Hope

Irwyn sat in on his bed and pondered. He had two distinct goals in the moment, both pertaining to magecraft: To create a proper chant and structure for a privacy spell and for his perception spell. Perhaps refine them as they were both undeniably a bit… improvised. After a moment he decided to focus on the latter of the two.

His perception spell worked on a simple principle: Send waves of invisible Light to envelop everything in a general direction, then feel where they were, therefore figuring out where they were not. And those gaps in his perception meant there had to be something which blocked the Light. And it worked… to an extent. The image was extremely imprecise, for one. Perhaps the principle could be improved.

Irwyn returned, once again, to his old fantasy of perceiving everything that natural Light touched. It has been a while since he had attempted it. In fact, since before he had reached Abonisle. It was worth another attempt, so he lay in his bed and felt.

Dust was everywhere - in the air, on every surface, in every nook and cranny where light could reach. Indescribable quantity of it. What was just as bad was the kaleidoscope of colors, so many that it all blurred together like blotches of paint on a ruined canvas, subverting what was into something closer to a mere approximation. Everything else were details. The singular mice scurrying through the camp, unnoticed. People in the nearby structures, each of various builds, heights and features. Elizabeth upstairs and a sphere which no Light pierced close to her. Letters, strewn across pages in an incomprehensible myriad as all of them individually appeared in his mind.

Then Irwyn felt like a nail was driven into his head. As though the weight of the very Realm was placed atop his skull, then released to crush him. Like every Star in the night sky exploded simultaneously inside his head.

He gasped and recoiled, breaking out of the immersion, it couldn’t have been more than half a second. Thankfully - mercifully - the unbearable migraine was quickly subsiding. A few minutes later it reduced to merely a dull ache and was withdrawing further.

Still far, far too much, Irwyn sighed internally. It was still overly ambitious by many degrees of magnitude it would seem. That was fine, it was an aspiration to cling to. He would try again… perhaps when he reached conception. He was a bit blurry about how large of a leap that would be but assumed massive.

He had still glimpsed something though: He had felt more than just vague shapes. He had experienced color and much more detail. The issue was simply that it was all too much. But what if he could downsize? Instead of perceiving through all Light, instead do so through only that which he himself wielded.

Which is exactly what he tried. For the first attempt, he created a small mass of Light magic which he layered over one of his room’s walls. No intentions involved. Just that much, then tried to feel through it…

Dust again, and he himself. The bed and the four walls of the room, each irregularity and slight chip of the walls and ceiling perceived with individual clarity. The closet, the bed, strands of his own hair strewn haphazardly, yet he understood their exact position. The floor…

Irwyn snapped out of it and the beginning of a new headache receded. Then frowned. He had only been trying to feel part of one wall but ended up feeling the whole room. He did not need to ponder long to realize his mistake: He had summoned Light, which glowed.

There was a distinction between natural Light and magical Light, Irwyn knew. Sunlight, or Light from woodfire were purely physical - a real particle with energy. It had no more mana than grass or raw steel. It was not affected by Finity and simply faded when its non-magical energies were exhausted. Then, of course, there was purely magical Light. The kind he wielded. Pure elemental magecraft he held direct control over. Conjured from nothing and then returning to it as Finity dicated.

But his spells could glow. Even non-Light spells often might. Irwyn had pondered this in the past and found in literature that such Light was considered pseudo-magical. It behaved as physical Light might, yet was still affected by Finity and would completely vanish when its magic did. Irwyn had known that was the case… he just had no idea it could affect his spells this way.

Because he was almost certain that the issue had been that he had not been feeling through just the elemental Light of his spell but also through the pseudo-magical Light it emitted. To test this hypothesis, Irwyn added an intention into the spell, making it invisible.

When he attempted to feel through his magical Light again the result was exactly the same - with minimal deviation even in dust position as far as he could tell in the moment before ending the attempt. Baffled, Irwyn frowned. He did not get how that was possible but decided to try from a different angle. He removed invisibility, then manually reduced the glow of the spell to the point it barely emitted any particles at all, to the point it would be barely possible to see in a dark room. Then he imbued the intention to suppress into the spell for good measure, making his elemental Light covering the wall look like just a dull yellow layer. Completely glowless.

When he attempted to feel through it again, he got what he had been hoping for in the first place: He felt that chunk of the wall and only that chunk of the wall. Each little chink and imperfection but also the exact areas of every perfect part. Nothing was left unperceived.

It was… still a lot. But not completely beyond his ability to handle. Now that his mind was not actively being overwhelmed by too much information, Irwyn could attempt to parse it. Except he was not sure how to go about doing that. How was he supposed to just know which part was important and which was not? Not sure where else to head, he began to gradually try and reconstruct the wall's entire image in his head. Down to every small ridiculous detail.

It must have taken him… 10 minutes? Maybe more, maybe less. He was too focused to count the time. Definitely impractically long but he thought he had achieved it.

To test it Irwyn closed his eyes and stood up, dismissing the magic and letting it dissipate. Then, in his mind, picked a specific distinct spot on the image of the wall he still held and approached - a larger-than-usual dent. He guided his hand and blindly managed to find the spot on his second try, finger brushing over the indentation.

The effectiveness was questionable. The image was already fading from memory. It was simply ludicrously complex even for something as seemingly monotone as an undecorated wall. Though Irwyn held suspicion that any outward ‘complexity’ would actually not matter too much at this level of detail: Diverse objects would not be too different from this up close.

Irwyn’s mind returned to why his attempt with invisibility earlier had failed to produce the intended results and quickly arrived at seemingly the only conclusion: Just because something was invisible didn’t mean it was no longer there, did it? Just because the spell’s glow could not be seen did not mean it was not being emitted. Which was in itself fascinating… although Irwyn had no idea what implications that had.

It did bring him to a different sidenote thought: Since the pseudo-magical Light of his spell had been affected by his attempt to feel his own magic, would it be possible to control it? Perhaps imbue it and turn into an attack of some kind. Yes, it had vanishingly little mana in it, especially compared to the spells it was caused by but it was fast. Way faster than anything else Irwyn could conjure. A thought for later.

He came back around to the spell he wanted to make. What he had created was progress, but still too much. It was too precise. He did not need to know the exact details down to the scale of dust particles… So, he imbued the whole construct with blur. And invisibility again for good measure.

The resulting perception was, obviously, blurrier. Which was exactly what Irwyn had wanted. Details faded, becoming exponentially less exact compared to the last attempt. What Irwyn felt now were only the most distinct dents… It also took him barely a few seconds to recreate the image in his mind.

Touching it blindly after dismissing the spell had taken him two attempts again, though that was probably caused more by his imperfect spacial awareness and manual dexterity than the spell itself. Satisfied with what he had done Irwyn looked for angles of further improving it.

He looked for ideas on more intentions that could be used… and came back empty-handed. He had tried a few but nothing that seemed to make him better parse the information. The limiting factor was not the spell being weak, rather, it was his brain. Ultimately, he opted to head in the direction of instead making the spell more subtle. Hide and conceal rounding up to 5 along with invisible, suppress and blur. Sixth would be an overkill and take up too much focus to maintain the spell itself rather than parsing what Irwyn needed to glimpse from it.

He would need to figure out his exact limits… But there was a different step to take before then. Perhaps more intentions could not assist in expanding his ability to process… but an incantation likely could. If he created a good one. First off, he worked from the end. The name.

“Lightsight?” he muttered out loud. But that was not quite right. He needed to focus on his ability to process that information, and the spell’s name held the most power of all the chant’s lines. Nothing came to mind at first, then he had an idea: Unlike with offensive or defensive magic he did not need to empower the spell itself. In fact, he was actively hindering it just to make it usable. Why then would he need a chant that empowered it? Rather, what if he focused only on a single facet: Only on the the part which actively needed it. Yes, the whole spell could still be Lightsight, but the chant would be altered.

“Lightsight comprehension,” he muttered and it felt like a spell. From there he just had to craft the rest of the chant.

“Apprehension? Attention?” he went through the rhyming permutations - hey, that also rhymed, quite well actually - line by line. Focusing on the thought aspect of it. It took him quite a few minutes but he did end up with something satisfactory:

“Through a blindfold,

like the Sun, behold

with unerring attention

Lightsight comprehension”

Mentioning a blindfold was for a simple reason: The spell explicitly did not rely on Irwyn’s physical sight and would be the most useful when perceiving things Irwyn couldn’t actually see. Mentioning the Sun was both an association with Stars – which seemed to always serve Irwyn well - and also that Sun’s Light covered the landscape just as the Light of this spell would cover the things it would perceive. Unerring attention as well as ‘comprehension’ being in the spell’s name was obviously to reinforce that he wished for the enhancement of the mental aspect.

And since he had a proper chant he could get on with understanding the limits. How much could he take in at once now? He needed to find the exact point which overwhelmed him, then either stay clear or see if pushing that repeatedly moved it further.

He started with all four walls, the ceiling and the ground, basically constructing a cube. First before chanting, then with it. The difference was massive - he thought the former was pushing close to his limitations while adding the incantation seemed to barely strain him. He could recreate the mental image of the wall and know mostly well where every little gap was compared to himself. The small rounding error, as far as he could tell, was not caused by magic but by lack of more physical alacrity.

So, he moved to envelop the entire room’s interior… And found it far easier than he would have even hoped. Not only possible but actually quite easy still, which baffled him for a split second before realizing the culprit: He was no longer perceiving dust. No more countless particles each needing to be individually processed and placed, all thanks to the intention to blur. And since he was not perceiving airborne dust he was not really perceiving anything in the open space - which was easy to fit into the mental image even with a whole lot of nothing. In a way even though he expanded to the whole room, all he had added to his range was the furniture, himself, the books - all his other belongings were either in the closet or in the spacial bag he carried on him.

So, he covered a larger area. Pushing past the closed door was not great for his magical efficiency and potency, but the hard part all remained inside his head. He found that actively perceiving the magic actually helped increase the distance ratio at which detached magic grew weaker and more troublesome to control. He covered all the walls of the entire floor, excluding inside the other rooms. That was already enough to slow his mental imaging down to a crawl.

Sure he had far fewer details of the walls but there was also a lot more wall, which he needed to fit into the image. Scale and distance seemed to be a major detriment as Irwyn felt where everything was comparative to himself and everything else touched by the spell. And comparative became more difficult when there were many things in a multitude of different places, only made much worse with significant gaps in between.

It took him perhaps a full minute to project the entire floor into his head. Then he dismissed it and scaled down. The sweet spot, after much testing, appeared to be around half the floor’s walls at the moment - though that would improve as Irwyn’s proficiency with the spell was improved as well as when he became more powerful in general. He couldn’t quite gauge the exact scale he could handle, but he managed to get a decent feel of it, enough to be able to eyeball things more or less accurately if need be.

Next, he stretched the spell. Casting a spell across distance while having literally no line of sight of where it would need to go was certainly a novel experience. Irwyn was half guided by the spell’s own expanding snake of perception and half by memory of the building’s layout. It took him longer to reach the stairs than he would have thought, though practice would likely make perfect in time. Then he let it climb to the floor above.

He still knew which cubicle Elizabeth had taken up, so he led the spell there. It was slow and stumbling, and he was mostly blind. Which made it rather surprising when the spell was grabbed. Half wrested out of his control but still attached to him. Surprised, Irwyn attempted to dismiss it, only to find out he could not. His own magic defied his command, making it quite apparent this was not mere intention magic. Perhaps not even conception. Then Irwyn realized it was not just his spell that was frozen in place - it was his very being. All the motion seemed to be concentrated in his suddenly thundering heart.

He was stuck somewhere in between bafflement and horror for a few seconds before the effect suddenly subsided. His spell was released in the exact same state it had been, not even made unstable by the events. He might have dismissed it right away if not for Black letters suddenly manifesting before his eyes, a lack of Light so distinct and concentrated enough to be readable – Void magic of some kind.

‘You triggered a countermeasure. Please be more careful, Irwyn. E.’

Oh, Irwyn paused, embarrassed. In hindsight, he had been rather reckless. He had been literally told that there were defensive spells layered in the building. It had just not occurred to him that he might trigger them in his excitement over new magic. He reformed his ongoing spell into a visible ‘sorry’ for a scarce few seconds, then dismissed it all completely. He would test distance later.

Chastised - and urgently wanting his mind on something else - he moved on to the simpler of the two projects he had set out to accomplish: A privacy spell. The principle for that was simple - a bubble that sound nor image passed. That was easy enough to achieve even without intentions by just tightening the magic until even vibrations struggled to pass through. The real issue was ensuring its security. Irwyn was not well versed in methods other mages might use to get through. Intentions like privacy, isolation, secrecy, conceal, and mute seemed like the best five after some time of pondering. He could also try to add suppress as a sixth if need be. Or use invisibility if he was not worried about lip reading for whatever reason.

Once again, he turned to naming the spell. Except nothing great came to mind, at least not right away. ‘Privacy bubble’ did not sound proper to him, and was most likely widely used already by other people and even elements which would diminish the potency significantly… So he took out a dictionary.

His books had been delivered when he was out, just as Elizabeth had promised. From his Book of the Name to the spellcasting literature he had been given. A dictionary was, of course, included. A convenient tome to grasp inspiration from. True, it wasn’t the fastest method, but Irwyn did not consider his time wasted. What words caught his eye could perhaps be used in a different spell somewhere down the line. Or help him understand more easily what an opponent’s spell might do. Eventually, he did find something he liked.

“Penetralia - the innermost parts of a building; a secret or hidden place,” he read, nodding his head. The definition specified that it was a place, while also being hidden. Building was a bit of a stretch but it was close enough to the structure of the spell he was going with to apply. And it was rather obscure, which was good for a spell that likely had thousands of permutations developed and used across the Duchy. Too many spells having the same name was documented to weaken them proportionally.

He worked from there and eventually had words he liked:

“I infringe upon reality

to wear confidentiality

like a regalia

Starborn penetralia”

With the first line, he drew a distinct separation between the within of his spell and the rest of reality – he wanted total isolation. The second line mentioned confidentiality, restating the spell’s purpose, then wearing it ‘like a regalia’ had a straightforward meaning: It imparted certain ceremonial majesty. Regalias were after all not something worn constantly. That meant the spell would be marginally more powerful if used scarcely, in moments that mattered - or less if used too often or wantonly. Irwyn did not expect he would need to provide such privacy on a daily basis. Then the name itself made sure to mention Stars since Starfire was the basis of it. Irwyn quite liked it.

A small issue was testing the efficacy. After all, what he desired first of all from the chant was to make the spell resistant to intrusion. And he couldn’t exactly intrude on his own magic, could he? He would have to ask if Elizabeth could provide assistance. Before then, he opted to practice the spells thought. Both of them. Until he could somewhat chant them without speaking the words. It was definitely not because he did not want to speak about his security mishap.