?” I asked with genuine interest.
“Alas not. I was told it was possible but beyond the adventurer’s skills.”
Relief flooded me, though I didn’t know why I was so concerned. Consequences had long since become an abstract concept. That morning, I’d Blinked into his shop, pleasantly surprised at the lack of wards, and taken the potions of clarity and forgone sleep. I’d then attempted to rearrange the potions to disguise their absence, but that had clearly not been sufficient.
“Enough about my woes,” he continued. “What new mystery brings you to my shop?”
In answer, I removed the potion and runed bone rod from my bag and held them out for his inspection.
“I found these on a w—” I caught myself before incriminating myself in a murder. “On a dead adventurer in one of the abandoned outposts. Can you tell me what they do?”
“Hmm,” he hummed, reaching for the potion, and holding it up toward the window to see how the light refracted through it.
“Just as I suspected from the coloring. This is certainly a mixture,” Levar said, tsking in disapproval. “Shoddy, irresponsible alchemy, that is. Putting profits over quality and the safety of the customer.”
“A mixture?” I asked, trying to forestall one of Levar’s diatribes about the falling standards of the guild and keep him on topic.
“Oh yes, it’s what all the adventurers are clamoring for—and I understand their desire, truly I do—but the practice, in reality, is quite dangerous. Adventurers want something quick and effective that they can down mid-battle, consequences be damned, and regrettably, the guild moved to fulfill that demand. Why carry seven potions of different effects when you can just take one that does it all? Healing potions, they call them. Healing my ass. They do as much damage as they fix and rely on the small amount of potion of regeneration to cover the negative effects.”
“What exactly does it do?”
“Well, that’s the problem. There’s no standard. Throughout the guild’s history, we’ve rigidly followed procedures.”
Levar cleared a space on the desk while talking before bending below the counter and bringing out a familiar and massive tome.
“This,” he continued, wiping his brow from the effort of lifting such a large book, “is Pains and Deaths Recorded, the 48th edition. It records every reported side effect of guild-approved potions, along with information on reactions and recommended potion combinations for adventurers to carry that minimize reactivity. This is alchemy. Mixing three potions that together cause kidney failure before adding a potion of regeneration isn’t just irresponsible; it’s sloppy alchemy!”
By the end of his tirade, Levar was breathing heavily and visibly angry in a way I’d only seen when the topic of love potions arose.
This man really takes pride in his profession.
“I thought you said potions of regeneration were prohibitively expensive due to unicorn horns being a major ingredient?”
“I did?” he said, confused, though not suspicious. “That’s true, but I don’t recall mentioning that to you. This whole theft has me all turned about. I’m sorry. Yes, unicorn horn is the main ingredient in a potion of regeneration, but there are other methods to produce them, and the amount included in these mixtures is very small. Only sufficient to heal minor wounds or stave off death long enough for a wound to be properly treated.”
I need to be more careful. With Levar, it’s fine, but a slip-up like that in an interaction with Tilavo could prove fatal.
“Anyway,” Levar continued in his regular excitable mood. “I’ll need to run some tests, but this is likely a mixture of potions of regeneration, clarity, and endurance, with an antitoxin and antidote thrown in for good measure. Adventurers take these in the heat of battle to stay in the fight. I don’t blame them for wanting them or even alchemists for trying them out, but we have no standard formula or data to suggest that these aren’t causing lasting harm.”
“Could I pay you to tell me what’s in it?”
“I was going to insist you allow me to do just that. I’ll do it for free, on the condition that you report any side effects if you’re fool enough to drink it.”
“Thanks,” I said, handing him the vials and offering him the next item. “What do you know about this?”
“Wow, yes, I do know what that is, but I’d like to know how you found it,” he said, turning it over in his hands. “This is a Tower Will Grain Meter.”
Grains of Will! It looks like that’s one of the spellbook’s mysteries solved. If only Spellbook’s were so accessible.
“I don’t know how to use it,” Levar went on, “but I know what it does. It measures the Will of the user somehow. Each notch that lights up represents one ‘diamond grain’ of Will.”
“Diamond grain?”
“I believe it’s a dwarven measuring system. It has something to do with diamonds of a certain weight—a grain—and the corresponding Will, but I don’t know the details. Or even the generalities, for that matter.” He chuckled at the hole in his knowledge as he handed the device back to me.
I examined it with new eyes. At the base of the rod sat a section filled with runes reminiscent of those found on the handles of the runed war picks. I gripped the rod, and as I sent my Will into it, I felt it leave me in a great surge. The amount I could push into the war pick was like a leak in a bucket compared to the waterfall of this device. It was a bottomless pit, hungry for whatever I could give. If not for the surprise, I felt I could have stopped the flow at any time.
In my hand, four of the rod’s twelve inches dedicated to light runes lit up with a faint glow, much like Levar’s disk of magic detection. Upon closer inspection, I saw that every tenth light rune was cut deeper than the rest, and using this, I counted fifty-three grains.
Well, whatever a grain of Will is, apparently I have fifty-three. Is that a lot? Oh, my poor head.
The sudden and complete loss of Will left me with a terrible migraine. I had one more potion of clarity in my bag, but drawing it now would draw Levar’s suspicion as to the perpetrator of the break-in. Luckily, I was in an alchemy shop and knew the way to the proprietor’s heart.
“Ouch,” I said, holding my head—only a little bit for show. “That took all my Will right out of me. You wouldn’t consider trading a potion of clarity for this object, would you?”
“Oh no, I could never,” he said, sounding almost offended. “I couldn’t trade you such a paltry sum for an item of such rarity!”
“I insist. In fact, you’d be doing me a favor. I’d hate to be caught with such a thing if it does belong to the Tower.”
At that, he assented reluctantly, but then he perked up with curiosity. “Are you sure you found this on an adventurer? Could this dead adventurer instead have been a wizard of the Tower? A Seeker, perhaps? You make a good point that these are likely rare outside the Tower’s hands.”
“Now that you mention it, he was wearing a robe like the Tower wizards tend to wear,” I lied, proud of my quick thinking. “In fact, the pockets seemed to be extra-dimensional bags of some sort, though we felt it wrong to rob the dead of their clothing, so we buried him with it.”
“Hmm, yes, he was almost certainly a Tower wizard, then.”
“I’ve been wondering, actually, why do the Tower wizards always wear robes? It seems so impractical. Stormcallers all wear canvas and leather clothing, and they—we—do just fine. What benefits do the robes have?”
Levar’s eyes lit up at the question.
“Now that is a good question, and a fascinating story. The creation of extra-dimensional bags is one of the many arts lost to the Flood, but not for lack of knowledge. The spells to produce such bags were retained, but the materials to do so were lost to the rising waters. Extra-dimensional bags—colloquially called bags of holding—are not, in fact, extra-dimensional in the sense of a parallel or pocket realm, but in that they literally have extra space inside them.
“As you may know, the creation of magical items is a sort of cousin to alchemy. We use many of the same ingredients, though for vastly different effects. Enchanting requires the craftsman to incorporate specific materials into the item to be enchanted, lest the spell fade. You could enchant a rock to be magically sharp, for instance, and any rough edge on it would pierce flesh with ease for about a minute, after which the spell would fade.
“There is as much art in finding the correct materials as in crafting the spells and the item. Now, bags of holding were created using two spells—one to stretch out space in an area, making the bag larger on the inside than the outside, and another to reduce the weight of the contents.
“As it happens, the ideal materials to stabilize such a pairing of enchantments were plentiful in the city of Altian, a place of magic and wonder nestled at the foot of a mountain. The stone of the mountain, when powdered and turned into a dye, allowed for the stabilization of many types of Spatial enchantments, while the silk of a local spider species did the same for Gravitational magic. The city combined the two to create the next best thing to pocket realms—pockets that could contain a realm.”
He paused in his explanation to look at me, a wide grin on his face, to see if his pun had landed. I gave him a not-so-insincere chuckle, and he continued. “Theirs quickly became the standard, and their bags were sent worldwide. By the time of the Flood, they had reached all corners of Kaltis and been adapted to many uses.
“Now, to answer your question—for I did not forget it—shortly before the Flood, robes were the height of fashion for the rich and powerful, and few were richer and none more powerful—save for the Emperor—than the Coterie of the Midlian Empires. These wizards distrusted their peers and wished to carry all their magical research and artifacts upon them at all times. Some could accomplish as much with their own magical arts, but most resorted to incorporating extra-dimensional pockets into all their clothing.
“As the Coterie did, high society at large followed, and soon all wore robes with such pockets. When the Flood occurred, the world lost access to new bags of holding and, at the same time, had a glut of magical robes. Some attempts were made to transplant their magical pockets to other garments or separate them completely, but they usually failed. While the enchantments only affected the pockets, the spell was tied to the garment as a whole.”
All the talk of pockets filled in a blank that had been bugging me for some time.
Trish sure does fit a lot of things into her jackets. I’m going to need to ask her about that.
I’d been avoiding her since the revelation of her daily deaths. The sight of her brought the images from that night to mind, and I consoled myself with the knowledge that my notes to her put a stop to them.
I chatted with Levar for a short while longer, but I sensed that he was eager to examine the items I’d given, so I quickly made excuses to leave.
