Chapter 26: 26. Sensory Duplication

Excerpt from Master Sanriyi’s ‘Worlds Beyond.’

“It has long been known to practitioners of the arcane that our world is not the only world. There are countless theories as to the nature of these other worlds, and ideas as to their provenance nearly rival the number of tales regarding our world’s origin. Those who stare at the sky believe there are worlds floating in the endless darkness of the night sky, while those who study the rocks and plants suspect there may even be worlds within those. There are believed to be worlds composed of each element, places composed of every tangible and intangible substance, gaps between reality where spirits and souls linger, heavens, hells, and countless others. The true mystery is—how many worlds are there? Can one even hope to count them all?”

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It took a bit of time to call for Demvya—or Jiin, whoever was present—mostly on account of Yenna not being able to simply go out and find her. She also wasn’t exactly certain where her own tent was located in relation to the rest of the campsite. Yenna was also slightly bothered by the fact that after helping to save the town, she had been forced to recover in a tent. When she used a magical hand to open the flap of the tent, it turned out she wasn’t the only one stuck outdoors.

Just outside the tent was a rather large collection of other tents—Yenna hadn’t been able to see them when her guests arrived, as their bodies had blocked the view. There were quite a few people outside. Townsfolk going this way and that, carrying tools or supplies, chasing after children or livestock—the signs of a busy town. After a moment, it all clicked in Yenna’s head—the beast-march had ravaged the town, and they were in the midst of rebuilding.

“Excuse me!” Yenna called out to a young woman walking by. “Are you busy? Could you help me for a moment?”

The yolm looked a little surprised to have someone shouting at her, and then just as surprised again to see the heavily-bandaged Yenna. “O-Oh! Do you need a doctor? I can go find one!”

“No, no! I just need to find a friend of mine. Though, I suppose she might be with the doctor…” Yenna trailed off—despite Jiin and Mayi’s very different professions, they always seemed to end up near enough to the same location. “She’s a yolm, rather short with a curling horn, a distinct accent, and…”

“Ah. I think I know the one! I’ll be right back—don’t go anywhere!”

The woman ran off before Yenna could get another word in—did Jiin really stand out that much? She realised belatedly that she didn’t have much else to describe Jiin—Yenna knew her best by the appearance of her horn. It would be helpful if she had kept the long, silvery hair that had appeared when Demvya had infused Jiin’s body with magic, but even that had faded back to its usual length—though her messy brown hair had ended up just a little lighter in colour, and straighter besides. Yenna had to wonder if the easy-going stonecarver had simply shortened the excess herself at some point, though she couldn’t say for sure.

Yenna distracted herself with the pieces of the elemental core while she waited. The unusual allure it held subsided the longer she looked at it, as though it had only been effective due to the surprise of it. The two chunks each held some swirling, active magic within them, the magic moving seemingly without purpose. Yenna couldn’t help but be reminded of a half-formed spell circle, stuck in a loop without symbols to draw anything in or let anything out.

The mage was snapped out of her pondering by the sound of someone dropping roughly into a sitting position before her. Looking up, she saw Jiin’s wide grin—and the amount of dust and grime that covered her.

“What in th’ heck is that? ‘S that why y’need Demvya?” Jiin leaned forward to prod the core fragments, and then decided better of it.

“Yes. Do you still have the black book with you, by any chance?” 

“Demvya has me keep it, just in case, y’know?” Jiin reached into a pack she had slung over her shoulder and, after a concerning amount of clanking and rummaging, she pulled out the book.

Yenna was still worried about the object’s effects, but it had to be studied at some point. The metallic black cover was still bound shut with Demvya’s enchanted plant stems, but the mage still made a point of not making to touch it. Jiin placed it on the ground next to the elemental’s core and sat back, closing her eyes. After a moment she straightened up her sitting position, the carefree expression on her face resolving into Demvya’s regal bearing.

“THOU HAST NEED OF ME. THE BOOK, AND THIS FRAGMENT OF A MIND—SEEST THOU SOME CONNECTION, THEN?” Demvya’s pure white eyes looked over the broken core—Yenna could swear she was reading something from within it.

“I– Yes. There’s something that reminded me of the black book’s… allure.” Yenna struggled to think of the appropriate word—it was more of a feeling than something that could be defined in scholarly terms. “The elemental was afraid of something, which is why it attacked. Then its core seemed to pull at me like the black book does—though the effect was far weaker. I was wondering if you might have any insights?”

Demvya shook her head, shattering Yenna’s optimism. “I KNOW NOT THE THOUGHTS LEADING UP TO THIS ELEMENTAL’S SHATTERING, NOR DO I COMPREHEND THE MOTIVES OF SUCH A BEING—I AM A GODDESS, AND SUCH THINGS ARE BENEATH ME.”

“Such confidence aside, are you sure there’s nothing you can add that might help?” Yenna placed a hand on the glassy surface of one of the core fragments, feeling the magic swirling around within it.

“I AM UNCERTAIN AS TO WHY SUCH A QUESTION MIGHT BE ADDRESSED TO ME. I AM NOT AN ELEMENTAL—I AM NOT THIS ELEMENTAL. HAST THOU ASKED THE ENTITY ITSELF?”

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“Ask the elemental… ? But how? It’s shattered—it can’t answer. It wasn’t particularly easy to talk to in the first place.” Yenna’s mind still sloshed and churned just thinking about her brief contact with the elemental’s thoughts.

“AH, I SEE. A LIMITATION OF THY MORTAL FORM. THIS FRAGMENT OF A MIND IS STILL YET A MIND—ONE MAY STILL REACH IN AND KNOW ITS THOUGHTS. BEHOLD.”

Demvya reached forward and pressed the two fragments together. They weren’t a perfect fit, but the rough edges connected for the most part. The two pieces—still missing most of the whole—began to react to some ability of Demvya’s, glowing slightly. Yenna watched as a kind of smoke built up across Jiin’s arms, sparkling with magical energies as it flowed into the crystalline core. With the core in her hands, Jiin blinked and looked up at Yenna—her eyes signifying her return to control more than her position.

“Um. Demvya said t’tell you t’follow her, an’ also told me t’hold this until yer both done. So, can y’make it quick?” Jiin gave a grin.

“Follow her?! She’s gone in there?” Yenna leaned in, ignoring the pain of her wounds as she moved closer. “I… I’m not sure how. Give me a moment here.”

Yenna’s mind whirled with ideas. Projecting one's being out of one’s body was not an easy task, something that only the greatest of mages could accomplish¹. However, such a spell wouldn’t be necessary—at least not to the level of a true soul projection. She thought back to Lumale, and the silupker’s tangible illusions. Instead of creating a true body, she would merely need to craft a representative with which to act within this place that apparently existed within the elemental’s core. It would need to be able to receive information from her mind and soul, so as to act according to her will, but also send it back—to that end, Yenna began to work off the basis of her magical eye spell.

The magical eye spell created a functional replica of the mage’s own sense of sight, displaced to a new location. While it allowed observation, it did not allow manipulation—the ‘eyes’ generated by the spell were intangible constructs of magic, catching light like real eyes would. Yenna knew that the place she was trying to go—the inside of the elemental’s core—would not allow her to see as normal. She mentally adjusted the eye spell to see magic instead—an alteration made simpler by the fact that it partly cut a step out of the process, allowing her to skip translating information into magical signals². The result that she saw would likely be rather unusual, but diving into an elemental’s mind was strange enough.

Next, Yenna needed a way to interact with whatever was in there—if there was no need to interact, then she surely would not need to enter the core. Her usual spell for manipulating objects from afar seemed a good starting point, but the idea was to craft a representative form that wouldn’t be too jarring to imagine occupying. Channeling that idea, Yenna came to the conclusion that a formless manipulator just wouldn’t be enough. A lifelike representation of her hands would be pointlessly difficult, but something more simplistic would do.

To that end, Yenna split her focus. While part of her mind focused on a simple representation of her own form, the other part began to put together the spell circle that would make all this possible. In doing so, she also had a number of additional ideas—if she could sense light through her magic eyes, why not hear through magic ears? If Yenna could replicate those senses, why not the rest? The spell circle was getting rather crowded—and very experimental. It wasn’t exactly comfortable to do so, but Yenna split her focus once more to test these remote sensing abilities.

Hearing wasn’t so difficult—Yenna already knew a spell that caught sounds in much the same way that the magic eyes caught light. Smell and taste didn’t feel particularly useful, and possibly quite obnoxious to test, so she settled for working out a way to sense touch and temperature at range. The first test held a rather uncanny tickling feeling as Yenna brushed this disembodied sense of touch against the fabric of the tent’s wall—having failed to define where that sense should connect to, it instead felt like she had some new, invisible body part floating nearby. 

“Yenna? Are y’nearly done? Ye’ve just kinda been sittin’ there furrowin’ yer brow for a few minutes.” Jiin had shifted herself so the parts of the core were resting against her thighs, removing the need for her to hold the thing up.

“Sorry. Concentrating.” Yenna continued her testing, her focus slightly damaged by Jiin’s interruption. It was one of the shortcomings of complicated on-the-fly spellcraft—even small disruptions like someone speaking could be quite a problem. The greatest of mages often locked themselves away in isolated towers, entering a meditative state for days at a time to ponder arcane mysteries—Yenna was stuck with a noisy tent and a handful of minutes.

A couple more iterations of the touch-sense spell later, and Yenna had it working well enough to transmit an approximation of touch to the appropriate location. Jiin watched fascinated as Yenna conjured up a tiny illusory copy of herself—a crude facsimile, but representative nonetheless. It was then Yenna’s turn to look in wonder as she activated the sensory spells—her world lurched, and suddenly she was in her own hand. Looking up at herself, Yenna nearly dropped her magical duplicate. The whole experience was deeply unsettling, and made her realise that she had forgotten one thing—if she wanted to move her representative, her avatar, she would need to cut off control from her own body.

In a slightly nauseating move, Yenna put herself—her avatar—down on the floor in front of her true body. Then, settling herself into a comfortable position, she steadied herself. Giving up control of the self was not an easy thing to do, but Yenna was eager to stop this unpleasant doubling of motions. Finishing up the last of her spells—allowing the avatar to manipulate the world both mundane and magical—Yenna transferred all control of her body solely to the avatar.

It was still quite the unusual feeling. Though the constant ache of her wounds was gone, her senses were somewhat diminished. Her eyesight was fine, but everything she heard had a slightly echoing aspect to it as the sound literally passed through her being. Yenna’s sense of touch was slightly dulled, and she had no sense of taste or smell—it gave the somewhat unpleasant feeling of having a blocked nose, without stopping her from breathing.

Without waiting any longer—for fear her nerves would stay her hand—the avatar of Yenna gave Jiin a wave and sprang directly into the elemental core.

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¹ - An exceedingly dangerous spell, a powerful mage functionally converts their soul into a pseudo-spirit state and lets it free from the body. Their empty, soulless body is sustained only by a thin tether, leaving them vulnerable to magical disruption—or the rather more mundane alternative of attacking the now defenseless body. However, doing so allows the mage to truly enter the magical realm. Arcane mages powerful enough to do so are all unwilling to share what they have seen and experienced in there, only insisting that one see it for themselves.

² - The arcane mage’s approach to a distant sight spell has a tether, a magical receptor and a light-translator—the final piece catching light much like the organic eye and transforming the received signals into a magical form. These signals are converted back to the kind of information one’s eyes would relay on the other end of the tether, thus allowing the magical tether to act like an extension of one’s ocular nerve.

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