Chương 207: 31. For Research Purposes

Vi and Allie are having a tiff. They've argued before, but usually they deal with it pretty quickly. Not this time, though—they can barely say two words to each other before they start fighting. I don't really get what makes this one so different, but it's also not my fucking problem. What it does mean is that I get plenty of time to myself to fuck around—I mean, conduct my magical experiments.

We're alone in our quarters—a little cabin attached to one of the houseboats with the bare minimum furnishing of a bed, a low table, and a cushion to sit on. A bit of a tight squeeze, but it's not bad, and most of our stuff is already packed up anyway. Hell, I don't think we ever bothered unpacking half of this shit. We haven't been here long, but we're already leaving soon. I guess we're really embracing the hobo lifestyle, huh? I should ask Fargo if he's got any expert bumming tips.

Not that I care where we go or who our enemies are. If Shaa wants to mess with us, then they can burn with the rest. Allie and Vi may be getting into mental self-flaggelation these days, but I'm done feeling bad about it. The first guy I killed deserved it, and the rest were pretty much all somewhere on the scale of "trying to fucking kill us" so to hell with them too. The only name on Allie's stupid list I give even a tiny shit about is Saban and that—well, it wasn't not my fault.

I'm the one that collapsed the cave on him, but collapsing the cave is what I was supposed to do. By the same logic, Vi refused to heal him, but she's right that putting either him or us out of the fight at that point would have killed us all. So maybe it's nobody's fault, but I still feel bad about that one. The rest, though? Fuck 'em! I guess there's Draga too, but none of that is on us.

We already turned the bitch who did it to dust, and if anybody wants to make a fuss about it, they can line right up for a taste of Eve's joy-buzzer of doom. Y'know, once we figure out how to cast it again. In the meantime, I've got the secrets of the cosmos to crack open. Our room's not really big enough to get a good pace on, but I give it my best shot anyway, tracing a circuit around the table. I enjoy the way the candle sitting on it casts my flickering shadow on the walls as I do—very ominous and sinister.

It's going to suck when we run out of these things. I wonder if there's a way to convince the others to go back to restock that wouldn't instantly end Allie and Vi's feud by making them both declare war on me. Eh, probably not. I'll just have to remember to save a few. For now, we've got enough magic stored up to work with, even after burning through a bunch of it on that giant monster, and that encounter also taught us that the unspent reserves make us light up like a beacon to anything with magical senses.

What I need now is to figure out how to use it. For big things, I mean—not the way we're already using it, which is as a reserve tank for spells. Permanent things. The hardest part is actually making things stick, but using the Alchemist's curse as a platform probably lets us shortcut that. Instead, my current spellcrafting conundrum is adding new aspects to an already active magical construct. Al called blessings and curses "modules." Components that can be added to and removed from one's interface with Engie.

If I generalize that idea, then I can think of the interface itself as one huge curse—albeit one that draws its magic from Engie rather than the people it's empowering. Modules, then, are just permanent or semi-permanent magical constructs which expand on that curse. And if you can attach modules to the biggest spell of all, then I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be possible to do so for smaller ones.

Completely freeform casting is still beyond my means, for now, but with a bit of practice I think I can see a path for modifying and repurposing existing spells on the fly. Maybe not skills yet, despite the fact that they are essentially the same thing. Skills are more rigidly formed than spells, which are more flexible by nature—like clay that's already been fired, maybe? Skills are defined by Engie, whereas spells are defined by their creators.

It leaves them more open to additional interpretation, which is probably why we have to reshape spells created by our headmates in order to cast them. What I want to do now, is do some similar reshaping after the spell has already been cast. Or more realistically while it's being cast—though for permanent or long lasting effects, that's basically the same thing. For that, I'm going to need some test subjects—a blessing that I can experiment with, and someone or something to apply it to.

Thankfully, I already have both to hand. Our adorable little Nip-nip is curled up on the table and eyeing up the candle with interest—an impressive feat for a creature with no eyes. It's hard to keep track of his size these days, since he keeps most of his biomass shunted into a higher dimension. Sometimes when he moves, it looks as if he's growing or shrinking, but that's just a trick of perspective caused by our sad little three dimensional perception.

"Come here, cutie," I whisper, coaxing him to slither up into my hands.

"Mommy's gonna do some experiments on you, hehehe."

"You better not hurt him, Mags," Allie warns me.

"Remember what Fargo told you." Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

"I know, Miss Killjoy," I groan.

"I'll be careful, I promise."

"I'm less worried about you hurting him on purpose than I am about your definition of careful." I wave off the whiny mosquito buzzing in my head. She doesn't have to remind me. When I made my first and only curse—so far—I gave it to Nipper right away in order to make him better at reading my signals. He gave me a real scolding about that, because critters like Nipper aren't good at managing the extra strain that comes from modules, and they're not smart enough to discard a blessing that they no longer need.

This should be totally safe, though. For one thing, my own [Magical Bond] lets me fuss with Nipper's interface, which should let me cancel blessings on his behalf if I need to. But also, the spell I'm going to be working with is already temporary. [Ignite Spirits] Light a fire in the hearts of those around you, granting them a temporary blessing that increases your Power, Resilience, and Will for each person that accepts. See? No problem.

Of course, that's Vi's spell, which means I'll have to remake it into my own version first. It also raises the question of whether Nipper counts as a person or not, but I'll worry about that once I see what my own interpretation ends up looking like. I close my eyes to focus, not so much to visualize the magic involved as to shut out other distractions. This will be the first time I've tried using a spell one of my headmates created, as I've mostly left Vi and Eve to worry about the more structured magic.

They've compared it to following a written recipe or set of instructions, but to me the magic is just magic. The magic of Vi's spell comes together to form a "shape," for lack of a better word, that's too complex for me to fully grasp, but I can make out bits and pieces around the edges if I narrow my focus. Annoyingly, this is a lot more like working with a skill than making a spell from scratch. I can see some of the components and how they fit together, but there's not much room for me to change things.

At its core, the spell forms connections. The nature of those connections—how they form and what they ask of those who accept them—is mostly static, the clay already fired. The only part I can still reach is how it connects back to me. But even then, there's not a whole lot I can do with it unless I have a far better understanding of the more complex body of the spell. So, what if I just do nothing? If that final connection is my opening to modify the spell, then let's just leave it open.

That doesn't mean it hasn't been modified, just that I've left the nature of that modification undefined and flexible. I don't think the modules I'm trying to create require this sort of opening, but it should make what I'm trying to accomplish much easier. It's a bit like training wheels on a bike. I can use the crutch to learn, then work my way up to doing without it. Satisfied with that idea, I set to work actually forming the spell into the proper shape.

It takes some finagling, as Engie would clearly prefer that loose connection to have a preset function, but all it takes is a bit of concentration and willpower to convince whatever inscrutable rules the divine mechanism follows that the spell is in fact finished and supposed to be like that.

A coppery tang in my mouth and trickle of warmth on my lip informs me that I've developed a nosebleed, but the words that form in my mind—almost hesitantly, I think—as I wipe my face on our cloak convince me that it's worth the pain. [Magdalena's Metamagic: Spreading Embers] Grant a temporary blessing to a willing entity that allows you to spread a single self-affecting skill or spell to them. Not quite what I was going for. Sort of backwards, even.

I was looking for a construct that I could practice attaching things to, but what I got was something that attaches to other spells. But does it matter which direction the connection is made from? Not really, no. A bridge is still a bridge, no matter which side of the river it's built from. Playing with the idea of casting it gives me the usual helpful intuitions about how it works—or at least how it's supposed to work.

I can probably maintain more than one instance of the spell if I want to, but unlike Vi's spell letting her draw strength from as many allies as she can reach, this one will add an extra burden for each target. It also only works with one spell or skill at a time, and no matter how many connections I make they will all use the same spell at the same time. No picking and choosing. Honestly, it's kind of limited.

I haven't made a lot of structured spells, and this one is the first I've bothered converting from Vi or Eve's repertoire. It works with skills though, the most obvious of which would be [Burning Innervation], which gives us a surge of strength in exchange for a nasty fever and wicked headache. But I wonder if I could make it work with [Magical Bond] or [Borrowed Power]. Shit, what about [Pyrothaumaturgy]? Does that count as self-affecting? Or even [Inner Flames]!

What would it even look like to grant the skill supporting our headmates to someone else? Probably nothing, my gut says, but that's quitter talk. This calls for experimentation, and Nipper is looking like less and less of a valid test subject the more I think about this. I need somebody who can actually report about the experience from their end. Someone who understands the underlying mechanics of magic and what it is I'm trying to actually do. Someone with cute white fur and an infectious enthusiasm for the stars.

Hopefully also a very open mind. Yes, for no reason in particular and definitely no ulterior motivations, nobody else will do but Talla for the next phase of my experiments. Purely for research purposes, of course. Now all I have to do is go find her. Outside somewhere. Probably around a bunch of strangers. Then ask her to willingly subject herself to my magical experiments—a perfectly normal request between friends, naturally. Ah fuck.