Chapter 10 — Wards

Ria finished reading the chapter on sensing magical energy. Unfortunately, the usual methods of awakening one’s ability to sense magical energy involved access to someone who could already use magic and thus were useless for her.

The last section of the chapter, however, caught her interest.

It briefly mentioned that the old-style ritual magic could still be used even without the ability to sense magical energy but was risky because it involved drawing upon ley-lines and places of power (or the power of magical beings) and often led to unpredictable results. The author warned about novices blundering about with energies they couldn’t sense or control being the cause of many an accident or worse throughout history and not to seek this method as a short-cut to power.

The mentioned rituals involving magical beings reminded Ria of stories where a desperate person makes a pact with an evil being for the promise of power or wealth, and terrible things happen to the person and everyone that person cared about. Attracting the attention of such a being would be terrifying.

On the other hand, priests often call upon the gods for miracles, and druids call upon nature for their magic, and that seemed fine. At least, in the stories and histories. Their village didn’t have a priest, so she’d never actually met one.

The village did have a shrine dedicated to Hemse the god of farming. Most farm villages did. Making offerings at the shrine was the focus of the seasonal festivals, with the Spring Festival being a prayer for a bountiful harvest and the Harvest Festival giving thanks for the bountiful harvest.

Ria wondered if the shrine might be considered ‘a place of power’. The chapter had emphasized meditation near places of power as important to awakening one’s awareness of magical energies. The rock on the hill certainly seemed like it might be a place of power.

Skipping ahead, Ria found the chapter on ritual magic.

The first section was about how ritual magic had its roots in ancient shamanic magic, and how there was some debate over whether it should be classified as priest magic or arcane magic. Ria had been wondering that herself, but if it meant she could throw fire or heal people, she didn’t particularly care what the power was called.

The book went on to say that, other than for alchemy and enchanting, modern ritual magic was mainly used for the creation of barriers and wards, and such was the only ritual magic that was safe enough to be introduced to beginners.

At the end of the section, the author noted that, against his better judgment and in order to keep the desperate safe from acts of stupidity, he had included an appendix detailing the proper ritual to bind a magical being as a mage’s familiar. He advised against contracting a magical being with the goal of making use of its ability to sense magic.

“Hmm. Well, it’s good to have options,” Ria said to herself.

The warding rituals did sound interesting, particularly if her meditation exercises made her defenseless and oblivious. However, what followed was a complexity that made her eyes glaze over. Geometric diagrams, symbols of meaning, lists of known powers, the importance of mathematical ratios, chants of petitioning, chants of shaping. Ugh.

In all of that, an important detail concerning the drawing of the spell diagram jumped out at her. The drawing had to be made with either a focus tool or a material imbued with magical energy, such as magic ink or enchanted dust. She had a focus tool—her staff!

Whether she could pass enough inner energy through her staff to work the magic, she didn’t know. But it was definitely worth trying. If she could better understand what real magic felt like, maybe that would help her learn how to sense it.

Satisfied at the idea, Ria decided that learning warding magic would be a good goal to work on while she was injured.

Though… glancing at the text again, better to put it off until after she slept. The book had dried fine, but there was no sense further risking such important pages to drool.

Sighing, Ria shrugged out from under her bed cover, putting the beginner’s tome on her desk and the glowstone in her desk drawer.

She was physically exhausted after her long day in the woods, but her mind wasn’t quite ready for sleep, so she decided to finish up the day with meditation exercises.

Careful of her ankle, she assumed the Inwardly Focused pose and began counting heartbeats.

Ria awoke to her shoulder being shaken.

“Ria? Wake up. We need to talk about some things.”

Ria squinted against the sunlight in her room as she opened her eyes to see Jarrel standing before her.

“I can’t believe you actually slept like that,” Jarrel muttered.

What’s that supposed to mean? Ah-!

She was still sitting on her bed in the Inwardly Focused pose! Ugh. Her back and arms were really stiff from maintaining the pose all night.

She willed her hands apart and gingerly moved her sore wrists around. “Oww.”

“I bet,” Jarrel agreed, but he didn’t sound all that sympathetic. “I know you’re excited about learning magic, but you should try not to overdo it.”

Ria nodded and rolled her shoulders around to ease her back stiffness.

“Anyway, I brought you up some food for the day. Here’s a waterskin. There’s a bucket of water in the kitchen if you get desperate. I’ve left an empty bucket by your bed. Try to stay off your ankle as much as possible and just rest up for today,” Jarrel instructed her.

Ria wrinkled her nose up at the empty bucket but understood that he didn’t want her moving around. Of course, he wouldn’t be going to this much effort if he was going to spend the day keeping an eye on her. “Where are you going?”

“That’s what I need to talk with you about,” Jarrel replied. “Remember we talked about me heading to the crossroads to listen for news. Since you’ve got plenty of food, and I won’t be able to train you for a few days, I was thinking that now would be a good time to go.”

A sudden fear of being abandoned again twisted Ria’s stomach, but she pushed it back down and let out a deep breath. “Okay. How long do you think you’ll be gone?”

Jarrel gave her a long look before continuing, “About three days, but it might take a little longer if there aren’t any travelers. I’m not happy about leaving you alone when you’re injured, but after tomorrow, you should be able to get around some if you use your staff to keep the weight off your bad ankle.”

And if he got captured or killed, then she really would be all alone. Still, this was the plan they had discussed, and it made the most sense. “Don’t worry about me. I found something interesting in the magic book that is going to take me a while to learn, and I can also use the time to continue practicing meditation.”

“That so… Keep alert and hide if anyone comes. I’ll be watching the road, so that shouldn’t happen, but just in case, okay?”

Ria nodded to show her understanding.

Jarrel’s shoulders visibly relaxed. “Alright. I’ll be leaving then. Don’t worry about Ranger. I’ll take him some food on my way out of the village. Is there anything you need me to bring up before I go?”

The only things that Ria could think of were writing supplies, and she had those in her desk. “Nope. I’m all set, thanks.”

Jarrel gave her a hug and left. The smell of oiled leather lingered for a moment. Watching him go, she wondered if the reliable figure he presented when armed and armored was the real truth of the man she had known as a simple hunter for so many years.

Once she heard the front door close, Ria looked under the cloth that Jarrel had used to cover the food tray.

Soup, cider, and two plates, each containing a mound of sliced ham and cheese. No doubt, the rest of the ham and the cheese wheel she had been trying to finish off, and arguably enough for three days, if needed. Though whether it would keep that long in this heat, questionable.

Ria left half the soup for later and returned the cloth to covering the tray. No sense letting the flies get to it.

Breakfast out of the way, she was itching to resume her study of wards. Barriers were interesting too, but wards gave her the flexibility to actually do things with magic. Even if it was just duplicating a ward from the book, she wanted to work real magic—something to prove to herself that it wasn’t a game of pretend all in her head.

Slipping out of bed, she hopped over to her chair using her good leg and sat down to get to work, her staff across her lap as usual.

A lot of the theory was beyond her understanding, and after a while, she skipped ahead to the ‘practical applications’ section looking for something simple that she could try out.

Her impatience was rewarded in the form of an easy-to-understand ward. The text under the diagram read:

Activation Ward - uses the imbued magical energy to send out a pulse of magic when the specified condition is met. Often the pulse is converted to light or sound to function as an alarm or elemental magic to function as a trap.

It was elegantly simple in design, and the use was set by simply adding meaning-containing glyphs to the two blank circles where the activation condition and pulse effect were to be defined. Several useful examples were provided, and there was interesting discussion about the limitations of various meanings.

Apparently, general concepts were a lot easier to define. For example, human proximity was two glyphs, ‘human’ and ‘proximity’, plus an optional construct defining the distance. Whereas setting the ward to activate when a specific person approached would require a true name or an embedded divination spell, or such.

Proximity activation would certainly be useful for alerting or protecting herself when meditating, but to use a ward for practicing her magic sensing by sensing the magic when it activated, she needed something that could be activated intentionally—something like a voice command.

There were sound activation examples, but here again, general conditions were much simpler than specific ones. Having the ward respond to a type of voice was way easier than responding to a specific word or meaning. In the case of a specific meaning, a comparative divination construct was required. An example was provided, but for now she wanted the keep the design as simple as possible.

For the pulse effect, there were several interesting examples. Simply inserting the ‘magic’ glyph would create a pulse that would only be noticed by those who could sense magic. Putting a ‘scream’ glyph would send out a scream.

Ria flipped back to the limited table of glyphs provided by the book and decided on ‘voice’ for the activation condition and ‘thunder’ for the pulse.

She grinned. “This is going to be so cool!”

Ria was really pleased with herself. Not only was the magic simple. It was self-powered and didn’t require any stupid chants or risky dealing with magical beings. This ward was the perfect ritual magic for her to practice with!

Satisfied with her plan, she cheerfully got out ink and paper and practiced drawing the completed ward until she could accurately reproduce it then a few extra times just for good measure.

Impatient to test the ward out, Ria hopped over to the center of her room and started drawing on the wood-plank floor with the end of her staff.

Immediately, a problem presented itself.

She couldn’t sense the energy, and there wasn’t any glowy line to tell what she had drawn!

This was a crisis! She was so close to being able to do real magic!

Ria debated going outside to draw in the dirt, but when her eyes drifted over to her closet, a brilliant idea came to her.

“Heh, heh, heh,” she chuckled like a villain while hopping over to her closet, quickly finding the fancy polished case she was looking for and taking it back to her desk.

Ria was shocked when Kurt, her oldest brother, had given her this paint set for her birthday. The vivid pigments were so pretty and expensive that she didn’t want to waste them, but painting was just too much fun, and over the years, the set had seen extensive use to the point that she was running low on her favorite colors.

She carefully scooped a measured amount of white pigment into one of the lacquered mixing cups and added water, stirring and adding until the consistency was right. Then, brush in hand, she painted the ward directly onto the floor in the middle of her room.

Painting a version large enough to trace with her staff was tiring work, so even though Ria was eager to test it out, she didn’t feel too impatient about taking a break to wait for the paint to finish drying. Before that though, she cleaned up her painting supplies, carefully putting everything away in the fancy box.

Ria sat on the chair and rubbed her sore muscles. She really wished that next time she went with Jarrel for training that she wouldn’t be so sore the next day. Ugh, how’d she end up so weak compared to everyone else?

Alright, that’s good enough. Time for magic!

Staff in hand, Ria hopped over to the painted ward and prepared to start tracing. She placed the end of the staff onto the design, then hesitated.

Just tracing over the design probably wasn’t enough. To power the magic, she had to provide energy through the tool.

Closing her eyes, Ria slowed her breathing and cleared her mind, hoping for some kind of insight, but she still wasn’t sure what to look for. Other than the slight warmth that she felt when holding the staff… huh?

Wasn’t that ‘warmth’ magical energy?!

And noticing that it’s ‘warm’ meant that she was sensing the magical energy, didn’t it?! Might she actually be one of those innately talented people mentioned in the book?

Feeling a flush of excitement, Ria opened her eyes and focused her attention at the base of the staff, trying to push ‘warmth’ through the staff and into the lines as she began to trace, carefully working her way through the design. Keeping a constant focus was harder than expected, and after tracing the last line, she felt a little tired.

Ria’s mouth turned up in a grin. Was she tired because she used her inner energy?

The moment of truth had arrived. Was she a silly girl playing pretend, or… “Activate!”

A faint sound like a distant thunder filled the room.

“Hahaha! It worked! It worked!” Ria was ecstatic. The soreness in her muscles completely forgotten, she hopped about cackling and cheering. “I can do magic! I can do magic! I caaan doooo maagiiiic! Hahaha!”

The sound from the ward had been pathetically soft, but it was unmistakable. That she succeeded at all, meant that she already had some ability to sense and manipulate magical energy. She just needed to work on improving her abilities.

Stopping in front of her closet, she decided. “I should wear my festival dress to celebrate!”

Her mom had made her a special dress for this year’s Harvest Festival, and not wearing it at least once would be really sad.

Humming a happy tune, Ria laid the festival dress on her bed and quickly shrugged out of her night gown. Getting into the autumn-themed dress while standing on one foot was a bit of a balancing act, but nothing she couldn’t manage.

Looking down at the dress with fabric dyed in colors of a cheery festival fire and embroidered with red and yellow leaves, this wasn’t the first time Ria wished she had a full-length mirror.

Even without a mirror, she could tell her mom really had done a wonderful job on the dress. Why wasn’t her mom living in a big city? She had already sold many dresses to minor nobles and wealthy merchants! It just didn’t make any sense.

Picking her staff back up, Ria went back to tracing the ward, entertaining herself by making thunder over and over again. The magic didn’t always work, and she quickly figured out that the more she concentrated, the better chance for success. She also discovered that the boom would be much louder if she traced the ward multiple times before activating it.

Thrilled at being able to duplicate her results but too tired to continue, Ria flopped backward onto her bed, causing the plates to clatter on the food tray and the remaining soup to slosh in the bowl.

“Oops.”

She had forgotten about the food in her excitement of having actually done real magic for the first time. Ria finished off the soup while planning what to do next.