The Maid Is Not Dead

The following night, I excused myself early after dinner and returned to the notes of the late wandering mage, determined to finish reading tonight. Not only was I keen to know whether he ever completed his research and materialized the results he wanted, but—Well, it was an authentic journal about magic, by a master of the Art.

How could I not be interested?

There was still an innocent maiden left somewhere under the uniform, I suppose.

- THE BACKGROUND OF MY THESIS -

Whilst about my extended quest for money and learning, I became inspired by the labors of a certain elderly peasant in Trakia, and unwittingly made perhaps the greatest of my magical discoveries. One, which accomplished the first of the chief objectives I'd set for myself in one fell swoop.

From the dawn of organized society, mankind has struggled with the problem of logistics.

Developing towns and cities require quickly increasing amounts of supplies and construction materials hither and thither, but the effort to move these materials where they are needed from where they are manufactured is never cheap nor easy. This issue was succinctly captured by the aforementioned Trakian lady, of whom I in passing inquired if she knew anyone willing to buy Grimoires. On her way to her rundown hut from the barn, across her rocky yard, bearing heavy milk jugs on an oar over her shoulders, and visibly struggling, this elderly lady replied to me thusly,

"You get me a spell that'll carry this crap and you can have my tortured soul in payment!"

"I'm afraid the feat is beyond me, good madam," I confessed, as one sworn to honesty, to which the mistress indignantly argued,

"Then what good is your magic to anyone?"

On the spot, I was struck by a flash of enlightenment.

This lady seemed she hardly had half a mark of silver to her name and could not have paid me so much as an echo of a soul, of course, even if I did successfully deliver the order, but I should say the essential point stands:

Magic will remain worthless to the common man, unless it may be harnessed for personal, practical benefit.

And I will remain forever poor, unless I address this fatal shortcoming through my study.

After a sleepless night of mulling over the matter, I suddenly realized I had the means to answer this need right then and there with the tools currently at my disposal, and so was born the compound technique, which I will below dissect for your convenience, and which I've come to call...

- THE GRAND MEMORY VAULT SYSTEM -

There is a certain Sigil, which augments a person's physical fortitude, allowing the caster to bear burdens they normally could not, but that, in my opinion, is not a solution to the challenge; it merely pushes the problem a little farther away instead of neatly wrapping it up.

The loads that need to be transported in modern settlements involving hundreds or thousands of inhabitants are not on a scale any one man can handle, even if he had the strength of ten. But what if there were a method to negate weight entirely? Beyond, what if even the space occupied by the exports could be temporarily freed for other use? The way we scholars cram knowledge into our heads day after day, then to be summoned when the need calls for it. What if there were a way to convert our possessions into intangible thoughts, to be safely carried along with our person without ever becoming a burden on us?

From this line of thinking, my amazing mental storage technique was born.

To work, this technique requires the user to master three Advanced Sigils, which I have learned, and which I will now proceed to describe in deeper detail for your benefit.

- SPATIUM -

The first sign that must be learned and used is Spatium, a Sigil linked to the element of space. What is meant by space? The sky up high? The empyrean heights above the sky? Long ago, the learned observed that we and our world appear to float in a sort of emptiness, a directionless nothingness that extends to infinity without clear boundaries. If you jumped high enough from the earth, you would find yourself eventually suffocating, because there is no air in the nothingness, no sound, no warmth, nothing at all. It is only a terribly cold and lonely place.

However, later studies by the brightest of minds have revealed that this isn't quite the case.

What surrounds us and fills the gaps in between us isn't only a stark void, but something more akin to a fluid in essence, an invisible, intangible membrane that can bend, ripple, and flow the way of water as objects pass through it, causing the things swimming in it to be offset in kind.

The essence of SPATIUM is in manipulating this mysterious element.

Using this Sign, it becomes possible to control the element of 'space' directly. But that isn't all! It is also possible, I have found, to create previously nonexistent pockets in our world space—shall we call them, SUB-SPACES—which swallow up matter similarly to whirlpools in bodies of water.

If the spell is suspended and the conjured openings to these sub-spaces close while there are objects from our space still inside, these objects simply vanish from view, as though swallowed underwater. What becomes of them? I imagine they stay there, potentially forever, undisturbed and unseen, unless another user of SPATIUM unveils them.

I am still unsure how to comfortably explain the concept to a layman without overwhelming his faculties and leaving him mad and babbling, but to grasp at least these small fragments of the essence of space is the crucial first step to the technique I speak of.

- FORMA -

While invoking SPATIUM, maintain the activation through ceaseless concentration, and then proceed to cast FORMA. These signs are compatible with one another and allow simultaneous invocation without conflict, as I have personally tested and verified.

This Sigil, as you may infer by the name, has to do with shapes. What sort of shapes, precisely?

You will hear as many answers to this as there are teachers. FORMA has been, through the ages, scorned as an obscure sign that has no obvious practical use. Those few adepts who have acquired it—it is an exceptionally difficult Sigil to learn—have generally been unable to cast rites of any level by it, and can only have admitted their effort and capacity wasted.

I have seen a tall pile of Grimoires made for this Sigil rot in the dark, closed storerooms on Wiseman Island. Nobody wants them. Pupils shudder at the thought of opening one by accident—as if they could read it, the fools they are! But I was glad to take anything I could get.

It was easy to see the cause of the disappointment.

Against expectations, this magic of controlling forms, cannot actually interfere with anything that already has a fixed shape.

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It is not alteration magic, nor transconfiguration, nor shapeshifting. By my limited understanding, gained through peering into this magic repeatedly, FORMA is a sign that exists only to grant shapes to those immaterial phenomena which yet have none. What are such phenomena? I don't know. They cannot be observed by mortal senses, since, well, they have no form. How useless!

But wait! I hear you cry. That would mean…

Indeed! You are absolutely correct, dear friend!

SPATIUM, the magic to manipulate space, which produces no distinct, tangible shape that we can see, can be forced to generate three-dimensional geometry when combined with FORMA!

Now, on the next step of my technique, apply this magic to the sub-space you have created.

You can make it look like anything! Imagination is the limit. It is possible to create a storage room for all your needs, or the needs of your hometown. I personally fashioned my experiment after the shed in the backyard of my grandparents, where I spent much of my childhood. I have found it is easier to use memories of existing places for reference, rather than attempting to fantasize entirely new structures, as the clarity of the visualization plays a significant role in the success of the spell. Hence the name of the technique. I encourage to do so!

Congratulations then.

Following these steps faithfully, you will have done what all the old beards on the so-called Isle of the Wise claimed is utterly impossible, foolish, ridiculous, blasphemous, sacrilegious, et cetera, et cetera, and created a mental magic storeroom by mixing Sigil effects!

All it took was a bit of focus and creativity.

Well, a tremendous amount of focus and very keen imagination—but all still within human ability!

Any sub-space you create with SPATIUM alone vanishes after you release the spell and anything inside is thereby lost in the deep recesses of cosmos as it ceaselessly shifts under its own unknown mechanisms…but your memory vault will not vanish. Why? Because it has been given a fixed shape, using FORMA. An entity, once made reality, will continue to be real, until acted upon by external forces. One of the base rules of our existence. No god will clean up after you. Thus, your creation may only be erased by using FORMA again. Otherwise, it is eternal.

Further, while the base shape of whatever you first conjure with SPATIUM will vary based on the user, as we've discussed before—it could be a wave, or a wall, or a tunnel, or a swirl, or a big bubble—that ceases to matter, because the effect of FORMA overrides the natural default configuration.

You can close the spell, carry on about your day, travel to another town to meet your relatives, wait for decades to pass, then open it again—Why, it is right there at hand, and not where you left it previously! Was all along. How can this be?

Because it is a ANOTHER space.

It is not anchored to OUR space in any capacity. It exists solely relative to the caster's position in the universe. It has no other reference point. From the magic's perspective, only you two exist.

Can you now see the absolute beauty of this technique?

Would you not say it is worth millions in pure gold? But oh, hang on! Did I say we needed three Sigils in the beginning?

Have we not finished the deed with only two? What more could be required? Well….

- AGORE -

There is one profound flaw in our mental storage technique, which you may have already discovered. The sub-space we created, regardless of its gorgeous form, is, alas, intangible. Even at the cost of redundancy, let me say it again, it is ANOTHER space, wholly separate from ours, obeying its unique set of physical laws.

That means we have no method to interact with it, as denizens of another plane.

As the creator of that space, you can observe it, but no one else can. It does not exist in the same world space. Again, another complicated thing for a layman to wrap his poor head around. The mental geometry we've conjured doesn't work like natural space modified with only SPATIUM; nothing we put in it that is of this earth can stay in it. Then isn't it completely useless to us?

Was the Trakian peasant right? Is magic worthless, after all, only good for show?

No, no, no, do not despair yet, my friend.

Magic created this issue, therefore magic is also the answer. We simply need another Sigil to solve the problem.

AGORE represents action, asserting one's will upon a target of choice, taking or giving. As such, it can do the impossible and allows you to interact with immaterial constructs. AGORE is favored by exorcists, who deal with spirits, curses, and enchantments. It is also valued by master-class crafters, smiths, alchemists, et cetera, since it allows the user to separately manipulate very minute aspects of their work without interfering with anything else in it. But none of these laborers realize the sheer finesse of the tool they have.

After you have conjured your mental storage, you may place objects inside, or take them out, by using AGORE.

That's it. It's finished.

- IN CONCLUSION -

The trouble with this technique is that you must always maintain the activation of SPATIUM in order to bring the storage into your world space, and FORMA at the same time, to specify that it is indeed the very same store room you wish to access each time, and not create a new one. Unless both these signs are used in tandem, AGORE will not have a target to interact with either.

So, yes, the Grand Memory Vault technique is asking you to invoke three very complex Sigils simultaneously.

The caster requires great reserves of Power, unwavering focus, experience, and the understanding of a Sage to make the most of it. It is immensely tasking to access for myself too. I can only maintain the store for about ten minutes, once a day, and I have yet to prove anyone else can cast it.

This could be a serious problem not only for my research, but also for any efforts to make money from it. I have crafted three Grimoires for the Sigils required by the Memory Vault, which I hope to sell together with my notes. It is going to be difficult to sell a service that even the creator struggles to explain comprehensively, but I hold hope that a live demonstration will help alleviate a potential client's doubts on the matter.

These northern latitudes have brought me no success, but there ought to be an expert in the south, who has the skills recreate my work and prove it serves as intended. This invention will revolutionize civilization, I know it. I only hope the gods will grant me the opportunity to show it…

I closed the notebook with a sympathetic sigh. Poor Master Ryndell.

I knew the end of the journey that had yet been but an unpleasant premonition to the man himself when these notes were written. His work did not revolutionize the world, but ended up gathering dust in the basement of Faulsen's Guild. According to Vera, the mage had gone into Baloria, but never emerged on the south side—or, at least never made a name for himself, even if he did. His magical revolution was left but a dream, the man vanished a century past, his notes buried, and the Grimoires he crafted, all lost.

But, his study had survived to this day and had now come into the hands of a maid.