Chapter 4: Obsessing over the useless tidying spell.

“You can’t withhold a paycheck when I’ve just secured us at least another ten percent on the bulk items,” Walters says gently, the young man pouring them both tea. He even deliberately pulled over an uncomfortable chair to sit in front of Julius’ office desk.

Julius is slumped back and a bit sideways, elbow on the armrest, legs crossed at the knee. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re the worst.”

“What’s the right way to take it?”

“Badly,” Julius deadpans but it’s been a day since his visit to the school and he’s stopped caring too much – past the embarrassment of the whole situation that’s probably going to keep him up at night.

“Oh my,” Walter frets, pushing over the rose cup. “I’m so sorry, Julius. I didn’t realise a 4^th level magician would be difficult for you when I saw you take one down in a single spell three years ago. That’s my oversight. I’ll make sure it never happens again.”

Julius sits up, batting him away before he can add sugar. “I’m a 2^nd class. You can’t do this again. What if I didn’t react in time?”

“Dilani is a bit hot-headed but she’s a lovely teacher, she would never do anything underhanded, all front-on or nothing,” Walters tsks, wagging his finger. “Not like certain boss I know, acting upset when he certainly must have enjoyed showing up an old classmate.”

“School was almost a decade ago and I care for none of those people – even when we were classmates,” Julius points out. “Walter, you don’t understand the nuances of magic. I surprised the 4^th class years ago, that’s the only reason I won. I need to prepare so accidents don’t happen.” So he doesn’t slip and reveal himself, that is.

Walter drops the ditzy act, sitting straighter. “I wouldn’t have done this without ensuring my success.”

“You took a risk when you didn’t tell me if you wanted her still alive or not.”

Walters pauses. “I knew there would be friction, but I thought I would have to plan several meetings with you in mind. I didn’t expect it to…”

“Go so well?” Julius drawls. The dim gold circle under the table doesn’t brighten with a lie – no lies except Julius’. “This week’s paycheck is still forfeited to the staff downstairs."

“Oh, my frail heart,” Walter sighs, deflating back into his air-headed persona. “I do try my best but I suppose I’m just not good enough.”

“Quit then.”

“Rude.”

Julius huffs and flaps a sleeve around. “Go. I know you’re still sick.”

“Fever has already broken,” Walter dismisses casually. “I need to meet with the warehouse manager this afternoon, it’s a quick job. Hopefully.”

“Ordering?” Julius looks around his desk in attempt to find any reports of that nature but all of it is staged paperwork and unfortunately honest clutter; a centurion orb weaver’s carapace was dropped off yesterday and now sits on his desk as a paperweight. Hien cleaned so now he has no idea where the real things have gone. Probably in a nicely labelled folder somewhere.

“Shipping back to the other warehouses actually,” Walter explains with a shrug. “We’re too full up with the school’s bulk order sitting in there.”

“And now you’ve stalled it even more,” Julius tsks, abandoning his search. He keeps thinking about that tidying spell and it’s starting to itch.

Walter smiles, politely bland. “I’ll have them begging by next week.”

---

Julius is staring at the pile of scrolls in the corner, pen making an ink blot on the letter he’s writing, because his eyes caught sight of the pile and then his brain checked out twenty minutes ago.

Maybe a base containment spell, which is what he does now, just needs a more structured sort of placement. Could add in a layer of telekinesis for better handling? But might as well use telekinesis for everything at that point.

Julius lifts a hand, still holding his pen, and rolls his wrist so his finger draws a circle in the air. Two palm sized circles in blazing gold blooms above the vaguely gathered pile, and both layers spin clockwise because this spell is a controlled one compared to ‘set and forget’.

The spell triggers when both finish forming and a faint shadow bleeds out of the gold lines, seeps down and bubbles to engulf the scrolls. The shadow then condenses to pile them up higher and tighter before it disperses on his orders. Some scrolls fall again but it’s tidy enough.

The circles shatter after he stops feeding the spell magic and it turns to glinting dust that fades as it drifts through the air. The scroll pile holds, for now.

There’s a knock on the office door and Julius barely hears it. He picks up his tea, worries at the rose cup, rubbing his thumb over smooth flower petals. The spell would a need a filter for size and top versus bottom, wouldn’t it? He’s not expecting it to fold his laundry but to stack books will take a rune chain for directionality which isn’t difficult but-

The knock comes louder. “Julius, are you in?”

Julius blinks. “Yes.” He blinks again and sets down the pen in its holder, trashes the ruined letter and frowns at his room temperature tea because he didn’t even get to drink any. “Come in.”

“Your new schedule,” Omar says as he lopes in. He hands the paper over and stuffs his hands into his pockets.

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“Did Hien quit already?” Julius asks in amusement, reading over it.

“McPherson is showing her the bank stuff.” Omar hooks a thumb into his own chest. “I’m the cute secretary now,” he deadpans and turns it into a thumbs up.

“Dreams do come true,” Julius muses. “What does this say?” He turns the paper around, pointing at it.

Omar leans in and squints a bit. He takes the paper back and squints more.

“It’s your handwriting-“

“Yeah, give me a moment.”

Julius takes his tea to the table near his viewing chair to make himself a new cup.

“D-die…Died? Oh, okay, Diedrik Govain. The noble boy.” Omar holds up the paper in victory. “I remember now. His pickup isn’t scheduled but it says the deadline is soon.”

Julius counts off in his head. “Should be about time. Tell him to pick it up tomorrow afternoon.”

---

The night is pitch black outside the window and Julius knows he needs to be sleeping and fourteen anchors to a first layer is too many - but Julius is in the kind of state where he’d rather just edit on the fly instead of redoing it neatly, half the construct being cancellations or linking to nothing at all.

He’s folded in half over his table in the study room of his house, elbow the only thing propping him up, head in hand, robes wrinkled and a bit stained with inscription ink as he makes a muddle of scribbles on the translucent vellum paper he’s using for the initial diagram, the other layers all shuffled underneath in a mess.

Usually he uses a jigsaw globe of glass that can be opened in layers to write on. Spell creation with two or more circles is three dimensional since the layers interact and need to be worked in a sphere. Julius deliberately forgot his glass globe at his office, hoping that it would deter him from making this spell but no, that would be too easy.

So even the rain has gone to sleep now, his back hurts and he’s just completely forgone rulers and compasses because who needs proper lines to draft a spell? Certainly not Julius, undeterred by the chance of this very literally exploding in his face.

Over the night it turned into a 4^th level spell like predicted and he’s putting the final touches on the third layer which is the absolute worst order to do this in but he’s not starting again now. He has a thick stack of vellum paper where he’s broken down separate components of the spell.

There are five major parts to a spell circle; a core script to activate it, thin anchor lines, thick channels for the magic power to flow, runes to dictate what the spell does, and finally an overall containment so the magic doesn’t bleed out and a magician can hold the spell.

Normally if a magician memorises it properly, they can just cast the core script but if they want to show off their control, they write it out in sections like Dilani did.

So Julius has one page with a small circular chant of words which is the core script to activate the spell and is the same for all circle layers. Then he has a couple of pages of thin lines spiked out from the core that anchors everything together and keeps it straight like a backbone.

Several more pages are of thicker strips branching from the anchor lines, concave or convex, in squares or triangles – whatever helps carry the magic flow better to power the spell like veins.

An entire two dozen pages of rune placement is to tell the magic what to do, which takes incredibly long to figure out because each new rune has a ripple effect to the runes webbed around it. It can only be placed in logical sequence though -Inis not next to Mahn unless there’s a Ryvet to the west, etc- so it’s hard to get wrong as long as Julius follows the placement rules.

Which the Julius of two hours ago apparently threw out the window; he can’t believe he tried to put three Berkonids together but that’s what he gets for doing this in southern tongue runes like a savage.

That is done for every layer and it’s fine. It’s fine. The anchoring is fine, the flow is neatly controlled. The rune information on what the spell should be doing is also not quite perfect but will have to be adjusted during practical testing.

He’s stuck on the encapsulation for the entire spell, which is meant to be simple arithmancy to lock it in and separate his magic from neutral environmental magic, but it’s too unstable and the circle keeps fizzing out as the magic escapes. He just keeps checking and rechecking the runes for interference, makes his lamp brighter to chase away the night’s shadows and the haziness of his thoughts like that’s going to help.

He places a hand on the sheets and his magic forms to the lines. The draft 4^th level spell flares a pale, shimmering amber in this light, strong enough it’s casting deeper shadows around the edges of the table and the stack of laundry on the floor he’s practicing on because yes, he’s obsessing over the useless tidying spell. It splutters, shattering into dust and fading quickly with how unstable it all is.

He needs to sleep.

The layers are summed into eights, so he’s designed it as twelve sixes to a simple two, with a backup five fours. It’s hexagrams, a line and some squares, how hard can this be? This should be working; the spell appears and then breaks so it must be containment that’s wrong. If he has to use the guess and check method, he’s going to set something on fire.

He sits back with a flop and drags a hand through his white hair -extra fluffy from all the frustrated ruffling- as he takes a sip of room temperature tea. He picks up the paper and turns it around for a new perspective. Picks up all the other ones too and layers them over the top of each other, dropping the edge of the desk a few times to make it neat.

He leans back and holds them up to the lamp light to see through it all. His eyes immediately catch on the gap of a perimeter anchor line. The gap that means obviously the magic is escaping, because he didn’t draw it closed.

Julius’ sigh turns into a loud groan.

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