Telepathy Rune (Thought 2)
With her attention turned inward, Mary reflects on how to create her first true magical rune. This would not be like the last time, under the guidance of Sylvia, where she had created a basic fire rune.
This time, she was attempting to create something she wasn't sure was possible.
‘Regular people can take years to create complex runes; that’s what Sylvia told me back then.’
But she wasn’t a regular person, was she? Even if we disregard her akashic record, which stated that she was a hero—a status whose benefits she did not fully comprehend—Mary still retained the memories of Alexander. And for several years of his life, Alexander had used technological systems that enabled something not entirely separate from telepathy.
"Like fire, my life as Alexander has given me experience with something reminiscent of telepathy." I should be able to create a rune based on that experience.’
Mary feels her head shaking from a distance; continuing further would only lead to circular thinking.
‘Clear your mind, purge all intent from your mana and create the rune.’
Mary allows herself to fall deeper into her meditation, turning her focus once again onto her mana. Mentally, she takes hold of a clump of the mana within her and purges the Mary-aspected intent from it, once again creating the neutral she needs.
For a moment, Mary casts her mind's eye at her newly neutral mana, satisfied that it had once again worked as intended, before pulling it out of her body and into the physical world.
She opens her eyes and carefully watches as the energy escapes her pores, collecting into a guarded clump above her.
With her ironclad control protecting the energy from the ambient mana of the world, Mary eyes the aspectless mana in consideration.
‘Now no more theory crafting; let this work.’
Mary concentrates on the cloud of mana before her and forces her new intent toward it.
‘I need you to become [Telepathy].'
She watches as the formerly aspectless mana begins to twist and morph; for a few terrible seconds it looks as though rune creation will be her first true failure before a new unknown rune takes shape.
Mary breathes out a tense sigh.
‘Please be [Telepathy], I need it.’
Object:
Rune
Main:
Telepathy
Level:
Basic
Power:
Least
Creator:
Mary Midgard
“Ya!” ‘Yes!’
Mary exclaims in celebration.
She eyes her new rune, attempting to understand what needs to be done to turn this solitary magic rune into a genuine telepathy spell.
The clump of shaped mana floats above her; to her eyes, it is an almost tribal symbol. Even in the physical world, it visibly pulsates with barely constrained energy. To her magical senses it is a glowing artefact of rigid lines, purple energy steadily flowing through it, as if each of the lines were a vein.
Mary frowns as she focuses on the purple energy; it was, of course, very different from the fiery feel of the fire rune that she had previously formed. This energy, instead of giving off the feeling of primal fire, Mary instead finds herself subconsciously associating it with psychic energy, the energy of the mind.
For a moment, she considers that thought and then allows the rune to disperse.
‘Would I use the term psychic energy?’
Mary asks herself in confusion.
‘It’s a telepathy rune; why wouldn’t I think of telepathic energy instead?’
She gums at her lips in frustration before dismissing the thought, concluding that not only was the exact terminology that she subconsciously used unimportant at the moment, but that it was something that she would probably learn from books instead.
‘No need to reinvent the wheel. Previous reincarnators will have investigated things like this, I’m sure.’
She thinks to herself in an attempt to sooth the burning need to know that she inherited from Alexander. Instead, she turns her attention back to the magic.
‘So how do I turn this rune into a genuine telepathy spell?’
For a moment, Mary considers calling Sylvia back into her room; she could show Sylvia the telepathic rune, and Sylvia would understand her intent, acquiring further instruction easily enough, but Mary thinks better of it.
‘It would be nice to surprise her for once, right?’
She smirks to herself with mischievous intent.
Instead, she focuses above herself and forms a magic circle. Her brand-new [Telepathy] rune alone in the centre.
The circle quickly forms and then ignites. But Mary finds herself unsurprised yet disappointed when nothing appears to happen.
‘Exactly as Sylvia said when the fire rune didn’t create a fireball, I have two options available to me; I can try to write in some logic that takes the nature of a telepathy rune and creates a telepathy spell. Or I can create a few other runes to replace that logic.’
Additional runes would make the spell more powerful but cost more mana; additional runes decrease a spell's relative efficiency. That is what Sylvia had told Mary yesterday.
But did Mary want to have a more powerful and less efficient telepathy spell?
‘Mind-to-mind interfaces are dangerous. What would power imply for a spell that talks directly to the mind?’
Mary thinks about that for a moment.
‘Obviously, greater power would give the spell longer range. Touch-based spells are fairly common in fantasy, so would the weakest version of a telepathy spell have a touch-based distance, whereas the most powerful could speak to someone on the other side of the world?’
Mary nods firmly at that thought; distance would likely be the largest benefit of a powerful telepathy spell.
‘But would a touch-based spell be more inherently controllable? Without having to take ambient mana and other interference into account that would make things simpler.’
But what about breaking through that interference?
‘Magical interference? Would that just involve increasing ambient mana, or would it be something else?’
Did something like magical interference even exist? Perhaps dense ambient mana would interrupt whatever magical mechanism carried words across distances.
‘Would it be just like technology? The longer the distance, the more the signal is lost, in this case due to background noise?’
In that scenario, Mary's initial step would have to be touch-based telepathy. As intriguing as it would be to be able to ‘talk’ over distance, Mary didn’t know enough about telepathy or magic to do that.
‘Would touch-based telepathy also be harder to notice? Sylvia carries me often, so in that case the distance would just be an extravagance.’
Mary nods to herself again, convinced of her argument.
‘There is also the matter of accidentally punching Sylvia's brain with telepathy.’
Mary chuckles; that was also a problem, wasn’t it?
‘Too much power directly into the brain would be just like punching it, wouldn’t it?’
That, Mary reflects, is an excellent reason to not go for a more powerful spell.
‘It would have made things simpler if I could use runes for most of the logic, though; a human or person rune would really cut things down, for instance.’
Mary carefully considers the thought for a moment: if she had decided to use runes for most of the spell grammar, what would she do?
‘A person rune, of course; that would automatically shape the spell to use telepathy on people. That by itself would remove large amounts of logic from the spell, no doubt.’
‘If I were constraining myself to touch only, would a touch-based rune help? Would that make the spell safer to use, or just needlessly increase its power?’
Mary frowns at the thought before blinking in realisation.
‘Safety? A lot of the logic I’m going to have to use would just be about making the spell safe. I already know that abstract runes exist; why not a [Safe] or [Safety] rune?’
All of this would involve creating three to four additional runes, but that wouldn’t be too difficult for Mary, especially not the basic variants.
‘It all comes back to spell efficiency. How many spells and how many runes can I use before I exhaust my current mana? I would like to speak with Sylvia as soon as possible to obtain the information she has. If I pass out after one use, then that doesn’t help at all.’
Mary reaffirms her decision to focus on using a highly efficient, logic-dense spell instead of creating an expensive, rune-dense one.
‘So then, what logic do I use to create a telepathy spell? No shortcuts.'
Mary frowns as she considers how to go about creating a telepathic spell formula.
She already has the telepathy rune that gives the spell circle its main purpose: to create a fireball. She had used Alexander’s knowledge of mathematics to create a formula that would create a sphere, but what sort of math could be used to create a mind-to-mind spell?
Mary blinks as that thought repeats itself.
‘Mind-to-mind spell.’
Mary considers that for a moment longer before remembering her previous life; Alexander had known what sort of logic was needed to create a mind-to-mind interface, hadn’t he?
‘Could it be that simple?’
Now that Mary is thinking more deeply, it is clear that Sylvia did not specify what types of mathematical numerals or formulas were needed to create magic logic, did she? Mary had simply heard Sylvia say 'maths' and then instantly used the logic and the numerals that had been taught to Alexander.
But even on Earth, Arabic numerals weren’t the only way to demonstrate mathematics, merely the most widely used. Nor was it the only way to demonstrate formulaic logic; there was another very modern way to create powerful and complex modern logic, wasn’t there?
Fortunately, Alexander had significant experience in that area, but how could she test this?
‘I’ll use the fire rune. I know how to create a fireball with pure maths, but what if I used a programming language instead? If my logic is sound, it should work, right?’
That seemed to be correct to Mary, but how could she go about this?
‘Clearly, I can’t use any libraries or methods that Alexander took for granted in his development environment.’
In the end she would be using the exact same mathematical logic to create a fireball, but it would be wrapped in a different form of notation; for something as basic as a regular fireball, this would just increase the size of the spell circle. If that is the case, then should she add something extra, just to prove that it works as she thinks it does?
Mary reflects on her options for a moment.
‘Something simple and relatively easy. What are my options with a fire anyway: shape, size, colour and temperature? Is there anything else?’
Mary frowns and shakes her head. There’s no need to overcomplicate this further; this was, after all, just a demonstration to herself that this would work.
Mary closes her eyes and begins to recall the programming lessons that Alexander had attended.
‘I don’t have any implants or save features; I need to focus.’
She allows the fire rune to bloom inside her mind's eye and begins to inscribe familiar logic for the first time without the aid of technological systems that Alexander had become so familiar with.
‘Build it like a proper programme.'
She imagines the development environment that Alexander had used and creates a simple call feature.
‘Two only, shape and colour.’
For a moment, time loses meaning to Mary as she carefully crafts what should be a basic computer program in her mana.
Mary smiles as she finishes and opens her eyes.
A spell circle blooms above her, with a fire rune at its centre; surrounding it is the dense logic of a computer program.
The spell ignites, and in its place is a carefully controlled blue fireball.
“Wa.”
Mary exhales in relief.
‘It worked. I could even swap out the spherical shape logic for anything else, like a square.’
Mary nods to herself; this could be a useful way to go. However, she would need a method to save or quickly recall information; although her impeccable memory might allow her to remember one or two of these logic-dense spells, the true benefit would be the ability to modify them on the fly.
‘Something to consider later. I would need to have some sort of mental library spell running constantly to achieve that, but would the mana drain be too much?’
Mary dismisses the thought for now and turns her attention back to her telepathy rune.
I’ve proven that I can use logic I’m familiar with. The colour change logic I used especially only makes sense if you're familiar with Earth programming languages; it’s all down to my own interpretation. Not something special to this world.’
Mary allows herself to smile as she considers the possibilities.
‘If that’s the case, then I can just use internet protocols. Alexander even created his own voice chat program once; I can use that logic here. Most of the hard parts are already handled by the telepathy rune; I just need to insert safety and talk features.’
Mary nods, her path forward clear.