NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 34: Alive
The Air primals hail from the floating castle. While the Primordials tend to appear in the highest concentration of their domain on the Realm, the presence of people seems to have a factor in that. The Primordial of Air has been following the Cloud Castle since shortly after it took to the skies to flee the Flood. Its people developed primal magic around 450AF.
Lidian’s Manual to Magical Fauna, 283rd ed
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“What?” Kole asked, staring at the necklace as if he’d never seen it before.
It was a simple brass pendant, the size of his thumb, but nothing special or of any visible worth.
“How do you know?”
She tapped her head above her eye.
“Voidyness. It’s got two auras in it, so it's still Bonded to someone.”
“She is alive,” Kole whispered to himself.
He’d always believed, but he’d never known. His father had escaped the pocket realm the first time with only the locket to show, but he’d never told Kole it had been ensouled. Everyone knew that ensouled items were Bound to their wielders for life, and if Zale could somehow detect the presence of the Bond, then his mother was still alive.
Had he known? Is this why he’d been so certain? No… he would have brought it with him.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“I have no idea, but I think I might have a lead on finding them—finally.”
Zale looked at a clock on the wall.
“Not to ruin this moment, but, don’t you have class?”
“Flood,” Kole cursed.
He gathered his things quickly and ran across campus, mind racing over the possibilities his mother’s locket offered. He arrived to class winded—but not too late. Gray gave him a hostile look, angrier than usual, but otherwise left him alone. Kole tried to listen, keeping notes as best he could, but he was very distracted. Between thoughts of his mother actually being alive, and his new spell progress, he kept zoning out and imagining finding his parents and then getting distracted from that by slipping into his vault to examine the two new additions he’d made.
His vault had long been empty of actual spells until recently. To cast a spell, a wizard must store the template of it in their vault, so that they can quickly power it and send it into the Arcane Realm when the need arose. The amount of spells a wizard can ready in this way increases as they train. Typically, a wizard capable of casting first-tier spells can store one to three such spells—the ability to store three being a requirement for passing WIZ 105. Due to his arcane nature. Kole had always been able to store one or two extra spells than those of similar age, but he’d never actually been able to cast the spells, so instead he’d filled his vault with cantrips.
Wizards cast cantrips by partially casting the gate and path portions of the spells they already had prepared, but since Kole couldn’t cast the full spells, he simply filled his vault with these components of the Fonts he thought might be useful in cantrip form. Utilizing the less complex components of the oldest spells he could find, he had access to half a dozen cantrips, an unheard-of amount for any wizard, let alone one his age. He could have fit more, but the work to discover and recreate the pared-down versions of old spells had not been worth it.
Now however, he’d had to abandon many of those cantrips in place of these new additions, and he looked on at the forms of Magic Missile, Shield, Thunderwave, and the blasting rod’s force blast. His cantrips had been reduced to only Light and Air, and then of course Force and Barrier from Magic Missile and Shield respectively.
Lost in his vault, he didn’t notice class had ended until the lights turned off.
Shaken from his thoughts, he went to the shooting range to test out his new toy.
***
Alone in a long room, Kole stared down the stone mannequin at the far end, pointing a stick at it experimentally. He was trying to find the best way to aim the blasting rod before firing it, but after a few minutes realized he was just procrastinating. Learning the intent for the blasting rod had been far too easy and he feared he’d missed something. If he never tried to use it, he wouldn’t have to face the failure he feared.
Pushing his pessimism down, he reached into his vault, shaped his Will to match the template stored there, and pushed it into the rod. A bolt of purple energy, identical to the one from last week, shot out from his rod and hit the wall a few feet to the side of the mannequin.
Kole stared at the rod in awe.
“It worked,” he whispered to himself, still not believing it had been that simple.
He fired the rod a few more times until he was able to hit the target twice in a row. He estimated each blast cost him around 5 Will, a little more than the rod from class, but Amara had assured him that she could make it more efficient if given the chance to tinker with it.
After firing it five times, Kole examined the runes, looking for signs of damage. Being mundane wood, tied as it was to the Fonts of Earth, Water, and whatever else life drew upon to exist, the pure power of the Font of Force was destructive to it. Amara had told him that the runes should hold up for at least twenty blasts, but if it did fail, the failure would be explosive.
It looked to him like the clean lines Amara’s ants had carved into the rod had grown a little fuzzy, but he hadn’t looked too closely at the start. Satisfied with his results, he stowed the rod and turned his attention to his vault once more.
This time he examined the spell he’d copied from the spellform Theral had provided. The spell had been unlike the spells used by modern wizards. The spell and path components were equally complex, whereas modern spells had simplified spell components and complex paths. Wizards had discovered that if they made one aspect of a spell very lean and the other complex, they could produce similar effects for less Will. Unfortunately for Kole, the part they made complex was the part his primal nature amplified the cost of.
Theral’s spell, like those Kole delved the depths of libraries for, had a path and spell of similar complexities. Wizards used to tailor spells and paths to fit together, increasing the complexity of both until a working spell was formed.
From the spell construct, Kole held in his mind—lacking a gate and path component—he estimated the cost for this spell would be 1 to 2 Will if it could be cast as is. If he did the same—stripping out the path and gate—to another modern spell, the remaining component would hardly be a measurable fraction of Will.
So, hope further buoyed by his last success and the revelation about his mother, Kole stood in the training hall and sent the spell through his bridge into the Arcane Realm.
Nothing happened.
Inside his vault, he felt the spell leave him, seeking the Font of Sound, but undirected by a path, it was quickly torn apart by the forces of the Arcane Realm.
"Flood,” he cursed, but he wasn’t particularly surprised.
While his pessimism had been a little overblown before, he’d known that this wouldn’t work on the first try.
He tried a few more times, trying to get a feel for the failure, and quickly realized he had no idea how to construct a path from scratch. But, he knew who did.
Professor Lonin could teach me this if I took his offer. He reflected, knowing the knowledge to be of no use. Maybe Zale’s uncle could help.
He left the training hall before incurring too bad of a Will headache. He had a lot of reading to do on a whole new topic. He tried to push thoughts of the locket to the side. He would need to pursue that, but right now was not the time. Wherever his mother was, she’d survived this long. He needed to learn so he could help her when he found her.