Riloth the 19th the 355th

“I got it,” I told Dagmar as I woke.

“Finally,” she grumbled.

“I don’t see you learning any spells.”

“I have to suffer through that alchemist’s endless lecturing. He’s worse than you. Do you know how much fire moss it takes to raise a fire beetle from a silk worm? Because I do now, and I did not need that information. Nor did I need to know the proper way of distilling deep whale excrement into a usable reagent.”

“You know that is the main ingredient in the potions of clarity, right?” I asked her.

“No. You're joking,” she said, both trying to convince herself it was false and to will it to be so. “You are joking. Right?”

“Nope.”

She stood speechless as I dressed, wrestling with the discovery.

We recovered Bearskin, set Levar to work, and went towards the Den. Dagmar once more camped out across the street to report back if anything strange occurred, and to keep her safe to collect Levar's status.

We waited long enough that I was certain Barion and his wife—also Barion I suppose—would be back in their rooms. Once I was marginally confident, I Teleported to the door of the study. Willsight was active, an oversight on the last attempt, and I could see a light purple, almost lavender aura just under the crack.

I extended my palm to the visible aura and began to cast the spell. Unfortunately, it was not possible to whisper verbal components and have the spell work.

“Bin. Di. P. Sh. Kis. Rich.”

At the last syllable, a blue wave passed out from my outstretched palm and spread out around the sliver of purple that I could see. And then, the lavender broke, dispersing into the air before fading.

I dismissed Willsight and readied a Mind Spike. Then, I took a deep breath and charged through the door. Barion sat at his desk, in the center of the room and facing the door. He reacted to my entry admirably, and began casting a spell, but mine got off first.

The Mind Spike struck, and he flinched but continued on with his own casting. A spear of ice shot at me and I threw up a Shield to block it.

The ice met my barrier and shattered with the sound of glass breaking on stone. He'd cast his ice spell faster than I could send a Lightning, Firebolt, or Mind Spike, so I had to send him flying with a Gust to retain the initiative.

The spell formed to his left and threw him towards the window on the side of the building from which Dagmar watched. The wind was deafening in the small room, and the contents of the office were thrown at the window, sending the curtains through with them and shattering the glass.

Barion managed to regain his footing briefly, and summoned a Shield of his own, which parted the wind around him.

I'd prepared a Lightning, and had cast it at the tumbling noble, but the barrier he'd summoned against my wind appeared just in time to block my Lightning.

He moved to cast a spell I couldn't recognize, and I summoned a Shield to block the unknown effect. Instead of being hit with an attack, the room went dark. Dark doesn't describe the blackness that filled the room. Calling the room dark is like saying staring at the sun is bright. The darkness had a weight to it that set nerves on end.

I Conjured my sword to hand and cast Mage Armor as I waited for an attack. Slowly, I moved back towards the door, listening for footsteps. I knew I could dispel the effect, but the speaking would give away my position—assuming Barion had no way of seeing through it. Instead, I Teleported to behind the desk and listened.

When it became clear no attack was imminent, I downed a potion of clarity and over-channeled Light with enough Will to cast a tier three spell. This was a trick my father had taught me. That's right, not my mother, for he'd taught her this as well. Though over-channeling my mother's Light spell did not make it any brighter, it did allow it to banish magical darkness of lesser power.

The dark dissatisfied like smoke sucked through an open window, flowing into my spell and vanishing. Barion stood a few feet away with a blade of the same shadow in hand.

"I don't know who you are, but you're dead." he snarled at me before charging.

I parried the thrust of his shadow blade, and my blade stopping his own caught him by surprise. I brought my right hand up to his chest and sent a Shock into him, causing him to momentarily spasm and providing me the opening I needed to bring my sword around and across his chest. A chest that was protected by some sort of Mage Armor. My sword slowed at contact with his spell, but I still made a shallow cut across his chest.

He let out a shout of pain before sending a Firebolt into my thighs from his offhand. The ball of fire exploded on my own armor, burning me only slightly, and my follow-up jab to his torso pierced the armor and went into his belly.

I let the sword drop with the noble and turned to his desk. The contents had been thrown towards the window, and I looked through the debris to see any books. I heard footsteps approaching and summoned a Gust blowing on the door to buy me some time. Just after the spell appeared, the door budged slightly before being pushed back closed. Two soldiers stood behind it and fought my spell to gain entry.

I found three books that seemed likely among the wreckage, threw them into my pack without looking at the contents, and Teleported to Dagnar.

I appeared next to the dwarf, who was crouching low behind the wall that lined the roof. Once I appeared, she ducked and looked me over.

"Where's your sword?" she asked.

In answer, I Conjured the ensouled blade back to my hand. Since learning Teleport, I'd been able to Conjure the sword from further away and could now even conjure non-magical items as large as one of Trish's long knives.

"I got some books. I'm taking us to Levar's."

Before she could protest, we were back in the alchemists shop.

"How did it go?" Levar asked when we arrived. I'd never seen him as animated as he was since making him aware of the resets. I was starting to regret doing so sooner, but I don't think I'd have risked it without knowing Tilavo was absent.

"I got some books, killed Barion—but don't worry. I'm fairly certain he orchestrated the Fall of Landing. I'll probably have him arrested after all this, once he’s not dead anymore."

I took my books and sat behind the counter on Levar's stool to read through my ill-gotten gains. Levar moved quickly to draw the curtains at the mention of me killing a noble with a private army.

That's probably smart.

I’d stolen three books from Barion. The first was a ledger that recorded the lord's less than legal business dealings. Flipping through it briefly, I saw that he'd been involved lightly in non-human trafficking, but most of his grift came in the form of smuggling and bribes. His position as a Lord of Landing granted him control over some aspects of the great dwarven made locks that lifted and lowered ships to and from the ocean to the Basin. He accepted bribes to allow smugglers and pirates to travel the locks unregistered and untaxed.

The second was a very ornate gilt tome I had guessed was the spellbook. It was instead a diary. Each entry even started with "Dear Diary." This one was new, but it painted a very compelling case for his immediate execution. The Lady or The Mistress—he used them interchangeably—had sent him an offer through members of the thieves guild that Barion has tangential relationships with. She offered him leadership of the city if he would arrange for the army to be gone the week of the invasion. She also smuggled ships of cultists through the locks and tasked Barion with hiding them before the attack. He accepted the offer gladly, and was mulling over her follow-up offer of dragon blood.

The Mistress offered induction into the dragon cult as a high ranking member. She knew of Barion's secret wizardly inclinations and promised the blood would bring with it increased power. Most of the diary was filled with his endless waffling and flip-flopping as he wrestled with the pros and cons of the deal.

Spellbook, I know I'm not one to comment on another person keeping a diary, but please trust me that I am self-aware enough to judge his pages of rambling as the whiny complaining of a spoiled noble.

The third book was a ragged old tome very out of place in the lord's belongings and in hindsight should have been obviously the spellbook. It was filled with notes and inserted pages of different types of paper. Each spell was written in a different hand with varying levels of annotations. It was the work of a hedge wizard, one who scrounged to find spells without the knowledge of how to record or improve them.

He had Icebolt and Firebolt as their offensive spells. Icebolt was a trash spell for sadists. The shards of frozen air did more long term damage than immediate, and were more likely to allow for their victims to survive as cripples than to die in combat. I had little use for such magic.

His Firebolt looked promising, but I'd lose my original fondness for the Font of Fire as my Air magic had progressed.

His Detect Magic spell had no annotations, only the name, but I assumed it to be an inferior version of Willsight.

He had both Shield and Mage Armor but from my study of the Tower wizard's spellbook, it appeared to be the base versions of the spells that the Barrier expert had improved upon.

The last tier one spell was Floating Disk, which the Lord had used to rescue his valuables.

For tier two he had; Darkness, Magic Weapon which made your weapon emulate the basic properties common to all ensouled weapons, Pyrotechnics which manipulated fire, Shadow Blade which looked very useful if I didn't have the ability to Conjure back my blade, and finally Spider Climb which matched the effects of Levar's potion.

Shadow Blade, Darkness, and Spider Climb were written on mushroom paper and annotated in Forsaken. Barion's dealings had brought him in contact with all sorts of nefarious individuals it seemed, from thieves to dragon cults and the forsaken in-between.

He had two tier three spells, Bestow Curse which had a myriad of very evil sounding effects, and Glyph of Warding which I planned to learn eventually.

"Any luck?" Dagmar agreed after I'd finished reading through the last book.

"Maybe," I said, still contemplating my options.

"Stop being cryptic."

"Sorry. I was still thinking. There was no Force attack or anything else that would be directly useful, but there was a Force spell. The wand I've been using utilized a magical creature's connection to the Font of Force in place of a gate and path. This spell has both the Will signature for the Font of Force and a gate. I might be able to combine the two to create a usable spell."

"Okay. Do that. Is it going to kill you, or can I go take a break from babysitting the other version of you?"

She pointed to Levar who was extracting blood from Bearskin for another test and struggling to break his unnaturally thick skin.

"No, you can go. I'm going to learn Floating Disk, and then go get the wand tomorrow."

"Great."

She walked off into the street. She'd not been particularly excited about spending every day with Levar. I imagine being with him would be difficult for someone like her who enjoys quiet.

With the early morning start, I had a whole reset ahead of me, so I got to work learning Floating Disk. The first thing I had to decide was the spell I could afford to lose. Once I learned the spell, I wouldn't need Dispel Magic anymore, but it'd still need a slot to build my new spell. I could always pick it back up later. I ditched Lightning for the time being, as it would be the fastest to pick back up.

To my pleasant surprise, Floating Disk was very easy to learn, and I had it done that day.

The spell was very useful. It could lift Bearskin if I cast it below him, and using Dagmar's heretofore unknown ability to accurately determine the weight of any object she lifts, we were able to load it with about five hundred pounds of books. While the spell could lift Bearskin, it was only three feet across, so his limbs dragged. The disk had the same distorted air appearance as the force darts, but it was much more visible now on a stationary spell.

I was very happy with the new spell, but mostly I was excited for what came next. I was going to create my first spell—sort of.