B6 Chapter 643: The Pit, pt. 7

Soft chatter rolled over Weavebane as he watched the keyseal mage from across the stands. Mere moments ago, Helena had let his speciality slip, and the silverhaired giant had broken their eye contact.

The half-elf snapped back towards him in surprise. A moment later, he grinned and looked away again to chat with his and Helena’s teams. Good, the man was interested. In all honesty, Weavebane didn’t know why he’d been worried in the first place. The man — Ianmus, he’d heard — had invented an entirely new branch of magic. If anyone would appreciate the beauty in well-wrought spellcraft, it would be him.

No true master of magic would turn down the opportunity to test themselves against someone trained in counterspelling. It was too useful for discerning the weakness of your craft.

Weavebane suspected the only reason Ianmus hadn’t dipped his toes into it himself was because of how restrictive of a discipline it was. True, all it required was strong Will and manipulation skills, but the fact of the matter was that you had to contest the control of another mage.

That limited the counterspelling to affinities in close alignment or diametric opposition to your own. Thank the heavens that he’d committed to arcane as a boy. It was as close an affinity could be to raw, unaspected mana — which meant, in essence, it was aligned with every affinity.

His eyes slid across the group, skipping over the greater beast and ranger to settle on the teamleader. Kaius. There was a man who appreciated the benefits of Arcane; he’d literally written it across his face. Kaius watched him closely. Weavebane grinned, openly staring at the dense knots of black runes that stretched across the man’s temples.

Gods, how he wished he could test his skills against that magic — but as much as his curiosity burned, the last three weeks he’d spent in the Collective had already proven that glyphbinding was annoyingly hardened to his art. The mana held within the skills was locked down tight by raw sacred geometry and runecraft — not Will and intent. Without a truly absurd power differential, he couldn’t just reach in and break it. Only in the moment the magic was unleashed, and the spell was woven into being could he unpick its weave.

That was a tall ask, even for him.

Keyseals though…he had no idea. That was why he had to be the one to challenge the man. Progress on the new branch of magic had been slow in the local Spire. The research flowing out of Mystral had been a little better, but it was still entirely theoretical in nature. It was only natural — the innate connection between the soul and the keyseal that Ianmus described forging in his initial treatise was a dangerous thing. A collapsing spellform was violent enough without the shock hitting your soulfire directly. Until new apprentices could be raised to seize a keyseal-focused class in much the same way Ianmus himself had, experimental research would be sluggish.

Thankfully, Ianmus had summoned one of his seals earlier — a fascinating solar-aspected thing, with potent healing spells. Oh, how the arcing lines and stacked rings of its sacred geometry had absorbed him. A far more interesting distraction than the two brutes slicing each other open on the sands. He’d barely even noticed the scent of iron in the air.

The sheer complexity of the had been mindboggling, with a far larger and more geometric weave than anything he’d seen from sorcery. Tearing himself away from that to focus on the things connection to Ianmus’s soul had been hard, but necessary. There was no way he would challenge the man without a certainty it was safe to fracture his work. Soul damage was not an acceptable outcome.

“Mage’s last, right?” a Gold skirmisher said from down the isle. Weavebane couldn’t remember his name. The man turned to the mage next to him — Darsel. “You thinking about taking ‘im on? That magic looked interesting.”

Weavebane jolted, lunging to his feet.

“He’s mine!” he hissed.

Half the delvers within twenty strides turned to look. Darsel raised his hands placatingly. “All yours, Weavebane. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

He barely heard them. Ianmus was getting to his feet, and the man was grinning. As he should be, this was going to be exciting!

….

Ianmus grunted as he hit the sands and crouched to bleed off his speed. The impact shot up his legs like a hot needle, but he ignored the discomfort in favour of looking up at his team who were leaning over the railing. All of them were smiling.

“Draw it out!” Kaius demanded. “I wanna see as much counterspelling as I can!”

Ianmus laughed. His friend has been fascinated by the prospect. Despite being a type of arcane mage himself, Kaius had never even heard of the art. It wasn’t that surprising. Arcane mages were rare, and ones who were skilled enough to counterspell even rarer. It required an incredible depth and familiarity with the nuances of aspected casting.

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As soon as Kaius had heard it was a vague, sorcerous equivalent to wardbreaking, his friend had been hooked.

“I’ll do my best!” Ianmus laughed. A moment later, he went back to eying how tall the wall was. “Seriously though, I’m going to need some help getting out of here. Some of us can’t jump ten strides straight up, and I’ll feel like a fool trying to use Starlight Alacrity.

“I’ll jump down and toss you if I have too!”

“Great, getting thrown around like a sack of grain will be much more dignified.”

Giving his friends a last smile, he turned around. Weavebane was already waiting for him, leaning on his black staff by the centre of the arena. The man was shorter than Ianmus had expected, though at just a hair under six strides he supposed Weavebane would have been tall to most. He certainly carried himself with an air of confidence, his smile growing as Ianmus crossed the sands.

Unlike the other fights, there was still a low level of chatter rolling through the stands. It seemed the hamfisted bruisers in the room weren’t quite as absorbed by the prospect of technical spellcraft compared to good old bloodsport. No matter, the mages hadn’t even blinked since Weavebane had challenged him.

“Ho, sigillarius,” Weavebane said as Ianmus came to a slow halt.

He raised his brow at the archaic word. ‘Crafter of sigils’ — it was certainly accurate enough.

“Ho, Weavebane. I hear you are quite the caster.”

Somehow, the man’s grin got wider. “Any other day and I would comfortably say I am the most technically and theoretically adept mage in this room by a wide margin — if perhaps not quite the strongest in raw power. Today, I am unsure. It is not often I get to stand in front of not one, but two founders of magic for the first time. Dare I say, it might be the only day, and one I doubt will repeat again.”

Weavebane’s enthusiasm was infectious. He could tell the man was genuinely thrilled to explore new branches of an art he had dedicated himself to. Ianmus was already eager to get started, but now he felt restless. Counterspellers were rare. Each relied on their mastery and their Will, unpicking the weaves of their opponents by striking at the weakest spots of their spell, and subverting the caster’s Will. How would that work with his own magic?

“I’ve read your treatise,” Weavebane said. “But if I am to counter your magic, I need more. You were once a sorcerer — where is it most similar?”

Ianmus didn’t even consider keeping the information from the man. It wouldn’t have been sporting in the slightest — but more importantly, it would have been boring. Plus, the weaknesses of keyseals would get out eventually, and he much preferred the idea of getting in some practice in a safe environment.

“Creating the keyseal itself is rather similar to standard sorcery,” Ianmus explained. “I weave the magic into a different form, but all the limitations of channelled magic still exist.”

Weavebane nodded, utterly focused.

“Once completed, however, it is stable as granite. I suspect you could destabilise it, but you will have much more trouble than a normal spell. It does, however, draw on ambient mana, so it might be possible to deprive me of that resource, and slow down how quickly the seal is ready to weave another spell.”

“And this secondary casting?”

“Once again similar to sorcery. If anything, it might be more vulnerable. It requires very little Will on my part, so if I wasn’t paying attention you would have less opposition. It’s also possible that by disabling a spell as its being cast, you might be able to impact the seal itself — but i’m not sure.”

…

Weavebane sucked in a sharp breath, tightening his grip on his staff. It was slippery under his sweating palms — damn thing was polished far too smooth.

He’d suspected half of what Ianmus had told him, but it was so vindicating to hear from the man himself. Already he could think of dozens of different attack vectors he wanted to try. There was his normal repertoire of course — from straightforward mindshock to counterpositional affinity injection and weave-line deformation. Some he suspected would barely impact the new magic, but others were more promising.

Weavebane thought that he would have more difficulty interrupting the initial formation of the keyseal than Ianmus expected. It was, on some level, linked to the mage’s soul. That would give it a natural resistance to outside interference until it was fully formed and the initial connection shrunk. No doubt, with Ianmus having reached a frankly astonishing level of Refinement, it would be all the more difficult for him to influence.

Not that it would stop him.

Much more interesting was the secondary cast. If it was even less shielded than normal sorcery, it would be very interesting to see what havoc he could wreak. But how would he use it to impact the primary seal?

Weavebane stood in silence for a moment longer, his mind racing. Something he’d seen in the Collective scratched at the back of his mind. Glyphbinding was as much of an oddity as keyseal conjuration — and it was even more resistant to tampering than the seal itself.

Except, it was not stable. He’d seen a demonstration of the original glyph, with its High Lothian spell-hymns. Those had all but shattered in an unholy explosion of waste mana, as had the similar, more complex magics that Kaius had used in his duel with Ivar. Perhaps, if he could somehow redirect a collapsing spell into the seal itself, that violence might be enough to cause a similar level of instability?

Whatever happened, he sincerely couldn’t wait to find out. This was the best day he’d had since his admittance into the colleges!

“Come, Ianmus, let us cast,” he said, rousing the ocean within him as he grinned.