PftA Book 2 - Chapter 8

Chapter 8 – Space Magic Training

While I waited for the Space Mage to meet me at my new office two days later, I took a closer look at the tools on my workstation. The area was set up almost exactly like my Junction workstation, though the quality of the materials was notably better here.

I was just reaching for the Lightoak to start engraving one of the designs I’d made before my vacation when Lisa spoke.

“Mage Stella CaerAsper has requested entry.”

“Allow access,” I replied silently, noting the noble identifier on her last name. If I remembered correctly, ‘Caer’ denoted the child of a Count or Countess…or maybe a Baron? I really needed that class on Alliance politics. Regardless, she was almost certainly the child of a noble, so I’d need to be extra cautious around her.

Though I hadn’t had much experience dealing with nobles and their children – aside from Ros – what little I had learned hadn’t endeared me to the group. What kind of people supported disowning your children because they didn’t get a good affinity? I understood that all nobles weren’t like that, but from what Ros said, it wasn’t an uncommon mentality.

The door slid open, revealing a woman with dark purple hair, easily dark enough to pass for black in dim lighting. Most would assume she’d used hair color to achieve the effect. Knowing her affinity, I was inclined to think it was natural. Or, at least, magical.

Aside from her hair, the first thing I noticed was how attractive the woman was. She wasn’t regular, pretty-girl attractive either. She was like the elves I’d seen and occasionally interacted with while living on Pylos and Olym. Her features were perfectly proportional and balanced, her skin flawless and smooth.

A small notification icon on my HUD lit up, notifying me that an identification spell had been used on me. It wasn’t something I’d bothered with before, but since I’d had Lisa start spoofing my information the day before, it seemed prudent to track when I was being identified. Returning the action, I cast Identify as I examined the woman more closely.

[Human – Tier 4]

She was dressed in more modern, Earth-style clothing than many of the employees I’d noticed on the third floor. It was clear everything she wore was expensive, from her tailored dress to her gleaming heels. The fabric of her dress looked so soft that I had to fight back the urge to reach out and touch it, just to see if it was really as soft as it looked.

“Awww. She did find a baby Space Mage on this backward planet. How quaint,” the woman said with amusement. I repressed a scowl as the woman overtly inspected me. “Rhona said you have the upgrade already?”

I didn’t bother asking for clarification. There was only one upgrade she would likely care about. “Yes. I recently obtained it. I haven’t had a chance to do much testing outside of the game –”

“And your efforts will largely be wasted there,” she interrupted dismissively before moving on. “What Space spells have you acquired thus far?”

Though I wanted to keep the spells I’d gained to myself, it didn’t make sense to hide the information from someone who was supposed to be tutoring me on the topic. Still, I listed only the spells under the ‘Space’ category.

“That’s more than I expected,” she said when I finished.

“I’ve been experimenting. I also take classes at the Mages’ Academy in the Junction. I can’t practice what I learn in the game, so I just do it after I log out.”

“It’s a good start, I suppose.” The violet-haired woman nodded. “The strength of your affinity will help as well. You have Spatial Sense, correct?”

When I said I did, the Mage immediately jumped into a wordy explanation of how I should use the skill to speed its growth. She had me do several exercises before she was seemingly satisfied with my progress. Next, Mage Stella had me Phase and attempt to sense the beacons nearby.

“I’ve used Phase before. How have I never noticed the beacons before?” I asked my tutor in surprise when the beacons appeared in my extended Spatial Sense.

“Intent shapes experience. If you weren’t open to the signal while in the weave, you wouldn’t see it,” she replied. “A lot of magic is like that. Intent matters.”

I’d heard the term ‘weave’ before, but until that moment, I hadn’t really understood what it referenced. Mages in the Alliance – especially those trained in Academies – were notoriously stingy with their information, and few liked to share. Books were…alright…but even they tended toward vague explanations instead of just breaking things down. At least I finally understood how the term applied to the weave that connected everything through the metaphysical concept of ‘Space.’

“I feel like I can reach out and touch one,” I said as I stared at the scattered dots of light held within the quasi-textured expanse.

“Go ahead. Reach for one that doesn’t have one of your anchors.”

Once she mentioned it, I could sense the small markers I’d placed during our travel from Missouri to Florida. It was easy to gauge the distance between me and the markers, and none seemed out of reach. Mentally grasping one of the mid-distanced beacons, I felt the space around me shift as I moved to a new location.

“Excellent. I was told you had a distance issue, but you easily covered half of the country in one move,” she said while tapping on a crystalline tablet about the size of a smartphone. “Before we do anything else, you need to connect to the local network so no alarms are raised. I let them know everything is fine, but that should always be the first thing you do when you arrive. Just set your IA to automatically sync after you teleport to avoid any issues.”

With barely a thought, Lisa connected to the network, and a series of verification messages flashed across my HUD. It reminded me of stepping off the arrival platform on Olym for the first time. Something similar had happened then, too, but it hadn’t required any effort on my part.

“It’s not automatic?”

“Not usually. Interplanetary travel will almost always trigger a sync – it’s how the Alliance keeps up with immigration. Otherwise, connecting to local networks falls on the individual,” she replied, looking up from her device. “Now that you’ve proven you can travel across the country with no issue, I want you to home in on one of your Anchors and Teleport there without Phasing. Just sense the Anchor and travel to it.”

I closed my eyes and attempted to follow the more experienced Space Mage’s guidance. I could sense my Anchors in the distance, but they felt too far away to connect to. Of course, I knew that wasn’t true since I’d teleported that distance already. Still, the sense of distance didn’t come with a feeling of ease this time. I had nothing assuring me that my goal was well within my range. If anything, it was the opposite.

“What’s the problem?”

I sighed and opened my eyes. “I can sense the Anchors, but they feel too far away to target.”

“You already know they are not,” she said impatiently. “Just connect and let your instincts guide you.”

I tried again. It felt like pushing through molasses, but I eventually got my magic to cooperate and send me back to Birmingham. As the sense of movement faded, I dry heaved, feeling wrung out and empty. A glance at my display showed I’d used most of my mana pool and was sitting close to empty.

“I would say ‘Good job,’ but it really shouldn’t have taken that much out of you to move such a short distance,” the woman said with a frown. “I’ll take us back to Headquarters.”

The woman’s mana once again encased me, and I allowed her magic to transport me to the next location. The increase in ambient mana was almost palpable with how low I was on the resource. My regeneration rate immediately increased, filling my drained pool in less than half an hour as I took a break to grab a snack from the Dining Hall while Stella disappeared somewhere.

“Alright, you should be full now. Let’s head out. We need to get you past this mental block you’ve created for yourself,” the Mage said when she found me a short while later. I reluctantly followed the woman back to the teleportation room where the beacon was housed. “Reset your Anchors. I think you’ve proven you can teleport to beacons now. I’ll show you how to sense them without entering the weave later, but I want to get you over this distance block you seem to have first. Go ahead and set an Anchor here. You’re going to need it to target for now.”

Knowing she was right, I let my previous Anchors dissolve and recast one over the nearby beacon.

“Perfect. I’m going to move us now,” Stella said, warning me so I wouldn’t resist her spell. When the sense of movement faded, I gasped. We were no longer anywhere close to civilization. Instead, we were surrounded by a frozen tundra of ice and snow.

My initial impulse was to panic. I was in no way prepared to deal with the dramatic environmental change. I had a temperature control charm in my ring, but I was not confident it would withstand the dramatic temperature change. It only took a second to realize that I was not freezing, even without the enchanted item.

“How are we not frozen?” I asked as I looked at my dim surroundings. It was dark, but not completely so. I could see easily enough, but the area seemed to be in a weird, perpetual twilight. It was unsettling – almost alien.

“It’s an easy adaptation to your Spatial Barrier. You control the barrier and, to a lesser extent, the space within. It’s not quite a separate space, but it functions closely enough to use the same principles as you would for Create Dimensional Space. Given the enchantment on your ring, I assume you already have the spell.”

When I nodded, Stella explained the modifications used to incorporate aspects of Create Dimensional Space into Barrier. There were no spellforms involved. It was wholly Direct Casting and Spell Modification, leaning heavily on intent. I learned more about using Space magic in that hour than I likely had in the entire decade before my return.

I still attached the temperature control charm to my necklace, even after successfully casting the modified Barrier. It was better to be safe than frozen in a block of ice.

“Don’t worry. Your spells will naturally get stronger as you increase tiers,” Stella said, noticing my action. “Now that you won’t immediately die without me, let’s work on overcoming this mental block you have going on. Space is relative. There is no reason why it should be harder or take more mana to move across the world than it would to move a few feet. It still requires the same magical action. The increased costs are coming from your expectations. You need to get over that, or it will limit you forever.

“You didn’t have any issue while within the weave itself, but I don’t want you to use Phase to make it easier. You need to be able to cast Teleport independently without relying on a secondary spell to make it work. You are effectively doubling your mana cost by doing it that way. As long as you don’t try to target something outside the planet, you shouldn’t have any issues teleporting to unwarded locations.” Stella raised a brow as she looked at me. “Do not try to Teleport to Atlantis or anything. You could probably get by with the moon as long as it’s visible since that helps bridge the…”

The Space Mage abruptly paused, then shook her head. “No. Nevermind. It’s probably safer not to even try it. Portals are much safer for interplanetary travel, and the moon counts. Unfortunately, being able to manifest and maintain a Portal strong enough to bridge two planets will be beyond you for a long time.”

I asked why travel between planets was harder, but Stella instantly clammed up, refusing to explain. She claimed the information was beyond the scope of what she’d been directed to teach and advised me to attend a real Mages’ Academy if I wanted to learn more. Apparently, the Junction’s version was limited in what it could teach.

I suspected the Enchanters’ Academy was the same, but I wouldn’t know until I hit a roadblock – or didn’t.

My years of experience using Teleport worked against me in this case, much to my tutor’s annoyance. Having ingrained false assumptions made overcoming the artificial limitations harder, but I knewit wasn’t impossible.

Mage Stella attempted to talk me through it using a quasi-guided meditation, but even after two hours, I was no closer to breaking through the mental barrier than I had been at the start.

“Perhaps using the spells in your game is holding you back,” the Mage theorized when I failed to teleport off the icy continent again.

Stella had brought us to Antarctica, almost directly south of our initial position. We weren’t so far away that there was no light – it had actually lightened a small amount in the hours we’d been there – but it was still much too far south to have a normal day-night schedule. If anything, knowing how far away we were only exacerbated the effect of my mental block.

“Spells in the simulation are severely limited,” she continued. “You can’t think of them as being accurate, or it will hold you back. They are inflexible shadows of what is possible – limited illusions of real life. It’s like…” she considered for a moment before snapping. “It’s like seeing an infant learning to walk and believing the child’s level of Agility is the height of what humanity can reach. It is an utterly flawed view of reality.”

In an uncharacteristic show of sensitivity, Stella patted my shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll get it, given time. I’ll be waiting for you when you get back.”

Before I could fully process the implication of her words, the Space Mage disappeared, leaving me alone in the icy expanse.