Even though it had been darker than midnight when we’d left, I’d managed to leave some Trace Glyphs on the trees so I could find my way back to the clearing if I wanted or needed to. I’d done it because I realized that the clearing would be a good, private place to do some actual spellcasting. After all, it was far from the main road, yet close enough to the Codexium that we could get help if needed. It gave me the privacy to figure out exactly how my Discipline worked.
And how to speed it up.
Nimbus, however, did not seem convinced.
“But what if the bandits are also waiting for us there?” said Nimbus as he hopped beside me. He sounded anxious. “Maybe they set a trap to capture us if we came back. They don’t even need to be there themselves. Delayed trap spells are a thing, you know.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Yes, but Jezebel was probably their only Codexer, and she’s dead. I can’t imagine the bandits want to go back somewhere where they got their butts handed to them—twice—by Salome. Just the possibility of facing Salome alone again should be enough to scare them off from coming back here.”
“I guess,” said Nimbus, who still didn’t sound entirely convinced. He hopped onto a tree stump and looked around. “Where’s Jezebel’s body?”
That was a fair question. When we had left the clearing last night, we hadn’t bothered to do anything about Jezebel’s corpse. Disrespectful? Maybe, but you had to understand that it had been the middle of the night, we’d both been spooked and tired, and the last thing I needed was to explain to my family why my clothes had been covered in dirt and blood. It had been hard enough to tell my family about being ambushed by bandits the night before without making them worried.
If I’d told them I’d buried a body, too?
I didn’t want to think about how Mom and Dad would react.
Still, I had the same question as Nimbus. Stepping into the clearing, it now looked as if there hadn’t been a fight between Salome and the bandits at all. Aside from some scuffed grass and a few dried bloodstains and broken tree branches, the clearing looked surprisingly undisturbed. I caught a glimpse of a squirrel in the trees overhead. It quickly bounded away across the treetops, chittering the entire time until its chittering sound disappeared into the distance.
I scratched my head. “I don’t know. I didn’t do anything to it. Did you?”
Nimbus looked at me as if I’d asked the dumbest question in the world. “If I knew what had happened to it, do you think I’d be asking you?”
I looked at the spot on the ground where Jezebel’s corpse had been lying the night before. In my mind’s eye, I could see it as clear as day, a headless corpse surrounded in a shallow pool of blood. The stench of blood was strong in my memory, even though in the real world, all I could smell was wood and Nimbus’s white fur. “Maybe Salome came back and buried the body? She must have done something to the other bandits, too, now that I think about it. We never did see the bodies of the other bandits she killed.”
Nimbus chuckled. “Maybe your sister was right about Salome. Pretty vicious lady.”
I shuddered involuntarily and shook my head. Thinking about Salome just made me feel conflicted and strange. I needed to focus. “Regardless, this is a good spot to train. And figure out how my Discipline works.”
Nimbus raised an ear at me in confusion. “Your Discipline? Isn’t that what your old drunk human friend is supposed to teach you about?”
I stepped into the center of the clearing and stretched. “ ‘Friend’ is a bit of an overstatement. Isaac didn’t explain much to me because he said he didn’t know what an ‘Inscriptionist’ was. I’ve managed to figure some things out, but there’s a lot I still don’t understand.” I gave Nimbus a questioning look. “You wouldn’t happen to know what an Inscriptionist is, would you?”
Nimbus shook his head. “No. But then again, Disciplines have always been a human thing. Codex Beasts like me don’t have Disciplines unless we link with a human. Then we gain access to our synced partner’s Discipline and spells and can copy their skills and stuff.”
I stopped stretching and looked at Nimbus in surprise. “Codex Beasts don’t have Disciplines? Really? I mean, that makes a lot of sense now that I think about it, but how do you specialize in spells and skills if you don’t have a Discipline?”
Nimbus yawned and scratched his ear. “We get species benefits. For example, as a cloud rabbit, I have the Phase Step skill that lets me teleport a short distance to a shadowy or reflective surface. If I were a bird or a cat or something, I’d have different abilities.”
I nodded. “Interesting. Didn’t realize that different Codex Beasts have different abilities. Human Codexers can basically learn any spell, though some spells, I think, are available only to certain Disciplines as far as I know.”
“Yes, we Codex Beasts are superior to humans, I know,” said Nimbus. He glared at me. “Now where’s my banana?”
I pulled off a piece of banana from the banana in my hands—the last bit—and tossed it to Nimbus. He caught it in his mouth like a dog and wolfed it down instantly. He then sat down on the stump, a contented look on his face. “Now, if you want more information about how Codex Beasts work, you’re gonna have to give me more banana. No such thing as a free lunch unless you’re fortunate enough to be a rabbit like me.”
I rolled my eyes and pulled out Inkwyrm from its sheath around my belt, flipping it in my hands. “Thanks, but I’m going to practice with my stylus and Discipline for a bit. You can watch if you want.”
Nimbus grunted but didn’t argue. He just started licking his fur, grooming himself, which was fine by me. As curious as I was to learn more about how Codex Beasts differed from human Codexers, I kept thinking back to last night and how powerless I’d been against even just a simple group of forest bandits.
I’d had time to think about my original plan to distract the bandits and realized it never would have worked, even before Salome showed up and saved us both. I wouldn’t have been able to break the mana bubble containing Nimbus, for example, so even if I’d successfully distracted the bandits, I wouldn’t have been able to actually free Nimbus. More than likely, I’d have been killed, and the bandits would have taken Nimbus, my portable, and my stylus for their use.
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Unfortunately, I didn’t have a spell that could disable mana bubbles like Salome did, but I could at least figure out how to use my ability to edit and rewrite spells more quickly. I liked to think that if I’d been a bit faster with my spellcasting last night, then I could have at least managed to distract the bandits and not end up as their prisoner.
What I needed, more than anything, was power, but I couldn’t get power until I understood my Discipline better.
So I raised my stylus into the air, its tip glowing red for offense, and wrote out the glyphs for Splinter Glyph again. Just like the night before, I had the name of the spell floating in front of my eyes before I opened the Inscriptionist Console and began modifying it. I tried to remember how the delay and anchor functions worked. They quickly showed up in my vision again:
MODIFY/ANCHOR/DELAY(Splinter Glyph, {Location: Caster’s Current Location, Timer: 15 seconds})
I could have modified the ANCHOR and DELAY details to be different, but I decided against that. I wanted to see how it would work when I cast a modified spell that was anchored in one place and had a time delay. If nothing else, this would be good practice and might even be a good spell to put into my glyph reservoir for the future.
Unfortunately, I didn’t quite know how to cast the spell now that I’d finished editing it. Back in the simulation, all I’d had to do after editing a spell was simply agree to cast it, but a lot of things had worked differently in my trial simulation than in real life. It had almost been like my Inscriptionist Console in my trial simulation had been a simplified version of the real thing.
As if in response to my thoughts, three buttons appeared underneath the modified spell:
CAST
CANCEL
STORE
Now that was interesting. I’d never seen those options before, but intuitively, I could tell what each one meant. CAST almost certainly referred to casting the spell itself, while CANCEL probably did the opposite and most likely dismissed the spell entirely. STORE was less obvious, but I remembered how my Console had asked me if I wanted to use my stored Arcane Light the night before. Perhaps that was how I added my edited spells to my glyph reservoir.
Right now, however, all I wanted to do was cast the spell, so I mentally clicked the CAST button, and then a timer appeared in my vision, completely replacing the other notifications:
SPLINTER GLYPH (MODIFIED) has been cast! Time to casting: 15 second(s).
I shuddered, feeling heat leak out of me in response. It was a strange feeling, one I had never felt before, yet it reminded me of—
“Are you done playing with your stylus over there?” Nimbus’s sarcastic voice came loud and clear. “The lights were pretty, but they don’t look like you did much.”
I looked over my shoulder at Nimbus, the lazy rabbit, who hadn’t moved an inch from his spot on the stump. “I’m sorry training is boring. Maybe you should go find a carrot garden to attack or something.”
Nimbus huffed. “Carrots? Who needs that stuff when you could get the superior banana instead? So soft and delicious, so sweet, so—”
A slicing sound—like a sword being drawn from its sheath—interrupted Nimbus, and a glowing glyph launched out of the air where I had been standing …
Directly toward Nimbus.
But Nimbus thumped his foot and disappeared, reappearing under the shadow of a tree a few feet away from the stump. That was good, because when the glyph crashed into the stump and blew it to pieces. Chunks of burning wood flew through the air, striking the ground and nearby trees. The grass around the stump caught fire, forcing me to sprint over and stomp it out before the fire spread.
“What the heck was that, Aaron?” Nimbus sounded angry but looked scared, his golden eyes dilated, doing that same snort-breathing he did whenever he was stressed. He stared at the smoking remains of the stump. “Were you trying to turn me into fried rabbit or something?”
Before I could answer, a notification unfurled in my view:
New Codex Achievement earned!
Codex Achievement: First Modified Spell
Category: Spellcasting
> You have successfully cast your first modified spell in the real world like a true Inscriptionist! Though the results were not exactly what you expected, you are nonetheless on the road to increasing your understanding not just of your Discipline, but of the Codex itself.
Rewards:
-
+1 to Intelligence and Insight
-
+5 Lines to Spellcasting
-
+1 Lines to Runic Knowledge
-
+2 Lines to Combat Magic
-
+2 Words
-
+ECHO Protocol added to your Inscriptionist Console
Codex Note:
> “The difference between a live rabbit and a dead one is in how carefully its owner aims his spells.”
My eyes narrowed in on that Codex Note at the end. How did the Codex know I’d nearly hit Nimbus with my spell? Was it because we were both connected to the Codex via my portable and Nimbus’s nature as a Codex Beast?
My thoughts were interrupted by another notification:
Would you like to add SPLINTER GLYPH (MODIFIED) to your glyph reservoir? Y/N
I scratched the side of my head, but ultimately clicked No. Though the spell had mostly worked, it obviously had some flaws that could have really hurt me or Nimbus or both of us if I wasn’t careful. I felt like the Codex Note at the end of my Achievement was a hint at that.
Then another notification popped into my view, looking like a glowing golden piece of paper:
You have earned 2 Words! As an Inscriptionist, you can add them to either your Banked Progress or your Casting Pool. Warning: Earned Words assigned to one pool cannot be reassigned to another. Words used to cast spells cannot be regenerated or recovered without the Reclamation Protocol.
I frowned. Two Words? That wasn’t nearly enough to replace the four Words I’d spent to cast Splinter Glyph in the first place. Even if I put both Words into my Casting Pool, I’d still be down quite a bit of Words, which would make it difficult to reach Page Two in my current Chapter.
Still, it didn’t seem like I had more time to think, so I went ahead and put one Word in each category. Because I was still practicing, I didn’t want to commit too heavily to my progress at the expense of my casting power, at least not yet.
Though if this was how many Words I would get every time I got an Achievement, it seemed like I had a long road ahead of me if I was to ever get to the point where I could fight like Salome.
But on the bright side, I got a lot of Lines for my Skills. That should hopefully help me balance out the slow progress of my Chapter growth.
Hopefully.
I was also curious about that ECHO Protocol. It sounded related to my ability to modify spells, so I opened my Inscriptionist Console to look at it—
Something sharp bit into my calf, and I yelped and jumped, making my Inscriptionist Console disappear. Looking down, I saw Nimbus at my feet, glowering at me with his golden eyes. I caught a glimpse of his teeth—which looked longer and sharper than the teeth of a normal rabbit—and realized that he had somehow bitten through my pants into my leg. It didn’t really hurt, but it was surprising.
“Again, what the heck was that?” said Nimbus. “And why were you trying to kill me with that spell?”
Feeling terrible for almost killing Nimbus, I opened my mouth to explain that I hadn’t been trying to kill him when I heard rustling in the bushes around us.
Nimbus must have heard the rustling, too, because he immediately hid behind me, peeking out from between my boots. I instinctively raised my stylus, its tip glowing red. I was ready to re-cast Splinter Glyph, just in case it turned out to be the bandits about to attack us again.
But the creature that emerged from the trees wasn’t a bandit.
It was a horse.
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