Magic is Programming

The bear prowled forward menacingly, approaching from the side of the road, and Carlos frantically scrabbled for his sword, heart pounding in his chest. He tried to remember if he'd read any advice about what to do when encountering a bear, even as he wondered whether that advice would still make sense in this other world. He thought he vaguely remembered something about not running away, because that would encourage it to chase. Oh, and never threaten a mother bear's cubs. Crap, were there any cubs nearby? He didn't see any, but maybe they were just hidden.

Carlos held up his sword, his hands shaking a bit, and gulped. This was worse than in the dungeon. At least in the dungeon the dangers had waited for him to come to them, never chasing him. That bear was huge! He supposed he would respawn by the rules of how this world operates, if it came to that, but he had no desire to test that, or to experience the pain of being killed. He was about ready to turn and run, despite knowing it was probably a bad idea, when Amber spoke.

spell activate = distant cut;

The bear interrupted its growling to yelp and flinch, looking at its nose where a small spot of blood had appeared. Then it growled louder and crouched a bit lower as it resumed advancing towards them.

spell activate = distant cut;

The bear yelped again, but only paused for a brief moment.

"At least take a swing or something! I only have a few more of those left." Amber glared at Carlos, who was still just standing there, gripping his sword so tightly his knuckles were turning white.

spell activate = distant cut;

Carlos gulped, gathered his courage, and charged as Amber started casting her third spell. He swung wildly, with frantic energy, with just enough presence of mind to keep each swing small enough that the sword remained between him and the bear the entire time.

The bear looked at the wildly swinging stick of sharpened metal, shook a few drops of blood from its now freely bleeding nose, and decided it had had enough. It turned and ran, quickly disappearing into the nearby forest.

Carlos staggered to a stop, sweating and breathing heavily. He wasn't sure how much of that was from fear, and how much was from being in terrible shape. Plenty from both, probably.

"Wow. I've never seen anyone that shaky just from facing a common beast! And you want to go adventuring?"

Carlos collapsed onto the ground. "Just." He took a few shaky breaths. "Give me a minute." He focused with exaggerated care on getting his sword back into its scabbard without cutting anything, which took a good 30 seconds or so. By the time he was done, his heart was at least starting to slow back down.

"I can explain." He took several more deep breaths to calm down. "Ok. So, in my world, people don't respawn. Ever. And 'common beasts' like that have been driven out of most settled areas so thoroughly that most people never even see one in their entire life!

"Imagine facing some dangerous monster, ten times more dangerous than anything you've ever personally encountered, and knowing that if it kills you it will drain, what was it, your 'soul development'? so completely that you won't respawn."

"But... You would respawn here."

"I learned that literally yesterday. The experience of the entire rest of my life says that respawn doesn't exist. It will take time for me to get used to the idea."

"I see." Amber nodded slowly. Her face looked a bit pale. "That... is a scary thing to imagine. Especially since there are monsters that can do that, though they are extremely rare. Alright, I can understand how this encounter was nerve racking for you, but you'll have to get used to this kind of danger if you ever want to seriously be an adventurer."

Carlos nodded glumly and stood up. "I'll need to exercise too."

Several minutes later, Carlos was back to breathing normally as they walked along the road. "So, what was that 'spell activate' thing back there? And you said something about having a limited amount?"

Amber chuckled. "I'm still getting used to how much you just don't know. That's a basic technique every combat mage has to learn. There's no time to chant the entire incantation of any significant spell when someone's trying to stab you. You'd be dead before you could finish speaking it. So, you speak the incantation in advance, but store the spell to be activated later instead of having it take effect immediately."

"Ah, makes sense. You'll have to teach me that soon, after I finish learning to cast a spell at all."

"Of course. And now if you're ready to talk, it's my turn to ask a question. You learned the strange tricky spell word already?"

"The semicolon? Yeah. It's just an unambiguous positional and structural marker. It means only that the part of the spell before it is ended, so the part coming after it can begin."

Amber stared at nothing, contemplating for a moment. "It can't be that simple. I've tried that already, last year, and my soul didn't learn it. What else is there to it?"

Carlos put a hand on his chin, thinking. "Hmm. I can think of two aspects of it that might be important and not necessarily obvious. First, its purpose is to make the boundaries it marks absolutely unambiguous. There may be many cases where it's obvious that the previous part of the spell has ended, but sometimes it would be ambiguous, and the semicolon's purpose is to make it reliably and consistently obvious.

"Second, there may be parts of some incantations that themselves have sub-parts, and the semicolon marks the separation between those sub-parts, even though the larger part of the incantation is still continuing."

Amber stared at him. "How the hell do you know something like that, and not the basic fundamentals of combat magic? That didn't all come from your wish for understanding, did it?"

Carlos shrugged. "My world doesn't have magic, but it has languages very similar to the language of incantations. We use them for controlling certain machines we built."

Amber sighed and shook her head. "Whatever. I don't think I can even imagine how you might build such a machine without already having magic. Thank you for the explanation, and I'll see if I can learn it now."

About a quarter of an hour later, Amber suddenly gasped, and froze in place for several seconds. Carlos stopped, and raised an eyebrow at her. She almost whispered an exclamation under her breath. "Holy shit. That actually did it!"

They exchanged grins, and resumed their journey with a bit more energy in their steps.

Well into the afternoon, they were still walking along the road when a man rode up on a horse behind them. "Aha! I knew it!"

Carlos and Amber stopped and looked back at him in confusion.

"Kindar missed spotting you on his way back because you knew he'd be raising hell and went the other way."

Amber sighed, and waved at him. "Yes, Mikil, you figured it out. Great job. Why did you bother actually coming all the way out here to check? You're too lazy to do it just for curiosity, and you hate Kindar too much to be doing him a favor."

Mikil chuckled, and his horse pranced in place a little. "Oh, Kindar can break his neck at the bottom of a pit trap a dozen times for all I care. His old man, though. Darmelkon is offering a hundred gold to whoever finds you for him. I've never seen so many people rushing everywhere at once before! One hundred gold!"

"WHAT!?" Amber stared, slack-jawed. "He-" She stood in stunned silence for a few seconds. "That- that's insane! One hundred gold could buy half of Erlen, just about! Just- just- What? Why? Even for Darmelkon, it's too much to make sense."

Mikil shrugged. "Who cares why? He showed the money and announced the terms in the town square, with the magistrate as witness. Now, I hope you escape whatever he's planning for you because sticking it to Kindar is always fun, but if you'll excuse me, I have a hundred gold to go claim." Mikil turned and sped back the way he came without another word.

Amber took several deep breaths as she watched him go, her heart thumping hard in her chest. "Well, shit."

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