Chương 82: Silent Spaces

Lira still had nearly an hour before Prince Lyth usually arrived at the library, but instead of retreating to her hidden alcove, she remained seated behind the front desk. It wasn't worth risking the spot being uncovered, not since her father's ledger wasn't needed for what she had in mind. She dipped her pen into the inkwell and carefully wrote the spell across a spare sheet of paper. Paldina. Picos. Hishar. Tarasana. Kurur. Passive. Diminution. Wave. Pocket. Space.

Lira stared at the words for several moments, tapping the feathered end of the quill against her chin. Prince Aric had cast the spell as a passive incantation, which made perfect sense. The spell had appeared instantly around him, creating a pocket of space where sound no longer reached beyond it. The design was elegant, but it wasn't what Lira would have come up with on her own. She drew another line beneath the first incantation before writing a second version. Kisar. Picos. Hishar. Tarasana. Kurur. Symbol.

Diminution. Wave. Pocket. Space. Simply replacing Paldina with Kisar fundamentally changed the spell. Instead of passively sustaining the magic through her own mana, the rune itself would carry most of the burden using ambient mana. It required paper and ink to prepare, but in exchange, the spell became dramatically easier to shape, refine, and modify. There was another advantage as well. She had already used Kisar in ten different spells, while Paldina, on the other hand, had appeared only in three of her spells.

By now, she understood enough about imprinting to recognize that magical words became easier to internalize the more often they appeared in successful spells. Every previous spell strengthened the next one that reused the same concepts. It was almost like building pathways through her soul. That alone made the runic version the obvious choice. Still, there was an advantage to non-runic spells, mainly that they didn't rely on paper and ink.

Eventually, she intended to recreate most of her runic spells as non-runic ones, and vice versa. There would undoubtedly come a day when she had plenty of time to prepare magical paper beforehand, and other days when she would need to cast immediately. Satisfied with her decision, Lira closed her eyes.

"Pika. Selan. Tureth." The familiar meditative calm settled over her. Instead of forcing herself to understand the spell from nothing, she built upon everything she had learned during the past week. She recalled the bronze bell swinging above the old well, the ripples spreading across the water, and the invisible vibrations traveling through the air. She thought about the books on singing, musical instruments, insects, and bells.

She remembered experimenting with her sound cantrips, trying different pitches inside her alcove, altering the wave spacing until she could imitate the chirping of birds. Then she considered the remaining words. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. A pocket of space, a region where waves became weaker by hitting invisible blockers, diminishing until they could no longer be heard. The image settled comfortably in her mind. Kisar. Picos. Hishar.

Tarasana. Kurur. Click. The familiar sensation of another spell imprinting spread through her thoughts. Lira opened her eyes and smiled.

"That was easier than expected." Most of the difficult work had already been done during the previous week. This spell was little more than an application of concepts she now understood. Now, testing came next. She drew a large circle composed of alternating Tarasana and Kurur runes.

Inside the circle, she placed an oversized Hishar rune representing the waves contained within the spell, while four smaller Hishar symbols surrounded it, closer to the circle, to represent sound dampening as it traveled through the pocket of space. Once the ink dried, she activated it.

"Kisar. Picos. Hishar. Tarasana. Kurur." The effect was immediate. The distant sounds of the castle simply vanished. The chatter drifting through open windows disappeared. The footsteps in the hallway ceased. She had been able to hear birds singing only moments before, and now there was nothing. The silence was slightly unsettling.

"So..." Lira frowned, listening carefully.

"It blocks sound both ways." She stood up, leaving the paper on the desk, and started walking away from it. As she approached the edge of the space, she started to hear faint noises from outside. She concluded that the sound dampened as it traveled through the space.

"Could I even hear my own voice in here?" she said aloud.

"Yep." She stepped closer to and farther away from the paper while testing whether it had any effect on her own hearing.

"AAA... Laa. Naaa," she shouted. Nope, the dampening effect was probably related to the distance the sound traveled. She sat down and deactivated the spell. As the sounds of the palace returned around her, she considered it some more. It was certainly useful in some situations, but it wasn't nearly as practical as she had hoped. She imagined sneaking through the palace at night to kill Kavard. Yes, nobody would hear her footsteps, but she also wouldn't hear the guards running toward her.

"No..." She shook her head.

"I don't like that." The spell solved one problem while creating another. Fortunately, she could probably fix it. Her first thought was to replace Picos, diminution, with Veshar, obfuscation. The spell would be better adapted to stealth. Rather than reducing every sound equally, perhaps the spell could selectively hide only the sounds produced from within the area. The concept resembled her body-obfuscation spell enough that it might work.

She made a note in the margin for future experimentation before studying the rune itself again. Runic spells are more malleable because of the runes. Maybe a better design could get it done without the need to imprint a new spell. Her eyes lingered on the large Hishar symbol.

"Asatan. Tir. Kisar." Using her calligraphy spell, she shifted the ink into a different formation. The Tarasana and Kurur runes remained unchanged, but this time the Hishar symbol shifted from a single large rune to dozens of tiny ripples, each one written with smaller Hishar runes. The sound waves spread outward from the center before abruptly stopping at the boundary of the circle.

Outside the circle, however, another series of wave patterns flowed inward uninterrupted, passing through the border without resistance. One-way sound blockers. She really hoped they would work. She activated the second rune.

"Kisar. Picos. Hishar. Tarasana. Kurur." This time, the sounds of the castle didn't vanish immediately upon activation. Perfect. Now came the real test. Lira picked up a small paperweight and stood several steps away from the rune-covered paper resting on her desk. Then she tossed the heavy object. She expected a heavy thud when it struck the wooden desk, but no sound reached her ears. A grin slowly spread across her face.

"Perfect." She walked over to observe more closely, noticing a small dent in the wood, and decided to use an old book for testing instead. She repeated the experiment from multiple angles, yet every impact remained completely silent while the ordinary sounds from outside the library could still be heard. Lira couldn't help but smile. Prince Aric's spell had been impressive, but she couldn't help feeling that her own version was superior.

The runes allowed her to refine a spell and shift its original purpose into something far more suitable for her own needs.