Libriohexer ~ 13!

Chapter Thirteen

A tsunami of unbridled energy came roaring out from Bill, screaming along Sam’s mana channels then tearing into his brain. It felt like magma was coursing through his veins while slivers of powdered glass had been injected directly into his skull. Sam tried to focus on his breath, but his lungs didn’t want to work properly. His eyes shot open as an involuntary scream was ripped from somewhere deep within his lungs. The glass shards inside his head morphed, the sharp pinpricks of pain transforming into a deep throb, threatening to explode his skull from the inside out.

In one last sudden burst, knowledge bloomed inside Sam’s mind. The pain vanished and a flood of new notifications flashed across his vision.

You have unlocked the following Spells:

Skill Gained: Auto Writing (Novice I): Hand cramps are no fun at all. Save yourself from a serious case of future carpal tunnel with the Auto Writing Spell! Use an Auto Writing rune to twin one Quill to another, allowing you to have a small army of enhanced quills carefully copying your every movement as you carefully write spell scrolls! After enchanting the Twined Quills, speak the Command Word, Copy Paste, to activate and deactivate the spell script. At Novice I, the spell caster may have up to two enchanted Quills deployed at a given time. Accuracy decreased by 5% for each enchanted quill utilized, increasing the risk of catastrophic spell failure.

Skill Gained: Transcription Twining (Novice I): Create a sympathetic bond between two sheets of paper, parchment, or vellum. Whatever is inscribed onto the first sheet will automatically appear on the second thanks to the transcription twining effect. This allows the caster to mass produce scrolls at an accelerated volume, though a mistake on one copy can lead to a mass ripple effect that can have devastating consequences. Additionally, all spell costs remain the same, so it is also possible to cause a mana chain that will instantly deplete the user’s core. Transcribe with care.

Production Cost: The material costs for all transcribed materials remains the same!

Casting Cost: The mana cost for all spells remains the same, multiplied by the number of concurrent spells being cast!

Skill Gained: Paper Homing Pigeon (Novice I): Write a short message (no more than 140 characters!) onto a regular piece of paper. When the spell caster whispers the magic command word, Tweet, along with the name of the intended recipient, the paper instantly folds itself into a paper pigeon and takes wing, seeking out its intended target at the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. Upon arrival at its intended recipient, the enchantment fades and the paper homing pigeon reverts, becoming a normal sheet of parchment once more.

Production Cost: 5 Mana per second until the incantation is completed or the attempt is failed. 1 sheet of paper, parchment, or vellum.

Casting Cost: 2n Mana where n=skill level (Paper-aligned magic). Cooldown: 1.5 seconds.

Skill Gained: Quill Wings (Novice I): Craft a specialty cloak of layered quills, which is magically bound to the caster. When the Command Word is invoked, the cloak instantly forms into a set of magical wings capable of holding the caster aloft in the air. The spell lasts for one hour or until the wings sustain irreparable damage, breaking the enchantment. During the spell duration, the caster can fly at the rate of their running speed, though the action costs stamina to stay aloft. This ability gives the spell caster greater advantage by elevating them above the battlefield, but it can also make them a target to ranged attacks. When the spell lapses, the quills return to the bound cloak.

Production Cost: 1,000 Mana Imbued Quills, 10 Mana per second until the incantation is completed or attempt is failed.

Casting Cost: 10n Mana where n=skill level (Paper-aligned magic). Cooldown: 8 hours.

Sam read over the descriptions of each spell carefully. His eyes lingered on the last one.

“Quill Wings?” his words were half question, half statement, and all amazement.

“Yeah,” Bill winked at him. “I figured with all the quills we’re gonna have thanks to the chicken farm, that one would be a good addition. I built that back when I still had a body. I hated always getting stuck at the back of the party, trying to lay down suppressive spell coverage with a bunch of tanks standing in my line of fire. So, I whipped that bad boy up. Float up above the fray. It’s got drawbacks, especially if you’re engaging ranged fighters, but it’s worth the risk. The other spells aren’t quite as flashy, but they are going to make our lives a thousand times easier. Auto-Writing and Transcription Twining are basically a production hack designed to be used together.

“You enchant a bunch of Quills using Auto-Writing, then when you write a spell, that same spell is written on two other sheets of parchment in the same instance. Instead of one fireball spell, you now have three. That wouldn’t normally be possible but, because you have the Coreless Spell Infusion ability, you can totally make it work. Also, because I’m lazy and I like to cheat, I further developed the Transcription Twining spell to make the process go even faster.” Bill laughed in delight as he imagined turning Sam into a one-man production line.

“You twin two sheets of paper, and whatever you write on the first ends up on the second. But you can also twin that second sheet to a third sheet, and the third sheet to a fourth. Never go past that though. The spell draws too much power and unbalances the whole chain. But, that still means instead of inscribing one fireball scroll at a time, you can inscribe twelve spell scrolls simultaneously… if you have the mana and skill to make it happen.”

“Divines above,” Sam whispered as he thought over the possibilities. “That’s incredible. It’ll save me so much time.”

“You better believe it. Once we unlock your Libriohexer spells, you’ll finally realize why you absolutely need these spells. Those bad boys are awesome, but they’re expensive. You’ll be able to summon Papier-Mache Guardians, and each one can cost up to a thousand sheets of parchment or vellum. A Book Golem? You don’t even want to know the price tag on that sucker. Worth it, though. But we have to get our Interspatial Library up and running first, and that…”

Here Bill faltered, “We’ll have to figure that one out. I was researching it back before the College apprehended me and sentenced me to bookification, but I never did iron out all the kinks. It’s definitely going to take some time.”

“I have no doubt we’ll figure it out,” Sam felt a burst of exhilaration in his chest. “In the meantime, I was hoping you could do a little research for me.”

He stood and stretched his legs, then moved into one of the stalls at the far end of the Pen. He was excited to try out his new assortment of spells, but the last thing he wanted was to accidentally blow up his fancy new chicken egg because of a slip of the pen or a moment of lapsed concentration.

Bill had access to the information of every book he’d ever gotten his metaphorical hands on, but storing that amount of information came with strings: he couldn’t recall it all at will, even though it was buried somewhere inside his head. “Specifically, I need you to scour your mental resources and see if you can recall anything about Chicken Farming. While you do that, I’m going to try my hand at some of my new spells and restock our spell inventory.”

Sam opened his Unending Flask and carefully pulled each item out of the spatial compartment, arranging them in orderly columns and rows so it would be easier to catalog. First came the paper, great stacks of finely pressed papyrus, high-grade parchment, and even more expensive vellum. All of those supplies didn’t come cheap, and though he was affording his habit by jotting off quick and dirty spell scrolls that he happily sold to the highest bidder, he was only making enough to break even at best. Moving that many spell scrolls was just too dangerous, even with Sphinx’s connections to the Upright Men: Ardania’s Thieves’ Guild equivalent.

Hopefully, that would all be changing soon.

Next, Sam added the book-binder tool kit to the growing pile of items: a wood-handled awl with a razor-sharp tip, a wolf-bone fold creaser, spools of waxed thread in various colors, several long, curved needles, and a glue brush with an accompanying glass bottle of epoxy. He also pulled free his ever-growing assortment of Quills. Quills of various sizes, types, and colors. Some made of osprey feathers with fine metal nibs, others meticulously crafted from hawk feathers sporting bone tips. The feather variations were many—peacock, eagle, falcon, vulture—the nib types just as varied—iron, gold, silver, bronze, jade, bone… diamond.

Although the differences might seem largely cosmetic to the uninitiated, the variety allowed Sam to write a wider variety of spells and make them more powerful at the same time. A decaying spell would be amplified by an onyx vulture quill with a specialized basilisk-bone nib. An air spell? Hawk feather with a crystal tip. A Phoenix feather with a bronze nub did wonders for both fire and restorative spells while Kelpie feathers with silver tips did the same for water.

Concentrating, Sam opened his mana channels and carefully invoked the spell to enchant two of his most trusty Quills with the Auto-Writing Spell.

“Copy Paste,” he whispered under his breath as energy poured out from his core, bringing the two quills to life. He watched with wonder as they floated in the air. He moved his quill and they responded in perfect sync. It might not have been big ‘kablooie’ magic, but it was very impressive in its own right. He lined up several sheets of parchment and performed the Transcription Twining spell, binding one to another to another to another. In a matter of seconds, all of the pages were twined and laid out in a neat grid before him.

Sam took a deep breath, steeling his nerves, and carefully put nib to parchment, writing out the simple instructions to create a Shuriken, then enhancing it with a fireball spell inscription. The motions were second nature—he’d written this spell a thousand times, at least—but the process was far more taxing on his core, since all twelve sheets were quickly covered in the same spell form. Overall, though, the results were nearly miraculous. He could normally produce a sheet a minute, and he’d just somehow managed to produce twelve in the same span. This was going to change everything, especially as he got more comfortable with the process.

Popping his neck and cracking his knuckles, Sam straightened his back, cleared his mind from distractions and set to work in earnest. His hands moved with a will of their own, guided by muscle memory as he flew through spell preparation. First, he focused on his Papier-Mache Mage, effortlessly tracing out the sacred geometry, inking the simple Spell Form onto the page, then sewing the loose sheaves together using a modified longstitch bookbinding technique. Refilling that tome normally took him close to an hour, but this time around he managed the task in ten minutes.

Grinning from ear to ear, Sam moved from project to project, working on autopilot while he thought. The time raced by, seconds stretching into minutes, minutes stretching into hours, while he replenished his dwindling stores until they were completely full again. He took a short break after three hours of steady work to stretch sore muscles and grab a quick bite to eat. Nothing fancy, just a little dried jerky and day-old bread, but it filled the void in his belly. While he munched Bill shared his findings, which, interestingly enough, also had to do with food.

“Fine,” Bill admitted as Sam snacked, “I’ll concede that maybe, maybe, there’s some merit to this crazy idea of yours then I originally thought.”

Apparently, Chicken Farming had some deep, deep roots stretching all the way back to the founding of Ardania. Turned out, as humble a profession as it may have seemed on the surface, Chicken Farming was actually big business. Sam’s hunch was right, it was possible to produce animals with magical properties and the big secret lay in their diet. What the animals ate mattered. A lot. If they were fed with rare ingredients or mana fortified foods, it could create genetic hybrids mimicking those same abilities. The process worked on cows and pigs—on any animal really—but big farm stock took a long time to raise and a lot of space to do it.

Not chickens… which made them one of the most valuable resources in the human Kingdom.

According to some old economic surveys Bill had pulled up, poultry and eggs made up over sixty percent of the protein the citizens of Ardania consumed. Even more staggering, a whopping eighty percent of mana-infused meats consisted of chicken and chicken byproducts. Bill had to concede that based on the figures alone—even if the surveys were years out of date—that Sam may have stumbled onto a very lucrative venture. It would be work, but they might just be able to get the resources they needed for the Interspatial Library and turn a very tidy profit while they were at it.

Bill dove back into his research while Sam settled in for another few hours of crafting. He’d refilled all of his tomes—save for his Rorschach Test, which still only had a single charge—when Velkan slipped into the room on soundless feet with a much louder Finn in tow.

“Divine above, but this place is bloody brilliant!” Finn marveled, looking around the Husbandry Pen. He spun in a slow circle, mouth agape. “I can’t believe this all belongs to us.”

“Not yet it doesn’t,” Sam stood and dusted his palms on his pants. “So far, we only have the Barracks and this area unlocked, but it’s a lot better than our old yurt. Especially the baths.”

“Praise be that we won’t have to use that old wooden tub anymore,” Finn agreed with a shudder. “Of all the things I miss about home, the indoor bathing and the gourmet food tops the list.”

“No luck with the food yet, but that’s only a matter of time. According to my Dungeon Compendium, the Irondowns do have a kitchen and if it's half as nice as the barracks, we should be able to find a chef in no time. But enough but this place,” Sam waved away Finn’s curiosity, “how was the trip into the city? Where’s Sphinx? Any problems?”

“Good, overall,” the hawkish boy replied. “Our dearest Sphinx has run off to these Totem training grounds to report into Dizzy, but I thought I’d linger around here for a bit. As for trouble, not so much as a whiff. The Mage’s College is still on high alert, but it seems as though some of the heat has died off with Octavius gone. That struck me as odd, to say the least, so Sphinx and I did a little poking around. Apparently, the College very much does not want to advertise the fact that they lost one of their most promising students to a rogue Warlock. Especially not a Warlock who raided their Library, stole a tome of incredible power-”

“Oh, go on, you,” Bill coquettishly teased.

“-and thumbed their nose at the whole of the College. It’s a bad look for them, and you know how Nobles are about maintaining appearances. So, they are looking, but quietly; even suppressing the news where they can. Even better, from what Sphinx and I were able to gather, you and I aren’t the only Warlocks on the College’s radar. They just started a city-wide manhunt for someone named Joe. Guy’s making serious waves, and much of their focus has shifted to him, especially since it seems he’s still hiding out somewhere in Ardania. A wonderful break for us, I must say. With some of the pressure off, Sphinx and I were able to slip into many of my former haunts and reach out to a few of Sphinx’s contacts within the Upright Men.”

Sam had many questions, but decided to start with what he needed. “Did you find out anything about the L.A.W.?” .

“So glad that you asked, because the answer is a resounding yes.” Finn reached into his robes and fished out a small leather diary, worn from hard use. “Ta-da! This belonged to Octavius. Part of the reason we were having such a difficult time understanding his blueprints is because they are encrypted.”

“Huh, makes total sense,” Bill looked eagerly at the book being waved about. “Mages are constantly trying to poach ideas or advancements from each other. It’s a dog-eat-dog world inside the halls of Academia, and that whole bunch would stab their own mothers in the back if it meant making a discovery that might help them climb the hierarchical ladder and get a shot at a tenured position. Even back in my day, we’d code our work to ensure no one could get their greasy little fingers on breakthroughs that didn’t belong to them.”

“Precisely,” Finn nodded in vigorous agreement. “Many of the core principles detailed on the blueprints are coded, but this is Octavius’s personal journal. One of Sphinx’s thiefly contacts managed to smuggle it out of his room at the College. It seems the key to deciphering the blueprints is located in a book called Magical Theory of Sympathetic Magic: Mastering the Arcane Forces of Spell Twining.”

Sam instantly recalled the thick volume. During his time at the College, he’d spent what felt like endless nights holding a flickering candle for Octavius while the older student poured over the book’s dusty pages.

“Since you destroyed Octavius’ Grimoire during our fight with him, we’ll need a copy of that particular tome to understand the spell forms necessary to link the towers once we have them built. But we’ll also need a copy to unlock the Blueprints themselves. Smuggling one out of the Infinity Athenaeum seems like an unlikely option, especially since the book may have been destroyed along with Octavius’ Grimoire, but through my contact network I’ve found that another copy of the work exists.”

“One of the Public Libraries run by the Scholars?” Bill wondered loudly.

“Right on the head, good sir book,” Finn glanced at the floating book with a hint of respect in his gaze. “Getting to the volume won’t be easy, but with a little help I think it should be possible. Don’t suppose you’d care to join me on a little jaunt into the city?”

Sam see-sawed his head from one side to the other. It was still early in the day and Dizzy and the others would likely be gone for several more hours at least. He quickly checked the countdown timer on his Prime Brood Egg and saw that he had a little more fifteen hours remaining until it hatched. If Finn’s suspicions were right, they would need a copy of this book, and Sam’s spells were mostly restocked, so now was as good a time as any to head back into the human capital. Besides, he wanted to pick up some gourmet ingredients for his chicken, and Ardania was the best place to do it.

“What have we got to lose?” Sam finally replied with a lopsided shrug. “Let me just let Dizzy and the others know what we’re up to.”

With a magician’s flourish, Sam pulled a single sheet of parchment from his Flask. He dashed off a quick note:

Dizz, off to the city with Finn. Will be back tomorrow. Also, got a new spell, in case you were wondering.

He leaned over and whispered the activation word into the sheet. Finn watched, confusion dancing across his face for a moment. That confusion morphed into wonder as the sheet of parchment in Sam’s hands lifted into the air and promptly folded itself into a delicate-looking paper bird that took wing and darted from the room in a flash.

“A few new upgrades,” Sam informed him with a playful wink.