Chapter 12: Paper-Thin

Jyn sighed. Kalender charmed someone by complete accident.

“I expected this, but not like this,” she muttered. She faced Kalender. “Follow me.”

She led him to a dark alley, not too far from the Knight HQ.

“And we’re in a shady place where we could totally be ambushed within 10 seconds of entering it … because?” Kalender asked while looking around. Few people passed by the alley’s entrance. There were no windows in the bordering buildings—and no witnesses.

“Oh no. You did what,” Jyn deadpanned in a somewhat loud voice. “Another one? You dirty man.”

“W-what are you doing?”

“Look over there.” Jyn pointed behind him. From a shadow, he finally caught the shape of a person.

She was cloaked, and they couldn’t see her face. Seeing that both her targets were aware of her presence, she emerged. “How did you know?” she asked. Her hands were already on her daggers.

“Rather, why wouldn’t the Inquisition send someone to monitor us?” Jyn replied. “The Esteemed Inquisitor Yal is known to be caring towards his friends, after all.”

Kalender tried to be clever and activated Interpersonal Bubble—but the skill left him dizzied. The shadow’s territory was … the whole alley. Anywhere there was shadow, she deemed it hers.

Yep. Peace is best. He raised his hand. “I’m very lost right now. We’re not supposed to fight, right?”

The shadow tensed at the suggestion. “No, we’re not,” Jyn declared. “We have a report and an apology to make. I’m sure you can tell the Esteemed Inquisitor Yal for us?”

The shadow huffed. “Speak with haste.”

Jyn nodded. “The anti-charm cuffs are not enough. Skin-to-skin contact circumvents them.”

“Then someone was really charmed?” The shadow glared daggers at Kalender.

“It was unexpected contact,” Jyn explained. “The Librarian stationed in this town’s Knight HQ. It’s recent.”

“That Librarian will lose her post.” The shadow turned towards Kalender. “This is the law of Lyrica. As one directly involved, how will you take responsibility for this?”

It was a probing question used with an anti-deception skill, and Jyn knew it. It was better for Kalender to answer from his heart, however, so she decided not to interfere.

“Well…” Kalender was pretty miffed and still in-denial about it. The only thoughts he had about it right now were the straightforward ones. “We’ll have to break it to her sooner rather than later. If what everyone’s been implying about the curse is true, then it’s not something that should be left alone to grow into a huge problem by itself.”

“You will … control the progression of the curse in her?”

“Huh? Well, if that’s what you call what I did for Jyn, then yes?”

The shadow shook her head. “There seems to be underlying information you are keeping from me. What is it?”

Underlying information? Kalender was genuinely confused, and the shadow picked this up with her Read Emotion skill. She didn’t know how to interrogate a genuinely confused man. At the least, he wasn’t being deceptive.

“If I may,” Jyn interjected, “if I am correctly recalling our conversation with the inquisitors in Fort Stave—Kalender, I believe we may have omitted a groundbreaking detail, thinking that the inquisitors already knew.”

Kalender tilted his head.

“Respect,” Jyn continued.

“Ahh.” Kalender thought he got it, but no. “Wait, no, I don’t get it.”

“Very few people have maxed Appraise, and hence, very few people have peered into the Companion System’s details.”

“… So Inquisitor Del never saw that weird stat at all?” Kalender suggested.

“That’s the case,” Jyn nodded.

“What are you two talking about?” The shadow was agitated. She’d already loosened her grip on her daggers, but she’d tightened them again.

“The Affection stat peculiar to the Companion System,” Jyn continued, eyeing the shadow, ensuring her attention was captured, “by the sixth day of the test, it had been replaced by a Respect stat.”

If Kalender couldn’t see the shadow’s eyes, he saw them now.

Jyn continued. “I am of the opinion that the change was triggered by Kalender’s quirks of personality as a man, and that this guided my possible Companion Skill choices, finally leading to a peculiar skill that essentially liberated me from the curse.”

The shadow was quiet for a moment. “I understand. Do not approach the Librarian. Await instructions.”

She melted back into the darkness.

“Wait! How do we find you!” Kalender called out.

“She will be the one to find us,” Jyn replied. “Come on. I am sure the response will be swift, so we need not worry about extended delays. Since we cannot do anything for the Librarian for now, let’s practice some magic, shall we?”

Jyn started walking out of the alley. Kalender shook his head at the abrupt flow of events, but started walking after Jyn anyway. “How can you shift gears so easily like that? It’s scary.”

“What’s a gear—never mind. Do you mean how I keep moving forward?”

“Something like that, I guess.”

“I am a Knight at heart.”

She grew up among the eldest of siblings, caring for them in place of their mother.

“Too small to matter, too large to abandon post. The enemy and the world moves without my permission.”

She could only do her duty.

“Even my best efforts will fail, and my chest plate made paper-thin.”

But to stop was to die every death.

“It’s all I can do.”

Relentless. That’s what Kalender saw, whipped across Jyn’s back. There were sacrifices she had never mentioned, he was sure. Maybe she thought nothing of them, or maybe she simply sealed them away.

He caught up to her to walk side-by-side.

***

“Oh, hey. Got what you wanted?” Lens asked. She was bored out of her mind, slacking on a desk in front of the training field’s storage shack. It was just a bunch of sticks she was guarding, really, but the constant threat of salary deductions for unaccounted inventory kept her from escaping. Practice weapons were surprisingly expensive.

“Yeah,” Kalender replied. “You look like you’re losing your mind here.”

“When aren’t I?” Lens chuckled. “I’m guessing you’re not here for small talk? You just went for a spell library, after all.”

“So this place has a magic practice area, then?” Jyn asked.

“It technically does, but the safety barrier isn’t working, so we’re not allowing any combat magics at the moment—which is 99% the reason why people go there, so it’s sort of abandoned at the moment…”

She was grumbling by that last part.

“Huh, disappointed about it?” Kalender asked.

“I am!” Lens jumped to her feet. “Magic is awesome! I want to see fire shooting out of someone’s wonderful ass, damn it!”

Kalender backed off. Each to her own, I guess.

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“What if we can fix the barrier?” Jyn suggested.

“Hm? You can?”

“Wait, we can?”

Lens got dragged into Kalender’s confusion. Jyn chuckled and shook her head. “An ordinary barrier is just a series of stone pillars, each one engraved with a magic circle. All you have to do is put MP into it, and it’ll activate.”

“MP dumping is normally my job,” Lens added, “or visitors’, in case I’m tapped out.”

“There you have it.” Jyn put a hand on Kalender’s shoulder and smiled. “I think you can do it. Have you ever done a stone engraving before?”

Her theory was that magic circles were just the same dead language as the chants. If Kalender’s skill also extended to writing systems, it should work all the same.

“Stone engraving?” Kalender repeated. He shook his head. “I’ve never even touched a chisel before!”

“Huh? This guy can repair the barrier?” Lens asked. “Do you have some sort of magic mastery skill or something?”

“Well—” “Yes.” Jyn interrupted Kalender before he could complicate things. “He’s quite gifted.”

“Cool, cool. Well now—go have a try at it!” Lens gave a thumbs up.

“Huh, just like that?” Kalender asked.

“I’m basically in charge here, so it’s fine!” Lens was being cheery about this, slapping down a box of chalk on the table. “I think we can find someone who can do the engraving, so don’t worry about that!”

Kalender had the distinct feeling that they were being ripped off.

“Let her,” Jyn whispered. “We can make her owe us for this later.”

Kalender nodded. Jyn’s kinda scary.

***

Lens was showing the two around, skirting the edge of the slope into the magic practice field. It was set away from the primary training field, and was a sunken, rectangular plot of land, about 3 meters deep. Overall, it was a quarter of the size of the physical combat practice field, but the fact that the downrange target area was practically made of glass at this point gave the place an air of volatility and danger that you wouldn’t get from watching a bunch of sweaty teenagers get bonked around by a slime simulator.

They weren’t going down into the field itself. The only way was to slide down into it, which was fun, but climbing out was a pain. “Aren’t there proper stairs or something?” Kalender asked.

“Oh, someone blew them up last week,” Lens replied. “Incidentally, she was also the reason why the barrier broke.” She sighed. “We occasionally get power types, so it’s nothing special. Usually, it’s their first time using magic, so—this happens.”

There was a crater about 10 meters wide, downrange where targets would be placed.

“It’s exactly what it looks like. No one was too injured, thankfully. A bunch of eardrums didn’t survive it, though.”

Although the land was sunken intentionally so that the surrounding dirt would absorb the bulk of area-effect magics, there was still the danger of things being thrown up in an arc and into the surrounding town. That’s where the barrier came in.

There were four pillars, one for each corner of the field, set on the higher elevation to help create a dome barrier that comprehensively covered the field.

Out of the four, one had been spectacularly damaged. It was one of the pillars closest to the live-fire target area. Lens approached it together with the two.

“Huh? It looks new,” Kalender remarked.

“That’s because it is.” Lens slapped the semi-circular pillar, leaning onto the flat side. Its stone was clean and polished, to the point that it had a bit of shine to it. “We just had this installed a few days ago. The engraving’s shit, though. It won’t play with the other three’s.”

Lens pushed off of the pillar. “Well, are you going to have a look at it?”

Kalender shrugged. “Hope I can figure something out, I guess?”

He approached the pillar. The engraving was on the flat side of the pillar, which faced away from the practice field. It was circular, as expected, but it was also unexpectedly dense with glyphs and sophisticated in layout. Aesthetically, it was beautiful.

In the end, however, they were just words to All-Language Fluency.

{This is a barrier pillar of a magic practice area, by Station 3 of the Knights, in Clarinets, of the Kingdom of Lyrica. Create protective walls with other barrier pillars in the same location to guard against physical and magical projectiles.}

“See what’s wrong?” Lens asked.

“Can I have a look at one of the other pillars?” He figured the magic circle was actually a specification, and if you changed the specs of something meant to function in a bigger system, of course things wouldn’t play together.

“Sure,” Lens replied.

The next pillar was of the same design, but it showed a lot more age. There were rain lines staining waterfalls down its face. Kalender checked its engraving.

{This is a barrier pillar of a magic practice area, by Station 3 of the Knights, in Clarinets, of the Kingdom of Lyrica. Create a dome with other barrier pillars in the same location to guard against physical and magical projectiles.}

“Hey, question,” Kalender called out. Lens turned his way. “You ever tried putting MP into these?”

“Yeah. The MP gets sucked in like normal, but it’s giving us half the dome we need.”

“There aren’t any straight walls?”

“Huh? From the barrier? No.”

Weird. They were all “barrier pillars,” or so they were labeled. Kalender had expected them to bug out by correctly making a half-dome, but then plop down a bunch of straight walls from the new pillar. There weren’t any straight walls, though.

To be honest, he could walk away right now and just tell Lens that the engravings didn’t match in the first place—but he really wanted to solve this puzzle in front of him.

From what the magic circles said, it was concretely clear that, broadly-speaking, you needed to give an object a name, a place, and instructions. In short, the creator of the magic circle got very specific about what object was being magicked into becoming magical.

There were a few weird things going on, though. First, the keyword “this” was already ultra-specific. If it weren’t, Jyn would’ve set fire to the forest instead of the campfire. He could only think that the only reason why the location was specified was so that other magicked things could be grouped together in case they needed to interact.

If they’re all declared “barrier pillars,” and are all grouped together, then why isn’t the wall pillar making walls?

He squinted with all his might, finally zooming in on the latter part of the statement: {Create a dome} as opposed to {Create protective walls}.

Maybe those implicitly declared the capabilities of that particular magicked object? If you told it to make a dome, it would become “a barrier pillar that makes domes,” and likewise, the other would be “a barrier pillar that makes walls.”

Then it struck him. The keyword “with” probably implied that at least two pillars with the same capabilities were needed to actually do the thing, and there was only one pillar that can make walls. If it can only make walls, then it couldn’t help make a dome. Likewise, the dome pillars couldn’t help make walls.

Telling an object what to do also makes the action a part of its identity.

He stood up, feeling accomplished and powerful—he knew, oh he knew, that he could totally magick up damn near anything if he put his mind to it.

Then it dawned on him—magic in this world was essentially just lawyering taken to the extremes. The only way to know how a statement was going to be interpreted by the world’s magic system was by actually trying it out.

It irked him. Experimenting with this stuff was going to be a long and hard road, and he had all of 10 MP to do it with.

Regardless, he would do it. No matter how boundless and swerving the path, or paper-thin his theories might be, he wanted to walk there—to wherever it would take him.

“Did you figure it out?” Lens asked.

“I did,” Kalender smiled. He took out a single piece of chalk and put a single dot above an F clef-looking glyph. “Just cut that part out? It should work.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

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