A Practical Guide to Sorcery

Siobhan

Month 9, Day 11, Saturday 1:00 a.m.

Siobhan returned to her forbidden research on shamanry, where she was systematically working her way through all the texts she could find that dealt with the subject. She still felt that the practice was unpleasantly wishy-washy and poorly documented by its practitioners, but was nevertheless becoming something of a theoretical expert in the craft. As she finished one book, she picked up the next in her quickly dwindling list, Spirit Guides and Familiar Bonds: Divergent Practices in Traditional Magic.

The author posited that, while shamanry was often considered a sub-craft of divination, in many ways, it was actually a type of witchcraft. Witches set out an enticement-laced summoning Circle and negotiated a contract with their prospective familiar, who they could then use to channel their magic. Technically, if Empress Regal had been a magical beast instead of a normal raven, Siobhan could have used the raven-summoning spell as the first step to entering into a contract with her.

Witches had the advantage of easy casting of spells that fit within their familiar’s range of abilities, decreased chance of Will-strain, and an up-front advantage in power over modern sorcerers. Sometimes, depending on the power of the familiar, that advantage might last for decades. They had the disadvantage of reduced versatility, the fact that a familiar could die, and having to fulfill the terms of whatever contract they had bound themselves to. Developing a familiar’s power required work and dedication, just like developing your solo power with sorcery. While one could technically have more than one familiar—if the contracts allowed—doing so by necessity meant that progress for each would further slow.

The author argued that shamans could do similarly, either for service within the spirit realm or outside of it. Due to the transitory nature of the spirit realm, these contracts were almost always short term rather than for life. Within the spirit realm, the contract was a standard enough process, though summoning a spirit had a few quirks that were different from summoning some particular magical beast in the real world, seeing as they had no identifiable, concrete species.

Outside of the spirit realm, however, spirits required a body to reside in as part of the terms of the contract, without which they had no way to interact with the mortal world. Most often, shamans allowed the spirit to temporarily reside in their own bodies.

Hypothetically, if one could create the right body and a strong enough anchor, the spirit could be hosted in a different form. However, in practice, this was impossible for any larger and more complex spirit. No one had figured out how to make a permanent anchor, or, more importantly, a body that could properly house a spirit. It faced similar problems to any other method to encapsulate a mind within a body different from its own.

The book delved into theories about how to create a good anchor and least-horrible body depending on the spirit’s characteristics. It did not attempt to theorize about ways to overcome the current limitations on either. Anchors were all distinctly temporary, and bodies meant for the simplest of spirits. Done incorrectly, or with too-small capacity, trying to stuff a spirit inside would cause damage to the spirit as well as poor integration with the body.

Spirits had no name—and should not be given one. ‘What happens if you do?’ Siobhan wondered. The book didn’t say. Without any horrifying cautionary tales, she had a hard time taking warnings of danger as seriously.

Instead, spirits should be described. If she knew a specific one she was looking for, she might summon them using words like, “The friendly spirit who knows the shaman Siobhan Naught, who loves flowers and knows the color ultraviolet, who has walked with Siobhan Naught through the Valley of End and has been contracted to aid her.”

But the author brought up something critical. “How do you bind a conceptual being, who has no body and is made of thought-stuff, to their word?” Spirits were unlikely to lie, and many believed doing so was somehow dangerous for them. This made it even harder for them to break contracts than for beings from the mortal world or Elemental Planes. Nevertheless, they were happy to mislead and misdirect, and they could lie. There were several records of them doing so if they found the benefits great enough.

In the real world, the spell array worked the binding magic. In the spirit world, glyphs were less conceptual and more real. Though Siobhan did not actually understand what this meant, apparently spells would take physical form and needed to be molded and set, like clay.The author suggested the form of a collar and leash, which made Siobhan’s insides squirm with discomfort.

Intent was even more important than normal in the weaving of a spell. Even if both sides agreed to the same terms, each might have a different personal interpretation of those terms. In that case, the one who was stronger would take precedence, their Will guiding the contract’s actual effects. To ensure agreement in intent, the forming of contracts was often accompanied by moralistic storytelling and common fairy tales, where each side explained to each other their interpretation of the story as it pertained to their contract.

‘I’m increasingly convinced that this might be how Myrddin created Carnagore,’ Siobhan thought as she finished the book. ‘If you could create a body that could react to Will, wouldn’t that be the perfect solution to house a being with no real-world physical form? Then, you would just need to solve the body causing insanity to the transferred consciousness.’

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Obviously, none of the methods the rest of the world knew about were good enough. But maybe Myrddin had come up with something new.

Siobhan sat for a while, staring out into the shadows between shelves and at the corner of the room. Even she became weary of studying for hour after hour when she wasn’t sure how much she was learning was actually helping her.

With a sigh, she roused herself and began to look for the next hidden text that held relevant keywords about divination and shamanry. What she really wanted was some insight into Myrddin’s spirit realm viewing spell—which could allow her to examine magic through it without needing to enter it—and had been trying to find information related to that for the last few days without much luck. She was holding out hope that the instructions would be somewhere within one of Myrddin’s journals, but knew she couldn’t depend on that.

After a few more scrolls and some actual clay tablets, she was beginning to consider taking a break before the frustration built beyond her limits. But then, she found a tiny, leather-bound book with the wraparound tie common to journals hidden inside a fake larger book, which had some of its interior cut out to act as a secret compartment.

Siobhan hesitated before taking out the journal. ‘Curses. I’d better check for curses. If the person who handles the shelving in here didn’t know about the hidden book, it might not be safe.’ There were several restricted rooms that required higher clearance than the rest, which she had not attempted to enter, even as desperate as she was for answers. Thaddeus had warned her about the curses and traps that a certain kind of thaumaturge like to build into their grimoires. ȓ𝒶₦𝘰ΒËŚ@@novelbin@@

The secrecy of hiding a book within another book seemed overkill, especially since someone could have just blacked out the parts they didn’t want seen even by people with access, like she had found with several of the more promising texts.

She ran through the limited number of curse and trap detection spells she knew, which were mostly child’s play, then cobbled together her own spell that gave her a bit of trouble in the casting, since it was so new. None of them found anything concerning.

Siobhan considered going off to research more danger detection spells, but couldn’t hold back her curiosity.

The small, leather-bound book unwrapped to reveal handwritten research logs. It would have reminded her of Myrddin’s own journals, except that she could understand everything they had written, including the calculations and spell arrays. Which were complete and coherent, from beginning to end.

The author, unnamed, had been working with a team to develop a spell, which, based on its casting method and effects, they had dubbed—somewhat ominously—the “crown of madness.” And it was what she had been looking for.

Well, not exactly. It was not Myrddin’s spirit realm viewing spell. But it did approximate it, for a different purpose. This spell was created not to examine the echo-manifestation of magics cast in the real world, but to explore the spirit realm and communicate clearly with spirits.

“Clarity of intent is all-important,” the author said. “The more powerful the spirit, the more harmful it is for them to lie, true. However, the more powerful spirits often have the most to gain from the downfall of a mortal walking their realm. They are more likely to be able to utilize and repurpose the mortal’s inherent stability. Additionally, spirits know well their reputation for truthfulness, and they occasionally leverage it when they think the risk is worth it.”

This spell allowed one direct insight into the often-incomprehensible spirit realm, as well as both the intent and nature of its denizens. Unfortunately, the very purpose of the spell came with inherent downsides. When casting it, spirit realm insights didn’t need to be interpreted—they were unavoidable, and understanding was gained directly from exposure.

The journal’s author noted in a shaky hand how the spell had already caused thirteen career-ending incidents for either the thaumaturges casting it or those who were in the spell’s area of effect. Two of those had been break events resulting in Aberrants.

“It must be the inherent instability of casting a spell that affects your own mind,” Siobhan read. “It degrades your concentration, which is a death sentence to a thaumaturge. One of the Aberrants opens up doors to…other places. Some of them are horrifically dangerous, just because of the way they spill over into here. But one of those doors leads to a place where the magic is more advanced than any I’ve seen before, and has spread throughout society all the way to the poorest of the poor. That world seems to have other doors to elsewhere, though they call them rifts, and harvest some kind of energy from the existence of the rifts, which can be used to empower people or directly charge their artifacts. It seems like some new form of magic.”

Siobhan stared at the words, trying to imagine such a place. Would sorcery even work there? And had this new world been created by the Aberrant, or was it already out there, just…existing? Was there any way to tell? Siobhan preferred the idea of the latter. If Aberrants had the ability to create entirely new worlds with new types of magic, that level of power was terrifying. ‘What if it wasn’t a new world at all, but an illusion? What if, after you walk through and the door closes, there’s nothing on the other side but annihilation?’

After that, there were several almost reverent write-ups about the worlds behind the Aberrant’s doorways, but the journal ended before its pages were filled.

On the last page, the author’s handwriting grew worse. More hurried. “I fear the Red Guard is coming for us. I cannot speak for the others, but I will not wait here to receive them. They will slaughter all of us for the affront of keeping an Aberrant alive and secret from them, if not for the original research itself. I am going through the door to the world of rifts, wondrous artifacts, and buildings of glass that reach toward the clouds.”

Siobhan’s fingers were trembling. She closed the journal and then opened it again to the first page and read through the whole thing once more, tying strings of connection to all the relevant information to ensure she would be able to recall it with fidelity. Then she wrapped the leather cover and cord back around, put it back into the larger book, and slipped it onto the shelf she had taken it from.

‘This spell is dangerous. As they said, a spell that directly affects your ability to apply your Will couldn’t be safe. It was a failed design from the start. For most humans. But I…I can split my Will. One part could concentrate on holding the spell while I stabilized my control with the other. Kind of like I did when dueling with Pendragon. If it worked like that, it might make the spell safe enough for me to cast. And I have light-refinement to make me harder to damage and heal up the effects of exposure to the spirit realm afterward.’

Siobhan rubbed her chapped lips together, trying to ground herself with the physical discomfort of the scratchy feeling. “Don’t go crazy, now,” she whispered to herself. “Pride will be your downfall.” It was unrealistic to think that she was really any better than the thirteen thaumaturges who had failed to safely cast or endure this spell before. People who thought like that ended up dead.

This was recklessness, with no defense. “And I am not yet that desperate,” she confirmed aloud.