The Divine Gambit Ch 18

18. A Wizard and His Worries

Sitting down at the table in the library, a cup of coffee for Antonin in one hand and Sam holding my other, I felt quite comfortable. It was a welcome change that I felt in control of my life despite Cynthia having disappeared for her job and Ev being largely absent recently. Even when Antonin wasn't present and waiting for us in the archive as he usually was, I wasn't thrown off. Instead, I listened to Sam swoon over me in excited little murmurs and guesses at what magic we'd be learning about today. Beth had stayed home, intending to give Sam and me a whole day together while also giving herself an opportunity to look up vegetarian recipes and alternatives to cook with Cynthia, whenever she returned.

Ten minutes after our agreed-upon time, Antonin came through the archive's wooden double doors carrying the unmistakable staff he had used previously. He glanced at me and then at the coffee, crossing the room purposefully to collect it. He picked it up, sipped, sighed, leaned against his gilded rod, and then said, "We're going back into the testing chamber today. I just got done convincing the management to empty their storage capacity so we can let you off your leash and not risk overloading their fragile infrastructure."

He then surprised both of us by turning to Sam and asking, "Samantha, would you be willing to assist us today?"

My loving companion was caught off guard, and she stammered, "Haven't I already been doing that?"

Antonin nodded and brushed some of his wispy, ashen hair. "Perhaps I should elaborate. For our earlier sessions, I have been working on teaching you some of the fundamental concepts relevant to your position in our society; where you relate and differ from those around you, the basics of several schools of magic, what the public knows about you, and so on. In this time, I haven't answered many of the questions that I have about you.

"Today, I would like to change that. I have planned to have us spend several hours in the grotto purposefully spending as much of your mana as possible. I will be instructing you in increasingly complex, typically inefficient methods of evocation, potentially moving into illusions if need be, so you will still be getting educational value from today, but the goal is to exhaust your supply. I want to test once and for all how dragons regenerate energy.

"Demi-humans recuperate small amounts over time depending on their location and the natural levels in the air, increasing somewhat if they meditate and focus on drawing the energy into themselves. Spirits do not regenerate energy until they return to their element and place of refuge, but their capacities are significantly greater than most humans."

He paused momentarily, drawing his silvery eyes between Sam and me before continuing. "Today, I want to exhaust you so that we can determine once and for all if there is some source of innate regeneration, as we seem to have already concluded, or if you truly need caches of wealth like your peers from the past. Samantha, if it would please her, can assist you, both by using your reserves as well and by allowing me to compare the flows between the two of you as we progress."

"Sounds like fun to me," Sam replied with a shrug.

"Wonderful. No time to waste, then; Let's be off."

Antonin practically gleefully led us back through the natural staircase down into the depths of the earth below the archive. The warding pressure seemed to affect Sam less this time around, though she still held my hand tightly on the weathered stone stairs. I was actually worried that she'd be more distressed by the sensation now -- having more mana now meant a greater tug from the warding, right? -- but Antonin explained that her hyperacute sensitivity was the issue, and she would be less impacted as her own magnitude grew. I nearly facepalmed as he explained it; given how much less I had been bothered, my original hypothesis was laughable in hindsight.

Down, down, down we went, back into the chiseled room. Antonin again tapped the center of the domed enclosure with his staff, illuminating the arena for us. He wasted no time in immediately launching into instruction once we had light to work with.

We began with a simple repetition of the final exercise from our previous session, with a few added caveats. For starters, we had a score now, in addition to the timer. For each of the themed orbs eliminated, we earned five points. For each wasteful impact on the exterior boundary, we lost a point. We also had only five minutes this time, although roughly a third of the balls were removed. For each second remaining when we had collected them all, we got another point.

The gung-ho, shotgun-blasting approach Sam and I took last time was obviously wrong, but we didn't have any time to coordinate or strategize before our first attempt. We ended up approaching a negative triple-digit score. Fortunately, Antonin gave us a few minutes to talk before he ran the challenge again.

Lightning and force were easy. Using the same approach from the first time, those two aspects efficiently collected all their points and never induced a penalty. Sam said she had a strategy for fire that she was pretty sure would work fine. Earth, ice, and water left me stumped. Sam and I tried to brainstorm anything, but Antonin called time and had us start far too soon.

Again, we gave it a valiant attempt and finished within the time limit, this time only several dozen in the negative. Sam's approach with fire had been to burn through her mana and emulate the terror-producing stream of fire she had caused before. If she kept the length of her flamethrower just shorter than our radius to the walls, she could sweep it around the entire room, dragging it over every fire orb and collecting them all without ever striking the barrier. It was brilliant, and, with Sam leaning against me and breathing heavily when we had concluded, I understood what Antonin wanted.

This wasn't an attempt to get us to gracefully solve a puzzle. The more restrictive time limit and point scheme was an attempt to get us to just go for it. He wanted us to go all out and create some way of tagging all the balls nearly instantaneously, without regard for efficiency or creativity. Hell, he had straight up told us that, and I was still trying to solve a puzzle.

The third time was different. I tagged all of the lightning orbs within a second while Sam was sweeping over the entire arena with dual-fisted flamethrower cones. I smashed the force orbs with massive, invisible propeller blades, spinning around Sam and me. Then I kept them going, morphing the force into a tornado that consumed nearly the entire room, tiny particles of earth mana buffeting everything in the whole dome. Sam, finished with the fire, added a storm mixture to my whirlwind. The room bore a stronger resemblance to armageddon than it did a secured testing chamber. My whipping twister of wind and dust was turned into a hurricane with Sam's energy, hailstones and rain tearing through the once peaceful grotto at a hundred miles an hour. Our cyclone decimated the remaining orbs in an apocalyptic vision of destruction.

And then, we let it slip away. The timer, now visible again, remained at 4:34. Our score was massively positive even before the time bonus. Sam leaned heavily against me, her crimson locks sticking to her forehead from her perspiration. She was panting, but an unconquerable smile covered her face as she looked up at me with unadulterated joy. Looking into the oceans of her eyes, I realized that she hadn't used a single drop of mana from me. All of that had come from her and her alone, and she was overwhelmingly proud to have done something with her own power for the first time in her life. Baking last night wasn't where she wanted the bar to be. A cooperative cataclysm crashing down on the world as a public declaration of our love was what she wanted. What she needed. And now, what she had.

I was so struck by what I felt from her that I didn't even realize Antonin had approached us until he cleared his throat and started talking.

"That was an outstanding display," he began. "Exactly what I was looking for. How did it feel?"

"Exhilarating," I answered without looking away from Sam. "Fulfilling. Satisfying."

She nodded, "Yeah. Great -- It felt really fucking great."

"And how do you feel now? I could see that Samantha wasn't drawing from you directly. I believe, given that display, we may need to have her reclassified before the day is out."

Sam gracefully wrapped her arms around my neck to lean against me and support herself and then gracelessly yawned directly in my face as her eyes fluttered shut.

Antonin murmured, "Still D, then. Not as dire as I thought. But, how are you feeling now? That was an excessive display."

Without opening her eyes or lifting her head from my chest, Sam answered, "Yeah, I can feel it now. I'm pretty drained. Fatigued. Feels like I just stretched a muscle I wasn't even aware I had."

"Drakeling?"

I shrugged, "I feel fine. Exhilarating was pretty close to a perfect answer -- I'm coming down from the adrenaline of being a part of that spectacle and all it entailed, but I'm not crashing. I'm just calm. I'm..." I paused, trying to find exactly the word I wanted. "Ready," I settled on. "I'm ready to take on more. Ready to do more. I don't know if this is an answer to your questions, but I might feel better than before we came down here."

Antonin frowned. "You aren't at all impaired after that display?"

"It only lasted a couple seconds and Sam did half the work. I don't think I could've done her parts for her, but not for lack of energy. I felt like I was walking across a balance beam, if you will, and my speed was more hindered by my desire for control than by my physical limits. I could have made a bigger storm or held it for longer without any issues, but the control needed to keep it fit for purpose for the game we're playing would've failed under the added complexity. But, like walking speed across a balance beam compared to a timed mile run, my limit was my experience and my focus, not my actual capacity."

Antonin scratched his head, drawing his finger through his grey wisps. "That runs counter to every established principle. It is possible that dragons are just an anomaly like no other, but I remain skeptical for the time being. I didn't believe that explosive unfolding would exhaust you, but it is utterly inconceivable that it left you refreshed instead."

I smiled in light-hearted exasperation, "It doesn't seem consistent with the results of our other lessons, but that's how I feel."

"Can we continue?" He asked, surprisingly gently.

After a moment, I nudged Sam, whose soft form had come to complete rest against me, smiling blissfully unaware. "Hmm?" she murmured, having missed the question.

"Can you do more or do you want to take a break?"

She took a deep breath, making me blush as she pressed her face directly into my chest as she did, before stepping back and adopting an authoritative, confident look. With her hands on her hips commandingly and her hair billowing the dying gasps of the storm we had conjured, Sam appeared to me like the complete version of the facade she presented in the past -- self-assured, capable, secure, content with the world and her place in it.

"I'll need to draw from you, but yes, I'd like to do more. You don't know how much of a dream come true this is for me."

"I think I do," I responded, seeing a sparkle in her azure eyes that I couldn't swear had ever been there before.

"I might not be up for a date after this, but I can't imagine not doing this instead. I couldn't fathom walking away from just cutting loose, playing with mana like this, with you and because of you."

"That's fine, Sam. We have tomorrow afternoon, as well."

She looked a touch surprised, and I could feel her think that she was content just calling this our 'date.' Which would've been sad, not just that I wouldn't be able to capitalize on my plans but that she would consider this magical workout a date. I understood that, from her point of view at least, this was a fantasy that wasn't possible. But, just as her knock on my door last Saturday morning had shattered my entire world, somehow, I had done the same for her. Even if it was a long-held delusion of grandeur that she could be frivolously casting spells for no reason beyond indulgent enjoyment while holding hands with me, that was simply the world we were in now. I wasn't content allowing the new baseline to fill the place of genuine development in our relationship, no matter how fantastic or novel it was at the moment.

We pressed on, solving increasingly complex challenges for Antonin. It started off somewhat grounded and connected to what we had done before -- more moving orbs. These ones were dual-colored, though, and required contact from multiple elements before they'd be eliminated. Electrical current moving through water, miniature glaciers of ice and stone, and fire intensely hot enough to create pressure differences and exert force on the orbs. The water and fire mixture was challenging for me conceptually, but Sam just switched immediately to using an oily liquid as the water component, allowing the fire to be propelled with her spray.

Then Antonin had us make purely magical fireworks, using our understanding of mundane chemistry to get us to emulate specific substances in the explosion. I only realized it now, but none of Antonin's demonstrations were real. When Sam and I made explosive, glittering displays, they really were explosions hovering in the sky, but Antonin merely used his illusion magic to show us the result or individual steps we were struggling with rather than exhausting himself executing the complicated evocation properly. Indeed, it was strange to realize that the average person would never be able to do this. Emmanuel's words about lighting candles echoed in my mind, and I realized that even someone with an evocation proficiency would likely be limited to using the one or two elements that best resonated with them. No one else was running around creating huge maelstroms of multiple elements on a whim and then, in the blink of an eye, creating firework-esque displays of color streaking through the same space.

That was just me, and now Sam. The other dragons, probably, but given Antonin's uncertainty, I couldn't confidently claim that it was a dragon trait. And, they didn't even seem real to me, basically a fairy tale of boogeymen in far-off lands. It could be something truly unique to me, a gift from the strange entity I had interacted with several times. Or, perhaps, a tool? It had wanted me to do things, after all. A payment or a piece of equipment I would need in the future was much more likely than a gift.

It was a fleeting thought, but as I modified the arrangement of the magically simulated elements in the core of the explosion I was manufacturing to better match the visuals Antonin wanted, I realized that Sam's unwavering obsession with me had somehow gotten her even more than she could ever have imagined. I didn't do this, really -- I hadn't even known it was possible -- but she was now on track to be one of the most powerful witches in the world, if only because of her versatility. My draconic energy supplied her with a blank check to budget against any problems; an ace hidden up her sleeve; a skeleton key that she could use to open any lock she was confronted with. Over time, she would grow into the magnitude needed to be genuinely formidable in her own right, but for now, having the potential to solve any problem with magic was unique to us.

It made me incredibly pleased to see her shed the skin of insecurity. Her technically existing magical prowess was no longer a noose around her neck, connecting her to an anchor that kept her firmly in place, unable to chase what she wanted. Now, it was a set of wings, a flowing set of scarlet wings worn by the beautiful angel from my past. All of my doubts about our confusing relationship faded away as I watched her laugh with juvenile freedom. She giggled harmoniously in response to mirroring Antonin's prompt, creating a red dragon in the sky that appeared to be flying backwards. Despite the reversed arrangement, she was far more competent in the minute details. Where my attempts looked fuzzy, as though viewed through a camera lens just out of focus, hers were crisp and perfect.

Antonin's next exercise had us play with what were essentially magic RC cars. He instructed us on projecting a tiny amount of force in roughly the size and shape of a toy car and then had Sam and me add an accelerating element. It was easier to just move the force component on its own, but he insisted that we use a magically replicated jet engine instead -- the added complexity from controlling multiple elements simultaneously was what he was after.

He conjured an illusionary racetrack around the grotto and had us practice controlling our 'cars' around the loop. It started off as simple as that, merely trying to stay on the marked course, but once we had several laps under our belt and were no longer driving off into the wall or toward the center, it got more complex. First, Antonin began morphing the course, changing it from the simple oval into something approaching an F1 track, with rapid repeating curves and chicanes between straightaways, designed to challenge our control of the car. We had to use both speed and direction to keep the car on the track, ensuring we had to manage both elements at the same time.

Then, to keep us on our toes once we had some experience with the new track layout, he added a timer. The first dozen laps were easy to complete, the time far more than we needed. Around the fifteenth lap, I noticed that I only had a few seconds to spare. As I passed over the starting line and my timer reset, I saw what I had been too focused on controlling my car to see. On each lap, Antonin was giving us one fewer second.

On the seventeenth lap, I missed my time by less than half a second, and the eight-digit display tauntingly transformed into a high-density LED facsimile to flash four skulls at me instead of a new timer. I let my car fizzle out of existence and watched Sam continue. She was just naturally better at controlling the car than I was; she was more precise in her adjustments and innately more skilled with her steering. She had the car drifting around some of the larger turns, and I could feel that she was actually rotating the angle of the engine equivalent downwards, making the acceleration lift the car off the ground a touch. It made it easier for her to drift around the edges and reduced her friction on the straights. And then, when she came to the weaving, tightly turning sections, she'd angle it up, pinning the car to the ground to keep a higher velocity through the turns.

Even with her far greater level of control, she only lasted another four laps before she, too, timed out. With a laugh and a cheer, she did a victory lap anyway, rejoicing in having beaten me.

Antonin continued with the cars but started instructing us on the basics of illusion principles. After half an hour of his expert instruction, we were projecting images of racecars onto our force blocks. Sam's, predictably, had much more detail than I was able to control, making it look like a little miniature version of her was sitting in the car. It wasn't entirely realistic because the illusion version wasn't wearing a helmet and the vibrant streaks of red hair were flowing backwards like she was in a convertible with the top down, but it was still awe-inspiring to me.

The mixture of force and illusion gave me an idea, though. Something that Sam wouldn't enjoy, so I didn't test it right away, but I was confident that Beth would want to experience it. Once I was eliminated again, several laps earlier this time, as both the third added layer of complexity and my wandering mind inhibited my performance, I tried it on myself. It worked pretty well, doing exactly what I wanted and being challenging to resist, and it made me smugly anticipate the next time Beth and I were alone.