The Abjurer: Chapter 40-41

We circled each other for a moment, waiting for one of us to make the first move and start the battle.

I snapped one of my knives off my belt and released a force spear at Osheen. Infused with the power of constellations, rather than just having the slight translucent color that most force spells had, it glowed a bright golden color.

Osheen’s tattoo lit up in response. His force armor appeared, and the artifact that I’d made him activated.

Water whipped around his armor in a whirlpool just before my spell crashed into it. The sparkling golden force of my spell broke and was dispersed by the whirlpool, spreading across the entire front half of the armor.

Osheen moved then, faster than usual. But it wasn’t the burst of extreme speed or strength that I’d come to recognize when he was using his force empowerment tattoo. No, instead he was moving smoothly, a flowing river rather than an exploding bullet.

I triggered the force enhancement in my cloak and tried to shoot backwards, but he triggered his own spell. Under the power of both of them, he was far faster than I was.

No matter which way I moved, he could reach me. I saw that in my future sight, and he doubtless saw the same.

So I snapped up my earthen ram knife and fired it. Earth tore away from under Osheen’s feet, launching up at him. He saw the attack coming, and chose to take it head on, which was where I was able to take the advantage.

Both of us were running the future sight spell, and I knew if I'd been fighting Tara, I knew this trick wouldn’t have worked. But I’d been using the spell for close to a year now, while Osheen was a rank beginner in it.

As he empowered his force armor to take the hit head on, I flung the two blades at him. They pinged off harmlessly, of course – I might have been a half-decent knife thrower, but I wasn’t anywhere near the skill level needed to punch through Osheen’s armor.

But as soon as the danger was apparently gone, Osheen dropped his force armor to save aura, and I activated the recall function.

Both of the knives flipped out of the floor and shot back towards me. Osheen must have seen the flash of sudden danger, but he wasn’t quite used to the spell, and was an instant too slow.

The knives struck the water armor, which was the only reason they were thrown off course – I wasn’t going to injure my boyfriend on purpose with knives.

But as Osheen was distracted by that sudden future, I pointed my bear force wave blade at him and said “boom”.

Osheen jerked and looked up at me, then laughed as the knives finished flying back into the sheathes they had on my belt.

“Fair enough. I need to get a handle on scanning through different futures for danger.”

“It’s easy to get caught up on focusing on one future at a time,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

Osheen nodded, actually not seeming discouraged, but rather invested and interested.

“Another round?” he asked.

We went through rounds until my enchantments were wrung dry – the recharging belt gave some extra casts of my spells, but it didn’t instantly bridge the gap of power between Osheen and me. My staff might have, but Mellt’s cage proved to be every bit as effective as promised.

The following day, I set out to visit Hallowbrooke, while Osheen was in class. It did mean I was technically skipping two of my own classes, but Travis was running low on material he was willing to teach me. He’d suggested moving onto the theory of imbued items, but I’d harshly rebuffed him. After that, he’d suggested foci, but it was half hearted – we both knew my interests there were minimal there, and with my new arch-star, I thought it was even less wise, since there were good odds I’d wind up sacrificing work I did on my aura, and having a tool whose power was completely inconsistent felt unwise.

In Hallowbrooke, I headed to Clara’s bookstore. The large woman smiled when she saw me.

“No Osheen today?” she asked, and I shook my head.

“Not today, I’m afraid. I actually came here because I need a ligature knot.”

Clara’s eyes went slightly distant, and I suspected that she was using her third eye.

“You haven’t lost yours, is there a reason why?”

“It’s for an enchantment,” I said. “I’m using it to set up…”

I glanced around.

“Should we move upstairs? The wards there are stronger, right? I don’t want someone in my classes to steal my designs.”

I actually was worried about a lot more than that, but I was fairly confident that if someone was watching, that would be sufficient reason to shed suspicion.

We headed upstairs, and I had to laugh at my previous self – once upon a time, I would have worried about the potential impropriety there, but after seeing the fae and Zheren, my standards had shifted away from Paerús’ conservative values.

“So, I’m setting up an armor spell to take on Frank,” I said.

“Frank?”

“Archmage Roark,” I said. “Draven called him Frank, and I thought it was actually kinda funny, and did a good job of minimizing the threat in my mind. But… I’m working on a seven sets of seven spell.”

Clara’s eyebrows crept up.

“Seven of seven? Even my shop is a three of three, and it’s top of the line.”

“Oh, you’ve made three-dimensional spells before?” I asked. Maybe I should have consulted Clara.

“Three…” Clara trailed off mid sentence, then shook her head. “Evan, you know that most witches don’t even look at that sort of thing until they’ve been working for a few decades? But yes, I have a little experience. I set mine up as a cylinder, with a top half, bottom half, and a metafunction in the center.”

“Oh, can I see the design?” I said, pulling my journal from my satchel. “I’d love to exchange pointers. I’m using a metafunction set in mine too.”

It took Clara a while to fish out the designs, and she insisted on us sending our designs to the Ligature, which I accepted.

Most of her magic was completely arcane to me – the top half of the cylinder was clearly the spatial warping spells, while the bottom half was clearly warding, and I’d not studied either of them. The middle functions, however, I understood – one was just a memory bank that was focused on the aura signature of different people, one let you add to the wards, and the last allowed spells to draw on ambient aura as well as stored aura.

There was no way to remove people, which struck me as foolish, but I didn’t say that. Instead, I focused on the spell Clara had nested inside the middle of the meta functions.

“What’s this?” I asked. Clara glanced at it and frowned.

“That’s just a directory spell. You haven’t used them?”

“Nope,” I said, studying it.

“Really? Foci use them all the time, they’re one of the most established ways of making foci that can change. It’s just creating pre-set pathways within the spell itself, so that you don’t have to rely on raw aura manipulation to switch between functions.”

Huh.

That would have been useful on the staff that Victoria and I had built last summer. Come to think of it, I wasn’t actually sure that she hadn’t used one – I hadn’t paid much attention to that half, I was too focused on the aura marking system I’d been making.

I wondered why Osheen hadn’t recommended it to me, then I dismissed it. Why would he? He probably never had to worry about that sort of spell, since sorcery required absurd aura shaping skills.

Still, as a nested function for the meta-functions, it was very useful. It could even create a sort of balance, if I did it right. Two sympathetic links, two power increasing functions, two growth spells, and then one directory spell made for a single point at the center of the sphere, with three smaller spheres around it…

I shook myself out of my thoughts as I compared my notes with Clara and explained why I needed the ligature knot.

“Interesting,” she said, looking at the abjuration arrays that would help me block out planar interference. “I was never much of one for abjuration – it’s too… Strange… For me. But I think I can manage to give you one, since it’s going to a good cause.”

I let out a sigh of relief. I’d half been expecting to have to bargain for the knot. Perhaps I’d simply been spending too much time among the fae…

I spent a bit more time with Clara, and suggested a few ways she might be able to expand to a five sets of five defenses for her shop before I headed back to Yesgol for lunch with Osheen.

At lunch, Liam handed me a bundle of papers.

“Here you go,” he said.

It took me a moment to realize what they were – the documents of clock towers.

“Apparently there’s a lot of variance, depending on what company built them, but there are a few broad strokes that most have in common, so they gave you as many notes as they could. Both of them thought turning a clock tower into a mage’s tower was interesting as a project, though, and if you’re interested in cooperating with them, they’re open to it.”

I took the papers with a guilty look on my face, and Liam must have misunderstood it, because he held up a hand.

“No pressure if you’ve already got someone in mind.”

I just nodded and glanced down at the papers, then up at Liam, then at Osheen.

“I want to try,” I said. “I’ve some theories.”

“It’s too risky,” Osheen said.

“Huh?” Liam asked.

“It’s less risky than trying it on a mass scale. This way, worst case, it can be explained away. And if I fail to complete the spell within a year and fix it, then at least someone else will know.”

“What are you talking about?” Liam asked.

“Compacts,” I said, and Liam’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded.

Osheen frowned, bit his lip, then glanced at Liam, then at me.

“Fine, just… Be careful. Also, cuz of how my compact is phrased, I need to swear a compact with you Liam. About anything. My oath just says I’ll bind anyone who learns into a compact.”

Liam just blinked, and then held up his hand, his aura lighting itself and swirling to meet Osheen’s. They swore a compact to not steal breakfast from the other tomorrow, and then I waved to Liam.

“Just explain to Lyn and Sarai I got caught up with magic,” I said. I did feel a bit guilty about leaving Osheen to delve into this, but I also felt guilty about the implied untruths that I’d told Liam – he hadn’t done anything to me.

Osheen snorted and nodded.

I led Liam to Osheen and my room and locked the door behind us. He was instantly on edge, and I couldn’t blame him.

I headed to one of my papers and started writing out a divination spell I’d learned the year before, one that was involved in the creation and accessing of memories.

When I’d sworn an oath to Franklin Roark, I’d left myself a small loophole. I hadn’t even realized that I’d done it, not at the time, I’d been in a state of panic and repeating words verbatim.

But I had said "I will not reveal a single thing that you learned or saw here today to anyone not already in the know”, rather than “ "I will not reveal a single thing that I learned or saw here today to anyone not already in the know”.

Franklin Roark had learned a few things that day, like how I’d broken into the Hawthorne family library.

But he hadn’t learned about the ritual sacrifice. He already knew about that.

This was a tenuous thread to hang on – as I’d told Osheen earlier in the year, I was willing to destroy my aura if I had to, in order to get the truth out.

But I had no idea when I’d be able to kill Roark, and indeed, even if I’d succeed. And I wanted to make sure there was someone out there who knew the truth. Maybe it was my brush with death in Medb’s castle, or the fear that I’d fail, or simple guilt, but…

I wanted someone else to know the truth. Even if it was a risk.

~~~

As I worked on writing out the spell, I glanced to Liam.

“This is a memory spell, do you know much about them?”

“Not really,” he said, shaking his head. “But I assume I’ll see some of your memories?”

“Indeed,” I said, shaking slightly. “This is why I wanted the clock tower schematics. To cast this on a massive space. I will tell everyone, even if it kills me. But in case it doesn’t… I want you to know. You should also talk to Clara, she runs a shop in Hallowbrooke. Maybe see about getting a familiar from her, with my recommendation.”

“I have been thinking about getting another familiar,” Liam acknowledged. “Alright.”

“This is dangerous information,” I said. “If you want to back out, this is your chance. There’s no pressure. But I wanted to give you the opportunity to learn the truth.”

“The truth about what?” he asked.

“Our nation,” I said.

He thought it over for several moments, which gave me time to finish the spell and let it start charging up.

It was a simple spell, so it didn’t take too long to charge, especially with me dumping as much of my aura into it to hurry the process as I could. Liam even stepped over to donate some of his own aura, though he didn’t accept.

Finally, he nodded.

“I want to know. Even if it’s dangerous.”

“Then put your hand there,” I said, pointing to a spot in the spell. He did, and I put mine on a separate part of the spell.

I closed my eyes and let the spell and memories take me.

I was standing on the mountain, looking at the pillars of aura that flowed around each noble estate.

I was in the forest, following a trail of aura through the forest with the spell Tara and I had devised.

I headed into the crypt. I saw the spell. The image lingered there, letting Liam get a good look at it before the vision eventually cut off.

I was back in my body, and I shifted my aura around, making sure that the compact I’d sworn was still in place.

It was, and I let out a long, slow sigh of relief, then looked at Liam.

His face was pale.

“Is that…”

“Human sacrifice being used to power the aura pillars, which in turn propagate the system.”

“But the power they provide could be used to… Oh. Is that how the aura of nobles is so much stronger? They boost themselves with people who refuse to join in their system, those who die in training accidents… I did think it was unusual that everyone said that magic was dangerous, but most spell failure is relatively annoying, not deadly.”

“Yes,” I said.

“What now?” Liam asked.

I held up the papers he’d given me.

“I’m working on a plan to spread the information,” I said. “And a mentor also is planning on doing something with the same spells, but I’m less sure. Tara is her name. If I do go faerie… Can you talk to her? Help her?”

“Of course,” he said seriously. “If you need help setting up the spells…”

“Thank you,” I said, then grinned. “I will still make you that bracer, though, over the summer probably.”

We headed back down, and I suffered some barbs from Lyn about being more dedicated to work than my boyfriend, which annoyed me more than I let on, but I did my best to ignore.

After the meal and the next class, Tara, Osheen, and I moved to my deeproot lab and started setting up my spell.

Tara started by modifying the wards that were already emplaced on the space, adding privacy sections, while I stitched, and Osheen used his force empowerment to lug materials in, Brigette helping him – for being a bird, she was absurdly strong.

Seven spells needed to be set up, and would serve as a part of a greater whole, and the easiest way to make them into a sphere like I needed was wood.

It was relatively easy to take the bodies of felled trees and use alteration spells to bend them into six curved, equal logs, with a single straight log in the center – both for balance, and for the pillar that would hold the meta functions.

Tara did those spells, while I continued to stitch, and Osheen moved on to burning the rune layouts in the wood, following exact guides in my journal. Occasionally, he burned deeper into the wood and used a knife to make room for the components – I’d decided that I’d be using seven magical components for each one of the spells, which meant he needed forty nine hollows in this log alone.

That day, we only managed to get halfway through one of the logs.

This one in particular would hold the mind bubble, ghost plate, luck and spatial armor, iron and assassin’s cloak, and the area of bad luck, with sympathetic linking serving  as the spell within those seven.

I was pretty sure that just that one set, once complete, would be infinitely stronger than the fivefold defense I’d had the last time I’d faced Franklin.

Over the next two weeks, we finished that log, and two others.

One of those others held my freestand scrying, rune detection, future sight, force enhancement, life enhancement, flight, and a temporal acceleration spell from Tara, as well as a sympathetic linking spell, while the other was the central metafunction pillar.

I’d been stumped on that one for a while. Travis’ selective mental spell took up three of the seven functions, and I’d wanted to add my recharge swapping spell and the modular ward in, which made five. There was the funneling function that would let spells broken down by abjuration be placed into the spell bottles – or, well, spell pockets – making six.

Finally, I’d settled on a quasi-independent power bank for the seventh function. It was bland, but if I wanted this to match up to Tara’s archmage killing suit, I’d need a lot of power.

The spell within those seven spells was a variation of the directory spell that Clara had used, which would actually save me on needing to hang up massive amounts of string, like Tara had, and would increase the overall efficacy of the enchantment.

The morning we would have started work on the fourth log, however, I got a gentle reminder that I was technically still in school, even if it didn’t feel like it.

“All students, please report to the auditorium in the top branch one thirteen for the arrival of Eira Talik. I repeat, all students…”

I glanced at Osheen, who had pulled a pillow over his face. I pulled it off of him and furrowed my brows.

“Wait, is it already almost time for the tournament?” I asked him.

He said something that sounded like eleven, but was probably my name. After blinking several times and stretching, he looked at me.

“How are you up and moving so instantly…?”

“I get up at fifth bell in the morning every other weekday,” I said. “Are you really surprised that I’m up? Plus, I’ve always been a morning person. You get ready, I’ll run down and grab us some breakfast, and we can meet on the way to the branch?”

Osheen gave me a sleepy nod, and I had to basically poke him out of bed and to the bathroom before I left to go get bagels.

When we met up again, he was looking much more put together, and I handed him his bagel, which was covered in cream cheese, pickles, smoked haddock, and dill, while munching on my own butter and jam bagel.

“I can’t believe it’s already almost time for the tournament,” I said to Osheen, who took several bites before responding.

“Are you? You’ve done a ton of enchanting work this semester. Not as… Frantic… as last semester. You’ve spent a lot more time with me – which I have noticed and do appreciate, by the way. But you have done… A lot.”

“I guess,” I said with a noncommittal shrug. “I don’t feel like I’ve crammed as much in, though.”

Osheen just gave me a look at that, and we waited to be funneled into the large stadium.

Honestly, I wasn’t the most interested in this year’s tournament. I’d like to win it, sure – maybe I’d finally be able to get rid of my debt, which I’d been hoping to do since the very first tournament of my first year.

But with the need to kill Franklin Roark to save myself from turning into a faerie, my plan to expose the broken system we were living in, and the complexities of the spells I was building?

It just felt petty to be invested in a tournament.

I hoped I’d win, but I doubted it. George had his strange red light, which had definitely been an archmage level artifact, and I had no doubt he could build or buy more. Liam was a powerful and skilled necromancer. And there was always that druidic powerhouse who’d won in our first year, the ice mage Theo, and plenty of others.

I was, however, mildly curious how Eira Talik was going to make an appearance. Frank had his giant pillar of fire, and the king had used the floating platform… Eira was a druid, though.

I didn’t have to wait long to find out. As we took our seats, clouds began to roll over the sky. A few droplets fell, and the weather wards over the top of the stadium activated to push them away.

More droplets fell, and the sky cracked with thunder. Flashes of lightning started off spread apart, but gradually grew closer together, until the entire stadium was rapidly flashing under the light of the bursts.

Then the ward exploded. A lightning bolt, easily the thickness of an entire cart, smashed through it. Instead of vanishing, however, the lightning stayed, more power coursing through the area for four seconds.

Four seconds doesn’t seem like a lot of time, not really. But forced to sit there, staring at the bolt as it lingered, with nothing else in my mind, it took much more time than it seemed like it should have.

Then the lightning was gone, and hovering in the air was a woman who could only be Eira Talik.

I’d seen her once before, with her satyr features, but they were almost completely warped.

Instead of hands, she had broad wings.

And I do mean broad.

The full wingspan was hard for me to measure, but easily larger than five men standing on each other’s shoulders.

The feathers were a tawny brown and white color, and lightning crackled between each of them.

Instead of feet, she had long, sharp bird feet, with thick claws that were absolutely those of a predator, and between the talons, a web of crackling lightning flickered. Oracle and Bridgette both leaned back upon seeing that, and I scratched Oracle between his horns to try and calm him down.

“Thank you, one and all,” Eira called out, and the wind swept around the stadium, carrying her words to everyone, “for my warm welcome back to Yesgol! I am proud to be the facilitator of this years tournament.”

I barely heard her. I was too busy staring.

She had fused with her infamous thunderbird somehow. I didn’t know how, but she’d managed the same feat as Osheen’s father.

I flickered open my third eye and focused on her face. Oracle slipped back into my aura and helped me focus.

Sure enough, the fifth of her arch-stars was different than Draven or Tara’s had been.

Eira Talik didn’t have mage sight.

She had another power.

There were other pinnacle arch-stars.

I sucked in a deep breath, stunned by the revelation. Did Tara even know about this? There was no way she could. Could she?

And Eira was demonstrating this power so publicly. There had to be ramifications there, I just didn’t understand them.

I was only snapped out of my revelry by Osheen poking me.

“Listen,” he said. “She’s about to announce the third year tournament structure.”