Magic is Programming-Chapter 26B2 : Educational Experience
Felton watched, fascinated, as his three students pored over the expanded runes that spelled out the details of a few of the enchantments in a suit of royal guard armor. Carlos keeps muttering under his breath, and both he and Amber are clearly examining various sections of it with purpose guided by understanding. Either they've been secretly learning magecraft for a long time, or they've devoted a number of soul structures to speed of learning magery that any commoner would consider absurd, or they've discovered something truly fundamental in how to make such structures extraordinarily effective. Essence and mana moved in response to some of Carlos's mutters, and Felton's gaze snapped to the small sphere of force that appeared above the youth's open palm. Possibly a fundamental discovery and an abundance of soul structures focused on it, combined. That sphere is not simply a duplication of the armor's Force Bubble enchantment.
Carlos's one-inch transparent sphere was joined by several more, and they all began moving in a circle. Flickers of commanding intent raced from Carlos to his creation, and the rotating circle of force bubbles expanded to a foot across, then shrank until the bubbles touched each other. The bubbles vibrated, pushing against each other as the circle tried to shrink even further, then they all popped at once as the spell ran out of mana. Felton watched in silence as Carlos stared vacantly for several minutes at where the circle of bubbles had been. Then the display repeated, a rotating circle of tiny force bubbles spiraling out and then inward, but this time the bubbles smoothly intersected and overlapped when they came into contact with each other. They became a lumpy ring, then transitioned into a lumpy disk as the ring shrank, until they merged into a single consolidated sphere of force at the center.
Felton blinked and raised an eyebrow. Impressive. That degree of sophistication in creating his own variant shows great depth of learning, not just speed. The spell seems more of a sophisticated toy than a useful tool, however. Felton switched to watching the young lord's partner instead. Amber seemed deep in thought, not actively doing anything at the moment. She had glanced at Carlos's display of merging bubbles of force, but had responded with only an amused smirk with no sign of surprise or of being especially impressed. I see. Such achievements are most likely expected and ordinary for their soul plan, then. It could instead be that she has grown accustomed to Carlos having extraordinary talent, but I think her reaction seems more like recognition of a feat that she knows she could duplicate. And on top of all that, they have something to make new soul structures after the Tier 8 merge at extreme speed, I believe as an application of something that will remain useful after all soul structures are made. No wonder the Colonel is so impressed with them.
Amber's gaze met Felton's, and she cleared her throat. "Learning details of advanced combat spells is useful, but why don't you show us the runes of the diagnostic and analysis enchantment? That seems more directly relevant to your goal, here."
Felton considered for a moment, then shrugged. "Very well, but why do you think you might glean anything useful for the investigation from it? You have already confirmed that the sabotage is absent from the runic expansions."
Amber grinned. "Exactly. The runic expansion will show the enchantment in its non-sabotaged form. And Ressara reported attention-diversion in both the enchantment being analyzed and the enchantment doing the analysis. That suggests that this analyzer is capable of detecting the sabotage, because why else would it be sabotaged too?"
"Well-reasoned so far, but I have explored that line of thought already. Then again, perhaps your house secrets might prevail against the obstacles that stopped me." Felton gestured, and another steel plate unfolded from the gauntlet into a long rune-covered ribbon, hanging in the air. Unlike the other enchantments being shown for inspection, this one split at a few points, forming multiple layers of ribbons stacked atop each other. It also extended several times longer, having to weave back and forth to fit into a reasonable area.
Felton nodded toward the runic ribbon, and white light outlined a small section of it, right at one of the splits. "The effect right there is an Enchanters Guild secret. I know approximately what it does - it makes the incantation split its workings into multiple parts operating simultaneously, almost as though cast as separate spells - but I do not know its spoken pronunciation, and my knowledge of what it does is not precise enough to learn a spell that uses it without knowing how to speak it." He smiled. "I have heard you and Carlos muttering parts of incantations aloud as you read them; parts that I believe you had never seen the words of before, and yet your pronunciation was consistently flawless. Do you know how to pronounce this one?"
Carlos looked up sharply at the mention of the Enchanters Guild, and Amber exchanged a look with him when Felton finished his question. She hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. "I suppose the Enchanters Guild is hostile enough to us already that it won't matter too much if this gets out to them somehow. The effect keyword you highlighted is startThread. Are there other words you don't know how to pronounce in that enchantment?"
"There are indeed." Glowing outlines appeared on 5 other parts of the enchantment's runic inscription. "If you could provide the pronunciation of each of these, I will see if my spell conceptualizer is up to the task of learning an incantation this large."
That afternoon, Carlos and Amber found themselves left to their own guidance. Felton had retired to his tent to meditate on the long and complex analyzer incantation in hopes of learning to cast it directly, having drilled himself relentlessly for an hour on the pronunciations of the 6 new words they had read aloud for him.
Carlos took the lead in calling Trinlen in to consult. "We've learned a lot of combat spells from the royal guard armor's enchantments; do you think what we've learned will be enough for us to fight well with? I'm sure they put a lot of thought into optimizing the set of which spells to put in that. We'll have to practice first, of course, but after that?"
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Trinlen tilted his head, pressed his lips together, and raised his right hand to his chin, rubbing his index finger along the left side of his chin as he adopted a sage mien. "Hmm, let me think. Are you ready to spar and practice? Sure. Are you ready to fight monsters afterward?" He hummed noncommittally and tilted his head left, then back to right. "Maybe. It depends on which type of monster you encounter. Is that set of spells enough to be ready for fighting people?" He snorted contemptually and shook his head. "No, absolutely not."
Amber leaned forward intently. "Why not? It's enough for royal guards, and it covers a lot of versatility. What is it still missing?"
Trinlen dropped his wise facade and grinned. "Why would I tell you, when showing you will be so much more fun? Oh man, I have been preparing for this!" His grin grew wider, and he beckoned eagerly for them to follow him. "Come on, it's time for Professor Trinlen to give a hands-on lesson."
Carlos laughed and went with him readily, while Amber followed more hesitantly. The three of them walked up to Lorvan, who was standing watch in the open area opposite everyone's tents, with Trinlen still leading. "Colonel Lorvan, sir, my students wish to spar with me for some practice, and we need a referee. Will you do the honors?"
Lorvan nodded smoothly. "Sparring type and rules?"
Trinlen quickly recited a list. "Mage duel. One on one. Simple arena, starting at 10 paces. War rules. Referee to prevent death."
"Understood. Who will go first?"
Carlos held up his hand. "I volunteer, but first, what does 'war rules' mean?"
Trinlen smiled at him again. "It's very simple: the only rule in war is to win, by any method. It is the only way to practice for true battle, for any real foe will rarely be so considerate as to constrain their tactics. You may use any tactic you wish, beginning on the referee's signal. You lose when you leave the arena, give up, or are unable to continue using spells - that last condition is because it's a mage duel, by the way."
"Okay." Carlos shook himself and stretched, thinking about what spell to start with. Better to defend first, I think. In a real fight, I can't count on having only one enemy. I'll activate a prepared Force Bubble first, which should block his first attack, and then respond to whatever he does. He took 10 steps away from Trinlen and adopted a loose stance. "I'm ready."
Lorvan touched one palm to the ground, and a transparent dome of force enclosed an area 20 paces across. He stood straight and raised his right hand high. He lowered his hand in a sudden chopping motion, and in the same instant declared, "Begin!"
Carlos immediately began executing his plan. spell activate-
Trinlen beat him to the punch. spell-act-Silence!
Carlos tried to speak the equals sign that would precede the spell name, but no sound emerged. What the hell? He focused his mana sense on the spell Trinlen had cast. It was weak, far too weak to affect him for long, but it wasn't affecting him. It was affecting the air around his mouth, preventing any sound from emerging.
Lorvan raised his right hand, which was on the side toward Trinlen, high and diagonally to the side. "Trinlen wins, by suppression of spellcasting!"
Trinlen dismissed the spell, and Carlos nodded in acknowledgement. "I get it, war rules means there's no such thing as a cheap shot. But still, how am I supposed to deal with that?"
"When you no longer need to speak to cast, it will be irrelevant. Until then, you can try to dodge it or shake it off, and you can try to disrupt it with raw mana manipulation and hope it's cast weakly enough to be vulnerable to that, but the only reliable way is to pre-emptively counter it in advance." Trinlen clapped his hands together. "I'll show you the spell for that later and won't use the same trick again until then. Now, did you catch the other reason I beat you?"
Carlos frowned as he reviewed the incredibly brief match, then comprehension dawned on him. "You finished your spell faster than me by shortening the activation command. I knew our spell activators let us incant things more quietly and with less precise pronunciation, but I hadn't realized the looser pronunciation allowed shortening things. Good to know."
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"Correct. Now, how about a turn for Amber?" Trinlen called over to where Amber was watching from outside Lorvan's dome. "Amber, got a plan ready for fighting me?"
Amber grimaced. "Yes, but I get the feeling it won't matter."
Trinlen chuckled. "Amber, I'm an experienced veteran of the academy's sparring program, and it was easier to list the people who weren't eager to put me down than to list the people who were. Yes, you are going to lose, because any novice without overwhelming power would lose to me. The question is how hard you can make me work for it and how quickly you can learn. Now, are you ready?"
Amber hesitantly squared her shoulders and walked over to take Carlos's place in the impromptu arena. "Okay. Let's see how this goes wrong."
Carlos watched Trinlen closely as Lorvan signaled to begin, and quickly found himself restricted to observing by mana sense as darkness covered the area. Whoa. I didn't catch the name of that spell, but it's surprisingly complex. Darkness combined with something else, and the parts of it keep shifting around confusingly. And… I can't tell where Trinlen is. There are 5 different spots where I sense mana that might be his soul, all of them moving, and I don't know which one's real.
He shifted his attention to Amber. She got a Force Bubble up, as I expected her to go for. It doesn't have the power that Lorvan would put into it, but it's still a good defense. As for offence… He winced. Blind-firing Force Spikes wildly. Yeah, that's unlikely to work. Moments after Carlos thought that, Amber's mana poured forth in a relative flood, blanketing a quarter of the arena. It took a second for Carlos to realize what spell she'd used. Flame Blast to hit as many places at once as possible, so it doesn't matter which spot Trinlen is in? A good thought, but we don't have enough mana to do it properly.
Carlos tried to sort through what he was sensing of Trinlen's mana. He's trying something, but what? There's a new layer of his mana, and it's focused in the area around Amber. It's a spell for… making something, I think? Something very small or insubstantial.
He got his answer half a minute later when Amber stumbled out through the dome that enclosed their arena, doubled over, coughing, wheezing, and waving her hands frantically through the air in front of her face. She took a deep breath in the clear air outside the arena and did not react when Lorvan declared Trinlen's victory. She wrinkled her nose and glared at Trinlen in disgust once he dismissed his spells. "What the hell is that stench? I never want to smell that again!"
"You don't want to know. Trust me, you really don't." Trinlen nodded toward Amber. "You fought well for your first time." He looked at Carlos. "Ready for your second round?"
Carlos cracked his knuckles. "Sure. I'm curious how many different ways you have to beat the set of spells we know." He smiled as he took position in the arena again. "Let's find out."
