NOVEL NEXT 5. I Know Better Than to Set Myself On Fire
Draga begrudgingly agrees to give Talla until the sun has fully risen to give me a crash course on basic thaumaturgy.
"Normally you'd have at least a few years of tutoring to prepare you for your first thaumaturgy skill," Talla explains.
"'Normally,'" Draga scoffs from nearby, keeping busy by sweeping dust out of the vehicle.
"Shush you!" Talla counters before turning back to me. "But since you already have one, it'll be easier to take things from a hands-on approach. First, start by just producing a flame—and keep it away from yourself!"
I snort. "Unlike someone, I know better than to set myself on fire."
"Fuck you!" Maggie jeers.
Ignoring her, I focus on the skill as I have with others, and a small flame appears in front of me. Like all skills, that part comes easily. Skills are intuitive—they come with the knowledge of how to use them and feel perfectly natural. It's like walking. The actual mechanics behind it are quite complex, but we do all of that without thinking about it.
It's only when stretching or forcing them to act in strange ways that I start to have trouble. Under Talla's instruction, I take a few moments to practice moving the flame around, making it bigger or smaller, and throwing it.
"Good! See? It's a skill like any other," Talla says. "Despite what you've experienced, most people go their entire lives without ever overusing a skill or experiencing magical strain."
Well that's good to hear, but unfortunately I don't think that life is ever going to be on the table for us. Though that does make me curious about something.
"If it's known to be possible to get more out of a skill, why don't people do it more often?" I ask.
Talla scratches the base of her horns frowning slightly. "Eh...there are a few reasons. One is just that it's hard. It takes some pretty extreme circumstances to push someone far enough to even try. The fact that it's possible is more of a trivia fact than something people consider normal to practice."
That seems so bizarre to me. I may not be as good at it as Maggie, but even my first thought about skills was to find ways to bend the rules to our advantage.
"Some also see it as ungrateful to the Goddess' gifts," she continues. "It's not really part of the Church of the Great Wheel's dogma, but it's a fairly common stance."
Draga chuckles. "I've had people tell me that my muscles are an insult to the Goddess. That I should be happy with the Power granted by my class."
"That's, um, a more extreme view," Talla adds nervously. "And uneducated anyway—Power is far more than just a measure of physical strength. But yes, most people are content to work within the limits of their class."
"It's just a natural part of the world to them," Allison interjects. "To us, classes and skills are strange and new, but it's a normal part of life here."
"Even in our world, scientists push to discover the rules and limitations of our reality," I argue.
Talla nods. "Right, but most people aren't scientists. Anyway, let's not get too distracted—we don't have much time before we have to start pushing this metal brick on wheels."
"Who's 'we'?" Draga gripes, knowing full well that he's the one who'll be doing the pushing.
Talla ignores him, putting on her now-familiar lecturer voice. "The key to thaumaturgy skills is the ability to create spells. Basic thaumaturgy skills are usually limited to just a few options, while specialized types grant more freedom in exchange for an additional restriction—in your case, all your spells will be at least partially fire-aspected."
"Alright," I say, nodding along. "How do I create a spell?"
"Let's start by choosing a skill as the base—something simple and harmless."
I guess the first thing to do is check my options. Whatever connection we have to the [World Engine] senses my intentions and the words in my head shift.
[Mastered Skills]
Candle Seeker
First Aid
Foraging
Inner Compass
Pyrokinesis
Pyropathy
Quick Sort
Retaliation
Retraced Steps
Stretch Supplies
Strong Arm
The Beaten Path
No sign of either [Locus of Thought] or [Reverse Entropy]. I'm a little surprised to see [The Beaten Path] on the list, though. How would that even work? It was the skill that [Pyrothaumaturgy] replaced to begin with. Same for [Pyrokinesis] and, to a lesser degree, [Pyropathy]. Every skill on this list has been something that's either saved our life or been critical to our survival—with one possible exception.
"What about [Candle Seeker]?" I suggest.
Talla's eyes flicker for a moment as she scans the skill's description.
[Skill - Candle Seeker: Never lose count of candles.]
She snorts in a tiny giggle. "What kind of skill is that?"
"I was bored!" Allison complains. "And the class that skill comes from is how we ended up getting magic in the first place!"
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"Don't underestimate that one," Maggie adds. "The skill might have been useless, but that class was a sleeper."
I sigh and shake my head. "It is part of our core class," I agree. "But I think the skill is still harmless enough."
"Fair enough," Talla accepts. "Now for the actual creation of the spell, that can be a little bit tricky. Everyone does it differently. For me, I envision points of light and try to bring them together."
I cock my head curiously. "It's a normal part of the skill—shouldn't it be intuitive?"
"Don't even get me started," Talla huffs. "You'd start a brawl if you asked that question at a university conference. The short answer is no. Your spells, and the way you create them, are unique to you, and you have to find what that is for yourself."
"It's conceptualization," Maggie says. "Sounds like thaumaturgy is just chaos magic with training wheels. Good luck with that, Vi. I'll be here when you're ready to give up."
Maggie's jabs make me frown, and I'm glad that Talla isn't using the translation spell that lets her hear the others. Probably isn't using it. I'm not comfortable trusting that entirely. In any case, Maggie's right that this is not my strong suit. At the same time, I can't help but want to prove her wrong.
"I'm not sure where to start," I admit.
"Focus on the two skills first," Talla says. "Don't try too hard to make anything happen, just focus on both skills at the same time and feel your way through it. Once you've found your method it will get easier."
"Alright..."
I sit cross-legged in the short, yellowish grass and close my eyes. Taking a deep breath, holding it for a moment, then slowly releasing it, I start to focus on—
"What are you doing?" Maggie interrupts me. "Meditating? Are you some kind of monk?"
"Shut up," I reply with a frown. "Let me do this my own way. If you're not going to help, just leave me alone."
I tune out her retort, along with all the other sounds around me. One thing at a time, I filter out each sensation, acknowledging it then ignoring it until the only thing left is me, sitting a little uncomfortably in the grass. It's a little embarrassing, but that too gets filed away and ignored.
There's only one thing I can't completely tune out. Something that's always there, impossible to forget or ignore. The words of the [World Engine], hanging in the back of our minds ever since our encounter with the [Angel] when we first arrived in this world.
[Violet: Tier 2 Human]
[Class Slot 1: Tier 2 Incandescent Souls]*** - Level 1/10
[Class Slot 2: Tier 1 Savior]** - Level 6/10
[Attributes]
Power: 39
Resilience: 61
Awareness: 39
Ego: 61
Will: 6
[Skills]
Inner Flames
Pyrothaumaturgy
Burning Innervation
Explosive Throw
Protect the Innocent
Revitalization
A world-spanning divine mechanism, possibly sentient and almost certainly magical, trying to define and quantify every aspect of every person in the world. It's the source of our strength, and an object of worship in this world.
Maggie is right that I don't have her conceptualization skills, but the [World Engine] and the skills it provides are real, and it never lets us forget it. Skills are made to be used, and while they resist attempts to bend and break them, they are flexible. Even I've been able to push myself in the right circumstances. Like Talla said, anyone can be pushed to extremes. I'm certain, however, that the [World Engine] wouldn't grant skills that require the users to push themselves that much—not when doing so is already dangerously close to the chaos magic it seems naturally opposed to.
There has to be another reason, then, that thaumaturgy requires such dedicated focus. A puzzle that needs to be solved, not by design but by necessity. I doubt that I'm going to solve that entire puzzle here and now, sitting in the grass in front of someone who's spent her entire life studying it, but I think I understand something about its nature.
Skills come almost entirely from the [World Engine]. It grants us a little piece of itself, carefully constructed to produce a specific change in the world. By overusing a skill, we can claw more of that power away from the mechanism, but its origin doesn't change.
By contrast, chaos magic comes entirely from within. The way Maggie and Allison describe it, they become conduits for the infinite power of the cosmos and try to force their will on reality. Reality fights back, causing immense backlash and rendering the results of chaos magic dangerous and unpredictable.
So then what is a thaumaturgy skill? Something in between? That feels too simple an answer, but it's the one I'm going with. What the [World Engine] provides is a mold. A template with which we can shape our own power.
[Pyrothaumaturgy] is a puzzle box with infinite solutions, and what I have to do is find how [Candle Seeker] fits within it. I like puzzles. Even if I don't know what the solution will look like, I know that I'll recognize it when I see it. I can play with the pieces, see how they fit or don't fit together. And these pieces?
They fit. Easily.
[Detect Temperatures]
Information floods into my mind along with a sudden but mild headache. The ground beneath me is cool in the pre-dawn shade, my body temperature is normal, if slightly high. Thirty seven degrees Celsius—I just know that. The air is twenty two degrees even before the sun has fully risen, and bound to get much hotter. I open my eyes and see that Talla and Draga have body temperatures at around thirty nine degrees—that's a bit hotter than humans.
It's not thermal vision—I can't see the differences in temperature, I just know them. At a glance or a touch, I can immediately tell the precise temperature of everything around me. It's a little overwhelming, so I quickly cancel the spell.
Talla lightly applauds me. "That's great! I knew you'd be a quick study. What was the spell?"
"[Detect Temperatures]," I answer.
I join Talla in taking a moment to read the spell's description.
[Detect Temperatures]
You can detect the temperature of anything you perceive.
"Interesting," Talla muses. "I can see how counting would lead to measurement. That's a useful spell for a healer, too. How precise is it?"
"To the degree, which isn't actually very precise at all."
She shrugs. "We'll have to compare our measurement scales later, but I'm willing to bet that it's still more precise than most tools."
"That's awesome!" Allie cheers. "I knew you could do it, Vi!"
I smile, a bit proud of myself for managing to pull it off so quickly. Despite my early skepticism, I have to concede that magic is pretty cool.
"Measuring heat doesn't help change it," Draga points out. "And you're almost out of time."
He nods at the distant horizon, and the soft orange glow of the sunrise in the eastern sky.
Oh! I glance to the right of the sunrise, at the brightly glowing rings, slightly embarrassed that I hadn't thought of it sooner. We're in the northern hemisphere after all.
Ignorant of my revelation, Talla scoffs at Draga's critique. "Being able to measure the temperature is hugely important to regulating it. Besides, now that Vi's figured out her method, it should be much easier for her to find the right spell."
"Assuming any of them will work at all," I sigh. "Although if any of them might, I think I have the perfect candidate..."
"Oh?"
I nod. "Yeah, [Pyrokinesis]. What kind of spell do you suppose I'd get out of two skills that let me control fire?"
Talla grins, looking up at the rising sun signaling the end of our crash course. "Let's find out!"