Industrial Strength Magic

Chapter 150: Paradox’s Pernicious Prison

***Heather***

Under the dim glow of the LED lights in Natalie’s walls, Heather’s eyes twitched back and forth rapidly, her body still, breath deep and slow.

Inside her mind was a little different.

Heather sat at a crude wooden table that looked like it would give her splinters just from looking at it, nursing a bowl of soup made from a goose named Becky.

She hadn’t had a normal dream since the ritual, instead consulting with her wraith ‘vassals’ every night while she slept. It wasn’t so bad, there was just the one, and they got along pretty good. This particular night, Anya was a bit agitated.

“He kind of reminds me of my husband,” Anya said, bouncing her son on her knee and keeping the wriggling menace from shoving tableware into his air-holes. The baby wasn’t real, though, just a manifestation of the ancient girl’s memories.

He’d died shortly after his mother.

“Who?” Heather asked.

“Paradox.”

“Really?” Heather frowned.

“Oh yes, my husband was about that age when I married him, fresh off his apprenticeship and ready to start a family. All Paradox is missing is a beard. He’d look good with a beard.”

She looked at the dead mother’s young face that couldn’t be older than hers, and the near-toddler squirming in her lap, at least a year old….which put her marriage…

“How old were you when you – you know what? Don’t answer that.” Different eras and all that. Didn’t make it less gross, but Heather tried to be sympathetic.

“Do you know why we’ve got such high compatibility?” Anya asked, setting her son aside to perch on Heather’s side of the table, leaning over and lowering her voice conspiratorially.

“I feel like I’m about to find out.” Heather said.

“Because we’re so similar. Terrible fathers, so much outrage at injustice, a willingness to fight to defend our love… So many tastes in common…perhaps an appreciation of young, handsome, bearded men?”

“Nope.” Heather denied, accidentally imagining an older, bearded Perry and…kinda liking it.

“Ask him to stop shaving.”

“What? NO!”

“Need I remind you of the terms of our arrangement?” Anya asked. “What do you stand to lose?”

“My dignity?” Heather responded, massaging her throbbing forehead. She was honor-bound to make a few minor concessions to the spirit each month, so there was no reasonable way to refuse.

God help me, my passenger has a crush on my girlfriend’s boyfriend.

Perry was…nice and all, but every time she found herself thinking about him like that, all the asshole things he’d done freshman year reared their ugly head in her mind, and she retreated into her shell, all thoughts of romance choked off.

She just couldn’t separate the Perry now, and the jerkface then, despite one being powerful superhero and the other being a cruel child who thought repeatedly humiliating her in front of her friends was a great way to make himself feel better about his own inadequacy.

She’d put some of it together, from snippets of comments he’d made in unguarded moments. She understood why he felt like he’d never measure up to his family.

She understood why he’d behaved like that, sure, but forgiving it was hard, and forgetting it was impossible. That’s why she was more comfortable trading childish insults.

The sting had already bled out of insults and jibes. It was safe and comfortable, being ‘mean’ to each other. If she started to care, that meant she was open to be hurt again.

“I’m not flirting with Perry on your behalf.”

“You know what? That’s an excellent idea!” Anya squealed and clapped her hands together with excitement, her dead son mimicking her movements with a manic giggle. “We’ll have so much fun!”

Heather buried her face in her hands.

“Can we just talk about crimefighting techniques long enough to pass the Bechdel Test? Please?”

“Young lady, I’ve been dry as a bone for six hundred years, so we’re talking about thi- Oops, he’s about to leave, wake up!”

***Paradox***

Let’s see here… Perry put his feet up and shuffled through his spell acquisitions, committing them to memory.

Resolution & Inheritance, Threads of Gintax, Bloodskip, and Totem Steed

Resolution and Inheritance (Difficulty: Master)

Ingredients: thumb-span sized Death Crystal, Haunted Iron. Norgoth’s Spirit Dive, Norgoth’s Recall, Kollox’s Threads of Fate, Norgoth’s summoning, Hubert’s Manifestation.

Use Norgoth’s Spirit Dive to enter the haunted iron. You will manifest into the spirit’s last moments of life. Proceed with caution as this may trap the user in an endless cycle of torment, or kill them outright. Having an assistant nearby to perform Norgoth’s Recall after a specific amount of time is advised.

Once their consciousness is inside the haunted iron, the caster must then draw the spirit’s rationality out of their endless torment, break the cycle and establish a rapport. This is a task of sheer willpower.

Summon the spirit with Norgoth’s summoning, and negotiate a resolution to their purgatory in exchange for willing you their Impact as they move on to the next plane.

Usually this takes the form of vengeance upon their killers or a favor delivered to their loved ones. Use Hubert’s Manifestation to make the spirit temporarily tangible. Both parties agree to the terms and bleed on the Death Crystal.

After this point, failing to commit the act in good faith will surrender your body and soul to the spirit. If this happens, they will consume your soul and possess your body. Only agree to a course of action that you know you can accomplish.

Cast Kollox’s threads of fate before doing the spirit’s task, visually manifesting the infinite branching strands of fate.

Once the deed is done, Use the death crystal to tune to the base of the new knot caused by enacting the spirit’s will. Once tuned, you may swap responsibility for the act in the thread of Fate. (Note, this spell does not actually change the past, only the universe’s perceived culpability for a specific event in present time. This may act as a loophole to commit murder and pawn the divine responsibility off on a spirit who hates the target.) This act will break the hold of guilt or anger on the spirit for their death and allow them to pass on.

In return, the ritual user will inherit a large portion of the spirit’s intelligence, skills, and talent, adding it to their own. The amount is based on compatibility.

Interesting. Perry thought, reading and re-reading the spell. He definitely needed to get his hands on Kollox’s Threads of Fate. It sounded like a spell that would allow him to visualize branching fate, something that his System processed on an industrial scale. Another piece of the puzzle to get him closer to mastering The System.

Well, not something I can do in the next three hours, Perry thought, moving on to the next one.

Bloodskip (Difficulty: Advanced)

Ingredients: Dried silver swimmer larva, caster’s blood, vivant root, corrupted areonite, lunar serpent eye, death crystal.

Boy, the Nocul sure like their death crystal and areonite, Perry thought to himself.

Powder the areonite, Vivant root and death crystal, creating two mixtures, one 1.14 parts to one part Death Crystal and areonite, with the other 3 parts vivant root, one and one half parts Death Crystal.

Perry could kind of see where this was going already. Vivant root bestowed energy, corrupted areonite sucked it out, necrotizing tissue in an instant. Death crystal acted as a conduit for souls and energy.

Aaaand…I was right.

Mix the vivant root mix in with the targets blood until it begins to thicken. Ensure the blood is still able to flow smoothly. Portion out the blood into drops of blood, and insert a dried swimmer larva into each of them.

Parcel the other corrupted areonite mixture into small baggies roughly the content of two thumbs worth of powder.

To cast the spell, scatter a bag of corrupted areonite mix over the head. Immediately look through the Lunar serpent eye to target one of the drops of blood. They will glow brightly in the lunar serpent’s eye regardless of distance. Mentally select one before the corrupted areonite kills you, and the spell is complete.

The caster’s soul and vitality will be drained from their body and possessions and will be transported to the destination, where the dried silver larva will grow rapidly into a clone which will house the caster’s soul as well as replicating everything in their possession.

Now that Perry was getting better at this whole magic thing, he could work out the mechanisms at work here.

This was just a pump that created high pressure in one spot and low pressure in another, shooting the caster’s soul and possessions to another location through a metaphysical tube, where it immediately reconstructed the caster’s body and possessions, then jammed their soul into it.

Now, Lunar serpent eye was pretty expensive, but it wasn’t consumed by the spell, making it significantly cheaper than other teleports. It even got recreated on the other side.

The side effects were a withered corpse of crumbling ash where your original body used to be, but other than that…it was pretty cool.

It was also dangerous as hell. The warnings about using proper PPE while preparing the spell literally continued onto the back of the page….but it didn’t rely on half a dozen other techniques, like resolution and Inheritance, so it was technically easier to perform.

Could be a good panic button if I need to get the hell out of there… Perry thought, moving on to the next spell.

Totem Steed (Intermediate Difficulty)

Ingredients: The spirit of a mount friendly to the caster, a vehicle such as a wagon or ship, vivant root, Areonite, form-steel, mithril, Aqua regia, Static Shock.

Prime the Areonite with vivant root by adding powdered root to molten Areonite and Form-steel in a 1:20.3:2.4 ratio by mass (root to areonite to Form-steel).

Replace a majority of any metallic part of the vehicle to be modified with identical pieces composed of the primed metal (nails, hinges, braces, etc.).

Before adding these metal parts to the vehicle, dissolve the Mithril in Aqua regia, bathe the areonite parts in the solution and strike with a Static Shock. This will serve to add a preservative layer of Mithril to the parts, making them stronger and more resistant to corrosion.

Once the vehicle is ready, Use Norgoth’s summoning to request the steed enter the vehicle. If successful, you may then pour the spirit unto the vehicle and it will house the spirit. A successful Totem Steed will move by itself, possibly moving against the wind, and temporarily resume it’s original form on command.

Interesting. The nocul version of the spell was more detailed, more robust, and included some materials and techniques that mom’s spellbook didn’t have. It also didn’t say the steed may turn into it’s former shape. It guaranteed it.

Mom’s version must be reverse engineered by wizards studying the nocul, and it works…but not as well.

This brought a heady question to Perry’s mind. If there could be THIS much improvement between two spells with minor tweaks…how many of the spells that he’d been using were truly as good as they could be?

He’d kind of assumed that generation after generation of old men with long white beards had tweaked the spells so much that the absolute best version was what wound up in his spellbook.

He was staring down at evidence against that.

If Mother’s Totem Steed can be improved, then what about the other spells in there? Who says these old wizards got it perfect, or just stopped at ‘good enough’? What about the Nocul? Did they get Totem steed perfect, or could I make it better? Could I make any spell better? Could I change them?

Perry was starting to get an instinctive feel for how a spell behaved. Maybe he could make something…better.

Perry read Threads of Gintax.

Threads of Gintax (Intermediate Difficulty)

Ingredients:A Malturian web-spitter, tar from the Tolusian pits. (Note: Not any tar will do. There is a unique death essence contained in the Tolusian pits.) Death Crystal, Rainfair Sand. User’s blood.

Absorb the user’s blood into the crystal, then break it in half. Powder one, and retain the other.

Mix the powdered Death Crystal with the tar at a 1:35 ratio, powder to tar, by mass. Mix until you are certain that the mixture is completely homogenous. Do not get any on your skin or clothes, as it may drain several years from your life without you noticing.

Once the mixture is done, simply drop a living web-spitter into the tar. The tar will bind to the creature, and when it dies, it will form a hard nodule in the primed tar.

Retrieve the nodule (with tongs) and carefully rinse away the clinging tar with Rainfair Sand. The nodule, when thrown with force, will erupt into shiny black webs. Holding the other half of the Death Crystal will allow the life force to flow into the caster.

The webs will drain the life of your foes life at a prodigious rate. Combined with their ability to cling and restrain while constantly weakening their prey, they are quite dangerous.

Again, this is different than mom’s book. reverse engineered by manitian human wizards, with several crucial steps missing or substituted with inferior versions.

Perry could see where the difference lay. The crystal was attuned to the user through their blood, then snapped in half, creating a conduit that would allow the life-drain to reach the caster, as well as using Rainfair sand, rather than Blessed alcohol to clean and temper the outer shell of the nodule.

That would make the nodule safer to handle, depositing a fine layer of dust on the outside.

I wonder…if I can do better.

Perry was about to go risk his life in…

Perry checked the time.

About an hour and a half.

Like the dutiful son he was, Perry wrote corrections into Mom’s spellbook.

It was an indescribable feeling, adding his own handwriting in the margins, beside his mother and grandmother’s. A tear splattered against the ancient vellum and Perry hastily dabbed it up before it smudged critical information.

He wasn’t sure if it was pride at leaving behind a legacy in his favorite book for future wizards to study, as small as it was, or mortal terror at his impending death.

Por que no los dos?

Once he was done correcting mom’s spellbook, he got to work making a new spell.

Something worthy of the name…Paradox.

Perry laid out Kolath’s Floating Armaments, Sacrifice to Gintax, Threads of Gintax, and Astra’s Mending.

Perry pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and started outlining the spell infrastructure in a manic blaze of speed.

Once it was all done, he took a deep breath, staring at the monstrosity he’d created.

I did need an attack spell.

Paradox’s Pernicious Prison (difficulty: Paradox)

Ingredients: Forming slime, Areonite, Hair of Saint Natanya, vivant root, A Malturian web-spitter, tar from the Tolusian pits, Death Crystal, mindtaker Ichor, Silvered Cloud Giant’s eye, The legendary Mimic, Abun’zaul, Darryl Zauberer’s ‘System’.

Insert Darryl’s System and the Mimic Abun’zaul into the caster’s soul. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Use Paradox’s Soul Surgery to implant Paradox’s Essence Filters into the soul, as well as the following Essence Storage and soul circuitry.

A hastily drawn diagram described how the spell would work.

Effect: Quite a bit of ass-kicking.

Perry took a picture of the spell, then fiddled around in his desk and pulled out the E???????p????i??????h??????a??????n??????y??????? egg he’d received from the tentacle monster rogue at the end of Gerome’s idiotic D&D campaign. Perry cracked the egg and spilled the slurry of mind-melting thought over his rough sketch before comparing the two.

Perry’s soul circuitry was shown at an axis, revealing a three-dimensional shape that Perry hadn’t thought of.

Perry took a picture, then paused, his new senses as a Dimensional cross-class Tinker tugging at him.

A 2-D schematic could give a rough approximation of a 3-D construction.

What if Perry made a 3-D schematic and doped it with the egg? What if he made a 4-D schematic?

Perry glanced at the clock.

I got time. Not a lot, but I got time.

Perry yanked his phone out of his pants and called dad.

“Hey dad, you still got that holographic projector in your lair? You know, behind the lawnmower?”

Dad showed up with the projector in a matter of minutes, and Perry uploaded the file he’d been designing to represent the 3-D schematic for his new spell, plugging a honking thumbrive into the machine.

Once Perry confirmed it was working, he poured E???????p????i??????h??????a??????n??????y???? over it.

“You know,” Dad said conversationally as they stared into the endlessly writhing mass of circuitry projected into the air that seemed to stare back at them… “If I was still in a meat-suit, this would drive me thoroughly insane.”

“Don’t be a wuss, dad, Insanity builds character.” Perry said, to which dad chuckled. Perry tried to take a video, but a 2-d representation of what he was looking at missed…SO much nuance.

It also made his phone bleed a little.

Written notes didn’t really do it justice either. They also changed a little every time he looked at them. Probably a side effect of dimensional turbulence around the schematic.

Perry needed to retain all that it was in his mind, then transfer that over to his soul-surgery equipment.

Let’s make some magic happen.

Stability 40 -> 34

Nerve 26 -> 32

Perry could help but let out a manic cackle as his mind expanded enough to swallow the living schematic whole, as the world around him faded away.

“I’m…regretting certain choices,” dad said, but Perry didn’t have enough spare thought in his mind to process it.

It was so FULL!

An hour later, Perry staggered back to Natalie’s hotel room, rubbing his chest, wishing he could massage his soul. The sun was creeping above the horizon, the Mk. 7 was done, he’d outfitted it with the spells he needed for the mission, and he’d outfitted himself with the spells he needed for the mission.

His soul was stuffed like a Thanksgiving Tofurkey, and it sucked. It made him cranky and irritable, and wanting more than anything else to not visit Nat on the way out.

But some things must be done.

Paradox’s Pernicious Prison (1/6)

Six uses, though, that’s not bad at all.

Perry crept into the room where his girlfriend was quietly sleeping in his girl friend’s arms, bent over and kissed the tiny Tinker’s forehead.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he promised, straightening and about to head out when he heard a sharp intake of breath, the sound of someone waking up.

“Perry?” Heather’s sleep addled voice called, and Perry turned to see her looking up at him, her eyes unfocused and blinking slowly.

“Yeah?”

“You should grow a beard, it would look good on you.” Heather said.

“I, umm…thanks,” Perry muttered, completely defenseless against Heather saying something nice. It was deeply disturbing.

She noticed. Crap.

Heather’s sleep-addled face gave him a smile that was half beatific, half impish delight, before she passed out again, snuggling back into the pillow.

The dead peasant girl from the 1500's swimming around in Heather's soul gave him a wink.

That was weird.

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