For as much as we learn about magic, there is always about twice as much that we don’t know. Remember how much I love the unknown? Well, there’s a reason magic had become my fascination despite my inability to wield any of it. The sect of magic that I had learned in Varenthell academy was known as Kistram Standard Casting, or simple standard casting. Despite there not being an ‘official’ form of magic in Kistram, standard casting was absolutely the unofficial ‘official’ form. The sort of unspoken rule that was never said out loud to prevent any discussion of the ethics of making one type of spell casting stand above the rest, especially when it had it’s roots within the North of Kistram, and many in the South were less than enthused about Kistram Standard Casting.
Unfortunately for me, KSC was the only form taught in Varenthell. Why is that unfortunate? Because KSC is based on certain fundamentals, such as having some form of spellcasting focus, and the knowledge of the inner workings of a spell to cast it. In short, it was learned magic. You could not cast a spell without first understanding how it worked. That is how magic for human, and most other races operated. I, however, was no longer human.
Deathless are a type of demon, and demons use what is known as innate magic. In the words of Varenthell, a ‘primitive and unrefined’ kind of magic. Mostly because it takes the essentials of learned magic and bends it over the desk for a- well you get the point. Innate magic does not require knowledge of a spell to cast it, instead relying on manipulating the magical core within their bodies with emotions and intentions.
As Lilith had so elegantly stated when I told her all of this-
‘Shut the fuck up and explain it better.’
I’m sorry. Am I shutting up or dumbing it down for you?
‘Don’t test me.’
Simplified, you want to think of it this way. Learned magic, like Kistram Standard Casting, is performed with the mind. Innate magic, like demonic magics, is performed with the heart. Make sense?
‘That description is acceptable.’
The problem I was currently facing was that Lilith was an innate caster, and despite never doing so yet, I had been trained as a learned caster. Mixing the two was just about as simple as mixing water and oil. It wasn’t.
I had told the rest of the group that I would sit on my own with the Marked and attempt to ‘get in touch with my Deathless’ side to cast the spell. Which left me sitting criss cross in front of my unconscious murderer, trying to mash together the knowledge from the academy I had, with Lilith’s lifetime of experiencing casting.
‘Try converting the logical procedure of the spell into an emotion?’
Hm. That might work. If I could find what the equivalent emotion corresponding to the procedure of the Axis Anonimi spell, I might be able to cast a KSC spell using innate casting.
‘So, bookworm, what’s the procedure?’
Well, it should go like this. You imagine the target before you with all of their features, and then you imagine the features of the form they will assume. Once those two are created in your mind, you begin to thread the two together, stitching outward from the heart until they have been stitched together fully.
‘Standard casting is ridiculous. You’re telling me you imagine that every time you’re supposed to cast the spell?’
Well, with practice, it becomes a quite simple affair. At least… That’s what people say in the books I’ve read. What we need to figure out is what emotion could even represent that.
‘I’ve got nothing. My only emotions towards stitching things together is hatred.’
I get the sense you feel hatred towards most things.
‘You don’t?’
I rolled my eyes and held out my hands. I could at least give it a shot, I supposed. I pictured the Marked in my mind. A dark skinned man with blonde twin cornrows, and a serious frown that barely moved. Next, I imagined a man of similar stature, ridding the blindfold that obviously indicated a Marked and dressing the man in the most stereotypical bandit outfit I could possibly think of. When I had the two images in my mind, I began to stitch the two together, moving the needle through each of their hearts once. As soon as I did, however, my eyes shot open and the magic flickering at my fingertips dissipated.
“Fuck.”
“Mind if I help?” I heard Phern speak from behind me. She must have walked up behind me while I was attempting to cast.
“Oh, sure.” She took a seat next to me, her smile wide as it always seemed to be.
“I’m having trouble using innate magic when all I’ve ever studied in the academy was learned magic. I’m not sure you could help much with the innate magic.”
“Why not? I’m an innate caster, silly.”
“Huh? B-but you’re human.”
“Half-human.” She pushed her curly hair out of the way of her ears that were usually obscured by the messy strands. Sure enough, elven ears poked their way through her hair. “Plus, you can still learn innate magic if you’re a human.”
“What? Demons, Elemental, Divines, stuff like those are born with innate magic. Humans need to develop magic through learned magic.” I spoke confidently, after all, this is what I had spent my life studying.
“Gosh, you really sound like a Northerner, Teeth. Is that all they teach up in Varenthell? People just think you need to use learned magic because that’s what everyone says. When people try, they usually fail because they’ve already learned the basics of learned magic. They’re like, completely different fundamentals!”
This information was like blasphemy to my ears. How sheltered was the knowledge of Varenthell? Was Phern right? Surely not, this would throw so much of what I learned out the window.
“Yikes. They really don’t like diversions from the status quo, huh?” Phern just smiled, like she hadn’t shattered the vase of a lifetime's information, glued it back together, and smashed it again in my face.
The more I considered her words, the more it made sense. The magic I’d seen her use was fully different in functionality. The transformative magic she used felt so real, and the emphasis on consent for it only made more sense with the knowledge that innate casting focused on emotions. If being forceful went against the emotion required for the spell, it wouldn’t work.
I looked at Phern with amazement. Such a small and unassuming woman had done what many scholars in the academy thought was impossible and learned innate casting. Not just learn, but become an expert in it from how effortlessly she used her magic. There was much more hiding under that smile than I had originally thought.
“Alright, Teeth, let me show you something basic.”
Phern raised her arm towards a nearby rock. A slimy greenish blue substance coalesced in her hand before launching into the rock. I watched as the slime sizzled and hissed its way into the rock, melting down the surface it had touched.
‘The little one has wonderful abilities.’
“Each innate caster has an anchor tha fuels their magic. As you’ve probably noticed, my magic revolves around a kind of slime. We’re going to find out yours. Raise your hand towards the rock, and attack. You’ll want to emphasize a touch of anger, but not too much. We want a simple cast, yush?”
I did as Phern asked, raising my right hand out towards the rock and imagining myself destroying it. I watched my arm coat itself in the shadows, much like it did when I first woke up. The shadows collected in my palm and fired a sharp blast into the rock.
“Huh, shadows. I don’t know why I didn’t expect that.” She giggled. “Well, there’s your first cast! Congrats!”
I let myself feel a wave of pride at such a simple spell. I had been waiting for the day I could cast a spell. I planned on going to my parents and showing them in hopes I’d get a smile from them, perhaps a dinner if I was lucky.
Now it was here. Sure, less magnificent than I imagined as a child, but I was excited regardless.
“I’m still stumped though. This is teaching me innate casting, but I need to find a way to use innate magic to cast a Kistram Standard Casting spell.”
“Hmmm. That’s tricky. Nothing my gut can’t handle!”
Ah, here we go again. She’d mentioned her gut the first time I met them, and it remained elusive as ever.
“Phern, please, do I need to hear about your gut?”
“It’s why I’m so good at innate magic! I can just tell when things are right! Or when they’re not quite right! It’s how I know you lied to Cecelia earlier.”
She spoke the last part so casually I almost didn’t acknowledge it. I froze and looked at her with confusion. How did she know?
“How did I know? That’s what you’re thinking, right? When you told her that it was a curse, it didn’t feel right. You lie a lot, Teeth, but this one felt more intentional.”
Gods she was scary. How many lies had she picked up on so far? Why was she so comfortable telling me she knows I lied?
“Y-yeah, it was a lie. It’s not a curse, even those it feels like one. It’s something else entirely.”
“Yuh-huh uhuh, but what is it actually? Demonic possession? Super powered blessing from the Gods?” She just waited patiently.
“I don’t know if I should say. I’m worried that revealing it will only endanger more people around me. I don’t want any of you getting hurt because of me.”
Phern stared at me with glossy golden eyes, the ends of her mouth curling upwards into a warm smile. “Okay!”
“...That’s it?”
“Yeah, you didn’t wanna share, and m’not gonna force ya.”
“But it’s a secret that I’m keeping from all of you.”
“But when you said that you’re afraid it’ll hurt us, I got the gut feeling that you were telling the truth. If you’re doing it because you think it’ll help us, then I trust you!”
She trusted me? I felt a warm comfort spread through my stomach, like an inferno fighting against the cold emotions that threatened to snuff it out around it.
“Thank you, Phern. Really.”
“Yeah ‘course, Teeth! Now let’s get to that spell! If you explain how it works, I might be able to use my gut to figure out which emotion it’ll translate to.”
It’s not like I had any way of knowing if it would or wouldn't work. My entire knowledge of magic had been kidnapped and hidden by a curly haired girl minutes ago.
I explained the way that the spell worked to Phern, who just nodded along until I got to the end of the explanation. It took her a moment of sitting still and making strange ‘hmms’ and ‘ohhhs’ before she spoke up once more to explain the emotions to me. They were strange, disjointed emotions that seemed to have little to do with the spell in question, but I supposed that made sense. They were conflicting methods, so it was unlikely they would have any logical conversions. The end result was me attempting to cast the spell while feeling bravery to begin with, followed by disgust, embarrassment and pride in rapid succession. It was not as easy as I thought to shift internal emotions while casting, but when I opened my eyes, it was clear that whatever I had done had worked.
“Oh my gods it worked! Hah! FUCK YEAH!!!” I might have gone a little bit overboard in my celebration. Cut me some slack, though, I had just defied the natural bounds of magic for what I knew might have been the first time ever. I had cast a learned magic spell using innate magic!
Cecelia and Sebil came over due to the commotion I had caused.
“Did you do it, bandit?”
“Well I’ll be damned.”
The two of them spoke over each other as they gazed upon the bound Marked, who now appeared as I had imagined, complete with different clothes.
“Hah! Did you use a coloring book bandit as your reference?” Cecelia snickered, hunching over as it evolved into an outrageous laughter.
I looked at her with an indignant glare, an embarrassing blush spreading across my face as she mocked me. I noticed that even Sebil had moved to cover his mouth, air blowing out through his nose.
“Oh my gods, oh my gods I can’t breathe. You put him in a bandana and hat? Is this what they told you bandits look like in Varenthell?” Cecelia had fully collapsed on the floor in her laughter, the beginnings of tears collecting in her eyes.
“H-Hey! I’ve never seen a bandit in real life before!” I whined.
“We can tell, love. Did you give him a mustache under that bandana?”
“I just broke the fundamental rules of magic for what might have been the first time in history and you’re making fun of me?!”
“Hahahaha! I might not be able to call you bandit anymore, you don’t have the ‘evil bad guy’ starter kit like him!”
‘Oh this is rich. You made the Marked look like a six year olds picture of a bandit.’
“Phern, its not that bad, right?” I pleaded towards the only person not currently laughing at me.
“I think he looks cute! I’d love to wear that big hat he’s got!” Phern exclaimed.
Kill me now.
‘Hah! You can’t even do that!’
“Okay whatever! Laugh all you want, but he’s ready to go, so we should actually go to Thrum now.”
As I started to speak, the Marked shuffled and groaned. The four of us looked at each other awkwardly, no one quite sure enough to make a choice of what to do in that moment.
“Ngh, mgh?” The Marked man grumbled through the rope in his mouth as he began to wake up. A moment later, Phern’s foot met his head, causing each of us to wince at the cringe-inducing crack that resounded through the empty field we stood in.
“Oh my Gods, Phern!” Cecelia seemed just as surprised as the rest of us that she kicked him with no hesitation.
“What? We need him to sleep as soundly as a Thumpertingle to get into Thrum.”
“I-I mean yeah. I just don’t wanna know what he’ll feel when he wakes up.”
“I’ve got an idea.” I quipped, the 3 of them giving me a sheepish smile in return.
I looked back at the freshly punted Marked and frowned. That was odd. Usually when someone was touched by another, the Axis Anonimi spell would dispel instantly. It was the primary limitation of such a spell.
“Hold on. One of you, poke him for me.”
“Huh. That’s a new paraphilia.” Cecelia replied as she moved towards the man.
“What? No! I- Gods you think you’re funny, don’t you. Just poke him, will you?” I replied with frustration.
“Aww, you know you love it.” Cecelia smirked back towards me as she poked the man in his chest.
I ignored the blush spreading across my face, opting to speak on the observations about the spell. “Usually this spell gets dispelled if you come into contact with another person. But if he’s able to be touched, I might have messed up the spell.”
“Is that a problem, love? Perhaps it’s simply a different spell if it was cast in a brand new method.” Sebil offered a theory of his own, one that I was inclined to believe. This was uncharted territory for spells, so the possibility was certainly there.
“As long as there aren’t any adverse side effects, we should be fine.” Even if there were, I wasn’t inclined to care much for the man that had put a sword through my heart.
“Then let’s get going. Being able to hold him will be easier than the earlier plan of putting him on a cart.”
“Excellent. Cecelia, love, would you mind taking him since I carried him the rest of the day?” Sebil asked Cecelia with a kind smile, and I watched as she visibly deflated but failed to come up with an excuse not to.
Reluctantly, she hoisted the man onto her back, and we marched towards the nearby town of Thrum. We had only discussed our plan in loose terms, coming to an agreement that we needed to find an inn with as little interaction as possible to avoid the Marked waking up as we walked through the town. Though I’m sure with Phern’s swift kick to the head, he’d be out for a while.
As we walked up to the town of Thrum, I noticed that they clearly hadn’t yet received the warning that Multon had. There was very little security at the front gates, and people were out and about like any other day. Good for us to blend in as normal individuals. As much as a group like us could at least.
“Hello! Welcome to Thrum! How can I help you?” The guard was… excited? Not what I would expect for someone in such a dull position as standing in one place for hours. What I’d give for energy like that.
“Hi! We’re just bringing back this filth for a reward.” Cecelia greeted the man casually.
“Oh, of course!” The guard took a look at the bandit, his eyes lighting up. “Oh wow! He looks just like the bandits in my childhood stories!”
Cecelia smiled and bumped my arm with her elbow. I whispered back “Shut it.”, and she simply laughed it off.
“Well he certainly looks the part to be a bandit, I won’t keep you any longer. You all look like the most fantastic group of adventurers to come by here in a while! If you’ve got a chance to, could you tell my father I did a good job out here if you see him? He’s the sheriff of this town.”
Sheriff? That was an odd system of leadership for a town like this.
“Uh, sure buddy.” Cecelia responded absentmindedly as she started to walk past the guard.
“Wonderful! You’ll need my name though! I’m Danil.”
“Why not just tell him that his son did a good job at the gate?” I asked.
“Oh, I’ve got about 8 other brothers, last time I checked. We all guard the gates.”
“Last time you checked?”
“My dad doesn’t talk to me much so sometimes I find out late that I have another brother.”
My stomach squirmed with discomfort hearing about an all too familiar family dynamic as mine.
“Got it. We’ll tell him Danil did great if we see him.” I gave him a curt smile, hoping my uncomfortable memories didn’t bleed through into my smile.
Once we had successfully made it into the town, we made a beeline for the closest building that looked like an inn. I think the best word to describe the town was quaint. It was fairly small, but each building looked cozy, like there were centuries of familiar memories that stained the wood of each structure. I always imagined if I had been born to parents that weren’t famous royals, I might have ended up in a place like this, growing up within a tight knit community.
‘You arethinking a lot about family, morsel.’
Yeah. I wish I wasn’t.
‘Then do not think of them.’
Thanks.
“Hiii! Welcome to the Pumpkin Patch Inn!”
More overly excited people? Eugh. Maybe I’m too much of a pessimist but surely people couldn’t be this happy all the time, right?
“Hello, love. We’re looking for some rooms tonight. What’s the biggest room you’ve got?” Sebil took the lead in the inn, something that I was fine with. I was far too occupied looking around at the interior of the lobby. It was pleasant, featuring a stone fireplace on the right wall, and frankly too many family portraits covering the walls. In some spots the portraits didn’t even really fit but instead overlapped precariously. Odd.
“Oh, sure! Our biggest room is double king beds.”
“Fantastic, we’ll take that room, love.”
“Absolutely! That’ll be one gold, please.”
One gold for a single room was incredibly steep. Was that a price that was intended to be haggled? Sebil didn’t seem bothered, but I almost wanted to speak up to say how outrageous that price was for a single night. Cecelia seemed to be thinking the same thing, however she placed a hand on my shoulder before I could speak up. The way she looked at me told me that it wasn’t worth it to make a fuss, especially when we were hauling a Marked through the center of a town.
We paid for the room, and made it to our room faster than you could say ‘I can’t believe that we got scammed by a chippy cheery innkeeper in a small town’.
What? We had to have time to walk down the hall, come on.
The room wasn’t anything special, a fact that only made me more upset about the price, but regardless, it would do for the night. We set out stuff down, Marked included, and immediately fell onto the beds. They were mercifully soft, a fact that the four of us were soaking in to the best of our abilities. It was like the spirits of all the people who slept here were soothing and massaging my muscles that ached from not only the walk, but the damage my dead body had suffered during Cecelia’s fight, something which I had yet to ask her about.
“As much as I’m sure we all want to fall asleep right now. We have business to attend to.” Cecelia spoke up, causing Phern, Sebil, and I all to groan in frustration. It seemed we all had plans to call it a night right now after feeling the beds.
“Two of us should go out to get some supplies before we get back on the road. Dry rations that we can store in the tent, some extra clothes that aren’t covered in blood for bandit here, and anything else we need. The other two will stay watching cornrows here until he wakes up.” Cecelia already had a plan, and none of the rest of us seemed to offer up a better one.
“I’ll take one of the supply spots if that’s okay. I’m in need of some extra materials for my current project.” Sebil rose to his feet, grabbing his satchel as he moved to the door.
“Oh! Oh! Me too! I’m gonna need some more moss, chocolate, cast iron pans, and some cheese for some spells.”
“You can’t be real.” I muttered as she moved towards the door. Had she not just instructed me on an astounding magical breakthrough hours ago I would have confronted her about lying. As much as I didn’t want to believe it, she was most likely telling the truth about the strange list of spell ingredients.
“Then I’ll stay here with our residential Deathless and bandit design expert.”
I rolled my eyes. I had a feeling my bandit disguise for the Marked would follow me for some time, knowing Cecelia.
“Don’t be gone long if you can manage, we want you here when he wakes up if possible.” I added before the two others left our room.
As soon as the door shut, I turned to Cecelia to ask the question that had been frothing in my mind,
“My back hurts. Why do I feel like you know something about that?” I asked.
“Oh, that. I might have accidentally let it get sliced by a holy magic disc?”
I looked at her with an unimpressed half-lidded stare.
“In my defense, it wasn’t so much you that got hit and more your dead body that got hit.” She gave a nervous smile.
“I’m just surprised you even went through the effort of getting me out of there.”
Cecelia frowned. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Why take the risk? I mean I’m happy you did, but it made a lot more sense to run away if you wanted to live.”
“I’m still here, aren’t I?”
“One of these days you might not be if you keep risking yourself like that.”
“We all gotta die eventually, bandit. Or at least, those of us who aren’t you. I might as well die doing something good, right?”
It was my turn to frown at Cecelia. We had taken to sitting on the edges of the two beds, facing each other on the inner side of the beds. “Can you just tell me why you’re doing this for me?”
“I found out that I was wrong about something important a while back. I’m trying to undo the pain I caused while being wrong all those years.”
“So I’m just your good conscious project?”
“No! It’s not like that, I promise. I’m just trying to correct some mistakes. Plus… if I wasn’t staying with you to help, who else would make fun of you?” Cecelia smiled towards me, her expression lacking the usual playful mischievousness, instead replaced with a tender openness.
The air grew thick with pause. I had no idea what to say to Cecelia, but I couldn’t seem to pull myself away from the eye contact we had made. I could even see the slightest hint of pink on her cheeks. I began to fidget, and it was only a matter of time before I ruined the moment by saying something like-
“You smell nice.”
“Hah! Gods you’re weird, bandit. Never change.”
“No I-I mean like, you have such a comforting smell. It’s like a fireplace. But there’s also a weird ashy smell of regret. Is that what you meant by mistakes?”
Cecelia’s face hardened at the mention of her mistakes, and I pulled back, realizing my error.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up. I just thought it was interesting.”
“I didn’t know you could get that kind of read on someone with your senses.” A stagnant hesitation hung over me like an executioner's axe as I waited for her to continue. “I’ll tell you some other time. Not now.”
“Right. Okay. Y’know you don’t have to tell me at all-”
“Bandit, I already said I’d tell you. You really don’t stop with the anxiety, do you? It’s like I’m watching a spring that’s been wound up every day for two decades.”
“Sorry.”
“See there it is! Gods we’re going to have to work on that.”
“S-Uh, yeah.” I caught myself before slipping into the obvious spiral I had set up for myself.
“It would be cute if it wasn’t so fucking sad.”
I opened my mouth to protest before a grunt resonated through the room.
“Mgh, fufgk!”
The Marked had woken up, and from the looks of it, had quite a bit of pain rattling around in that head of his.
Been there, buddy.