Engineered Magic

37 AL: Grandmother

The statue rose up a story and half. It was constructed of stone and metal. A ribbon of dark cast iron, inscribed with six lines of symbols, curled through it. Three smaller statues circled the main statue’s feet, each farther away than the last. They were constructed of stone, glass and steel. Oxidized wires of bronze struck out at a smaller stone and glass construction at the statue’s feet. Seven wires jabbed into it. Four of the wires continued on to impale the second smaller stature that was farther away. Only one wire reached out to the last statue in the far corner of the room. The dark iron ribbon was marked with hash’s, double crossed t’s, x’s and inverted y’s.

The high room with its wrapping stair rising two stories above them was in complete darkness when they arrived. Grandmother took the time to ignite every panel in the ceiling before she started studying the statue. She recognized it right away but she wanted to see what her companions made of it.

“This is like that room we fought the bears in,” Todd observed.

“Yes,” Grandmother replied. “I think of them as grand staircases. They usually mark a transition between difficulty levels.” Grandmother continued to inspect the statues and made no move to head up the stairs. Her companions took their lead from her behavior and gave their attention to the art.

Sarah ran and climbed onto one of the smaller statues. She tried to swing across to another one using the oxidized wires of bronze. The bronze didn’t yield even an inch. Grandmother noticed that the oxidation didn’t come off on her hands either. Sarah jumped free of the wires and landed on her feet.

“What do you think they are?” Grandmother asked the young girl.

“These three are badgers,” Sarah replied, pointing at the lesser pieces. “That is an elder wizard,” she said, pointing to the large sculpture over her head, “casting a spell.” Grandmother was impressed by her insight. Grandmother would have called the smaller sculptures animals, not the specific badgers but they were definitely the target. She found it interesting that the girl called the larger statue an elder wizard and not just a wizard.

Grandmother looked at it again herself, wondering what triggered the elder comment. “What makes you think it is an elder?” She asked the girl.

“The staff,” Sara replied, pointing at the ribbon of dark cast iron.

“That is the wizard's knowledge,” Grandmother countered. She stepped forward standing on a small raised stone right in front of the wizard sculpture. She thought the stone might represent one of the wizard’s feet. “See those inscriptions on the metal?” She said to Sarah as she pointed to them. “That is the script for the spell.” The girl climbed into the sculpture to get a better look.

“Is that true?” Ellen asked.

“Yes,” Grandmother replied. “I recognize the spell. Do you know what it is?” Ellen started to shake her head in the negative. “I will give you a hint,” Grandmother said. “You have seen me cast a higher tier version of it.” Ellen turned to study the display again.

“Is it that jumping lightning spell you used on the stairs?” Todd asked, from where he stood to the side.

“Correct,” Grandmother confirmed, “chain lightning. Now what are the symbols used to cast it? Everyone take a look, I will keep watch.” Grandmother wandered over to the nearest solid wall, where she could keep an eye on all the entrances.

After everyone took a turn studying the inscription on the ribbon of cast iron, they discussed it among themselves before Ellen said, “zero, three, four and five.”

“You are close but not quite,” Grandmother responded. “What is the first symbol?”

“Four,” Todd responded, “because four is the lightning tree.”

“I gave too much away with that hint. If you didn’t know what spell tree it came from, how could you tell which symbol is first?”

“We could look at the end of the ribbon and see which is the first symbol,” Ellen suggested. Alex knelt down and brushed some dirt and dust off the bottom of the ribbon. He looked at the ribbon last and was standing closest to it. He peered at the symbols there.

“This first section is a mixture of zeros and threes,” Alex reported.

“The top then,” Ellen said, looking up at the ragged end of the ribbon above their heads.

“To save you the climb, I am going to tell you that the top will look broken. The inscription will continue off the end of it at a random spot in its sequence,” Grandmother explained. “My second hint is that there is no zero in this spell.”

Alex looked back at the ribbon. The others looked over his shoulder. Sarah gave up trying to and came over to cling to Grandmother's side.

“This section here,” Alex said, running his fingers over the inscription, “is all zeros. The first non zero symbol above it is a four.”

“In that section there is a four in each of the columns, then another section starts with zeros and fives,” Ellen observed.

“Followed by a section with mixed threes and zeros and then all zeros again,” Alex continued.

“So the section with all zeros is the start section,” Todd concluded. “And the ribbon is read bottom to top.”

“Correct,” Grandmother responded.

“So what are all the extra zeros mixed in with the number sections?” Todd asked.

“They are used to indicate timing. This is a tier one spell, so timing is unimportant. If you study the inscription you can see that each section is about the same length. The spell symbol for each section is randomly mixed with the zeros. That is how it is telling us the timing is unimportant. The spell symbols bunch up into a few rows of its section when timing becomes important. The location of those rows give you what the timing is.” Grandmother gave Sarah a pat and stepped away from the wall, in preparation for moving on. “I wanted to go over how to read one of these statue sculptures because they are about the easiest way to learn a spell, even if they are incomplete. You will notice there is no indication here of what the finishing move is.”

“Can you cast it for us, Grandmother?” Sarah asked the older woman. Grandmother was surprised by the request. She thought about it and decided a demonstration wouldn’t hurt.

“Sure,” she told the girl. She looked back at the rest of the group. “Head on up to the landing,” she said, indicating the landing in the stairs behind the main statue. “You should be safe there from an accidental jump.” The younger members of the group headed up the stairs. Grandmother went back over to what she thought of as the foot of the statue. When everyone was safe on the landing she held her primary hand up to where they could see it.

“Everyone got a good view?” She called. Her back was to the platform, as she faced off with the stone and glass ‘badgers’.

“Ready!” Todd called down.

Grandmother spread her fingers wide. She rolled them down to the left into a fist. Slowly she opened her fist smoothly into the four symbol, switched to the five symbol and finally with the three symbol she moved her hand forward in a throw. She aimed for the closest of the smaller statues. Lightning formed in the air just past her hand and poured into the first badger. A smaller bolt emerged out of the statue and jumped to the second badger. Grandmother jerked back in surprise. Since the statue wasn’t a real opponent she expected the cast to fizzle out on it. A third bolt, dimmer and weaker than the second, jumped from the second badger into the third.

Sarah shouted in approval and began to applaud. Grandmother did not look back at them. She held herself at full alertness wondering what the jump meant. A chime rang out, in three pure notes. Everyone fell silent. The statues began to move.

The stone Grandmother was standing on began to sink. She hastily stepped away. She backed up against the nearest wall. The ribbon of iron rippled and coiled, as the wires of bronze extricated themselves from the smaller statues. They pulled back toward the larger statue before splaying out into the air.

Blocks of stone and glass along with rods of steel ran across the floor changing alliances. The larger statue split while the smaller statues merged.

Everything settled. A fresh layer of dirt and dust lay across the installation giving it an unchanging appearance. If Grandmother just arrived she would have thought it was in this configuration forever. A tall wizard statue stood in the center of the ring of stairs. Now behind it were two lesser statues that were obvious echoes of the first. Before the group was a much larger opponent. It was not as large as the wizard but it was much larger than the badgers were and rivaled the lesser statues behind the wizard.

A ribbon of dark cast iron threaded up through the wizard. Wires of oxidized bronze shot out of the wizard to spread into a rough circle in the air between it and the opponent. The opponent was a boar. Grandmother could see its essence in the abstract shape. She held a very deep seated fear and hatred for the beasts. Suddenly she wondered if Sarah was right about the badgers and the bear.

Grandmother knew the structure changed. She traveled back over her own path to find inscriptions completely rewritten, corridors that no longer led to the same rooms, landmarks that vanished or entire squares that just appeared. She never saw anything change before her eyes. She knew, in an intellectual way, that the whole thing was engineered. Seeing it was another thing. The way stone and steel, glass and bronze moved and morphed showed a level of instrumentation that was shocking.

It was obviously triggered by the cast spell. Have I never done that before? Grandmother wondered. She thought back. She could remember trying to learn a spell described by the statue in the same room as it. She hoped being by the statue would reduce the learning time, just like standing in front of an inscription did. It didn’t shorten the learning time at all.

Grandmother had started believing that she had seen it all. Now she was starting to see that really she just settled into a rut, repeating the same behaviors over and over. Her new companions were pushing her to try new things and in the process discover new secrets about the structure.

Grandmother took a step forward to get a better look at what was stamped into the cast iron ribbon. Her movement broke the tension.

“Do it again! Do it again!” Sarah cried from the landing above. Grandmother looked up to see that Todd and Alex’s weapons were in their hands. Ellen was trying to hold Sarah back with one hand, while keeping the other hand ready to cast with.

“This isn’t the same spell,” Grandmother said to the girl. “You need to tell me what this one is.”

“It is a shield spell,” Sarah declared triumphantly.

“Perhaps,” Grandmother responded. “What symbols do I need to cast it?” Sarah escaped from her sister and hurried down the stairs.

“Are you sure it is safe?” Ellen asked.

“I am never sure of anything,” Grandmother admitted. “I don’t sense any active malice. I think it's alright.” Ellen tugged at Grandmother’s leathers, pulling her attention down. Grandmother leaned down and Sarah whispered to her the numbers.

“That is a shield spell,” Grandmother told the girl softly. The others came down to give the ribbon a look.

“Two, four, two,” Todd reported as the last one to inspect the sculpture. “Does that mean it is related to Alex’s shield spell?”

“Yes, it is part of the force spell tree. It is called group shield, as it will protect a group of people as long as they stay close together.” Grandmother walked out to stand just in front of the elder wizard. “Stand back against the walls and I will cast it.”

When everyone was in position, Grandmother spread her fingers wide. She rolled them down to the left into a fist. Slowly, so that her watchers could see the symbols, she opened her fist smoothly into the two symbol and switched to the four symbol. She reformed the two symbol and made the shielding finish move aimed in the direction of the sculpted boar.

As soon as she finished the cast, she quickly moved back to her safe position near the wall. The air around the bronze wires shimmered as her shield interacted with them. Normally shield spells were invisible until something hit them.

A chime rang out, in three pure notes. This time Grandmother noticed that the first note and the last note were the same. The statues began to move.

The boar grew in size but still contained the same essence. The elder wizard shrank and twisted, while her two smaller companions, impossibly, melted away to nothing. The ribbon of iron rippled and coiled. The wires of bronze dived back into the caster, wrapping themselves around and into the figure.

Once again coated in dust, everything stilled. Grandmother walked forward to look at the ribbon. The inscription was made of hashes, asterisks, dots and upside down Y’s. It was a spell of the sixth spell tree. Grandmother could not cast it. Their experiment was over.

Grandmother stepped back to study the statue, as the others took a look at the ribbon.

“What is the sixth spell tree?” Todd asked.

“I don’t know,” Grandmother responded. “I think it might have something to do with mass or maybe stamina. This is some kind of enhancement spell,” she observed. “I know a couple from other trees. What does it look like to you?”

“He is running away,” Sarah said. She already climbed onto the boar statue and was sitting on its back. “See,” she said pointing at a cluster of stone on the statues right, “he cast the spell then he turned.” She moved her finger higher up to a chunk of glass almost at the top on the statue’s left side.

Grandmother walked over to stand by the girl. The bronze wires all emanated from the cluster of stone Sarah pointed out. The glass did remind Grandmother of a face turning away. She walked to the side studying the glass blocks. The forward most block was crisply cut. While the next block looked a bit elongated, its edges were blurred. The last block, almost facing the back of the figure, was elongated even more. Its edges almost flowed, like it was melted. It did give the feeling of motion to the static sculpture.

“I can sort of see it,” Ellen said. “It is like several snapshots blurred together. This could be his feet reaching out behind him as he runs,” she said, pointing to a cascade of stone reaching back in the direction of the stairs.

“But what does the spell do?” Alex asked aloud.

“What would be useful if you were running away?” Todd said aloud. “Maybe some kind of camouflage spell? Or something to mask his smell, so he can’t be tracked?” Todd suggested.

“No,” Grandmother responded. “I know both of those. Camouflage is a light tree spell and scent masking is part of the fire tree.” She looked again at that flowing chunk of glass.

“Could it make him faster?” Alex commented. “That would be awesome.”

“That could be it,” Grandmother offered.

“So is this room a test?” Todd asked.

“Maybe,” Grandmother responded. “Perhaps if we finished it we would get a reward.” She thought about it for a moment. There was an attack spell, a defense spell and a retreat spell. “Do you remember how I told you the grand staircases occur between changes in difficulty? I think it could be a warning. It is giving a list of spells you should know before you continue onward. I have seen versions that portray weapon or crafting spells. I think this one being focused on cast magic is just chance.” There were also grand staircases that held no art at all. Were they empty because they were dedicated to something else?