The Magic, Warped (The MagicWarper Trilogy Book 1)

by Rick Field

  “Good day, My Lady,” he said with a friendly dip of his head to both her and her Assistant, before walking out of the classroom.

  *****

  Liane scowled slightly as they left the small apothecary in the Lower City. They had the neutral dust she required, but the purchase price had wiped out her disposable income.

  It had been robbery, but the small shop was the last place in the capital that the dust had been sold, and she needed it.

  Her faithful Assistant walked half a step behind her. "That was expensive, Proctor," she complained.

  Liane nodded. "Yes, it was, Assistant. But we required the neutral dust as a non-reactive base in which we can store the elements. The procedure fell out of use, so it stands to reason that the neutral dust would not be a common item. And if something is uncommon, it becomes expensive."

  Amy didn't reply, indicating that she understood. With a brisk pace, Liane walked through the Lower City, with its narrower unpaved roads, frequent shadows, its smells and sounds. Although infrequent, it was not unknown for a Noble to venture this deep into the Lower City on business, and people made way for her as she passed.

  She was appreciative. She still tried to nod to everyone who stepped aside for her and her Assistant, and still received the startled glances that came with it.

  Finally, they emerged into the full light of the Kirian mid day sun, and the oppressive heat that came with summer. Now that the cool shade of the inner alleyways of the Lower City had given way to the broad and paved expense of the main street, Liane's relentless pace eased up.

  "It is mid day. Let us enjoy some lunch and ease back to the Academy to start setting up the ritual, Assistant. I believe I will be able to manage lunch for two," she spoke, eyes searching for a decent food stall among the various shops that lined the main road.

  "Perhaps Proctor would allow her humble Assistant to treat her to lunch?" the younger girl offered. "It would be a poor Assistant who would wipe out her Proctor's last coins when she is in a position to assist."

  Liane stopped her scanning of the shops and glanced at her companion. "And it would be a poor Proctor who accepted coins of her Assistant when it is unnecessary."

  The two stood there, looking at each other, neither backing down. Amy had been Liane's Assistant for over a year now. Liane had taught her to be strong and independent when required.

  Finally, Liane relented. "I see this is important to you," she said, and dipped her head. "Thank you, Assistant."

  Amy's lips tugged. "You are welcome, Proctor."

  When they returned to the Academy, an hour later, Liane was eating a juicy pear she had bought on the way back, a treat to herself and a fitting desert after the filling, spicy meal. The hot food had made her sweat, cooling her down from the almost oppressive heat from the summer sun.

  After each had a refreshing shower, Liane preceded Amy to the Council Chambers, confident that her next target would be located there.

  She was right.

  "May I ask for some of your time, My Lord? There is a favor I need to ask," she asked.

  Dars motioned to the free space on the other side of the corner he was occupying. "Please sit down, My Lady. What motion would you like me to put forward?"

  She smiled faintly as she and her Assistant sat, before activating the privacy screen. He lifted an eyebrow; she usually wasn't one to insist on such privacy.

  Liane passed the packet of neutral dust to him. "Does My Lord know what this is?"

  He carefully opened the packet and looked at its contents. A small frown appeared on his forehead. "I do not, My Lady," he finally admitted.

  "That is neutral dust, My Lord. It is a special kind of dust that is entirely neutral and non-reactive to magic, and therefore, the best medium in which to store magical properties."

  "I am intrigued, My Lady," he admitted, sitting straighter. "Why do you have such a substance?"

  She smiled faintly, and handed him a few folded pages containing the ritual she had hand-copied from the old book. "I wish to perform this, My Lord."

  He unfolded the pages, and read through them. He blinked twice, looked up at her, looked back at the ritual, the neutral dust, back at the ritual, and finally, back at her.

  "Why come to me, My Lady?"

  She motioned for the insignia on his robes. "My Lord has taken, and completed, Rituals & Ceremonies. He is the only one in my circle of confidence to have done so. As much as my Assistant is capable of learning, she is still an Assistant. I require your help, especially for the first few times."

  Dars was silent as he looked at the ritual in front of him. "I can see why you would like assistance, My Lady." He lapsed back into silence. She waited for him to speak.

  "Very well," he finally said, just as her patience was about to end. "I will assist you, if for no other chance but to see you in action, My Lady."

  She quirked her lips in amusement. "That is as good a reason as any, My Lord," she said. “I thank you."

  When they met up a few days later, Liane was giving Milor a slightly disgruntled look. “My Lord Dars Earthcrafter, please meet My Lord Milor Lightningmaster,” she introduced. “My Lord Milor Lightningmaster, My Lord Dars Earthcrafter.”

  “My Lord,” Dars said with a small nod of his head.

  “My Lord,” Milor replied, calmly neutral.

  “My Lord Lightningmaster has stated his intentions of witnessing the ritual,” Liane told Dars. “He seems to think that I will either need his protection, or his guidance.”

  Milor turned to Liane, and lifted an annoyed set of eyebrows. “One does not normally state their thoughts in such a manner, My Lady,” he cautioned her, as he always did when she said something he thought was outside of Decorum.

  Liane dipped her head. “I have always found the truth to be liberating, My Lord,” she answered him. “You have never shown the least interest in either Rituals or Ceremonies, nor in the major magical works that I perform. And you even confirmed this when I first explained this to you. It is only after I mentioned that My Lord Dars Earthcrafter is involved that you wished to witness the event. I must conclude that you do not wish me to be alone with My Lord Earthcrafter.”

  Dars seemed highly amused, while Milor stared at her with the most blank look of astonishment he could get away with under Decorum. “However,” Liane went on, ignoring his facial expression, “I do not wish to argue this point with you. I have a major ritual to perform.” She turned to Dars. “My Lord?”

  Dars' lips twitched. “My Lady,” he replied, holding out one arm.

  Ritualistically, Liane hooked her hand onto his elbow. Milor's face twitched. Amy tried valiantly not to react to anything that was happening between her Proctor and her friends, and just stayed behind Liane's right shoulder. “Besides,” Liane said as they stared to walk to the library, “My Lord Earthcrafter and I spend quite a lot of time together in the Student Council chambers. He is, after all, my teacher in politics.”

  Milor blinked twice, looked at Dars, frowned slightly, and turned back to Liane. “I do not wish to argue with My Lady,” he told her.

  Liane's lips twitched in a manner resembling Dars' earlier, a fact that did not seem lost on Milor. “Thank you, My Lord,” she said gracefully. “After all, we wish to avoid the similar events that happened after the Lord Pertogan and I started corresponding.”

  Milor flinched visibly, as if slapped, and let out a breath. “You are quite correct, My Lady. My apologies.”

  Dars hid his confusion and lack of understanding quite well, and remained silent as Liane and Milor talked. By the time they arrived at the bottom level of the practical building, the advanced ritual level, Milor's attitude seemed to have improved quite dramatically.

  They entered a completely empty ritual chamber, and Dars looked around with confusion. Before he could ask anything, Amy held out a bundle of hand-written notes.

  He accepted them, and leafed through them. They were Liane's notes on the ritual they were about to perform, the fi
rst page holding the entire diagram of the magical work, the second holding the runic arrays required.

  Under normal conditions, the Ritual Master would require the assistance of a Runic Master for the creation of the array. Dars looked up at Liane. She could do the entire thing by herself; she was both Ritual Master and Runic Master. For the first time, he realized just what formidable magical intellect was required to enter Deep Secrets classes.

  Liane ignored his look, pressed her hands together, and whispered a spell. Pulling her hands apart, the runic array appeared between her hands, floating in mid-air in semi-transparent light-blue script.

  Dars blinked twice more, and stared at the arrays whose signs and glyphs and symbols seemed to have been built up out of vapor and smoke, yet were as clear and pure as if written by a calligraphic pen wielded by the hand of a master.

  He swallowed. “My Lord,” Liane spoke to him, startling him back to the here and now. “I believe this is the first circle required.”

  He checked the floating circle against the one on the page, and found it to be the one written in the exact center. “I believe so, My Lady,” he replied, his voice not as firm as he would have liked it. “I am, however, woefully ignorant in the subject of Runes, Glyphs, and Magical Symbols.”

  “If I may be of assistance, My Lord, My Lady?” Milor asked, reminding Liane that he had been in the same classes as her. He may not be as good as she was with them, but he was more than capable of verifying two circles against each other.

  Dars handed him the notes without hesitation, and Milor flipped through them. Calmly at first, but faster as he read through them, he flipped through the pages, realizing just how intricate the ritual was. Finally, he just did as he had offered, and checked the circle against the one in the notes.

  “It appears flawless, as usual, My Lady,” he told her. Over the last few years he had seen her do outlandish things with runic script, and creating an illusion in mid-air was just the next step up. He would never forget the ever-increasing efficiency of her enchanting his sword.

  She dipped her head, walked to the center of the room, and pushed her hands back together, the circle in between them shrinking until it vanished. Breathing out deeply, she went to one knee, placed her hands on the floor, and whispered a different spell. The array formed around her quickly, each glyph and symbol starting to form at the same time, yet taking time to do so.

  It took nearly twenty seconds for the array to be complete.

  Dars stared at her again.

  She re-whispered her illusion spell, and a second array formed between her hands. Milor checked it calmly against her notes.

  She stepped back, the second circle larger and more intricate. The first one was barely half a meter in diameter, this second one was nearly two meters in diameter. She cancelled her first spell, went to one knee, pressed her hands against the floor, and formed the second circle.

  It, too, took twenty seconds, and it was perfectly concentric with the first circle.

  Liane created two more smaller circles, attached to the 'north' and 'south' positions of the larger outer circle, and were the spots where she and Dars would be located once the ritual would start. Careful so as not to disturb the arrays she had just laid out, Liane stepped to the center circle, and placed the neutral dust on a small pile in the exact center of the layout.

  “My Lady?” Dars enquired when she had stepped outside the ritual space.

  “My Lord?” she asked, turning to face him.

  “I find myself wondering about the limitations of your earlier spell, My Lady,” he explained.

  Liane pressed her hands together, whispered her spell, and recreated the inner circle of the ritual. “This spell, My Lord?” she asked. Upon his nod, she went on, “What would you like to know?”

  “How easy would it be to make a change, My Lady?” he asked, reaching out to point to one of the runes. To his utmost surprise, it felt like velvety smoke to his finger when it reached the symbol, and it wavered in the air at his touch.

  “If I may, My Lord?” Amy said, stepping forward. Dars nodded his assent, and Liane looked at her Assistant, curious as to what she would say. The younger girl stepped forward. “Proctor created this spell as a training spell for me. She uses it to allow me to create and build runic sequences without going through the effort of writing them down, nor can mistakes result in terminal catastrophic failures, My Lord.”

  She reached up, and touched two runes, one with her thumb, and the other with her index finger, and made a flipping motion. The two runes flipped positions. “It is easy to flip runes like this. It is also possible to change them,” she touched one rune, and made an upside-down motion with her index finger. The rune startled scrolling, changing into different runes and finally into glyphs and magical symbols. When she found the one she was looking for, Amy touched the sigil in question, which took the place of the original rune.

  “Of course, building an array using nothing but scrolling runes would take longer than just writing them down,” Amy went on, “so it is possible to just write them out.” She swiped her finger horizontally, and the runes she wiped vanished. Using her index finger, she wrote an approximation of the rune in question, which sprung up in mid-air and settled back into place. In quick succession she wrote out three different items she had wiped out earlier.

  “Incredible,” Dars whispered.

  “Thank you, My Lord,” Liane said, vanishing the circle. “Let us begin with the ritual. I am anxious to see the results.”

  “Of course, My Lady,” he said. He took the papers back from Milor and stepped into place, leafing through the notes and finding the parts he would have to perform.

  When Dars nodded to her, indicating his readiness, Liane started off the ritual. Her voice sounded and a flash of fire spread in front of her, rapidly circling the inner array, filling up the space in between the inner and outer circles.

  As her voice fell into cadence, Dars' voice started to add to hers, lifting the flame and the fire, preparing for the proper ritual, where the very essence of the element would be locked into the neutral dust stored in the exact center. The first part of the ritual consisted of starting the magical fire before the second part, the actual ritual, would use and channel the external magic into stripping the fire of everything but its very essence, which would finally be imbued in the dust sitting in the center.

  Liane felt the magical fire feed back to her unstable core, the fire of the ritual resonating with the magic in her chest. Her crippled magic, always very susceptible to outside influences, answered in kind.

  The world fell away to her unseeing eyes. The fire and the ritual became her world, and the magic in her chest burned as it raged and howled like the fire it was mimicking. The words of the ritual flowed from her mouth without conscious thought or desire, the magic knowing what she wanted.

  The ritual progressed and Liane could feel Dars' assistance ebb through her own magic as they battled against the raging flames, trying to lock its very essence into a neutral dust, ready to be called upon at a moment's notice in the future. His magic was beautiful and stable, and behaved according to the words he was speaking.

  Her own magic was burning and raging, filled with storm and lightning as it clashed against the element filling the primary ritual space, it was out of her control and behaving as she wanted it at the same time, it was both chaos and order.

  Liane could feel Dars' struggles to keep up with her as the speed of her words increased, her conscious thought leaving her as she surrendered to the whims of her magic, trusting it to know what she wanted and how to get there, just as it had always protected and guided and saved her during the various stages of her life. It was magic that had defeated her enemies in either battle or duel, and it would be her magic that completed this major ritual.

  When Dars faltered, she could feel the ritual destabilizing. She took the instability deep within herself and forgot about it, anchoring the ritual deep within her magic. The energy
burning through her body was incredible, and Liane's fingers gripped the handle of her wand.

  Planting her feet, she drew her wand and pointed it straight at the ceiling, arm outstretched, stabilizing herself into physical and metaphysical realm alike and channeling the power of magic called up by the ritual through her body. As she allowed its path through her, the pain vanished and the flow of the ritual stabilized.

  When Dars stopped completely, she closed her eyes, yet did not stop seeing the fire and the ritual and the magic throughout the room. She needed more energy, and felt Amy's power through the Proctor-Assistant bond. Drawing magic through the bond would hurt the girl, and both Liane and her magic dismissed the option as soon as it had been presented.

  Instead, she took a grasp of Dars' magic through her access to the ritual arrays, and took that in herself, as well. His magic was level and stable, and she commanded it, ruthlessly, powerfully, utterly, just the way she dominated her own magic at times, and exactly like her own magic dominated her at present.

  Liane channeled his magic back into the array, controlling the vast amounts of external power drawn up by the ritual, taming and tempering the flames, controlling them into doing her wishes, drawing their essence into the prepared container.

  The flames raged, reaching for the ceiling and the world at once, before they flared, and were seemingly draw through unstoppable forces into the container of dust prepared in the center of the ritual arrays.

  As the ritual completed, the magic dispersed. With an unexpected suddenness, Liane was thrown back into the real world, her own feet upon physical instead of metaphysical ground, no longer connected to either external magic or flaming currents stored within the ritual.

  The abrupt cut-off staggered Liane, who stumbled, before dropping to one knee, panting deeply as if she had not drawn breath for multiple minutes, feeling the sweat of exertion flow down her brow and back.

  She stared at the floor for long seconds, trying to ease the burning in her heart and lungs, before she looked to the center of the ritual. The neutral dust, dull gray in original appearance, was now glowing a murky red and gold. A tired smile spread on her lips.