33. A Welcome Diversion

“So what is this new spell of yours supposed to do?”

I glance up at Talla’s question, idly cleaning the lenses of my glasses. Without them, she just looks like a fuzzy white blob standing out against the muddy brown of the cabin. Hmm, I wonder if I can trick myself into looking people in the eye by taking off our glasses. Probably not worth messing with, these are already getting pretty beat up as it is. The lenses are scratched to shit and one of the arms has gone wobbly—that’s going to be a bitch to fix—so it’s a wonder we can still see through them at all.

Doesn’t help that they keep fogging up with all the humidity and—oh shit, right, the question!

“I think it gives you one of my skills,” I explain, replacing my glasses just in time to see her incredulous glare.

“What?” I ask, tucking my legs in under me to get comfortable on the not-so-soft cushion.

“It’s unusual enough that you’ve got any blessings at all at your tier,” she grumbles, taking a seat across from me. “Duplicating an entire skill should not be possible.”

I shrug and let Nipper climb down my arm to freely explore the table. Poor little guy gets a bit antsy hiding under our cloak all the time, so it’s nice to let him stretch his legs a bit. Not that he’s got any legs to stretch.

“I don’t make the rules,” I say, “but it sure is fun breaking them. This isn’t even chaos magic, though. It’s all playing nice with Engie’s little boxes.”

“The [World Engine],” Talla corrects me peevishly. “Must you insist on that irreverent nickname?”

“I must,” I reply with a nod. “Where we come from, there are superstitions about invoking the names of gods or other powerful beings. Normally I wouldn’t put much stock in it, but [Messages] have real, tangible power. I’m not taking my chances.”

She cocks her head curiously. “Chances of what?”

“Drawing its attention, bringing an army of infinite-tentacled, featureless horrors down on me—hot as that would be. If your religion gets anything right at all, it’s that Engie doesn’t approve of chaos magic.”

Talla giggles. “What odd tastes you have. I wonder if I should be offended that you find me attractive.”

“W-we don’t have to talk about that!” I stammer, my voice pitched a bit higher than I intended.

“Casual blasphemy aside,” she chuckles, “I wouldn’t be so certain that it’s inherently opposed to the divine mechanism. To the Goddess, yes—Her domains are Light, Life, and Order—but I am no longer so sure that the same applies to Her great work.”

I hum thoughtfully, letting Nipper chase around a little mote of unrefined magic while I ponder.

“Because of Eve’s spell?” I muse. “I think maybe that’s because it doesn’t have a choice. Entropy is baked into the very fabric of reality. Engie can’t change that, but it can at least try to put it into one of its neat little boxes.”

But that doesn’t mean it’s happy about it. I’m not sure how sentient Engie really is, but it’s definitely got something approximating a will. I think its support of the [Chaos] domain is an attempt to contain the damage, rather than an endorsement.

“You’re not doing a very good job of convincing me that chaos magic isn’t evil,” Talla points out.

I scoff. “Why would I do that? Being evil is half the fun. Anyway, there’s pretty clear evidence that Engie doesn’t like [Chaos Magic] and it’s right in the description of [Chaos].”

Talla blinks, then furrows her brow. “I don’t understand. Those look perfectly normal to me.”

Huh? I open the messages myself, out of curiosity, and immediately frown as the words take shape in my mind.

[Chaos Magic]

Thaumaturgical effects that lack the structure of skills and spells created by the [World Engine].

What? That’s not right, that was redacted before!

[Chaos]

The absence or breaking down of structure. Disorder and confusion. Formlessness.

No, no, I definitely remember those being obscured back when we were still in the convergence point! Something has changed—either us, or Engie—and I don’t like it. Setting that unsettling revelation aside for a moment, I change tack.

“Okay, well that’s weird, but we still got offered classes encouraging us to reject chaos,” I remind her. “And the language definitely seemed to imply that it was the will of Engie.”

She nods. “Of course. That’s not surprising at all, given the dogma of the Church of the Great Wheel. The descriptions of classes and skills are often shaped by culture and individuals. And even back then, you already had Evelyn’s soul dormant within you, right?”

I raise a finger to object, then pause. Fuck, she’s got me there. Is it really that simple? All those preachy class offers and religious language—was it because we had Eve lurking in our head, unseen?

“You’ve been building up your beliefs on a lot of assumptions,” Violet interrupts my thoughts. “Some of those guesses were bound to end up being wrong. I’m just impressed it’s taken this long.”

“Yeah, yeah, fuck you too,” I grumble under my breath. “Alright, so maybe I got some stuff a little off. We’re getting way off track anyway.”

We didn’t come here to debate theology or whatever this was.

“Actually, that reminds me,” I add with a frown. “Is it okay for you to be hanging out with us like this? That stuff before sounded kind of important.”

She smiles and shakes her head. “You’ve given me a lot to think about, but I do need to think about it. Some magical experiments are a welcome diversion.”

“If you say so. Allie’s been pretty much screaming at me this whole time, though.”

“What’s she saying?” Talla asks.

I shrug. “Dunno, I haven’t really been listening. Let me check.”

“—do you mean you’re not listening?! Mags, this is important! You can’t just—”

“Nah, never mind. It’s nothing.”

She gives me a dry smile. “I see. So this spell of yours, it gives one of your skills as a blessing?”

“Or its effect at any rate,” I confirm. “I was trying to make a spell that attaches to other spells, but I got a spell that other spells attach to instead.”

“Not much difference, is there?”

“Not much!” I agree. “Definitely close enough for my purposes. Shall we try it out?”

Talla nods. “So long as the blessing is temporary, I don’t see the harm.”

I rub my hands together eagerly, and cast the spell. I sense that it doesn’t really need touch, but it’s a lot easier to direct that way. Violet’s original version just throws the blessing at everybody in the vicinity, but this one is a lot more discerning. I reach towards Talla, then hesitate.

Wordlessly, she offers a hand, and I try not to blush as I gingerly place my own atop hers. The spell passes into her and I pull my hand back quickly to avoid lingering.

“Interesting,” Talla mutters, her eyes glazing over a bit while she focuses on her interface. “The blessing doesn’t do anything on its own. At the moment it’s just [Unlit Embers].”

[Unlit Embers]

A dormant blessing, awaiting the spark of its creator.

“I can feel that I’m able to discard it, if I want to,” she continues. “And that I’ll have the opportunity to do so if it changes, before it affects me.”

I click my tongue in disappointment. “Shit, that rules out using it as some sort of trap.”

“Were you planning to?”

“Maybe,” I shrug. “I mean, probably not since anything I did to someone through the blessing I’d also have to do to myself. It’s good to have options though.”

“I suppose. What now?”

“Now we test it with something simple,” I explain. “I don’t actually have a lot of canned spells, so I’m thinking we just try [Burning Innervation] first.”

[Burning Innervation]

Dramatically increased Power and Ego at the cost of a commensurate increase in body temperature and exhaustion.

She grimaces. “As long as it’s only for a moment. It’s hot enough already.”

“Agreed.”

I’ve rarely ever actually used this one, personally. Vi loves it—especially that stupid trick where she converts the feverish heat into motion in order to ragdoll us around—but it’s not great for magical research since it makes us sweat like a pig and fills us with nervous energy. It’s almost impossible to sit still while the skill is active.

As I invoke the skill, my skin prickles uncomfortably and the sweltering heat of the cabin grows even more unbearable. With a thought, I let the skill spread through my blessing, and Talla immediately grimaces.

“Oh, that feels awful,” she groans. “You use this every time you fight?”

“Not every time, but yeah, Vi’s kind of crazy.”

“I don’t want to hear that from you,” Violet complains.

By unspoken agreement, we both stop the skill and take a break to drink some water.

“It looks like I can still use the skill as long as the blessing remains,” Talla notes. “But it takes some focus. At best, I think I could keep the blessing until I go to sleep, but it would be draining.”

“I can’t revoke the blessing from my side, either,” I add. “Though I think I might still be able to change it. Let me try another skill.”

I haven’t the slightest idea what it will actually mean for her, but I try sending [Pyrothaumaturgy] through the blessing to see what happens.

Talla furrows her brow and cocks her head. “I can deny the change if I want to keep the previous skill instead. Oh, this is odd. I’ve never had multiple thaumaturgy skills before.”

She flicks her wrist and conjures a little floating fireball above her palm. It’s a little annoying how easily she did that after how much I’ve had to practice. Nipper comes slithering over to her, eager to get his teeth on the treat he senses. She smiles and condenses the fireballs into a tiny glowing mote, which he snaps up greedily.

“Don’t spoil him too much,” I grumble. “It’ll be impossible to get him to behave if he thinks he can just beg you for snacks all the time.”

“Sounds like your problem, not mine,” she replies airily, feeding him another.

Oh no, I’ve created a monster!

“Can you make spells with it?” I ask.

Talla pauses for a moment to focus, then nods. “I can, though it only seems to consider the skills of my core class to be mastered. Recalling previous classes likely requires an actual class with the [Mastery] domain rather than just a borrowed skill.”

Huh. I guess that makes sense. It would have been pretty cool if she could have drawn from her pool of old skills like we do. Also, that tells me that classes are more than just the skills and attributes they grant. Domains are said to be an academic construct rather than a real facet of Engie, but maybe there’s more to them than that.

“Wait, does that mean you’ve mastered your core class?” I ask with a start.

“Allie reacted exactly the same way,” she giggles. “Did you forget?”

I look away and cough awkwardly. “Must not have been paying attention, sorry.”

“Well, it’s been mastered for quite a while now,” she confirms. “It’ll take a long time for my other classes to catch up, unfortunately. By the way, there’s no difference between using [Pyrothaumaturgy] to craft a spell and simply combining it with another skill using my [Advanced Thaumaturgy].”

Talla summons another little fireball, then freely adjusts its color from red, to green, to blue by way of demonstration.

I blink. “Oh. That’s cool. What happens to the spell if you lose [Pyrothaumaturgy]?”

The fire winks out and I feel the connection through the blessing vanish. Talla focuses for a moment, then shrugs.

“Nothing, it’s gone. I think the spell remains formed, but I lack the means to cast it.”

Well this is all very interesting, and I look forward to exploring the possibilities further with Talla, but the question that’s been burning in my mind refuses to go unanswered.

“Can I try giving you [Inner Flames]?” I ask.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Maggie,” Violet warns.

[Inner Flames]

Multiple souls glow within you. Each thoughtform sharing this class can project their senses through nearby flames.

Talla purses her lips. “The skill you use to brush off people’s questions about your other selves? I don’t think it will do anything at all.”

That’s my gut feeling too, and I normally trust those. Hell, even the description is pretty clear—just like gaining [Pyrothaumaturgy] doesn’t give her access to previously mastered skills, she doesn’t share our class. If we take the wording literally, then she wouldn’t even get the basic pyropathy effect. There’s really no point in trying.

But that feeling just makes me want to try it even more.

“It probably won’t, but we’ll never know if we don’t try, right?” I argue.

“I suppose not,” she agrees. “Alright, let’s do it!”