NOVEL NEXT Book 5, Chapter 10
"You've taken to Occult magic quite well," Frederick said, once we were underway, and mostly sitting around in the living room- Faith was up in the cab with Volex, riding "shotgun" as Summer called it, despite Faith's weapon being what Summer called a "sniper rifle."
"What makes you say that?" I asked.
"The ability to cast Summon Buxom Women is the only plausible explanation for where you keep finding these people," Frederick said dryly, glancing at Summer and Talia, who were cuddled up together on the couch next to me.
"Fun fact," I said. "That's not the actual name of the spell, but a spell that does exactly that does exist, and I'm working up to being able to actually cast it- it turns out that an Occult spell that creates a convincing simulacrum of a person requires a lot of skills that I didn't get around to learning out of the Bard College books Jimmy was slipping me under the table."
"So that's where you got them," Frederick marveled. "Well, as it so happens, I have a Master's in Bardic Studies from your grandmother's university; it's quite old, but I have been keeping up with the state of the art, here and there."
"Wait, you're a Bard?" Summer asked. "I thought you were just a creaky old man with a wheelchair and a typewriter!"
"Yeah, that's on purpose," Frederick said. "Standard Bard trick: if you present a specific image on purpose, most people will think it's the truth and make assumptions based on it. I wanted to make the idea that I was a powerful spellcaster unthinkable, so that the fact that I'm a Black Dragon doesn't occur to anyone, and thus I consciously leaned into the 'helplessly creaky old man' image, once I was old enough to sell it properly."
"What even is a Black Dragon, anyhow?" Summer asked. "Nobody's explained that to me yet."
"Dragons are categorized by their lifestyle," Aunt Rebecca said. "Black Dragons are dragons who make use of their shapechanging to disguise themselves as humanoids and avoid being noticed as dragons. The other three colors, in brief, are Gold, for dragons who live openly among humanoids, asserting themselves as kings, generals, and other authoritative roles; Steel, for dragons who seek worthy humanoids to bond with and face down grand challenges together; and Red, for dragons who choose to live as wild animals, eschewing civilization altogether."
"Huh," Summer began.
"Naturally, the Black and Red Dragons are all that are left after the Dragon Wars," Silas finished. "Because the God of Paladins loves genocide more than anything, and only the Blacks and Reds were able to hide from his hunt."
"Oh."
"I do have a question, vis a vis you being a Black Dragon," I said, facing Frederick. "Why didn't you tell Napoleon you were a dragon before now?"
"Because Napoleon is a community organizer who talks to a lot of people every day," Frederick said. "My little brother is good at politics, don't get me wrong, but if he was in his right mind, he'd tell you he's the wrong person to trust with a dangerous secret, because it'll keep sticking in his mind as an option he could bust out when things are going wrong."
"Speaking of dragon stuff," Summer said, "I'm Dragonblooded now, thanks to Cat here, and I was wondering if you could maybe share some advice on how to work with that, and the whole Sorcery thing?"
"I'm sure you thanked her quite vigorously indeed," Silas said, grinning.
"Five times in one night," Summer answered.
"If we're all done bragging about how much we fuck?" Frederick asked. "Catherine, how much time do we have?"
"About ten hours to get to Mount Fate, and then some unknown length of time to meet Summer's contacts on the Mesa Verde," I said. "Jason's taught me some spells, but I gotta admit, he's not taught me overmuch else, aside from accidentally teaching me that, if I do enough sorcery to increase the potency of the dragon's blood in my veins, I will have a brief dragon episode, and engage in hoarding behaviors with my girlfriends."
Frederick blinked.
"Jason is a terrible teacher," Frederick said, frowning. "Has he done anything to teach you to manage those?"
"Told me to talk to Professor Takeda, who didn't know either."
Frederick blinked.
"I know," I said wearily. "The best Takeda could give me was to either stop advancing my blood potency, or to somehow induce a permanent dragon episode so that I would have to learn to cope with the impulses it gives me."
"Fucking hell, what a mess," Frederick muttered, reaching into his kimono- Professor Takeda had informed me that that was what Frederick had been wearing my whole life, not a 'High Elven house robe.'- and producing a small, slim, rectangular box of polished silver. "Do you mind if I smoke in here?"
"I prefer my house not smell like an ashtray," I said dryly. "Put those away, Frederick."
"Alright, alright," he muttered, putting away his cigarette case. "Anyhow, some theory is in order. First and foremost: you do not need to be taught how to cast spells with Sorcery. It goes faster if you are, but you can learn and even develop spells all on your own if you put in the time. It leans more towards the Occult than the Arcane; you can develop intuitions and just feel it out, without necessarily needing to map out exact equations and theoretical models like a Wizard would."
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
"Sounds good to me," Summer said.
"I'm less sanguine about it," I said dryly. "Being as I'm already a Wizard, it'd actually be quite nice to know I could just transfer my existing spellcasting skillset than developing a whole new one. But whatever, I'm an elf, I've got time to learn another one. What's another four years?"
"Next, there's the issue of dragon episodes," Frederick said. "These tend to happen in dragonbloods whenever they make any real upward movement in their blood potency, but they also tend to wear off quickly. Catherine, I take it you were not told what the root cause of dragon episodes was?"
"No," I said.
"I thought not," Frederick said. "Jason Goldmist was my Sorcery teacher at Mount Fate, back when that was still a class being offered, rather than a direct apprenticeship he was offering his... kinda-sorta granddaughter. And, well... honestly, he's a bad teacher, as well as a bad Sorcerer. Oh, he can do some amazing things with Sorcery, but he doesn't understand a goddamn thing about what he's actually doing. And if you're taking Professor Takeda's classes, am I right in assuming that she's the only Professor you've had teaching you Occult magic?"
"Pretty much, yeah," I said, nodding. "Lemme guess: the fact that Takeda isn't a Bard, and approaches the Occult the way a Wizard approaches the Arcane means that she misses a few fundamental tricks that a regular Bard wouldn't?"
"Mhm," Frederick said, nodding. "The relevant Bard trick is the concept of... well, there's actually a lot of names for it- the Mnemosytes call them 'Archetypes,' but there's been Bardic traditions calling them 'masks,' 'forms,' and even 'mantles.'"
"Aren't mantles a divinity thing?" I asked.
"Bards and Clerics both do magic upon the Spiritual, upon the realm of Ideas," Frederick said. "Little theology lesson for you: the trick of apotheosis is relatively simple, it's just hard. But, yes, the term 'mantle' in a mystical context usually refers to a deity's Aspect and the associated trappings."
"Hrm..."
"What's this whole 'archetype' business all about?" Summer asked. "Y'know, for those of us who don't eat textbooks for breakfast."
"You gotta braise them with garlic powder and paprika in tomato sauce," I said. "Makes the pages fall right off the spine- so tender."
"An Archetype is a set of behaviors and abilities associated with, essentially, a common 'stock' character in a culture's popular fiction," Frederick said. "Traditionally, Bards wear an Archetype like a mask to present a specific image to those around them, partly for mundane reasons of controlling what people think of them, and partly for mystical reasons, as Bards can use Occult magic to turn perception into reality. Now, Catherine, you might be thinking that the Archetypes are simply a useful metaphor- a condensation and smoothing-over of a much more complicated and nuanced set of cultural expectations around narrative. However, in Occult magic, only the most trivial metaphors are only metaphors; the Archetypes are very real, and possessed of genuine mystical power."
"Ah."
"Which brings us to dragon episodes," Frederick said. "Catherine, you said you engaged in hoarding behaviors with your girlfriends. Did you, at any point, call a girl who was precious to you 'Princess' during a dragon episode?"
"Multiple times," Talia chimed in, from her seat in Summer's lap.
"Well, that's the Archetype of The Dragon pressing down on you," Frederick said. "And as it turns out, the Bardic trick to controlling your dragon episodes is much like Professor Takeda suggested, with her suggestion to induce a permanent dragon episode until you learned to cope with it. She just didn't know that trick, because she has never bothered to learn how Bards think about the spellcasting tradition she's been teaching at a university for centuries."
"Yeah?" I asked. "And what would that trick be?"
"It's in the Book of Mnemosyne," Frederick said. "The Hymn of Thespos." He then recited the hymn:
AS ABOVE, SO BELOW
WEAR THE MANTLE UNTIL IT FITS YOUR SHOULDERS
WALK LIKE THEM UNTIL THEY WALK LIKE YOU
"Act like a dragon," Frederick finished, "until you define what a dragon acts like."
"...Damn," I said. "That's-"
The door to the cab slammed open, Faith standing there with her gun in her hands. "We've got a problem, guys!"
I was the first one to rush into the cab with her, and beheld exactly what Faith and Volex had decided was a problem. The good news was, we'd found a hidden community of Wood Elves, and Talia had been wanting to meet some of those for a long time.
The bad news, which was very bad indeed, was that a small army of demons had also found the Wood Elves, and was leading an unfortunately-successful assault on the grove, judging by the visible tongues of unnaturally dark hellfire licking up from the forest below.
Flying up from the melee below, a winged Hellknight flew up, her armor having grown more vicious-looking, but also more patchwork, leaving red skin exposed seemingly at random. I knew her face well enough to recognize her; after all, only one person had ever managed to kill me while looking me in the eyes.
"Yep, that's Karthrynax alright," Volex said, wearily. "Something tells me she's upset with you."
It occurred to me, a bit too late, that Volex had once been a servant of Paimon, and therefore, it was actually perfectly reasonable that she would recognize this other servant of Paimon. It also occurred to me that, being as a Succubus's body was an ectoplasmic construct, stabbing Karthrynax through the brain would have only, at best, seriously inconvenienced her, incapacitating her for a little while until she scraped up enough magicka to make a new body... or, no. No, that should have sent her soul back to Hell, according to Volex- it was her reliquary that let her stay here permanently, apparently. So... someone summoned Karthrynax.
"This time," I said, pulling out an empty beer bottle I'd fit a cheap figurine inside and capped with far more restrictive iron bindings than Volex's current reliquary, "we are not letting her slip the net."