NOVEL NEXT Chapter Thirty-Five: Conjuration Two
After the class with professor Caeruleum ended, I rushed to the dining hall and ate a quick lunch of a salad with poached pears, gorgonzola, and grilled strips of chicken, before heading off to Conjuration Two. The class was once again held in the faerie castle on campus, but instead of being located in the ballroom, it was located within the castle's solarium.
The room was beautiful, with large glass panels that had been fused with wooden cross-hatching in order to hold them aloft. There were designs worked into the glass in the form of whorls and bubbles and ripples, but the glass was all clear enough that it didn't disrupt sight so much as make the entire thing feel otherworldly. It was smaller than the ballroom, but not by much, and it was much more richly appointed with an assortment of large, cushy chairs scattered throughout the room and wooden tables sitting next to them. A few pixies and sprites were lounging about in the sun in a way that oddly reminded me of cats.
I took a seat in one of the chairs and waited. I'd eaten a bit faster than I'd strictly needed to, so I was early. I pulled out Jadis' remodel to practice while I waited, and was startled when a voice spoke right into my ear, less than an inch away.
"What'cha doing?"
I jerked and nearly dropped the bowl, but snatched it at the last second, causing professor Toadweather to laugh maniacally.
"Hello professor," I said, letting out a sigh. "I'm working on an ether manipulation technique for Fundamental Magecraft. I don't suppose you, being a professor, would have any free advice?"
"Oh, there's plenty of ways to handle it. Shattering your brain into multiple different parts in order to allow each section, for example, but that tends to kill people very fast. Practice can also manage it without having to rip your brain into stitches and tie it back together. I learned the technique by doing the inside, then the outside, then the inside, then the outside, faster and faster and faster and FASTER!"
She was practically shouting by the end, then broke off into a fit of manic giggles before shrugging.
"After a bit, I learned to do it so fast I was doing it at the same time! Or you could sell your soul to a demonic sage for its knowledge on how to do it!"
"I'll keep those methods in mind," I agreed. Frankly, the flipping idea wasn't a bad one, and probably something I should have figured out for myself. I'd spend the weekend working on it, and if I couldn't master it by the time that class rolled around, I'd buy the bowl to keep training it.
Professor Toadweather giggled and buzzed away, poking at some of the lounging faeries in their chairs, driving them out of the solarium before she waved her hands and began chanting a spell, but not one that I had any sort of recognition of. I watched, curious, as she summoned a blackboard and wheeled into a sunbeam that would let pretty much all of the seats get a good line of vision to it.
"What was that?" I asked. "It didn't sound like a normal spell."
"I pulled it from my locker with my teacher's card," the faerie said as she wiped the blackboard clean of the text covering its surface.
"Huh? You don't need–"
"No, no, no. Not the Etherius locker ritual. The locker that the school provides for all students and teachers, past and present. It wasn't so much a spell as it was half a password."
I narrowed my eyes at her as an idea entered my head. With the creation of my Etherius locker, I hadn't seen much use for the school provided lockers. Even though they were huge, many times bigger than the spell, they were located within a single building that I had to physically walk to and from in order to access. But if the teacher's identification cards could be used to access them remotely, it might be possible for a student card to do something similar. Even if it wasn't a way for normal students, it was possible that I'd be able to do it as a member of the Coven of the Twilight Grotto. After all, I still hadn't unlocked all of the powers of the ring.
While I mused on that, the rest of the students wandered in, a mix of third year students and the people I'd worked with the year before, like the woman who thought she was a dragon, and the treefolk who I'd partnered with the year before. For a moment, I wondered if there was a reason that I hadn't seen any second years taking the first year courses for anything other than Applied Mage Combat, which felt like an outlier. Maybe they tried to normally keep first years sectioned off? That would make some sense to help people get their feet under them.
Professor Toadweather handed out a copy of the syllabus to each person as they entered, including handing one to her giant frog as it wandered in. I was about to raise my hand and ask for one, assuming she'd just forgotten, when the frog opened its mouth and spat one out of the void onto the table next to me, before hopping onto one of the plush circular chairs and laying down.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
I glanced over it as quickly as I could, noting that we began the year with the 'five names' technique, before moving onto the study and analysis of spellforms, as well as the learning of actual spells. Much like the year before, there was a solid mix of the different types of conjuration spells that ranged from teleportation style effects, to conjuring items, to summoning creatures. Notably, the entire block of third circle spells was dedicated to learning to summon creatures from elemental planes outside of the classical four elements used in wizardry, like summon lightning ermine.
I didn't have long to look, however, as professor Toadweather began the class almost immediately.
"How many types of realms are there?" the pixie asked, looking all of us over. That immediately set off alarm bells in my brain as a trick question, so rather than answering five, I gave the more exact answer.
"Inifinite. We use five broad categories, but there are lots of planes that fall in-between two other plane types, and lots that don't explicitly fit into the structure of the five perfectly."
Professor Toadweather pouted for a moment before bounding up and nodding. Behind her, the chalk began to draw out a diagram of the planes, with our world in the center, branching off into the faerie realms, the elemental, the divine, the demonic, and the ethereal.
"You're right, alas. But yes. The five types of plane are just generalizations, but they're still useful tools for categorization. In the same way, so too is the five names ether manipulation technique. Who can tell me anything about it?"
The treefolk sitting near me rustled his branches as he answered.
"Names have power. I'm guessing that this technique helps you form four additional true names?"
Professor Toadweather barked out a long laugh and shook her head, her wings buzzing.
"If only such a thing were possible. Alas, no. True names are well and real, and some scholars posit that the tones that are used in Songcalling represent the true names of the materials their tones draw on, but that is neither here nor there. Most beings aren't even aware of their own true names, and the power that it gives command over is not quite so drastic as some may hope. It's considerable, but simply knowing a being's true name will not allow you to command them freely."
"So if we aren't using their true names, how do beings that we summon know that we're calling for them?" one of the third years asked.
"Davis?" professor Toadweather asked.
The third year looked at her, blinked, then asked "Yes?" in confusion.
"How did you know to respond to that, if it wasn't your true name?" the professor asked, and the third year, Davis, closed his mouth, letting Toadweather continue. "The truth is, all names have power, be they normal names or true names. So long as you answer to a name, my intent can call to it. And that's the purpose of the five names technique. It allows you to create names and cycle your ether through the names, imbuing them with more weight and intention."
"Does that mean that it's possible for people to summon us?" I asked, arching an eyebrow. I guessed that it made sense, but it was also strange to think of being called up by some elemental in order to fight for them.
"It does," professor Toadweather agreed. "Though wizardry is rare in most planes, and I don't know of any 'summon human' spell, many beings have bloodlines that let them call on mortals they've made deals with. Fae, for example, nearly all have this power. Faerie monarchs can pull you across planes. As can archangels, demon lords, and more."
"Why don't we simply use our real name?" asked the girl who thought she had draconic ancestry. "I mean, it already has all our intent in it…"
"It does, and at times, you may wish to use your real name. But having additional names adds a layer of… safety. This is why many faeries have multiple names as well. If Bobbery Hobbery makes a deal with a faerie queen for a favor owed under the name of Boery, then when she calls in the debt, she will call upon Boery, not upon Bobbery Hobbery. Bobbery will have a bit more leeway in responding to the call, and she can less make Bobbery act on things that Boery wouldn't know."
"That sounds… complex," admitted the treefolk next to me. "It also sounds like an overly-elaborate way to wiggle out or into things."
"If it helps, you can think of it like a mortal's working professions," professor Toadwether explained. "The manager at a restaurant can call a server in for work, and tell them what to do when they are there. But that restaurant manager cannot tell their server how to act when they are working in their second job at a steel mill, nor when the server is in the privacy of their own home."
That seemed to satisfy most of the class, but there were certainly some confused looks in the surrounding students. I thought I mostly understood the theory, at least. The technique for putting real intent in our five names would help insulate our real identities, like owning a company helped separate out the company's finances from the personal ones.
Professor Toadweather clapped and gestured to the board, where the ether shaping pattern was drawing itself out. It was fairly simple, splitting the ether into five different streams, then speaking each name aloud while pulsing the stream it was tied to.
"I advise everyone to intentionally re-arrange some of the letters of your real name in order to create your five names. This will help conceptually anchor them to your base name, without being too close to anything particularly identifying. For that last part, I recommend keeping the names to four letters or less."
I considered my own name: Emrys of White Sands, as well as Emrys Dreki. Either of them felt real to me, though I had a deeper connection to the first. It also gave me more letters to work with, which was nice.
"Oh, one last thing!" Toadweather added. "While I recommend using the name with some beings, especially powerful ones, I don't recommend trying to genuinely split yourself into five beings. That tends to break people without a lot of experience. Use your base name, your real one, for any being who you have come to trust, and your five names for those you do not – especially the sages, and powerful beings like faerie queens."
I nodded and got to work. In the end, I decided on Rhit while dealing with angelus and other divine beings that I didn't want to know my real name, Anir for elementals, Haf for whatever beings lived in the ethereal plane, Syr for dealing with demons, and Whym for the fae. With my names settled, I began to work on the technique itself.