Magic is Programming

Chapter 6: Learning

"So that armor fits? Great, we'll take it!"

"That will be 8 silver."

"Done."

"Uh, is bargaining not a thing here?"

"No time, we need to go!"

"The edge feels sharp enough. It'll do."

"5 silver for the sword, then."

"Here."

"I'm grateful, really, but why are you helping me so much?"

"Talk later. Hmm, ten days of food and water for us should be enough."

"Um, a small notebook and pen would be nice too?"

"Sure, that's fine. Total price?"

"1 silver for the lot."

"Done."

"Ok, now we can talk."

Carlos raised an eyebrow at Amber and smiled, bemused by how rushed their exit from town had been. "Ok. So, to start with, I get that Kindar will be pissed at me, but I don't see how that would make it so important to rush out. Oh, and to bother laying a false trail by circling around to go the opposite direction from where we left Erlen."

Amber raised an eyebrow right back at him as they continued walking. "He'll think you destroyed the dungeon, and he won't be shy about telling that to everyone in Erlen. They'll all think that you destroyed our very own local dungeon. A very weak one, admittedly, but still. The whole town will want to punish you, not just Kindar, and the only way to convince them not to would be to hand over the intact dungeon core."

Carlos paled a bit. "Ah. Oops. Makes sense that dungeons are considered important resources." He sighed. "Thanks for rescuing me from that, then. And that brings me back to my earlier question: Why are you helping me so much?"

Amber chuckled. "That's actually a few different questions combined, isn't it? The first of them being why I'm willing to just skip town so suddenly at all."

Carlos nodded. "Yeah. I was under the impression that Erlen was your home."

"It was. And it sucked. I had no real friends, no one liked me, and everyone got annoyed by all the things I find interesting. People would joke about me reading all the time, ignore or dismiss anything I tried to tell them about it, and make fun of me for aspiring to match archmage Sandaras. Even my mother just didn't understand why I cared about any of it.

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"The truth is, I've been planning and preparing to leave for years. I have no idea how many times I've daydreamed about learning magic at the royal academy, and I've been saving up to pay their entry fee. The book you found me reading yesterday was review, studying to make sure I'd be able to pass the exam to qualify. I was already planning to leave in the next few weeks."

"Ah, I see. So that part was fortunate timing for me."

"Yep. The other parts are, let's see, why I'm willing to come with you, and why I spent so much money on helping you. That money came from what I saved for the academy's fee, by the way."

"Wait, you gave up your chance at the academy for me?"

"Yes. At least for now, until I can save up enough again. Please don't make me regret it."

"Um. I'll try not to?"

Amber smiled at him. "Just don't keep important secrets from me anymore, and I doubt it will be an issue. Anyway. You were interested when I started talking about magic theory yesterday. And you called all those idiots back there exactly what they are. Maybe it's sad that this is true for me, but that makes you the most promising potential friend I've ever had."

Carlos gently put a hand on her shoulder. "It is sad, but it's in the past now. And it's a big compliment for me, so thank you."

"Hey, I still feel like I should be thanking you. Especially with the next part I'm about to say."

"Oh?"

"I'm sure I could find some potential friends at the academy. At the very least, it's filled with people who would understand and share my interest in magic. But one: you're here already; and two: at the academy I'd be learning the same magic that everyone learns. With you? You've already told me about two revolutionarily groundbreaking things that I had never heard even the slightest hint are possible! That... I- I don't even know how to express how incredible that is.

"I always planned to go to the royal academy, but plenty of people go there, and the odds of me actually being talented enough to match Sandaras are... not good. It was more of a hopeful wish than a realistic goal. I probably would have ended up a typical average mage; competent enough, but nothing to write stories about. You, Carlos, are my ticket to a real chance at matching, or even surpassing, archmage Sandaras someday.

"And sure, you might reasonably view that as taking advantage of you. But if I become a legendary archmage from this, it will be because we both become legendary archmages together."

Carlos nodded. "That's fair. Good solid reasoning, too. I was worried this might be a poorly considered whim, or something."

"Ha! Ask anyone who knew me back home, and they'd tell you I always have a plan. Always."

"What's your plan right now, then? Surely you didn't stop with just 'get out of town'."

"The next step is very simple." Amber got out the book she'd been reviewing yesterday and opened it to a bookmarked page, showing a familiar written incantation. "You, fellow future archmage, need to learn your fundamentals. See if you can get that glowing light spell to work by the time we make camp for the night."

Carlos glared at his hand, which was still stubbornly refusing to glow, and sighed. He was still missing something, and just repeating the same thing to try again probably wouldn't help. Maybe an idea would come to mind if he came back to it later. [Hey Purple, what exactly were you doing last night? You asked for a position where you could take in some mana, but didn't you have to just leave it all behind again?]

[Was trying solve that. Attach mana, take with. Takes time. Spend one thousand twenty four mana. Attach one mana. Crystal internal bigger. Wasteful if stay, but not stay soon.]

Carlos stopped walking for a moment, stunned. He recognized that number instantly. Nearly any computer programmer would. [1024? 2 to the 10th power? Why that exact fraction?]

[Don't know. Why important?]

[Nevermind. I don't think I could explain it. Anyway, you're going to slowly start having more mana as we keep traveling?]

[Yes. Don't make spend soon. Please. Terribly drained. Take time build up.]

[Only in an emergency, if there's no other option. I promise.]

[Thanks.]

Carlos idly looked around at the fields and occasional trees they were passing, putting matters of magic out of his mind for the moment. Sometimes, the best way to solve a tricky problem really was to just stop trying for a while. When you came back to it later, you'd have broken away from the failed approaches you were stuck on and might have new and different ideas.

An hour later, Carlos finally broke the companionable silence he and Amber had settled into. "Amber, I think I need to revisit your explanation of the four foundations of magic. If I get all four right, that should be all it takes to make the spell work, right?"

Amber nodded. "Yes, the four foundations are all that spell needs."

"Ok. First foundation: mana. Could that be the issue? I'm from another world, do I even have mana?"

"Yes, you do."

"How do you know?"

"If you didn't have mana, I would sense the absence of it. You would be a strange void in the ambient background."

"Ok, good. I was a bit worried, if that was the problem it might not be fixable. Anyway, second foundation: incantation. Have I been saying the words of the spell correctly?"

"Yes. Your pronunciation is actually quite good."

"Then I think the issue must be with the third foundation: meaning. My problem is that I don't see how that could be possible. I know exactly what all those words mean. The translation I get is perfectly clear. I might even be able to write a more complete and correct explanation of the meaning and syntax than that Sandaras guy!"

Amber raised an eyebrow at him. "Wait, you thought knowing the meaning was enough? That's silly. You need to know the meaning."

Carlos blinked. "Uh. Ok, either you're pranking me, or something got lost in translation." He paused, and mentally focused on the impressions he could sense from the translation magic, and also on the actual sounds he was hearing. "Say that again, please."

"Ok. You thought knowing the meaning was enough? You need to know the meaning."

Carlos nodded. "Definitely lost in translation. You used two different words that both got translated to the same word in my language. I guess the one that's involved in magic got translated to the closest fit because my world doesn't have a word for it at all. So, please explain what it means to know something." He was careful to use the second of the two words for "know" that Amber had said.

Amber tapped her chin, thinking. "Hmm. Knowing something means knowing it in your soul. It's... hard to explain. Partly because I've never heard of it really being needed to explain. Everybody knows about it. Knowing something in your soul is an absolutely unmistakable feeling that I don't remember ever not having. The knowledge is just... there."

"Huh. Ok, so how do I get that knowledge into my soul?"

"Um. Mostly instinct, I think? Contemplate it, and just try to focus on that intent."

Carlos sighed. "I guess that will have to do. Alright, here goes. Contemplating the meaning of the word that starts the spell."

Half an hour later, Carlos was trying to meditate on the result of focusing his translation magic on the single word that started the spell when it happened. He suddenly felt something happening in a part of himself he had never known existed.

It felt like something had just been etched into the surface of one of his bones, except whatever it was etched on definitely was not part of his body, even though it was just as definitely inside of him. He reflexively stiffened and stopped walking for a moment. "Whoa! I see what you mean about it being unmistakable."

Amber jerked slightly, startled. "Oh! You already got your soul to learn the spell? That's impressively fast."

Carlos smiled sheepishly. "Ah, actually, just the first word of it. I know you said doing it word by word is harder, but I still want to try. If it works, I should be able to recombine words to form different spells more easily, and I think I might have a unique advantage for it. I'm guessing the third word in this spell is one of the hard ones?"

Amber nodded. "Yeah. As far as I can tell, it hardly seems to have any meaning, but it's ubiquitous and spells don't work without it. I've heard rumors of people learning it, and some people say mastering it is part of what it takes to become an archmage, but no one's been able to properly explain it that I know of."

"Well, let's see how long it takes me to get that one into my soul." Carlos grinned, mentally examining the new sensation of having something's meaning embedded in his soul. It was strange. Whenever he mentally poked at that spot, it was like the word and its exact meaning were forcibly brought to mind. One specific meaning of it, too; it might translate into English as "spell", but this word could never mean to list the correct sequence of letters for writing a specific word. It was an incantation keyword, used to define, identify, or refer to a spell incantation or its boundaries. Carlos wasn't sure he would ever be able to forget that, even if he tried to.

He held a hand up to his chin, thinking. Holding the precise definition of the word in mind had been part of how he'd gotten that first word into his soul, but it wasn't all of it. The magic of understanding that he'd gotten from Purple might have helped, but even with that it hadn't happened until he'd formed a wordless mental impression of pure meaning in his mind. He'd had to define the word correctly, and then form it into a mental conceptualization.

As for the new word he wanted to learn next, it translated as a semicolon. A punctuation mark. Perhaps more importantly, given the context, as a mark with a specific common syntactical role in programming languages, and it appeared that the language of spell incantations was either literally a programming language or very similar to them. So, the meaning of that word was simply an unambiguous mark of the separation point between consecutive parts of an incantation. And judging by programming languages from back on Earth, it might be used in multiple different levels of how large or small a clause it might mark the end of, and might be used inside certain clauses as a structural element.

Carlos kept walking, brows furrowed as he meditated on that definition, trying to focus without words on the concepts behind it. About ten minutes later, he felt that strange internal etching sensation again, and exclaimed in triumph. "Woohoooooooo! I got it!"

Amber shook his shoulder. "Um. Bad time to make noise."

Carlos looked up and noticed his surroundings. A few birds were flying away, and was that some kind of bear, uh, growling at them from the side of the road?

"Oops."