by Kyle Johnson
“Okay, let’s do this,” Jeff said as cheerfully as he could, taking a deep breath to psych himself up for the task ahead. Even knowing the pattern, there were plenty of ways for this to go wrong, but Jeff figured if he just took his time and focused, he’d be fine.
For the first few feet of the passage, he was absolutely correct. Despite their brilliance, the flames didn’t seem to radiate a lot of heat, so he could get pretty close to them without taking damage. This was a very good thing, which he discovered when he didn’t quite move in time at one place, and just the edge of his shoulder brushed one of the gouts of flame, sending searing agony through his arm and bringing up an angry, red notification:
“Damn!” he swore aloud, clutching his burned shoulder, which sent a new wave of pain through him. That brief contact had taken more than half of his LP in an instant! He realized that, if he took a blast directly – or even another glancing shot at this point – he wouldn’t survive it. Distracted by the pain and a touch of panic, he lost the pattern for an instant and stumbled, landing heavily on his hands and knees – facing directly down at a rune. He saw a flash of light, and suddenly everything went black except a notification box looming mockingly in his vision:
The world slowly formed around Jeff, as he found himself standing in front of the obelisk in the main room once again. “Well, that sucked,” he muttered, touching his shoulder and finding it fully healed. “At least dying didn’t hurt; and it’s good to know that I won’t suffer any debuffs if I die here. That’s handy.” He took a deep breath and started walking back across the bridges. There was no point in lingering: he had to make it through the passage to continue, and now that he had died once, the concept of doing it again was much less worrisome.
This time, Jeff took his time and focused, making it much farther into the passage before his foot skidded on the smooth stones at the wrong moment. He tried to halt his momentum, but he slid directly into a jet of flame. Another flash of white filled his vision, followed by darkness and the red box:
“Stupid Agility,” he muttered as he trudged back up the bridges to try again. It took Jeff three more attempts to make it through the passage, and he was tired of seeing the red notification by the time he cleared it and entered the room beyond.
“Hey, Veronica,” he called to the empty air, “is there a way to change my notification settings? I remember that at one point, they were just blinking dots…”
“Of course,” Veronica’s voice spoke in his mind. “They are completely customizable. I minimized the earlier ones for you, as I judged they would be a needless distraction at the time. Would you like me to do that for all notifications, just during combat or stressful situations, or only death notifications?”
“Lets just minimize them all,” Jeff decided after a moment. “I can check them when I get a chance, and that way, they won’t be filling up my screen when I don’t want them.”
“Your settings have been changed,” Veronica confirmed. “Is there anything else you need?”
“Nope, I’m good,” Jeff replied, finally looking around the room beyond the fiery passage. The room itself was fairly nondescript: it was a circular room, perhaps 10 feet in diameter, with glossy stone walls and a low ceiling. The only distinguishing feature was a 4-foot tall pedestal in the center of the room, on top of which was secured a glowing, crystal globe a foot in diameter. The orb pulsed softly with a faint, bluish glow that reminded Jeff of a heartbeat.
“Well, the next step seems pretty obvious,” Jeff grinned as he stepped to the middle of the room and placed his palm firmly on top of the globe. The sphere flashed a brilliant blue that forced Jeff to shut his eyes in sudden pain, and he heard a rumbling sound from the main chamber. The sound faded away as Jeff found himself falling into himself, forcibly dragged into his mindscape.
He blinked and opened his eyes, glancing around his dojo. The mists beyond the glass were once more obscured by the swirling colors of his mana, to his relief. However, he was surprised to find a wizened, ancient-looking elf woman standing before him, looking around and clucking her tongue in disapproval.
“What a chaotic mess,” she said disapprovingly, her voice harsh and scratchy as she waved a gnarled hand at the swirls of mana around her. “How can you expect to craft anything meaningful with such uncontrolled mana, Traveler, hmm? What level is your Mana Control skill?”
Jeff stared at the woman for a moment in shock. “Uh, I haven’t learned Mana Control,” he admitted. “But…who are you? How did you get into my mindscape?”
“Who am I?” the woman repeated in an aggravated tone. “My name was Lythienne Sylmaer, not that it will mean anything to you. Who I am is unimportant, especially since I am truly only the memories of a woman who has been dead for long centuries. What matters is what I am!”
“Okay,” Jeff allowed slowly. “So, what are you?”
“Better question, at least,” she replied. “I am the collected memories of a woman who was a Master Sorcerer, Traveler, and the last of her kind. When the Feast came, Sorcerers were among the first targeted by the Darkness, before they could adapt their magic to deal with the nightmare hordes. After the last of her students was slain, Lythienne implanted her memories into these globes, foreseeing that a time would come when the Travelers would arrive and need her knowledge.
“So, I am here to train you, young Traveler,” the woman finished. “I exist to impart knowledge to you. However, until the Trial is completed, I am bound to teach you one spell and answer one question. Which would you rather we do, first?” The woman glanced meaningfully up at the swirling mana as she offered Jeff the choice.
He immediately got the hint. “Uh, I guess the question?” he asked carefully. “How do I learn Mana Control?”
“What a wise question,” the woman said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. “Mana Control is a simple enough skill, yet it can take a lifetime to master. It is nothing more or less than creating a pattern for your mana, one that allows it to retain its chaotic nature but restrains that chaos within a greater order.” When Jeff stared at her blankly, she sighed. “And this is why it takes a lifetime to truly master,” she told him. Sit down, child, and close your eyes.”
Jeff obediently sank to the floor, shutting his eyes and trying to get comfortable. “We will start simply,” Lythienne began. “Have you, perchance, seen a snowflake before, child?” When Jeff nodded, the elf continued, “What we are attempting to do is something similar to how a snowflake forms. If you were to look closely at one, you would see that it has six arms, and that each arm has multiple branches. Look closer at an individual branch, and you will see that it has branches identical to its parent. Each of those smaller branches has a similar shape if you look at them closely, and so on for as far as can be seen. The pattern repeats indefinitely. Do you understand?”
Jeff blinked. “It’s a fractal,” he agreed. “A pattern that replicates itself infinitely. I’m pretty familiar with those, yeah.”
It was the elf’s turn to look surprised. “Indeed?” she replied with a slightly pleased look on her face. “Then, this will be much simpler for you. The essence of Mana Control is to guide your mana into such a pattern – a ‘fractal’ as you call it – that allows it to move freely, but continually breaks it into smaller and smaller sections. The goal is to eventually separate the mana into individual strands, each curled into your pattern, moving chaotically but not touching any other strand. And that, my boy, is the work of a lifetime!”
Jeff considered for a moment. He had studied fractals in college, long ago, and he used a handful of them somewhat regularly in his programming. Quantum computing allowed for incredible data storage and rendering, and using fractals sped both of those processes up tremendously. The issue was that he had already chosen a gross shape for his mana: it needed to be layered around his dome. Only one of the fractal patterns he had memorized was appropriate for a 3-dimensional dome. Fortunately, it was also a relatively simple pattern, so he figured it wouldn’t be t
oo much effort to implement it.
He reached his mind out to the mana swirling above him, relaxing his consciousness and trying to grasp the graph of the peaks and valleys his mind envisioned previously. It came to him much more easily this time, and the graph felt a little more solid, as if his mind were understanding it a bit more completely. He could see the peaks and valleys where his mana entered and left the system, and he was tempted to try and raise another peak, but that would have to wait. He was here for a different purpose, this time.
Instead of picturing the highs and lows of the graph, he tried to focus on its motions. He had frozen the movements before, allowing him to see the peaks and valleys more clearly, but now he set the image into motion. The swirling, chaotic mass churned and surged in his sight as individual strands jumped and shifted erratically, and he almost lost the image as his mind struggled to comprehend the greater picture.
He shifted his focus, trying to picture the general motions of each area, to find the nodes in the image: the places where the chaos cancelled itself out and the net movement was close to zero. Rather than look at movement, he began to seek out spots of relative stillness. It took a few moments, but he located thirteen nodes; these would be the anchors for his new pattern.
He decided to start slowly, choosing a node and guiding the currents around it to spiral inward to the node, then continue to spiral back outward to their origin. It was far easier than he imagined: since he was not changing the overall movement about the node very much, the specific paths he chose didn’t seem to matter very much. He moved his thoughts to each of the remaining 12 nodes and repeated the pattern, until his graph consisted of 13 distinct spirals, all feeding off of and into one another freely. The paths of each strand were still chaotic – it was impossible for him to follow a strand into the center before losing its track amidst the denser concentration of threads, and while it was easier to follow a single stream out of the spiral, at the edge of the spiral it vanished, sucked into one of the nearby spiral patterns – but the overall effect was much more ordered.
Jeff gasped as exhaustion struck him and pulled his thoughts out of the churning spirals of mana, falling backward to look up at the dome overhead. The colors overhead no longer churned randomly and sickeningly; instead, they whirled in 13 individual rainbows spirals. The resulting light show was very pretty, if a little bit dizzying to watch for any length of time. “How’s that?” he finally asked as his exhaustion faded. He noticed a blinking, blue dot in the corner of his vision, but he ignored it for the time being.
“Somewhat beyond satisfactory,” the elder muttered. “Typically, a Novice’s first attempt results in nothing more than a minor stabilization of the mana. This sort of pattern is more indicative of an advanced Student or junior Adept, so well done, I guess. Now, to advance the skill, you must focus and refine the patterns. Over time, I will teach you to place spirals within your spirals and to group individual mana types so that conflicting types are not creating additional entropy.
“That, though, is for another day,” Lythienne went on. “Now, I must teach you a new spell. First, though, I must ask: have you managed to create a spell of your own, yet?” When Jeff shook his head and opened his mouth to answer, the old woman held up a hand, forestalling his reply. “I would have been shocked if you had, child,” she assured him. “The process is not intuitive and requires a considerable investment of time and mana.”
She held up a hand, and a glowing ball of energy suddenly appeared, floating above her hand. “This spell is a Sorcerer’s most basic attack form,” she explained. “It is called a Mana Bolt. It is nothing more than a raw discharge of energy that can be hurled at a distance. When it strikes, it explodes, doing minor unaspected damage.” As she spoke, the woman straightened her hand and pointed her palm toward the far wall of the dome. The ball of energy shot from her hand and slammed into the glass, exploding in a burst of energy and light. Jeff winced, expecting to see the glass cracked or even shattered, but when the light cleared the glass was smooth and unmarred.
“Foolish child,” the woman chuckled. “Have no fear of damaging your odd, little dome. This is your mindscape; nothing can damage it unless you will it. Not to mention, I am but a memory, unable to directly affect anything in this place or any other.”
Jeff sighed in relief. “Okay, that’s good,” he replied. “I mean, that it’s impossible to break the dome, not that you’re a memory, sorry. Anyways, how do I go about creating the spell?”
“There is no set process,” Lythienne said firmly. “Recipes and rituals are the province of Wizards and Clerics, not Sorcerers. You are limited only by your own imagination, and your imagination is what you will use to create the spell.
“Simply focus on what you wish the spell to do,” she instructed. “Close your eyes and concentrate your entire being on it. Do not simply see the spell moving in the world: feel the mana rising from your center, pouring down your arm, and collecting in your palm. Smell the ozone as the power crackles in your fist. Imagine what it will sound like, the sensation of pressure you will feel as it launches from your hand. Utilize every sense possible; the more perfectly you can see the spell happening, the faster it will form and the more potent it will be.”
Jeff closed his eyes once more, clearing his mind and focusing on the image of the glowing, ball of light. He thought of the Sorcerer’s directions and began by imagining the feel of his mana, low in his stomach. He had never felt it, but he pictured it as a tightness in his gut, a feeling of potential, waiting to be released. Then, he imagined a surge of that potential lashing forth, racing up his center and down his arm, tingling like electricity in his muscles. He could almost feel the ball of energy hovering over his outstretched hand, the warmth of it radiating on his palm. He recalled the acrid scent of ozone after a thunderstorm, picturing it rising from the coalesced ball of energy. He pictured himself facing the winged creature from his first testing with the glowing ball in his palm: his arm extending toward the diving monster; the surge of power against his palm as the orb streaked away; the explosion of light and heat as it impacted the beast, hurling it from the sky.
“Once you have the image,” he distantly heard the woman’s words, “replay it in your thoughts, again and again. Slowly allow your SP to trickle into the image you are holding, very slowly and carefully! If you allow your SP to escape too quickly, it will rupture the image and you will have to start again, losing the SP in the process.”
Jeff dutifully returned to the beginning of his image, again feeling the sense of power as the drew the energy forth, gathering it on his hand, and hurling it against an enemy. As he did so, he reached out to the mana surrounding him, drawing that power in to feed the image. As he did so, he was once again struck by the similarity to a quantum system: the image was like a virtual waveform, having no real existence and only being maintained by his will. Just as a virtual waveform, though, all it needed was energy to coalesce into being. He could almost feel the pattern of the wave he was trying to create; for an instant, he felt as if he could see the wave flowing before him, before he felt surge of actual energy rise up his arm and gather above his palm.
He opened his eyes and stared excitedly at the 2-inch ball of multi-hued energy tumbling above his hand. Just as in his imagination, he could feel the warmth of it against his skin, could smell the ozone wafting up from it. He moved his arm hesitantly, facing his palm at the dome across from him and surged his will. The tiny ball rocketed from his hand and sped unerringly at the wall, exploding with a minor flash of heat and light.
“Whoa,” he murmured, staring at his palm. “I did it! I cast a spell! That is so…cool!”
“Indeed,” Lythienne agreed with him. “And, I must say, you learned it quickly and well. I expected it to take you at least twice as long to learn the basic form of the spell. You have quite the potential, child…and present quite the danger, should you misuse it.
“Now, our time here is done,” Lythienne replied, “and you
must move to the next part of the challenge. I have but one bit of advice: practice your new spell before you attempt the next challenge. You will likely need it.” The woman gestured, and Jeff felt himself rising from his mindscape to rejoin his body.
He blinked as his vision returned and glanced around the room. The orb before him was dark now, with only a faint flicker of light within. He touched it again and got no reaction, which made sense. It looked like the Trial was actually designed to train a fledgling Sorcerer. Hmm, he thought speculatively, I wonder if the experience would have been different if I had chosen a different class?
“In that case,” he heard Veronica’s voice answer in his mind, “you would have been placed in a different starting location. This scenario is necessary, since you have chosen a class that is temporarily unique and has no living class trainers. Had you chosen Warden, for example, you would have entered the game in a town with an actual Warden who could act as a mentor and guide to you.”
Huh, I never thought of that, he mulled. I guess unique classes require unique solutions? I’m kinda glad, though: this is fun! Unsurprisingly, Veronica chose not to respond.
“Okay, let’s check out the changes,” he said aloud, focusing on the blinking dots in his screen and pulling up his status: