Riloth the 19th the 124th

I took the wand to the most chair-like rock and made myself comfortable.

Holding it gingerly in my hand, I turned it over for any signs of—well, not levers, but something. The wand was eighteen inches long, and made out of bone. It had been turned into a perfect cylinder, with edges as smooth as polished steel, and with a tapered tip that was sharp to the touch. I found nothing in my cursory examination, and turned to my Willsight with a brief mental jaunt to my vault.

I’d used it often while examining the book, finding that the headaches it induces get worse when looking at high concentrations of Will. The wand shone a sea green, and I tasted salt lightly on my tongue, as if standing in a breeze of the ocean.

Could this be the bone of some magical sea creature?

I held the wand close to my eye, but the solid green aura didn’t alter its appearance no matter the distance. Next, I dismissed my sight, and closed my eyes, focusing on sensing the Will inside the wand.

I got something.

It was like when I’d sensed the Will Dagmar had imbued into that dagger the day she’d taught me about runes, but more. Much, much more.

Where on that day I’d sensed a simple concept, this felt like I’d shocked myself with my own Lightning Bolt. My mind was suddenly full of disjointed fragments. It was like holding a spell that I was about to send into the Arcane Realm, but instead of an orderly construct of Will, it was a scorching hot ball of razors covered in glass.

The pain was so great, I lost consciousness, and woke to Dagmar sitting on my chair rock and snacking on the wizard’s rations.

“I take it you didn’t figure it out,” she said when my eyes opened.

“Nope,” I said, rubbing my still throbbing head, “but I think I have a clue.”

Still laying in the leaves, I clasped my hand on the wand and closed my eyes, entering my mental vault fully. The place was a disaster, which was a new experience. I’d never witnessed it undergo any changes I hadn’t directly performed. My neatly ordered shelves of books that made up my memories were in disarray, covering the floor, and the air was filled with a thick smoke. Frantically, I looked through the books, worried that my mishap had somehow destroyed my memories, but all the books I checked—be they memory or spell construct—seemed intact. Once I was satisfied that I hadn't endured permanent mental trauma, it only took a moment and small effort of Will, and I was able to clear up the mess. I sat on the ground, and remembered the way the small apartment had been, and watched as the books returned to their shelves.

The smoke, however, was a different matter. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get it to leave. Adopting a different tact, I focused on it as I would a book, and to my satisfaction, I sensed something.

It was that same flaming ball of sharp pain, but now instead of feeling it, I was simply aware of it. The difference between standing near a fire and feeling its warmth and sticking your hand into it and burning it in the coals.

Now that I sensed it, I became aware of something else, only not in my vault. In the vague awareness I maintained of my body while meditating, I felt a pull on my mind—like an echo of the smoke in the palm of my hand. The moment I turned my attention to the echo, I learned the secret to wands.

It was fairly simple. Standing in my mental vault, wand in hand, I could examine the enchantment in the wand without shoving the whole thing violently into my skull. From this new and less painful perspective, it was clear what I needed to do. Inside the wand, sat a preformed and prepared spell construct, just waiting to be sent through my bridge into the Arcane Realm. The magical artifact drew Will naturally, and the enchantment inside it shaped it into completed spells, ready to be used.

I left my vault and jumped to my feet, shouting a triumphant, “I got it!”

Extending the wand at a nearby tree, I closed my left eye, looked down the shaft and sent the spell into the Arcane Realm. Power immediately flooded through me, and then out through the wand. Three faint shimmers of distorted light, hardly visible if I hadn’t been looking, shot from the bone rod into the dead center of the tree, exactly where I’d aimed. Each dart hit the same location with the deep thud of an ax cutting into a tree and sent wood splinters flying. I approached, a smile wide on my face, and stuck the wand into the twelve inch deep coin sized hole I’d made.

“Your turn,” I said, turning to Dagmar.

I reached into the wand, and to my dismay, found that the spell construct was gone.

“Flood!” I shouted, “It's empty. I guess there was only the one charge.”

“Bah!” Dagmar laughed, wiping the remains of rations off her filthy shirt as she stood up.

Then, I remembered the fog in my vault.

That must have been an additional charge. Does it still work?

I willed it to leave, picturing it flooding out the door of my bridge and into the Arcane Realm.

That had been a mistake.

I felt the power enter me, but I knew at once that it was wrong, more akin to my warped Firebolt than to the spell I’d just cast. And, just like my warped Firebolt, my world erupted in pain. The wand in my hand exploded, sending bone shards in all directions, and pulverizing my arm up to the elbow. The shards stuck, burying deep into my upper arm, face, and chest. I fell down, both from the force of the explosion and from the shock of losing an arm.

At once Dagmar was upon me, wrapping my forearm with a clean linen bandage she’d found while sorting the gear. Once the bleeding had stopped, she ran back to the pilfered equipment and brought back a vial of foggy red liquid. Silently and without mercy, she removed the bone shards from my face as best as her large fingers could manage, and when she was done she handed me the vial.

“Drink this.”

I obliged, not thinking my situation could get any worse and nearly choked on the bitter taste.

Definitely a potion.

I kept the foul liquid down, and felt it immediately go to work. I felt as all the ailments of my body lessened. My headache, the throbbing from the bone shard wounds, the agony of my missing arm, the burning in my muscles from our brief adrenaline fueled combat and some level of my exhaustion from those same exertions, none of it went away completely, but it all became less noticeable and suddenly more manageable.

“Wow,” was all I could say.

After another moment, I gathered my words, “That took the edge off. How did you know it would work? Was that a healing potion?”

I examined the bone cuts I could see. They were scabbed over, though not completely healed, which likely meant my stump would remain a stump for the remainder of the reset.

Hmm, I’d never thought I’d be so cavalier about an amputation. I suppose dying repeatedly puts things into perspective.

“I didn’t,” came Dagmar’s answer. “I figured it’d either help or kill you faster, and either would be better than letting you bleed out slowly.”

“So kind of you. On an unrelated note, that didn’t count as the attack I owe you.”

She threw the spellbook onto my lap.

“Start studying, there has to be something more useful in here than Clean for our current predicament.”

She paused, looking herself over and added, “But, if you find the time, maybe try to learn that one too.”

She went back to sorting through the items, and I flipped through the book, awkwardly with only a single hand, wondering which to choose first.

The remainder of the reset was spent studying, me the book, and Dagmar the duo’s gear. By the end of the day, I’d settled on learning Shield, and was making progress on doing so.

Dagmar had managed to discern the purpose of most of the magical equipment. Fanos had two swords, one dispelled any magical effect it encountered with a cooldown of about ten minutes, and the other drained the Will of anyone it struck. She had hopes that at least one of these would hinder the golem’s regenerative abilities, or at least slow their movements.

The wicked dagger was enchanted with a pain-inducing effect. The slightest cut felt as if “a swarm of fire ended stone weevils were digging into your flesh,” or at least that’s how Dagmar described it after pricking her finger with the blade to test the effect. Not exactly a standard dwarven method of establishing magical effects as she explained it, but as my father used to say, when life hands you a temporal prison, best to take some risks in pursuit of knowledge. Well, he would have said it if he was here, that’s for certain.

The dagger's effect faded immediately when contact is broken. Its small size and temporary effect implied that it was not meant for battle, but for less noble pursuits.

Along with the weapons, Fanos had a braided silken choker that drained the Will of whoever touched the inner surface. The Hardune have a similar device, though theirs are made with runes and this one was enchanted. When Dagmar put it on, the air became cloudy with her amber aura, as the choker vented her Will. We dubbed it the Choker of Headaches, for the Will drain was severe and immediate, and she had to take a potion to banish the migraine it’d induced.

Other minor magical trinkets included a magical rope that could untie and repair itself if cut and then put back together, a cloak enchanted to protect from the elements, and a runed pot of dwarven make that could be heated via application of Will.

The wizard, along with the wand and spellbook, had his own assortment of magical and runed items; a strange bone rod carved with runes, that shone the same green color in my Willsight as the wand, a diamond ring, a bottle of ink that from its white aura I surmised was used to write out spell forms, paper that had no aura in my Willsight—also used for spell forms—and lastly the robe with its larger-on-the-inside pockets.

The pockets didn’t appear to be a pocket realm like the Dahn, but instead a combination of Spatial and Gravity magics that both expanded the size within while also reducing the weight of its contents.

The bone rod looked to be some sort of tool, not a weapon, but Dagmar wouldn’t let me experiment with it until after I learned a spell. To reinforce this demand, she broke it in half over her knee. She hadn't recognized many of the runes and couldn't make heads or tales of its purpose. Before breaking it, she'd tried to activate the runes, but only succeeded in lighting up a single, minuscule light rune at the base—far less light than should have appeared from her expenditure of Will if generating light were its purpose.

The diamond, on the other hand, I did examine. It shone white like a spell form, and after a careful examination in the same manner in which I’d examined the wand—the second time—I discovered it contained a spell. It appeared much the same as the wand, only this one was recognizable as a fully formed spell construct waiting to be sent into the Arcane Realm, while the wand was weird and missing crucial components like a Font and gate. I recognized the Font of Lightning inside the ring as part of the spell construct, and deduced that this was the Call Lightning spell the wizard was working on.

Cautiously, as to not absorb the spell into my vault, I cast it through my bridge and... nothing happened. The spell, it seemed, was still a work in progress. I sensed it fall apart on its way to the Font of Lightning—ripped asunder by the forces of that magical and chaotic realm.

When darkness began to fall, and Dagmar had exhausted the slain pair’s supply of rations, she came back to me to check on my progress.

“How goes the spell work?”

“Not good.”