Ends of Magic

It turned out there was another dining hall close to the low-tier residential area, and Nathan followed his new suitemates there for dinner. As they went he scoped out the layout of the Academy. It was a huge building that didn't seem to have an obvious organization, but he was still only starting to build a mental map of its layout.

They sat together in a secluded corner of the dining hall, eating the excellent food. It was just as good as the food where they'd had lunch, and Nathan understood why so many mages were fat. Instead of [Fireball] the room itself focused on force magic, with the various dishes moving around on mobile panes of magic. The spellwork was carefully constructed so that it could be controlled with simple force magic, to allow the students who knew the basics to summon their desired food to them if they wanted to avoid running across the hall following their desired dish.

Nathan fell into an easy pattern socializing with Hibor, Roni and Yelun. The two boys weren’t the most suspicious people, and had already accepted Nathan at face value. The same couldn’t be said for Yelun. She seemed a little suspicious of him, but mostly she was judging him, trying to figure out what he was worth to her and what levers she could use to influence him. He was also pretty sure she had a social skill that predisposed people to like her, and she was using it at full blast on him. It wasn’t doing much.

She’s got nothing on Faline.

The daughter of the archmage wasn’t the overt leader of the group, but it was clear that she had Roni and Hibor wrapped around her fingers. If she ever decided that something needed done, they'd do it for her.

Nathan shrugged internally. He didn’t care about the social dynamics of the young Giantsrest mages beyond what would let him disguise himself in the Ascendant Academy. They were good cover, and that was enough.

That fact was driven home as they walked back to the living space with a crowd of other low-tier students returning from dinner. A giant golem with divine musculature was walking the opposite direction, fifteen feet tall and adorned with only a loincloth. It was as if the statue of David had come to life and started prowling the halls. The golem seemed to be scanning random people, then checking in with the Academy to be verify their identity. Nathan worked his way to the far side of the corridor, passing by the golem without incident. The proximity let him get a sense of the magical construct. He was surprised to find it was different from the normal Giantsrest golems, powered by wizardry. It even seemed to have its own mana pool.

That’s more advanced than any of the other Giantsrest golems I’ve encountered. It also seems smarter and stronger. I don't have a way to fool one, so I need to stay away or hide in a crowd. It’s not fast enough to scan everybody.

They finally returned returned to the suite, where Nathan's suitemates bitched about climbing back up the staircase after the heavy meal.

Nathan begged off further socializing, claiming he needed to catch up on work. He went to his room, taking a breath before closing his door all the way. The lock melded with the wall, and he was sealed in the room.

I hope I can figure out how to open that later. I can probably get the caretaker slave to open if I really fail. I I don’t even know her name.

Schooling his thoughts, Nathan sat down on the bed. It was enchanted, along with the sheets. He shrugged and lay down anyway, feeling the mattress and sheets becoming coarser as the magic in them broke from contact with him. But he wasn’t about to sleep on the floor when the bed was right there. He’d just have to hope nobody noticed that the bed wasn’t enchanted anymore.

Nathan stared at the ceiling for a little while, turning over the events of the day. His mission had changed dramatically today, and he’d lost a powerful ally. But he wasn’t sad about it.

No more nibbling around the edges of Giantsrest, messing around with politics and depending on Faline’s political interpretation. I’m here to kill Badud and the archmages, and for that I need to climb this tower. But first, I’ve got to figure out the wizardry that makes the Academy run. And for that, I need to pretend to be a student for a little while.

—

He awoke some hours later. He’d gone to sleep right after dinner, so it was still the middle of the night. Nathan tossed aside the sheets, sliding out of bed quietly.

His first priority was to figure out how to open his bedroom door. The lock on it was the simplest piece of wizardry he’d seen in the Academy, but it operated off of the same basic parameters as the rest of the place. When somebody who was authorized to pass through the door approached, it opened automatically. The rest of the time it was closed and melded with the wall.

Unlike other places in the academy, where a random wall could hide a passage that would open up when the right person approached, this door was always a door. But it had melded into the frame as a solid unit, making it rather impossible to open via normal means. There wasn’t even active magic holding it closed - the door and the frame were solid, and an act of wizardry was necessary to separate them.

As far as the academy was concerned, the room was empty. He didn’t think he’d be able to fool the part of the Academy that tracked all of the inhabitants. As far as he could tell the Academy had some kind of access level assigned to each person, and did some kind of computation to decide when to unlock a door.

Does it track their mana pools? I’ve got a fake one of those, though I think it’s for fooling people, not giant ancient dungeons. Regardless, whatever it tracks is hidden by my antimagic. So if I can’t fool the tracker, I’ll have to hotwire the door.

He busied himself poking and prodding at the wizardry in the door. It was in there, ready to act if the door needed to be unlocked. The problem was that he didn’t understand the wizardry the way he did mana. That needed to change, and this was his chance.

Nathan investigated the wizardry in the door for a while before he stopped and glowered at the offending stone and the magic concealed within. He couldn't just stare at the magic, he needed to poke it and see how it responded. He thought he had a pretty good idea what the structure of the wizardry was, but his understanding was pretty half-baked. The problem was that he might very easily break the wizardry on the door. Then he really would betrapped in here.

Nathan glanced around the room, looking for a substitute. His eyes settled on one of the lights along the wall. There were ten of the magical crystals scattered around the room, and they'd provided a soft ambient glow when the slave was in the room. As soon as she’d left it they'd all dimmed because the Academy thought the room was empty.

It’s not a big problem if I break a few lights, right?

He moved over to the wall and examined the spellwork. The magic that emitted light was mana-based and extremely basic, but each light had a small piece of wizardry that seemed to be what turned it on or off when it recognized somebody was around and not trying to sleep.

An hour and six broken lights later, Nathan thought he understood the very basics of the wizardry used in the academy. It reminded him of playing with wires on a breadboard, but more dependent on sympathy. Different areas that didn’t seem to be connected at all could interact, so long as they were shaped similarly, or were symmetrical across a spatial axis.

Wizard’s Intuition 7 achieved!

He twisted one portion of the wizardry and pinched off another with his aura, and the light flickered on. He pumped his hands into the air, then lowered them.

Can I revert it? I don’t want to permanently break things that can be tracked back to me.

Unfortunately, the light seemed to be stuck permanently on. He completely disenchanted it and moved onto the next one. Two more lights later, he figured out how to turn it on and off reversibly, leaving the light in the same state he’d found it.

Nathan stood there for a moment, grinning widely as the light in front of him flicked on and off at his command.

Congratulations! I can work a lightswitch. A marvelous achievement. Truly, my skills are without measure. How will Giantsrest ever hope to stop me?

With that success he returned to the door, carefully manipulating it with his antimagic. Portions of the wizardry were similar to the activation section of the lights. He moved carefully, slowly, poking his aura into the more complex enchantment with a delicate touch, then sighing in relief when it surrendered to the same basic manipulation as the lights. The door clicked open, and he looked around the empty common area to be sure there was nobody else around.

And now I can open doors! Amazing. I wonder if I’ll learn to work the toilet next.

Nathan turned back from the open door to examine the enchanted toilet in his private bathroom. It was a fiddly enchantment with air magic to block smells. It seemed to automatically detect when it had been used, at which point it disintegrated the waste.ds

Yeah, that's not happening. I guess my first crime in the Academy is going to be using their cool waterfall pool for an unintended purpose.

He padded out of the suite on the soft carpet, taking a moment to admire the waterfall out of the wide window. The lights in the area had been turned down, and the falling water was illuminated from within by a silver radiance that cast a gentle glow across the huge chamber. It was a calming view that would be nice to just sit and watch for a while.

But that wasn't the plan for tonight. Nathan slipped through the entryway, silently passing the slave on her cot and moving towards the opening beyond. The lack of a door allowed a comfortable breeze into the common area. When his suitemates approached the opening the staircase had appeared, spiraling down towards the greenery below. But that didn’t happen when it was just Nathan, and looked out of the doorway to the park below. He stepped out into empty air and began descending quickly, trying not to be spotted.

The park wasn’t fully deserted, with a few students taking late-night strolls or necking behind illusions in secluded areas. Nathan ignored all of them, using his stealth skills to descend unseen to ground level before fulfilling his earlier promise regarding the central pool.

Then he left the living area, taking one of the open corridors away from the low-tier residential area. His goal was to climb the tower, finding the places where Badud and the archmages lived. He wasn’t sure if he was going to take time to find multiple targets before striking, or if he’d be greedy and immediately kill the first valuable target he found.

On one hand, dead archmage good. But then they’ll respond, maybe even by destroying Gemore. Right now they don’t know I’m here, and if I can kill Badud and half of the archmages in one night that would be a crippling blow.

But first he had to learn how to climb the stairs, or more accurately, open the door to the stairs. He found the spot where he’d first descended to this level. There was a flat wall where the staircase had been, and the knot of wizardry was significantly more complicated than his suite door had been.

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There were several levels of magic in the wall. If he’d previously been playing around with a breadboard, now he was staring down a printed circuit board with multiple layers. He couldn’t even detect the parts deeper in the wall, since they were obscured by the stuff closer to the surface.

With a sigh Nathan started moving back and forth, assembling a mental model of each layer and trying to get a good picture of sections farther back. It was hard, taxing work and Nathan spent Focus to help him accurately parse the information and add it to his model.

After about an hour of inspecting a blank wall, Nathan thought he had a pretty good idea of the structure of the various layers, and how they communicated with one another.

Wizard Senses 6 achieved!

Now it was time to try to manipulate it. He took a calming breath and spread out his arms, resting them against the stone. He wasn’t really trying to open the path to the staircase. He just wanted to understand this circuit better, and maybe wizardry in general. That meant poking various portions of the magic within the wall to see how the overall system responded. If there were any anti-intrusion measures, this would almost certainly activate.

Who am I kidding. I’m definitely going to set something off. But I need to do this if I’m going to get anywhere. At least there aren’t any obvious traps in the walls or anything. But that makes me worried about the non-obvious ones.

He tentatively squeezed a node on the first layer, watching a small flicker of energy pulse through the layers of wizardry like a stone cast into a pool. After a moment the system stabilized, the errant signal quashed to nothing.

Nathan waited a moment, but there was no further response. He shrugged, then did it again. This time he slipped his antimagic to the second layer and tweaked a node that had seemed to amplify the signal the first time he’d poked the wizardry. The response was much larger, with a noisy buzz of activation that seemed to overload various portions of the spell.

Something deep within triggered, and a signal was passed out of the local region. In response another piece of wizardry reached down, stamping on the local magic and forcibly returning it to normal.

Ah, that’s what happens when I mess it up. It gets forcibly reset. Is there anything else, or can I try again?

Then a voice sounded around him, genderless but commanding. “Magical anomaly detected. The Grave of all Giants is currently set to: Placid. If there are students present, remain calm. An administrator will arrive shortly to provide clarification on the magical anomaly."

There was a faint ‘pop’ and a mid-twenties man sitting in a chair teleported right next to Nathan. He was dressed in the blue robe of an enforcement mage, and appeared to have had very little warning. His hand held some kind of crunchy snack and his face registering surprise at the sudden change of scenery.

Nathan just stared at him for a moment, unsure how to react.

The mage blinked around, eyes landing on Nathan in his gray robe. “What?” Then his expression grew angry, and he moved to stand. “There will be blood from your wounds, boy. No matter what you…”

He didn’t get any farther. Nathan’s punch went straight through [Mage Armor] and into the man’s face. Blood and vitreous humors splashed to his wrist, staining the sleeve of his robe.

Dammit! That’s going to be hard to clean. But at least the mage is very dead. A mysterious dead body points a lot fewer fingers than a living witness.

Magekiller has leveled to 151! You have killed Enforcement Mage Birv dho Feste from surprise!

He didn’t wait to see what happened next, just turning and running away before the Academy could respond to the mage's death. It took him bare minutes to reach the low-tier residency hall, where he quickly ascended into the air. He angled towards the center of the room and the waterfall to wash the blood off his hand, though it also got his robe wet.

He had to pause for a moment to recall which of the hundreds of openings he should head towards, but he zipped into the correct suite moments later, staying off the ground to avoid making any noise. The room was as empty as he’d left it, with nothing out of place. Nathan forced himself to calm down and take his time in manipulating the wizardry of his door. He hadn’t blown his cover yet, and wanted to keep it that way.

I learned what happened if you mess up the wizardry sufficiently though. Good lesson.

Once his door opened, he slipped inside and closed it firmly. His first target was the bathroom, to use a towel to try and rub out the blood from his sleeve. He wasn’t fully successful, but the stain wasn’t particularly noticeable on the gray cloth.

Void of Magic has leveled to 312. You have killed an enforcement mage of Giatnsrest while inside the Ascendant Academy.

He hung the robe up to dry, then went back to bed. He didn’t sleep, instead considering the lessons he’d learned.

The Academy definitely has some kind of central control, but it doesn’t seem intelligent. A little bit of messing around is ok, but if I cross a line then it sets off an alarm and drops a mage on me. Giantsrest has ‘administrators’ who seem to be in charge of the Academy, though that guy wasn’t a wizard. He wasn’t even at a very high level mage. He seemed more like a security mook watching cameras.

Can I use that to kill off mages? Set an alarm, kill the guy who teleports in, then skedaddle? I feel like that will work once or twice before they turn that setting off and throw a hundred golems at me. My priority is still figuring out the wizardry of the Academy.

Nathan was happy with the results of the evening. He’d learned to manipulate the Academy in the most basic way. He couldn’t open up walls or get to the staircases yet, but he’d made tangible strides forward in understanding both wizardry in general and the Academy in particular.

As it was, he was confident he could figure it out eventually. It might take another Development of his antimagic Talent, or maybe some of the synergistic utility skills, but he’d manage. But they keyword was eventually. It was going to take at least a few days, potentially a couple of weeks to understand the wizardry well enough to hack it reliably. He’d need to blend into the Academy and do what it took to go unnoticed until he had gotten the necessary practice and experience.

This might be one of the few places where I actually get exposure to significant amounts of wizardry. I remember where the [Antiwizard] description said wizards are ‘the most powerful magic-users on Davrar.’ It was easy to be exposed to mana-based magic for my Talent, because that kind of magic is everywhere. I just sat down with Stella’s parents and they showed me dozens of spells. But if I want to learn wizardry enough to fight a wizard, this is the place to do it. So I’ll work on staying hidden, taking what risks need to happen to learn how to break wizardry. I have the feeling

With that resolution in mind, Nathan pulled up his exact recollections of what he’d sensed tonight. Things had happened quickly, but he’d been paying attention and spending Focus to capture everything. He reconstructed the cascades of energy with [Mental Fortress], recalling how the wizardry construct had activated to send the alert signal.

He didn’t have enough data to understand specifics, but it was enough to generate hypotheses and try to get a better understanding of how the wizardry worked. After his fifth fine-grained run-through of the cascade that had led to the administrator’s intervention, Nathan thought he was on the edge of understanding the metaphysical nature of wizardry a little bit more.

If he had to put it into words, he’d say that it was dependent on metaphorical significance in a way that normal mana wasn’t. Fire mana represented heat and combustion and could burn on its own, but it worked best when it was fed oxygen and fuel. Wizardry was more concept-driven, and worked off of meaning and connection to enforce an abstract will upon the world.

The wizardry inside the walls didn’t deform the stone and physically slide it aside, it just expressed a will that the stone be elsewhere. Once that was done, the stone simply moved into a space that hadn’t existed until it was needed. Mana was power that could be used to change the world, while wizardry was the power to rewrite it.

Wizard’s Intuition 8 achieved!

With the satisfaction of a concept understood, Nathan drifted off to sleep once more.

–

He awoke to a soft knock at the door. He quickly got up and donned his the same robe that he'd worn last night. It was still damp, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that. “Come in.”

The door cracked open, showing the matronly slave, head bowed and arms outstretched. In her hands was a neatly folded stack of gray robes.

Nathan took them gently and responded automatically. “Thank you.”

She looked up in surprise, eyes catching on his own damp robe. She blinked, then nodded and turned away. Beyond her Nathan saw Hibor open his own door, yawning and scrubbing at his eyes.

He closed the door again and changed, finding the new robes fit him perfectly. He hung the bloodstained robe up out of the way before taking a minute to untangle the lock and leaving to find all three of his suitemates outside.

Yelun was speaking quickly, her voice full of trepidation. “... and they don’t know how he died! An enforcement mage killed in the academy. My cousin didn’t say how he died, but she did say it wasn’t magic!”

“Then how?” Roni said, looking confused. “A monster?”

Status of Nathan Lark:

Permanent Talent 1: Aura of Antimagic 9

Permanent Talent 2: Perfected Body 10

Permanent Talent 3: Airwalking 5

Class: Void of Magic level312

Deepened Stamina: 4390/9660

Void of Feeling

Antimagic Momentum

Raging Thrill

Implacable Inertia

Unarmored Resilience

Magic Anathema

Airborne Agility

Hand-to-hand Expertise

Voluminous Aura

Denial of Wizardry

Mana Severance

Class: Magekiller level 151

Regenerative Focus: 992/1610

Catastrophic Blows

Battle Stealth

Mage Infiltration

Forgettable

Unsuspecting Strike

Antimagic Stealth

Spell Redirection

Lethal Index

Utility skills:

Battle Meditation 10

Inspiration 1

Acceleration 4

Wizard Senses 6

Alertness 6

Wizard’s Intuition 8

Effortless Dodge 2

Mental Fortress 9

Tutoring 2

High-tier Tumbling 10

High-tier Noticeability 4

Mid-tier Disguise 5

Mid-tier Battle Cry 7

Mid-tier Aura Manipulation 7

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