Nym stood in the middle of Analia’s room. She had thoroughly redecorated her space, unlike him. His room looked almost exactly as it had when they’d first moved in, save his closet had some spare clothes in it and he’d filled the empty shelves with books. Hers had new curtains over the window, three different light orbs made out of what appeared to be quartz, bedding that was considerably more vibrant than the dull-coloring his room enjoyed, a new work table that was filled odd little bits of metal.
“What are those?” he asked, nodding his head at the table.
“It’s a mechanical representation of a rune sequence. The pieces only fit together certain ways that mimic how actual runes slot into each other. You use it to help figure out how runes go together without having to write the whole sequence out first.”
“That sounds useful. I might have to get a set too,” Nym said.
“They do make things easier, but I don’t think that’s what you wanted to talk about. Out with it. These privacy wards are expensive to maintain,” she said.
“Right, sorry. I hit third layer arcana like I said, and I don’t want people knowing. I need to start learning spells with a focus on combat against other mages, how to avoid detection, stuff like that. I have a feeling I’m going to need to defend myself against people soon, and it would be better if those people don’t know what I’m capable of doing.”
“People like Jharn and Navarim?” she asked.
Nym couldn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. She knew about the geas, and his silence said enough. He wanted to say that neither of his bodyguards could use third circle magic just yet, maybe not ever, but that was definitely restricted information. Besides, he was more worried about the third circle mages the Collective had on their roster.
Somehow, he doubted Analia’s father was going to be a pushover in a fight. Hopefully, it would never come to that, but he’d already been crushed in his first encounter with the Collective. They’d caught him asleep and off-guard, then overwhelmed him with sheer numbers. Things had worked out well enough considering the position he was in, but it could have just as easily ended with the door of that mage cell opening and someone firing a crossbow bolt between his ribs.
“It might be better not to use your family line of credit to buy anything relating to third circle magic,” he said.
“That might not be an option. Third circle spellbooks are rare and expensive. Even in the family library back home, we only had a few of them. We can probably pool our money and get one spellbook with a few third circle spells in it. Usually people who make it to this point get headhunted by someone and get access to a lot of help. There are never enough third circle mages to meet demand, so no expense is spared training them.”
“So secret training is out then.”
“At least it is here,” she agreed.
“Here,” Nym echoed. “Where might it not be so difficult?”
Analia shrugged. “I might be able to find a place. I’m not sure. Would it matter with the two bodyguards keeping an eye on you? Would they let you go?”
“Let’s just say that teleportation is a third circle spell.”
Analia’s eyes sparkled. “Is that so? Well, just keep in mind that teleporting more people is supposed to be much harder than teleporting yourself. If you had access to a spell like that, it would be a good idea to practice with a friend in case a group getaway became necessary.”
“That sounds like something any mage capable of casting teleport should be able to do,” Nym agreed.
“It would be a shame to have to abandon all of these books though,” Analia said, looking sadly around the room. “Anyway, I’ll keep an eye out, but I wouldn’t expect anything. You should probably keep working on a back up plan just in case I can’t come up with anything to help.”
“Alright. I’ll keep trying to figure stuff out on my own too. The principles are the same between a lot of second and third circle spells. Maybe I can modify a few things and make it work.”
“That’s everything then?” she asked. At Nym’s nod, she stopped feeding arcana into the rune sequences set up around the room and sagged down onto her bed. “That was exhausting.”
“Thanks for the help,” Nym told her.
“Any time, not that I did much.”
“It helps just knowing that you’re trying to help.”
“Oh, get out of here. You’ve got stuff to do.”
* * *
Nym felt like his soul well was as functional as it could get. He could channel arcana through his conduit at maximum speed again, and in fact his new output was actually a fair bit higher than it had been before the incident a few months ago. The techniques he’d gotten from the Collective had probably helped to expand it, though they certainly didn’t help in speeding up his recovery.
That annoyed him especially because against all odds, he did have access to a master healer, and the man had refused to treat him on the grounds of not introducing variables to the experiment. Nym wasn’t exactly mad since the end result for him personally was an increased capacity to hold arcana in his soul well. The Collective as a whole also had a few dozen mages who were slowly expanding their own soul wells.
It was a slow process, but if it continued to work, there would soon be a lot more third circle mages in the world. Navarim had told Nym that a few of the mages who were borderline had managed to successfully cast a third circle spell. They were still working to expand their soul wells as much as possible before they began the process of creating channels, for the sake of the Collective’s data.
Nym came home late. He’d been dragged through dozens of scans and then pulled into a class to answer questions about his personal technique for isolating smaller clusters of nodes so that the next batch of mages could start testing with it. The sun had long since set by the time he and Navarim appeared on the teleportation platform and started the walk home.
It was too late to get a fresh meal anywhere, though there were probably any number of taverns or inns he could duck into to get some leftovers. By shared agreement, they both skipped that and went straight to the house instead. Nym gave the exotic pet store next door a mild glare as he walked by. They’d gotten some new type of animal the day before that would not stop howling at random times during the night. As soon as one got going, the whole pack started up.
Analia was already asleep by the time they got in, and Navarim was just as tired as Nym. They bid each other good night, and trudged past Jharn, who was doing maintenance on his equipment at the table, and went to their rooms. There, Nym kicked off his shoes, hung his coat on a peg on the wall, and collapsed face-down onto his bed.
He landed with a grunt as something small and hard under the blanket dug into his ribs. With a groan, Nym rolled over and pulled the bedding back to reveal a book. It wasn’t one he recognized, and he definitely didn’t remember leaving any books in his bed. Grudgingly, he called up a light spell and examined the book.
It definitely wasn’t one of his. The book was titled On the Efficacy of Mind Altering Magics and had a bookmark slipped into it close to the back. Nym flipped it open and froze in place. His lips curled up into a grin and he whispered, “Analia, you are a brilliant researcher. Where did you find this?”
The bookmark opened to a chapter all about the geas spell. It detailed exactly how it anchored itself into the brain, imprinting instructions and sinking its roots down to control actions and in some cases thoughts. The book gave examples of extreme geases that would cause their victims to die, choking on nothing as the geas refused to let their lungs open if they violated some condition. Other cases prevented the victim from even realizing they were under a geas, with the magic itself serving to direct their thoughts away from it anytime they came close.
Nym grew more horrified as he read. He knew he hadn’t been given a choice about signing the geas, but he hadn’t realized the extent to which the spell could be abused. He was lucky that his geas only curbed his ability to talk about a specific range of subjects. It was also completely voluntary, which, if he was understanding what he read correctly, made it considerably less painful to absorb than a geas which was forced on a subject.
‘Voluntary’ might be too strong of a word, since it was really more like he’d been coerced into agreeing, but in this case, the book meant one who’d agreed to the geas, even if they didn’t want to. It had been an unpleasant experience; Nym was glad he didn’t have to go through the involuntary version of it. He doubted he’d have gotten nearly as generous terms.
On the other hand, by agreeing to the geas, he’d had no chance at all to fight back against it. It was firmly entrenched in him now and would be far more difficult to break than it would have been at the time it was being forced on him. Nym didn’t know how to fight off something like that though, so he didn’t feel like he’d missed out on anything.
The last section of the chapter was the most important, at least as far as Nym’s situation went. In order to break a geas, he needed a specific spell the book called ‘absolve.’ There were a couple different versions depending on exactly what kind of geas the victim was under. The good news was that all of them were third circle spells, so theoretically, Nym could cast them if he learned them. The bad news was that absolving himself was significantly harder than casting it on someone else.
It might actually be easier to show Analia what he’d learned so that she could cast third circle spells too. They already knew her soul well was large enough that she wouldn’t run into the same problem the mages of the Collective had, probably thanks to her father’s tampering. He was pretty sure the geas wouldn’t stop him from helping her advance, since the Collective’s focus was on the soul well, not conduits.
That would have to be the subject of their next meeting. Nym was having problems keeping his eyes open and processing the words on the page. He’d check over it again when he was fully awake to make sure he wasn’t missing any details, but it looked like they needed to find a copy of the geas absolving spell next.
He was sure it wouldn’t be easy to do, but perhaps Analia would come through for him again. There was no way the Collective was going to hand him the spell, not if it meant freedom from their control. In the absolute worst case, he could leave to hunt for it himself, but that would have to be done very carefully so that all his friends were safe from repercussions.
Those were all worries for another day. Nym hid the book on his shelf by stashing it flat against the wall with a few other books in front of it, then resumed his journey towards sleep. The bed called to him, ever so sweetly, and without hesitation, he fell into its gentle embrace.
Nym stood in the middle of Analia’s room. She had thoroughly redecorated her space, unlike him. His room looked almost exactly as it had when they’d first moved in, save his closet had some spare clothes in it and he’d filled the empty shelves with books. Hers had new curtains over the window, three different light orbs made out of what appeared to be quartz, bedding that was considerably more vibrant than the dull-coloring his room enjoyed, a new work table that was filled odd little bits of metal.
“What are those?” he asked, nodding his head at the table.
“It’s a mechanical representation of a rune sequence. The pieces only fit together certain ways that mimic how actual runes slot into each other. You use it to help figure out how runes go together without having to write the whole sequence out first.”
“That sounds useful. I might have to get a set too,” Nym said.
“They do make things easier, but I don’t think that’s what you wanted to talk about. Out with it. These privacy wards are expensive to maintain,” she said.
“Right, sorry. I hit third layer arcana like I said, and I don’t want people knowing. I need to start learning spells with a focus on combat against other mages, how to avoid detection, stuff like that. I have a feeling I’m going to need to defend myself against people soon, and it would be better if those people don’t know what I’m capable of doing.”
“People like Jharn and Navarim?” she asked.
Nym couldn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. She knew about the geas, and his silence said enough. He wanted to say that neither of his bodyguards could use third circle magic just yet, maybe not ever, but that was definitely restricted information. Besides, he was more worried about the third circle mages the Collective had on their roster.
Somehow, he doubted Analia’s father was going to be a pushover in a fight. Hopefully, it would never come to that, but he’d already been crushed in his first encounter with the Collective. They’d caught him asleep and off-guard, then overwhelmed him with sheer numbers. Things had worked out well enough considering the position he was in, but it could have just as easily ended with the door of that mage cell opening and someone firing a crossbow bolt between his ribs.
“It might be better not to use your family line of credit to buy anything relating to third circle magic,” he said.
“That might not be an option. Third circle spellbooks are rare and expensive. Even in the family library back home, we only had a few of them. We can probably pool our money and get one spellbook with a few third circle spells in it. Usually people who make it to this point get headhunted by someone and get access to a lot of help. There are never enough third circle mages to meet demand, so no expense is spared training them.”
“So secret training is out then.”
“At least it is here,” she agreed.
“Here,” Nym echoed. “Where might it not be so difficult?”
Analia shrugged. “I might be able to find a place. I’m not sure. Would it matter with the two bodyguards keeping an eye on you? Would they let you go?”
“Let’s just say that teleportation is a third circle spell.”
Analia’s eyes sparkled. “Is that so? Well, just keep in mind that teleporting more people is supposed to be much harder than teleporting yourself. If you had access to a spell like that, it would be a good idea to practice with a friend in case a group getaway became necessary.”
“That sounds like something any mage capable of casting teleport should be able to do,” Nym agreed.
“It would be a shame to have to abandon all of these books though,” Analia said, looking sadly around the room. “Anyway, I’ll keep an eye out, but I wouldn’t expect anything. You should probably keep working on a back up plan just in case I can’t come up with anything to help.”
“Alright. I’ll keep trying to figure stuff out on my own too. The principles are the same between a lot of second and third circle spells. Maybe I can modify a few things and make it work.”
“That’s everything then?” she asked. At Nym’s nod, she stopped feeding arcana into the rune sequences set up around the room and sagged down onto her bed. “That was exhausting.”
“Thanks for the help,” Nym told her.
“Any time, not that I did much.”
“It helps just knowing that you’re trying to help.”
“Oh, get out of here. You’ve got stuff to do.”
* * *
Nym felt like his soul well was as functional as it could get. He could channel arcana through his conduit at maximum speed again, and in fact his new output was actually a fair bit higher than it had been before the incident a few months ago. The techniques he’d gotten from the Collective had probably helped to expand it, though they certainly didn’t help in speeding up his recovery.
That annoyed him especially because against all odds, he did have access to a master healer, and the man had refused to treat him on the grounds of not introducing variables to the experiment. Nym wasn’t exactly mad since the end result for him personally was an increased capacity to hold arcana in his soul well. The Collective as a whole also had a few dozen mages who were slowly expanding their own soul wells.
It was a slow process, but if it continued to work, there would soon be a lot more third circle mages in the world. Navarim had told Nym that a few of the mages who were borderline had managed to successfully cast a third circle spell. They were still working to expand their soul wells as much as possible before they began the process of creating channels, for the sake of the Collective’s data.
Nym came home late. He’d been dragged through dozens of scans and then pulled into a class to answer questions about his personal technique for isolating smaller clusters of nodes so that the next batch of mages could start testing with it. The sun had long since set by the time he and Navarim appeared on the teleportation platform and started the walk home.
It was too late to get a fresh meal anywhere, though there were probably any number of taverns or inns he could duck into to get some leftovers. By shared agreement, they both skipped that and went straight to the house instead. Nym gave the exotic pet store next door a mild glare as he walked by. They’d gotten some new type of animal the day before that would not stop howling at random times during the night. As soon as one got going, the whole pack started up.
Analia was already asleep by the time they got in, and Navarim was just as tired as Nym. They bid each other good night, and trudged past Jharn, who was doing maintenance on his equipment at the table, and went to their rooms. There, Nym kicked off his shoes, hung his coat on a peg on the wall, and collapsed face-down onto his bed.
He landed with a grunt as something small and hard under the blanket dug into his ribs. With a groan, Nym rolled over and pulled the bedding back to reveal a book. It wasn’t one he recognized, and he definitely didn’t remember leaving any books in his bed. Grudgingly, he called up a light spell and examined the book.
It definitely wasn’t one of his. The book was titled On the Efficacy of Mind Altering Magics and had a bookmark slipped into it close to the back. Nym flipped it open and froze in place. His lips curled up into a grin and he whispered, “Analia, you are a brilliant researcher. Where did you find this?”
The bookmark opened to a chapter all about the geas spell. It detailed exactly how it anchored itself into the brain, imprinting instructions and sinking its roots down to control actions and in some cases thoughts. The book gave examples of extreme geases that would cause their victims to die, choking on nothing as the geas refused to let their lungs open if they violated some condition. Other cases prevented the victim from even realizing they were under a geas, with the magic itself serving to direct their thoughts away from it anytime they came close.
Nym grew more horrified as he read. He knew he hadn’t been given a choice about signing the geas, but he hadn’t realized the extent to which the spell could be abused. He was lucky that his geas only curbed his ability to talk about a specific range of subjects. It was also completely voluntary, which, if he was understanding what he read correctly, made it considerably less painful to absorb than a geas which was forced on a subject.
‘Voluntary’ might be too strong of a word, since it was really more like he’d been coerced into agreeing, but in this case, the book meant one who’d agreed to the geas, even if they didn’t want to. It had been an unpleasant experience; Nym was glad he didn’t have to go through the involuntary version of it. He doubted he’d have gotten nearly as generous terms.
On the other hand, by agreeing to the geas, he’d had no chance at all to fight back against it. It was firmly entrenched in him now and would be far more difficult to break than it would have been at the time it was being forced on him. Nym didn’t know how to fight off something like that though, so he didn’t feel like he’d missed out on anything.
The last section of the chapter was the most important, at least as far as Nym’s situation went. In order to break a geas, he needed a specific spell the book called ‘absolve.’ There were a couple different versions depending on exactly what kind of geas the victim was under. The good news was that all of them were third circle spells, so theoretically, Nym could cast them if he learned them. The bad news was that absolving himself was significantly harder than casting it on someone else.
It might actually be easier to show Analia what he’d learned so that she could cast third circle spells too. They already knew her soul well was large enough that she wouldn’t run into the same problem the mages of the Collective had, probably thanks to her father’s tampering. He was pretty sure the geas wouldn’t stop him from helping her advance, since the Collective’s focus was on the soul well, not conduits.
That would have to be the subject of their next meeting. Nym was having problems keeping his eyes open and processing the words on the page. He’d check over it again when he was fully awake to make sure he wasn’t missing any details, but it looked like they needed to find a copy of the geas absolving spell next.
He was sure it wouldn’t be easy to do, but perhaps Analia would come through for him again. There was no way the Collective was going to hand him the spell, not if it meant freedom from their control. In the absolute worst case, he could leave to hunt for it himself, but that would have to be done very carefully so that all his friends were safe from repercussions.
Those were all worries for another day. Nym hid the book on his shelf by stashing it flat against the wall with a few other books in front of it, then resumed his journey towards sleep. The bed called to him, ever so sweetly, and without hesitation, he fell into its gentle embrace.
