Chương 595: Chapter Five Hundred and Seventy-Nine - Experimental Procedure

It took Amaryllis a solid fifteen minutes to set everything up, and that was with help from Awen and Caprica and Desiree. Awen would be providing geometric glass foci, while Caprica and Desiree helped with the spellwork. They initially started setting up on the deck of the Beaver, but I was a little worried about hurting him, so I shooed them down to the field he was moored in. That required clearing out a wide swath of grass, but it was safer than doing complicated magical things onboard the ship.

What if there was a weird interaction with the magic or something? I was less worried about the magic of the old knife and more so about all of the spells that Amaryllis was tossing out.

"What are all of these?" I asked with a gesture to the air where mana hung so thick that it was plainly visible. Layers of shimmering ribbons wove around one another, sometimes violet or magenta, other times meeting in bright sparks of cyan, crimson, amber, and gold, but always flowing together into intricate formations.

"This is something I haven't done since I left school," Amaryllis said.

"And it's a little makeshift. I'm confident in my spellcasting, of course, and having gained... a number of levels since I graduated... does make me more certain that I have this correct, but it's still a lot of small, careful spellwork."

"Uh-huh," I agreed.

"But what is it?" Amaryllis blinked, then shrugged a wing and pointed to one of the spells.

"That's a magical measuring spell. It measures ambient mana. That's a directional spell. See how it has nodes? If magic crosses one of those, it'll measure the direction by triangulating it." She pointed to another spell, a smaller one hanging in the air nearby.

"This is to determine the aspect of any mana used. Here, cast a small spell in the middle." I bounced forwards, making sure not to bump into any of the spells floating around or anchored to glass devices that Awen had made. Then I bent down and plucked a small rock off the ground. Holding the rock in the palm of my hand, I cast a very light Cleaning spell on it, just a faint wash of magic that removed the crust of dirt and grime and left it looking all shiny and...

well, rocks couldn't exactly be new I don't think, but it was cleaner. The spells hanging around me buzzed and whirred and a few of them flashed in a strange pattern. Amaryllis looked from one to the other, writing down some quick notes in a pad as she did.

"Here, a full diagnostic. Spell was cast from a singular point, aiming inwards and slightly up, aspect was... a mixture of Holy, Water and Cleaning, with a heavy lean towards the latter, total mana cost was... point two four, and the ambient mana shifted by... well, not enough to matter."

"Whoa, that's a lot of information," I said.

"That's the goal, yes," Amaryllis said. Caprica nodded nearby.

"We had similar exercises at the academy I attended. Though I wasn't in a magic-focused class so this is beyond the level of expertise we required."

"Okay, but why?" I asked.

"That's relatively straightforward," Amaryllis said.

"When committing to scholarly pursuits in the field of magical research, you need ways to identify and catalogue spells and magical effects. More importantly, you'll sometimes run across magical devices, cursed items, or magical items of unknown origins that need testing. That, and in the more specialized field of magical engineering, you'll often want to know if a machine you've created leaks mana in a way that might interfere with other devices."

"Oh, like the big gravity engine in the Beaver." I gestured to the ship in question.

"Ah, um, and its motive engine as well," Awen said.

"The fuels and oils we use have trace amounts of magic, and the engine uses magic to run, to make sparks and to control ignition. Some of those things can be a little sensitive."

"Amoungst other things, yes," Amaryllis said.

"So, knowing a full suite of spells for identification is a handy set of skills to have. If nothing else, I suppose I could find work in a port city somewhere doing calibrations on machinery. But this is far more interesting work." I retrieved the knife that the headsman had given me and placed it on a large, flat disk of glass. Glass, even magically conjured, was apparently pretty inert when it came to magic. Or something like that.

I was really just trying to pick up as much knowledge as I could about magic as I went. Stolen story; please report. I gently unwrapped the leather bindings that held the knife in the sheath, feeling them crack under my fingers. Then Awen poured more glass over the hilt, fastening it to the disk, but leaving the sheath free. We all retreated beyond the array of analysis spells. More glass magic spilled out of Awen's hands, forming a long rod with a thick loop on the end, covered in little grippy pyramids.

"Everything seems to be functional," Amaryllis said as she did one last check of her spells.

"Awen, if you would do the honours. Unsheathe it." Awen nodded, reaching into the array with her glass rod. She hooked the loop around the sheath and started smoothly pulling back. It took some effort. The knife was wedged into the sheath, and it had obviously been in there for a very long time. When it came out, it was with a faint crinkling noise, and a few flakes of old rust slipped out of the sheath along with the blade itself.

I didn't see any active magic, but the sensor spells that Amaryllis had put up clicked and whirled and flashed even as my harpy friend rushed to take notes. I leaned in as close as I could without hitting the spells. The hilt was in tatters, and the metal ring standing in for a guard was encircled with rust, but the blade -- the blade was solid black. Darker than obsidian, an inkblot spilled on reality itself. The edges were razor sharp; the interior, a void that swallowed light.

A few flakes of rust drifted onto the blade. It was hard to tell anything about the surface they landed on, since any shadow was invisible in the blackness, and they quickly started sliding off, as though the blade had barely any friction.

"Weird," I said.

"Disturbing," Caprica said.

"I've never seen the like. Bastion? Caprica, Desiree? You've all travelled a ways, have you seen anything similar?" Most of my friends shook their heads, but Bastion hummed, then frowned.

"I have," he said.

"You have?" I asked. He nodded.

"There are weapons in storage at the capital, in the headquarters of the Royal Paladins. I've perused the armoury there, and there was a spear with a head very similar to that blade. I don't recall its origin, however."

"So it's not a unique material," Amaryllis said as she finally looked up.

"And the magic is uses isn't unique either."

"You've figured something out?" I asked.

"When Awen pulled the knife free, it cast a spell. I'll have to examine the blade and sheath to see what did the actual casting, but it looks a lot like a communication spell. Interestingly, it looks like there was also a second spell, and then a third."

"Oh?" I asked.

"The first seems like a wide-ranging communication spell. The aspects are Holy, Air, and Sound. At least, I think. I don't have my old textbooks to cross-reference things." Amaryllis eyed her notes some more.

"The second spell seems like... I don't know. It was small, however. The third spell came some three seconds later. It fired off another signal. This time in a specific direction with a lot more power to it."

"Okay, so... a sort of ping, then it listened, then it sent out something stronger?" I asked as I tried to piece it all together.

"That sounds about right," Amaryllis said.

"Honestly, this reminds me a little of banking rings? The spells are all different, maybe a little more crude, but the basic principles are there."

"Long-range communication?" Caprica asked.

"Or something akin to that, yes," Amaryllis said.

"That matches what Headman Eikon said," I replied.

"It's a spell to call for help, right? It needs to be able to communicate to do that." Amaryllis nodded along.

"And thanks to my foresight, we now have an exact direction that the signal was sent in. It's... well, northwest of here, but also down."

"Down?" I asked. I looked to the northwest, and a little up, but there was only sky that way.

"Oh," I said as I connected the dots.

"The sky castle sank?!"

"Let's not jump to conclusions just yet," Amaryllis said.

"It's possible that Dirt's curvature has something to do with it, or the spell hit a relay, or... there could be any number of reasons for things to not be as they seem."