Technomancer: Birth of a Goddess

Chapter 13 – Diving Into the Spellweave

Emily groggily wipes the crust from her eyes and turns over to bury her face in her pillow.

Why is my pillow so soft…

As the haze of sleepiness slowly lifts, memories of spells and knives come rushing back all at once.

She jerks up, her breath accelerating, as she puts the broken timeline of her yesterday back together.

“Dad… he… it’s okay, he didn’t end up like…. that!” She shivers and forces back the images of Herber mangled by spikes of rock, or splattered on the floor in a pile of gore, that intrude unwanted on her mind.

Slow deep breaths.

Focusing on her breathing, she enters a familiar meditative trance, watching the delicate weaving of mana around her to calm her nerves. Time slips away and Emily only comes back to awareness as she hears a light knocking on the door.

“Haaa.” Letting out a deep breath, her eyes flit open with a glint of steel that fades as she glances down at her still-naked form.

“Just a second!” She springs out of bed and approaches the dresser, grabbing the robe from on top and throwing it around herself.

“Come in!”

The door swings open and two familiar maids walk in, one carrying a bowl of soup and a plate of bread, and the other an empty glass and a jug of water. After a cursory glance around the room, the maid with the plates looks to Emily and asks.

“Where would you like your food, madam?”

“Ah, over here please!” Emily quickly turns around and clears the clothes off the top of the dresser, tossing them onto the bed.

The maids place the food and drink down, pick up her dirty towel, and then bow and head for the door again.

“Thank you!” Emily calls out before they can leave.

The maids turn and give one final silent bow before shutting the door on their way out.

“Wow, they really don’t like talking,” Emily grumbles and gets dressed before starting her meal.

The soup is thick with potatoes, chicken and a green herb Emily has never tried before, reeking of luxury.

They seem to treat me well for a brainwashed slave and, from their reactions to my self-awakening, I’m guessing mages are pretty rare. I should be safe as long as I follow orders for now.

After finishing her breakfast, Emily quickly heads to the bathroom to shower and brush her teeth, then settles down cross-legged on the bed in her robes. Pulling up her status page, she looks down the list to locate a skill she neglected to use in frozen time: Spellweave.

“User can gaze into the truth of runes… Sure I’d love to see the truth of runes, but how do I activate it?” Emily mutters to herself and focuses on the skill description hovering in her vision.

Something clicks in her mind, and she shifts her breathing pattern a little while willing her mana towards her eyes and cortex.

She begins to feel the mana flow around her as in her normal meditation, but this time she opens her eyes too and sees the world anew.

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The space around her is filled with twisting fractals of colour and texture, constantly shifting and tearing at each other, as if in a relentless battle to beat out their competitors and impose their form upon reality.

Focusing on one of the sickening patterns, Emily’s perspective bends, drawn into the folds to reveal a complex intertwining of unknown runes. The runes flicker, never remaining in the same shape for more than a few seconds.

Emily reaches out her hand and watches as the runes part, avoiding her touch, and then fall back into place once the obstruction is removed. As the runes move, she sees small twists of sharpness and cold being left in their wake.

These are spells.

It clicks in her mind then, that these patterns of runes are the matrices mentioned in the skill description. The indescribable folds of mana and language before her form the basics of magic.

How do I cast them? Those guys made the runes appear with their mana, maybe I could try that.

Full of excitement, Emily remembers the feeling of guiding mana around her body to activate the skill and copies it to will her mana into motion. A small tendril of deep, warm blue slowly emerges from her chest, reaching out towards the matrix in front of her.

As the mana leaves her body, she senses something shift in the weave around her and sees each of the flickering runes settle on a single shape.

So, using mana outside my body stops the weave from moving around?

Struck by a sudden idea, Emily retracts her mana and then relaxes her focus. Her perception returns to the original dizzying mess of information. She wills her mana out of her body again, and the change is immediately noticeable.

All the shapes, colours and textures within her vision stop as if frozen in time, allowing Emily to take in the entirety of the weave for the first time. She is mesmerised, only now appreciating the beauty of the scene laid out before her.

What once looked like a raging battle, she now realises is a delicate dance. Each different aspect displayed perfectly melds into its neighbours and not a single one dominates the scene.

It’s beautiful…

After gazing in wonder for a few seconds, Emily narrows her focus on one of the swirling red patterns and sees another spell matrix appear before her.

This one has far fewer runes - only a dozen. She pushes her mana tendril towards the closest rune hoping to move it, but instead, her mana is drawn into the rune.

As her mana follows the shape of the rune, she feels a matching mana flow form in her cortex. A faint rune, identical to the one before her, forms in her mind.

It’s hazy and hard to perceive, but Emily can feel a faint warmth radiating from it along with the concept of ignition.

She continues pouring her mana into the rune, solidifying the one in her mind more and more, until she begins to feel a cold emptiness spreading from her chest.

Quickly, she interrupts her breathing and breaks herself out of her trance, returning her vision to normal. The room around her is unchanged as if the mystical experience she just had was a lie.

The only thing remaining from the experience is the faint after-image of the rune, still sitting in the back of her mind. The rune only holds a fraction of the clarity it did within the weave, and Emily can only understand it to be a form of fire element ignition rune.

I see, so I can use the Spellweave to learn runes and maybe later entire spells, but it uses a lot of mana and I can only retain a fraction of what I learn each time.

She knows she has discovered more about the rune, but the memories of what she found have vanished.

Falling back onto her bed, she opens the system and checks her current status.

¯¯¯¯¯

[Health:] 110/115

[Stamina:] 169/175

[Mana:] 20/330

_____

She frowns, feeling something is off, and checks the time on The Clock. Three hours have passed since she ate breakfast.

Weird, I thought Spellweave was only meant to use 80 mana per hour, but it drained 310 instead. It must only give the basic cost to keep the vision of the weave active, and not account for any mana used manually to learn about runes. Also, why did I take damage? Was the pain when looking at the moving weave actually bad enough to cause mental damage?

Emily shivers and raises a hand to rub her chest, but the aching cold is unaffected. Sighing, she sits back up and gets into a lotus pose again.

Being drained of mana feels disgusting. At least I can test how fast my meditation works.

As she meditates, the cold in her chest slowly thaws, unable to withstand the warm waves of mana being cycled through her circle once again.

Three hours later, her meditation is interrupted by a polite knock on the door. Emily opens her eyes and glances at the door.

“Come in.”

It opens and the two familiar maids walk in again, carrying a plate of food and more water. They deposit the items on the dresser and take the empty dishes from breakfast before leaving without a word.

Huh, I wonder if those two will be the only ones bringing me stuff while I’m here.

With her curiosity piqued, Emily climbs off her bed and leaves the room. She creeps to the open end of the corridor and peeks around the corner. Other than the two retreating maids, the hallway she gazes into is devoid of life.

A little disappointed, she pulls back from the junction and closes her eyes, listening carefully to the building around her. She hears creaking floorboards, several sets of footsteps and a few doors opening and closing. Emily waits and listens for ten minutes but doesn’t hear a single person speak.

Creepy.

Feeling slightly unsettled, she returns to her room and sits at the dresser to eat her food while checking her status.

My mana is back up to 260 after three hours, so meditation must refill 80 an hour. Oh, my stamina is also full, I’ll have to test how fast that regenerates later.

After eating, Emily meditates for an hour more to finish filling her mana, then dives back into the Spellweave.

She finds a simple fire spell again, but all the runes she sees are different to the one she began learning in the morning. She checks a few other red folds in the weave, but can’t find the same ignition rune again so instead she decides to learn an ice element rune. The rune she chooses gives off a feeling of slowness.

Emily remains in her trance for another three hours, dropping it the moment she feels a familiar emptiness at her core. Instantly, she switches to meditation, which she stays in for a while before opening her eyes and pulling out The Clock to check it: 8:15.

Dad died at 8:16.

She sits in silence, sadness swirling in her gaze as the seconds tick down.

Tick! Tick! Tick!

8:16.

Her chest tightens and her hand starts to shake as flashes of Herber dripping with blood, or drenched in it, fill her mind.

Tick! Tick! Tick!

She resists the urge to press the button. To see his face one more time.

Tick! Tick! Tick!

8:17.

A string in Emily’s heart snaps, as she is consumed by panic.

Should I have reset again? Could I have saved him? Was there something I didn’t think of? Something I didn’t try?

Then she remembers the Patriarch and the overwhelming power he wields.

Dad’s fate was already sealed the moment I stole those magic crystals. It was already too late by the time I made The Clock. The only choice I had was who else died too.

Hoping that’s true, she feels a single tear roll down her cheek as ice washes through her veins, the memories of Herber’s demise sinking into the depths of her mind. She sits perfectly still, staring at the ticking pocket watch for three more minutes before she hears a knock at her door. She shuts her eyes and takes a slow breath, before turning to the door and calling for the maids to enter.

This time they are carrying another set of plain clothes and a fresh towel, along with her dinner. Emily thanks them as they leave, dropping The Clock back into her pocket before forcing herself to chew her meal, barely aware of what she is eating. She turns her mind to magic to distract from the chilling void within, determined to learn enough magic to exact her revenge.

It looks like I won’t be able to learn enough runes to form a spell quickly. I don’t know how many different runes there are, and the constant movement of the weave makes it too hard to find the same one again. If only I had some finished spells, I bet I could work out what the runes mean quickly with a little help from the weave.

Sighing in frustration, she finishes off her food and gets up, deciding to do some exercise to test her meditation’s stamina regeneration rate. She removes her robe and drapes it over the back of the chair before dropping to the floor and starting to do push-ups, following the short exercise routine she has often done at home. She quickly beats her previous record of fifteen, not feeling her arms give way until she reaches thirty.

Woah, I doubled my record. Did awakening affect my body that much?

After a short break to regain her breath, she moves on to squats, crunches, jumping jacks and a plank, finding herself able to beat all her previous records by a sizeable margin. Collapsing on the floor in a pool of sweat, she looks at her status page.

I’m so much stronger, and my stamina has only dropped by 80 after all that. Now to test stamina regeneration.

She sits up, not moving to the bed this time, due to her sweaty state, and meditates for an hour.

After finishing, she stands up and stretches her muscles, finding a large portion of the fatigue completely gone.

40 stamina in an hour of meditation? Do I even need to sleep anymore? It seems far more efficient to just meditate instead, though I didn’t notice my stamina going down normally throughout the day so it may not be related to general fatigue… It also doesn’t seem to drop much from mental strain since experimenting with the Spellweave only cost 6 stamina even though it was so intense it caused mental damage. I think my cortex is to thank for that.

Emily yawns and checks the time: 10:14.

Never mind, that answers that question.

She grabs the clean towel and moves to the bathroom to take a nice long shower and prepare for bed.

After finishing up and heading back to her room, it’s already 10:55. She falls back into the soft embrace of sleep, her mind filled with the wonders of magic.