It turned out none of us did which kind of blew our plans out of the water. “So no warts, no wart removal spell,” I said. “Anyone want freckles removed?”

I looked at the girls and still no takers. “Well, we have two bolts,” I said. “A fire bolt and a force bolt. Tanya, why don’t you share your spell screens with us?”

At her look of confusion, I said, “earlier while I was messing around, I discovered that it was possible to only view certain spells. Just tell yourself that you want to view both the force bolt and firebolt spells on a single screen. Then try to share it with us.” I had no idea if this would work, but whatever. My mom always said, ‘If you expect failure, don’t be surprised when you get it.

Shortly thereafter though a blue window appeared in front of us all that showed us the two spells:

Spells

Firebolt

Rank: Bronze

Elemental Sphere: Fire

Casting Time: 2 seconds

Somatic: Pointing at target

Verbal: Firebolt

Range: 10 meters + 5 per level

Damage: 1-10 (+1 per level)(+2 fire damage)

Cool Down: none

Duration: Permanent

Spell Resistance: Resist

MP: 10

Once cast, a firebolt almost always hits. Every rank it gets another bolt.

Level 1, (2/25) Force Bolt

Rank: Bronze

Elemental Sphere: Air

Casting Time: 2 seconds

Somatic: Pointing at target

Verbal: Zap

Range: 10 meters + 5 per level

Damage: 1-6 (+1 per level) per bolt

Cool Down: none

Duration: Permanent

Spell Resistance: Yes, if blocked

MP: 10

Once cast, a force bolt almost always hits. For every three levels, it gets another bolt.

Level 1, (6/25)

“Ok, there they are,” I said. “What do you think? They look almost identical. A little more damage on the firebolt, a possibility of a greater number of bolts on the Force Bolt.”

“Imu,” I said out loud. “How many level points to raise the spell to level 4? “

It showed briefly and said, “201.”

“How many casts would that take?” I asked.

“101 regular casts or 67 critical casts,” it said.

“What’s a critical cast,” I asked.

“It’s a cast that hits an area that is vital on the opponent or utilizes the knowledge of the spell effectively,” it said and then vanished.

I looked up and saw them both looking at me and so I passed on the info that I’d just learned.

“I guess aiming makes a difference. The description says that both spells almost always hit, I guess it didn’t mention where it would hit or that that made a difference. Good to know,” said Tanya.

“I could totally see that, it’s like the difference in punching someone in the arm or hitting a guy in the nads. Totally different experience. Ah!” Janet said. Both she and Tanya started laughing.

“Are you guys ever going to let it go?” I asked. “It’s got to get old sometime.”

“Hasn’t yet!” they both chorused. I rolled my eyes at them.

“Imu,” I said. “Is there a way for a mage or cleric to pass on a spell?”

It appeared and said, “there are at least two ways to do so. The first is by telling all of the details of the spell and letting the student perform or study the spell until they discover how to cast the spell by themselves. They gain proficiency at the bronze rank. The second is by direct transmission.”

“How does direct transmission work?” I asked.

“The master makes contact with the student and concentrates on passing the knowledge of the spell to them. If the transmission is successful, the student learns the spell at half of the proficiency of the master. Or the master can, if he has the skills for it, create a scroll or book to pass the spell on to his student or merely the reader of the scroll. Direct transmission or scroll creation requires that the master have at least two ranks in the spell. And expend 100 mana per rank of the spell.” And the little guy vanished.

“Scrolls! We can have scrolls!” I yelled.

The girls looked at me so I gave them the news. They were happy, but as Tanya pointed out, the gaining ranks in spells was not easy. We’d have to cast the spells at least, after a brief imu consultation, 3334 times perfectly in order to achieve the second rank in the spell. Suddenly all those skill points I was rolling in didn’t seem like that great a number. That was 33,340 mana points just to raise a single spell to the next rank. That meant, quickly doing the calculation, that it would take over 111 hours to generate that much mana, assuming I did nothing else but meditate and cast the spell. Also assuming that I didn’t get better at casting it or meditating to restore mana. Not happening soon, I think.

“Crap,” I said. I started to be suspicious of something and again asked my imu about skill points. “Do skill points raise a spell a rank or a level.”

It appeared and answered, “Not a rank and only sometimes a level.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It depends on the stage the spell, skill or ability is at whether it increases a level or not,” it responded. Another new term. “What do you mean by stage?” I asked.

“There are four stages in each rank of a spell, skill or ability. Early, Middle, Late, and Peak. They affect the number of points given by a skill point.”

“How so,” I asked.

The imu continued,

“Early stage automatically takes the spell to the next level plus whatever partial amount of level experience the user has, 23➔48, 48➔148, 148➔248

Middle stage, beginning at level 4, just adds 400 points to the level or whatever points it needs to achieve the next level, whichever is lesser: 248➔448, 448➔848, 848➔1248.

Late stage, beginning at level 7, adds 1000 points per skill point.

Peak stage, at level 9 adds 2500 points per skill point.”

“How many points does it take to reach each level?” I asked.

It answered, “Level 1 (25), Level 2 (100), Level 3 (200), Level 4 (400), Level 5 (800), Level 6 (1600), Level 7 (3200), Level 8 (6400), Level 9 (10000).

“Wow,” I said, “that means that,” quickly doing the calculation, “that it would take if we started from a level 1 spell with 2 level points on it, 14 skills points to reach the next rank.”

“That is correct,” it said then vanished.

I passed on what I’d just learned and we all sat there in an unhappy silence for a while. “On the plus side,” I said, “we do get experience for every level we increase our spells, skills or abilities. “Hey imu,” I called out. What experience does each level of a spell grant?”

It popped up and said, “25, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, 10000”

“Well,” I said. “At least the experience is pretty good. 22,950 experience points a rank isn’t bad. That would take a person up quite a few levels. Think about it, you could practice your skills or spells and make levels. We just got six levels from those rats and could have died.”

“Imu,” I asked, “what’s the experience points required for say the first 14 levels?”

It said, “200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, 12000, 22000, 33000, 48000, 63000, 80000, 97000,” and then did it’s vanishing thing again.

“I take it all back. That experience is enough to get you through to level nine. That’s pretty sweet. Some mage otaku is going to rule the world by casting his light spell. We need to practice as much as we can, especially when we’re in a safe zone, provided we ever get into a safe zone. And not pick on shut-ins. You just can’t tell what they’ve been practicing.”

“So, back to our spell, I say we try to create another bolt spell. We’ve seen the Force Bolt and the Firebolt spells. Both look really similar. I bet we can create another bolt spell. What do you say?”

“I’m not a mage,” said Janet. “I’m pretty sure that I don’t get the same spells that you get. I probably won’t get any elemental spells at all.”

“You’re probably right,” I said. “In the games, I used to play, clerics always got different spells. Mages were basically elementalists, tied into the four elements. That reminds me, imu” I called out. “How many elements are there and what are they?

It appeared and said, “There eight known elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Light, Darkness, Life, and Death.” And, then it vanished again.

“I can’t help but wonder every time my imu vanishes as soon as it answered my questions if I’m keeping it from something? Is it on a hot date? Chillaxing with Netflix?” I said. “Anyway, I was wrong. There are eight know elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Light, Darkness, Life, and Death. I’m betting that your spells, Janet, come from the later elements, Light, Darkness, Life or Death more easily than from the first four. Although, I don’t know that it’s a total line in the sand. I have two Life spells: Heal and Create Water.”

“All of my spells are Life spells,” she said.

“Be that as it may, I used to play a cleric in a game and they had a bolt spell in it. It would have probably been a light spell. I’m thinking that you could probably try for that, while Tanya and I try for whatever it is we decide to try for. It did more damage than our Force Bolt spells and left a light residue on the target that made them easy to hit. That should give you an idea of what to try for, don’t you think?”

She nodded and got busy.

I turned back to Tanya. “I say we try for an earth-based bolt,” said Tanya. “It seems logical that one would exist.”

“OK,” I said. “Remember how we got the Stick It and the Identify spell: we concentrated and used language and gestures.”

I closed my eyes and started trying to feel my mana. After a while, I could sense the blue glow in the same way that I first discovered it, a faint blue glow about my heart and in the middle of my forehead. I just relaxed and tried to, I guess commune with it. I mean what can you do, it’s a blue glow? Eventually, though I calmed down. Time passed slower in this state, I’m sure. Then I started thinking about earth, trying to name its parts: soil, topsoil, loam, clay, silt, dirt, sod, clod, turf, what it was composed of, metal, copper, iron, gold, silver, feldspar, limestone, granite, sandstone, formations that it grew into, stalactites, stalagmites, the special forms that it took, crystals, rubies, sapphires, topaz, diamonds, geodes, how it was shaped, caves, sinkholes, erosion, sedimentation, glaciation, volcanos, how we worked with it, farming, wheat planting, gardening. I felt heavy, ponderous, unmoving, dark, fecund. I felt grounded, stable. Then I started to remember the other bolt spell, since I only had the one right now, its damage, how it felt to cast it, how much mana it took to do so, and I tried to bring a new spell into being like it, but different. I thought about all of the differences and all of the similarities and then I started to try to create a similar spell only using earth.

At first it was difficult, I felt the mana moving in a way that I was not the way I imagined earth moving and slowly I gentled it, slowed it, gave it a sense of permanence, unyielding-ness, inevitability, abidingness, then I thought of the gesture I’d need to make, of the vast heartbeat of the world and pointed first toward my heart, and then, opening my eyes, I pointed at another tree and said, “Earth Bolt!”

A dark-brown bolt, more like a dart, the size of one of those lawn darts that were popular in the 70s, about 60 centimeters long, shot towards the tree and hit its trunk. It was what I guess would be an adult tree, even though it was new. Somehow it had been grown to that state overnight since it was in what used to be a parking lot. Its trunk was about 30 centimeters in diameter. It looked a little like a beech tree, which was odd because beech trees are usually not native to Oklahoma. But well, new-Earth, what can you do. It’s trunk almost exploded into a mass of splinters as the dart hit. It didn’t break the trunk but left a hole about tennis ball-sized in it. It left an odor of freshly cut wood with a tinge of burning to it in the area around us, like someone was chopping wood or running a chainsaw, only without the exhaust fumes. Unlike our Force Bolt spells, the dart remained in the hole it created for several seconds before slowly decomposing into sand and then slumping out and down where it seemed to decompose even further until it finally vanished.

‘Good to know,’ I thought. ‘Can’t create permanent darts using magic, at least this way.” I could feel a blue screen forming, but I repressed it.