Blood and Magic

[Susan Daunt]

The day after being shown the magelight spell Susan fidgeted outside of Mr. Freeman's office waiting for him to show up to his office hours, the amulet he had given to her in a jacket pocket. Her blue eyes seethed with lowkey frustration and concern, far cry from her usual cheerful demeanor.

She had to be able to get this. It wasn't like it was anything hard like keeping six longknives in combat use at once, but... Hopefully Mr. Freeman's soothing voice covered a wise mind, too. That would really help.

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

At slightly more than a minute before office hours were scheduled to start, there was a click from the door and a gentle breeze blew it open. Inside the bookshelf-lined room, Professor Freeman was hunched over a large bowl carved from a solid block of obsidian. The bowl was hemispherical, supported by three legs carved in Maori style into grinning faces, and filled perfectly to the brim with water.

Professor Freeman sighed and straightened up, a little tired. (Though whether it was from punching a clear signal completely through the planet or due to the person on the other side was anyone's guess.) When he noticed Susan, his face brightened.

"Miss Daunt!" he said. "What brings you by?"

[Susan Daunt]

The Daunt scion stood up and entered the office, trying and badly failing to mask her general tiredness and frustration, "I don't get the magelight spell, Mr. Freeman. Why whatever power I'm tapping keeps making it blow up all at once whenever I forget to focus on all the special runes you added to it or I try to move it or change it's color or... Or... It's like trying to grapple a troll with one hand while holding up a roof post with the other or performing a three-blade juggle while dodging, one thing too much to do at once..."

Susan took a deep breath, mustering her self-control a little "I get the theory behind it, Mr. Freeman, I really do, but... It's so hard. And if this is as easy as the others made it look and basic as you made it sound... Help?"

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

"It's really not as easy as it looks," Professor Freeman said. "I'm honestly quite surprised that as many people picked it up as quickly as they did."

He paused for a moment, and gestured towards the chair opposite the table.

"Please, come in." He said. "At least at this point, the real difficulty comes not from understanding the theory but in translating the words I'm saying into what the magic should feel like. You're exercising muscles that you may not have even noticed before this week, and and trying to find what abstract words like "control" and "flow" feel like. You also seem to have a very... assertive internal reservoir of power."

"Don't worry," he continued. "This is the hardest lesson of the semester, and you definitely have the focus and the willpower to succeed."

[Susan Daunt]

Susan sat down and nodded slightly. Focus and willpower were expected. She wouldn't have been sent here if she lacked those. But... "Is it possible I could permanantly hurt this resevoir before I can get control of it? Warm up exercises I should do? I don't want to do anything stupid to myself, especially if it could injure the bloodline abilities I need to do my duty. Good training practises are everything, I've always been taught..."

She frowned deeply at that, looking up at her teacher.

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

Professor Freeman thought for a moment.

"Reservoirs that are both hereditary and individual are very rare - it's much more frequent that a family will share a reservoir, or that a mage will acquire his own. In most cases, though, a reservoir is a flexible thing. Draw power from it and it will refill, keep exercising it like that and its capacity will grow. Draining a reservoir entirely is massively tiring, but it's only when one tries to keep drawing on power after that when serious injuries are caused. Unless it's a very, very odd reservoir, you will know well before you approach that point. So, yes, it is possible that you could be doing yourself damage, but it's very unlikely."

"In the meanwhile, though, we are faced with an odd paradox: To learn to control power, you must control power. Until you know how to control power, you cannot control your innate power. There are a few techniques invented for such situations, but I'm not sure how well they will work with someone as strong-willed as yourself..."

[Susan Daunt]

"What kind of techniques, Mr. Freeman?" the Daunt scion asked, not liking the sounds of that disclaimer one bit, but reassured that she wasn't, probably, maiming her own or, and this excited her a little, her family's pool of power. To sacrifice yourself was one thing, but to sacrifice others on your behalf...

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

"Well," Professor Freeman said, "the usual group of techniques boil down to variations on the same basic theme: using my abilities to slow or even stop the flow of magic out of your reservoir. This becomes problematic because the connection between you and it is buried very deep in your psyche - you would have to suppress as many of your defenses as possible and ignore my breaking through the remainder, all while casting magic as well."

Professor Freeman decided to leave out the fact that he'd seen such 'training' destroy minds in the past - if the student was strongly oriented around their mental defenses, and the teacher ignored the warning signs, massive damage could (and had) happened.

"There are others, but they range from the potentially dangerous to the completely untested. Any situation involving the imposition of control..."

Professor Freeman lost his train of thought, distracted by something behind Susan.

"Would you pass me that tablet?" He asked, pointing towards a heavy, fired clay tablet on the bottom shelf. Cuneiform writing covered the top surface, in patterns seemingly arcane, but very odd. There was almost none of the geometric complexity of usual spells, instead (if one happened to be able to read Akkadian) the spell's structure was written into a poem of some length.

[Susan Daunt]

Not wanting to think about having to let someone else into her head to control her little problem, the Daunt scion turned in her seat and handed over the tablet without visible strain, feeling the feathery tracing of residual magic in the artifact before putting down in front of the professor.

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

Professor Freeman blew the light coating of dust off the top of the tablet and read it quickly, and then paused briefly to think.

"I think this will work," he said. "Hypnomancy - the art of messing with dreams. Made doubly useful by the fact that dreaming about magic can be both relatively accurate and entirely removed from real-world limitations... Would you like to give it a try?"

[Susan Daunt]

"It... might be interesting, Mr. Freeman," Susan answered, clearly having second and even third thoughts about the concept but too disciplined to entirely discard the concept out of hand, "If there are no reliable excercises I can do to improve my control myself."

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

"Unfortunately, the only way to exercise control is to keep doing what you're doing now - casting as complicated spells as you can over and over again. It's the unfortunate problem that those with power too often encounter - because it's too strong, initially, to control, learning the very fundamentals of controlling power is difficult."

"On the bright side, your power seems content to only do anything when you're trying to cast magic, which removes all the pressure that dealing with wild abilities so often includes. It's up to you if you want to continue as you have been or if you'd like to try working with my help. Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet."

[Susan Daunt]

It wasn't easy by any measure, but Daunts didn't flinch away from challenges and Mr. Freeman didn't seem like the kind of malicious mage she had been training to oppose. No way the Powers That Be would let someone like that teach children in so public a location, right? And it could really help to get over this hurdle so she could actually use this stuff...

"I trust you not to do anything more than help me," she answered softly with the ghost of a smile, "What do I have to do?"

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

"Sleep," Professor Freeman said, quietly casting a spell to cause exactly that. "You're about to have a very educational dream."

Another gesture, and the office door closed and locked itself. Casting the dreaming-spell itself took only a few moments, and then he too sank into a slumber.

For an environment, he chose an old memory - the top of the Tower of Stars, in Persian Babylon. Above, scattered clouds were tinted red by the setting sun. The brickwork city stretched out below, and on the far side of the Euphrates river, the great mass of the Hanging Gardens and the palace loomed in the twilight. Power - from the tiny and insignificant sources in the city to the massive ley-lines of the trade winds, the desert, and especially the river circled and bent around the tower. Now, to wait for Susan to appear.

[Susan Daunt]

With a slight pop of displaced dream physics, Susan appeared on the tower. She was dressed as she had been in Freeman's office, if just an inch or two taller due the fact she slightly bothered by her height.

Reach was important in a knife fight after all, and she might encounter someone who could easily cut her someday.

She looked around in fascinated wonder, normal good cheer buoyed up by fuzzy dream logic, before finally turning to face her teacher. "Oooooh. What is," she asked, pausing for quick thought, "Or *was* this place? It's nice looking."

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

"This is Babylon," Professor Freeman said, "during the reign of Darius the Great of Persia. The city was a great center of science and learning, and the building we are standing on top of, the Tower of Stars, was the first college of magic in history. And you have just earned the rank of Master mage from it."

Professor Freeman offered Susan a staff of cypress wood. As the sign of the rank, it glowed with promise and knowledge - to take it would be far more than just the act of picking up a stick.

[Susan Daunt]

Susan's eyes widened slightly, looking around her again, blond hair blowing in the breeze. She looked back at Mr. Freeman, licked her lips, and took the staff in one hand, quiet faith in the professor in her expression.

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

Multiple tomes' worth of knowledge were connected to the staff - through dream-logic, being promoted to the rank of Master meant that Susan must know everything that a master could be expected to know. Even though the details were blurred and would probably vanish entirely when Susan woke, the important stuff- how to control power - should stick.

"Now," Professor Freeman said, "Cast the light spell... from that power source." He gestured towards the massive ley-line running through the river. The Euphrates made for a relatively stable power source, but the raw scale of the thing would require control and precision to draw the right amount of power.

[Susan Daunt]

"Okay," answered the Daunt scion, closing her eyes and tightening her grip on the staff. She inhaled, she exhaled, and one act of will later, the magelight danced smoothly to life above her freehand, the vast torrent of power that was the river diverted away from the spell by a surprisingly easy but by no means simple step.

Who'd of thought it was just a matter as saying 'Please. No more for now.' the correct way?

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

Professor Freeman nodded appreciatively.

"And that's all there is to it," he said. "You may want to cast it a few more times before you wake up to be sure you remember it."

[Susan Daunt]

It took a little bit for Susan to process that, distracted by making the sphere buzz in little glowing circles around her head, flickering it up and down the humanly-visible spectrim of light. She checked herself and nodded, extinguishing the spell and casting it anew.

"This... this is incredible, Mr. Freeman," she murmured, trying to focus through the dream euphoria and confusion of implanted lore as she turned it into a drill like one of her knife routines, "I can see why it's so easy for some people to... just run wild... with this... Powers That Be, It's... Wow."

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

Professor Freeman nodded, appreciating the sentiment.

"I've been working magic for four and a half thousand years, and it never gets old. Why don't you try something a little more complex?"

With a wave of his hands, Professor Freeman conjured the pattern of a spell. It was a shield, multiple layers deep. Casting it would require balancing power flow to multiple places at the same time while keeping the shape of the spell in precise mental focus. It was easily a Journeyman-level spell, both in terms of power draw and complexity. Thanks to the wonders of dreaming, both those problems could be mostly handwaved away, leaving it an exercise in power control more than anything else.

[Susan Daunt]

That four and half thousand years thing made Susan blink, even through the dream haze, that same haze brushing it away before it could stick.

She extinguished her second magelight and focussed on the spell, the dream lore filling gaps that years of study might not have filled.

"Okay," the Daunt scion answered, before turning herself to the task, several layers of mystic barrier springing into existence in a hemispherical barrier in front of her. She frowned and focused her thoughts as the conflicting flows of power threatened to burst each other for a dozen painstaking heartbeats of thought. It built, bubbled, twisted at the edge of control like the river feeding it, and then... Hummed, like a well-tuned machine, stable past a certain threshold in this dreamscape.

She let out a breath and looked over to her teacher, an uncertain grin on her face asking 'did I do it right?'.

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

"Well," Professor Freeman said, also grinning. "It looks to be that way, but there's really only one way to give it a thorough testing..."

He stepped back and raised his own shields - slightly more complicated, but still following the same basic pattern of layered spheres. Some of them were geodesic domes, durable and rigid, while others were elastic and tough, and still more served more arcane purposes.

"Are you ready?" He asked.

[Susan Daunt]

"To fight you? With magic?" Susan asked with wide eyes, certain fundamental things kicking in even in dreams, despite the fog of lore and catalogs of fighting spells the mere possiblity brought kalediscopically to the edge of her mind.

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

"That is what I'm suggesting, yes," Professor Freeman said. "Certain consequences are... mitigated in dreams."

[Susan Daunt]

Susan's answer is a visible flicker in her shield as a half-dozen blood red energy daggers crackle into existence behind Professor Freeman's back and speed towards him. She sucked in a breath at the increase in mental strain, letting the dream logic cover the unlawful nature of a lethal attack from behind without warning.

She'd never take him head on though, not with her thoughts so jumbled though.

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

Thanks to prior experience with attempted backstabbings, Professor Freeman's shields extended all the way around him. Noting the impacts, he grabbed power and shot back with maybe more dramatic an attack than he'd intended: a levin-bolt. Like a lightning bolt but made of pure magical energy, laced with magical threads to control it and guide it, the bolt flashed across empty space and towards Susan.

[Susan Daunt]

Eeeep.

The bolt impacted with Susan's shield, popping the first two levels of the shield before fizzling away. A flicker of confusion danced through her thoughts at the decidedly odd sensation of power failing under outside pressure before she rallied and gathered energy within her barrier, pink light forming into a sphere that erupted straight at Freeman, a touch more oomph behind it than the previous daggers.

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

...pink?

That was an odd one. Professor Freeman shot back, aiming to skewer the whatever-it-was with an ice bolt. And then, just because opposites were fun, he reached deeper into his repertoire for a fun fire spell. While it started like an ordinary fireball, it quickly expanded to be larger than Susan's shield... and then opened a mouth full of crystalline teeth large enough to treat the entire shield like a jawbreaker.