Underkeeper

Bernt watched as a glowing thread of his spirit slowly wormed its way out of his open palm in a loop, curling a little as it emerged.

Carefully, he tried to push more of the damaged channel out, but it didn’t work quite as well as it had the first time he’d done it. Instead of going where he pushed the mana inside, it bent awkwardly and wavered in the air.

Once the bit of thread was under the influence of the rune circle, however, things got easier. It was designed for manipulating the spirit, after all.

With a simple effort of mana-manipulation, he extended his spirit out further, effectively lifting out the entire portion of his mana network that ran through his right arm. It didn’t look visibly damaged to him like this, but he knew better. Without wasting more time, he split the looping thread of spirit at his shoulder and manipulated the now loose end through the spellform hovering in front of him.

The process was tedious and difficult, but not especially risky at this stage. Pollock wandered off to his office as Bernt worked, and shuffled back into the laboratory a few minutes later sipping on a cup of hot coffee.

“How’s that coming? Almost done?”

Bernt gritted his teeth, nearly losing his concentration. He answered with a carefully polite tone. “Yes, Magister, almost. If you’d just give me a few more minutes.”

“Hrmpf,” the old man grumped and sat down in a chair to watch.

A few minutes later, Bernt let out a slow breath. “Alright, I think that’s it. Do you mind taking a look for me, please?”

Pollock rose unsteadily from his chair and shuffled around the rune circle just as he had with Bernt’s hellfire derivative, checking it from different angles.

“I can see a bit of your spirit poking out of the spellform right over here.” He pointed. “Just pull that loop in a bit tighter… yes, like that. Now, let me check to make sure you didn’t just mess something else up with that maneuver.”

It took a few more minor corrections, but the old man finally nodded a few minutes later. “Good.” He rubbed his hands together, eyes practically glowing with sudden excitement. “Now for the good part.”

He held out his gnarled hand and conjured Bernt’s little red candle flame over it. “Alright. Now, we’re going to break the rune circle and collapse the spellform onto your mana network. You’ll need to make sure you keep your mana still. You don’t want to absorb away any of the perpetual flame’s substance at this stage. I’m going to run your new modified hellfire along the entirety of your new investiture, just to ensure we get all of the malformed areas. Then, when I give you the go-ahead, you’re going to run mana through those eroded channels very gently to essentially regrow that damaged thread along our defined pathway.”

Bernt took a breath and nodded. “I’m ready.”

“Alright, then go ahead and break the circle.”

Without looking, Bernt scraped his foot forward along the ground and covered one of the runes. Instantly, the spellform collapsed, trying to reform into a flame, but it was held back by Bernt’s spirit. Instead of running mana through the thread to absorb the material, though, he waited for the mana that made up the spell to settle around his spirit.

Pollock leaned forward and, with surprisingly smooth and quick motions, ran the flame along the thread, starting at the spot where Bernt had begun to feed it into the spellform.

Bernt didn’t feel any pain and that surprised him. Shouldn't it feel at least as bad as when he'd damaged his spirit in the first place? At first, he thought that maybe it wasn’t working, but he could actually see the thread inside the spellform get thinner and dimmer as the old man worked. All the while, it felt like the spellform was growing heavier, pushing down harder on his spirit.

It made sense. As the thread of his spirit thinned, it would be less able to resist the spell that he was trying to absorb, and he would have to concentrate harder to prevent the investiture from losing its shape. With this in mind, Bernt focused as best he could on maintaining the shape of the spellform, rather than trying to keep track of the old man. It was a surprise then, when, just a minute or so later, Pollock clapped him on the shoulder.

“Alright, run some mana through there. Go on.”

Carefully, Bernt complied, sending a trickle of mana through his spirit to start and then slowly increasing the flow. It felt a little odd at first, but it worked. The mana that made up the perpetual flame’s spellform thinned and disappeared, drawn into the mana flowing through his new investiture.

Was that it? Was he done?

“Odd coloring,” Pollock commented, “but it looks to me like it worked. Settle it into your spirit and try it out!”

Bernt relaxed, letting the spellform fold in on itself as the entire thing settled into his arm and shoulder. Mana flowed through it normally, which at least meant he hadn’t hurt himself with this experiment. It also felt oddly warm. Hot, even.

He gasped as the sensation intensified, then groaned and looked down at his arm. He could see light emanating from under his skin. And it burned.

Panicking, Bernt screamed and danced back as if to escape the heat, but of course that didn’t work – it was inside him. And the pain just kept getting worse.

***

Bernt’s head pounded in time with his heartbeat. He tried to open his eyes, but a bright glare forced him to shut them again immediately. He groaned and tried to block the source of the light with his hands. Pins and needles prickled down his arm as he moved it.

“Ugh. What happened?” he said, trying to get a look at his surroundings.

His vision swam at first, and it still hurt to look, but he realized after a moment that the light wasn’t actually that bright, his eyes were just oversensitive.

“You experimented around with the investment process,“ Iriala’s voice answered, audibly irritated. “So, no way to really tell, yet. You might have crippled yourself for all we know. How did you even get your hands on the perpetual flame without my authorization?”

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,“ Pollock answered. “I conjured it for him. Besides, his mana flow looks normal and the channels on the new investiture are completely healthy. It worked! I asked you here to share the results, not to cluck over some minor side-effects.”

“Minor?! Are we looking at the same arm?” Iriala hissed, angry now. “I haven’t seen this before, ever! Have you?”

Unsteadily Bernt focused on the offending limb, trying to make sense of what he saw there. The coloring was wrong, somehow. As his vision grew clearer, he realized that the colors were actually light that emanated out from under his skin in strange patterns, disappearing at some points only to reappear an inch away in different shades of orange and red.

He turned his arm to see the other side and finally realized what he was looking at. His investiture was glowing. What did that mean?

Unruffled at the archmage’s outburst, the old man chuckled. “That’s why it’s called innovation, Iriala. Bernt here has invented something new. It might help hundreds of burnt out mages who are unresponsive to alchemical treatment – especially if we can iron out these side-effects. He’ll be the youngest wizard to make such a contribution in a generation!”

“Only because you pushed him,” Iriala said, sounding tired now. “You better hope it’s not as bad as it looks. Ed is very protective of the boy, you know.”

Pollock snorted. “I’m too old to be intimidated by overblown bruisers like him.”

Bernt sat up, realizing that he’d been lying on the floor of the lab on what looked like a small pile of old clothes. He cleared his throat and waved his arm between the two other mages, prompting both to break off their discussion and look his way. “What’s going on? Why is my mana network glowing like that in my arm?”

Iriala frowned at him severely. “Don’t you think you should know the answer to that? You did this to yourself! I expected you to take the old man’s guidance with a grain of salt, not… this."

The old man cleared his throat. “Well. By the looks of it, I would guess that your new investiture manifested itself into your flesh physically. Like when you activate a spell, except that it’s not a spell – it’s a part of your spirit.”

Bernt had no idea what that meant, but it didn’t sound great.

“And what does that mean?”

Magister Pollock shrugged. “Well, it sounds a lot like how the mana networks of sorcerers are described. I’ve never seen one in person, mind you – human sorcerers are exceedingly rare, since their access to magic is usually something biological, inherited through their blood. I have a book somewhere… for now, it’s probably best if you just try it out as you would any new investiture. There’s no point in guessing when you can experiment. I can tell you that it should work just fine for casting spells. If you can channel mana, you can cast spells. And your mana seems to be flowing fine, right?”

Bernt concentrated on the flow for a moment, and nodded. “It feels normal.”

Pollock raised both his hands in a “there you go” gesture.

At the old man’s enthusiasm, Bernt felt a little of his own excitement return. The investment process had worked, even if it wasn’t exactly as they’d predicted. It was time to see what his efforts had bought him.

Concentrating, Bernt sketched a rune into the air with his right hand, visualizing the rest of the spellform for the basic cantrip around it out in front of him.

As he activated the torch spell, he felt an odd pressure run through his arm, then fire erupted from his palm, rolling itself into a liquid ball of flame.

Bernt yelped and backed up a step, realizing only after he moved that the flames hadn’t burned him. The two other mages looked from the spell, which was obediently hovering in the air, to him.

“What’s the matter?” Pollock asked, turning back to the spell with a frown. “Looks normal to me, though the light show wasn’t really necessary. We can all play with fire, you know.”

“I didn’t mean to do that,” Bernt said, still a little shaken. “I cast it to appear overhead, next to your light, not in my hand. That’s crazy!”

“Ah.” The old man frowned. “Hmm. Well. I suppose perhaps the investiture prematurely activates your spells? Not really too much of an adjustment, as long as you’re careful not to burn yourself. An annoyance, more than an inconvenience, really.”

Iriala scoffed, turning away. “It’s too godsdamned late for all this nonsense.” She turned to leave, cursing under her breath. “Wizards!”

The door slammed shut behind her.

When she was gone, Bernt sighed and turned to Pollock. “How bad is it, really?”

The old man shrugged. “I told you there were risks – you’re breaking new ground here. Don’t worry about the downsides so much. Just think how concerned the first person to successfully form an investiture must have been, suddenly finding that all their spells came out wrong!”

Bernt tried to smile, but it didn’t come out right. “I don’t think I just reinvented the investiture with this,“ he said, watching his torch spell dubiously. It's color was oddly white, and he could feel it slowly draw mana from the air around it.

“How do you know?” Pollock asked, raising both bushy white eyebrows for emphasis. “You don’t know what you have there yet. You should treat it as a potential opportunity first. There’s always time to be upset about unwelcome side effects later.”