I relax into my bath with a satisfied groan. The rest of the party secured some rooms in the inn while Heather and Liv were running me into the ground, so the only substantial wait was for heated water to be brought up and poured into the tub. It may not be a water heater and a hot shower, but after two hours of grueling exercise I’m willing to call it close enough.

Heather and I are sharing one room, Liv and Agnes have another room, and Ji and Bob are keeping Axelos company in a third.

While I relax, I think. I’ve accomplished my immediate goal: I have some basic defenses. What do I learn next?

I could do more defense, I could do more utility, or I could work on offense. I think that Heather and Liv are pretty happy with my defenses. I already have the major utility item they needed. I suspect I should probably start trying to round out my capabilities, which means offense. If I get stuck in a fight right now, I’m hosed even with my shield available.

So. Offense. Options options options. Firestream, Farpunch, and Blast of Fire.

I disqualify Blast of Fire immediately. As useful as I think it’d probably be, I’m not licensed for it yet.

So the question is really between Firestream and Farpunch. They appear to be comparably difficult to cast, six and eight pages of somatic components respectively. Firestream is more disruptive and can do area in a pinch, and area disruption is probably my primary offensive contribution right now. Farpunch, on the other hand, is far more precise and probably can do far more damage to a single target, especially if it’s “charged” like I think it’ll be.

Once Heather and I have both finished and are getting ready for bed, I ask her what she thinks.

“How long will they take to learn?”

“…Six pages of somatic components, so a few hours each. Maybe a day total. Wow, I’m really out of it. I’ll just learn both.”

“Being tired does that to people,” she laughs. “Now get some sleep. You’ll feel better tomorrow. Might be sore, though.”

I do my best disgusted-zombie impression—far better than what I heard from Axelos’s mass-production undead—and flop face-first into bed.

Heather drags me out of bed at an unreasonably early hour.

“You can sleep on the wagon.”

“Nnnnnooooooooo, pillow fluffy,” I whine.

I’m eventually coaxed out of bed by the promise of fried potatoes. When I get down for breakfast they are indeed as delicious as promised, which means that Heather is forgiven for another early morning. It’s not exactly hash browns but it’s very close, basically a giant pile of grated potatoes, mixed with peppers and onions and fried into a puck the shape of the frying pan that they used to prepare it. I feel like it could do with a little bit more seasoning, but that’s probably because I’m used to fried potatoes being grotesquely salty. I cast Make Ready and Shield for One while I’m eating, hoping that I can make it a habit.

Then we all march out into the forest-smelling damp morning air, both caravans worth of carters and guards, and pile into the wagons. We wait for the carters to do their inspections—

Liv shouts and whips a knife into something above me. I activate my readied Shield for One and point it at the threat. Liv throws two more knives over my head and they hit meat, whak whak. Ji shouts “Hwah!” and practically levitates out of his seat to deliver a midair bicycle-kick to a blurry mess of green and brown and ivory white. I flatten myself against the container behind my seat. I realize that a chunk of my shield is already orange. Heather gets an arrow off, thwok. Stephanos swings his spear and hits the thing again with a wet CHRACK. And then a pile of bloody brown-green fur slides off my shield and out of sight next to the wagon, where Agnes jumps down and produces another of her signature crunchy splatters.

I want to close my eyes and throw up. Instead, I keep an eye on my shield strength and kick myself over to hide under Bob, who’s standing over Axelos and looking in every direction.

At least those exercises with Heather and Liv last night seem to have gotten something done, I find myself thinking.

The rest of the caravan is starting to go on high alert, guards shouting back down the line.

“Any more?” Stephanos asks.

Liv vaults off a seat back to reach the top of the cargo container in the back of the wagon. “Ji, up here, then clap your hands, as loud as you can,” she orders. Ji does so, producing a gunshot-like crack that echoes off the stone buildings around us. Liv cocks her head, listening. “Again.” Another gunshot rolls out and returns. “Again.” Yet another. “I’m not hearing anything absorbing sound in the wrong place,” Liv says.

I realize that I could be helping. I don’t need the shield with Bob right there and everyone alert, so I dismiss it and start casting Find Spellcraft.

Agnes is prowling around the wagon, hammer at the ready. Heather’s jumped over the side and I think she’s doing something I can’t see to the remains of the beast that attacked us. Attacked me.

A guard from the other caravan shouts that she can’t smell anything other than the thing we just killed, and asks us who has sensory skills. Liv shouts back her own findings.

Find Spellcraft goes off and I start sweeping it around, taking care to check above and below me as well as all sides.

Honestly, it’s not like we’re going to find another one of those things. Solitary hunter, and an animal at that; it would’ve only been one of them acting alone, there’s no squad backing them up the way there would have been if that’d been an intelligent ambush. Liv and I confirm that all of the dots correspond to either guards with skills active or the consistent patterns of enchanted wagon parts. I try to shout out the result of my sensor sweep but can’t quite manage because I’m shaking too hard, so Bob does it for me.

It takes a few minutes, but everyone finally seems to realize that there are no threats left. Agnes heads into the inn to rinse herself off. I check myself over and find that I’m completely clean despite all the violence done a few feet above my head, so I just re-prepare Shield for One and try to relax.

I still don’t feel completely safe until the carters have finished their inspections and we’re moving.

Heather, Stephanos, Liv, and Yaroslav have their heads together and are talking quietly. I can’t put in the effort to figure out what they’re saying over the sound of the wind. Hopefully things along the lines of “That’s never happened before” and “Maybe we need to exterminate the forest cats” and “You need to hire better guards.”

Right. Enough of this. Heck with options, the rest of the party is more than capable of killing anything I point at. I just need to survive until then, which means not getting ambushed. I’m going to figure out how to have a Find Spellcraft up—not just at the ready, actually running—every waking moment.

Hopefully having something to work on will get me back on an even keel, too.

Gather requirements and determine scope.

It has to not be canceled when I deactivate my casting points, so that I can keep it up while I’m casting other spells.

I don’t care if it takes me ten minutes to cast because I’ll be casting it in the morning and leaving it up all day. I don’t care it if does stay up all day because I can make a more controllable version later. I’ll deal with it making light everywhere.

Scope: ASAP.

I could figure out a way to turn spells on and off. In the long term I need a real interface, the magical equivalent of a command line. Then I could just hook my spells up to that. That’s not feasible right now. I don’t have the ability to build stuff in a principled manner.

I could put it on a timer. I need the functionality from Make Ready that keeps a spell attached to me when I’m not casting it. I need the timer functionality from Stall. There’s probably some common functionality that I want related to capturing and halting another spell, which will help me figure out what parts I need.

Okay, so we’re disassembling some of my spells, throwing parts out, and stitching the remains together into a frankenspell that hopefully does what I want. How do I isolate those bits of functionality?

I know how to produce the kinds of mana that actually do things—it interacts with other mana—and I know how to redirect mana. I can knock out parts of the spell by blocking off those little dots that spawn mana, so the “result” mana goes through empty space instead of a filled whirlpool. I’ll track the specific path of each piece of “working” mana through whirlpools to see how the sequences differ, which will hopefully be much more enlightening than approximating it by looking at the somatic components. That’ll guide my search for whirlpools to delete. My first goal would be… a version of Stall that goes off immediately, which would point me at the timer functionality? Or, no, a version that never goes off.

Hmm.

Once I find the timer functionality, I could be left with a Stall that just never goes away. That’s… probably bad. Not catastrophic, but at the very least it’d be messy and I don’t like messy. There’s no “dispel magic” in the spellbook. I need to find a way to interact with my mana after the spell has been “cast”. I know there’s some kind of detachment going on because I can cast one spell while holding another; that’s how Make Ready works in the first place.

Hold on, I have coworkers. “Hey, Agnes, can I borrow you for a second?”

“Of course, Whitney,” she smiles, sliding across the bench so she can hear me more easily. “What is it that you need?”

I’m already halfway through casting Belighten. “I’m going to start experimenting with spell development and I need a way to stop something that’s gone out of control if I mess up. There’s no ‘Dispel Magic’ spell in my spellbook nor any guidance for interacting with spells that I’ve already cast,” I say. “Can you destroy this spell?” I hold my hand up, finger glowing brightly. “No need to be precise about it, I just need it no longer magicking.”

“Of course,” Agnes answers, amused. She reaches out, concentrates, makes a fist, and… very lightly punches my finger. I’m not sure what I expected, that’s obviously how she’d do it. Either way, the light goes out.

“Success!” I celebrate. “Perfect, time to do unwise things to the nature of reality. Thanks so much, this will speed up my timetable by like a whole week at least. I’ll let you know if you need to obliterate any of my mistakes!”

“Your mood seems so much improved that I cannot find it in me to question your sanity,” Agnes laughs, shaking her head. “I am baffled by your coping strategies, Whitney.”