The Way of the Sorcerer: A 'The Wandering Inn' Fanfiction

“Raaaatty ratty rat rat, rat rat rat, rat rat rat. Raaaatty ratty rat rat, cleaning up dead rat~”

A crow, indeed. The hummed track made this disgusting job a bit more tolerable. In actual fact, he didn’t really mind it that much; there was something about cleaning up your own magical mishap that was rather satisfying. He’d cottoned on to how the whole thing worked; he’d probably get a spell or two from this, which made it all worthwhile.

And therein lay the immediate issue. He, lately, had felt a curious uncomfortableness when he was in his magical element. ‘Uncomfortable’ wasn’t the best description; he felt the magical equivalent of wearing clothes that were a size too small. Casting spells and activating Skills were fine, there’s no question about it—but it was in the… acquisition of new magic that this discomfort arose. He felt that the otherwise parallel trajectory of the calibre of spells alongside his magical capabilities was starting to veer.

Ivory had read Flowers for Algernon in school. Not because he was studying it, but because everyone had laptops, he was bored, and it was easily found online. It had given him nightmares for a week following its completion; the whole concept of Charlie being conscious of the rapid decline of his newfound intellect, and having to live knowing that he was forever ‘dumb’.

It made him shiver just thinking about it, now.

He felt a sort of kinship with Charlie, for all that their situations were wildly different. He didn’t know why this was happening, only that it was; it didn’t concern him much at the moment, for one can still get away with wearing clothes a size too small.

Would that Ivory had had the time to compose a fuller letter to his serpentine friend! She’d have known what the problem was at once, and would no doubt have laughed at the folly of his subconscious over-reliance.

Alas. The fact that, he thought, he could even use magic was enough for him; the last thing he’d want to do is to bite the hand that was feeding him so well.

“A job well done,” Ivory proclaimed, head held high. An assortment of water, blood, death-goop and rat parts lay in a far corner of Linda’s garden that was ripe for future floral expansion. She had approximately a hectare of combined garden space; only a quarter of it was being used so far, the rest was just dirt.

Ivory checked over his shoulder instinctively, like one would if they were wanting to pass gas in public. Only, this was Ivory, and such a scouting manoeuvre meant one thing.

“No people, and nothing too flammable…”

Another 360 degree check. All clear.

“[Zont’s Fire Pufferfish].”

A red orb began forming at the end of Ivory’s wand, as if inflating a balloon. It suddenly snapped in size, detaching from the end of his wand, the size of a basketball. It was a transparent, fluorescent red and, unlike ‘regular’ pufferfish, it had no more than ten spines, none of which were very big. It had two big, angry looking eyes that made it look like it wanted to be anywhere but here; there were no other discernible biological features, such as a mouth or nose.

It hovered there, staring into space, looking intimidating. So much so that Misoe got a bit creeped out and decided to fly a few metres away and play in the dirt. Looking in the other direction.

With a flick of his wand, one of the spines shot out with terrifying speed into the pile of rat detritus. Nothing much seemed to have happened, so he walked up to it and had a closer look.

“Oh my.”

The murky liquid was bubbling where the spine had shot through, steam rising from it. A nearby paw, which had drifted away due to the force of the strike, was singed slightly.

Very interesting, he thought. A powerful spell that could no doubt do some real damage, though he wondered what differentiated this from a normal [Fire Pufferfish]. This version, adjusted by Zont, clearly had more functionality from its progenitor spell. The almanac didn’t mention the thing that Ivory innately knew this could do, though.

“Uppsy,” Ivory said, dashing over to a dirty Misoe and picking her up, heading back another ten metres. No, 20.

With another swish of his wand, the magical summon wafted over into ratmire, bobbing up and down from the light force with which it landed.

“Cover your ears.”

Her flippers thwacked against her body, trying to reach her little ear-holes. He then put her under his armpit, with the aid of her own levitation, and covered his own ears.

His wand, pointing awkwardly behind his ear, swished again. The [Fire Pufferfish] lit up brightly—

Boom.

A great ten-foot high, bright orange pillar of flame erupted with a deafening explosion of sound.

Ivory only saw a glimpse of it before he averted his gaze before he was blinded by it. Even from such a distance away, he felt like he was standing in front of an active furnace.

In actuality, the explosive pillar of flame only lasted a few seconds before it put itself out, including the embers that had been spat out onto the dirt.

He opened his eyes, and all could scarcely make anything out. Almost the entirety of his vision was bright white that slowly decayed; a dial-up vision experience to see the aftermath of his spell.

But, as before, there was a little thing called consequences of one’s actions.

“WHAT THE HELL!”

Linda was sprinting over, having heard the unmistakable sound of an explosion.

If you were deaf, and were looking at the aftermath of this little incident, you’d not have thought that a pillar of fire had exploded onto the scene. There was no obvious crater, no uneven buildup of dirt, no residual fire… there was, though, a nicely dug hole, perhaps in preparation for the planting of a lovely tree.

“What in the fuck did you do now?” she said a bit less frantically, after seeing that Ivory and Misoe were fine, but most importantly that he hadn’t really damaged her future allotment.

Ivory rubbed at his eyes, trying unsuccessfully to get rid of the few white spots in his vision, and looked up at Linda.

“Blew up the rat.”

Linda closed her eyes for a good while trying, herself, not to explode.

“Please,” she said, sitting down cross legged next to him, “stop with the everything.”

She waved her arms around madly.

“Did it even work?” she asked.

“I—let’s check.”

Misoe landed on Ivory’s head, now fully clean, before they both got up and headed over to the site.

“Wowee.”

“What.”

The rectangular hole, that looked like it had been dug by a child, had no trace of anything other than some blackened dirt, the only evidence of the spell.

“Unless you tell me beforehand, and get a deafening and privacy dome spell or something, don’t do this again! Fucking hell, you’re lucky that the back garden isn’t visible to the city, else they’d have seen it. You’re gonna be the one explaining this to the [Farmers] if they come here wanting to know what this shit was!”

A genuine reprimand, and a deserving one, he thought. There was sporadic farmland outside of the city, but it was mostly just… basic land. From his current vantage point, he couldn’t actually see evidence of any other settlement other than the city in the distance. It wasn’t as if the place was a mess of hills, too: it was just, well, vast.

The big one, of course, was causing a bona fide explosion so close to a city that was fresh into its [Serial Killer] phase. ‘I didn’t know the spell would do that’ was a poor excuse at this stage of the game.

“You’re banned from big magic for today," she said, getting up and brushing the dirt from her skirt. "C’mon, Nozumu’s out the front with me. I have first dibs on your enchanting garbage.”

“Yes, miss.”

—————————————————

Ivory was flanked by Linda and Nozumu, all lying on deck chairs; Nozumu was looking most undignified as he slept, beak wide open. Linda had on a pair of designer sunglasses and was catching up on some more Merchant Guild newsletters. She had moved her chair out by a few metres so she could tan up, a leisure activity she had taken up since coming to this world since England wasn’t exactly bathed in sunlight very often. There was still a suggestion of warmth before the Winter truly hit. Misoe sat by her feet, enjoying the warmth.

A bit tired that Ivory was, the fire of magic roared inside him. He stared, cross legged, at the fat little pouch of jewellery; the thought of his Shocktowel came to mind, and how he had totally neglected that little branch of magic that he had unlocked. [Imbue Object: Electricity] was very probably a rudimentary enchantment, but it had given him some proficiency in the magical application of enchantments, thanks to his levels.

If the journey of the enchanter was akin to learning to walk, then the imbuing of an element into an item was probably the learning of how legs worked, before crawling was even on the table.

Idle thoughts cast aside, he plucked a bronze ring out of the pouch and examined it. Study, light, a bit cheap looking—yep, it was a bronze ring, alright.

“[Detect Magic].”

Now, he didn’t distrust the Mage’s Guild, but he liked to have it running regardless. Of course, it was not magical at all, though the great glow of Misoe to his left did throw him off at first.

The question, now, was what next? How did you imbue an item with a spell? It was a rhetorical question depending on whom you asked; an [Enchanter] or Wistram-trained [Mage] could tell you quite easily. Ivory was neither, and his class was kind of based on winging it—something he’d learned was seemingly built into whatever force that governed Skills and spells. He didn’t need to know how it would work, and chances are it probably would work. Most people didn’t know how a computer really worked, yet it wasn’t hard to use. Point being, knowledge of processes was mostly irrelevant to someone from Earth, so learning the basics of magic in this world was actually a lot easier than normal.

The next question was: what spell? Surely a ‘Tier 0’ one, for all that he didn’t think of his magic in tiers. But what of his spells were tier 0? If Tier = mana usage + complexity, then [Light] or [Water Spray] would qualify. [Light] was boring, so [Water Spray] it was.

“[Brandish Wand].”

The acorn floated out of his pocket and morphed into its wand form before sitting itself in Ivory’s trip.

“Lazy sod,” Linda called out. She now had a reflective mirror angled towards her face.

“I’d be more concerned about cancer,” Ivory jeered back.

“Nice try, but I’m using alchemy-sunscreen.”

Defeated, Ivory looked back at his ring, as Linda grinned victoriously behind her mirror.

A Ring of [Water Spray]. What would the functionality of that actually be? He… doubted it was drinkable water, but if it was it probably wouldn’t be nutritious. That was a concept from most fantasy he had consumed on Earth, so it stood to reason that it was the case now. That meant it also was not suitable for watering plants. What, then?

A dribbled [Water Spray] to the face later gave him his answer. It wasn’t ice cold, but it was cool enough to splash on your face. The would-be [Entrepreneur] thought there could be something to it, if only maybe for kids playing with each other. Cooling runes and other magical solutions had already existed, presumably forever, after all.

Anyway. Ivory closed his eyes and concentrated on the objective: imbue this ring with the capability to activate [Water Spray]. That meant mana, water-mana, and a way to anchor it all on this flimsy ring. There was far less surface area on the ring than on the towel, but the difference was more than made up by the myriad Skills and levels he now had.

Like any good [Sorcerer], he was pushing in mana and hoping for the best.

It was akin to a being in a pitch-black room. You’d carefully shuffle about, arms extended, waiting to feel something familiar. There’s the bed; that’s for sleeping—that’s a cupboard, there should be a thing to pull or slide to open it… yep, that’s open. Now, where are the clothes? Nope, this is a linen cupboard, there you go. Sidling along that cupboard, you almost fall over as your foot collides with something small, but solidly heavy. The hell is that? Okay, step over that thing and keep going…that’s surely to be a door knob—perhaps what you kicked was a stopper of some kind? Twist that door knob and pull. Nope, push…

Ivory shivered as goosebumps ever so suddenly erupted on his arms. He’d done it, somehow: it took barely 30 seconds of concentration and he barely felt a dent in his mana that he could tell. The ring shone a dim blue, the tell-tale sign of magical quality, no doubt also influenced by the water element.

Could this have been below him to try? Was that why it was so, well, easy? Perhaps [Water Jet] would have been more appropriate.

He shook his head, trying not to get ahead of himself. Test it out first.

“Linda, come try my new thing.”

Ivory got up and walked over to her, who had placed her reflective mirror down and took off her sunnies.

“Ring of [Water Spray]. Try it out?”

She accepted the artefact and looked up at Ivory.

“Have you tried it out yet? Of course you have. There’s no way you would just give me an untested prototype. There we go… a lovely fit.”

She held up her middle finger.

“Now what?”

Err.

“You, um, point your finger and say ‘[Water Spray]!’”

Linda did know how worn artefacts worked enough to know that the magic didn’t actually come from wherever the artefact was on your body, so she kept her finger in the same position. Worst case scenario, they both get a bit wet.

“[Water Spray].”

A [Wind Umbrella] was on the tip of his tongue as he saw the ring activate. Linda, too, raised her other arm to shield herself.

The good news was that the ring worked—water was conjured.

The… neutral… news was that Linda was incorrect, and the water did actually come from the ring itself.

The bad news was that the enchantment was a catastrophic flop.

Instead of a stream of water spraying out in the direction she envisaged, the ring on her finger began… leaking. And not like a bathroom tap that wasn’t turned all the way off.

Linda, bug-eyed, quickly dropped her arm so it wouldn’t travel down it. A constant, weak stream of water was leaking from the ring, quickly making quite the puddle on the ground. She looked at Ivory, then to a still sleeping Nozumu, then back to the ground.

“That is quite shit.”

After a pause, she met Ivory’s gaze, who was visibly holding in laughter, and belly-laughed herself that broke his shoddily made dam.

It wasn’t even that funny. If anything, it was really quite pathetic—an [Enchanter] would have disciplined a level 2 apprentice for that mishap. Let alone a level 18 magic user with powerful augmentative Skills. A [Magic User] would have done better!

But oh, how they laughed. Ivory lay flat on the ground, tears in his eyes, as Linda sat back down, holding her head in her free hand.

The cacophonous revelry woke Nozumu up, who sat up immediately. He checked himself for any wet feathers—all dry—and then went right back to sleep.

“Ah man,” Ivory croaked, red faced. “When’s it gonna stop?!”

Linda looked through the gap of her fingers and began silently laughing, setting Ivory off again.

The ring, after almost two minutes, abruptly stopped. There was a large pool of water beside Linda’s deck chair now; it would have been two litres total, easily.

“Back to the drawing board with that, then…”

——————————————

Interestingly, Linda had opted to keep the ring; true to her word that she had first dibs on his first creation. She had told him that artefacts were rechargeable, and that she’d learn how to toggle it on and off. She’d also declined getting a better one when he (eventually) got it right; there was only one first time, and it would be good for washing one’s hands in a pinch.

The ‘mistake’ that Ivory realised he was making was that he was focussing on the enchanting process itself, rather than the enchantment. This was categorically not a mistake, as any [Enchanter] or learned [Mage] would have said! To present it as a finished product was the real error.

Luckily for him, this wasn’t one of the myriad [Mage] schools, so there was no punishment for what would have been an otherwise grievous failure of submission.

The next few rings were the subject of some intense scrutiny. The first one cracked into a few pieces after a most improper method of infusing mana into the ring: pouring large sums mana into it until something happened. So, really, it was a success.

The third went rather interestingly. Ivory exhibited such confidence in his success that it drew Linda and Misoe over.

“Go on, then. We’re taking cover.”

Ivory put the ring on his index finger and stretched out his arm away from the house. He already knew the spell, so he didn’t want to recite or think the spell, other than picture how he wanted the ring’s spell to cast.

“Here goes. Ring!”

After the awkward activation phrase, from just in front of his hand shot out a clumsy splash of water, akin to someone slap-uppercutting the surface of the water from below.

Linda was pleasantly surprised—in the space of just ten minutes he had gone from UTI dribble to… Giant’s sneeze.

He activated the ring again, and twice more after that, before it ran out of juice.

“You know,” Linda said, looking rather thoughtful, “that may just be better than the actual spell for an artefact. Would be a ruddy good move for any creeps at the club. Make me a few, kindly.”

Ivory could smell the potential to level up… but there was an issue.

“I could try, but I don’t know what spell this would be… [Splash]? [Water Splash]? I might accidentally just be too good and perfect the enchantment, but I’ll do my best.”

Linda rolled her eyes to the point that it was almost audible

“You’re getting too big for your boots. You need to go get humbled at the fight club.”

“Aww,” Ivory replied dourly, “but I’m on a roll!”

“Not now, you twat.”

They both grinned and went back to their respective leisure activity.

Ivory was starting to really like Linda. It’s not that he didn’t before, but even after such a short time, they seemed to gel really well together. Perhaps it was by necessity, and that she was relieving a sense of homesickness that he didn’t realise was simmering inside him.

It was also nice to have a ‘break’, as it were, from being around Nozumu for such a long time. He remembered his parents once telling him that such close proximity to close friends could lead to the friendship fracturing. Ivory had gone on a European holiday with some schoolmates after he had finished his schooling, and his parents were shocked that no one punched on or had any major arguments.

That was on Earth, and this is in a new world—what he likely felt was the odium of cabin fever. Perhaps he could make a small trinket for Nozumu?

Maybe when he had a better grasp on the process. For now, it was time to throw mana on the proverbial wall and see what sticks.

“[Bronze Chakram]. Carefully—”

As the serrated mana began to graze Ivory’s thumb, he heard a shrill squeal. The spell flew up into the air and dissipated as Ivory threw his arms up in fright.

He turned around and saw one of the [Singers] with a hand covering her mouth, as the remaining eight were wondering what the hell the problem was.

“Steady on, Jane!” Linda called out as she ran over to her. Before she could get to her, Jane pointed a trembling, accusatory finger at Ivory, who was a deer in headlights.

“What?”

“Y-you… Your hand!”

That’s all she could manage before she swaddled herself.

All eyes were on Ivory, who had to think on his feet.

“Just cutting my nails?”

He held up his hand and pointed to his thumbnail, which was… well, a nail.

Jane saw and this quickly muttered an apology, unheard to any but herself, and took off back to the city. The rest of the women, save for Zuria, followed suit while waving and mouthing sorrys and goodbyes.

“She thought you were self-harming,” Zuria said, apologetically, “Poor girl. Everyone loved you by the way, Ivory—but it seems we are off. See you next time.”

“Uh, bye!”

Zuria jogged to catch up with her group as Linda came back over. He leant back on his deckchair, regretting wanting to play with a [Purify Blood] enchantment.

“I feel very overstimulated,” Ivory said, covering his eyes with his arm. “Are you expecting any other visitors today…?”

“Thankfully, no. I’m not expecting Tanne for a few days, so we should get some peace and quiet.”

Linda shivered loudly.

“Bloody Winter. Knew we’d feel it eventually. Inside, inside. Why were you cutting your damn fingernails with a damn spell, as well?”

Ivory chuckled nervously as Linda tapped Nozumu on the head, startling him back into the waking world.

“Ring of [Purify Blood]. Would that get me lynched?”

She sighed.

“I don’t know with you. You’re not some teen horror character—no one just slices themself to get blood. Nozumu, how did you deal with this idiot?”

“With effort,” he groggily replied.

“Stuff yez all. Missy gets me, don’t you? Hey!”

Misoe floated past Ivory and into Nozumu’s arms, looking particularly devious.

“This is my villain arc. You’ll all be sorry!”

He waved his arms around dramatically and gave everyone the finger. Linda returned the gesture with an ‘up yours’ fore and middle finger gesture, accompanied by a loud raspberry.

Nozumu and Misoe, viewing this strange display, just shook their heads and went inside. Weirdos.

————————————————-

By sunset, Ivory had managed to create a whole lot of junk. Truly useless artefacts that a child may find humour in for a few minutes, before being confiscated by their parents.

On Ivory’s balcony table sat four rings and two necklaces. Each ring had a simple elemental enchantment, and in each necklace there was, after some excruciating forbearance, a Tier 1 spell.

It was simple to recreate the dribble-ring he had first made—to make it functional, however, was a bit trickier. The Ring of Water, as he called it, could generate approximately 500mL of water, which could be activated to produce as little as 20mL at a time. Useful for hand washing, flicking water at an adversary, or to cool yourself off by a light washing of the face.

The Ring of Wind came most easily to him. It could, when activated, triple the amount of air generated when waving your hand. Useful for misplacing annoying insects or, again, cooling off by fanning yourself with your hand. You’d get a good 20 hand waves out of it.

The Ring of Static was quite a bit of fun—15 of your finest static zaps from your fingertip. Best of all, it could be recharged independently of Ivory: rub a particularly hairy carpet for a little while to get some charges back.

Most useless was the Ring of Fire: it could warm your finger for five minutes. It was a dreadful facsimile of the Ring of Warmth that had been pilfered from him some time ago.

Now, the necklaces. They were interesting: for whatever reason, they could hold ‘more’ of an enchantment than the rings. They looked to be made of the same thing, and the amulet itself couldn’t have been much better in size than the ring, but it nonetheless gave him a bigger magical breadth. The ‘chain’ of the necklace Ivory did not try to alter; it was so thin that he doubted he could fit enough mana to power a tenth of a spell.

The first was a Necklace of [Detect Life]. It was categorically inferior to a high quality (comparatively) one from the Mage’s Guild, but it could still be used a few times before depleting. This was tricky to make, as it wasn’t just a matter of ‘apply elemental mana and you’re good’—this required a rather confusing process where he would cast the spell himself and [Extend] it, in the hopes that it would either 1) imprint itself onto the amulet or 2) make him understand how the spell functioned.

Neither happened, unfortunately, but he was eventually successful in just… pushing the spell into the necklace and anchoring it there. It was inefficient, and used far more mana than actually casting the spell, but that’s what a mana potion was for. He’d not realised his reserves were starting to dwindle until then, but was surprised it hadn’t happened sooner. The day had been one of much magic, but his mana pool was growing steadily.

The second lesser artefact he had created was enchanted with a spell he had obtained while sailing back to Terandria from Drath. He’d thought for quite a little bit while watching the sunset from his lovely private balcony on what spell to try. He was confident he could make [Cooling Wind] work, but he was conscious of the fact that he was only really casting the same spells over and over. He threw his wand to the wind—no, really, he did, but [Brandished] it back—and decided to sift through the rolodex of spells he’d not yet really cast. Or, cast at all.

In terms of spell acquisition, the vast majority of them were obtained on said boating trip. We’re not talking 20 or 30 spells, here—the number was just shy of 100. And the vast majority of those spells were ones he learned, not obtained via levelups. There was a difference.

And that difference was this, if you were wondering. Ivory had, as the eloquent well-studied user of metaphors that he was, described it to Nozumu thusly. Put simply, learning a spell was when you functionally cast an existing spell without knowing it, vs. being rewarded one by merit of levelling up.

“Imagine I didn’t just automatically get a Skill to read this world’s language for a moment. Yes, I know, ha ha. So, I have an idea of what a written language looks like, so I’m tracing general shapes onto some paper. At some point, I’ll accidentally make the right letter, and whoever's there tells me I have it right. I’ll eventually then correctly spell a word—nice, go me, so I’ll then know that word. Perhaps the word is ‘bed’, which I incorrectly assume sounds like ‘bead’: I’ll get corrected, and whallah: I’ve learned a word. Think that, but magic. I, without a Skill or spell, conjure a small ball of fire, mix in a few [Lightshow] orbs and throw them into the air, producing some colourful little bursts of fire. When my head touched the pillow that night: [Fireworks]. I was actively working towards that result, but the point remains. And then there’s obtaining a spell, which is just through levelling up. It could be something I’ve been working towards, or something random, like [Check Temperature]—bloody thing uses Fahrenheit—or [Ominous Wind].”

Nozumu had been a bit flummoxed, as one may expect. What one may not expect, though, is that the main reason was not due to the word vomit and questionable metaphor, but because this was new information for him. The Drathian syllabus included much of what would be considered ‘lost’ or ‘secret’ information on levelling—which Nozumu was privy to, as a student of the academy—but apparently not everything. That this young Human knew, who’d barely been here a season…

Needless to say, it had cause for him to respect Ivory that bit more. Not to mention the peculiar spells he was capable of casting—despite not caring much for the magical arts, he was still a knowledgeable sort.

[Gravetender’s Grip], which afforded the recipient a strong grip on whatever they were holding. [Gravetender] was a rare class of antiquity, when the dead were given much deserved veneration. Dropping one’s tools on the resting place of someone’s loved one was a sign of an irreverent [Gravetender].

[A Word on the Wind] allowed Ivory to send a short message to someone he could see, being delivered with a little puff of air.

[Melt Ice], which did exactly what it says on the packet. It didn’t utilise heat to melt the ice: it just accelerated its natural melting speed based on the ambient temperature. It wouldn’t work in, say, Cenidau.

[Detect Air Current], as before. It was always windy on that damn boat, so there was no point.

[Petrel Feather]. Probably the strangest one of the lot. A Tengu Petrel had seen fit to try and eat Misoe as they relaxed on the back deck. It hadn’t expected the [Gust] that tickled it, nor the Human that jumped on top of its light snack. From its point of view, it was doing the Human a favour—it wasn’t uncommon for a seal or walrus to hitch a ride on a boat or ship, and [Sailors] tended to wait until it got bored and left, rather than try and engage it. Instead, it perched uncomfortably on the boat’s railings, figuring this was off limits and inspecting the situation. Its heightened intelligence, courtesy of its namesake race, was lost on Ivory, as when he looked up there was naught but a gargantuan feather the length of his arm before him. Naturally, Ivory played with it, realising it was… windy. The next day, the feather was gone, replaced with the spell in his mind. In truth, he’d merely forgotten all about it—the feather was not on his bed-side table, so he’d thought he merely dreamt it. The sheer number of spells he was receiving almost every night tended to drown each other out.

[Detect Minute Life], for when [Detect Life] didn’t work. This was the runner-up spell for the second amulet, as it happened. In Hidenori’s cabin were some curious plants that swayed, rather unnaturally so. [Detect Life] didn’t work, and Ivory actually got an approving word from him. It was full of tiny, tiny spiders that acted as a hivemind, powered by the plant itself, which of course generated the arachnids. Ivory hated this, but quite quickly altered the spell to, well, detect the most minute of life. He’d tried it again on yoghurt before the spell was cemented in his mind, and decided it wasn’t as good as Hidenori purported.

[Flash of Darkness] was, in spirit, a love/hate letter to the flash setting on his phone. Playing around with [Light] made Ivory wonder: if light magic was a thing, surely it went both ways? And both ways it did. The spell disabled light for a split second in a small cone, which didn’t sound like much, because it wasn’t, but it’d disorient you. Learning this spell actually gave him two other lesser spells: [Mote of Darkness] and [Flashlight].

The last spell Ivory had reminisced was the one he decided to use: the rather neurotically named [Evoke Sense: Ocean (Smell)]. It produced the unmistakable scent of the ocean which wafted about in the air. He’d tried (and succeeded) to produce this smell for posterity, though living in a seaside city defeated the purpose of it for the time being.

And that was exactly why he chose it. Firstly, to see if he actually could, and how nice would it be to be able to smell the ocean, wherever you were? I’d be nice, one day.

Six pieces of jewellery lay on the small table, a symbol of Ivory’s increasing magical proficiency. He’d established that there were limits to his magic at present, which just meant that he would be able to do even more in time. Perhaps the biggest thing he’d taken from this process was that he was not utilising enough of his spells—specifically, the spell schools he had access to.

__________________________

Ivory yawned loudly. Twilight was upon the world, and he realised a few seconds before his stomach rumbled loudly that he was quite hungry.

“Shit,” he muttered. He’d never been so focussed on something that he’d forgotten about eating, well, ever; it was just on dinnertime, but he hadn’t had lunch. Ivory looked down at the six pieces of jewellery, glimmering a beautiful purple—it juxtaposed rather starkly with the cheap metal it shone on.

They jingle-jangled as Ivory put them in his Bag of Holding. A whomf followed as he collapsed on the bed with Misoe in tow.

“Bit of a nap and th—”

His comment to Misoe was interrupted by a knock knock knock.

“Come in!”

Any other door would have creaked open. This one soundlessly opened, revealing the avian features of Nozumu.

“Linda wants you to come down and help me prepare our dinner.”

Ivory sat upright and nodded slowly.

“I don’t know how much help I’ll be, but sure!”

“She wants today to be ‘Japanese’ night.”

He saw the look in Ivory’s face and elaborated.

“I did explain that Drath is a fusion of many Earth cultures.”

“Amazing. Well, I can’t cook at all, so you’ll have to tell me what to do.”

“That is fine.”

Ivory was glad Nozumu was here—else it’d be a few mistreated eggs for dinner.