Chapter Text
I drew a hissing breath through my teeth as the ice-cold sensation of new knowledge and power poured through my head and down my spine. It passed after a moment, leaving me with a tingling sensation, and a sudden burning need to write, a strike of inspiration, of understanding, greater than any I could recall.
There was no thought, no consideration, no conscious decision-making. The leather-bound, clasped book I’d bought a month prior in anticipation of needing a spellbook snapped into my hand, followed by my fountain pen.
I had a perfectly good writing desk upstairs in my parents old office, but no time to relocate there. I crashed to my knees on the parlour floor and bent over the book on the coffee table, skipping straight past the first two blank pages to begin writing on the third.
I worked feverishly for I knew not how long, arcane knowledge decanted straight from the ether or granted by divine intervention flowing down my fingers and onto the page in the same frantic, deranged shorthand I’d used in my experimental journals in my past life, interspersed with runes and sigils I’d never seen before. Spell circles, power flow maps, and sketched diagrams crowded the pages, and when the fugue state passed me by I had encoded the full instructions for nine arcane spells into the book, replicable by anyone who could parse my shorthand, along with the formulas to prepare five of them as rituals to reduce the magical power draw on the caster.
I heaved a deep breath, my pen falling from trembling fingers to clatter across the table as I slumped back against the front of the couch.
“That, was. What. Holy fuck. Right. Wizard. Learned caster. Fuck. Never, ever doing a wizard level up anywhere but a safe and quiet place, shit.”
[If you had attempted to complete the level-up process while still out, I was going to warn you, but deemed it unnecessary since you already elected to wait until you were home.]
“Warning would have been good anyway, but, thanks,” I panted, shaking my head in an attempt to clear the haze of runes and sigils bouncing around it.
[In that case, allow me to remind you that you’ll need to Prepare your spells as well, now that they’re recorded in your spellbook.]
I groaned. “Right, spell prep, that’s a thing I need to deal with now. Suddenly I regret everything.”
[All purchases are final, I’m afraid.]
“Har-de-har,” I sighed, leaning my head back on the soft cushion of the couch and reviewing the arcane knowledge that had just been decanted into my head. Torillian Wizardry was a complicated, technical process that involved using strands of personal magic to ensnare and manipulate the forces of reality through specific, rigorously tested processes. To cast a wizard spell was no simple process; if a sorcerer's magic was a gun, then all they had to do was aim and pull the trigger. A wizard had to mix the powder, cast the bullet, press it all together, and load it before pulling the metaphorical trigger. Fortunately, there was a way to do most of that ahead of time; spell preparation. A wizard could pre-cast most of a spell, holding the mostly complete spellforms in the back of their mind and adding the final touches at the last moment, when they wanted to actually cast the spell.
“Oh boy,” I sighed. “More meditation. Gods be good, I’m going to have to do this shit every morning now, aren’t I?”
[Naturally. Or you could cheat.]
“...I like cheating. Cheating is good. If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying. Cheating is just the shittalk term for efficiency. How, exactly, am I supposed to cheat at spell preparation though?”
[Well…]
A new holographic interface popped up in front of me. Six empty round slots, arranged in a circle, and a list of spells on the left with only six entries.
“What am I looking at, Mar?”
[I can manage your spell preparation for you, using the same method by which I grant you level ups. Access to this feature is included with your Wizard class and will not interfere with future rewards. By selecting the spells you wish to prepare and the available preparation slots, I can impress upon your psyche the spellform as though you had prepared it the proper way.]
“Six spells and six slots? I don’t have to select anything.”
[Happy accident, owing to your choice to improve your Intelligence. The available number of prepared spells is based on your experience with Wizard spellcasting and your general intelligence. At this time, whether through this system or the ‘proper’ method of spell preparation, you would be able to maintain six active spell forms. That this is the exact number of spells learned at the first level of the Wizard class is what someone might call a humorous coincidence.]
“So I just drag and drop and you plug the spells into my noggin, just like that? No additional lengthy meditation every morning?”
[Correct. I don’t recommend trying to swap spells on the fly, as it will still take a brief period of time to un- and re-write the available spellforms, and while new spells are preparing you will be unable to cast any wizard spells more complex than cantrips. You will however be able to undertake other tasks at the same time, and it shouldn’t take more than five minutes per spell being prepared, instead of the ‘traditional’ hour total.]
“Hunh.” I paused for a minute to consider the surreality of allowing a cosmic brainworm to brand spells on the inside of my cranium, but the ship had long since sailed on whether or not I was going to trust Mar. With a few flicks of a finger, my six wizard spells socketed into the six open preparation slots. As they dropped into place, the orb-like slots filled with maps of the spellforms pulled straight from the spellbook I’d just set aside. At first the forms were greyed out, but then a familiar but drastically reduced chill seeped through my brain, and the forms began to light up as if a spectral hand were beginning the protracted process of casting each spell at the same time.
[Preparing spellforms. Please hold.]
“Cool.” I sat for a moment, watching the progress.
“I’m going to make a snack while I wait.”
—
“So,” I mumbled through a mouthful of beans and toast. My Spell Preparation menu was pulled up, with all six of my new spells highlighted. “Now I just…?”
[Finish casting the spell you want, as if you had prepared it the traditional way? Quite.]
“Well, nothing for it, I suppose,” I said with a hint of nerves, putting my toast aside and moving to the middle of the living room. I shook out my shoulders and loosely extended my left arm. I’d been casting spells for a month, but the excitement (and concern over doing something wrong) was still there for something new. I took a steadying breath, and with a thought, summoned the spellform for Mage Armor from the back of my mind. A flicker of power flowed from my core, down my extended arm to my loosely splayed fingers. In a flash of a moment, shimmering lines of purple energy sprang forth, weaving into a mandala of three sigil-laden layers. I flicked my fingers, first left, then right, and two layers of the mandala spun like the dial of an old rotary phone, and the entire array pulsed and crackled with newfound energy, purple fluorescing into white. Ignition.
A word of power from an ancient draconic tongue dropped from my lips on instinct. The array shattered and the magic I had released flowed back to me, but instead of returning to the well of power within me, it coursed around me, just over my skin, then momentarily solidified into a colorless, spectral suit of plate armor. Then it started to fade, until within moments it was gone. I raised my hands, turning them. Occasionally, the light would seem to catch along the edge of an invisible vambrace or the knuckles of a non-existent gauntlet, but other than those hints, I could see no trace of the magic armor.
The mirror of the downstairs bathroom showed me more of the same. At a glance, just Emy, but as I watched and shifted, I could see glints of light just over my skin and clothes. Invisible strands of magic distorting the air and catching in the light, in the shape of a suit of fitted plate. It was faint enough, and the flashes brief enough, that I could probably get away with wearing it in public; in Diagon, or Hogsmeade, and maybe even Muggle London, anywhere people wouldn’t be watching me for too long, where I’d be just another face in the crowd, and any oddities could be written off as a trick of the light. Probably wasn’t something I wanted to bank on though, and I certainly wouldn’t want to wear the mage armor at Hogwarts; the teachers would absolutely take note over the course of a long lesson, and even my peers might notice if I were seated between them and a class’s professor.
I wouldn’t be starting every morning with an armor spell any time soon, but I didn’t regret taking it; I’d have it in my arsenal if, really when, events got violent. I still had to determine how effective it would actually be, however. To that end, I returned to the living room, withdrawing my shiny new blunt training sword from my trunk.
Then I started hitting myself with it.
[Emyra?!] Mar nearly yelped the first time I awkwardly slapped myself on the shoulder with the sword, which skittered off a momentarily-visible pauldron.
“Stress testing,” I responded calmly, before whacking myself in the leg and yelping. Sparks of white magic drifted away from my leg, where the arcane sabaton had briefly shattered, and now reformed. “Fff-. Hoo. I need to know how tough the mage armor actually is to know how much I can rely on it.”
[And the best way to do that-]
“Is to beat myself up a little, yes. I’m dangerous and deranged, not a masochist, promise.”
[Comforting,] ‘she’ responded flatly.
“Good, that was the goal,” I said cheerfully, while placing my forearm on the coffee table, then resting the sword over it and leaning onto the blade. A hard-light vambrace flared into view, cracks running across it, radiating away from where the blunt blade was pushing into the spell. I put more weight on the blade, and the vambrace shattered like the sabaton before, the blade slamming down on my now-unprotected arm.
“Motherf-” I exclaimed, dropping the sword and instinctively pulling the arm in, cradling it against my belly.
[For someone at the literal pinnacle of human intelligence, you’re kind of a dumbass.]
“Discovery requires experimentation,” I grumbled darkly, “and pain is temporary, but death is permanent.” With those words of questionable wisdom, I teased out another thread of power, my soul instinctively twisting the magic into a healing warmth that suffused my body. Within moments, the pain in both shin and arm was gone.
“There, see? Cure Wounds, all better, and now I have an idea of how much force the mage armor can block. Which isn’t much. I’d definitely call it deflective and ablative, not absorptive. It can blunt a solid hit, but can actually divert an indirect one, which would be preferable. That tells me I still need to focus on parrying and dodging as much as possible, I can’t just trade hits, but narrowly failed dodges are likely to be converted into deflections, and direct hits should at least not be as bad.”
“Of course,” I added after a moment's thought, “I still have no idea how it will fare against magic or area of effect attacks, but I have no good way to test that now, so this will have to do.”
—
My next experiment with my new wizard magic took me (and one of the couch cushions) to the basement, where I could chalk-up the floor without a problem in my par- in my workshop. I had the power to burn, I could snap-cast every spell if I wanted, but while a more efficient use of my very limited remaining time before I’d be headed to Scotland, it wouldn’t give me any experience or firsthand knowledge casting my spells as rituals. Hence, the concrete floor of the basement.
Having intimately familiar knowledge I had no experience with continued to be a strange feeling. In this case, it led me to sitting on a cushion on the hard concrete floor, surrounded by a pentacle woven of chalk lines and interspersed with arcane sigils I’d never seen before today. Within their circles at each point of the pentacle rested five items; two I already had a decent read on, my new sword and Morgana’s cloak of billowing. Joining them were the polished rock, and one each of the books and scrolls I’d found in Vault Six.
One by one, I lit the candles and incense sticks placed around the circle, each stage and chanted syllable helping me draw in external power from the air and ground, feeding it into the pentacle and the sigils chalked around each item. After more than ten minutes of careful, methodical power build-up, I settled back onto the cushion in the middle and released the spell into the circle. A wave of faint light seemed to roll away from me, down the lines and through the runes, sinking into the intricate symbols around each item, until with an anticlimactic ‘ding’, each item was overlaid with a sky-blue interface panel.
I blinked in consternation.
“Really?”
[Apologies, miss. The spell normally feeds a barrage of information directly into your brain, leaving it up to the caster to decipher. I thought you might find it preferable if I intercepted that information and sorted it for you. Was I wrong?]
Oh. That was actually very useful. “No, no, you’re fine, Mar. I just wasn’t expecting it. Thank you. Let’s see…”
{Duelist’s Sword, +1}
{Weapon (duelist’s sword), Uncommon}
{This weapon was crafted on commission by the goblin smith Gromril Ironhide for the Princess Emyra of Houses Pendragon-Le Fey. The blade is imbued with magic, rendering it eternally sharp and supernaturally durable. Attacks with this weapon are magical in nature and capable of harming magical beasts that are resistant or immune to non-magical damage.}
“Sweet, simple, to the point. It’s just what we thought, Mar. Plus-one sword. Duelist’s sword is an interesting flag.”
[Quite.]
{Cloak of Billowing}
{Wondrous Item, Common}
{Enchanted in times long past by a witch of incredible power and with an even more incredible flair for the dramatic, this weathered cloak is sure to keep the wearer the center of attention. It will naturally twist to capture every errant breeze in the most impressive fashion possible without hindering the wearer’s movements. The wearer can override this passive ability and command the cloak to billow in a specific manner they desire instead if they wish.}
“Two for two. Now let’s see about the weird stuff!”
{Luckstone}
{Wondrous Item, Uncommon (requires attunement)}
{This polished agate probably won’t save your life, but while you have it things will tend to go just a little bit more your way.}
“Hunh. Luckstone, nice. Classic low level loot. Attunement though, I hadn’t thought about that. How does that even work?”
[Particularly powerful or focused magic items that affect the world around them need to be attuned to an individual to fully realize their potential. In this case, the Luckstone wants to tweak fate, but it needs to know who for. There is a limit to how many items an individual can attune to, but it’s somewhat less restrictive than the tabletop game you’re familiar with might imply.]
Ding!
{New feature unlocked! Attunement.}
A new window popped up, similar to my spell preparation menu. This one instead had five empty ‘sockets’, and the list on the left listed only the Luckstone.
“Neat!” Click, swipe. The picture-perfect rendition of my new Luckstone popped up in one of the attunement slots, and I felt a tug at my soul for a moment. I picked up the Luckstone from the ritual circle and started to slip it into my pocket, before pausing.
“Hey Mar, do you think the Luckstone would work if it was in my hammerspace?”
[I don’t imagine many magic items are going to be able to do anything from another dimension.]
“Yeah, that’s about what I thought too.” Into the pocket it went. Next!
{Scroll of Fly}
{Scroll, Uncommon}
{A spell scroll containing a single cast of the third-level arcane spell ‘Fly’. Once used, the scroll crumbles to dust. A skilled wizard may be able to copy the spell into their spellbook, though the process risks permanently damaging the scroll.}
“Hrm.”
[A third level spell is quite good, isn’t it?]
“I’m an angel, Mar. I can already fly.”
[Hrm.]
“Also, copying it into my spellbook is going to be expensive. And I won’t be able to cast it until I hit level five in Wizard, if I do that. It could come in useful at some point if I need to give someone else the ability to fly, but right now this is pretty much worthless.”
I shrugged whimsically. “Whatever. It was free. I can shove it in my inventory and forget about it until I need it for something. Next!”
The last item I’d put out for my first batch of identifications was the book with the stained glass cover I’d first seen on Morgana’s bookshelf.
{The Deidoro Fragments}
{Wondrous Item, Rare}
{The linen pages within these stained glass covers contain the last remnants of several treatises on intraplanar language development by the asura Deidoro. Many of its pages are marked with seemingly unrelated notes. An individual who studies the tome for a period of 64 hours over no more than 8 days gains the ability to read, write, and speak Celestial. Once the Fragments have been read, they lose their magic, but regain it after one century.}
“Oh, stone me! That’s-” I paused for an instant to do the math twice. “Fuck! Eight hours a day for eight days. Damnit, this is so cool, and totally useless for me until next summer! That’s so rude!”
[I’m…sorry?]
“Sorry Mar, talking to the DM, not you. You’re great, you’re awesome.”
[The DM.]
“Mhmm. My life is an RPG, and that means there’s a DM handing out randomized loot I can’t use. Super rude.”
[Oh-kay.]
“Ignore me. The book is actually awesome. Free language for spending a week cramming. Actually banging, I’m just going to have to suffer a year of it sitting and waiting before I can devote the time.”
I sighed and set the Deidoro Fragments aside, then ran through the ritual again.
The short rod with a button on it was a Pole of Collapsing, not an Immovable Rod, to my disappointment. Not that a 10’ metal pole that could shrink down to the size of a police baton wasn’t potentially useful, it just wasn’t an Immovable Rod. Of course, it made sense that anything left in Morgana’s vault wouldn’t be too terribly powerful. She probably took the good stuff with her to Avalon.
The potion bottles held truly ancient potions of healing and greater healing, respectively. The spell and tooltip Mar generated didn’t imply anything was wrong with them after fifteen centuries, so I tucked them away for a rainy day. Every adventurer worth their salt needed a couple healing potions they’d never drink but hang onto forever, ‘just in case’. It was tradition.
The last two scrolls were less impressive than the first, albeit more potentially useful. Tenser’s Floating Disc raised several questions about the passage of time between Earth and the Realms given the scroll had been sealed in that vault for fifteen centuries, but I didn’t actually know much about the wizard Tenser, other than that he was a classic epic level wizard. Temporal conundrums aside, the spell was potentially useful to transfer into my spellbook, being a first level utility spell. I had forgone the selection because its primary utility was moving cargo, and I had my Hammerspace for that. I’d try to copy it over at some point when I had the time. The second scroll was a cantrip, Dancing Lights, which I’d forgone on the assumption I’d be learning Lumos before long at Hogwarts. I’d copy it over too. The more magic I learned, the easier learning more magic would be, hypothetically.
I cast the ritual a third and final time, sitting in a ring of three books and one magical portrait frame which I pulled out of my inventory very hesitantly just before beginning the ritual, and only went forward with after confirming the frame was empty.
My eyes went first to the portrait frame, eager to get it hidden away if it was what I suspected.
{Pair-Bonded Portrait: Morgana le Fey}
{Wondrous Item, Uncommon}
{One of a pair of frames containing a single painted simulacra of the legendary archwitch Morgana Pendragon le Fey. The resident simulacra can move between the two frames at-will. The location of the second frame is presently unknown.}
It was exactly what I suspected, and oh I desperately wanted to hang it out, to call out to it, to speak to her. I couldn’t though. I had no idea where the other portrait hung or who Morgana’s likeness might answer to. Someday, I would meet her, but not now, not when my tenuous place in this world was still so vulnerable.
I wrenched the dagger of ice from my heart and whisked her portrait away to my inventory once more, before turning to the other objects.
The Libram of Dumne was broadly similar to the Deidoro fragments, except that it was parchment bound in leather instead of linen bound in glass, could only be read under the light of the moon, and would teach one person every century to read, write, and speak Sylvan if they studied it for fifty-six hours over seven days.
A book with blackthorn covers inlaid with gold revealed itself to be a spellbook, the Infernal Esoterica of Bali. It contained a substantial array of spells of the first and second level that I would have to copy into my spellbook relatively quickly. According to the tooltip Mar generated, the book could only be opened by a maiden. A quick test confirmed that at least my memories of my past life weren’t disqualifying me, and it certainly didn’t care about purity of heart. I already knew Find Familiar, Protection from Good and Evil, and Shield, but the rest of the spells would make for a substantial addition to my arcane arsenal; Arcane Lock, Cloud of Daggers, Illusory Script, Magic Missile, Witch Bolt, Darkness, Invisibility, Knock, and Ray of Enfeeblement. Nine new spells to copy, assuming I could find my way to third level this year. One per month I’d spend at Hogwarts. Hopefully I had enough ink. Hopefully I’d manage to fend off my curse that long. I’d like to at least make it to fifteen ‘unspoiled’.
The notebook I’d found in Morgana’s desk proved to be exactly what I’d suspected;
{Morgana’s Apprentice Spellbook}
{Wondrous Item, Uncommon}
{An unfinished collection of rare spells written by the archwitch Morgana le Fey, intended for teaching her grandson or -daughter her Art. Abandoned after Merlin’s Curse. Despite being incomplete, it contains the spells Arcane Aegis, Clue, and Intaglio.}
I had never heard of any of those spells. Grandmother, what have you left me?
“Mar, I didn’t see any of these spells on the level up list, what are they?”
[Spells that are personal creations and not in widespread circulation are not automatically available for any wizard -or witch- to learn. I suspect these spells have either long fallen out of use, or were Morgana’s own spellcraft.]
I stared down at the small black spellbook, wondering why my vision was swimming, and why my throat felt sore. It’s not like I knew her. She disappeared from Britannia before the Viking age. I wasn’t even really her descendant, not really, not honestly. Just an imposter wearing her ring, an invader from another dimension riding the coattails of her legacy. Even if I was the biological daughter of her biological great-something-grandson, it didn’t always feel like it.
“Thank you, grandmother,” I whispered.