063 – Melee And Magic Part 2

Caspian swung with the carved end, making Rox defend with just the raw stick. Rox took advantage of this and split her staff, and for about ten hits, pummeled Caspian’s shields silly, pushing him around more than Steven did. Caspian tried to cast several spells in that time before leaping thirty feet back, and pointing a flame jet at Rox.

Rox dodged, and started scrounging through her brain for all the spells she had learned so far, to see what she could use against him. She threw her ‘lights’ at him, using the last of the flame jet as the source, and it blew up in his face, temporarily blinding him.

She put her staff back together and slap-shotted a rock off to Caspian’s left, almost hitting Steven for her poor aim. Dismissing that, she pointed at a spot of ground, and used her ‘dig latrine’ spell, and made a hole with a pile of dirt next to it. She then closed and grabbed Caspian as he got over his flash-blindness and tossed him bodily into the fresh hole. Caspian almost hit the ground when he caught himself with a levitate spell, and floated quickly out of reach of Rox.

Rox was about to call no fair, when she remembered this was as much a powers test of Caspian as it was sparing for her, they would go until one or the other called an end. So she reenergized her staff, and waited.

Caspian cast a spell around her, and all the scrub grasped at her feet and legs. Rox struck at the magic field on the ground at her feet and dispelled it,

Steven called foul before things went further. “You could float above her all day; she can’t match that, yet. You have proven you can; now come back down and continue on the ground. Or call things here and teach Rox how to fly.”

Neither looked at Steven, but Caspian released his spell and settled to the ground. Rox cast next, stirring up the dust around Caspian, obscuring his vision. She moved in and swung through her own spell with her staff, negating it, and then connected with Caspian in a classic staff hit. He was prepared for this, with his shields back up, and only stepped back as Rox pushed her attack.

Caspian force-pushed her back, and cast a gate; the one locus directly behind Rox, the other behind Steven. The force-push propelled Rox though the gate and into Steven, knocking both over. Caspian dropped the gate, and turned as the Caplan's fumbled over each other to get back up.

Rox started to her feet to charge, but Caspian held up his hand. “Hold.”

Rox trotted past Caspian as she canceled her charge and changed course. She and Caspian were both breathing hard from effort, Roxanne more so than Caspian.

Caspian spoke again as Rox and Steven stood in loose circle with him. “We are done for now. It is evident to me that you need a wider diversity of spells to draw upon, or to be taught to use your innate skills to channel magic to what ever you need. As for me, I could show you more, but to do so, I would risk hurting you seriously, and healing magic is generally outside of my abilities. I can do some physical stuff, but not the spells.”

Steven muttered under his breath, lost in thought. “That was usually clerics that did that.”

The three of them started walking back towards the horses. Caspian did not hear Steven, and continued. “Steven, my question with you is can you handle multiple attackers? I don’t have the spells ready at hand to create some dummies for you to fight, but could in a few days. As for spells to teach you Roxanne, I am undecided. Elves are more the ‘shape magic by force of will’ type of casters, and at your freshness to magic, that may be the better way to go.”

Rox bristled some at this. “Don’t we have anything to say, about this?”

“Of course you do,” Caspian answered. “I just figured you wanted an evaluation, and I was the first to speak.”

Rox took up the conversation as Caspian let it go. “First off, you started dirty. In sparring the idea is to mutually test and improve. So each are aware when to begin. After that, it was quickly apparent that you were holding back some. On the other hand, I was gratified that Steven was able to disarm you. He has mentioned your previous escapades, and I figured you were a pragmatist. One thing I did sense you using was the shields. I want to learn that. You have seen Steven and I bang arms a few times to keep conditioning. I figure these magic shields could be something in a similar principle. Also at the end, you pushed me through a gate. Could we use those to get around, or are their principles of operation similar to teleport?”

Caspian had expected other of his spells to get her attention, but was not surprised at this. They untied their horses, but did not attempt to mount. Instead they walked, allowing the walk to stretch out their muscles and give them time to work out the bruises.

Caspian took up lecture mode as they went. “Shields and Gates. Well, you are peripherally right about the Gates. Gates are a hole from here to there, with no intervening space. Your physics calls it a ‘wormhole’ which I always thought was funny. To open one you need to know where you are doing so, and generally they are anchored in proximity to a target object or location. In this case I picked two rocks. If I had a specific target in Shalaia, I could open and anchor a gate to it. If I had that kind of target, I would have already teleported us to it. On the other hand, Gate Targets are much more flexible than Teleporting. I could make an arrow a gate target then shoot it out of my sight, and still open the gate to wherever it landed. Accurate and safe teleporting requires some idea of where you are going to land. Gates are more forgiving on that score.

“Both have variables or filters that can be set for what goes through. I irrigate my fields at home via gates to sea water. But I filter out the majority of the minerals, and all the living animals, while keeping the other organic material. Also I set the gate to allow a certain volume to pass through then shut off; that usually runs for some time. Teleport is all at one shot. If I tried to teleport that much water with those restrictions, I would be twice the time setting the parameters, then have all the water come through at once.

“I can teach you gates, but it will take some time. There are a few preliminaries to be done.”

Rox nodded. “And Shields?”

“Less time, much simpler. You already understand using small components to pattern the energy and scaling it to need; simply pattern energy off a solid material, and give it a location in space. I was projecting the metal of my knife, mixed with the fabric of my coat, so I effectively had a flexible metal shell around me. I could have chosen the rock or dirt around me, or some chunk of plastic from you world, if I could hold its pattern in my mind. There is part of the key, and reason for using ingredients. If one’s mind is powerful enough one can hold the source pattern in mind and desired effect. With ingredients, one uses them for the source pattern, and then only needs hold the desired effect in mind.”

Rox restated what she was hearing. “So I could take the hard leather of my belt as the source pattern, and have the shield effectively be a suit of hard leather around me, so long as I can hold or, or set it to run by itself.”

Caspian nodded. “Yes. That is essentially it.”

Rox went to a logical extreme. “Or I could hold in my mind the pattern of a thick steel plate reinforcing concrete, and that would be the source for a stronger shield, so long as I can form and maintain the spell.”

Caspian was used to these extensions by now. “Right. Easier to have something at hand, but willpower coupled with imagination are the limits.”

Not to Caspian’s surprise, Roxanne began using whatever rock was at hand as the focus of her shield base. It had a secondary effect that Caspian had not considered of anchoring Rox to the spot where the rock was, rather than leaving her to move, as his did. But while she could put the shield up, she was not yet able to move force around and redirect it.

Roxanne grudgingly tried it with the Sorceress’ chains on, and found the amount of power she could safely manipulate was dramatically increased. There after, she would practice the fundamentals without the chains, then once she had the pattern, try it with the chains.

Gates were still outside of her capacity.

Journal of Steven Caplan: Day 99

Something is changing in Caspian. I recognize now that the first weeks he was in an ill-mood, while he was deliberately blocking some of what I wanted to do to allow for time to acclimate. After picking up Rox, he seemed more than ready to charge ahead as fast as I wanted.

Now we are marching though these mountains to see his benefactors, and he seems to be back in his ill-mood. On the other hand, he and Rox are doing more practical magic; our pace has slowed a little to take time each day to spar or otherwise practice.

One topic that we keep pushing is going faster via magic, and he keeps either pushing back or finding excuses. As I write this I realize that either there is some base presumption that I have wrong about getting about by magic, or he is stalling without telling why.

The company road along, passing a Kingdom marker on the road. They had left the main highway behind a few days back where it turned more northerly and they took the south fork.

Now they were approaching the Kimid Mountains, finally. Once camp had been broken and the morning sparing and drills accomplished, they mounted and road on. The horses were all in even temper and used to each other. The mules used to the horses and all used to the group pace.

The magic drill had ended with Rox and Caspian in a discussion about how to accomplish a certain spell. Their central point came down to Rox doing a different spell and result than Caspian thought she was. Caspian was expecting a moving force wall, meaning a comparative wide field of effect over an unspecified distance; Rox was doing a pointed strike of limited field effect to a given distance. In physical terms their argument was a shove vs. a punch. Steven caught this point and defused the escalating tone of the discussion in pointing out that Rox as a trained fighter was of a mindset to stop and drop her opponent, as compared to Caspian’s of pushing the opponent to a distance to toss energy at them.

After some consideration, both sides yielded the argument’s cause and moved on to other topics. Rox had noticed over the weeks that Caspian always had spells at the ready. She wondered if it was equated to her training in martial arts where she just had all the moves already in her muscle memory; meaning that Caspian was so versed in the principles of magic and the spells that he was capable of, that he could essentially assemble them at will.

Caspian thought and then answered. “Sort of. I would consider it more like cooking food; knowing the available pieces, and how and in what ratio to combine them for the desired result. There are many recipes, but how many people actually follow them to the letter?”

Rox considered this and picked up on a side point. “Do you use or carry a book? I have not noticed you using one.”

Caspian shook his head. “Use? Some. Mostly as notes. I do carry a notebook. I also only use about half of the ingredients others may use for spells.”

“Then how do you cast so many different spells?”

“Like cooking, it’s from memory, from daily preparation and storage, some I make up as I go, building from starting principles.”

Rox shifted to an absurd tangent, from the cartoon’s the kids watched. “Can you shoot a ridiculously large blast of energy?”

Caspian considered this. “. . . Yes,” he finally answered.

Rox was curious. “Care to demonstrate?”

“No,” Caspian was quick to answer this.