I had eventually found some paper, and now it sat in front of me… and I was no long sure that this was a good idea. Or rather, I was no longer sure that I thought this was a good idea.

Kendra, as she had eventually introduced herself, had gone off to finish her own report, and then yell at her teammates.

I stared at the page, and pressed my hands to the table. They itched to draw out the inherent truth of… something. An echo of an echo of an echo…

I had drawn a scintillating flower in the centre of the page. I did not remember doing it, or where I had gotten the colours from. I knew what I would draw next - a circle around the flower, then a larger circle around that, and then use runes to write an ode to the earth.

I watched my hand move as if in a dream, quivering as it went to go through motions which my memories assured me I had done a hundred hundred times. It was nothing so complicated as mind control. It was… centuries of acquired habits, warring with my desire and [Talismania].

It wasn’t possible for me to not complete the Talisman. Just like the last two, in fact. The moment I thought of them, the burning need radiating from [Talismania] receded a little bit, so I immediately seized on them.

The plate and the scalpel. The plate I had created in a similar fugue-like state, down in the dark. It was only looking back on it that I noted the obvious parallels to… I quashed the thought. It came from a children’s book that I had never read.

[Talismania] had come off cool-down fairly quickly after that one, I thought. The scalpel on the other hand had been my first deliberate attempt at a Talisman… And it was shit. In retrospect. It was a lot weaker, and barely a work of anything. A modern symbol imbued with desperate prayers, its form and function clashed almost completely.

And [Talismania] had taken much, much longer to come off cooldown afterwards.

Was that it? If I made a worse talisman, [Talismania] would stay on cooldown for longer?

Of course, having a worse Talisman would mean less power. Fewer options. Dying sooner.

It was an obvious trade off - sanity for power.

Suddenly, a hand landed on my shoulder. “How’re ya laddie?” I turned to look at the man behind me. He wasn’t particularly tall, but he was built like a brick wall, and had an oddly multicoloured beard set with dozens of small pieces of jewellery.

“Hello again laddie!” He said, brightly. “The ECRA sent me to have a word with you, y’know, induction, build advice for new Awakened, that sort of thing. So! Grand Mage Kendra informs me you’re a new Spellslinger, yes?”

“Um. Yes?” I said, a bit taken aback by this new arrival. “Wonderful. Call me… George? Yes, George will do.” He clapped me on the back again.

“Now then, a piece of good news - the first step on the path of the Spellslinger, at least our Earthen version, is very well understood. In short, it’s a choice all around Talismania. Either make 5 Talismans with it, which can be decently or even very powerful, like that plate you have tucked into your bag… Or make a tonne of shite ones that burn out quicker than the cooldown… CD if you’re one of the kids, of course. At that point, you go and do an advancement trial.”

“…” I stared, blankly at him. “… I think I understood that. But what is an advancement trial?”

George blinked at me, as if confused for a second, before realisation flashed across his face. “Ah, yes, no induction yet. An advancement trial is your first gate at a planar depth 10 deeper than your awakening trial. Your awakening trial is the first Gate you clear. Although you cleared one solo, so if you’re lucky you can get an advancement trial at a depth only 8 deeper.”

He gesticulated wildly the entire time. “Your advancement trial will let you up- or side-grade one of your Powers and one of your Skills. That’s also your only guaranteed Advancement Trial, after that… Well, it gets complicated… Oh, hold on, I need to take this.”

He pulled a flip-phone out of his pockets, and started talking to someone. My own attention turned back to the page in front of me, and the half-formed and unconsecrated Talisman in front of me.

“You can mix-and-match styles” George said, briefly covering his phone.

It was like I was struck by a lightning bolt, and I was immediately struck with the most horrific decision paralysis I had ever experienced in my life as the various different magic arts that I knew start flowing through each other in my brain. Obvious combinations pushed themselves forward from the bundle of intruding thoughts that were my skills.

I vaguely noted George wince, but I was too busy distracting myself from the rapidly increasing headache I was getting, trying to choose the next flavour of madness.

I settled on enclosing the flower in a nonagram instead of a circle, then inscribing the nine-pointed star with the names of the Muses. I had already invoked them to empower my scalpel, after all.

The moment I finished inscribing the last name, it was like a celestial chorus sounded around me, and for a moment I saw nine masks in a field of distant stars… And then it was gone, and I was back in the tent.

George looked at me, intensely for a moment. “We need to go, laddie” He said. “The Confederates are set on breaking the gate, and it seems like every last one of the zombie-arse-licking bastards is crawling out of the wood-works and making their way here.”

The minor sense of success I had felt at completing my Talisman faded to be replaced by a bundle of anxiety and nerves.