Black Magus

“Evening, Your Grace.” Gerolt bowed as I emerged from a shadow in the corner and waited for me to sit before asking. “Fancy a midnight snack?”

“I do.” I nodded. “The usual.”

“Very well.” He grinned boyishly as he leaned to retrieve a wooden slab from under the counter, then moved to the enchanted fridge. "So, how goes His Grace's studies?" He asked from behind a hefty hill of ingredients.

"They go well.” I amiably stated. “I’m taking a break before I began to read of spells.”

“Oh! Spells!” He perked up with enthusiastic approval. Though I couldn’t help but feel a little condescension in his tone. “Already, huh?”

“Yes, already. Soon enough, I’ll be able to accompany you on your hunting trips.”

At that, he only chuckled nervously and leaned over his board to concentrate on making my meal presentable. In turn, I remained silent and watched him work while I thought about the questions still burning in my mind. The many wonders regarding this strange world in which I found myself.

There were uncountable similarities to Sol. The clothes. The architecture. The language; or one of them, at least. Even a lot of the food was the same. There were apples and bananas and pineapples and your standard assortment of vegetables. But otherworldly entrees as well. Like the mass of sweet and juicy, rubbery growths called Hex Fruit. Or Mudroot, a fruit that, as the name suggested, grew in the mud to somehow create a strange mix between a pear and potato. And, my favorite, Swamp Shard Nectar. A putrid bulb that resembled a burnt pine cone containing a mass of succulent syrupy yellow flesh.

Those things were trivial in the face of other observations, however. Namely, in the face of the fact that I had yet to see the sun.

Sure, I was a nocturnal creature and went off to bed as soon as the sun began rising and traveled through the shadow plane most of the time. But I also emerged from my room as the sun was setting on many occasions and found that the light had been cast from more or less the same angle. That in itself could have implied a number of things. The world we were on; Maru, could have been tidally locked and it was thanks to a piece of orbital infrastructure or its magical equivalent that gave us our day-night cycle. Or it could be that Maru was tilted so far over on its axis and its orbital period was so long that a solar day could have equated a few sidereal years. Or, it could have been like Venus and had a slow retrograde spin. Giving it extremely long days.

The possibilities were endless and my knowledge base was insignificant. Infuriatingly so.

A sudden thud ripped me from my thoughts, causing me to turn a glare up at Gerald just as he was retracting his hand from my fruit bowl. An apologetic smile smeared across his face.

“Didn’t mean to break your concentration, Your Grace.”

I waved the matter aside as I took my bowl. Then called out to him before he turned to grab a cleaning rag. “Say, Gerolt. How big is this world?”

“Oh. The Mortal Plane is far larger than any of us can imagine.” He chuckled meekly. “I know that Maru is around 25 to 26,000 kilometers from any one end to the other. As far as the plane itself.” He chuckled again. “You’d have to find a scholar to answer that.”

“Jesus Christ!” I gasped aloud.

Gerolt’s brows ruffled immediately. “Who?”

“Nothing,” I quickly said before settling into my thoughts and my meal.

‘Twenty-five thousand kilometers!’ I scoffed to myself. ‘That’s the equivalent of two Earths! That in itself is huge, but Gerolt made it seem as if that’s sand in the face of gold.’

After thinking things through over my snack, my eagerness to know more was beginning to reach the point of frustration. So I hurriedly picked up my bowl to the sink to wash away the scraps with water manipulation and place them in the cleaning rack. Then, after a nod to Gerolt, I slipped back into the shadows; calling from the darkness. “I look forward to the day you teach me about hunting and the culinary arts, Gerolt.”

“Yes… Your Grace.” I heard his somewhat reluctant voice echo behind me as I stepped into the night. “I as well.”

Back in my room, I excitedly returned to my seat to begin flipping through the last and smallest of the books- The Basics of Spells and Casting.

On the very first page was a thank you note to all the mystics who came before. For remaining altruistic and choosing to disclose the secrets of their prowess. All for the betterment of society's future.

“Hmm.” I frowned.

In truth, a part of me felt a particular way about disclosing my abilities to the greater world. It was highly probable that I’d encounter many powerful beings throughout my life; human or not. Snitching on myself was a surefire way to make a bad possibility become a chaotic reality overnight. That said, it was also likely that the underlying concepts of my abilities would go far above their heads. From what I could see of this society, the age I was born into seemed to be just on the fringe of entering the Renaissance era, if not in its throes. Only accented with hints of modernity due to the many enchantments strewn throughout the place. I had doubts that even a scholar in this world would’ve heard of concepts like gravity or radiation or beta decay. So, it wasn’t as if I’d have lost anything.

‘Oh well.’ I shrugged, ensuring to capture the entirety of the page within my field of vision before flipping through the pages to the cover. With my Eternal Eye, this drastically reduced my reading time to only a few seconds. Leaving me hours to read, review, and research.

Following the thank you note, the book started off by stating spells could be learned in two ways. Either by studying a Tome or by developing a spell yourself. Making three types of categories for learned spells to fall into- Simple, Grimoire, and Stylized. Naturally, since stylized spells are unique in their creation and grimoire spells are; quite misleadingly, learned from a tome, the book only went into depth with simple spells.

As for which, there were many more than I initially expected. And the effectiveness of each of them was entirely dependent on what attributed mana was used during a particular engagement. There were the obligatory Attack and Defense Spells, of course. The former of which consisted of literally throwing the attributed mana at an opponent; or using it thrust, sweep or slam. Defense spells on the other hand required one to simply condense a shield of mana around them; much like a concentrated domain. And of course, the effectiveness of that shield depended entirely on the conflicting mana attributes.

Domain Spells were more or less as Grandpa Lich described. Zones of attributed magical energy- a cloud of darkness in my case; or an electrical field; or a ring of high gravity. More intriguing, however, were the last few types of spells. And more so, the section after that.

What was referred to as Craft Spells, came with a disclaimer. While they were indeed categorized as Spells, Craft Spells revolved around the art of using magic for more industrial or crafty means. It wasn’t using raw mana to craft weapons of energy like the elves, but using attributed magic or even mana manipulation to create material items- to heat forges for iron and steel; to compact and mold earth and stone for construction; to build emplacements or infrastructure or even furniture with different attributes of magic.

Any spell emplaced in an area with any form of conditions was referred to as a Trap Spell. While they were most famously known for their effectiveness in ambushes, they were invaluable for more practical means as well. A water trap spell could be emplaced in a field for irrigation while a fire trap spell could be cast into a fireplace for a fuelless fire.

From what I could gather about Reinforcement Spells, they acted as a form of magical body augmentation; wherein one would flood their body with mana to strengthen, empower, or outright change it. Though once again, the element’s compatibility with the human body was a factor to consider. As was the case with the last spell type: Binding Spells. Which, as the name implied, were used to bind and restrain a target.

With that came the section I was most engrossed in. A passage about the differences between active and passive spells. As one would have guessed, active spells required conscious effort to cast. They required the mystic to imagine the effect their spell to have before manipulating their mana through the core, measuring the volume and density of the gathered energy before directing it out of their body to unleash the desired effect.

Passive spells, however, were more akin to buffs than actual spells. Natural abilities or resistances that were based on one's affinity and regulated like automatic biological processes.

‘Perhaps that’s why I feel the cold of the air without it bothering me.’ I wondered to myself. ‘Implying that I’ll have electrical and even radiation immunities after awakening the rest of my cores. And if it’s true that my natural darkvision is improved from my affinities, then that’d imply that I’ll gain to see across the EM spectrum when I awaken my other cores as well.’

With my reading assignment complete, I decided to get some meditation in and head to the training court at the first crack of night. And so I hopped on my bed and assumed the lotus position before letting my mind clear.

---

I stirred from my torpor-like meditative state just before sundown and rolled out of bed to quickly get dressed and head off towards the training court with my final piece of literature. I wanted nothing more than go and start flinging spells around since the moment I’d been born. To experiment and learn of the capabilities and limits of the dark energies within me. For, unlike my dormant affinities, I had not a clue as to the limits of magic. The tome Grandpa Lich gave me would serve as an invaluable hint, I assumed. And so I eagerly unfurled and inspected the palm-sized scroll after settling in the center of the court.

Despite being sealed with wax or some other material, the parchment was severely tanned by age and tied off with a golden-yellow silk banner. And beneath that silken tie were only two lines.

‘What is your shadow, if not a clone of oneself; cast by the blue sky?’

‘The Puppeteer. Magi: A. Cole.'

‘Not only a riddle but a Haiku. Outstanding.’ I snorted to myself in contempt. I hated riddles. ‘At least this one is simple.’ I then sighed, glancing down at my shadow, mimicking my swaying head as my mind churned.

When viewed from a different perspective, It was indeed a clone of myself- my shadow. A twin. Born the same moment I was born as an entity trapped between the planes. A dark mirror sentenced to follow me around wherever I went. Forced to mimic the actions I performed in his two-dimensional world.

‘So then, this… Doppelganger spell.’ I wondered. ‘I assume that at a base level, it’ll allow this 2D clone to come into our 3D world and do whatever the being it was spawned from could do. But if these spells were limited to imagination, how many effects could be stacked?’

The only thing to do was to experiment and see for myself. So I focused on my shadow and began pulling mana from my well. As before, the energy was immediately drawn to the abyssal bean that was my affinity core and began spreading throughout the organ after passing the membrane; allowing me to grab hold of the now-attributed energy and begin withdrawing it radially before it could be tainted with death.

Now free of the spiritual organ, the shadow mana gathered and began condensing well within the walls of my strange, ethereal second body; yet still seemed to leak out of my physical body in the form of a black misty aura.

Again, without a proper scale, I knew not how much was too much or too little for any particular spell. So, I decided to continue gathering the energy while I thought up as many conditions as I could. To start, I wanted the Doppelgangers to be persistent dark mirrors of their original counterparts, as they needed to be capable of independent action and grow in tandem with their other half. Additionally, there needed to be a mental link or some sort of empathic bond with them. And they needed the ability to create umbral pockets in the shadow of their original to give them storage dimensions like mine. Above all, though, I wanted the Doppelgangers to be modular and capable of being recast into more complete versions as my knowledge grew over time.

A tall order, to be sure. But if Telin’s words were true, the possibilities were truly limitless.

With just over half of the mana in my well withdrawn and accumulated into a cloud of darkness within me, I reaffirmed my conditions on the spell before guiding the energy toward the soles of my feet. until the breach triggered. As if great floodgates had opened, a deluge of umbral energy poured into my shadow. Darkening and condensing it past what could be thought possible until the influx of energy came to resemble a half-elven-shaped pool of tar, hot and hardly boiling.

Seconds passed, and a singular bubble rose from the center of that pit, elongated, and began to take shape. First into a squat pillar of semi-solid darkness before splitting apart at the base and top to further condense into legs and arms. Followed by a head and a split-tailed coat, slacks, and loafers all made from the dark mass of mana ebbing from the floor.

With half of the energy within my ethereal body depleted, I began to feel a bit of fatigue in my mind. Like I’d just spent an hour or so running or exercising and the fatigue turned into stress that affected the brain only. I felt a bit… on edge. Annoyed like I was craving a cigarette, though there were physical effects as well. My body was a bit tenser than it was before. I noticed my jaw was clenched and both my heart rate and rate of respiration had negligibly but noticeably increased. Yet, like water flowing down the drain, ambient mana was cascading into my body. Passing through my mana pores to enter and recharge my well in quick succession and somewhat relieve the after-effects of casting what I assumed to be a powerful spell.

Meanwhile, my newly formed doppelganger was standing before me, mimicking my somewhat labored breath. The outline of its face, hair, and clothes were all identically matched to mine, up to the smallest detail. Only colored in differing shades of black and gray.

Somewhat slowly, I held out my fist and watched as he mirrored my movement to give me a fist bump. However, he quickly retracted his hand in tandem with mine after the vacantly cold texture of his shadow flesh shocked me. It was an amorphous material like rubber or gelatin that retained the solidity and hardness of a flesh and blood fist.

“Can you speak?” I asked my clone.

“I can.” The doppelganger whispered after a nod. But without moving his mouth. And the whisper sounded more like me impersonating a ghostly wail ringing in from both inside my head and from where the doppelganger stood.

“Nice.” I grinned. Then took a few steps away from him. “Let’s see what else you can-”

“I see you’ve finished your assignment.” A gruff voice came floating in from behind me.

My Doppelganger shifted his head to see around me while I turned to see Grandpa Lich stepping in from the shadows.

“I have.” I nodded, turning to fully face him. “I’ve completed my other assignments as well. I now know about mana wells and pores and know that this stress I feel is Mana Fatigue at work. I learned of the basic spells. The opening of the gates and humanity gaining affinity cores. The abilities of non-humans. And of the basic spells.”

“It’s only been a few days, Amun.” He laughed in despair and disbelief.

“It’s not as if I have anything else to do besides wander around and train.” I shrugged. “I’m bored.”

“You’re bored.” He shook his head this time, laughing again. “You can have anything you want; be it games or toys or anything that brings you joy. And you’re bored.” He paused to erupt a bit in boisterous laughter before stepping forth to place his bear paw of a hand on my shoulder. “You are the Grand Duke of Odissi, Amun. If you want or need something, all you need is to say so.”

“Very well.” I greedily nodded. “I have no interest in games and toys. What I need is information and experience. I need access to a library. I need to go hunting with Gerolt. I need the freedom to explore outside of the estate. And I need my vassals here so we can train together.”

Grandpa Lich gripped my shoulder tighter to give me a vigorous shake. “Acknowledged and understood!” He grinned madly. Then released my shoulder to begin pacing back and forth before me. Now,” he said at his pivot point. “Are you ready to continue your lessons?"

“Yes, Sir!” I bowed. Spurring forth his enthusiasm.

“Judging from your shadow clone, you have a grasp on withdrawing mana from your well and out of your core to produce darkness. But I wish to teach you one more shadow spell before we move on to death. A simple reinforcement spell that I call, Wraith Form. Though, you can call it whatever you like.”

“Very well.” I nodded, settling on the same name before pulling the mana from my well.

“Once you withdraw the darkness and it begins accumulating in an aura around you, focus on infusing it into your physical body. Distributed evenly amongst all your parts.”

Like before, the energy began gathering in my ethereal second body, resulting in an umbral aura wafting from my body like steam. Following the pointer given, I began pulling the energy inward, forcing it from the spirit and into my flesh.

“That’s enough.” Grandpa Lich held up a grizzled palm.

I stopped the flow of mana at once. Yet continued pulling residual shadow mana into my physical body before relaxing my focus.

“Try to move about.” Grandpa Lich gestured to his side. “Try to jump.”

I’d already been turning about in place when he gave the instruction and during that time, I noticed that my body felt… airy. Lighter as if it were no longer made of flesh and blood. Following his words, I hopped upwards and almost yelped as I rapidly gained altitude and came to a rest near the rooftops of the training court.

I felt a burst of shadow energy bloom below me and suddenly saw my grandfather rising up to my level, black clouds wafting and waving in place of his legs. “Reinforcing the body with shadow mana essentially transforms us into phantoms. As the name suggests, this Wraith Form gives our bodies ghostly qualities. Regular attacks will pass right through us. We can freely fly through the air and can even pass through walls or the ground. Only in darkness are we invisible, however. And of course, this form is strengthened in such a case.”

“Amazing.” I gasped.

“Indeed.” He grinned. Then grabbed me by the wrist to pull me into the nearest shadow. “Now come. It is time you familiarize yourself with death.”