Underkeeper

“That seems like a needlessly restrictive solution.” Josie said, shaking her head. “Why don’t you just use your other hand to cast? Why haven’t you been doing that this whole time?”

They were sitting in the Underkeepers’ break room over a cup of tea as Bernt caught her up on what had happened since she noticed his spiritual injury.

Bernt sighed. “The strain doesn’t really come from channeling the mana out of my hand – at least not the worst of it, unless I lose control of the mana flows. That’s not how it works, I use my entire mana network to help manifest the spellform that I’m visualizing. The arm is just the weakest link, so that’s where I feel the strain. I mean, I guess it would be a little safer… but it’s not a solution.”

Josie frowned, holding up her own hand. Over the course of a second or two, her fingertips darkened and long claws grew out, then they melted back and the normal hand reemerged. “Doesn’t work that way for me. I have sort of a loopy pattern, a bit of my midnight hag’s spirit, inside my hand. It’s not like your mana network though – it’s physically there, not just spiritual. If I sort of ‘push’ on it, the claws come out. It’s simple. The third eye works basically the same way.”

Bernt grunted. “Well, mages don’t. It’s probably just because you’re a warlock.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Josie replied, waving the topic away. “This magister is supposed to be an expert on fire magic, right? Why don’t you just bring him some hellfire and see if he can figure it out? I mean, there has to be some overlap with alchemy there. The alchemists have to use reactions with other magical materials to get whatever they’re making, but you can just rewrite the spellform for it, can’t you?”

“Yeah. Just.” Bernt laughed without humor. “We ‘just’ have to figure out how to tell the spellform for soul-burning hellfire to restore my mana network instead of burning it up some more.”

Josie frowned at him. “I don’t see the problem. Think about it. You’re reshaping your mana network every time you add an investiture, right? You’re just adding an extra step here, straightening it out a bit right there and maybe clearing out some kind of metaphysical obstruction, ironing out those weird wrinkles there. Hellfire seems like exactly the right thing to use, or something kind of like it as long as you’re not too heavy handed with it.”

Bernt froze, staring at her as he considered it. If he had the right derivative, he might be able to wear away the malformed "scarring", in a sense, and then heal or reinforce those mana pathways. Josie was right, even though she probably didn’t know why. The best way to do that would probably be during an investment procedure, when he had a spellform to serve as a sort of scaffold. It should also provide that reinforcing effect he needed to help the healing process along.

“Josie. I think you might be a genius,” Bernt said. “That, or you’re going to get me killed. I need to find Jori, and I need to get something from my house – but I’m going back up to see Pollock today. At least provided that we don’t get an alarm in the next couple of minutes.”

Josie didn’t respond. She had raised her head and was curiously staring right past Bernt’s arm over the edge of the table and down into his lap.

Bernt swallowed and slowly moved his hands to block her view.

Josie blinked and looked up. Then she leaned forward and hissed. “You saved the skin from the beaver?! How did you get it made into a belt? Tell me everything!”

Bernt grinned.

–------------

When Bernt stepped into the Mages’ Guild this time, Jori half a step behind, the receptionist did not ignore him. Instead, he drew a slim metal wand from his robe and pointed it right at the two of them. Bernt stopped.

From the back room, the man's monkey familiar screeched in agitation.

“No demons on the premises!” he snapped, scowling furiously. “What is the meaning of this?”

Taken aback, Bernt held up both hands in a calming gesture. “Hey! Easy. I just wanted to bring Jori by for Magister Pollock. We need her support for something.”

Jori, who was standing mostly behind Bernt, leaned around him to glare at the man. "He is rude!" She was surprised and agitated, and it showed in the way she spoke – simpler, a bit less fluently and with more hissing. “A bad man, I think.”

The mage ignored her, eyeing Bernt sternly.

“I don’t know how you do things in your sewers, but this is the Mages’ Guild. You’ll need to go and talk to Magister Pollock and request a Permit for Temporary Containment of an Extraplanar Entity on Guild Grounds. When that’s done, he has to come down here and escort the creature personally.”

Bernt groaned quietly. This couldn't be happening. For a moment, he considered trying to push his way past the man, but he looked deadly serious. Grinding his teeth, Bernt took a deep breath and chose the only way forward.

“I don’t suppose I can get one of those forms here from you?”

–--------

Nearly thirty minutes later, Bernt and Jori followed Pollock into his office, who immediately shuffled over to his chair and sank down into it with a small sigh of relief.

“Ah. That’s better,” he said, peering at Bernt. “Now. You’re telling me that you want to try to create a hellfire derivative that you can use to fix your mana network directly. And you think the best time to do that is during an investment process…” he paused, waiting for Bernt to nod. “Alright. Why the timing, though? You could infuse hellfire into your network right now without doing a proper investiture, just by carefully running a bit of your spirit out of yourself in a loop and holding the flame over it while you circulate some mana.” He waved a hand at the air. “I would advise against that, mind you. It’s been done. But why do you think so?”

“Too dangerous,” Bernt said immediately. “That might affect my entire mana network somehow, even if it shouldn’t. If I do it during the investment process, I would be able to limit the impact to the new investiture. Even in the worst case, it wouldn’t ruin what I’ve already got and I would still be able to finish the augmentation, even if it ends up modified somehow.”

“Yes,” Pollock said enthusiastically, “that’s exactly right! Being aware of and managing risk is a critical part of being a wizard.” He leaned forward, raising both eyebrows. “Now, what else have you got? I certainly hope you didn’t come here thinking you could just casually rearrange hellfire into some manner of spirit restoration spell.”

"No, of course not. I'm not sure that's even possible.“ Bernt shook his head and pulled open his bag. Reaching inside, he drew out a thick stack of poorly organized notes along with an old, worn-looking journal.

“This isn’t exactly about restoration, but I’ve been trying to make sense of this journal for a couple of months now,” he began, as Pollock reached for the book and flipped it open. “It’s some long-dead wizard’s theory for transmutation magic – I found it in a pile of garbage down in the dungeon. I think we can use some of the principles he talks about in there to help. I don’t understand everything because it’s all in some old archaic dialect, but I’ve made a lot of notes. I was hoping you could fill in a few gaps…”

The old man flipped through the book with growing excitement, turning the book sideways as he got to one of the diagrams.

“Ha!” he cackled. “Hahaha! Do you have any idea what you found!?” He wheezed, flipping through to another diagram and examining it. “This person was an absolute madman – and my favorite kind!”

He looked up at Bernt, eyes now aglow with a feverish intensity. “We’re going to make history with this, boy. History!”

–------

It took a few minutes for the old man to collect himself, and Bernt spent the time digging through his notes to find the relevant pages. Bored, Jori entertained herself by jumping up as high as she could into the air to see how far she could glide on her wings. She thumped against the far wall on the third try, knocking over a small stack of books on the way.

Meanwhile, Pollock started reading the text, flipping pages at a rate that suggested he had absolutely no trouble with the odd language that it was written in.

“Not half pretentious, wasn’t he?” he muttered. “Probably an archwizard. He calls regular mages ‘bottom-feeding cretins’ here. And now a little underkeeper found his legacy in a pile of garbage. Good irony there, very nice.”

Bernt made a noise of agreement, though he wasn’t really listening. “Here it is!" he said, holding up a page of notes. "So, the spells recorded in there use fire as a basis to transform objects, but it requires two concurrent spells to do it. One to disintegrate matter and another to reintegrate it into the desired form. But I don’t really need to reintegrate anything here – not if I don’t completely destroy the channels, anyway.”

“Hmm,“ Pollock said, taking the piece of paper from him and reading his notes. “You want to modify the hellfire to mimic this kind of solvent effect and then use it to wear away the damaged channel. You prop up what's left with the spellform for the investiture and then finish the investment process to restore the channels for you. You would probably lose the normal reinforcing effect, so the investiture might be a bit weaker at the end, but it could work...”

Bernt watched as the old man pursed his lips, apparently thinking about the idea.

“You realize that, if you damage your spirit so much that the investiture doesn’t take, you might cripple yourself, right?” the wizard asked. “It would weaken your spells permanently. Though, I suppose you’d still have solved the strain issue – your mana network would just be smaller.”

Bernt nodded.

“Hmmm, alright.” Pollock said, “It’s a worthy experiment. Someone has to take these risks, after all, so why not you? If it works, we might even be able to adapt it into a proper treatment for overstrained mana networks. You might well become one of the youngest wizards to make such a significant contribution to magical research, never mind the kingdom as a whole!”

At Bernt’s skeptical expression, the old man stood up straight and wagged his finger at him seriously. “Don’t underestimate the value of innovation. Healing that kind of damage could restore hundreds of veteran war mages to the Beseri military, even if it's not perfect. It would change the balance of power in the entire region and probably make you stupendously rich in the process...”

That. Well, that did sound pretty interesting. Before he could say anything, though, Pollock went on.

“...never mind what’s in that journal of yours. You don’t even know what he was really doing, do you?” He shook his head disbelievingly. “I’ll tell you about it after we solve this problem of yours. No sense in distracting you with the dreams of a mad genius now, is there? Come along!”

He shuffled out of the room energetically, moving quickly for a man his age.

He didn’t go far. Across the hall was a much larger laboratory than the one Bernt had seen two days earlier. This one was, like Pollock’s office, a mess. Tables and chairs were covered with heaps of books and notes, and there were a variety of items lying around that Bernt recognized as focuses, lab equipment, and a discarded cloak. The floor was inset with many rune circles, poured into the stone floor with metal. Only a few of them were the standard version for analyzing spells that Bernt was familiar with.

“Alright, young Jori. Cast a bit of fire over into that rune circle there, please,“ the old man said, rummaging through the clutter on one of the tables, before coming up with a small pen knife. “And when you’re done with that, prick yourself in the skin with this, if you don’t mind. I’ll want to take a look at some of your blood, too.”

With a wide grin, Jori threw a rather larger-than-necessary handful of hellfire into the rune circle, which obligingly unraveled into a large and complex spellform as it came under its influence. Then she jumped up into the air and glided over to the old man, coming to rest on top of the table that he was still standing next to. She accepted the knife and pricked herself in the palm, pointing up. As usual, a searingly bright flame erupted from the tiny cut, which closed almost instantly.

What was less usual was that, instead of dissipating, the fire rolled itself into a ball and floated neatly into one of the other rune circles, where it also unraveled into its constituent spellform.

“Now then.” Magister Pollock said, adopting a lecturing tone. “Why don’t you go and take a look at those and tell me where you think we should start?”