Walking Outside - Chapter 12

My cheerful mood was broken when I unlocked the apartment and found the door to my temporary room wide open, a note taped to the door. Worse, I was circling Black mana at that exact moment and my emotions slammed from violation and anger at the trespass on my territory to instantly considering how I could punish Gile’s for his actions. Switching over to Blue, my emotions slowed and calmed and I almost had myself chuckling at the obvious manipulation and wondering how I would play things. Leaving the door open showed he had entered my room – something he had every right to do since it was his home – but it was still a light violation of my trust. On the other hand, he left the door open to make it clear he had done it. Or at least, that’s what this game felt like to me. It was possible, but I doubted it, that he had just gone looking for me and left a note for me when he left. I already knew that Giles was able to hide himself and show only facets of himself as needed. He was trained as much as a spy as much as he was as a researcher.

With the switch to White mana, my feelings of betrayal cut off and I was back to feeling enjoyment on my success of the day while also feeling that it was only right that the Council would have Gile’s poke at me to see which way I would jump. Not that the me under the influence of White mana would hesitate to smack them down if they endangered Buffy and the Scoobs, but I could at least see where they were coming from.

Dropping my mana, I could feel everything that I had before, but it was muted and less intense, less focused on the specific facets that the colors of mana enhanced. I did feel a sense of trespass, I still that the council was pushing Giles to poke at me, I didn’t really had no problem with it unless they went too far. Only while I was holding Black did things amplify beyond what I would normally be able to feel.

I wasn’t used to Black, I didn’t normally resonate with Black, and its effects were more pronounced because of it.

Shaking my head, I walked to my room, dropping the crate on the dining room table as I passed. Snagging the folder from inside, I yanked down the note and dropped both sets of papers on the desk in my room. Flopping into the chair I took a moment to just breath, rubbing my eyes to remove the frustration. A twist of the neck and a stretch left me ready to get back to solving my problems.

The note was short and formed with impeccable handwriting, something that was a bit disturbing considering it was also obviously a quickly penned note.

Mr Goodfellow,

I attempted to contact you at lunch today but it seems you were out. I’ve received news from the council and I felt that I should inform you post haste. My afternoon will be spent in the school library from 3 to 6, if you wish to stop in and discuss this news, or assist with later patrol issues, we would appreciate your arrival.

G.

Signing the note as just ‘G.’ - which admittedly was done in a delightfully swooping swirl - seemed a bit pretentious to me, but he was probably concerned about me having something that he had personally signed and gave to me. My magic instincts seemed to hint that such could be a useful link and would be something to avoid doing myself.

Dropping the note on the table, I sat and stared at it, trying to think of any other interpretations but the initial manipulative reading of the situation or the basic direct reading of the note. I couldn’t think of anything else, but I’ll keep an open mind about it. I’d screwed up my first introduction with the way my magic had been messing with me, but I wasn’t going to pretend that Giles was just a fuddy-duddy intellectual no matter how much he played the part.

Staring at the note as I wildly considered every kind of social maneuver I could, I finally shrugged and pushed it aside since I had nothing. I had to spend the extra time considering because I was so eager for the next item on my to do list.

Grabbing the manila folder with the stapled stack of paper I purchased with my efforts, I grabbed the stack of papers and dropped them on the table with a grin. Flipping through the pages my manic grin slowly slipped away.

It wasn’t a healing spell. It was a regeneration spell. Oh, it was useful, extremely so, but it wouldn’t cure aneurysms, brain tumors, or whatever the hell it was that Joyce had waiting in her that would kill her one fine morning. Worse, it might actually make it worse. This wasn’t some conceptual regeneration spell, it was more like accelerating the bodies own healing process. If the body can’t heal it, this won’t heal it either. Overuse would likely also cause premature aging, not that aging for a single use was much of a worry.

Leaning back in my chair, I rubbed across my face as I let the bits and pieces of the spell float around in my head. It had a call to a spirit as part of the spell, but that component was so badly integrated that it could be yanked out and only two locations in the spell had to be patched to make it keep working. It was barely a hindrance. Even that was useful since it had a way to reference a minor spirit, and that could be substituted for just about any True Name. If I was suicidal I could even use my own for my own spells in the future. Not that I would ever risk using mine ever again.

Pulling out a spare bit of paper, I began to doodle bits of spell forms, picking and choosing from the spells I knew and the new parts. I wasn’t writing out anything real, I was using short hand and little references to catch phrases from TV shows, whatever popped into my head in a loose kind of free association. It didn’t always work to get the mental juices flowing but in this case it did.

Somehow, I had a spare thought about a sale on a boat with some cartoon character blowing on it, causing the thing to fly along even though it would never work in reality. That led me to an idea using regeneration itself, at least the concept of it as structured in this spell, as a source for magical energy. Actually, it was the source for a heat transfer component that would then be transferred into magic, but it was close enough.

Now my smile was back. Sure it wasn’t perfect, but in short bursts, it could provide an extra oomph of magic. Not that power was my real limiter. But the side effect of stopping aging was a pretty significant one. Still, the slow decline of the body as the simple failures of the body without even human level regeneration made it seriously flawed. Conceptually halted aging was a pretty neat idea, even if it was so flawed that everything else about it meant it would be a slow decline into death even in a single year.

So not so much un-aging even if the magic said it was. Which was an important point to keep in mind. Just because the spell said it did something, didn’t mean that thing was a good idea. A few more spells, and I might be able to pull together an actual immortality spell.

My magical instincts seemed to think this wasn’t a serious concern for me, it kept hinting at all the things that the different colors of mana would do for me if I continue to use them, but I was more of a belts and suspender kind of guy. Not to mention, it would be nice to be able to use it on anyone I care about.

Flipping to another page, I checked the clock to be sure I still had time before finding out what Giles wanted. A quick trip to the kitchen for tea – and Giles had some great tea options – and a sandwich, and I was ready to fiddle with my spells again.

Next on the docket was my much abused candle spell. Their were all kinds of fun bits and pieces in that spell. A way to detect living things as an exclusion, a way of extending the target to multiple targets...my head snapped up to the regeneration spell then down at the idle doodle I made. The words ‘I’m just one of you kids dudes!’ an old reference to a skit from some old comedy show where they were making fun of Hollywood’s tendency to use twenty-somethings in place of older teenagers. The skit used a much older man, wrinkles and all, playing as a teenager and it had been seriously funny.

My messed up mind had taken the idea of the reversing the sourcing from regeneration, the targeting from the wind gust spell, and the exclusion for the living. I would have to hold and channel the spell, but it should be able to basically create a cone of effect in front of me that basically takes the age of vampires, ignores the living, and create areas of reversed aging for other vampires. It would never work for reversing aging in a human, it would almost instantly start doing nasty lethal things if done to a human, but I didn’t care about doing damage to the undead! It was a serious mana hog, but I was a mana powerhouse. It would pull the power out of a vamp, using it for further damaging effects for any around them, but it would completely ignore anything living. It wouldn’t be exponential, the effect wouldn’t chain. The first effect would damage them and create an area around them that does more damage to any other undead, but that secondary area effect wouldn’t do anything further. With enough of them crammed together it would cause a rather significant bit of heat build up in the targets, but that was even better!

Scratching out the mana recycling component that would bleed off some of the initial feedback into further effect, I used a different recycler that would ground anything beyond a the further component's ability to generate the secondary effect and then directed that mana into further heating the target.

It took another half an hour, but when I was done, I had a spell that would cause younger vamps to simply die – fire, ashing, explode, I wasn’t precisely clear on the way their de-aging would finally result just knowing it would be bad and lethal according to my instincts – and would make older vamps into beacons of death for their minions all while weakening them.

The only real down sides were that I would need to cast and keep funneling mana into the spell, as well that it was limited to a focused cone that I had to keep on target. The effective range of the cone was also a bit questionable. Still, not bad for bastardizing and weaponizing a regeneration spell, a candle lighting spell, and a wind gust spell!

Stretching with a few vertebrae popping nicely, I glanced at the clock then cursed when I realized the time. I only had twenty minutes to get to the school to see what Giles wanted. I’d wanted to grab a shower before I headed over, but I got distracted with my spell work. It was surprisingly enjoyable to fiddle with magic and creating things. Briefly I wondered if this was how my father felt when he obsessed over his toy trains, but I shook that thought away as I grabbed a thin jacket and briskly walked to the door.