A Practical Guide to Sorcery

Sebastien

Month 9, Day 3, Friday 2:15 p.m.

Sebastien felt like the world was spinning around her. She wanted to rest her head on her knees while things settled, but instead looked desperately between Professor Lacer and the High Crown, as if one of them could free her.

The High Crown and her mentor were staring, unblinking, at each other. Professor Lacer wore a small smile and an unusually friendly expression. The High Crown looked constipated, if anything.

‘Say no, say no, say no,’ Sebastien urged silently, trying to push a compulsion on the man with her eyes and the force of her Will alone.

Beside the man, the younger Pendragon seemed to have noticed her in the crowd. He looked to his father, and then to Sebastien. His shock turned to suspicion.

Sebastien had a very strong feeling that the young man had never requested a duel with her at all. ‘What is Professor Lacer trying to do? Some kind of show of dominance? But surely, refusing the duel isn’t “acting against” either of us? Or is he trying to make Pendragon throw the duel against me?’ The latter was the only way she had any chance of winning. ‘Or maybe he just hopes they’ll refuse and lose face from seeming scared of the challenge?’

When the High Crown gave Professor Lacer a single, stiff nod, his son grew incredulous. The High Crown pulled the young man away to speak with him privately, while Professor Lacer turned his attention toward Sebastien.

Sebastien’s legs lifted her halfway up from her seat before her mind caught up. She opened her mouth to protest, but the words died in her throat as she caught the High Crown’s venomous glare. Nothing she could say would make a difference, she realized.

Professor Lacer descended from the stage and moved to stand beside her. He placed one hand firmly on her shoulder. “You will do fine,” he said, his voice carrying that familiar tone of absolute certainty. “After all, you have nine spell options to work with, while Frederick Pendragon only has three.”

“I’ve never dueled before in my life!” Sebastien protested, her voice cracking slightly.

Professor Lacer paused, as if surprised, but recovered quickly. “Well, there is a first time for everything.”

Sebastien stared at him, open-mouthed. She knew he had spent some time in the dueling circuit when she was a child, and of course had dominated with his characteristic overwhelming general superiority. She had read the newspaper articles about it. So, surely he had the experience to know that a second-term student who had never even competed couldn’t win against a Master who had probably been dueling for fun since he was fifteen? “I’m going to embarrass us both.”

“You have all the skills necessary to succeed,” Professor Lacer assured her, patting her shoulder somewhat awkwardly.

Rhett pushed through the crowd that had begun to gather around them. “I can give her a crash course on the rules and strategy,” he volunteered eagerly. “I know all the standard formations and techniques.”

Professor Lacer nodded. “Good. Sebastien, you are to do your utmost to win, within the rules…and disregarding silly notions like ‘honor.’” His tone grew graver, a subtle warning. “I believe any apprentice of mine should be able to win in a match-up like this.” With that, he turned and walked away to discuss the upcoming duel with the event organizers.

“Disregarding honor? Do you think Professor Lacer is upset about Frederick Pendragon challenging you? He must be really angry about the unfairness, to say something like that,” Rhett said with unease.

Sebastien couldn’t help but think that perhaps people didn’t know Thaddeus Lacer quite as well as they thought they did.

What he had done was beyond reckless—it was practically suicidal. He had threatened the High Crown himself, the most politically powerful person in all of Lenore. The kind of man who could order someone’s entire family line erased from existence with a single word, and then forbid the newspapers from writing about it.

‘Professor Lacer must not be afraid of being caught or punished,’ she thought. ‘Likely, he’s proactively prepared for the danger he just called down on his head. Or maybe he just thinks nothing the High Crown does can harm him?’ But this still felt like a massive escalation of the situation. While Lacer might be capable of defending himself against whatever retaliation came his way, she certainly wasn’t.

A cold sweat broke out across her forehead as an even more disturbing thought struck her. How exactly had Professor Lacer created that gu curse? She was certain he had prepared it in advance—he’d still been actively maintaining the planar portal avatar spell during their confrontation, and he couldn’t dual-cast. But the mechanics of it troubled her.

The curse needed some kind of intent-based trigger, surely? Yet the High Crown had screamed for his guards with no immediate consequences. Perhaps the curse was designed with a delay, preventing the High Crown from dying right there in the audience and implicating Professor Lacer.

But what truly unsettled her was how he had anchored it to “himself or his apprentice.” True curses typically relied on binding magic rather than sympathetic connections. And her divination-diverting ward probably wouldn’t even activate against it, since the curse wouldn’t need to search for her to do its job.

She remembered Professor Lacer’s words when he had examined Liza’s ward and its properties. He had talked about a method to model his knowledge of someone and then divine for anyone who matched that hypothetical construct. It was a method of circumventing certain divination wards.

It had not worked on her, and she suspected it had something to do with the fact that he didn’t actually know who she was. His model was inherently incorrect.

If he did that here to anchor the curse’s parameters, then “his apprentice” was very clearly a different model than “the Raven Queen.” But if he had used a piece of her somehow, without her knowledge, she already knew that both of her bodies were equally “hers.” In fact, it was almost strange how both bodies seemed to react exactly the same to sympathetic magic, even though Sebastien’s mass was higher than Siobhan’s, meaning that it couldn’t be a pure transformation.

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But however it worked, if it had used a piece of her, the next time the High Crown acted against Siobhan Naught, it would either activate her divination-diverting ward, or the High Crown would die a horrible, gruesome death. And seeing as Professor Lacer was fully aware of her divination-blocking “boon,” the latter seemed more likely. Not only would she be suspected as the culprit, it would alert Professor Lacer to her true identity.

Sebastien could think of only one word to summarize the situation. “Fuck.”

Rhett threw an arm around her shoulder. “Don’t worry too much. No one actually expects you to win.”

She looked at him incredulously. “Professor Lacer just said he expected me to win.”

“He wasn’t serious, surely?”

“He’s always serious.”

Rhett shifted uncomfortably, his expression worried. “What’s your current thaum capacity?”

“You were there for the last test,” Sebastien reminded him. “Six hundred eighteen thaums.”

Rhett pinched his lips together and shook his head. “Right. Well, that’s very nice and all, but Frederick Pendragon probably has three or four times that much power. Maybe more, if he’s anything like you and Damien. And even with only three spell circles in his dueling ring, he can make them as large as he wants.” He tugged on one of his small braids. “That must be why Professor Lacer said you don’t need to be strictly honorable. You have no chance in a straight fight.”

Damien had approached, and now elbowed Rhett in the side. “That’s not true. The outcome is never determined until the end.”

Rhett pinched his chin and nodded sagely. “You’re right. I need to place a bet on Sebastien now. If he somehow wins, I can probably make ten-thousand-to-one profits.”

Waverly sidled in between them. She adjusted her glasses and looked Sebastien up and down. “Is that true? You can win? Because I’ll bet on you, too. I could use a few thousand gold that my parents don’t know about.”

Sebastien didn’t think she could win, but she certainly had no choice but to try. “I don’t have the power, but I have a few tricks up my sleeve. Professor Lacer taught me how to adjust and even completely detach the output of my spells from the physical Circle. Some of them I have enough force and clarity of Will to adjust slightly without changing anything on the spell array, if we leave the output moderately vague in the setup.”

“That’s huge. What spells can you actually cast?” Rhett asked.

“We’re allowed to use components and set everything up beforehand, right?” she asked.

“Of course! You just can’t free-cast or use esoteric spells, and your opponent gets one minute to examine your spell arrays before the duel starts, and vice versa,” Rhett said. “You have to stay within your outer circle, and if you leave it for any reason, you lose a point. Get hit enough to cause damage by an opponent’s spell, and you lose a point. Lose three points and you’re out.”

Sebastien nodded absently, her mind already racing through possibilities. Since this wasn’t a real fight, and they would both be stuck within pre-defined areas, it actually opened up her options quite a lot.

She listed off her capabilities, starting with the basics she’d learned in class and moving on to some of the more creative applications she’d discovered through experimentation. With each new spell or technique she mentioned, Rhett’s eyes grew wider.

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“I’m still not very good with anything that requires heavy transmogrification,” she admitted. “Not enough to use it in battle, anyway.”

Rhett stared at her with a mixture of amazement and apprehension. “Where did you learn all this? Some of these applications... I’ve never even heard of using these spells this way.”

“Practice,” she said simply. “Lots and lots of practice. And...” She hesitated. “Sometimes desperation leads to innovation. The fact that this is a game and not a real fight to the death is the only reason some of those ideas could be viable.”

“And he’s Professor Lacer’s apprentice,” Damien added proudly. “Why do you think the man accepted Sebastien?”

Waverly rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes. So, what I’m gathering is that we should all pool our funds to bet on Sebastien.”

Ana smiled. “We might make enough to fund our own pseudo-noble house. The Fourteenth Crown Family.”

They were trying to put him at ease, Sebastien realized.

Waverly started to press back and forth onto her tip-toes. “Enough for me to buy a dragon egg, do you think?”

Brinn stuck out a knuckle and rapped her on the top of the head. “Waverly, you cannot bind a dragon familiar. Haven’t you heard the many, many stories about witches who thought they could handle it?”

Waverly rubbed the top of her head and scowled at him. “But I’m better than all of them. A dragon would like me. Especially if I raised it from an egg.”

“Sure, it’s cute and manageable as a hatchling. Maybe it eats a few of your neighbor’s pets and tries to have sex with your serving boy. But the next thing you know, it’s big enough to ride, and you’ll be forced into raiding Silva Erde or Kuth to pay for its upkeep and maintain your end of the contract. Or it wants its own familiar and decides it must have a sky-kraken, never mind that they eat dragons. Or…”

Sebastien tuned them out as Brinn and Waverly continued to bicker.

Damien rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Since this isn’t an official duel for rank, we should be able to provide our own components. That could be good for you, right? You can use whatever you’re most comfortable with.”

“Or bad,” Sebastien said. “The High Crown can obtain anything money can buy.”

Rhett snorted. “You’re forgetting who your mentor is. Professor Lacer could probably get his hands on anything just as easily.”

Ana straightened, her eyes sharp. “Components aside, your only real advantage is versatility. Nine spells versus three gives you options.” She smoothed the line of her pants’ seam with precise movements. “Frederick Pendragon isn’t a free-caster, but he’s been tutored by the best since he could walk. He’s competent, and I’m sure he has some impressive tricks prepared.”

“You know him?” Sebastien asked.

“I know of him. If I were in his position, I would choose three versatile spells. Defense, offense, and control. He needs to make a good showing here.” Ana’s lips curved in a small, knowing smile. “Have you had any interaction with him before? Something that would make him challenge you to a duel?”

Sebastien shook her head.

“It’s because Professor Lacer rejected him as an apprentice!” Damien exclaimed. “The High Crown must be holding a grudge.”

Ana nodded slowly. “Frederick will probably treat this as a demonstration at first. He’ll let you show off your repertoire, maybe even seem like he’s going easy on you. Then he’ll defeat you decisively.” She tilted her head, considering. “If you can embarrass him early, he might drop the pretense and actually try. And if you manage to embarrass him badly enough...” Her voice lowered. “Well, people tend to make mistakes when they lose their composure.”

Sebastien watched as the exhibition organizers scrambled to adjust the schedule, selling tickets on the spot and creating a betting station near the entrance. The impromptu duel had created a buzz of excitement that drew even more visitors than before. They would display it on the massive mirrors even for those who couldn’t fit inside the amphitheatre itself.

On the stage, two large circles had been painted out, just touching each other. One was hers, and one was Frederick Pendragon’s. Between them, a curtain had been set up to keep them from watching each other’s preparation.

Rhett pulled her aside and started rushing through as much knowledge as he could pack into thirty minutes of rapid-fire speech.

Sebastien did her best to retain it all, despite the use of names and standard strategies that she had never heard of, while simultaneously trying to formulate a strategy that had any hope of winning.

Rhett followed her onto the stage as she began to draw out her spell arrays, continuing to spew information of questionable use.

She laid out her spell arrays with methodical precision, nine smaller Circles around the inner edge of the larger one, and still leaving her a couple of meters in the center with which to move.

Instead of a standard barrier spell, she created two more situationally useful shields. A mirror-based one that she hoped would deflect incoming attacks with minimal resistance, similar to how her divination-diverting ward worked, and a magnet-based shield that might be able to cover the places where the other failed.

Rhett hovered anxiously nearby. “This is a terrible idea,” he said, gesturing at the mirror array. “Reflecting spells back is way harder than just blocking them. The backlash alone could break your Will.”

“I’m not going to reflect them back,” Sebastien explained. “Just... guide them away.” She continued drawing her arrays: two different air-control spells—one broad and one precise—vibration control, light manipulation, stone disintegration, and stone control. That was eight, and after a moment of hesitation, she added electrical control to her ninth inner circle, just in case it would be useful to counter something Pendragon did. A lot of battle spells could be disrupted by lightning.

Her strategy relied not on casting multiple spells simultaneously, but on using most of her Will to maintain detailed control over deliberately vague spell arrays, while still leaving some mental power for dodging—and if Ana’s advice was right, maybe taunting. Most of Sebastien power would focus on fine-tuning the output of each spell.

This would keep Pendragon from knowing exactly what she had up her sleeve, and allow her to do multiple different things with a single element from the same spell array.

It ended up taking slightly longer than the promised hour for the duel to start, as the organizers rushed to bring properly sized dueling suits from somewhere. They were slim and somewhat stylish, made of leather and with a long, flared jacket that reminded Sebastien a little of Professor Lacer’s.

More importantly, they were artifacts that would offer slight protection, measure the impact of most spells, and monitor the body’s condition to detect damage. With that, they helped the judges determine the duel points that might be less obvious, and also give damage reports to the healers on standby.

Sebastien and Frederick Pendragon were ushered off to a couple small closets cut into the side of the amphitheatre to change, and Sebastien realized an unforeseen problem. To prevent cheating, artifacts weren’t allowed in the duels. And they would check.

Along with her clothes, she stripped off her warding medallion, the new sympathetically linked bracelet, the anklet she used to cast her shadow-familiar, and the harness with her black sapphire Conduit. She hesitated with Myrddin’s transformation amulet. They wouldn’t be able to detect it was an artifact, but she didn’t want anyone to see or know about it, either.

After some hesitation, she took it off and put it in the small chest provided to keep her belongings with the rest. She locked it, and then used some chalk and a knotted piece of leather to cast a locking spell on it. She hesitated, feeling half-naked despite the protection of the dueling suit, and then used a second spell to fuse the wooden lid of the chest to the body. ‘Just in case.’

Even that didn’t feel like enough, and with wild scenarios of someone stealing the whole chest and running off with it, she brought out and set it at Damien’s feet in the stands. “Look after my things.”

Alec leaned forward, resting his chin on his fists. “Are you afraid someone is going to steal your underwear?”

Waverly, who was sitting behind him, kicked him in the back.

Sebastien was still wearing her underwear, but… She looked up at the crowd. Maybe some of those people were the same kind who would steal her things and sit around in a circle taking turns casting divination magic on a drawing of her. Suddenly, Alec’s idea didn’t seem so outlandish. She looked down at Damien. “Protect my underwear,” she said seriously.

Alec started giggling, and Waverly kicked him again, forcing him out of his seat and onto the floor.

Damien’s mouth did a funny little wiggle, but he saluted Sebastien with equal seriousness.

Sebastien returned to the stage to do one last review of her spell arrays.

Ana approached as Sebastien finished. She gripped Sebastien’s forearms tightly and tossed her hair with nonchalant confidence. “Show them what you can do.”

Sebastien grinned back at her friend. “If I win, I want ten percent of whatever the group wins from betting.”

The announcer’s voice boomed across the arena. “And now we see a touching moment between the underdog defender and his... close friend.” The suggestive tone in her voice was unmistakable.

Ana’s face twisted with disgust. “Oh, please. Two ridiculously attractive people can actually be just friends, you know!” she called back loudly, drawing laughs from the nearby crowd.

The announcer cleared her throat awkwardly and moved on to introducing the duelists’ credentials, while Sebastien made her final preparations, double-checking each array for perfection.

And then the curtain came down and the timer started.

As they switched places to look at each other’s spell set, Pendragon gave her a confident smirk. Who knows what the High Crown had told him.

With dismay but no surprise, Sebastien noted the complexity and precision of her opponent’s work. Unlike her, his spell arrays were full and detailed. He had done as Ana guessed. His shield array incorporated both physical and energetic protection components, with redundant fail-safes that would make it difficult to overwhelm. A force spell used sympathetic connections to mimic and amplify…physical movement? She didn’t spend the rest of her limited time trying to read and parse the whole thing. His ranged attack array bristled with piercing and slicing glyphs arranged in an efficient pattern that would allow some measure of guidance, even once it had been shot.

She could tell that he knew output distancing too, though his version seemed to require guiding anchors rather than true detachment. Either that, or he was deliberately showing less capability than he possessed, hoping to catch her off guard.

When the minute ended, they returned to their own duel circles and bowed to each other with formal precision. The crowd’s roar faded to a distant hum as Sebastien focused entirely on her opponent.

The instant the starting bell rang, Sebastien channeled power through her vibration array, creating a thunderous crack of sound as close to his head as she could manage. She followed it immediately with a much more subtle variation of the vibration spell, meant to disrupt the inner ear and cause vertigo. This was tricky, and she wasn’t sure she was doing it right. It wasn’t an application she had practiced nearly enough.

Pendragon’s shield—a spherical thing that reached all the way to the ground on all sides—grew around him with impressive speed. It seemed to be made gently glowing lines that formed hundreds of interconnected triangles. He shook his head, pressing his hands against his ears as he stumbled. Unfortunately, he regained his equilibrium quickly.

It wasn’t enough for the judge to raise a flag for a single point in her favor.

Sebastien’s excitement at landing even a glancing blow faded as she realized the limitations of her strategy. Her sound-based attack couldn’t penetrate his shield to reach his inner ear—the barrier blocked not only spells impacting against its surface, but the energy transfer she needed to supply her detached-output attack.

To bypass such protection, she would need a spell that drew power from somewhere the shield didn’t reach, either physically or conceptually. The latter, at least, she had absolutely no idea how to manage.

Before she could formulate a new approach, Pendragon’s shield dropped and another of his spell arrays gained the subtle glow of life.

He lifted his right hand, and a giant, blue-glowing mimic of the appendage rose from the ground. The magical hand of force was taller than the man’s body.

Though several meters separated them, he smirked again and slapped in her direction.

The force hand jumped forward and blasted through the air, coming in to swat Sebastien like she was a fly.

Sebastien squeezed her Conduit until the veins in her wrist stood out, and her mirror-shield spell blinked immediately to life. She angled it to the side to deflect the oncoming blow.

The force of his strike shattered her mirror-shield spell like glass.

Sebastien released the spell before it could harm her, but she was mentally reeling as she used her last bit of mental fortitude to throw herself bodily to the side. She landed hard and lay prone.

Displaced air brush past her face and ruffled her hair as his attack missed by mere inches. It struck the ground on her other side with a horrible “crack.” The attack spell dissipated from its own overwhelming force, but the tremble traveled through the stone and rattled her bones and lungs.

Sebastien crawled back to her feet and met Frederick Pendragon’s gaze.

He was smirking again, but none of his three spell arrays held the subtle glow of activation.

Sebastien swallowed, trying to wet her dry throat. ‘If that had hit me, I wouldn’t just have lot a point. I would be seriously injured.’