Hope

Irwyn slowed down and made sure he was not staring directly at the man, though they seemed to not be paying particular attention to their surroundings. Irwyn was thinking about whether and how to approach, however, an opportunity presented itself before he took a dozen more steps: The man was casting. Just a bit of magic, a few rays of light jumping along the man's fingers. It even reminded Irwyn of how he sometimes played with a bit of magic to relief some nerves. More importantly though, there were few Light mages in the duchy of Black.

Supposedly it had to do with Void magic being more widespread in the ambience as well as children of existing Void mages being much more likely to be the same while at the same time reducing the statistical chance of possessing any affinity to light as the two elements were anathema. Either way, because of that rarity, it was a conversation starter; sharing something uncommon was a good icebreaker.

Slowly, Irwyn approached the bench. Midway he changed direction and walked around so that his approach could be seen well before he arrived. He had relatively no problem with Desir sneaking up on him, at least in this case, however, this was practically a complete stranger. And indeed, he was quickly spotted as the man dismissed the spell and frowned lightly.

"How may I help you?" they said as soon as Irwyn could hear.

"I apologize if I am disturbing you, however, I couldn't help but notice your magic as I was passing by, and well…" Irwyn moved his wrist slightly and summoned a circle of light. He imbued it to solid and condensed. Just two concepts, in big part because of the conversation he has just had with Desir. If Alice was considered a prodigy it would be best to not overdo it, even if his current plan was all about playing the talented youth whom it might be worthwhile helping just a bit. In all honesty, he was not sure how well other mages could even perceive the number of concepts in a spell. “I was hoping you would be willing to exchange some tricks if you have the time.”

There was also a second layer to it. For the moment Irwyn’s face was separate from young Mockingbird. He was not sure how long that would last but in the first place he had done so hoping it would provide him some opportunities – and reduce risk of retaliation in case he made enemies – perhaps this situation would be the chance to make use of that. He was not too worried that his voice would be recognized: After all, he had spoken to this man just briefly and in such circumstances that would be difficult to relate. When looking at the situation without context, Irwyn was just sixteen, too young to be the masked Fowl who had overwhelmed the other mage last time. ‘Young’ Fowls could be as old as 30 after all.

On second thought, the man had seen Irwyn without disguise as just another guest at the hotel that night; and his suit, though it looked as generic as a black suit could. A blunder to not realise it before approaching though thankfully there was no recognition in the mage’s eyes. If there had been Irwyn could have tried to play it off but not realizing and preparing in advance was suboptimal.

“I suppose I have the afternoon free since what I came here for fell through,” the man sighed. “Arthur, pleasure.”

“Irwyn, the pleasure is mine,” he made his best smile and continued as conversationally as he could. “Did something happen? I am not exactly the best connected, however, I might have overheard a hint of some kind.”

“Nothing to worry about,” Arthur waved his hand. “Heard there was a visiting enchanter looking for a Light mage for some reason. Shame I was too busy to get here sooner and someone swiped whatever the job was from under my nose. I suspect I even know who… Well, maybe this is just the distraction I need.”

“I see, I am sorry that happened to you,” he probably means Hen Daut and the Yong Mockingbird taking the job first. Well, that was actually exactly what happened but Arthur would not suspect Irwyn to be the one behind that just because of how young he was. “Thought I will do my best to serve as a distraction.”

“Take a seat then,” Arthur invited, welcoming. “Let’s see. Did I notice right that you could already imbue intentions? That is extremely impressive at your age. How come I have never heard about you?”

“I arrived in Abonisle very recently,” Irwyn admitted, though the statement was misleading. He had come up with a plausible story before approaching. “Frankly I am rather at a loss of what to do. My sponsor had put me in contact with some people and then left me to my own devices so far, though I have little to actually do other than practice magic.”

“Your sponsor?” Arthur asked with clear interest.

“I have been explicitly forbidden from talking about them?” Irwyn shook his head, trying to put a bit of regret into his tone. “They can be rather… loose in how they act, however, I would not dare break any direct promises made.”

“Don’t worry, it was just idle curiosity,” Arthur laughed it off, waving a hand, though Irwyn was pretty sure the man’s eyes were calculating; going the list of people that could fit all the clues presented so far. Though given how little had been said, quite a few should be possible. “You spoke of tricks to Light magic, right? Well, I do have one which is more of a party trick,” he said and then raised a finger. For a moment longer it was there and then it disappeared.

“How did you do that,” Irwyn gasped, genuinely. He was preparing to fake a reaction of some kind but his surprise was true. Why would Arthur be immediately showing him that. Irwyn inspected the spell closer and quickly noticed a few abnormalities: The most blatant among them was that he could not quite see the whole knuckle. It was a bit strange to look at, almost uncanny. But it was as if half the knuckle was simply gone while the other half was stretched out over the gap where the bottom of the finger would attach to the hand. But that was only because Irwyn was looking hard. At a glance, it could probably pass for an ugly stump of a missing appendage.

“As I said, it’s more of a party trick than something useful,” Arthur grinned and turned his hand, revealing that not all of the finger was even covered by the magic; only the front and back. From the side it was obvious that there were two parallel little squares of light at the front and back of the finger. From the inside they were not even transparent and glowed lightly, probably making them easy to spot in the dark. That made Irwyn realise why Arthur was so forward with shoving some of his invisibility. The man knew how to downplay his own ability and overstate the limitations of that magic Irwyn had seen him use.

“It’s relatively simple. I use a spell called Mirrors of Light, what it does is create two mirrors just like this which interact with the human eye. You see, what our eyes behold is actually reflected natural light. What the spell does is that it takes the colors of the light that would have reflected of one of the pair and instead make it perfectly reflect off of the other. Basically, it copies exactly how light would act if neither of the two were there in the first place. If I put them opposite to each other it will always look like the space between them is empty, even if I put something there.”

“But your finger is stretched strangely?” Irwyn played as impressed as he could to draw out a few more clues from the man though his mind was already racing. Although Arthur was trying hard to downplay the practicality of the magic Irwyn had seen what it could do in action from the very same man. If he could just go invisible on a whim, even if the spell ended up being detectable, it could prove an incredible advantage in the right circumstances. And this gave him the direction to go towards if he wanted to figure it out on his own. Which Irwyn currently very much did.

“Well, that’s just the limitation of the magic,” Arthur shrugged. “I need to fill out the gaps manually. Except I cannot just make up all those countless individual rays of light or change them to show something I want them too; that is way above the magic I can do. So instead, I have to improvise to fill in details, like where my finger should connect to the hand. On the floor of a room if I hid a single leg, for example, I would have to somehow recreate tiles or boards since the reflected image might not necessarily match the actual pattern on them. And don’t get me to talk about doing that for grass and such, the only positive there is that mistakes are harder to spot for more complex things.”

“So you have to recreate anything in between if you want people to actually see it?” Irwyn nodded in understanding.

“Recreate is a strong word,” Arthur shook his head. “I copy and modify more than anything else. Even doing that much can be difficult for me. Sone floors and such are much easier and I have to consider other things. For example, if a fowl was to fly through the gap, it would disappear when passing the upper boundary and reappear when going through the bottom for any viewer. In the end, this little trick remains more for impressing strangers than anything useful.”

Except Irwyn had seen firsthand that this very man had perfected it. It was a clue and Irwyn was thinking about whether it would be wise to push for more or whether to just be happy with what he got and move from there. Also, did he just use the word fowl to see if Irwyn would react to it? Well, Irwyn had not so that was fine but he still needed to figure out where to take the conversation from there.

Except when he was just about to speak again he felt a flash of magic course through the air. A thin string, flying at the speed of sound; a seemingly weak construct that had to weave around all the surrounding enchantments and slip through their gaps just to avoid being destroyed. Irwyn was surprised it was even able to enter the area at all.

“Excuse me for a moment,” Arthur reacted to it immediately though, reaching into his pocket and removing a crystalline square of some kind. The flickering string of magic stopped flying around and immediately homed into the item. “I apologize but would you mind giving me some privacy?”

“Of course,” Irwyn nodded and stood up, stepping away from the bench. Since the area was enchanted to mute sound he did not even need to go further than a few steps away. He felt Arthur do something magical to the box, likely activating it, and then listening without speaking a word. It was a good half minute before the older mage beckoned Irwyn to return, already, the man was standing up.

“Though short, I enjoyed our chat Irwyn, I wish you luck with your magic though unfortunately something has come up and I will have to take my leave,” he said. “May we meet again.”

“Good luck to you too,” Irwyn nodded his goodbye and Arthur almost ran off. Whatever the matter was, it was clearly urgent. The method of communication also fascinated Irwyn. There were means of sending and receiving messages over short and long distances like that - both mundane or magical in fact - however, those suffered because of ambient magic. Simply put enchantments tended to completely block out any such communication attempts for various reasons. Whatever that had been, it eluded those issues somehow. And Irwyn had felt no intention from that string of magic. That meant it was either particularly weak or beyond Irwyn’s ability to fully understand. If it was the later it would at the very least explain why it was able to arrive in the first place.

Though Arthur was gone for the moment, he had given Irwyn an idea. Several ideas in fact. And also made Irwyn realize several of his own deficiencies. The biggest one was the very concept of sight. Irwyn had known in some way that seeing was caused by reflected natural light, but that was far from properly understanding what that meant. Embarrassingly enough, Irwyn realized that he had next to no idea about the specifics and exact mechanisms in place. From where the light reflected, how it actually interacted in the eye, how was that interpreted into sight… Irwyn did not actually comprehend.

So, he decided that if he had any shot at making a working invisibility spell, he needed to learn. And for that he needed an appropriate book. He might have asked Elizabeth, however, since she was not available, he would have to search for one himself. Except Irwyn had no idea where to buy such literature. He was looking for downright academic texts after all, not something present in most stores. Was there a library somewhere? He had not the slightest clue.

But he knew someone who might. Irwyn quickly set off and hoped he would be able to catch Desir to ask for some directions.

Some ten hours later, Irwyn was staring at the mirror in his bathroom, eyes lightly bloodshot. It was already dark outside though he did not particularly care; he had just attempted to cast the first draft of the spell after getting done with visualizing its outline and how it was supposed to actually work.

Sight, as it turned out, was a deep, fascinating and in some topics even controversial subject. Desir had indeed managed to help Irwyn, getting him in touch with someone who specifically sold scientific literature to mages and had exactly what Irwyn had been looking for. The cost was steep for a book but Irwyn could afford it and it was definitely something he wanted to improve his comprehension in.

The first issue Irwyn had run into was color. Natural light’s color was determined by what the light reflected off of. Simplified, the impact of reflection changed the individual particles of light and absorbed some of it and its energy; Black apparently took the most while white took the least. What was reflected would then enter the human eye which could perceive these colors through countless small receptors; differentiate them from one another. Then it was up to the brain and soul to understand what the colours meant and visualise them. Similar principles applied to shapes as well as pretty much the rest of seeing.

Human eyesight was all about interpreting natural light. Human eyesight.

Because that was clearly not all that there was. Some monsters or animals had no sight and instead understood their surroundings by sensing such things as tremors, smell, heat, or other stimulation but that was nothing compared to magical species.

Many creatures simply possessed what the book described as magical sight, a term which it called ‘So broad it is similar to calling a group of humans people’. Since any such sight was magical, they worked based on what kind of magic they used. The most common ‘raw’ magical sight simply projected elementless mana in front of the eyes which captured natural light, then sent it off for the brain and/or soul to understand. In theory, it did not require for the area of capture to be just right in front of the eyes; it could be anywhere and of any size. Except that for the limited number of creatures that used this kind of magical sight it was inborn and learned by instinct; obtaining such technique was apparently ‘beyond difficult’ and ‘a challenge a magelord would struggle to accomplish’. Most notably, the majority of undead operated on this kind of sight. It was actually a topic of great controversy whether common undead exclusively operated on magical sight or if they would use the pre-existing eyesight when being risen; if possible. The evidence on the topic was inconclusive considering that testing on an actual undead beings in laboratory conditions was obviously strictly illegal; all undead had to be put down as soon as feasible by Blackburg law. Such magical sight might be able to notice there was something awry with the method of invisibility Irwyn was attempting to develop, however, not what exactly.

In the end though that wasn’t too much of an issue for the spell at least compared to other things. No, there were other kinds of sight that would simply invalidate the spell by default at least in the way it was conceived. Though these rarely appeared across the land, more specialised magical sights could cause Irwyn problems. One simply ‘saw through any magic’; apparently the experience was quite strange and required specialized training for humans.

Most Void dwellers including many demons or even apparently perceived reality by the lack of light rather than its presence; they could not properly operate on any plane but apparently it was perfectly suitable for existing within the endless nothingness.

The Fae, as always an exception it would seem, possessed the ability to just see through illusions, including physical ones and even ‘metaphorical’ ones, whatever that actually meant. Whoever wrote the book had no good guess on how that was possible and simply put it down to ‘unique fae magic’.

But back to color. It was a bit of an epiphany of its own for Irwyn to realize that he could change the color of his light. The change itself took him a good half hour and another one before he could do most of the visible spectrum. The kinds of light not visible by the human eye did not actually work for his magic though. He could make the Light itself invisible but not change it to colors that the eye simply could not perceive. Entire chapters were dedicated to the topic in the book, however, the base reason for that was relatively simple:

Magical light created by Light magic was fundamentally different from natural light.

Although the human eye perceived them the same way, while natural light worked on reflected particles with specific properties, magical light was visible because of what the book described as meta-particles.

In the end, it all came back down to the Planar law of Finity. Since the magic could not cause any permanent ‘matter’ to be created, the particles of light that radiated from magical light sources were actually nothing of the kind. It was temporary, volatile, and generally lasted at most a few seconds before dissolving into raw energy, generating a slight bit of heat. In the vast majority of circumstances the difference was academic. Reflected light moved at speeds incomprehensible to the human mind and mortal scale, however, it had been tested with ‘endless chambers’ that magical light eventually decayed when made to travel long enough distance; not to mention in accordance with Finity and its breakpoints.

There was another area where the difference was not academic though: Different methods could either detect or outright see through such magical light or interacted with it strangely. Creating yet another weakness for what Irwyn was going to attempt. Frankly, it seemed that even if Irwyn managed to perfect the invisibility spell, it might only work against humans – and not even all of them - even if he could control well enough to suppress any leakage of mana.

Yet he was still determined to attempt it. For one part, being invisible just to humans was a tool he was distinctly missing; stealth had always been his weakness. But more importantly, there could be an opportunity to perfect it in the future. Turn it into something that could not be seen through by anyone with half-decent precautions.

Hence why Irwyn was staring at himself in the mirror, eyes ever so slightly bloodshot as he attempted it again and failed. Not the trick with the reflective parallel mirrors that Arthur had shown him. He could do that limited version of what he pursued mostly fine after less than an hour of practice. No, the issue was he was struggling to make headway with overlaying it around the shape of his body rather than a flat plane.

It was too complex. Far far too complex. Irwyn could possibly control thousands of individual constructs at a time without intentions involved. Manage them mostly independently, having each do whatever he pleased. Yet there were millions upon millions of rays of light he need to copy, or perhaps several orders of magnitude more give how exhausting even the attempts were. When the area was a straight mirror, that had not been a problem: He could just take everything at once as one bunch and transfer it to the other side.

But that all changed when different shapes came into play. At a different distance, different angles from each other. Even though it was still far simpler than working with the individual particles of light it nevertheless remained beyond Irwyn’s capacity. Far beyond as it seemed considering the whole thing had been shattering before even covering a fraction of Irwyn’s form.

After two more failed attempts Irwyn sighed and took a step back. It felt similar to the issues he had run into with his ambitious spell to perceive everything that Light touched around him… And yet, this was different. It had to be. Because Irwyn was not exactly the same thief who had dreamed up that idea. Not because of the connections, achievements, or enemies, because those did not really matter to him in the end. No… Irwyn felt like he was several leagues better in magic than his past self and would not allow another unattained dream. Not admit another defeat and ‘maybe when I am better’ like this

So he took a step back and begun to restructure. The issue was there were far too many uneven surfaces to cover in the mirrors he had made to fit around his body, but they did not need to fit perfectly. What if he still used the much simpler flat shapes? Ovals and bends had proven to be extraordinarily more difficult but he did not technically speaking need them. He did not require for the spell to be right over his clothes. He just needed it to be close enough that it was practically there. A few millimeters of separation and suddenly, the requirements for uneven surfaces vanished.

The mental image he had of the spell no longer looked like a shape very similar to his own, rather, it appeared almost like a plate armor, except all the bends and smoothed out surfaces had been turned as sharp as possible and instead of round. Bends turned into corners and circles into octagons wherever he could make the changes.

It might have still been too much but he had another idea which he had neglected in the first draft, perhaps out of habit. Because he knew what to do when he had too many different constructs doing the same thing. He needed to merge it into a single spell. So he paced and muttered.

“Invisibility?” no too simple. Too generic. Beyond sight… that would be better. “But I can be more specific, just to see if this works at all,” he muttered. “Sight, Light, that will do. Then… hide. What rhymes with hide?” and so forth. It took him a few minutes but he made a working enough spell for what he wanted.

All in all, it might have been another hour while he restructured the idea of the spell and its mechanisms from basically scratch then came up with a suitable chant. But even an hour could pass in the blink of an eye when spent in feverish obsession. And then, finally, Irwyn was satisfied enough to attempt it.

“With unbroken stride

I will hide

In the light

Beyond mortal sight”

And he smiled wide: Because though strained by the onset of tiredness, he could not see his own grin in the mirror.