Chapter 26: Chapter 26: The price of progress

A good night's rest – sans sleep demon – left Norman in a good mood. He wasted no time after waking up, quickly drawing out the complex magical circle for his new spell on his kitchen table.

The magical crayons he had made came in handy for this part of the spell once again. Once that was ready, he grabbed one of the rats from the freezer and simply chopped off the head with a cleaver he found in one of the kitchen drawers.

Norman was going to remove the skin off of the skull but decided to leave it on and see what happened. If it didn’t need to come off, why waste the time?

As soon as the skull touched the unmarked portion in the center of the circle, it began to change.

Norman had learned his lesson from his previous magical experiments though and was hiding behind the refrigerator door in case something went wrong.

The skin and muscle peeled away from the skull first, followed by the bone, then the eyes, and last the brains.

Watching the skull dissolve into the air like it was sitting in a strong acid was odd and a bit disconcerting. The dissolved components created a sickly-looking haze above the magic circle.

As Norman watched, the haze began to rotate. Slowly at first, but it soon picked up speed. As it did, the orb of sickly haze condensed into a ring. Norman noted this ring was the exact dimension of the outer line on the magic circle.

There was a pulse of light from the circle and the ring of spinning haze shrunk. It was now as wide as the second line in the circle.

This was repeated three more times, once for each circle in the magical design. By then the haze had condensed into a fast-spinning donut. It was rotating so fast that Norman could feel a breeze blowing out from the spell, even from where he stood.

Norman stood transfixed by the spell. It was one of the most fascinating and visual magical processes that Norman had encountered so far. He wanted to see it up close but he didn’t dare risk that yet. Not with an untested spell.

With one final pulse of energy, the entire spell form went dark. Laying in the center of the exhausted spell circle was a dark green ball. No, not a ball. Norman stepped closer. It was a tiny skull. It looked like something you would have on a keychain or hanging off a backpack.

Norman picked up the tiny green skull and inspected his handiwork. It was beautiful, almost like expertly carved jade.

He let out a chuckle, he couldn’t help it. After he had had the thought about it looking like a keychain ornament, he just needed to make it happen. After a few minutes of fiddling around and a bit of burning his fingers, Norman had his piece de resistance.

Dangling from Norman’s finger was a green skull, hot glued to a keychain. The thought of having an attack spell as a keychain accessory made Norman inexplicably happy.

He clipped it to his shorts and shook it about. The skull stayed firmly attached. Not that it would matter if it hadn’t. Norman hadn’t figured out how to activate the spell yet. He had an idea of how to do it, but it was probably better to test that theory somewhere that wasn’t his house.

***

“Another day, another angry raccoon,” Norman sighed.

The understandably upset critter hissed at him from inside the cage. Norman hated testing his spells on live critters. But he needed to know what they would do and testing it on a person seemed a bit extreme. Especially if he wanted to stay out of prison or not end up a corpse himself.

He had plenty of spells to use as test samples today. Some were more dangerous than others.

Thinking himself smart, Norman had doubled up, then tripled up on the magic circle used for the spell. It worked. But each additional circle required the equivalent amount of skulls for the spell to kick off. The size of the resulting skulls even reflected the change, which made it easy to see which skull was what. The single skull was about the size of a marble. And the triple was about the size of a mandarin. Easy to hold in your hand and toss like a grenade.

Norman didn’t want to think too much about what happened with the quad-circle attempt. He would need to find a new kitchen table. And clean up the pile of ash residing where his old table used to be.

Without further ado, Norman tried imbuing the marble skull with some of that internal energy he had. It was the only thing he could think of that might activate the spell. Everything else he had tried had failed already.

But it wasn’t as easy as just willing the power to fill the skull. Norman hadn’t ever tried to control the power within him, there had been no need. All of his spells so far were precharged and ready to go.

He pretty much ran into a roadblock right away. He couldn’t really even feel the energy inside of himself. He knew it was there. But it was like knowing you had blood and being able to feel the blood flowing through your veins. Unless you pressed your fingers against a vein, you couldn’t tell.

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Going off of that assumption, Norman tried to find magical veins within his body. Yeah… that went about as well as he thought it would. Which meant not at all.

What did he know so far about magic?

Precious little. But he knew that certain humans could pull magic from the environment around them. Or he suspected as much. Norman also knew that the elves had magic practically bursting in their blood… could it be that simple?

Norman took out his pocket knife and poked his finger until a bit of blood appeared. He winced from the pain but he continued.

Holding out the small green skull, Norman wiped his bloody thumb across it. The blood seemed to be sucked into the skull, leaving Norman feeling a bit spent. But the green skull was now pulsing a dark red color.

Not wanting to see if the spell had an automatic timer, he threw it toward the cage… and promptly missed.

The skull sailed past the cage by about ten feet where it landed in the tall grass. As soon as it impacted, however, there was a flash of sickly green light, mixed with a hint of red. No sooner had the light faded, than the vegetation wilted and decayed, leaving a puddle of unidentified brown goo behind.

Norman walked over to the spot where the spell had landed, ignoring the continued angry hisses of the trapped raccoon.

When he got close enough to the impact site, Norman could see that it was a perfect circle. The affected area looked to be slightly larger than a basketball, but not by much. Norman could even see where the bottom of the spell ended as there was a slight curve of unaffected grass that led down to the dirt.

He found a stick nearby that he used to poke the brown muck that had settled on the ground. It confirmed what he suspected. But it was good to verify. The spell had no lingering effect as the stick was left whole. Norman didn’t stick around near the impact for long. The smell of rotting vegetation was not pleasant.

After returning to his original position, Norman pulled out the second larger skull. This one was about the size of a bouncy ball. He quickly repeated the steps to activate the spell, and this time took more careful aim.

The skull impacted the cage with a light clink, startling the raccoon and making it pause its angry diatribe. But its surprise lasted for only a moment before the spell detonated. The raccoon gave out a terrified squeal as the green energy encompassed it.

When the light faded, the raccoon began to decompose rapidly. Its skin sloughed off, followed by its muscles and tendons. Then the organs ruptured and melted into a vile sludge. But the bones… the bones remained.

Norman really didn’t want to go over and inspect the carnage, but he knew he had to if only to verify his findings. He covered his nose as he approached the cage. The first thing he examined was the area of effect. It didn’t look to be twice the area of the first test but with the shorter grass near the cage, he couldn’t be entirely sure.

When he got closer to the cage, he noticed something else he hadn’t expected to see. The cage looked to be rusted. Like it had been left to sit out in the elements for an extended period of time. Norman reached into the cage and extracted one of the bones for a closer look.

The bones looked pitted on their surface but had survived relatively unscathed. Seeing no reason to leave perfectly good bones behind, Norman picked up the cage, letting the decomposed remains fall through the bottom with a wet plop. He would need to rinse the bones and cage off before bringing them home but that would be fine.

The next test went much the same, Norman tossed the largest skull into a thick bushy area. He wanted a clear picture of how big of an effect the spell would have. There was also a nearby tree, so he was hoping to see what the effects on larger vegetation might be.

Again, the spell size wasn’t as large as he expected. He guessed it to be about two feet across. But he did notice something new. The vegetation that was consumed seemed to have gone past the rotting stink that the first test produced. As for the tree, not much looked to have happened to it. The bark exposed to the spell flaked away at his touch but even the wood beneath seemed to only be discolored.

Norman wondered about why that might be but he was no tree specialist. Now he only had one more test to perform. It wasn’t one he was looking forward to, but it needed to be confirmed.

With a shaky breath, Norman set up for the final test. In one hand he held an uncorked healing potion. And in his other hand, one of the marble-sized skulls. He estimated the distance for only the edge of the effect to impact the side of his foot, then he activated the skull and dropped it.

Norman had been waiting for excruciating pain to spread through his foot and up his body when the spell went off, except, he felt nothing. Opening his eyes, Norman looked down. He blinked a few times in confusion, seeing no injury to his foot. Had he missed? He lifted his foot off the ground and saw he had not missed. A part of his leather sandal had rotted away below his feet.

The outcome was so unexpected that Norman couldn’t help laughing. After his short bout of manic laughter, Norman packed up his gear and headed home. Norman now had more attack spells than he could use, literally.

What happened when Norman activated his Orb of Decay spell wasn’t the only thing he had learned today. After each test, he verified his inner pool of energy by looking through his grimoire and comparing the intensity of the feeling to what he knew it should be. It was most definitely depleted by his actions today. Almost completely. So that meant Norman was going to have a fun night of experiencing another magical overdose… yay, him.

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