Broken Lands

Chapter 364 – Arcane Demense

Sophia moved on to her actual Abilities next. She’d known it would be a far shorter list, but she hadn’t really realized just how short it was until she saw it. It was probably only a third as much as her previous list of Abilities. That was a good thing, as long as they all worked together.

The list matched her previous Grand Spell and Grand Ability in a way other than being short: there were no longer any notations about the level of an Ability or its slot. That change tied directly into another that she only knew to expect because of an offhand comment from Sweetfire; Arryn, Jax, and Bai had not thought to mention it until she asked for more information.

Starting at the third upgrade, you gathered Threads instead of Wisps. There was of course no known conversion between them; Wisps didn’t even appear on your Status anymore. Despite that, most people still referred to Threads as Wisps, because they worked more or less the same way. You could still use them to upgrade your Body, Core, and Sphere or push them into an Ability for a more customized upgrade. 

Upgrading an Ability was no longer the simple ‘tell the Guide you want to put Wisps there after upgrading the slot’ of the first two Upgrades; instead, you had to use the Thread on your Abilities yourself, just like when you created your Grand Talent. The Guide did seem to help, because it would provide a literal guide in your trance to help you know what you needed to do with the Thread, but you still had to do it. You could upgrade an Ability once per Sphere level, and as long as you didn’t mess up too badly you could back out with only the cost of the Threads you tried to use. There were stories about people destroying their Abilities, but they were rare.

Bai pointed out something that turned out to be a nugget of lost knowledge: some Called, people who could enter the trance state at will, could apparently spin Thread for themselves. He knew of it only from records, but it was considered niche in the days of the Empire because it slowed down your normal rate of Thread acquisition, leading to only a slight increase over what you would have received anyway at a fairly notable cost in time and effort. Bai’s preferred theory was that you still gathered Wisps, and they were the material used to make Thread, sort of like turning wool or flax into thread in the material world. Normally, the Guide refined them into Thread, but you could do it as well if you wanted to. If Wisps naturally dissipated with time, refining them into Thread more quickly would let you gather more of them before they vanished. 

It might even be part of the explanation for why Wisp gain was so inconsistent and Thread gain was worse. Both were based on something real, with a variable delay that made it extremely hard to track.

Sophia had the feeling that Jax would be trying to spin his own Thread in the future. It wouldn’t work for Sweetfire or Arryn, unfortunately; they’d already checked and while both of them were able to enter the trance far faster than Jax could, neither of them had any of the material needed to actually make Thread. Sweetfire’s guess was that because Professionals gathered Wisps more gradually rather than in the bursts Called received, the Guide was able to keep up. It was a better explanation than Bai had; he only knew that it didn’t apply to Professionals.

That was all in Sophia’s future. What she had now was the short list of Abilities in front of her. The top seemed like a good place to start, with her new Anchor Ability.

Arcane Demense Abilities:

Hoard of Plumes, Anchor Ability

Take control of plumes’ mana to collect them. Release some or all to establish and extend your Demense. Plumes form the points you can use to exert your will on your Demense.

Hoard of Plumes seemed a lot like Spread Plumes. Instead of enhancing feathers, she had to control the mana in plumes, probably both feathers and collections of mana. Spread Plumes specifically called out using the feathers to attack or use Abilities, while the Hoard called it exerting her will, but that was probably the same thing. Unlike Spread Plumes, Hoard of Plumes didn’t say it was needed for other Abilities. Sophia was certain it still was.

Arcane Signifier

Place your arcane signifier of a plume on something or someone to affect them as if they were one of your plumes. 

Arcane Signifier came out of Bond of Plumes and it was almost identical in effect. That was a relief; it was key to the style she’d developed to help her allies. Her hope was that she’d be able to share more than Collected Knowledge, Corruption, and True Death, but as long as she didn’t lose those modifiers she was good. 

Plumed Knowledge 

As your Plumes gather knowledge for your partner from all within your Demense, you may relay your partner’s information to those marked with your Arcane Signifier so long as they are within your Demense.

Plumed Knowledge looked like an improved version of Collected Knowledge and Domain Knowledge. It was limited to those she marked with Arcane Signifier, which was new, but the limit that they had to be inside her Demense wasn’t new. She was going to mark people (or their gear) with her Arcane Signifier anyway, so it was a minor problem. 

If anything, the change to an Arcane Signifier might be a boon, now that she thought of it; there had been a handful of fights in the Maze where the feathers tied to Jax’s sword were severed. They weren’t particularly important fights, but this might mean they could avoid the risk entirely.

Plume of Perception

See, hear, and know all that lies within your Demense as your Plumes reach out to test it.

And there it was, the usual complete lack of useful information the Guide provided. Okay, it wasn’t nothing, since it said that the Ability that took over her MageSight, along with her other perceptive Abilities, was limited by her Demense and the information was gathered by her Plumes, but that didn’t really help that much; she could have guessed it from the name. Did it work when she didn’t have Plumes released from her Hoard? 

Well, she hadn’t added any yet, so that should be easy enough to test.

Sophia sat up and looked around the bedroom. The first thing she noticed was that her gear glowed softly with enchantments. She could feel exactly where it was with her aura, too, so that seemed to work. When she pulled her aura back, the glow faded but didn’t entirely disappear; that was interesting. Did her Demense somehow extend outside her aura or was there a lingering effect she wasn’t entirely aware of yet, maybe because the gear was hers or because she’d already sensed it?

It would only matter in places where she didn’t keep her aura extended. That was common practice in Mazehold; she was pretty sure it was because people didn’t know how to retract their auras, but it meant she wouldn’t need to worry about it any time soon unless she was sneaking somewhere, and she wasn’t exactly good at sneaking anyway. Testing it later would be good, but it wasn’t a particularly vital point.

Sophia relaxed her aura and let it extend back out. This time, she felt it as it moved past something that extended in a direction she couldn’t quite name. When she turned towards whatever grabbed her attention, she saw Dav’s Cord of Spirit Ice looped around the back of a chair. 

Huh. Apparently she had kept Spirit Sight, as she’d hoped. It was integrated far more than it had been before, but she’d only know how good it really was when she actually saw a spirit without a physical body obscuring it. That wasn’t likely to come up often, but it still meant she wouldn’t be blindsided if it did.

Translucent Aura

Your plumes deflect and diffuse the magic imbued in attacks within your aura. You can concentrate plumes together to enhance their effect. Attacks initiated by people and objects marked with your Arcane Signifier are ignored unless you direct your plumes to stop them. Other attacks may be permitted by commanding your plumes.

Sophia nodded as she examined the Ability. It was a combination of three protective Abilities. They were all originally aimed at protecting her, but it looked like her new Ability would also protect her allies as long as they were within her aura. She’d have to test it, but it looked like she’d lost the physical deflection of Plumed Aura Armor in favor of being able to blunt the magic in an attack. It seemed like a fair trade, maybe even an excellent one, as long as she didn’t have to worry about being hit with non-enchanted strikes. She had Plume Shift for that, anyway.

Plume Shift

You are your plumes and your plumes are you. Turn yourself into a cloud of Plumes that you can spread across your Domain. So long as any Plume is intact, you may return to your normal physical form without injury at the location of that Plume. While using Plume Shift, your Shield is disabled. 

Plume Shift hadn’t changed at all. That was a relief; it was perfect the way it was.

Prismatic Plume Strike

Strike your opponents with the magic contained in your Plumes. Plumes can be combined to form a single prismatic strike or split into their constituent parts and targeted separately. 

Prismatic Plume Strike was supposed to be Sophia’s main attack spell, combining Force Blast and Feathered Evocation with the addition of Prismatic Magic. Prismatic Magic was a potentially risky addition, since she’d never really figured out a good way to use it on its own, but if it worked it ought to give her better control of the magic in her strikes. 

What she ended up with was probably better than what she’d hoped for. Targeted separately? 

She reread the description, but the words were still there. She’d given up Force Blast and gotten something that looked even better: a multi-target spell! Sure, she’d have to aim each one, but if she was fighting something that was weak enough to not need a full-power strike, that was probably fine. For that matter, she could probably set it up as a cluster of close strikes if she needed to hit something specific and didn’t mind also hitting whatever was nearby.

If they had to hit something really precisely, that was Ci’an’s job anyway.

That had to be because she’d worried about losing Force Blast while she worked on the Ability merge. As side effects went, it was a positive one. It did mean that it was a good thing she’d added Prismatic Magic; who knew what the effect could have been if she hadn’t given it a way to split?

The prospect of being able to combine Plumes into even stronger “prismatic” attacks was even better, and probably came from her other worry: that she wouldn’t be able to hurt things. Combining all of her offensive Abilities into one was supposed to be a plus for a spellcaster that didn’t depend on spell variation, and Sophia didn’t. It still felt like putting all of her eggs in one basket.

Sophia felt extremely grateful for the advice she’d gotten over the past few months. She’d made her choices herself, but she was certain she wouldn’t have done as well without knowing what others did.

That brought her to the last Ability in her Arcane Demense, the one that used her old spell structure to hopefully do something very different. If it worked the way she wanted, it would add a lot of flexibility to her kit. If it didn’t, she was going to lose just as much. She could only hope that her half-formed desires had results as good for Aural Plumes as they did for Prismatic Plume Strike.

Aural Plumes

Enhance Plumes within your Aura using all of the different modifiers you have learned. Available Modifiers:

Stunning - Send a shock through the spirit 

Soothing - Relax the spirit

Focused - Grants increased control of a particular Plume in exchange for less control of other Plumes

Piercing - Strike the Shield

Binding - Slow mana movement

Reinforced - Adds cohesion and resistance to dispersion to the Plume

Disruptive - Break spell structures

Warming - Locally increase the physical temperature. Requires a compatible Plume.

Rending - Attack the body. Cannot penetrate Shield.

Corruption - Erode the core element

True Death - Lay that which is not living to rest

Translucent - Move through unaffiliated mana with lower loss

Prismatic - Split affiliated magic into its components

Sophia let out a sigh of relief. The Ability was exactly what she wanted it to be. Some of the modifiers were going to be more useful than others, but they were all there. She’d lost the physical restraint of Plush Bonds, but what she got in exchange was the ability to slow the movement of mana. That was an extremely positive trade if it meant she could slow down strong enemies’ Ability use.

Of course, that relied on being able to hit them and she had no idea how much it would slow them down. She was hopeful.