Crafting Equations

“Alright. Array version one, test one, set,” Vivian announced as she placed it on a piece of flat stone. Some distance away, Beth and Senka worked to keep a golem engaged, the pair using their abilities more to impede its movements than to damage it.

John looked up from Candle, the fox spirit letting out a yip of annoyance, no longer being the center of her master’s attention.

“Guess it’s my turn then,” John said, equipping his fire glove. Candle let out some excited barks and leapt up to bite the glove. “Give me a sec. I’m going to try and get her infused. If she freaks out, I’ll unsummon her.”

Vivian watched as John closed his eyes and began whatever bargaining he had to do with the spirit. She felt his mana pulse in a sort of calming manner, directed at Candle, almost like he was petting the excitable spirit. Candle herself seemed to bristle despite that, likely resisting John’s pleadings.

‘What is it like to commune with an animal, spirit or otherwise?’ the redhead mused. She was sure there were likely a number who could talk to animals, whether by way of an innate ability or some spell, though she hadn’t come across any records of such. ‘They don’t have the mind for the same complex thoughts as us, but if the magic is touching the soul and not the brain, does that allow for more complex intentions to get across?’

Vivian shook her head. Going down that philosophical rabbit hole wasn’t worth the brain power, at least not right now. She had to think about possible alterations the spell storage array may need and how the current model could fail spectacularly. She couldn’t help but smile at that thought. That she could work on her arrays openly and have them appreciated. To see John watch attentively as she weaved them, to hear Beth whoop in excitement when one went off.

Aeolia and Senka weren’t as overt with their appreciation but she could tell they did by how they kept their attention on her when she explained things. Those things, small and large, fueled her passion more than any need for the arrays in a practical sense. She had thought of more ideas in the last week than she had in the months leading up to her flight from her family.

A shift in John’s mana drew Vivian out of her thoughts and she watched as Candle seemed to phase into John’s glove. It clearly was different than a dismissal of the spirit, and with a small strain to her magical senses, she felt a slight change to the glove’s usual warm presence. It flexed outward before contracting to just slightly larger than it was before as if it was breathing.

“She wasn’t too happy about the idea, but it feels like being mixed into the glove has changed her opinion,” John said as he flexed his hand and summoned an information sheet. Vivian stepped close to him to read it, taking the opportunity to lean against his sturdy frame and place her head in the crook of his neck.

Candle Infusion
The energetic fox spirit yearns to run free, even if she’s comfy in her warm spot. Confers the Hunting Flame effect to Fiery Pursuit.

Hunting Flame: Candle can take control of Fiery Pursuit, adding her summon limit to the Evocation’s range.

“Why do I have the feeling that I’m still going to have to keep track when I use this?” John grumbled pessimistically. “I wonder if the Auction has some book on how to reliably order animals.”

“Do you think they would work on a spirit?” Vivian asked, more to provoke further musings. “After all, you have a direct link to Candle's mind.”

“More ideas couldn't hurt,” John said. “Who knows, besides Gaia, if getting some ‘Animal Handling' skill won't stack with ‘Spirit Link’.”

Vivian hummed before reluctantly drawing back from John and pulling out her phone. Turning on its voice recorder, she said, “Test one of ‘Mine Array’ underway. Spell contained: Fiery Pursuit with Candle infused. John, if you will?”

“Going all professional with this one?” John remarked with a grin as he conjured the fireball. Candle's presence in the glove was immediately evident as instead of a softball-sized sphere of flame, Fiery Pursuit looked far more like the fox’s head.

John's face scrunched up in concentration as the shaped fireball tried to move, almost looking angry as he held its motion back.

“We may want to not infuse Candle if we use this method in the future,” John said. “She really wants to go, and towards the golems if I'm reading her right.”

Vivian let out a small laugh. “Perhaps not. We can't run around with her being a loose cannon, so let's treat this as conditioning. We give Candle the treat of getting to attack a golem if she correctly hits the array to charge it.”

The fireball turned to look at Vivian and she couldn't help but wonder if Candle had understood her words, or if she was getting her intent secondhand via John.

‘Not the time for more spirit musings,’ she chided herself before saying, “Ready?”

“Yeah, think we are,” John answered and the spirit-possessed flame launched out of his open palm. For a second it flew around them, shooting high into the air before rocketing down at the array.

Before impact could be made, the array flashed with a faint silver light and the fireball vanished, a wave of displaced air rushing over the dust.

“Capture successful,” Vivian cheered as she checked a second array, one built to monitor the first. “John, anything from your powers?”

“Nothing,” he reported. “And Candle's still in the glove so no problem with using spirit-enhanced spells for this.”

“We'll have to see if she can reassert control when the spell is released,” Vivian muttered. “Hold her back for this first test. I'd rather see if the base is good and not risk her with some launch failure.”

“Can do,” John said, giving Vivian a quick salute that drew another fond laugh from her. “Time for the ranchers to bring in the prized steer, yeah?”

“I wasn't aware we were keeping up with the cowboy theme,” Vivian chucked. “Call them in.”

“Blame Beth for putting the idea in my head,” John remarked. “Senka doesn't have a problem with it. They're on their way.”

Deciding to play along with the theme this afternoon had adopted, Vivian put on her best Texan drawl and said, “Hope they mosey on over quick.”

Then her face began to heat up, surely starting to match her hair, and she turned sharply away from John. It was then when she realized that her phone was still recording, and had likely picked it up in good quality.

“Well, that was adorable,” John declared, moving close to Vivian and wrapping his arms around her. Vivian felt her face grow even hotter.

“What the hell did we miss that got Senka all giggly?” Beth asked as she skidded to a stop.

“Vivian decided to play into the rancher theme,” John answered, making Vivian squirm in his arms. Despite the embarrassment, it felt nice to be surrounded by them. “Put on the accent and everything. And it was recorded.”

“Well, I’ll be a prairie dog's aunt,” Beth drawlled, a manic grin on her face. “I need to hear that.”

“Sadly, that will have to wait for later,” Senka interjected. “Our ‘cattle’ is coming home.”

“On the range,” Beth sang. “Okay, got it all out. Let’s get the fireworks going!”

“We have to make sure the target gets within half a meter of the array,” Vivian reminded her, still within the confines of John’s caring embrace. “And we should probably make sure we’re a bit further away. I’ve set the array to aim towards what sets it off, but…”

“Better safe than sorry,” Senka finished for her. “I can have Dark Veil ready to act as a safety wall.”

“I was going to ask if you could do that,” Vivian said, reluctantly pushing John’s arms away from her with a gentle nudge. The golem Beth and Senka had engaged lumbered closer, its gait steady. “Do any damage to it?”

“I did hit it with Thornbite to get its attention, but I really didn’t put any oomph into it,” Beth answered.

“So probably not too much damage,” Vivian muttered before she looked back at John, who had remained right behind her. “Do you have an idea about how much health they should have?”

John tilted his head. “I remember that Fiery Pursuit did a little less than thirty damage and it took three to fully put one down, so somewhere in the ballpark of eighty to ninety. And that was when I was level six. No idea how much more damage it’ll do now that I’m twice the level.”

“Well, we’re about to find out,” Senka noted. “I think that retreat is in order.”

The golem was now only ten or so meters from the array, and seemingly unaware of its presence. The group quickly stepped backwards, with John and Senka moving between the approaching golem and the girls, ready to react should things take a misfortunate turn.

The golem’s foot stepped within the half meter detection radius and Vivian felt the array trigger, right as Senka summoned a Dark Veil. A second later, the whole array exploded as if the fireball had impacted it instead of being launched out. Still, the blast was the expected size and tore large chunks out of the golem’s leg and side, enough damage to compromise the limb and send the earthen construct toppling forward.

“Well, that could have gone better,” Vivian said as Senka dispelled her shield, her eyes scanning over her recording array.

“At least it went off,” Beth said, focusing on the bright side. “How much damage did it do?”

“Sixty-one,” John reported. “Which is a bit more than double what I was doing last week against similar leveled enemies, so that’s nice to see.”

“Maybe that’s where I messed up?” Vivian muttered. “No, I’ve seen you use that enough to gauge how strong it was at your current level. The cost doesn’t change, so it's just more efficient at converting mana to impact as you increase your stats and level.”

Her eyes swept over the array, the symbols and lines telling the story of how the array worked up until its detonation. She twisted her hand and rolled back the recording to when the Evocation was loaded, then let it progress forward, carefully watching for the moment it was triggered. She stopped it right as the fireball was to be released and studied every inch of the readout.

“Ah, there it is,” Vivian muttered. “It looks like the launching mechanism got overloaded. But that shouldn’t have happened; I calibrated it to be able to handle that amount of mana. Unless that idea of your spell being more efficient is the reason.”

“How would that even work?” Beth asked. “It’s the same amount of juice either way.”

“It’s like a water balloon,” Vivian said in an excited tone, the solution coming to her. “The volume of what’s going in isn’t always the limit, the speed at which it’s filling is! Because John’s mana usage seems to increase in efficiency as he levels up, it flows far faster than I anticipated, thus the overload.”

“Are we sure having Candle infused can’t have caused the issue?” John asked.

“Even if she is the reason, making the trigger more robust should still be the solution,” Vivian remarked. “And if it still fails, then we go back to the drawing board.”

“Question,” Senka said. “Are we going to use that fellow for the next test or do you want a fresh target?”

Everyone turned their attention to the wounded golem. Despite its injuries, it still moved towards them, dragging itself over the ground.

“I believe something not damaged would be better,” Vivian answered. “As to see if a normal discharge does similar damage. Plus, we owe Candle a treat for directing the first shot as well as she did.”

“We promised her she could go after a proper target if she was a good girl,” John explained to Beth, who looked confused. “I’m not sure if she’s going to like just delivering the final blow to that guy though.”

“Best to make good on our promise quickly to show we’re acting in good faith,” Vivian remarked. “Plus, we can see how she acts when told to go after a downed target.”

“But is it wise to waste a use of the Evocation like that?” Senka interjected, playing devil’s advocate.

“I’ve got sixteen uses of Fiery Pursuit before I run out,” John revealed. “I think we can spare one or two shots as a treat.”

“I suppose that does give us a fair amount of wiggle room,” Senka relented. “Fire away.”

“Okay, Candle, here we go,” John said, summoning a flaming fox head above his open palm. The spirit-possessed attack shot up and flew around everyone, getting close enough for the heat of the fire to warm them but never actually endangering them. Then, Candle rocketed further up before dive-bombing the golem.

The explosive fireball struck its back, just below its head, and Vivian swore she saw the fox-shaped flame open her jaw right at the moment of impact. Once the blast subsided, they watched as the golem’s shattered body vanished into dust, leaving behind a chunk of ore that John walked up to and collected.

“Well, she isn’t raising a fuss over it, so I think we’ll be good to throw her at anything that survives the first blast,” John reported before looking at Vivian with excitement in his eyes. “Actually, that just gave me an idea. Do you think we could combine two effects? Like store Pursuit and hit it with Amplify right as it goes off?”

“That could work,” Vivian answered, a grin spreading across her face. “It would take a lot more sequencing lines and a spot to store Amplify. And we’ll need some way to capture that before it tries to increase the power of the array.”

“Does it being a stream type of effect change anything?” John asked.

“Somewhat,” Vivian replied. “There’ll need to be some tweaks to handle the variable mana cost. It might be possible to empower the main spell before launch, but that could cause a backfire due to too many things going on in a small area. Best to apply the boost as it fires. Assuming we keep the half-meter trigger, we’d only need about two or three seconds worth of Amplify, so the container for that won’t have to be too big.”

“Look at them geeking out,” Senka said to Beth in a teasing tone, causing both Vivian and John to go red. “Oh, don’t stop on our account.”

“N-no, we shouldn’t get into the weeds over something new while the main version still needs refining,” Vivian said, pulling out her notepad and pen. “I need to do the tweaks on the release sequence. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to rework it then we can lure in another golem.”

Vivian tuned out the banter that began between John, Senka and Beth as she worked. Ultimately, the changes she needed to make were rather simple. A changed symbol here, a reinforced line there, all small updates that when taken together would hopefully make the array work as intended.

A few minutes of work later, Vivian stored her pen. “Alright, array version two is ready.”

“Looks like we’re goin’ back to hunting,” Beth said to Senka.

Senka opened her mouth to respond but was cut off as Aeolia’s voice shouted, “Guys! We have a problem!”

Vivian turned along with everyone in the direction Aeolia had led Kiera off in and gasped. Aeolia moved with quick steps, nearly dragging Kiera along, the bluenette close to limp, one of her arms draped over Aeolia’s shoulders. An arm that was covered in blue and green scales and ended in a hand tipped with white claws.

---

“What happened?” John asked in a hurried voice as he led the charge to meet Aeolia and Kiera.

“Not a clue,” Aeolia answered. “She was going up against a golem, got her spear stuck, and boom, her arms went all dragony. Looked like it boosted her strength. But then she started to freak out. Got her to calm down, but she’s been like this ever since.”

John helped Aeolia lower Kiera to the ground, frowning at how much Kiera resembled her brain lost state. Then he noticed something. Some of the scales on her arm seemed to shimmer, nearly going transparent before returning to full opacity.

Filing that observation away for now, John fired off an Observe, hoping that would provide any useful info. Sadly, the only thing it gave on this new state was her emotions reading as ‘disconnected’.

‘At least she’s not reading as blank like she was Monday.’ John thought before speaking. “Kiera, can you hear me?”

A few seconds later, she nodded, her distant eyes focusing on him slightly.

“Can you talk to me?” John asked.

“...Yeah,” she muttered in a voice so quiet he almost missed it.

“Great,” John said, relief washing through him. “We’re going to figure out what’s going on.”

“Kiera,” Vivian spoke up, kneeling down next to her. “Do you remember what you were thinking and feeling when this happened?”

“I was thinking about how I didn’t want to be a burden on you,” Kiera dully responded. “I don’t want to be a burden.”

“You aren’t,” Senka interjected bluntly. “We don’t need you to do anything but be yourself.”

“But I want to help,” Kiera listlessly said.

“We’re getting off track here, guys,” Beth remarked.

“Right,” John muttered. “Kiera, does Verida have anything to say about this?”

“Don’t hear her,” Kiera said. “Connection’s weird.”

“Well, that could be it,” Vivian muttered as she drew out her phone. “I’m calling Teri to see if anythings gone wrong in Pruzonia.”

“I would think she would call us if that was the case,” Senka said.

“Not if things went super bad and ruined the phone tower,” Aeolia mused.

John held his tongue, but privately held the hope that since he’d not received any notification or quest relating to the Kingdom, that things there were okay.

“Vivian?” Teri’s voice came out of the redhead’s phone, drawing a sigh from everyone.

“Teri,” Vivian said in a relieved voice as her phone connected. “Good, do you know if Verida is alright?”

“Um, she’s fine. She’s been talking to the elders,” Teri said. “Um, any reason you want to know that?”

“Something happened to Kiera,” John recounted. “She’s got dragon arms and says her connection to Verida went wonky. We feared the worst.”

“I’m going to get her,” Teri said. “This sounds like a bad thing and I know she’d want to fix it.”

The sound of rushing wind played through the phone as Teri ran to wherever the goddess was. They didn’t have to wait long as Teri shouted for the dragon.

“Yes?” Verida spoke into Teri’s phone.

“Verida, can you reach Kiera?” John quickly asked, urgency in his tone clear.

A moment of silence passed then Verida spoke, “No, I can’t. What happened?”

“She’s fine-ish, as far as we can tell,” Vivian quickly said to allay the goddess’ worry. “But she’s a bit out of it and her arms are, well, dragon-like.”

“I was giving her space to focus on her training,” Verida remarked in a solemn tone. “I didn’t even notice. And I have no idea how this could have happened. If she was turning into me, our connection would be stronger, not weaker.”

“So we have no idea how this is happening or how to fix it,” Beth lamented. “So now what?”

“John, phone me,” Aeolia suddenly demanded, holding her hand out. “If anyone knows someone who can help us, it’ll be Cammie.”

Thanks again for reading this little story. If you liked the chapter, please hit that thumbs up, and if you want to support my writing, check out my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/ScrapCrow. Get access to my chapters before they’re published here and join my private Discord.