“Is this a good influence to be having on your child?” Tyr asked.
Leon shrugged, not bothering to look up from the floor of the ritual chamber. He was currently using a dragonbone stylus dipped in Abyssal Squid ink to inscribe a magical circle. It had to encompass the majority of the ritual chamber floor, an area about as large as James’ entire shared apartment had been back on Earth.
The array was unfathomably complex—a dense, intricate web of tiny runes and symbols that looped back in on itself. Worst of all, Leon was creating it in one smooth, continuous line, the stylus never rising from the clay floor. He skated along the ground in his dress boots as his wrists and fingers contorted at impossibly grisly angles.
“What do you mean?” Father responded, his arm flickering through some complex, deadly knife art in order to engrave violent lines onto the floor.
Tyr was only really speaking to try and distract him. Make him stumble. The wisdom of doing this to the person creating his ritual circle was questionable, but Leon looked far too smug about his own antics for it to go unanswered.
Tyr crossed his arms. “Bullying Miss Lionheart for doing her job, for instance.”
“Yes, obviously that was necessary. What did you learn?”
“How to abuse my power?”
“Of course,” said Leon. He pirouetted around like a ballet dancer while somehow keeping his torso low to the ground, the wide, sweeping motion of his arm inscribing an orbit around him. “Is that a bad thing?”
These theatrical maneuvers can’t be necessary for the ritual circle. I bet no one else does it in one line either.
But Tyr had to admit it was impressive. Not that he would say it out loud.
“Back on Earth, we used to think it was rude to berate people less powerful than you. And calling their manager to complain? That’s tacky.”
“Takee? One of your Urth words? I always thought that was baby gibberish.” Leon grinned, not bothering to watch his work as he reminisced for a moment. “Well, power dynamics are one way to look at interactions. You can view it as someone bullying their lesser. Or you can view the behavior of the lesser to their superior as disrespectful. It’s a matter of perspective.
“I can understand why a person would want to challenge authority, but I don’t know why someone with power would surrender their authority in order to be polite. That’s simple politics, and in the Game of Nobles, you’ll be crushed if you feel the need to cripple yourself in order to seem fair.
“Either way, Miss Lionheart isn’t some poor, mundane servant that I unjustly berated. She misstepped in etiquette and, far worse for a War Mage, failed to understand the nature of the battlefield. That arrogance would have gotten her killed in an Instance or some faraway conflict if she wasn’t humbled in a gentler arena first.”
You can really justify anything as long as the rhetoric sounds good enough. Even make yourself look like the hero.
“Also, it was funny,” said Mother. “Did you see her face? And her hair. What a hothead!”
Tyr snapped his head back to look at Alana. She was chuckling to herself and clutching a glass of sparkling wine.
Are we doing puns now?
She had always been the perfect Mother to the point that he had forgotten she was her own person. Some aspects of Father had to appeal to her for them to have ended up together. And she had been the one to bring up Dath in the first place, as if reminding her husband of the Karen Option.
In fact, she had an appreciative look as she observed Father, standing off to the side with the rest of their group. Tyr wished he hadn’t noticed the lovey-dovey gleam in her eyes as she sipped her wine and watched her man work.
Don’t encourage this behavior!
“Are you paying attention to what he’s doing?” Mother asked, knowing quite well Tyr wasn’t. “He’s a Master at this sort of thing. Even if you don’t understand any of it, just observing can create inspiration or open your mind to new possibilities. Always best to expand your horizons when you’re young. You may even receive a high-quality General Skill.”
The realization struck Tyr like a bucket of cold water to the face. Filling out his Status with more broken boons took precedence over trying to humble Father. He didn’t want Leon’s arrogance to get him killed in whatever an Instance was, or some faraway war, but what about Tyr’s own growth?
Now that he was looking for it, there did appear to be a method to Father’s madness in creating the ritual circle. That wasn’t exactly a surprise, but the fact Tyr could even recognize some patterns within the chaotic scribbling and absurd one-take method was enlightening in itself.
Were the magical symbols considered both another language and a fantastical subject for the purposes of his Reincarnator, Zero Mana World Achievement? Studying foreign languages received a 100% buff, and unknown or fantastical fields of knowledge received 50%. Did they stack on one another, then? Still, it seemed unlikely that boosting his baseline learning speed a couple times over would allow him to understand such an insane working.
It almost seemed like an affinity connection. As if he was observing mana flows, even though it was an artificial, static drawing.
Is this some sort of random esoteric affinity like Ink, or Runes? Or am I just too narrow-minded to understand what this is, so I’m using the ability to sense mana as my closest reference point? It could be a Skill, an Achievement, who knows. But it is pretty interesting. Clearly something about it is resonating with me.
[ The General Skill Drawing (Common) is now available. ]
[ The General Skill Linguistics (Uncommon) is now available. ]
[ The General Skill Encryption (Rare) is now available. ]
Tyr closed his mind to all distractions, even his own constant internal monologue. All of his focus was dedicated to attempting to decipher the full nature of the magical circle. How did the interlocking sections reinforce and counteract one another? What symbols were repeated?
While these questions flitted across the back of his mind, his consciousness remained locked in. It was almost like a meditative trance, but he sought understanding over peace.
No grand revelations occurred to him. Instead, he felt as if he was piecing a puzzle together without having any clue what the final image should look like. He absently divided the ritual circle into chunks, storing it into his memory in bite-sized pieces for future study.
Time passed. It could have been minutes or hours. Tyr ignored the occasional notification popping up in the corner of his vision, all of his focus on Leon’s handiwork. Before he knew it, the magical circle was almost complete, with only a small, distant section left to be filled in.
Then, Mother added her own influence to the ritual.
Her glass of wine was nowhere to be seen. Instead, she stood with a regal bearing, chin tilted slightly to the heavens, hands clasped together in prayer. Words of Power poured from her tongue, her usual soft tone of voice infused with authority.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Though he heard the exact sounds she made, they flowed in one ear and out the other without registering to him. Any attempt to store the Words within his memory slid off like oil across water.
Strings of golden light unspooled from Mother’s mouth as she chanted, a Holy filigree that shifted and swirled across the fabric of reality. It drifted away from her and settled into the ritual circle. The tapestry of mana somehow harmonized with the array, a complementary diagram.
A moment later, with a flourish of his wrist, Father completed the last line of the circle.
And Tyr was transported elsewhere.
***
Tyr opened his eyes to discover…he was back on Earth. Specifically, standing next to the Stanford graduation stage, wearing his gown and cap, staring out into the crowd. His memories of his new life on Savra flickered in and out of existence, as if his mind was waging a war against him. Or, perhaps it was trying to keep him from forgetting the truth.
What the…
He looked over and saw James Mclean’s head right next to him. The surroundings spun from his disorientation. Another perspective joined his own—he was looking at his own toddler-sized Tyrus Hollan face, perched on a separate neck but attached to the same gowned body.
Oh, great, I’m a two-headed ogre monstrosity. Is this deep symbolism or something?
Whatever. I’m obviously not back on Earth. Right, the ritual. Either one of my parents messed things up, or they tweaked it in my favor. This probably isn’t the usual routine, but no one tells me anything ahead of time. Typical.
After a few moments of adjusting to this bizarre world, a fighter jet blasted overhead.
The purifying annihilation of the nuke once more washed over him, scouring flesh from bone.
A blink later, he was standing beside the stage once more.
Stuck in a time loop, am I? How original. Though, what’s this?
As he looked up at the beautiful, sunny day overhead, he noticed currents of Sky mana whirling about. If it wasn’t obvious enough already, there was no way any of this was real. Earth was a Zero Mana World, and the presence of magical energy offered straightforward, objective evidence that he was going through the motions of some recursive simulation.
On top of that, the world seemed muted. No smells, no ambient sound, decreased sensations that were more of the idea of feeling than anything else; at least it had made dying terribly a bit more tolerable the second time around.
The crowd of posh folk also blurred together at some points, or remained static in the corner of his vision.
Amateur work.
Frowning, he reached out to the Sky mana. To his surprise, it answered his call. Manipulating it within this simulation was almost too easy. Streamers of light-blue energy coalesced into his palm. More and more flooded in, almost like a continuous lightning strike drawn to a rod.
The infinite potential of Sky mana revealed itself to him. Wind and weather manipulation, farseeing, lightning manifestation. And most important of all, flight.
A Sky cloak appeared around his shoulders, almost like a superhero cape, and he leapt straight into the heavens. Wind parted around him as if recognizing him as part of the atmosphere itself, offering no resistance to his passage.
Rolling hills and bright homes, as well as the run-down, downtrodden duality of San Francisco, spread out below him. The Pacific Ocean glimmered like liquid sapphire, crowned with foam.
Tyr’s heart thudded in his chest, but even that was muted. This could only be a poor imitation of true flight; none of the freedom, none of the fear. Yet it was thrilling regardless. He couldn’t wait to experiment back on Savra.
High above, he sensed a yellow, radiant force. Not Holy mana. Heaven? Sun? Celestial?
A moment later, the fighter jet tore through the cloud next to him. The shockwave of its supersonic flight washed over him harmlessly. He clapped his hands and a wave of Wind blasted after the plane. Far too slow to catch it.
Have to target where it’s going to be, not where it is now.
Before he could test his insight, the nuclear payload dropped. He tore it to shreds with a storm of windblades.
It erupted, once more annihilating him.
Another blink, and he was near the graduation stage again.
Did nukes back on Earth activate when destroyed like that? I’m not sure. But I still have to solve this stupid riddle.
“There’s a reason it’s called a Trial,” James’ head quipped beside him. “Did you think they’d just cast some spell and tell you the results?”
“Stop acting like a millennial,” Tyr snapped back. “This is why you never had a real girlfriend, pal.”
“Too far, little bro. You can’t even date anyone for like thirty years without being a creep, or making them a creep by association. You won’t get to experience childhood love this time around either.”
Tyr hissed at his conjoined head-twin. “Whatever, Graduation Boy. By the way, you’re just so committed to the whole Stanford bit, aren’t you?”
“A lot to unpack there. First of all, that’s our Father, not Leon.” James used one of their hands to point at an uncanny-looking Cameron Mclean within a distorted cluster of the audience; Cameron returned the gesture with a wave of his seven-fingered hand. “But what do you mean by ‘the whole Stanford bit,’ exactly?”
“Everyone that attended Stanford has to constantly bring up the fact they went there.”
“But I did go there.”
In the time they spent bickering, nuclear destruction washed over them again.
Another loop.
“Alright,” said Tyr. “Enough of this nonsense. The timing intervals of these deaths are completely random, by the way. So, what, are we supposed to figure out how to manipulate mana in order to save the city? Discover the affinities all around us, learn to weaponize them in this training environment to solve the Trial, and so on?”
“As a Stanford graduate that double-majored in History and Philosophy, I concur.”
“We start from the first principles, then.” Tyr cleared his throat and lifted his arms.
Sky was his first known affinity. Crystal the second. Holy the third.
He sensed random flecks of diamond-like mana within the crowd, likely fake jewelry. Wisps of golden energy danced around the occasional person interspersed throughout the area. One had a pocket Bible, a couple wore rosary beads, and the other sources seemed to be praying out of happiness, or perhaps begging for their more successful family members to face divine punishment.
Right on time, the fighter jet smote them all again.
Next loop, Tyr harvested the Crystal mana from the crowd. It formed a rough-cut chunk of diamond in the palm of his hand. With a flex of his will, he stretched it into a convex crystal lens and set it to hover at eye level.
His own nightmarish reflection stared back at him from the mirrored surface, warped and twisted. Two-headed ogre indeed.
I am not two separate people. Leon knows the truths and laws of nature back on Savra better than I do. If he says I’m a unique blend of Tyr and James, then that’s who I am. Not this freak.
The two-headed image flickered, blurred even more, then resolved into sharp focus. He looked once more like Tyr Hollan, though his face had matured to that of a late teenager’s. A mess of curly golden locks formed an aurora around his head.
Nuclear fire.
Next loop.
This time, he restarted as teenage, unified Tyrames—Jayrus—perhaps just Tyr was best.
He harvested beams of Solar mana from the distant heavens. Radiant light brightened the entire land, purifying darkness and shadow alike. Then Tyr stole the prayers and the symbolic power of the religious symbols, admonishing evil and deception to flee from his Trial.
Everything vanished, leaving Tyr hovering within a void of pure darkness.
“And now, for the final, most obvious layer.”
Tyr seized the void around him, streamers of clear and purple energy swirling about in a terrifying maelstrom, larger than the false cosmos stretching out infinitely in all directions. After a moment, he realized he was the origin. The universe was an endless fountain of energy, emerging from his forehead.
“This is only a nightmare, and I can never be trapped within my own Mind.”
***
Tyr blinked, and opened his eyes back in the ritual chamber.
Someone had at least seen fit to rest his head upon a silk pillow after he had passed out. A killer migraine pounded between his ears.
Mother’s face hovered over him. “Tell him the bad news, honey. I can’t bear to break his little heart.”
Leon shook his head solemnly as he bent down and handed Tyr a crystal tablet, engraved with the perfect calligraphy of his handwriting. “No one becomes a spellblade with these affinities.”
Mind - 127
Dream - 64
Crystal- 58
Sky - 54
Holy - 51
Life - 43
Solar - 38
Death - 21
Moon - 19
...
