Industrial Strength Magic

Chapter 31: Mistakes Were Made

Perry was checking the accuracy of his newest spell-disc’s casting, and it was good.

As close to 100% as a biological organism could be.

Alright, I waited all day for this.

Perry could have asked his mom to fix his broken arm, but where was the fun in that? Perry also half-suspected that his mom might refuse on the grounds of it not being life threatening and any magic she used would be under the Hexen identity, and she wanted him to learn a valuable lesson about playing with the big kids.

Or maybe Perry was just being stubborn. She had freaked out when he was shot, so chances were she wouldn’t mind healing him.

Maybe those are just the reasons I’M being stubborn.

Either way it would be a net positive if he figured out a way to fix his own boo-boos.

Perry loaded up the spell disc and inserted it in the prototype, with its bits of hair and bone suspended in glass cannister.

The way Perry saw it, the cannister for the entire process could be glass, the old-timey wizards just didn’t have any glass capable of taking that kind of heat change without cracking.

Perry did.

Perry made sure all the heat coils and the temperature reader were working one last time before he turned on the juice.

The green light blinked on, indicating that everything was working and the spell was ready to go.

Perry hefted the jarlike spell-frame. Bit heavier than I would want to put in my suit, and potentially more breakable. Maybe I’ll just make a healing station at my base? The ability to heal in combat was invaluable, but Perry was unsure if the frame could be seamlessly integrated into his suit.

Maybe I could make a smaller version with limited uses that’s more for patch jobs to get people home alive, then keep the real good one here? That sounds like a good idea.

Compared to when his boost from Attunement was a meager 27%, with 16 attunement, Perry was working with a 118% increase to a spell’s effectiveness.

Leaning on the primary effect of the Spendthrift perk, He could reduce the size and power of the spell frame drastically and keep full effectiveness until he hit roughly 1/8th the size.

But the full-sized, big version would be more than twice as effective, because of his flat +118%

Sounds like a plan.

Now, to test it. Perry didn’t have any animals on-hand to test the spell on and even if he did, he wasn’t sure he’d want to use the spell on them. According to his math, he could only use the spell every day or so, minimum, which made it so he’d have to wait an extra day while his broken arm sent out bursts of pain every time it shifted even a little bit.

It’s fine. The spell’s not even that complicated. The temperature control is automated. Let’s just get this broken arm fixed.

Perry moved the spell-frame over his arm and flipped on the spell-frame.

PatchesMD.EXE

The mixture began heating up under Perry’s gaze, ever so gradually, the lunt bone began to redden and take on a life of its own.

“Yo, Perry, where’s the shower?” Heather said, walking out of the practice area with the steel dummies, a sheen of sweat on her forehead.

Perry glanced over and tried not to stare as the sweat made the hyperweave…clingy. I mean, it was already clingy, but now it looks painted on.

“There’s a shower in every room of the motel, pick one.” Perry thumbed over his shoulder towards the exit.

“You mean, I gotta walk all the way up from the underground practice room, out through the parking lot and into one of the rooms? Dressed like this?”

She motioned to herself, prompting Perry to look again.

“You could get changed?” Perry offered.

“Then my regular clothes get smelly.”

“…Streak?” Perry shrugged.

“Look, if you’re gonna have a team…specifically one with me on it, you’re gonna need showers and a locker room, and separate ones at that.”

“What, you don’t wanna re-enact the shower scene from Starship Troopers?” Perry asked, his nerves relaxing as the conversation turned his attention to more comfortable ribbing.

“I could handle it, but you’re way too immature.”

“You wanna bet?” Perry said in an attempt to prove his immaturity.

Shortly afterward, Perry’s brain caught up to his mouth and realized the implications of that question.

“As tempting as that is-WHAT IS THAT!?” Heather’s voice rose an octave as the pointed at him.

No, not at him, down a bit. At his spell-frame.

“Oh, this, this is just…”

Perry moved the spell-frame out of the way and saw his arm underneath it.

Calling it an arm at this point would be a generous statement.

It looked something like someone had decided to create a Christmas tree out of limbs, fingers, and thumbs of various sizes, using Perry’s arm as the center pole.

The flesh continued to writhe and grow as he carefully set the spellframe aside and hit the emergency power switch with his good arm.

“Well, that’s…unexpected,” Perry said, his brain unable to catch up to what was happening.

“Umm,” Perry said, staggering backward as he fished in his pants for his phone. “Could you call my mom-“

As the arm fell off the table, some eighty pounds of flesh suddenly tugged Perry to the side. He tried to compensate, but suddenly felt incredibly lightheaded.

The ground rushed up behind Perry and smacked him in the back of the head. All of a sudden the industrial ceiling lights were glaring down into his eyes, making it hard to see.

Perry glanced over and noticed the sprouting arms creeping their way slowly up his arm like a cancerous growth.

“Perry, are you okay? PERRY!?” Heather’s voice came from somewhere out of Perry’s vision, moments before her face entered the tight little circle of his vision.

Am I dying?

If you must die, die on a joke, son.

“I know you wanna see me naked, you perv.” Perry muttered before he fainted from lack of blood pressure.

******

Perry’s eyes opened to the worst headache he’d had since he’d watched cartoons for sixteen hours straight.

No, this one is worse.

“You know if your paramour hadn’t been there, you could’ve died a tumorous mass.” A familiar, heavily accented voice spoke.

“Not my girlfriend, Grandma.” Perry muttered, rubbing his forehead as he forced his eyes open. He was in what appeared to be an eighteenth century hospital, with poor lighting, and creepy jarred organs.

“Why am I here?” Perry wondered. “Where’s mom?”

“My daughter only had the skill to stabilize you, not reverse the spell itself. Your body is strangely resistant to magic, as is the spell you created oddly resistant to traditional dispelling. Together, they were more than she could manage.”

She rolled back towards his face with a flashlight and magnifying glass.

“Good,” Grandma said, leaning over to peer into his eyes with the magnifying glass, making the pores on her oversized nose look huge. “The spell didn’t reach your brain.”

“Then why do I have a headache?” Perry asked.

“Blood flow. Needless to say, the growths played hell on your circulatory system.”

Grandma was rail-thin, with the look and mannerisms of a professional doctor. Every move she made was tightly controlled and deliberate.

She was held in a position of high esteem among the surviving Manitians who made their home in Funkytown, being the queen of a country that no longer existed, but sort-of did.

She was also a bit of a jerk.

“It’s a good thing that fiery-haired strumpet isn’t your paramour. Her aura had a low-class, brazen feel to it.” Grandma said, returning her attention to Perry’s arm, which was a shapeless mass of wiggling arms.

“I was under the impression it was low class to call other people low-class.” Perry said.

“When it’s not true, yes.” Grandma said, a scintillating weave of essence flowing out of her hand and ever so slowly pushing one of the wiggling hands back into Perry’s arm.

“If it will spare your half-breed sensibilities, we shall say her aura indicates she ‘needs much polish’.”

“My half-breed sensibilities are cool with that.”

“So.” Grandma put her tools down and met Perry’s gaze with her own brown eyes. You’re not Dull, eh?”

“Apparently not.” Perry said without going into detail. Grandma probably didn’t need to know he was a Tinker and not a Mage. He also didn’t know what she would do if she knew about his spell-discs.

“Remarkable. I’ll never fully understand why my daughter chose that mess of a man, but breeding your attunement true makes him worth slightly more than nothing.”

“Mom likes bad boys.” Perry said with a shrug.

“What?” Grandma oriented on him like a hawk with its prey in its sights.

“I mean, it’s obvious in hindsight, isn’t it?” Perry asked.

“She dated a vampire in high school, rebelled, skipped school, got into a lot of trouble…my personal understanding is, she likes the appeal of bad boys, but it wasn’t until she found one who maintained the image professionally but took good care of her in private that she was able to settle down. She had to learn she liked the image of bad boys more than actually being with them, because let’s face it, they’re jerks.”

“Interesting observation.” Grandma said, nodding. “I could have controlled her so much easier if I understood that when she was younger. Could have avoided mistakes like you. Ah well, live and learn.”

Perry cocked a brow, but one does not simply threaten their own grandmother with ruination in a fit of rage, no matter how mean they might be.

“What spell did you use?” She continued. “I can revert your arm much easier if I know what did this.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to cut it off and grow a new one?” Perry asked. There were regeneration spells available after all.

“Yes, I could do that in about half an hour, but your arm would never be the same again. It might even grow back with these tumors on it.”

“Ah. It was Astra’s Mending.”

“Mage-cast or ritual?” Grandma asked.

“Ritual.”

“Describe what you did.”

Perry went through the entire process, and Grandma stopped him when he got to the part where he shaved Saint Natanya’s scalp.

“You mean to say you added thousands of tiny bits of her hair to the mix?” Grandma asked.

“Yes?”

“The instructions to heal your body are generated as the prayer activates Natanya’s hair, unravelling the hair as it goes. A single, long hair must be used to transcribe the complete instructions from Astra.”

“What you did was bombard your arm with thousands of incomplete instructions in how to heal your arm, which led to…this.”

“Ah.” Reminds me of bombarding my arm with radiation.

Looks like Paradoxing it up backfired this time around. Speaking of backfiring. Maybe I can make rituals that are completed by the target instead of Terry’s cells, and backfire on them? This whole debacle gives me an idea for a new generation of offensive weaponry.

“Would you mind handing me my phone so I can tell Mom I’m okay?”

Grandma handed him his phone and Perry immediately took the opportunity to take a selfie whilst throwing up no less than sixteen thumbs-up at once.

Grandma snatched the phone out of his hand.

Worth it.

“I’m tempted to leave you like this a while to teach you a lesson,” She said, eyes narrowed.

“Not gonna work,” Perry said shaking his head. “I’m unrepentant.”

I’ve had my fill of people ‘teaching me a lesson’. When someone said that, more often than not, they were being spiteful to satisfy their petty anger. Perry would learn his own lessons.

“I can tell. It’s that infuriating Dull father of yours peeking through.”

Man, if only she knew dad is the reason I can’t cast.

She would probably kill him.

Grandma unstrapped Perry from the gurney and motioned for him to follow.

Perry hauled himself out of the uncomfortable bed and followed Grandma out of the room. It opened up to the old woman’s clinic, where no less than half a dozen magical creatures were waiting their turn to be attended.

Perry spotted a familiar face sitting on the bench in the lobby.

“Sup,” Perry said, waving at Pixie, who stared at the mutant arm dragging his side down for a moment before waving back belatedly, frowning. Her delicate wing was bent at a painful-looking angle.

Oh, right, she’s never seen me out of the armor. Pixie must’ve assumed a stranger was hitting on her. Well, hopefully it was a confidence booster and not creepy.

Perry didn’t have time to introduce himself as Grandma walked at a ground-eating pace that he almost had to trot to keep up with. Maybe it’s better Pixie doesn’t recognize me, anyway. He wasn’t exactly presentable.

“I have a large amount of powerful spirits,” Grandma explained as they walked, “but the essence we need is very esoteric, and one I cannot produce, which makes this a bit more complicated, but we can work around it.”

Grandma took him to a store room and went to a small shelf an pulled out a box with some rust-colored dirt in it.

“This is earth scoured by Nogul,” Grandma said, “Sworn enemy of Astra. It contains the blood of the slain Army of Saint Natanya. Now, normally it would rot your arm off…”

“Less than Ideal,” Perry admitted.

“But with the right restraints it will simply undo Astra’s instructions.”

“Okay.”

Grandma closed her eyes and held her palm above the reddish dust. Tendrils of essence wove from her hand teasing out a thin strand of magic from the dust, unspooling it like a thread before weaving it in with Grandma’s essences, and directing the resulting spell towards Perry’s arm.

Now THAT’S magic. Perry thought, impressed with the light-show.

The wiggling extensions protruding from Perry’s arm in every direction gradually retracted, bringing back the left arm he knew and loved.

“Than-“

“You know why I call you a mistake?” Grandma asked.

“No, but I wish you’d stop.” Perry replied, flexing his arm and rolling his wrist.

“Because for a long, long time, our bloodline has been…unfruitful. The last fifteen generations of the Zauberer line have only been able to produce one heir. When I had your mother and her sister I thought…I thought we were finally free of the stigma.

“I was so confident, so blindly hopeful for the resurgence of our family that I…made a serious mistake.”

That was probably pretty painful to admit, Perry thought.

“It cost me the life of my daughter and once again proved that our family is cursed to have but one child.

And then, fifteen years later, your mother fooled around in a concrete prison cell and got impregnated by a reprobate. Eight hundred years of history and tradition, careful breeding, tossed away like so much garbage.”

“To be fair, the effects of inbreeding are well understood and the dating pool of Funkytown is small. Mom probably wasn’t interested in marrying a paternal cousin,” Perry said before Grandma whapped him upside the head.

“How about this. Would it make you happy if I knocked up a bunch of girls?” Perry asked.

Grandma whapped him upside the head again before tilting her head contemplatively. “Yes. Yes it would.”

“I’ll get right on that,” Perry said sarcastically.

“You’re different, young man.” Grandma said, frowning thoughtfully.

“Aside from the arm?” Perry asked, wiggling his fingers.

“Your aura’s being eaten away by something,” Grandma said, her gaze flickering around Perry’s body. “You used to care so much what I thought of you.”

“Or…you called me a mistake and insulted my amazing parents one too many times?” Perry suggested.

“Nope. You care what I think. It’s definitely damage to the soul.” Her eyes narrowed for a minute, then widened. “I didn’t see it, because they’re so good at hiding, but you’ve got two amorphous beings worming through you like a juicy apple, warring with each other for your attunement, and damaging your soul in the process.”

“That sounds…not good.”

“It’s not serious yet,” Grandma said, her eyes tracking invisible movements in Perry’s aura in a way that made Perry’s hair stand on end.

“Kinda sounds serious.”

“Put some work into healing your soul. I prescribe team-based sports, regular family game nights and passionate lovemaking with your paramour.” Grandma said, picking up her phone and carefully dialing mom’s number with the hesitation of someone who didn’t fully trust electronics.

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Perry muttered.

“You’re dismissed, Paradox.”

Grumbling, Perry left his Grandma’s clinic and stalked out onto the dark streets of Funkytown.

***Claudette Zauberer***

“Hold on,” Claudette said, fishing her phone out of her pants as Darryl paused the movie.

She sucked her breath through her teeth as she saw the number for Mom’s clinic.

“It’s mom.” She said.

“Put it on speaker!” Darryl said, devoting his entire attention to the phone.

Hopefully nothing went wrong with Perry. Claudette thought, her heart slamming in her chest as she answered the call.

Click.

“Abun’Zaul!” mom’s shrill voice pounded their eardrums over the phone. “You put Abun’Zaul in my grandson!?”

“Umm….”

I forgot she might see that.