The Restored: Chapter Twenty

Kelly reached within himself and began creating the most impressive spells he knew. 

It was one of the spells that his father’s friend, the one who had given him the mind rune bond, had left in the tattered, old, half-ripped apart spellbook, but it was one that Kelly had largely overlooked. It hadn’t ever been especially useful for survival in the same way that invisifields were to sneak groceries out from under a shopkeeper’s nose, or creating mental illusions could be used to distract someone and give him time to run away. 

Of course, if that had been the only reason, he probably would have still worked on casting it. If nothing else, it might have been able to prevent some of the issues with his old landlord. 

The other reason he’d overlooked it was the absurd complexity. Most mind spells were shockingly simple, at least when looking at the spell formulas that were used. The difficulty in mental illusions didn’t come from complex shaped spells. 

It came from maintaining all of the crafted images in his third eye, while sensing all minds in range, and projecting it out to them, all while factoring in things like angles, light, and shadows for the other minds. It didn’t need to be perfect – the mind could often fill in some small gaps. But any major flaws could be just as bad as shouting that it was fake from the top of your lungs. 

Getting the ability to sense minds from his new arch-star had been a massive boon, and it had advanced his ability to hold complex illusions by leaps and bounds, but it still wouldn’t have been enough to let him cast this spell.

Because unlike mental illusions or invisibility, the influence emotions spell was one of the most complex bits of magic that a sorcerer could cast. 

Before his relationship with Axel and Rhys, he wouldn’t have been able to do it at all. Kelly wasn’t sure exactly what to call his benefactors, honestly. They weren’t his father, and neither one had pretended to be or asked him to call them dad, but they were doing a lot of the same things. 

They had protected him: Rhys had opened his apartment to let him stay there, and Axel had almost thrown an entire apartment building at his old landlord. 

They had provided for him: Rhys had bought tons of food for him and made it so that he didn’t need to steal to get by, and Axel had gotten him out of jail and had the fines paid off. 

And they had taught him, tutoring him in magic, which was how he was able to get a start on this spell. According to Rhys, it was the sort of thing that a college graduate would be expected to whip up on the fly, and not the sort of thing that a two-bit street rat would ever be expected to be capable of casting. 

Some of the tutored lessons on magic that Rhys had given him did a lot to help Kelly break down the runes and linework, in order to get a better grip on the way it worked, the constant, protean, often contradictory power that was emotions. 

Joy and sorrow were opposites, but the world wasn’t a sorcereric knights board, where you could cancel out your opponent’s fire sorcerer just by using a water sorcerer. In the same way, messing with emotions wasn’t as simple as just making one bit stronger and the rest weaker. Opposing emotions had to be worked together, not as two distinct things, but as one weave. 

Rhys had used the analogy of baking. If you had the ingredients measured to make bread, but wanted to make buns, it wasn’t just a matter of adding more yeast to make bubbles – every other bit of the rest of the recipe had to change with it, the method had to change, and 

Kelly wasn’t sure he followed the logic there – to him, it was more like painting. If there was already a bunch of black on the canvas, then turning it into a bright yellow sunshine painting wasn’t as simple as just dumping yellow onto things. You could, but then you’d be adding so much paint that the black wasn’t there at all, which would be breaking the mind to force it to feel happy. 

Neither analogy was quite right, and even now, Kelly wasn’t sure he understood the entirety of the spell to influence emotions. Even with Rhys’ help, Kelly wouldn’t have been able to cast the spell, because being able to understand it still didn't help with being able to shift his aura into such a complex shape that it matched the shape within his mind’s eye. 

That was where Axel’s help came in. He’d shown Kelly a lot of techniques for manipulation of his aura, building up his willpower’s dexterity when it came to shaping runes, and had shown him just how useful a familiar bond could be, if it was pushed to the limits. 

His own familiar’s power, second harvest, allowed him to let go of a spell in his mind’s eye, and it would linger, as long as he kept pumping aura through its structure. A very solid power – a bit more situational than some, but it was thanks to Axel’s comments on how he infused his own spells that Kelly had figured out his current plan. 

Even with the increased shaping ability and understanding of the spell, influence emotion was the kind of complex that should have still been out of reach for him. A few lessons in their spare time, even from really skilled people, wasn’t enough to turn him into some kind of master mind sorcerer. 

But it did teach him how to cheat. 

The moment he was done constructing half the spell, which was his current limit in terms of shaping skill, he let go. Second harvest kicked in, and the green light of his fox familiar flowed through, stabilizing the spell for another moment. Kelly poured Aura into the magic, then started shaping the second half of the spell. 

When he was finished, the two halves of the spell clicked together, and he spun his magic through the completed structure. He released it, and second harvest treated it as a single new spell, which he flowed power through. 

He opened his eyes, the completed influence emotion spell hanging in the air around him invisibly, and grinned. 

“Told you I could do it.” 

“Bull,” Jin responded. “You’re just pretending to do it so I have to admit I’m wrong.” 

Kelly rolled his eyes at her and scoffed, then focused on their mark.

Not the Central Aura Depository. That entire bank was absolutely massive, occupying eight floors of one of the buildings, as well as two or three basement levels. It ate up the entire floor, too, meaning that if they wanted to keep an eye on all eight of the floors, they needed to get up high. 

Which was why they were in one of the viewing platforms on the eightieth floor, across from an airship maintenance dock entryway, and waiting for their opportunity. Jin could have flown them to the top of the building, where the airships were anchored, and broken in, but that would have had some major downsides. 

When she had been possessed by Veriotix, she would have done it anyways. She was able to pass through force wards, and could rip through their steel defenses with the might of her metallic magic. If there had been alarm wards, she’d have to reshape the metal to fizzle the right runes out before they could go off, then put them back in place and allow the aura generator to connect them, which was extremely delicate and difficult, but she thought she could have done it. 

Now, Cythraul advised her, and she was able to acknowledge that there were a lot of problems with that plan, not the least of which was that she didn’t have the flicker ability of Veriotix that had let her turn her spells off and back on again rapidly to avoid and evade force wards. She could still work to do it through manipulation of her aura, but it took a lot more work, and she risked messing up her body by messing with her acceleration like that without a demon to smooth things over. 

It was like she’d told Kelly – her familiar ability had let her pass through force wards. Had. It didn’t anymore. 

And perhaps more importantly, after everything that had happened, her unshakeable self confidence had been shaken. Cythraul had spoken to her about her pride and arrogance, and even if it grated on her, the faerie-turned-demon was right that it had held onto her. 

They could have flown up and hovered, but then it would have only been a matter of time before a constable came over and asked why a pair of teenagers were near an airship tether. It wasn’t like Kelly was able to make them invisible to an entire city. 

No, they needed a more delicate solution, so they’d taken a position where she could watch most of the Depository, at least until Kelly could get them into the airships

 which was why Kelly used his sense mind archstar to hit the guard with the influence emotion spell. He held his breath, terrified that this would set off some sort of ward, but… nothing. 

He let out a sigh of relief, though he was a bit surprised there weren’t any mental barriers or alarms against mind magic.

If Rhys, Axel, or Hadiya was there, they would have been able to explain that Kelly’s rather unique method of disjointed casting his mental spells through mind sense, with no mental tether spell, was why. Among mortals, Kelly was an extreme oddity for his ability to disjoint so casually. Even among beings of the Dreamscape, the Faerie Sovereignties, or the Fallen Void, it was quite the uncommon skill. 

As such, most wards to detect and prevent mental intrusion in the city were simply made around altering that sort of anchor. Few enough bothered to wrap their entire mind in a bubble unless they were paranoid of mental attacks, like some of the warmongering northerners.

Neither Kelly nor Jin knew that, though, so they just chalked it up to luck, as Kelly got to work.

He needed to go subtly, to turn up the apathy about his job without also dulling the pain of grief from whatever the guard had going on, or dampening the traumas nestled in. Reducing the weight of either of those would have almost certainly alerted the guard to what was going on. After all, suddenly feeling extremely apathetic to your own past and grief in the midst of wallowing in it would be quite jarring. 

He needed to work in that instance of conflicting extremes, to allow the guard to feel the depths of all emotions, while also feeling extremely uncaring towards certain other things – namely, work. 

Then he needed to normalize the presence of Jin and Kelly to the guard’s mind, all without altering their apathy or touching their grief, while also layering on a mental illusion to make them look older, but doing it gradually, so the guard wouldn’t be shocked by it.

As Jin watched from the windows, placing birdwatching binoculars to her face to stay on the lookout for any sight of Alyphize or the Arenamaster, Kelly worked. 

After about thirty minutes, Kelly nodded, and the pair walked into the office. Kelly held up an illusion of a badge and spoke with confidence, projecting a degree of self importance and even pompousness. 

“Inspection for the ship. Please put us through.” 

The guard, primed into not caring about anything work related right now, slapped the button to disable the wards, and the pair marched through the gate, and up the stairs to the roof, where they strode towards the ship hanging in the air. 

It was long and elegant, with the kind of light armoring that most airships meant for high speed travel and trade had, but it was clearly outfitted for war, and looked like it had been through a battle with a whole fleet of air pirates. There were burns, dents, oil slicks, sanded down spots, and more. Despite that, the armor seemed to have held up far more than Jin would have ever expected – Kelly had no experience with warships, so he had no frame of reference for that sort of thing. The bronze looked oddly dull and darkened, like it had been mixed with building steel. Maybe that was why? 

There were six canons on either side of the ship, but neither Kelly nor Jin really paid them any attention, as their eyes were drawn to the far more impressive spell-spike that rotated around the front of the ship, glowing with runes for force, fire, and lightning, burning in a grayish aura that both of them found oddly familiar, though neither one could place why, exactly. 

Jin let out a whistle of appreciation, and Kelly nodded, 

“Is it empty?” 

“Yeah. Wait. No? Yes? Yes. There aren’t any human minds aboard the ship, but inside of the cargo bay, there’s something weird. I’m guessing they’ve got some sort of caged animal or something like that?” 

“As long as it’s not a person,” Jin said, waving her hand and lifting them into the air by their belts while unlocking the door to the ship. 

They landed, and with their new, aerial view of the building, were able to see it from all sides. Kelly pulled out binoculars of his own, and the pair began scanning for any sight of their targets.