Underkeeper

Bernt felt worn out as he climbed the steps in the Mages’ Guild toward Pollock’s office. The day had been uneventful – he’d had a light assignment on patrol in the Crafting Quarter with Torvald. There was a pickpocket in the morning and a vandalism incident in the afternoon, but Torvald handled both before Bernt could even get involved.

No, his exhaustion was in his mind. But knowing the nature of the problem didn’t make it any easier to deal with. He’d solved one problem by creating another. One that was already proving to be annoyingly tricky to deal with, and that he might not be able to fully overcome.

Taking a deep breath, Bernt tried to summon the sense of excitement he’d had developing his new hellfire derivative. He’d done it, after all. He was a wizard, and Pollock thought he was looking at an opportunity here, something new.

With… well, not exactly a spring in his step, but slightly more energy than before, Bernt opened the door to the Wizard’s Society and entered. As he made his way toward Pollock’s office, he noticed for the first time that there were other people here. One of the other offices was occupied today by at least three people who were excitedly talking over one another.

How many wizards were there in the guild here, anyway?

Dismissing the thought, Bernt knocked on Magister Pollock’s office door and entered at the man’s call. He found him sitting in an overstuffed armchair in one corner of the room, books piled awkwardly one on top of another on his lap, all of them open.

“Ah! The young wizard!” Pollock said cheerfully. “So, what did you learn?”

Bernt swallowed hard. “I can cast only pyromancy spells through the investiture, and they don’t form correctly. They sort of weave themselves around the complete spellform for the perpetual flame. I can’t modify them as I’m casting, either, because the spell activates as it forms. I have to visualize the spellform completely before I even start moving mana. I don't think I would have figured it out if I hadn't started with a cantrip.” Pulling up a much more modestly proportioned chair from next to the desk, Bernt took a seat and explained what he’d learned so far.

Pollock nodded along, asking for clarification here and there, but he generally appeared content to listen. When Bernt was done, the old man smiled, eyes glittering. “Well, that all sounds quite promising to me. I think you may be in a position to explore some rather obscure areas of magical theory."

“What obscure areas?” Bernt asked, though he was pretty sure he knew what the old man was going to say.

The old man picked up the book on his lap and held it up demonstratively, giving it an emphatic little shake. “Sorcery, of course! I found the book I mentioned to you before. This one, right here. It’s a travelogue by Archwizard Finnerixes of the kingdom of Theuroma.”

Pollock looked at him expectantly, as if expecting a response. Bernt had never heard of the man. Should he have? He shrugged. “I’ve never heard of him.”

The old wizard gave a disappointed little shake of his head. “He was a prolific researcher, you should look him up in the library some time. In his younger years, he went and lived with a clan of mountain savages across the sea, south of the Mirian city states for seven years, gaining their trust to eventually gain access to their mysteries. The people there were sorcerers – some of them at least – and he claims that they “ignited” a sorcerous talent by consuming the hearts of various fey creatures. There is a lot of mystical nonsense about meditation and self-discovery here, but the crux of the matter is that they grew a mana network out from a central point in their belly 'physically manifested itself into their flesh’. That’s what I was referring to last night.”

Bernt pursed his lips in thought. “That’s… strange. Does that tell us anything I can use?”

“Well,” Pollock said, raising both eyebrows. “That’s what I asked myself this morning. I went and collected a few texts on the subject from my colleagues here and talked to our fine librarian to get my hands on whatever materials she might have on the subject. As it turns out, there’s actually quite a bit scattered across all these scraps. Nobody seems to have bothered to put it all together into a proper treatise, so far. Maybe a good task for you, when you’re done with it. If we’re lucky, you might be the first person in the guild who can personally test the veracity of some of these claims.”

“So,” Bernt said slowly, “what did you find?”

Pollock cackled. “Why burden you with my own conclusions? I’m just a doddering old man making guesses based on uncorroborated reports from questionable sources.” He placed the top book carefully down on his desk, and lifted the stack of open ones on his lap up, holding them out to Bernt. “Here, read them for yourself and see what you can make of them. I already found the most interesting bits for you, though it probably wouldn’t hurt for you to look into them a bit more thoroughly. We’ll talk about it later, and I’ll tell you if I think you missed something important.”

As Bernt accepted the books, the old man rose and began to walk toward the door at a geriatric pace. “You can use my chair while I’m out, I’m going to get something to eat. Should give you plenty of time to get some reading done. I'm not as quick as I used to be, you know.”

With that, he was gone. Bernt stared down at the books.

That oppressive sense of failure, that he’d ruined his future, didn’t go away. He’d made himself less versatile as a mage, weakening most of his magic and modifying his pyromancy spells in an unbalanced way. But he was curious, too. What could sorcerers do?

Would it be worth it?

The first book described the mana network of a lesser drake – a tundra wyvern. The wizard who wrote it had killed the subject and then meticulously dissected it, mapping narrow empty channels that ran through the creature’s flesh. The substance of the creature’s mana network – a physically manifested soul – had disappeared on death, leaving only the spaces where the spiritual channels had run behind. The gaps themselves, the author posited, were proof enough that a sorcerer’s mana network, unlike that of a mage, was a physical thing. He theorized that this was related to how the body parts of some magical creatures and even plants gained inherent magical properties – becoming magical materials that could be used in alchemy and other types of crafting.

Bernt stared down at his arm, examining the odd, glowing pattern on it. It might explain why his own spells didn't burn him as he cast anymore. Not a demon arm, as Jori had suggested, but still transformed after a fashion.

The next book was written by a war mage who fought against a tribe of centaurs who had allied themselves with the orcish nomads on the Tib’nar plateau to the northeast of Besermark. He described the capabilities of their sorcerers in detail, claiming that some could cast a fireball from one hand and a heat shield from the other simultaneously. Even more surprisingly, the author suggested that sorcerers could cast a wide range of different spells, though they tended to be variations on a central theme. It sounded much like the specializations that mages naturally fell into as they developed their augmentations, except that they couldn't – or at least didn't – cast spells outside of their focus.

The next several books had marked passages with theories on how sorcerers formed and grew what passed for their mana networks – likely ones who had read some of these very sources. Their ideas ranged from the intent and will of the sorcerer to pure instinct. One suggested that the investitures that formed were likely just hereditary. That didn’t interest Bernt very much. Growing this odd, fused mana network outward into the rest of his body sounded like something that would only cause further complications.

One account, though, stuck out. It was by a regular mage, a magistrix of abjuration who claimed to have been friends with a lizardman sorcerer. Most of the text was dedicated to documenting the plants and magical materials found in the lizardmen’s marshes. There was also general cultural information about the tribes who lived there, and a description of the remains of an unimaginably ancient ziggurat that rose out of the waters near the wetlands’ center, and which the lizardmen shunned. The page that Pollock had opened for him, though, contained a segment dedicated to the lizardman sorcerer who had invited her and acted as her guide and, more importantly, some commentary on the nature of his magics.

“Where mages can sense and manipulate mana directly to cast spells of infinite variety, sorcerers rely on their sense of, and control over, their mana network – their spirit – to guide their flow of mana. With sufficient practice and focus, a skilled sorcerer may learn to manipulate it directly to a limited extent, modifying his mana flows in the process. In this way, they may also alter the spells that are produced by the spellforms embedded therein. It is a misunderstood practice of magic, and one that deserves further study…”

Bernt sat back in his chair, reading the passage again. If he could learn how this was done, then maybe he could find a way to use this investiture correctly after all. He would have to somehow reconfigure the mana flows in the investiture, perhaps only activating some parts of it to allow them to better mesh with his normal spellforms. It would be a messy process, if it worked at all. He could feel the investiture sitting there in his arm, like a physical thing. That meant he should be able to do it, right?

In fact, Bernt might have gained something important here. Mages couldn’t really feel their mana networks or manipulate them internally, otherwise they wouldn’t need the investment process. In fact, considering all this, investitures might have originally been invented as a way to imitate the mana networks of sorcerers.

So, what did it mean for a mage, someone who could sense and manipulate mana directly, to get access to a sorcerer’s power?

Bernt laughed incredulously. It sounded a little wooden at first, but then sound bubbled out of him, taking on a life of its own. He closed the book and set the entire stack on Pollock’s table. He needed to try this out.

Then he sat back down and focused on the pathways of his new investiture. He couldn’t feel the whole thing in detail, so just tried to get a sense for it. It was a little like trying to feel the specific shape of an object pressed against the skin. Something that felt like it should be easy, but wasn’t. The mana running through it was much easier to distinguish, but that wasn’t how it was done. He needed to learn to physically manipulate the channels somehow and he couldn’t do that if he couldn’t get a proper sense of them.

–----

“Well,” Pollock’s voice came from the door, “you look a lot less defeated than when you came in here.”

Bernt turned to find the old man standing there, watching him. He wasn’t sure exactly how long he’d been meditating, but apparently it had been long enough for Pollock to finish his dinner and make his way back up here.

He cleared his throat and nodded toward the books. “I’m trying to work out how these sorcerers manipulated their mana networks. If I can work out how it’s done, I should be able to control the investiture better and maybe incorporate it into my spells in parts.”

“Good, good” the old wizard sighed as he sank into his armchair. “That seems like a good place to start. Now, tell me. What kinds of opportunities did you see, looking through these sources, that you should explore?”