Three days later -
Running errands for Eda had proven as useful as could be. Fetching her potion ingredients from the market, selling these human trinkets to everyday people, carrying pouches of goods. I did it all without complaint and not without my own needs, while I moved through the Boiling Isles with her shopping lists and her coin purse I kept my eyes open.
My phone sat at five percent now, the camera roll was filled, unsullied with anything except what I intended to capture. It was my own mistake though, the magic circles were fast, faster than I'd anticipated. most of the videos were useless, a smear of light from a partial shake of the wrist and then nothing, the circle already gone before the frame could resolve it. What I did have were stills. Frozen mid- activation from videos I'd caught instead, the geometric structures were scarcely sharp enough to trace. A fire circle caught from a street vendor's cart, the teardrop and its surrounding ring blazing orange for the half-second before the flame appeared. An ice circle made by a merchant to keep his stock cold, that one I'd gotten clean because he'd drawn it slowly, like a signature. A light magic discharge I'd witnessed during what appeared to be an argument between two younger witches near the market's east entrance.
Construction magic I hadn't seen yet. Healing I'd only seen once at a distance with practitioners moving and the circles gone before I could get within useful range. Abomination I'd caught on video once — three seconds of footage that showed almost nothing useful because the circle had formed and collapsed in under a breath. Oracle magic remained entirely theoretical to me. And the illusion glyph I had actually managed to capture clearly, had transcribed it carefully onto paper, had drawn it four times with an increasing preciseness.
It had done nothing. Not a hint, whatever additional complexity the illusion glyph required existed somewhere above what I currently understood, and I had noted that and moved forward quickly.
My transcriptions covered eleven pages by the time I sat down at the desk this morning. I'd copied every still image onto paper organizing each of them into a section I could fill in later, labeled the components I could identify as discrete from the ones that seemed structural to all glyphs, and begun the process of asking what each piece actually did.
The fire glyph, a teardrop sits inside the ring, and a dot is placed in the center.Assuming the teardrop meant fire, the dot's position shifted something about the flame's behavior. The ice glyph had a curved line going through the entire ring structure, alongside the diamond, the bell shape. The light magic with a not-equal sign I didn't find in other circles also stood out the most for this glyph
They all share lines, some of the same curves appear across different elements, and presumably different scales of complex magic. And the differences between them aren't random either.
I drew a circle on the page in front of me then a diamond below it completely unconnected. Then a single horizontal line beside that. I set down the quill and look at all three.
I believe I can see it, there's something at the edge of my own perception, a faint quality going with the heat of the air here that feels different from home, though it may be my mind pushing itself to hallucinations. Either way, its reaction remained nonexistent against the paper.
The symbols simply sat completely Inert.
The telltale failure I discovered when you look at the magic circle is that the symbols are never isolated. They're always enclosed within the ring structure, I believed it was a tradition rather than a fundamental requirement when it came to making glyphs but even a fully formed glyph didn't work without one.
I look at my hypothesis section. 'The symbols themselves might simply be nonfunctional without each other rather than without the ring specifically.' My hypothesis section was the most jumbled of my notes but It'd have to do since none were definitive fact.
I closed the page with a crease. It was time I-
Hm.
"Good morning!" The brightness of the voice was immediate, her natural volume set for rooms twice this size.
She usually arrived around this time.
"Morning," I said, already gathering my journal, a knife, and the folded reference sketches .
She hovered at the threshold of the door for a moment and I could feel the question she decided not to ask with her eyes focused on the ink, and stacked books.
"I'll be back soon, take care" I said.
The forest path to the first trap took roughly twenty minutes at a normal pace. I took about thirty-five.
There were several reasons to believe nothing particularly dangerous would appear, but I went slowly anyways, to avoid an unfavorable encounter. The undergrowth on the Boiling Isles had a quality of attention that I hadn't entirely trusted. pausing at each natural chokepoint, checking sightlines before committing to an open stretch of path.
The first trap was undisturbed. I crouched, examined the ground around it, found no tracks worth noting only a few leaves that weren't here last time.
I moved and heard the second trap before I saw it.
A wet, irregular discharge for a place with technology. water being expelled in short bursts into open air. I slowed more so than before and came around the tree line to the clearing's edge in stages rather than all at once and looked.
it was low-slung almost to the ground, roughly the size of a large dog, with a gray-ish brown hide. One rear leg caught in the snare. It wasn't struggling particularly; it stood in the trap with the resigned quality of something that had concluded the situation was inconvenient but not fatal, it could have some low level intellect. Every few seconds its throat moved, and from somewhere inside its tubelike mouth a small blue magic circle materialized, fully formed, hanging in the air for a fraction of a second before water discharged through it and the circle collapsed. Again. Again. Regular as breathing. Whatever it was doing, expelling water at nothing in particular, it almost seemed involuntary.
I watched the circle form twice more waiting from the distance for a favorable moment.
Then I stepped into the clearing.
The creatures turn was near immediate. The discharge rate spiked and the circle forming faster, water spitting outward.
I closed the distance quickly. My left hand found the back of its skull before it finished turning it's head towards me, fingers clutched around the handle I plunged the knife deep, to the skeleton of the neck.
Wriggles tugged at my arm and chest, pressed against the demon. With a few more drops of water it settled against me.
I let go of the body and removed my kitchen knife, finally opening the journal to the page I'd prepared to lay this information out the night before with labeled sections. Things like fluid samples didn't seem quite possible yet without the right human world tools.
cutting down the rope and moving my cadaver front facing I began the dissection, although it required more force than I'd budgeted for. The knife handled the exterior work cleanly enough, but the ribcage simply couldn't be defeated by it, I set the blade aside and slid my fingers into a gap I'd created pulling as hard as I could, the cartilage separating with a resistance that was unpleasant and but much less rough than using a rock.
The chest cavity opened and a spread of organs still covered in fresh blood greeted me.
The heart was immediately identifiable, the same position as a humans seemingly a bit fiercer since it was still lightly beating. Beside it, seated against the interior wall like an afterthought , was a sac roughly the size of my fist. The fluid inside it caught the light and returned it yellow, a pale luminescent yellow, that looked warm to the touch. I pressed a two fingers against a vein covered by the membrane.
I retrieved the feather from my journal's spine and like a needle it slid in.
A moment later I started drawing up an ice glyph on a clean page.
ring first, closing it completely, then the diamond inside, then the bell curve beside it. The full structure, copied from my best still image, drawn as precisely as my current understanding allowed.
The surrounding energy supposedly moved.
The page frosted at the edges first then a spreading of white moved toward the center at an imperceivable speed, and an ice spike formed. it was small and crooked.
The expected result.
I drew the next Circle a thick ring and dot placing my palm on it.
I held very still for a moment and looked at it.
A rapid sucking sound came from the center and seconds later an invisible burst of energy surged.
!
I couldn't move back in time the burst picking me and my book up along with it, my back thudded against the foliage behind and roughly stop me.
My eyes were dry, body disheveled by the suddenness, I got back up quickly.
This was perfect, I couldn't have asked for anything more.
The notebook and feather at my side was quickly grabbed, I began writing in the observation section. Bile sac fluid can be used as a medium for glyphs.
It was time to test my theories.
Hours passed by quickly and sky had turned amber quickly. I had covered more pages than I'd expected with all this new insight and ran more trials than I'd intended. the bile sac fluid had been working for quite a while.
Early in the testing the fluid had been that pale luminescent yellow. I'd written the color along with a sketch of the heart in my first entry. Somewhere around the third hour I'd finally noticed the color had changed. still yellow but darker, A greener hue at the edges, the luminescence dimming. By the time the light turned amber the fluid was a flat dark green, the same color as the sac itself and the glow entirely gone. My best current explanation was the death of the creature ultimately propagating through the sac a slow cellular failure, the fluid losing whatever living quality had made it conductive. If that was correct, the fluid had a shelf life, and I'd need a consistent supply while I was still in the testing phase for glyphs.
I turned to back to all my notes on glyphs.
KEY ELEMENTS OF GLYPHS:
(field notes page 13 -15)
glyph component analysis, bile sac medium trials, compiled observations
[Glyphs For Noobies (yes you):
Basics:
They draw surrounding energy.
Wherever these symbols are inside the ring structure determines it's release direction
Every glyph created will abide by these laws:
Ice element:
Diamond shape Bell Curve
Traits: Form and shape water into ice Forms ice into water
Not Equal Sign: Means Light
Traits: Depending on Size it releases more light or more heat (Smaller=light/Bigger=heat)
Fire Element:
Tear Drop (Obviously)
Traits: Ignites, Heats the bigger the shape the bigger the flame (dot plays crucial roll)
Ring:
outer structure acts as a balancer trapping in the magic radiating throughout the air.
Traits: Simply the foundation of all magic, multiple can be combined, the biggest is usually most dominant
Dots: Concentrating magic into a single point
Traits: Like the ring structure it rapidly sucks in energy (used for bursts/concentration)
Zigzags: They represent rapid energy transfer (from one symbol to the next)
Traits:How fast or slow the magic is released
Circle:
Parallel Line: Creates magic into a controllable ball
Trait: Allows for control of the magic with a simple gesture
Horizontal:
Time of release (theoretically applies for long magic Ex: Abomination)
Traits: Whenever Magic isn't A one time spell this lines thickness determines the time
(Necessary For Basic Magic)
]
All of this came from testing complete glyphs and changing one thing and individual tests, inferring was somewhat of an issue with my notes but the symbols meaning were at least mostly correct. The ring as boundary condition is strongly suggested instead of fully confirmed.
Everything I had now needed more testing, but I need to get to the human world for a complete understanding, this world was vaster than the show made it seem, I had to be careful, of the emperor.. the collector and possibly more.
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you can skip the long notes it just explains the future combinations.
Sorry I lowkey like trolling yall with those mb chapters, hope you enjoy. i'll be rewriting this soon doesn't really feel like a story.