The Abjurer: Chapters 5-6

“What happened?” Osheen asked when he saw me.

“Just frustrated,” I said. “I’m running into a power problem.”

“Evan, do you remember when you got mad at me in our first year, because I kept urging you to relax, but you needed to catch up?” Osheen asked.

“Yes?” I said, confused.

“Well, you weren’t able to fire your flame orb spell many times back then. How many times could you fire it now?”

“Probably one or two times more?” I guessed. “I haven’t used foci much, or done any serious Aura training. And it’s not like I’m going to use potions for it.”

“And yet, I wouldn’t want to fight you,” Osheen said. “You were the turning point for our battle against the most combat capable team last year. If it had been Victoria, or Lyn, or anyone else, we wouldn’t have won.”

“You don’t kn–” I started to say.

“Oh shush,” he said teasingly. “Maybe they might have come up with something. But you did come up with something. That’s kind of the whole point.”

I smiled at him. It didn’t fix my problem, not in the slightest, but it did make me feel a bit better.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Course,” Osheen said.

“So, how are your courses going?” I asked.

“Pretty good,” he said. “My ability to sense flame has made my manipulation of it much better, and I’m not as concerned about burning myself when I can sense how close or far it is.”

“Good!” I said.

“I also asked Armond about Fae,” he said. “He confirmed that mortal magic can still put a stop to the effects of Fae magic, even if we use different spells. He once turned a fae blade back on its wielder. Both were using metal magic on the blade, fae and human, but it was still contested between them.”

I nodded. That was good to know. Abjuration still wouldn’t be of any use for it, unless the spell included Fae runes, but luckily I knew a handful of those, and I would look through the library and talk to Seth to see if I could learn some more.

Speaking of, I should ask him about the artifact that I’d gotten from Roark. I knew the communication function, but there were others I didn’t know.

“That was smart to ask,” I said, and he smiled.

“Thanks,” he said.

We entered the lunchroom then, and Lyn and Sarai walked up to us.

I winced, uncertain. We’d beaten them two tournaments in a row now, and after how bitter Lyn had been from the first, I wasn’t sure how she’d be this one.

“You two are official, then?” Osheen asked.

It was only then that I noticed that the pair was holding hands. I blinked.

“Wait, you two are together?”

Sarai through her head back and laughed at that, and Lyn smiled.

“Yes, Evan,” she said. “We’re together. Officially now. But did you really not notice that?”

My mind ran through everything I knew about them. I thought I remembered they’d shared a room in the first year, but I hadn’t really thought about it.

“I,” I said, floundering. “I, um… No, I didn’t.”

Osheen squeezed my hand.

“Good for you two,” he said. “You finally wore your mother down, then?”

“No,” Sarai said, “after two terrible showings and barely passing the years, I’ve been relegated to the most minor of the branch families, the same one my uncle is in. And it’s so minor they don’t really care!”

Her sharklike grin made me think she was happy about it, but Lyn’s stoicism made me guess there was more to the story.

“So, how are your classes so far?” Lyn asked me while Sarai and Osheen ran to get us some food. She sounded a bit awkward, but I guessed she was still working to try to repair our friendship.

“Decent. I’m running into the problem of not having enough space on a staff to fit all the capacitors I want, but I’m wondering if I may be able to learn something about that in the crafts club” I said. “How about you?”

“Oh, you’re joining the crafts club too? Nice! I’m doing fairly well,” she said. “Lightning and metal go together well, so I’ve got a lot of combination spells there. But incorporating force is a bit harder.”

“Try casting two spells, then including a sympathetic linking, maybe?” I suggested.

“A what?” she asked.

I reached into my bag and withdrew my journal, then showed her the design for the curse glove.

“I used it with a lightning spell and a curse spell, but I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t do it with some of your spells.”

She stared at it, then frowned.

“What… is it?”

“Sympathetic magic?” I asked.

“Yeah, it doesn’t resemble any spell I’ve ever cast.”

“It shares principles with charm magic and divination,” I said. “It deals with conceptual things.”

“Huh,” she said. “I guess I’ll give it a shot at least.”

Osheen and Sarai returned then and put some plates down.

“Are you two open to doing some training this year?” Osheen asked. “I could use a good sparring partner, and you all were really impressive last year.”

“What, am I not a proper training partner for you?” I asked, giving Osheen a teasing smile.

“You’re an amazing partner in a fight,” he said.

“That’s not what I said,” I said, sticking my tongue out.

“Stop flirting you two!” Sarai complained, but she was grinning. “But sure, I’d be open to doing some training. I’m probably gonna quit after this year. I’ll have gotten Adept certifications in at least my basic classes, and that’s good enough for me.”

“We’re actually thinking about leaving too,” I said. “What are you thinking about doing after?”

“We’re both joining the military,” Lyn said, “I can start as a Captain thanks to my performance in the last tournament, and Lyn’s got an offer for a Second Lieutenant position.”

“Ah, that’s nice,” I said, though I honestly had no idea how high that was in the military.

“How about you two?” Sarai asked.

My brain went blank. I couldn’t actually say what we were going to be doing.

Thankfully, Osheen stepped in before I could blurt out anything stupid.

“I’m going to be working in private security, while Evan works as a freelance enchanter, at least until we can pay our debts off. We’re also looking at trying to do some traveling while we’re young.”

“Fun!” Sarai said, waggling her eyebrows “I’m sure you’re gonna enjoy… travel.”

I rolled my eyes at her, and we made some light chit chat during lunch. I couldn’t help but wonder if Sarai knew about the nobility’s secrets though, and that held me back a bit from talking too much. At least Lyn seemed happier.

The lunch passed by quickly, but I still had a two-hour gap in my schedule until my last class started.

I was getting frustrated with my attempts to cram more runes on the staff, so I put that aside for now and started seriously looking at the tasks that I’d been given for abjuration.

My first three tasks were going to have to be focused around each of the main elements of abjuration.

I considered going for purely building defenses against fire, but flame armor wasn’t a common or extremely useful thing, and Archmage Roark seemed to be more likely to use his fancy tattoo than he was to use flame armor.

Or whatever that weird transformation into a half phoenix was, but I didn’t know anything about that, so I couldn’t account for it.

So, for spell altering… Force armor had a fairly simple design, and even though there were a thousand different variations on it, most of them used the same core design. Being able to create an artifact that let me shift apart force armor would serve me well against Roark, as well as against a variety of different opponents.

Spell breaking was fairly obvious. Force bolts, beams, and blades were all a part of Roark’s tattoo, and they were also common enough spells. Travis had already said we’d be spending the latter parts of the semester expanding what we could do with the abjuration artifacts, so I could start with the force bolt, and then get it to handle the rest.

But there was no point in having my spell breaking and spell reflection both working on force magic. Spell reflection was a much more impressive trick, and it could handle more powerful spell arrays, so I would design it to handle Roark’s favorite spells, as well as any other fire spell I could find.

I grinned. I still needed to learn a lot more about the practical side of the spellwork, but that would only take reading. My theory was sound, I was confident of that at the very least.

Since I wouldn’t be able to get much more theorycrafting done until I had the rune skills, I took out the book Travis had given us and began to pour through it.

Eventually, though, it came time for scrying, so I put away the books and headed up to Tara’s classroom.

“Good evening, class,” she greeted as we filed in. Once again, I was with older students I didn’t recognize, so I just took a seat away from everyone.

Once everyone was settled, she pushed her mousey brown hair back and began her lecture.

“This year is going to focus on one of the hardest spells a scrying mage can learn: freestanding scrying. Do you all know what that is?”

A man who looked distantly like Jerimiah Heenling – a branch member, maybe? – raised his hand, and she nodded to him.

“It’s the art of scrying wherever you want without a focus,” he said.

She made a so-so gesture with her hand.

“It does actually use a focus. Do you remember when you took the first course in divinations, that I told you the entire world is connected through invisible strands?”

I nodded, and Tara continued.

“These are the focuses in freestanding scrying. You complete a spell that creates a mental image of what you see, and then you shift it. The entire world is one interconnected puzzle. If you’re scrying yourself, and you can see the door, you push the scrying magic through the door. Then push it down the hall. So on and so forth.”

She tapped her chin as if thinking, then continued.

“Unlike most standard scrying spells, these types of spells are much more reliant upon your mental ability and your willpower to hold the image and keep the connections stable, especially if you begin with scrying somewhere you’ve only been, rather than were you actively are. Even using the same spell, you can expect different results. Don’t be discouraged if those with more advanced skills find this hard. We will begin with the most basic spell of this variety, which starts with scrying what you see, and letting you focus in on small details. Not much disorientation there.”

She scrawled out a spell on the board, and told us to separate out and each build our own ritual. I did as she instructed, not suffusing my first arch-star into my Aura, so it wouldn’t interfere with other’s spells.

While our spells charged, we went through the theory behind the spellcraft. Once they were ready, each of us activated our spell.

It was strange, almost as if I was vividly imagining the same room I was looking at. It tugged at my concentration oddly, and I could definitely understand why a split mind arch-star would be able to let this operate smoother.

I felt a pang of regret at not having it, but I dismissed it a moment later. I wasn’t unhappy with the rune compression arch-star, I just wished I’d been able to have both.

I focused on Tara, and suddenly the mental image of the room zoomed in on her, and I could see her face in much more detail, from her thin hairs, to the pores on her nose, to her flat eyes.

Out of curiosity, I tried to send my vision down the secret passage that I knew was there.

My internal vision of the room focused on the spot on the wall where I knew the passage was, but it didn’t pass through. I focused harder and tried to force the mental image to move past.

The spell shattered, not flexible enough to handle not focusing on what I was capable of seeing.

I blinked and looked around. There was a knife on my desk. I looked around. There were knives on ALL of our desks. A few other people’s spells had already shattered as well, and they looked just as confused as –

There was a sharp sound of a clap, and those who hadn’t broken their spells yet abruptly snapped back.

“That’s the biggest weakness of freestanding scrying,” Tara said. “You’re looking at things in your mind, and in reality. That means you can often ignore things like my levitation spell putting a knife on each of your desks, but can also lose the grasp on your spell if reality comes crashing back in on you.”

She pointed at the knives.

“If that was an attack, you’d all be dead.”

She waggled her fingers.

“Same here. You all should have been able to see me moving my hands with your eyes, while also maintaining enough concentration on the spell. Now, let’s try again.”

We set up our spells again, learned more theory, then tried the spells. To my surprise, I found the exercise… fun. It strained my brain in a way I’d never had it strained before, and I felt like it was helping me multitask better. I wondered if I’d have enjoyed it more with the split mind, or if it would have been too easy.

Once class was over, I headed over to Tara. She gave me a grim smile and headed towards the secret entrance. I followed her, and we took a seat in the hidden living room downstairs.

Over the summer, Tara had been busy using spells to transcribe the contents of the Hawthorn secret library, and the shelves were now overflowing with new magical manuals. I glanced at them in interest, but took a seat in the chair across from her.

“What did you want to talk about?” I asked.

---

“Two things. First, I acknowledge your boyfriend is right that I can’t use luck to attack archmage houses too much, that’s true, and… it does get innocents in the way. But you’ve got something inside you, I can see it.”

“I… do,” I admitted hesitantly. “I have to kill Archmage Roark. And soon.”

“He forced you to take oaths?” she asked.

I nodded. Tara was in on that secret, at least. My own oaths stopped me from telling her about his plan to kill Eira Talik, since that was a noble’s secret, and I’d sworn not to tell them.

Tara steepled her fingers and leaned forwards.

“I want to help. He’s awful, and he’s a huge reason that our system is so broken. His family’s control over the treasury and the banks is a major reason that it’s so hard to advance. But…”

She swallowed hard, and when she said the next words, it sounded like it was painful for her to admit it.

“I don’t think I can beat him. I’d place myself up against most Archmages, but the big three…”

I bit my lip and nodded.

“I understand, and I’m working on defenses to counter him specifically. But I guess that does bring us to a new question: Which Archmages can we work with?”

“Non–” Tara started to say, but I cut her off.

“If we want change, we can’t just slaughter everyone and start over,” I said firmly. “I know for a fact we can trust you, Zachary Dormer, and probably Eira Talik. Who are the ones who have to go?”

“Roark, Hasting, Heenling, Luis, and Elide,” she said after a moment’s thought. “All old families who are deeply entrenched in the system and would never consider change. Once the Paerús line gains another Archmage, them too, but you already took care of the last King, and the current one is just a puppet.”

I wasn’t actually sure about Luis. He’d offered to help Zheren, and he was from there originally. But I didn’t trust Draven either, and I certainly didn’t trust him to help.

“So that leaves Chantal, Byron, and Castor,” I said. “Byron was iffy on the war, only seemingly interested in the money. I don’t think she’d thrown in with us if the odds were bad, but if they were in her favor, I think she may. I need to speak to Chantal, though. I know her daughter, but…”

“Castor’s a prick, but he’s been a huge support in the senate,” Tara admitted grudgingly. “He’s not a noble either, like Chantal and Talik, he became an Archmage through military excellence and deals.”

“Would you be willing to reveal yourself, if the moment was right?” I asked. She considered it for a long time before she responded.

“The moment would have to be right. It would have to be a moment where one more vote on the archmage council could really change the fate of the nation.”

If I managed to kill Roark and reveal the truth about Aura Sparks to the country, then there would be a brief window, before any other Roark could ascend to Archmage, and before the nobility managed to squash down the population, where it could make a difference.

If Eira Talik, Zachary Dormer, Serena Chantal, Johnathan Castor, and Tara were able to present a unified front, and Brittney Byron was willing to join them, then there would be a real chance to make change. Elide, Heenling, and Hasting would be outnumbered two to one. If Draven threw in with Eira, then it would be seven on three.

If he threw in with the Heenling side, however, it would be much more complicated. We’d still have the majority, but they’d have more leverage to use against us.

If both Byron and Draven threw in with the old power, or even worse, if Byron, Draven, and Chantal all threw in with the old powers, then things could get bad. Really bad.

And if Roark moved before I did and killed Eira, then even Tara revealing herself wouldn’t do much to shake up the status quo.

And all of this was failing to account for how House Elide would react to the crippling of their Archmage. Maybe they could ascend a second one, maybe not.

I took a deep, deep breath. this was going to be hard, very hard. But it wasn’t impossible.

Well, it wasn’t impossible as long as I was able to survive a party for one of the most powerful fae queens in existence, kill one of the three most powerful Archmages in Paerús, and successfully spread the knowledge across all of Paerús.

No big deal.

“It’s a lot,” Tara said, gently reaching out to brush one finger across my wrist, probably trying to comfort me. “So let’s leave that for now and look at the other thing I wanted to talk about.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Your next arch-star!” She said with fake cheer.

That did actually pique my interest. If I made myself an archmage, it would help all of my problems. Gaining a third star was the next step on that journey.

“Alright,” I said, adding some fake cheer of my own. “What options do I have?”

“I actually only know the technique for one third tier arch-star, which is the one I have, but I know about a lot more than that one. So if you want a different one, we can look and see if it’s in the Hawthorne library, and if it’s not, we can look at other houses for the secret.”

I nodded in agreement, glad to have some more choices.

“The first, and the one I have, is the spell storage arch-star.”

“Is that like a spell bottle?” I asked.

“In concept, yes, but in practicality, no,” she said. “Similar to the aura storage arch-star, it starts only able to hold a small amount of spellcraft, but the more its used, it can stretch and grow. Mine accommodates my whip and armor spells, for example, as well as two of my mental divinations. Between it, my ability to flood a ritual with stored power, and my spell bottles, I’m able to take on threats quickly, which not many people expect from a witch.”

Even if I had to put a lot of work into expanding the arch-star’s size, it sounded like a massive boon, the kind of thing that would be able to turn the tide in a fight.

“What other ones are there?” I asked.

“The Aura expansion arch-star is one that most arch-mages have here. It slowly pushes at the boundary of your Aura, slowly expanding it over time. An Aura Spark may grant more instant power, but given a few decades to mature, this can massively expand your power more than even many Aura sparks could.”

I frowned, wondering if Osheen knew about this. He’d told me the only way to grow my Aura was from potions.

Regardless, while I hadn’t put in as much effort into increasing my Aura density as perhaps I should have, if I worked on that, and also got this arch-star, foci could actually become a viable path of magic for me. Artifacts were great, but they were limiting. Being able to just provide my own power would be great.

“The next is the elemental alignment arch-star,” she said. “There’s some evidence that this was actually the arch-star that inspired the entire path of sorcery. It links your Aura to an element. Any spells – rituals, enchantments, wards, anything – that you cast or create with this arch-star are going to be a lot more potent. It doesn’t let you cast the spells like a sorcerer, but it also doesn’t interfere with other spells the way that does.”

I raised my eyebrow.

“Really? That seems perfect for Osheen. I’m not sure if I’ll use it, but…”

I trailed off. Why shouldn’t I? It did apply to enchanted items, Tara had just said that. If I bonded to something like lightning, I could squeeze even more power out of the staff I was building.

“There’s a rumor that it can also be used to bond to a different type of magic, like Fae magic or Dreamscape magic,” Tara added, “But I’m really not sure about that. It doesn’t seem to fit with what I know, but I’ve seen it mentioned in a few spots. Anyhow, the final one, I actually don’t advise. It allows someone to switch places with their familiar. Incredible utility in a fight, but you don’t overly rely on Oracle in combat.”

Teleportation still sounded pretty dang amazing to me, but I couldn’t deny that it didn’t give me the same utility as any of the other ones.

“Why are they so… Similar?” I asked. “I mean, with my first arch star, things seemed to be divided pretty well between utility for a druid, witch, and sorcerer. Sure, there was some overlap, but not a ton. There was a bit more with my second, but these seem… Honestly, all of them would be useful for anyone. Even the spell storage could let a sorcerer pack away some powerful, heavy hitting spells to use without having to worry about draining their power in battle, or let a druid carry a portal around with them. Even if I, a witch, took the one that lets me switch places with my familiar, that would massively increase my mobility in combat.”

“Modernity,” Tara said. “Most historians believe that in ancient civilizations like the Duhn-Shra were advanced enough to have their magic branching into modern paths we know today, but not quite so firmly as modern day magic. There was a lot more overlap. But most people stop at one or two arch-stars, and almost nobody makes it past three. So as time has passed, the first and second arch-star techniques have been refined and developed many times more than the greater arch-stars.”

“Interesting,” I said, nodding slowly. “I guess that makes sense.”

“So, do you have any idea which one you’re going to pick?” Tara asked.

I bit my lip, thinking.

The easiest one to discount was the one that let me change places with Oracle. It would be useful, but I just wouldn’t be able to get the full utility out of it without more familiars.

The obvious choice was spell storage. Not only did Tara already know the exercises to let me start working on it, but it also would combine well with witchcraft.

But I could also just keep more spell bottles, rather than sell them.

The expansion arch-star might let me use more focus items, and I could build decent foci, but I’d invested a lot of time and effort into using artifacts, and I was much better at building those.

The alignment arch-star… admittedly, it was useful. But what made me keep going back to it was the idea that it could align with other planes. I had a fair bit of knowledge about Fae magic, and if I used what I knew with an alignment arch-star like that, it could kick up my abjuration by quite a bit.

“Let’s look into those rumors more,” I said. “I’ve got good Fae connections, and if I could leverage them into increasing my power, that’d be quite useful.”

“I’ll look into it,” Tara said with a nod. “You can too, when you get home.”

“I can?” I asked. Tara smiled softly and rose, then pointed to a stack of books in the corner of the room.

“My spell finished transcribing everything into a second copy. It took a while to process and cut out everything that wasn’t especially useful, like banned books about accounting, but that’s all their secret grimoires. I haven’t read everything in the grimoires, of course, but that’s all of them.”

A tiny spark of suspicion flared inside me. It wouldn’t have taken all summer to just pick out what were grimoires. I suspected Tara may have been holding out on me, though I wasn’t entirely sure why she’d do that.

“It’s getting late, though, you should go home. I’ll help you carry the stack of books to your room.”

I nodded and rose, starting to stack the books into my arms. I wasn’t going to be making the arch-star tonight anyways.