Calibrations [Closed][SCIENCE!]

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"I spy, with my little eye, something that looks like... complete gibberish. That's new."

The weary sarcasm in her tone seemed to rebound off the walls of the otherwise empty room, aimed as much at herself as at her frustration at her failure to unravel the deepest secrets of magic on the first try. In retrospect it had been slightly optimistic, but it had seemed like a good idea at the time, and the process was immensely educational nonetheless. Even if, admittedly, most of that education was simply a gradually building realization that being able to use magic was dramatically different from understanding a spell's construction.

She hadn't put herself through the Academy through inborn talent or family connections, though, not that either had actually existed - realizing that she was not actually destined to be the next Archsage at age fourteen had been an unpleasant experience. No, stolid determination, which was arguably really just bull-headed stubbornness and a total inability to accept failure had been really the only reason she had gained much from her studies. Lillianne resumed her studies, perusing the dimly flickering runes that appeared and vanished without apparent rhyme or rhythm in the air around her right arm, held up by her left as she sat atop the rented room's bed.

"Borrowing" and slightly repurposing a diagnostic spell had also seemed like a good idea at the time, but even with her clumsy alterations it seemed unlikely to show her the core underpinnings of the universe. Unfortunate, but unsurprising. Being able to glimpse bits of her spells as they manifested had already proven itself exceptionally useful, though; for as little innate talent as she possessed in magic, Lilly liked to think that she made up for it with her talent for seeing the patterns in things - and diagnostics were, if nothing else, good for teasing out patterns in how a spell went wrong.

Which explained why she had already nearly set the room on fire twice, once while trying to figure out what one stretch of gibberish meant, and once when she thought she found a Greater Rune of Destruction that actually turned out to be a Lesser Rune of Change. Not a mistake that she intended to make again, recognizing the unique spirals that marked Sathorael, the Greater Rune of Change. The one next to it was not as familiar, a fuzzy array of stark silvery-blue lines entwined with each other. It was very four-dimensional and fascinating and she was too tired for this.

No one in the room was surprised when replacing it with Astrogha promptly caused her arm to nearly catch on fire, with no real explanation as to why. Back to the drawing board.

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Working outside of Ryerde's academy was turning out to be more difficult than she had anticipated. Okay, yeah, sure, technically she was using a stolen-and-heavily-customized diagnostic and trying to brute-force the whole process through trial and error, but not having any of her old textbooks was making it even harder to remember the answer to questions that came up. Not that she had ever read one on runes but that wasn't the point.

Now she was halfway through the trigger phase, or at least she hoped it was the trigger and not the detonation, trying to figure out how to amplify the effect. Replacing all the lesser Destruction runes with Greater versions had proven - less than optimal. Her arm still hurt. There was a pattern to this array though, she was goddamn sure of it, something familiar. "And where do you belong, you little trollop?" Not that she could remember where the snippet had last shown up. "If you are actually part of the trigger, I would imagine that you would have... hurm. No, you don't. That complicates matters. Not a single Sydonai to be found."

Lilly sat back, thoughtfully playing through a much slower rendition of the Fire spell, several small magical circles orbiting her arm. "This would be so much easier if I had access to an Elfire tome to compare, but a true mage of Ryerde never steps back from a challenge!" Or maybe she was just crazy, talking to bubbling ball of fire as it was sucked into nothingness. At least she hadn't been reduced to talking to inanimate objects! ...Though animate objects weren't really a huge step up in the grand scheme of things. Neither was likely to talk back, and if anyone was on the otherr side of the wall they were likely dissatisfied with her running commentary.

There - that snippet again. Near the end, curiously; the shapeless mass of flame was gradually growing smaller. A limiter of some sort? Well, Fire was less an inchoate mass of heat as a solidly defined projectile. Removing the limiter would certainly serve to detonate the fireball, but that would be useless in a combat situation - blowing up a Fire spell in your face was not a good tactic for winning a fight. "Something I know from experience, thankyouverymuch." What an exam that had turned out to be! "Ah, yes, there you are again, and again. You certainly aren't the only one, though, and even if you were I don't see how I could turn you into an Elfire anyways." Frankly, on top of learning that spells were hard, the other main realization of the evening had been that spells were already about as optimized as they could be - she wouldn't be able to just amplify damage. Any improvements would require greater sacrifices, whether it be directly lowering another attribute of the spell or pouring significantly more magic into the whole shebang to even reach its original specs.

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The problem, Lilly decided, was that this was just a theoretical exercise. Not that there was anything wrong with the concept, but the only way that she was likely to get anything actually done was by casting the spell, editing on the fly on a live Fire spell and seeing how much the actual thing but be altered. Still, thought problems were good for the mind. Even if it wasn't actually possible to turn Fire into Elfire, at least she had... hm. "...I figured out what one snippet of code might do. Possibly."

Maybe there was a use for Astrogha there. No. There. That particular octuplet of runes had shown up often enough that she was pretty sure they meant something. That two Greater runes showed up in the code meant that it was likely a control fragment, albeit a minor one. She focused silently on the spell again, watching the rough representation of the magic as it formed. Basic fire spell. Nothing new to anyone - at its core, magic drawn from self or surroundings flowing into a container, amplified, detonated and launched at the same time to create a ball of fire. Most of it was visible to anyone, and she had not the vision to see the raw magic.

"...I wonder. If that is a control sutra, replacing certain of the Change runes with Domination... mmmh." The mage trailed off into silence, her blue eyes shining with an excitement that belied how invested she was into her work. "There. Sathorael replaced by Astrogha entirely, then - that was just a filler rune, I hope, because if not this isn't going to work very well. Decarabia... Zayl might be a better replacement than Orias, though that will tax the array. Significantly." Ugh. This was going to play havoc on tome uses as well as her personal reserves. Domination runes tended to work like very focused Change runes, as a general rule of thumb; they required more power in return for only outputting a single result. Short of having carrying around a jar of magical fire, she didn't really have any great ideas for compensating for the increased power drain. Might be worth it for a more focused spell, though.

She focused, gradually building up the energy as the spell channeled once more. More circles sprang to life around her arm, concave and convex, some larger than others, each inscribed with a constantly changing set of runes. It was like trying to understand continental politics; a massive rush of information, far too intense for the human mind to even comprehend. All she could do, the Ryerden mage was keenly aware, was skim the edges of the river, hoping to find something useful.

The burning in her arm notified her that, needless to say, the spell was not performing as it naturally did. At least it wasn't incinerating her body and the room. That was good. The Domination runes were at least doing something that didn't involve exploding in her face, though the increased power drain was obvious - and the spell wouldn't be any stronger. "Or... cast." Woops. Apparently she had borked with the wrong rune. Or - not. Hurm. Maybe she just needed a better channel.

Lillianne looked at her arm again, appraisingly this time.

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A few moments later, she was staring at a smoldering, charred impact site on the wall. It was unfortunate. Lillianne shook her head gravely at the injustice of what had been done to the poor wall, but sacrifices had to be made in the name of SCIENCE! Her attention for the tragedy evaporated as quickly as her sympathy, already ensconced in her work. That had - taken more out of her than she had hoped. And she hadn't invented Fire 2.0. The spell had been more focused, sort of, but frayed quickly with distance.

It had been a proof of concept, though, evidence that she was at least on the right track. The containment field had been of inferior quality, for both the accelerator and the spell proper, but she was confident that with additional work she could iron that out. Probably. Eventually. Likely with the need to pour even more power into the spell, and it wasn't actually getting stronger. This was very quickly going to get overwhelmingly taxing, and - hm. "Perhaps not. Sydonai... here. This one could be replaced with Astrogha." Lilly pondered the alteration, certain that she was on the right track but not sure if this was the best way to do it. Replacing a Greater Rune of Destruction would weaken the spell somewhat, but the bloody Domination runes needed extra power and she didn't have the deserve to power the process manually.

If she was lucky, this might actually work. Add a few extra snippets here, admittedly just copying that one... there, use a proper channel, and she might be able to salvage most of the spell's power while amplifying the Domination runes. Redirecting, really. At least it might be useful in a combat situation at longer range, though if power was a concern, the vanilla spell would be superior. And easier to cast, for that matter. Still, success. Sort of.

Lucky~!

-and someone was knocking at the door, apparently alerted by the pungent odor of burning. Yeah, she'd kinda forgotten about that.

"Can it wait for a bit? I'm in the middle of some calibrations."

Topic End.