Scientific Sorcery : Beware of Kittens!

I watched as the first rays of dawn crept through the pub's windows, painting the room in a soft, pale light. Another sleepless night had passed, my hands and mind preoccupied with drawing out more hexagrams onto my Codex using the Hexometer.

Cali stirred on the pile of earth where she had collapsed after her first dragonglass expedition.

She blinked groggily, then sat up with a start, hyperventilating.

Then she stared down at herself and her jaw fell. The angry red blisters and peeling skin from the previous night had vanished, leaving her skin smooth and unblemished just as I expected they would.

Since Cali dropped on my head, I’ve been jotting notes about her in the Codex, constantly scanning her with the Hexometer, tracking exactly what the witch-water and my domain was doing to her.

And what it was doing to her, was changing her from within, grain by grain, atom by atom.

Two hundred and nine nature spirits existing within two hundred and nine crystalline rocks on my person rewrote the foundational rules of reality around me within the base radius of approximately 1.5 meters. The life-rad pouring from my domain was a sphere of 3x3 meters emanating from the center of my body and ending its influence entirely within the distance of approximately 33 meters.

Life-rad poured from the chainmail of crystals, permeating every wall of the old pub. It bloomed flowers across the floor and chests filled with earth in the dead of winter, tore right through the White Blight fungi that had infected Svalbard decades ago.

The life-altering effects that I discovered on my second day of my life on Thornwild magnified the efficacy of all organic components, healed absolutely every scratch and accelerated the spin of the Wheel of Life to an impossible degree.

The rate at which cells in the human body ordinarily replaced themselves varied significantly depending on the type of cell and the organ they belong to. The epidermis renewed itself every few weeks. Red blood cells lived for about one hundred and twenty days. Gut lining lasted three to five days. Bones were replaced every ten years.

From my continuous observations, I discovered that life-rad accelerated this cycle by a factor of about two hundred. Every cell in every being within the influence of my domain was changing from within, dying and multiplying at an impossible rate.

Life-rad didn’t give two shits about telomeres, halted aging almost entirely. It suspended Stormy and me at our current age, while optimizing our health to an insane degree where neither of us could even feel dragonglass all around the village and beneath our feet.

Likewise, the all-oblating life-water I kept making Cali drink permeated every cell in her body, remade and optimized her, reshaped her with two hundred unseen hands from the outside and from within.

"How...?" Cali murmured, turning her hands over and over as if expecting the horrid blisters and burns to reappear. “What?”

“Magic,” I said from my corner of the earth-pile.

“But… I don’t have my lavalier!" Cali pawed at her bare neck. “What’s healing me? I don’t understand.”

“Put on some clothes,” I threw a fluffy white and blue Nordstaii sweater at her without a second glance.

Cali caught the clothing and she slipped on the sweater which hung loosely on her frame, and resumed gaping at her freshly grown skin. Then, she noticed that her hair was longer, curlier and shinier. She pawed at her white locks for a minute, blue eyes wide.

"That's impossible," she uttered. "Why is my hair longer? It should have started to fall out, not get longer. Dragonglass burns don't just... heal overnight. Even with my lavalier these burns would take months to heal and even then there would be scarification! First you claim to be from Endalaus, then you somehow heal my dragonglass burns. Why?!”

“Why’d you come to Svalbard, Cali?” I asked. “Nobody invited you here. You barged into my life with a burning desire to kidnap me and derail my work, to take me to Amari’s court and then to Iridium.”

Cali's ears flattened against her head white tail twitching. She slid off the pile of earth, resting her arms on her knees between blue-violet lilies and bell flowers. "I... I just wanted to bag a genuine, unique thrall, a Star-Eater born from dragonflames. I spent a fortune on an auction at the Court of the Skulldug Isle to win the chance to speak to Amari. I was given a name, a time, and a treasure map that was supposed to lead me to the greatest prey. I didn't know that—"

“You got a questionable map from a questionable Arch-Sorceress, walked right into fire and now you’re asking why you got burned?”

“Fire?” Cali blinked looking around the pub and not seeing life-rad pouring over everything in brilliant, violet-tinted radial waves plainly visible through my Astralscope. “Are you talking about dragonglass? That’s poison, not fire.”

“No,” I lifted the locket containing the glass remnant of Gem 52 from my neck. “Don’t you see it? The violet flames? You’re practically sitting inside the furnace.”

“That’s a plain rock,” Cali said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What furnace?”

“What do you think these are?” I pointed at the rocks hanging all over me.

“I don’t know,” Cali shook her head. “Some kind of a barbarous fashion statement?”

“Do Sorceresses not see magic?” I squinted at her.

“We sense our own magic, cast by our Star-Shards and the shards of other Arcanicx,” Cali said. “I am trained to sense Cometfall gems to seek them out, but that rock… I don’t sense anything from it. It’s not a Star-Shard, it’s just, uhh, mundane melted slag. I thought that you were wearing it for sentimental reasons, like maybe it’s something that remained from your family or…”

“Do you not interact with nature spirits?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Nordstaii nature spirits, as plainly as I can put it, are simply… truculent nonsense.”

I simply stared at her.

“How does your magic work?” I asked after a moment of silence.

“We interact with Cantigeist, the Songs of Wormwood suspended in Star-Shards, magical inert shape-forms that can be activated by our Auric threads,” Cali said haughtily.

“How do you think Nordstaii Yaga perform magic?” I asked.

“They probably find Star-Shards and then bury them in the ground, manipulating the growth of trees by activating the Cantigeist within?” Cali shrugged. “I don’t know the specifics as I haven’t met any of the local witches.”

I laughed, a sudden realization dawning on me.

The Sorceresses of Iridium boxed themselves into a corner, their perception of magic limited only to what they knew - the power of the Wormwood Star. It was as if they only knew about sunlight, but not x-rays, nor any other types of radiation.

"Oh, Cali," I said, shaking my head. "It sounds like you were trained to recognize only one type of magic, but there's so much more out there, a whole spectrum of it!"

I held up the locket. "This isn't just a rock. It's a flame, a magical forge, a conduit, a lens through which I can see and manipulate the world. And it's just one of many."

"But... that's not possible,” Cali murmured. “Only Star-Shards can channel greater magics."

"Says who?" I challenged.

“The wisest Arch-Sorceresses of Iridium Maggelanum,” Cali replied.

“Well, they’re wrong then,” I said.

“Everyone is wrong and you’re right?” Cali tilted her head at me. “Judgey much, bestie?”

“I don’t claim absolute rightness,” I shrugged. “I’m simply less wrong on the account that I absolutely know that I’m not seeing the entire picture. I can make guesses about what the picture looks like, but I’m not mired in a particular magical training yet. I’m trying as many things as possible. When I get more time, I’ll try controlling Star-Shards too.”

Cali simply blinked at me. I sighed. Trying to explain the intricacies of my understanding to Cali was likely a futile endeavour. Instead, I decided to focus on more immediate concerns.

"Let's have some breakfast," I said, standing up and heading towards the stove.

Once we finished our meal, I grabbed a couple of shovels and handed one to Cali. "Ready to get back to digging dragonglass?"

She took the shovel reluctantly, her ears flattening slightly. "Do I have a choice?"

"Not really," I replied with a shrug.

“Do you enjoy tormenting me or something?” She asked. “Is this some kind of a devious technique to break me, Mister Understanding from Endalaus?”

“It’s a technique to help you,” I said. “To deprive you of your addiction to Star-Shards.”

“What addiction?! Is your plan to make me entirely useless?” Cali huffed. “I can’t protect you, can’t help you, if you peel all of my magical skills away!”

"Look, Cali," I began, trying to find the right words. "Where I come from, there are… were people called doctors. Their job was to heal others, to make people better when they were sick or injured."

Cali's brow furrowed. "Like specialized healers? We have those in Iridium, but they use Star-Shard magic. Also, I’m not sick or injured! You’re the one injuring me with Goldara-damned dragonglass!”

"Doctors often have to cause pain or discomfort to heal someone,” I said. “They might need to cut into a person's body to remove something harmful, or set a broken bone, which hurts a lot. But they do it because it's necessary for the person to get better in the long run."

"That sounds awfully barbaric," Cali said. “Here I thought that you were some kind of a wise entity from the broken moon!”

“Sometimes, pain is part of the healing process," I explained. "What I'm doing with you, making you dig up the dragonglass, it's like that. It might hurt now, it might peel away all of your tattoos, but I believe it's necessary to help you become... well, better."

Cali's ears flattened against her head. "Better how?! By taking away my magic? By depriving me of my tools?! You are mad! You have bound the mind and flesh of a fledgling Sorceress with seven blood contracts! And now you subject me to torment and degradation, stripping away the essence of my being, tearing away my magic, rendering me less than I was with each day!"

I shook my head. "Not taking it away, necessarily. I’m freeing you from your dependence on the Star-Shards. I think there's more to you, more potential, more than what those shards allow you to be."

She looked at me, her tail swishing back and forth in agitation. "And you know this, how?"

"Because there’s something horribly wrong with blood magic,” I said. “Or it wouldn’t be attracting Jotuns or folding into itself like that.”

“Folding into itself?” Cali blinked.

“That’s what I see, yes.” I said. “Those Star-Shards you wield are contaminated by some kind of wrongness. The way you are now, you’re an incredibly specific signature in an equation of the future that’s being tracked by some unseen party.”

“What?” Cali sputtered. “Who’s tracking me?”

“Stormy told me last night that Jarl Bobliss is going to kill you in fourteen days,” I said. “That Bobliss is guided by a future Seer, one that knows where you are at all times.”

“So then we… should take my sleigh and run!”

“Run where?” I asked her. “The river ice is gone. It will take it time to freeze again.”

Cali looked left and right with a distraught expression.

“If you hadn’t broken the Thunder-Runes, they could have defended us from Bobliss and his men, Ioan!” She lamented.

“I don’t think that it would,” I said. “Whoever is guiding Bobliss can see the future in the Astral Ocean. Your sleigh and you… were casting specific magic into the world. You’re like a beacon in the darkness, telling our enemies where we are at all times and what we’re doing. Each type of magic bears a specific signature, a specific color. I’m erasing yours, unmaking what you are from the ground up.”

“Why?”

“So that you can go on living,” I replied.

"Why? You clearly proclaimed your indifference towards me, decried our world as wretched. You said things with the heavy weight of judgement, as if viewed from some lofty perch of higher morality," Cali shot back. "Do you deem yourself superior to us, oh Arch-Sorcerer of Endalaus?"

“I’m not better than you,” I sighed. “And I’m not judging your people. The Matriarchy of Iridium is simply the result of the catastrophe of the Wormwood Star. The rituals of the Nordstaii people are the result of the White Blight and the advancing glaciers. I’m the result of Ioan Starfall selling his soul for greater knowledge to a god-damned river because a dragon ate all of his kin.”

Cali stared at me. I wasn’t sure if she understood, wasn’t sure if she even believed my words.

“Everyone everywhere is doing their best to survive. You tried to use your soul threads in an attempt to make me kill you, Cali… because you were trying to un-exist the future you, an impediment to your present self. I got mad, said a bunch of things. I too, am just doing my best to survive this brutal place with the resources available to me. I am not the perfect being."

“Why help me at all?” Cali murmured.

“Because you’re a pawn in some greater game,” I said. “And I don’t want to participate in any games. I just want to be left alone so I can research magic.”