What We Do to Survive

There’s a very stark difference between knowing academically what outcome a ritual is meant to have and feeling it directly. Ritual magic, more so than any other field of magic, could be both incredibly finicky and wildly powerful in ways that were hard to quantify. For instance, only among rituals did you find spells that were more powerful on certain days of the week or that required a certain planetary alignment to work properly.

Unlike in a regular spell that might utilize perhaps a half-dozen spell-forms, perhaps slightly more in the case of highly complex and specialized spell matrices, a single ritual could use fragments from dozens, hundreds, or even potentially thousands of individual spell-forms. A single rune was simply a two-dimensional projection of a multi-dimensional spell-form after all, and a ritual such as the one I’d used contained hundreds of unique symbols.

Furthermore, there was the living sacrifice to consider, along with the magically-powerful materials I’d used to create the ink and the innate properties of the room itself as well. With so many factors in play, there was only so much you could predict, calculate, and optimize. With Professor Williams’s guidance, we’d put together a ritual designed to maximize my gains, but that was no guarantee that things would work out exactly the way we wanted them too.

The Outsider I’d captured, a Starspawn Doppelganger, possessed a number of interesting traits, but after some discussion we’d decided that it would be a waste to attempt to simply gain one aspect of its abilities. Instead, we wanted to steal as much as we could from its key trait, its incredible adaptability.

Despite the power of the ritual, the ability I’d stolen would never be as strong as that of the original host. Some of its adaptability was simply a feature of its otherworldly ‘biology’, but unlike a regular spell, ritual magic could often find workarounds for such things.

More importantly, I was dealing with an Outsider and not a regular magical creature like a troll or a rock-wyrm. I didn’t want to steal a specific circulation or group of circulations, as an Outsider its abilities did not conform to the rules of magic as I knew them.

Instead, what I needed was a ritual that could convert some amount of the Outsider’s innate ability into something my body could use. That was the key element that had held me back from creating the ritual without Professor Williams’s help. I simply didn’t have the needed expertise to do so.

What we’d come up with in the end was a complex web of runes that I only mostly understood and certainly wouldn’t have been able to create on my own. Its function was to use the Outsider as both a sacrifice and a catalyst to convert the concept of the Outsider’s adaptability into something I could actually use properly with my human body and local magic while limiting the amount of potential contamination from the Outsider’s foreign nature.

It worked. Or at least I was pretty sure it had. I had yet to test it fully and it would be months before I was certain everything was fully safe and properly adjusted, but even if what I was looking at now was the full extent of what I’d gained, I would be absolutely thrilled.

I watched with growing fascination as the threads of mana within my body shifted slightly, minute twitches and hair-thin adjustments that would have been impossible to perceive if I wasn’t so in tune with my own mana. It was barely anything at all, well within the margin of error I typically worked with when it came to my well-practiced circulations.

And yet, with every tiny adjustment my mind felt just that tiny bit clearer, my memories and senses sharper. Years of practice and meditation told me exactly how effective my circulations should be given the amount of mana moving through them, and this was not it. This was better, and not by a small margin.

With bated breath I slowly formed my next circulation, carefully threading strands of mana out of my core and weaving them in gentle spirals and webs throughout the muscles of my arms and legs. The moment the circulation snapped into place, the end of the thread connecting back into my core, the entire arrangement shifted and twisted, the overall structure barely changing but individual strands twisting and twitching into a more perfect arrangement.

I opened and closed my hand, feeling my muscles flex beneath my skin. It was hard to say for certain, I didn’t have a good baseline to test with just this one physical circulation active, but my gut told me I was measurably stronger than I would have been a few days earlier.

My lips stretched into a wide smile. That was interesting. Very, very interesting. I wasn’t sure exactly how this related to the ‘adaptability’ I had attempted to take from the Outsider, but if these initial tests were at all indicative of how it worked, I was already very happy with my newly acquired abilities.

I could barely feel them thrumming in the background, a completely incomprehensible mass of higher-dimensional mana that was now woven through every inch of my body and stretched into my soul. The ‘circulation’, though calling it that felt like a gross mockery, was woven so tightly into the very core of my being that I’d only noticed it after several hours of meditation.

It was a part of me now, several long and painful days of recovery having given it time to integrate with the rest of what made me me. I was very glad that circulations created and acquired through ritual magic did not require the same sort of maintenance and reconstruction as manually created ones did, because there was no way I was in any way capable of understanding what I was looking at, much less recreating it from scratch.

Looking at it now, I had a feeling that I had grossly underestimated the complexity of what lay beneath the surface of Miranda’s skin. Sure I’d found a very complex natural circulation, but I hadn’t even been looking for something like this. I didn’t even know how I would begin trying to analyze something like this outside of my own body. The spells and techniques I’d used were made to analyze the sort of circulations I knew how to use, not whatever this thing was.

I laughed silently. I thought I’d understood circulations. Clearly I was very mistaken. Perhaps my understanding was better than that of my classmates, but this showed me just how far I had yet to go. Someday, I told myself, I would have the expertise to create something like this from scratch. That day was far off into the future, but it would be glorious.

I let myself indulge in such a dream for a few short minutes, then got back to work. Clearing out the collapsed circulations inside my body had taken less time than I’d expected, possibly my new adaptability at work or perhaps simply I was better at it then the last time such a task had been required, but I still had a lot to do today.

I needed to recreate all of the circulations I maintained at all times before the next time I needed to leave my room and then there were people I needed to talk to, exams to prepare for, and important tasks to finish. Winter break was just around the corner and then I could spend day after day doing nothing but studying my new ability. Something to look forward to, not focus on right now.

Three hours later I finally opened my eyes and stretched. My back popped, stiff from long hours sitting motionlessly in my chair. My throat was dry and my stomach empty, but despite those physical discomforts I felt amazing. Mana thrummed silently beneath the surface of my skin and my newly re-stabilized core spun slowly at the center of my soul.

I was not yet fully recovered, my mana control outside my body was still thoroughly disrupted and at the current rate it would be days before my mana would regenerate fully, but my body felt strong and my mind sharp in a way they hadn’t in several days. The sluggish mud had been washed away from my thoughts and I no longer felt like a strong breeze would knock me off my feet.

I stood up and my legs held me with no trouble. I laughed loudly, stretching my arms up above my head and twisting my shoulders from side to side before leaning down and resting my palms flat against the ground without bending my knees.

Straightening, I noticed Rea watching me from where she was kneeling by Daphne’s bound body and gestured for her to approach. She hurried over to me and I pulled her up into a tight hug, then in a moment of curiosity picked her up by the sides and held her up over my head.

It was nearly effortless. I could feel her weight, but it was like lifting a pillow and not an adult woman. I could have done this before, yes, but I would have felt it! Now, with five different strength-enhancing circulations augmented by the Outsider’s adaptability, I could have held a dozen of her there without breaking a sweat.

I couldn’t wait to test things out properly in one of the Academy’s reservable gyms. Perhaps it was not exactly common for a mage to engage in physical combat, but the ability to run and dodge better was potentially priceless.

“Master?” Rea asked quietly, and I realized that I’d been holding her for nearly a full minute while my thoughts raced. I shook myself, then set her gently back down on her feet.

“Some––” I began, then coughed as my body reminded me how dry my throat was. I cleared my throat, “Some tea?”

“Yes master!”

The next morning I woke up to another very pleasant surprise. Typically, the first thing I did after waking up was spend ten to fifteen minutes fixing up my circulations that had degraded over night without my direct supervision. I knew that it was possible to maintain circulations perfectly without paying them any attention, but my unconscious mana control was not yet quite at that level. It wasn’t exactly a lot of work, but it was certainly an annoyance and for the first few days after adding a new circulation to my repertoire, I had to rebuild it fully each day until I got used to it.

Now, it seemed like that was no longer an issue. I carefully examined the web of mana threads crisscrossing my body and found not a single mote of mana out of place. More than that, my mana core felt noticeably fuller than it should have considering how much time had passed. I wasn’t sure if that was a sign that my rate of mana regeneration had improved or if the continued drain on my mana from the ritual’s progressing changes had finally abated, but either way it meant I was much more ready to face the day than I had feared.

I clambered reluctantly out of bed and slowly got dressed for the day. Today was Tuesday, which meant I had three classes to attend. More importantly, it meant that my practical exam for Professor Shrike’s Evocation Fundamentals class was tomorrow and last night I had barely been able to cast a simple force spike spell without it making me want to vomit.

Thankfully, I wasn’t really expecting to need to do much in my classes today. Professor Yana told us we would just be having a review session during our last class together, as had Professor Shrike. Similarly, Professor Williams was having us meet in one of the viewing rooms to watch our last few classmates go through with their own enhancement rituals. The biggest struggle there was going to be dealing with Camille’s inevitable pestering.

Miranda met me at the door to my room and we walked together up to the Academy cafeteria. Today we didn’t bother with using illusions to hide my presence; half the goal of this excursion was to be seen up and about. Though I still was struggling with my spellcasting, outwardly I looked strong and healthy.

I piled my plate high with buttery eggs, cured meats, and some sort of fried, cheese-based cakes that were filled with chopped nuts and dried berries and smelled absolutely incredible. I hadn’t really noticed it before, but I was absolutely starving. Elf milk had kept me going and made sure my body had everything it needed to function, but it was no substitute for hot food in my belly.

Miranda and I found a small, out-of-the-way table by one of the windows and sat down together. She hadn’t even bothered to take a plate, simply grabbing both of us a tall glass of the dark-blue iced tea they had on display today. I took a small sip and found it slightly sweet and fruity, with a pleasant minty aftertaste that lingered on my tongue. Not bad at all.

I was about half-way through the small mountain of food I’d grabbed and starting to question if I’d been slightly too ambitious with my first real meal since Friday when I noticed Liam making his way towards us.

“Hey Orion,” he called out once he was relatively close, “nice to run into you like this. Mind if I join you?”

I had no real reason to say no. “Go for it.”

He set his own plate down and I was slightly relieved to see it just as filled with food as my own plate had been. Despite knowing it wasn’t really an issue here, I still sometimes felt awkward to find myself taking more food then the people around me. It was an irrational concern, no one in Avalon went hungry unless they wanted to, but one I’d never been able to fully eliminate from the edges of my mind.

Liam grabbed a third chair from a nearby empty table and sat down heavily. Taking a long sip from his own blue drink, he set the glass down and sighed loudly, staring at it as though he wished it was something a tad bit stronger.

“Long week?” I asked rhetorically.

He sighed again. “Long month. You think exams suck now, just wait until seventh year.”

“I think I can imagine.”

I felt a tiny flash of mana and one of the small cakes on Liam’s plate silently split in half. Liam speared it with his fork and brought it to his mouth, chewing and swallowing the piece before responding. “Maybe. Think the paper for our Mana Theory class, except there’s at least two or three of them and also a practical exam.”

I winced. “Damn.” That paper had taken a lot of work and I still needed to finish editing and preparing my presentation. It would have been even worse if I hadn’t already done so much work on my own time on studying and designing the shielding magic I was writing about. Five or six papers like that would have completely destroyed any semblance of free time I had.

He smiled ruefully. “Yeah. That. Speaking of which, how is yours coming along? This is probably your first time having to present like this, right?”

I nodded. “It is.”

“You got this. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough. Don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t match up with what some of us have prepared, you're only a third year and the graders will keep that in mind. Plenty of time left to get better.”

His words didn’t come off quite as encouraging as I think he meant them too, but I appreciated the sentiment. “We’ll see. I think my presentation is good, I’m mostly worried about the writing itself. I’ve never had to submit something like that before.”

“Fair enough. Would you like me to take a look before you turn it in? I think I can spare an hour to give it a quick look on Thursday night or something.”

I was glad I had just taken another bite of my food because it gave me a good excuse to consider the offer before I had to say something one way or another. My first instinct was to refuse. This felt like a very obvious attempt to steal my work, either to take credit for it or just use it for his own purposes. Knowing how exactly my pure mana shield worked might expose an exploitable weakness that could potentially get me killed.

On the other hand, well, it was Liam. If he really wanted to kill me, there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop him from doing just that. Similarly, how useful exactly would my clumsy attempts be to someone who I knew could snap off sixth-circle combat spells in the blink of an eye. I’d seen Liam fight before, if only against a copy of himself, and my flimsy defense would do absolutely nothing against some of the spells he could throw around without breaking a sweat.

“I’d appreciate it if you could do the same, of course,” he added a moment later, “I’m sure you’d have a much different perspective on my own writing than I do.”

Oh, well that certainly helped make up my mind. I was very curious what a talented seventh-year like Liam had come up with. This was absolutely an unfair exchange for Liam, there was no way whatever feedback I could give him was as valuable as what he was giving me, but I would be a fool to pass up this opportunity.

“That would be great.”

“Perfect. Then how about we meet up after dinner on Thursday, say seven o’clock, and see how it goes from there?”

“Sounds good.”