"Well, I would guess that if you constructed a chain of these, ah, meta-constructs, you could perhaps tie it to the pebble and use those to lift and pull them? I can see the applications; moving air, rocks, metal would be simple. You might add additional force to the blow of a sword, or make something thrown move around corners, or just make things lighter. Maybe you could use them as a sort of magical net, or web for collecting mana in the air? I think I saw you use this sort of aether net to keep the mana in that first stone?"
"Broadly correct, with some limitations you would not have come across. For this simplest spell, yes, we construct and then alter lattice constructs tied to the pebble to make it move about. You would not be able to move air with this method, air is constantly moving in a way that pebbles don't, and this technique has a hard limit in terms of the force lattice alteration can exert upon the mundane world; no more than five pounds or so. You could lift a sword with it, they don't weigh more than three, but the act of swinging one puts about ninety pounds behind it when you strike. Still, you could use this to move small objects, or for fine detail work such as writing, if you had enough practice. And yes, you can use meta-constructs to contain mana, and indeed you must if you want to store it.""What about the way those structures broke down? Could you use preservation threads to strengthen them?"
"No, preservation patterns, like most other patterns, tend only to affect the material world. Aether patterns are unique in that they mostly affect other spellforms. Any preservation patterns would also be susceptible to the Ebb. Spellforms need to be manually repaired, although you can construct spells to reinforce and repair existing spells, but these are highly complex and well above your present ability. Additionally they would require a constant source of mana to power themselves."
"So what is the Ebb?"
"Ehh, that's complicated to explain. There are some good books on it, for when you are a bit more proficient at reading. The simple explanation is that it restores the natural state of the world. Magic is supernatural rather than natural, which is to say that it can create effects on top of those naturally occurring, but that these are not truly self-sustaining or stable. Given time, any magical effect will collapse to a more stable natural state. The Ebb is the expression of the natural world re-setting itself.
"In any case, you look knackered. What have you been doing today?""I got beaten up with a sharp wooden stick and made to be a statue for an hour."
"Ah, right. Well, get off to some rest, we'll be spending the rest of the week working on getting these lattices down, and then it'll be on to anchors."You take Pip's advice and return to your room, where you collapse into bed and fall into a deep slumber.
The rest of the month continues in a similar vein. You wake up, eat breakfast stolen from the prior night, muck out the horses and train with Aethelwine. Aethelwine continues to prove a complete bastard, periodically belittling you and insisting that you should not get your hopes up. After the first few days' bitter exhaustion and stiffness, you learn to make sure you do your stretches in the stable before engaging in his lessons, and afterwards as soon as you have a free moment. After learning how to stand (you are constantly corrected), Aethelwine teaches you how to walk.
"Keep your stance. Sword up! Flourish up! Hips down! Now, extend your front leg forward and put your foot down. No, straight ahead, not like that. Now shift some of your weight forward - not that much! - and bring your back foot forward so you are in the same resting stance. Feet further apart! Don't change your back foot, keep it at forty-five degrees! Put your weight back so seven tenths of it are on your back foot. That's an advance. Shift your back foot a step backwards - keep it at forty-five degrees! Now shift your front foot back so you're in the original stance. That's a retreat. Now, once you've advanced and retreated ten times across the courtyard with both legs forward, we'll do single passes..."You still haven't even learnt how to use the sword yet, but weeks of bitter exhaustion are really starting to build up your stamina. After swordplay and stretching there are more chores, followed by spellwork, with further chores and reading work in the evening. Your reading speed is about thirty words a minute, and you have to say each word out loud, but you are improving. Nowhere near the level of reading arcane textbooks, however, as long words are still tripping you up. Pip presently has you reading out of the Scriptures, so your religious education is improving slightly, and the words are all fairly straightforward in it.
After a couple of weeks of working on lattice construction (to the point where you can make this particular Aetheric form with less than four seconds of work), Pip starts working on the next stage.
"Now, this is an anchor," he says, and
through witchsight you are able to see a fairly complex, circular form composed of Earth threads, which you also learn how to produce."Anchors are structures which can transmit physical force either to or from the object they are linked to, or serve as a fixed point for a spellform. So if you were to exert a force on the anchor, it would exert that force on the object, and if you moved the object it could exert force on the anchor. Note that force is conserved; if you push an object with five pounds of force, it will move as much as it would if you pushed it with that force with your hand. Similarly, if an object is moved connected to a 'receiving' anchor, it will exert the same amount of force on the 'sending' end. Receiving anchors without somewhere to exert their consumed force will simply not do so.
"For instance, if you attached a receiving anchor to this pebble and moved it, you would notice no change in the ease of moving the pebble. If you then attached that receiver to a sending anchor connected to another pebble, the difficulty of moving the first pebble will be equal to the force exerted on the second pebble; so you might pull the first pebble and the second be pulled with it.
"There is another limitation. A single anchor can only receive or exert about seven ounces of force. You can couple them together, so the limitation can be overcome, it just adds focus, mana and time constraints. For this, you can reasonably stack up to ten or eleven per part of the object you want to exert force on.
"Finally, anchors exert or receive force linearly, in both directions on a single axis. You set the direction when you create them, but anchored to the linked object. So if I were to move my first pebble forward and backward it would move the second pebble forward and backward, but moving it side to side would have little effect. Similarly, if I were to turn the latter pebble ninety degrees to one side, when I moved the first pebble the second would appear to move in a separate direction.
"Now that you're familiar with these, let us have a try."It takes several days to get
anchors down, as the shape of the form is rather more complex than the lattice was. Once you have it down, lessons continue.
"Here, then, is the trick. The act of extending or reducing a lattice will exert pressure, with a hard limit of five pounds, three ounces of pressure spread across as many anchors as you care to affect. The extension or reduction is connected to you, making your own magic the corresponding point of tension. Knowing this, how would you construct your spell to move the pebble?"Focus: 4/Day
Mana: 6/Day
Spells
Witchsight: 1 Focus (no components, sharpens magical sense at the expense of slightly blunting physical senses)
Components
Lattice: 1 Focus, 1 Mana
Anchor: 1 Focus, 1 Mana (depending upon number created)
Flavours
Mana.
Fire.
Air.
Aether.
Earth.
Water.
Life.
Destruction.
Preservation.
Skills
Novice Farrier
Novice Groom
Dabbling Chemist
Dabbling Metalworker
Dabbling Swordsman
Dabbling Manipulator
Stats
Fair Stamina
Author
Topic: Apprentice [TSG] (Read 11089 times)