Vex frowned, and took a moment to concentrate.

The system always presented information about skills and spells in a neat, orderly sort of way. His Glyph did the opposite, in the sense that it fed the information directly into his skull and didn't seem to bother to filter it, meaning he got a whole lot of irrelevant information on top of the actually useful stuff.

Not unlike the way he tended to take research notes, actually. So on that front there was a possibility that this was slightly his fault.

Just a bit.

It took him a second to sort through and organize the most important information in his mind.

Sign of Renewal

The result of a merge between the personal Sign of the great archmage ###a#, merged with the Sign of the Great Wyrm during their confrontation many eons ago. The original Sign of Devouring is a unique-class Sign that takes on the form of a set of metaphysical teeth, consuming everything in its path. Tempered with ###a#'s unique Sign of Birth, the result is a spell that consumes the essence of an object and turns it into a seed, to be grown anew.

There was a lot of information that Vex had to discard to put even that together. Part of it was a scrambled list of things the Sign had previously been used on, and the resultant seed that had been created; Noram — or this version of Noram — had evidently used it on a number of plants that Vex recognized as the same as the ones that along the streets of Teque.

Derivan's spell was, interestingly, not on that list.

Then there was a mess of information about the emotional state of the caster, the names of everyone that knew the spell — useless information that Vex had to sort and discard before it crowded out the more useful stuff. He did learn why the plants had been Renewed, though; apparently, many of them were plants on the surface that they'd lost access to after the mana had closed it off. The Sign didn't keep everything the same, but it was close enough.

It was a small reminder of the breadth of the world they'd once had.

"Renewal," Vex finally said, looking at Noram; the otter widened his eyes slightly in response, but didn't say anything. "It consumes something on a metaphysical level, and then rebirths it, a little different than before. You use it to preserve some legacies from the surface that don't last down here in Teque."

"An information-gathering personal Sign, then," Noram said thoughtfully. The otter hopped to his feet and glanced at the door, where Anton was bringing a grumpy-looking Helg into the building — not that Helg ever looked not-grumpy, as far as Vex could tell. "Those are... rare. And not often as potent as yours."

"We don't know that it's mine," Vex said, embarrassed.

"The fact that it's feeding that information back to you and not your friend is good enough evidence for me," Noram said with a shrug. "Though how your friend discovered your Sign for you and managed to integrate it with his own is another question entirely."

"It is because I was thinking about Vex, I believe," Derivan supplied. "He is the reason I am close to magic at all."

"I'm—" Vex started, and then promptly buried his snout into his hands. He wanted to hide behind Derivan, except that was what he always did, and this time Derivan was the source of the embarrassment, so he couldn't hide behind him—

Noram, watching the two of them, snorted and grinned. "Yeah, okay, nevermind, I figured it out."

"Doesn't take long, does it?" Sev commented.

"If you tease him any more he might explode," Misa said. "Can't have him exploding. It's bad for wizards."

"Have experience with that, do you?" Noram asked, raising a single, ottery brow.

"So much," Misa sighed. She pulled Vex close to give him a presence to anchor to, and he gratefully hugged into her. She'd always had the most understanding of his anxiety next to Derivan, and Derivan at the moment seemed to be too busy trying to figure out what everyone was talking about...

"He'll figure it out," Misa whispered to him. "I think he just did, actually. Fuckin' finally."

Vex decided he really needed to figure out that sink-into-floor spell. If only his friends would let him try. It had only blown up twice before! It absolutely wasn't the big deal everyone seemed to think it was—

"Can we get back on topic, please?" Helg finally spoke up, looking disgruntled and vaguely annoyed. Her arms were crossed, and her antennae twitched slighty in irritation. "In case you forgot, we have rogue elements loose in the city, and the Guard can't deal with them because apparently they don't hide using spells."

"You said your spell gave you some information on them," Noram said. "What kind of information was that, exactly?"

"It's kind of incomplete," Vex said, grimacing a little as he spoke. Maybe he'd played it up too much — all he knew was that the Patchers gave him a very bad feeling, along with an assorted set of impressions. Every time they struck Derivan's shield, it was like he could feel something being drained away, but it was much harder for him to learn what the Patchers were doing compared to what Noram's spell was doing...

Though that made sense, he supposed. The Patchers were part of the system, and his Sign or Glyph was part of the magic here in Teque, or whatever they called their greater world. They opposed each other, in a way.

"It's a lot fuzzier than trying to read the spell," Vex elaborated when he saw the others looking at him; he tried not to fidget, and he felt Derivan stepping behind him again. The large armor's presence somehow let him feel a little calmer, and he sighed, trying to sort through his thoughts. "I can start with the obvious, I guess — the Patchers work the same way the system does, since they're its agents. They can edit aspects of the system, grant themselves skills, and to a limited extent they can cause minor shifts in reality."

"The thing is, the ones here are trying to do something specific, and that's what I'm struggling with." Vex hesitated, searching his mind for the words. "It's not... whatever it is they're doing, it's not good. But I need more. It's just..."

The Patchers were gone, were the words left unsaid.

Helg frowned. She pulled out an arm — quite literally, in fact; Vex felt the shift in mana as she dragged the literal arm of one of the Patchers out of some dimensional space — and held it forward. "Can you use this?"

"Um," Vex said, and then glanced helplessly at Noram. "Probably?"

"You might want to try Signing yourself," the otter told him, as gently as he could. "It may open new aspects of your spell that aren't available in the combined Sign. Also — no offense — but your current combined Sign is amateurish at best." He glanced at Derivan.

Derivan simply shrugged. "It was my first attempt," he said. "I am not surprised. But I am eager to learn what it could do, if properly combined."

"One might call that a rather intimate act, combining two personal Signs," Noram said, his tone just a bit teasing, and Vex tried to ignore the way Derivan glanced contemplatively at him.

"Anyway!" he said, trying to ignore the way his voice pitched a little higher than usual. "How do I— Um. Right. I have this." He rummaged around in his tailbag, eventually pulling out the brush that he'd gotten from Anyati, back in the shop; Noram watched him with something that looked like a spark of recognition, but didn't say anything.

Vex used [Splash of Mana], and then... he hesitated.

This was, already, different from anything that the people of Teque did when casting their magics. He'd never seen any of them use mana itself as a paint; their glyphs were all preprepared, with the only exception being Noram's use of the Sign of Renewal just now. Did it matter?

"What is that?" Helg muttered, staring at him, and Noram shook his head and shushed her. Vex decided to ignore them both, for now.

He needed something that represented him. And he had some idea of what his Sign might look like, thanks to Derivan; it would be something like a book...

He still hesitated after letting some of the light-green mana he'd generated soak into the brush. The bristles gleamed, and he knew, with an instinct he hadn't known he had, that he could now use it to cast — but the thought of what he should draw left him entirely. His Sign was a book, certainly, but what kind of book? Was it open or closed? What were the details—

Derivan placed a hand on his shoulder. "You are overthinking," the armor said quietly. "Clear your mind. Draw what comes to you."

Vex... breathed. And then he began to paint.

He could sense, somehow, that Derivan was guiding him — that the armor himself wasn't exactly sure what he was doing, only that he was helping. He felt himself being guided, slowly, towards a clearer image. His hand was moving on its own, now; the brush strokes were familiar, like he'd been drawing and painting all his life, and when he was done...

"Oh," he said softly.

The Glyph represented his first empty notebook.

There were a few glittering shards beside it — no doubt mana slivers. Vex remembered what the shopkeeper-Anyati had said, that the mana would award an act of true creation with some slivers; he wondered if there was significance in the number or the size. Judging by the look Noram was giving him...

But he didn't care about that right now. More importantly was the surge of emotion the glyph brought with it.

For all that his family had a focus on studying and researching magic, not all of them enjoyed it; some of his brothers and sisters, he knew, found greater joy in understanding the combat applications of magic, or how illusions could be twisted towards beauty. He was the only one among his brothers that had taken to studying and documenting everything, and the memory of his first notebook was something...

He didn't treasure the memory. Not exactly. But it was his first gift. The first thing he could truly call his own, gifted to him after his parents had seen how he spent all his time analyzing and studying every piece of magic he came across; it was a small thing, loose papers held together by a copper binder that spiralled through the pages, but it was his.

And that was the form the glyph had taken.

Vex swallowed the well of complicated emotion that rose up inside him. He watched instead, silent, as the mana around him began to move — flowing from the great river of mana up above and drifting slowly, carefully towards his glyph at first; then faster and faster, charging it to a brighter potency with every passing second. Noram's eyes widened slightly. Helg reached out, as if about to say something—

"Give me the arm," Vex said, as a small piece of the puzzle unravelled for him, and he understood how to use the glyph a little bit more.

The wasp-lady handed it over without another word, her eyes lingering on the mana slivers he had created, or been awarded. Vex took the arm, a small part of him disturbed by the fact that he was essentially holding on to a part of a corpse, but the rest automatically following the instinctive instructions that came along with the casting of the spell; he placed it in front of his glyph, and thin tendrils of magic burst from the notebook, latching on to it —

Vex felt the information flow in, and his face paled quickly, even beneath his scales.