Arcane Apocalypse

26 – Getting a Cat

“Why am I ‘Scratch’?” Sam whined when the group finally stopped to rest an hour of hard marching later. 

“I had a cat called Scratch growing up,” said Brent. “He was a whiny orange stray, as dumb as a box of bricks. The only part that doesn’t fit is your white-blonde hair. It’s a good nickname, you should be honoured, brat.”

“You got some thought put into your nickname at least,” Mark grumbled, grimacing as he bit into a piece of jerky and struggled to bite off a chunk. 

Mia listened to their byplay only half heartedly as she flipped through the First Steps of Arcanism book. Her gaze raced over the lines of text, the words themselves and their meaning snapping around her mind and getting deconstructed into information faster than ever before.

From the outside, it seemed like she was just skimming through the pages without reading more than a few sentences. In reality, her increased Cognity, Memory and Mind stats going together with her Multitasking skill were all working in tandem to help her comprehend the lessons hidden beneath the text at record speed.

A large part of the book covered introductory segments on some professions needing Arcane mana to work. Enchanting, Imbuement, Inscription, Alchemy, Artifice and some more. There was a lengthy section dedicated to describing practices to isolate the Arcane mana in one’s mana pool from other types of mana.

Seeing as almost anyone with Minor affinity for the element also had it as their secondary affinity, knowing how to get their hands on pure arcane mana was a must for them all. Not for Mia though, with her entire mana pool being purely Arcane attributed with her sole affinity being Arcane. Still, she skimmed the part lest she misses some context later on.

She also realised what she messed up earlier on when she tried to get her Arcane Mana Manipulation skill. The book described the Arcane and its characteristics in great detail and if Mia had to sum it all up and encompass what the element represented in a single word, she’d choose ‘Duality’.

It was both Light and Dark, Positive and Negative, stable and chaotic. It was a boundary splitting the affinity chart in two, and yet it was the gate that connected the two split halves together. Arcane was duality, with a slew of contradictions as the icing on that mind-numbing cake.

As Mia thought that through. She collected more and more pairs of seemingly contradictory concepts that nonetheless described her element. She noticed pinkish motes of light gathering around her body. More and more gathered around her, dancing in the air and swimming through it in circles.

That’s my shot. With a thought, she urged them to gather in her outstretched right hand and the little motes came streaming in as Mia rolled the concept-pairs around in her mind over and over again. I need to command them to do something. That’s what Mark said.

Deciding that simple was best for her first try, she imagined the gathered ambient arcane mana in her hand shooting out from her fingers as a beam of energy.

There was no magic circle this time, nor was her runic-mode used, just pure mana flashing out of her fingers and burrowing into the dark waters of the Mur with a hiss. 

[You have unlocked the Secondary Skill: Lesser Arcane Mana Manipulation]

[Do you wish to slot this Skill, you have (1) empty Secondary Skill slot remaining?]

Yes / No

Yes.

[Skill slotted]

Mia let out a sigh as a rare smile graced her lips. Then she noticed the four pairs of eyes watching her and her expression turned impassive. “What?”

“What did that poor river do to you?” Mark asked, shaking his head. “You probably killed a fish in there. What if it had a family, a wife at home, children to feed? And you just killed their husband and father. Shame on you.”

“Shut up,” Mia hissed, glaring at the dumb dwarf. “I did not. If there were ever fish in here, the iron birds would have killed them all days ago.”

“Fish murderer,” Mark huffed, going back to playing with dirt without gracing her with another look.

Mia rolled her eyes, going back to reading as the other three’s attention faded during their brief conversation.

When Mia sent her mana flowing out of her fingers and washing back over her hand like a glove, it was substantially easier than before. The Skill was doing good work. 

Also, she felt an ease in the way she could keep her mana under control even while it was flowing through her energy channels. Perhaps this skill would be the edge she needed to finally ‘double barrel’ her Bolts.

Maybe once my Control crosses over to 10, I can even do them akimbo, shooting off a Bolt from my left and right hands at the same time.

Arcane Bolt, being her least ‘weighty’ spell, would be the only spell she might have any chance at casting this way. For now that is, as her stats increased and her Skills evolved, perhaps there would come a time when she could really channel a Shield with one hand while shooting off Blasts in a rapid-fire barrage with the other. Small steps. Alright, let’s try that double barrel Bolt.

Her runic-model revolved around itself, swiftly constructing the simple and familiar spell-circle. That done, Mia eyeballed about twice the mana the spell would need and sent it flowing into her palm and fingers.

Mana was strange, having aspects of gas, liquid and solids depending on the circumstance. Right now though, as Mia packed the mana under her grasp into her hand she felt its properties going from gas to liquid in short order as the mystical energy resisted getting even more of it bundled into such a small space. 

In the end, her energy channels were filled up to her wrist. Good enough.

She took a deep breath, once again aiming her outstretched hand at the nearby river whose bank they were taking a rest on and activated the spell with a flick of thought.

The mana in her hand tore in half, the bundles in her fingers dashing out of her channels to form the spell-circle, while what was left behind writhed angrily like a snake with its head cut off.

The Bolt shot off, but Mia’s focus was on pushing the next bundle of energy into her fingers before once more pushing that mental switch.

Her runic-model vibrated once more and the remaining mana came alive, forming a second spell-circle before her palm in a blink before sending a bundle of arcane destruction into the waters once more.

“It worked!” Mia exclaimed, hands shooting up in a fist pump as she watched the disturbed waters with starry eyes. Her whole lower right hand was buzzing and her energy channels felt slightly sore, sure, but it worked. 

That was her fastest sequentially cast set of spells to date without question. More importantly though, it opened up a whole new can of possibilities and confirmed that her other ideas could also work with some certainty.

Soon enough, she’d be dual casting. I won’t need to hide behind Mark and cover like a glass cannon forever. Hell yeah.

“What did you do?” It was Lina that asked, coming over to settle down next to Mia, briefly glancing at her discarded book laying in the grass.

“I double barrelled a spell,” Mia said, sounding annoyingly smug even to herself. Not that she cared, she had every right to be smug.

“Meaning?” Lina asked curiously, gazing at the river along with Mia.

Mia glanced at the blonde, and seeing nothing wrong with sharing her discovery, shrugged. “I can shoot off a spell twice in quick succession by storing enough mana in my hand to cast it twice. I need to have firm control of the mana though as I do so if I don’t want the leftover mana to go haywire before I can cast the spell the second time.”

“Huh,” Lina made a surprised sound. “You use spells and stuff? Like real fantasy wizards? Not just manipulating that element of yours?”

“You don’t?” Mia asked with some surprise of her own.

“No,” Lina said. “Though I guess I could … ? I have Greater Air Manipulation as one of my Class subskills, and the other is Minor Air Mana Manipulation.”

“You don’t have a runic-model?” Mia asked, squinting in thought.

“No?” Lina asked. “Should I?”

“Well, using spell-circles without it is going to be a monumental pain,” Mia hummed. “You’d need to memorise all the runes and shapes and be able to draw them with your Air mana. I think? My runic-model does most of that for me.”

“Uhh,” Lina deflated. “Bummer.”

“I don’t have Arcane’s equivalent of a simple elemental manipulation spell though … I’m not sure there even is one.”

“Guess I’ll have to make do with flying and air blasts,” Lina lamented with mock resignation, a hand held over her eyes in grief.

“What a sad fate to have,” Mia rolled her eyes. “I truly pity you.”

“You should,” Lina gave another exaggerated sigh before wearily standing up. “Alright, our knightling overlord said we should get ready to continue our walk in another ten minutes. He wants to be out in the suburbs before nightfall and away from the Rifts, and I’m guessing so do all of us.”

“Yeah,” Mia said, snapping up her book to get in some last minute reading. “I’ll be ready.”

Doing so, she found an answer to the one question she had since she learned people with Elemental Manipulation skills and Elemental Mana Manipulation skills could do magic without all the unwieldy spell-circle stuff.

***

‘Why would people use spells when they can directly manipulate the mana type to achieve similar effects? Is a question many young, and aspiring mages ask at the very beginning of their careers. The answer is simple: efficiency.’

‘You might believe your mind to be perfect, the perfect conduit for magic, but you’d be dead wrong. The mortal mind is not fit to directly channel and control the forces of magic with any measure of finesse and efficiency, as such, we leave that to pre-made constructs. A spell-circle is static, unchanging, its focus doesn’t flicker, its attention doesn’t get distracted, it is always perfect and predictable.’

‘If that didn’t convince you, my dear reader, let me give you the cold, hard, numbers. If a simple Firebolt spell costs one unit of mana, its equivalent cast through the direct manipulation of Fire mana would cost at the very least ten times that. Possibly as much as twenty or thirty times that if the mage attempting the casting is outstandingly incompetent.’

‘Furthermore, the mortal mind simply cannot, even with all the system assistance and Attributes in the world, do all the mental gymnastics and calculations needed to cast a spell directly that is above the third Tier. Direct casting is a crutch, a toy for the amateurs and the children so they may call themselves mages. They are not.’

***

“Wow,” Mia murmured. That’s harsh. What Mark and Lina are doing looks magical enough to me.

Plus, even if the author of the book called this ‘direct casting’ nothing more than a toy, Mia thought otherwise. In a bind, letting out a burst of destructive mana from her palms without having to put her focus into casting a spell could very well save her life.

Just that made practising with it worth the time and effort put in. Well, Mia thought so at least, even if whoever wrote that book would probably have quite a few curses to throw her way for that decision.

It could also be good training to get my Base Control up some more. 

“Alright, time’s up!” Brent clapped. “Let’s go. This should be a three hour walk at most, we have about six or seven till night falls. Should be enough even with occasionally stopping to fight or circling around monsters.”

The group sets off again, now all of their eyes peeled for anything moving. They left a wide breadth of space between themselves and any manholes they passed by.

The city was dead. It was silent and lifeless, not a single car’s engine roaring in the distance, no cyclists shouting, no children bawling. Nothing. It was eerie and made Mia jumpy, expecting something much worse than goblins and giant rats to jump at their group at any moment.

“Do you guys think the rats ate everyone?” Sam asked, his voice quivering slightly as his head snapped from side to side.

Mia swallowed, realising Sam might have been onto something. The city was empty, true, but there were no corpses. Those rats were quite … fat. 

Bile rose up in her throat, how many people lived in the city? Somewhere around two hundred thousand, or was it three? 

There had to be other pockets of survivors like them. There had to be, right?

“Bird,” Lina said, just a moment before Mia caught a glint of steel just above her. 

When she looked up, Arcane Blast readied at her fingertips, she made eye contact with a thrashing murderbird in one of Lina’s air bubbles only a metre away from her. Mia stumbled with a shriek, falling on her butt and failing to activate the spell even as she pointed her palm at the bird.

“Hurry,” Lina said urgently, sounding strained.

Before Mia could collect herself enough to cast the spell, Mark’s oversized mace smashed into the monster's side with a powerful overhand swing.

Brent was by Mia’s side, sword raised to protect her should she need it, but Mark was handling the bird pretty well by himself.

Metal screeched and bent as the monster got sent flying away. It crashed into the cracked asphalt metres away, rolling in a bloody ball of metal and torn flesh.

Mark was upon it in a second and followed up on his initial strike with another overhead swing. The mace landed with twice the power this time, flattening the monster and cracking the pavement below. 

Mia took in a sharp breath, forcibly dismissing her mana by just showing it out of her body and letting it hiss and crackle as she stared at her trembling hand. Fuck.

Closing her eyes and taking another deep breath, she focused on the fact that she was alive and the monster was not. She survived. She was fine. 

“Fuuuuuuck,” she breathed out, then slapped herself on the cheeks before getting up. “I’m good. Sorry.”

“It’s my fault,” Lina said, squishing Mia’s shoulder. “I should have caught it quicker, further away. Sorry.”

“I shouldn’t have freaked out,” Mia retorted, feeling angry at herself. She shook her head, frowning as she thought the fight over. She’d be dead now if she came alone, again. 

Time to pull out that Familiar, I think. Better to have it than not, even if it costs two-thirds of my mana stores.

“We live, we learn,” said Brent, giving Mia a surprisingly warm look. “I doubt that chicken’s core is not powdered after Rocky oh so gently tenderised it, so I think we can continue on. Anyone against?”

“A moment,” Mia said. “I’m going to make that Familiar. Maybe it’ll be useful.”

“How long will it take?” Brent asked, looking around.

“A minute?” Mia shrugged. “If I can’t do it in five, we can go on.”

“Okay, five minutes.”

Mia got to casting, slowly and carefully assembling the spell-circle shape after shape and rune by rune. Unlike the previous circles, this one didn’t come to her so naturally, probably because this was the first one she herself added to her Spell Tome.

Which meant she had to be careful if she didn’t want the backlash from messing up to hit her with an aneurysm or a burst eyeball, both of which were listed among the ‘moderate’ severity backlashes. I don’t even want to know what counts as a severe backlash.

When it was done, she opened up her Spell Tome — the one given to her by the second subskill of her Class Skill — and checked it all over, twice, down to the last line. Good thing that she did, as she found a pair of runes she had to switch up and that the angle of the central triangle was not quite right.

The Spell Tome itself was a semi-translucent book she could pull out of thin air whenever she wanted and which had all of her spell-circles listed in it. She could also draw new ones in it to add them to her list of known spells. 

Though the Tome threw back any spell containing runes not already in her runic-matrix. So there was that. Still, it was an awesome piece of magic … uhh, Skill? Whatever.

After checking it all over three more times, with only the final check-over not resulting in any minor corrections to uneven lines or such, Mia decided to go ahead and give it a go. Supposedly, the spell-circle would become more ‘engraved’ in the Spell Tome with every casting of it, which would help her runic model replicate it  with the same ease as the others if only she practised enough. 

Another endless time sink. I think I’m starting to understand why every powerful mage in the stories is depicted as a withered old man or a hunched-over old witch. 

Mana gathered in her arm, more than ever before filling her channels up to the brim as far up as her shoulders. With a deep breath, Mia gathered her focus in a way she didn’t really have to since her first day of practising magic and let it crash down onto the gathered mana with all of her willpower behind it.

The spell-circle formed without problem and Mia let herself release a sigh, then went back to work. Unlike most of her spells, Mana Familiar wasn’t a one-and-done sort of spell, but more similar to Mage Hand in that manifesting the spell-circle was not the final step.

***

‘This spell forms a corporeal vessel from arcane mana and invites a Lesser Arcane Elemental to inhabit it for the duration of the spell. The vessel itself must be a form the caster knows intimately, recommended forms include: wolves, rats, birds, cats, anything the caster wouldn’t have trouble visualising.’

‘One must make sure though, not to overshoot their capabilities. The spell’s mana consumption is dynamic, always taking exactly the amount it was provided and using it to form the vessel. Choosing to form a bear-like form for the vessel when the provided mana is only enough to properly form a shape tenth its size will result in the Familiar either being more fragile than glass, or only lasting for moments before disappearing.’

‘For Rank 0 mages, the recommended size when using 50% of their total mana stores is something the size of an average human head to maximise the strength and lifetime of the Familiar.’

***

Mia had always been more of a cat person, so her choice of a form was easy. She pictured the pretty tabby cat her mom had, a lazy feline with a fluffy coat of coal-grey fur and pushed the mental image into the slowly spinning spell-circle above her palm.

She felt it all click into place. The moment the spell activated, she felt some ephemeral connection form between her and the ball of shifting pink energy the spell-circle devolved into. Unlike her expelled balls of angry mana, this morphing globule of mana was calm as can be, its surface clear as crystal as if an invisible hand moulded it. 

It lengthened, grew four digits, a head, a tail, and then the rest in a blink. A semi-translucent cat just like her mom’s, but in a soft pink hue stood still mid-air, frozen as if it really was made of rose quartz, like it appeared to be.

Then came the most important part, the one that would turn this cat-shaped statue of mana into a moving, living thing that would follow her orders. She felt the moment it happened, feeling the spell breathing life into the mana construct as the veil of reality cracked the slightest bit. Something tiny slipped through the crack just before it disappeared, and inhabited the vessel she prepared for it.

The cat blinked, large glowing pink eyes focusing on Mia before tilting its head. It floated there, paddling at the air languidly for a few seconds, just staring into Mia’s transfixed eyes before giving a slow blink. A moment later it was on her, draping itself over her shoulder and looking around in mild curiosity.

Mia slowly reached up and gently scratched it under the chin, earning a purr that she felt more through her temporary bond with it than anything.

“It’s cute,” Lina said, snapping Mia out of her daze. 

“Yep,” Mia replied with a smile, though she was curious how long Lina would be able to hold on to that notion. By the book’s description, her temporary Familiar should have the structural integrity of her Arcane Bolts, with the ability to move just as quickly as those spells. Furthermore, it had claws, fangs and should be able to shift its form somewhat if it wanted to. 

Enlarging its head to twice the size for a quick moment, lengthening its claws into knives as long as Mia’s own and the like should be well within its capabilities.

She scratched her Familiar behind the ears, even though she knew it wasn’t a real cat, just some lesser elemental inhabiting a vessel with the shape of one, but still. If it bothered the Familiar, she wouldn’t be hearing the constant purring and contentment flowing through her bond with it.

Plus, I think I read that elementals are dumb as rocks, barely scratching low-human levels of intelligence by reaching the highest state of being they can. Which is Elemental Lord, so this little guy should be about just as smart as an actual cat, but with our bond making it instinctively understand my orders. 

“Your job is to stay near me and keep any projectiles heading my way away from me, and to attack monsters I tell you to, okay?” Mia whispered to the cat, which sent an affirmative feeling back through their bond. “I’d give you a snack, but you’ve already devoured a good chunk of the mana I spent summoning you, haven’t you?”

The cat sent back a greedy feeling, probably saying something along the lines of there always being more space in its stomach for more mana. 

“Be good and keep me alive, and you’ll get some extra before you dissipate, alright?” Mia said, earning a gleeful purr in response. Elementals were simple creatures, it seemed, though she liked it that way. It was cute. “Alright, I’m done, we can go.”