Wild Card segment 10

Much as I expected, I crashed out around mid morning. What I hadn't expected was that the members of this order were not only tolerant of my sleeping schedule, but surprisingly understanding; it seems that having different sleeping schedules was necessary for an order of active military simply to ensure there were people alert and on duty at nights in case of unfriendly trespassers. Not everyone welcomed this schedule, which was why they often rotated waking schedules - that, and the necessities of arms training meant even the natural night owls needed to spend some days awake on the practice yard.

Still, I found myself wishing I were in the sort of shape I was in my youth. Although... that might actually be in reach for me, now? I have access to a lot of healing magics that I've been ordered to improve, and there's no reason not to use them on myself as I practice them.

Maximizing the effectiveness of my healing abilities will involve training up more than just those healing abilities, but other synergetic spells as well, such as Druidism to create more powerful healing herbs to be brewed, and Upgrade to improve both ingredients and their final results. And Unseen Servants to tend to plants and harvest them, fetch raw materials for me to reshape into things I can actually use, and so forth.

Alter Object is going to be critical for me. After waking up in the afternoon, I requested from Vanion a shaving razor, and received a straight edged razor as a result. I've rarely used one, so shaving my scalp entails careful watchfulness and several mirrors.

Or, it would have, except the moment the edge of the razor would have touched my scalp, it slipped right through my fingers. And I don't mean between my fingers, fumbling like some butterfingered klutz, no, it passed through my fingers, and then my body, to fall to the floor like it wasn't even there. I couldn't even pick it back up until I moved away from it five feet then approached it again. I couldn't use it to cut paper, shave my head, not even to accidentally or 'accidentally' cut myself.

Which is how I find myself in Vanion's study again. "I have a problem," I admit.

"I can't say I'm surprised," Vanion said, frowning as he pushed aside his inkwell and the papers he was working on. "What happened?"

Rather than describe the issue, I figured the fastest way to get the point across was a simple demonstration. I set the edge of the razor against the back of my arm, and the thing slid right through me like I'm a ghost.

It also landed edge down and did a bit of damage to his carpet, which I sincerely hope he doesn't notice. But at least it didn't land on his desk or a chair or something.

"Your restriction? Against things not created or altered by your magic?" Vanion guesses astutely. Seems even from something he learned while suffering sleep deprivation and whatever that sword did to him, he retained what I told him well enough to make the connection immediately. Shouldn't be surprised, though, given all the Pandion Knights are apparently wizards as well as trained knights so they can't precisely afford to have intelligence as a dump stat.

"The simplest thing would be for me to get some raw iron or steel," I take a few steps back from the razor, getting all the way to the wall, before walking forward again and picking the damned thing up. I carefully close it and set it on Vanion's desk. "I can just reshape that into whatever I need, I think. That, and some glass."

"The iron and steel will be easy enough," Vanion says, picking the razor up with a small frown. "We have a farrier and a general blacksmith in the chapterhouse to maintain armor, weapons, and keep our horses shod. The glass might be a bit more difficult; there's a glassblower in Cimmura, but things between the Pandions and the Church there are somewhat strained at the moment, as I'm sure you've gathered."

"Yeah, I got that. But I can make the glass I need with plain quartz or obsidian," I reply.

"Obsidian?" Vanion says with surprise. He sets the razor down on top of some of the more nearly piled papers on his side of the desk, and leans back in his chair. "Then you don't need the glass to be clear?"

"Not really. Obsidian is just impure volcanic glass, and most manufactured glass is made from quartz sand. I can make either one into whatever glassware I need."

"You are a wagon full of talents, aren't you?" he observes drily. "Don't become too productive with any of that, or you'll likely anger some perfectly innocent craftsmen you'd be putting out of work."

"I don't have time to make a business selling windows and horse shoes," I reply with a shrug. "What I make is going to be for my use, for the most part, either directly or to fill in where my talents are needed and I can't be there in person. I have too much work to do already if I'm going to be ready for what Sparhawk wants from me. Also, before I forget: do you have a room I can set up in where I won't be disturbed, and I can craft or practice without being underfoot?"

"I'll see to it you get the supplies you need and a room to yourself; we do have some penitent cells where the repentant can seek isolation and make peace with their sins." Vanion makes a tired gesture with one hand. "And speaking of, I don't suppose you can fix the damage the razor caused?"

I wince. "Yeah, uh... I'll need a few minutes."

"Please do so. I don't have many luxuries in this world, but the carpet in here happens to be one of my favorites."

I see to the process of repairing the carpet with Mending as Vanion watches. "Your magic is fascinating," he comments. "And you say you're not praying to your Loki to do these things? What are you saying when you cast your spells?"

I give him a helpless shrug. "It's not... speaking, precisely. At least, it's not language in the way you're thinking of. You understand math, right?"

"I'm not ignorant, Anthony," he says reproachfully. "I know how to count."

"That... Does the word 'mathematics' translate for you?"

"I just said I know how to count." he pauses. "Or do you mean more than that?"

Yeah, that's not reassuring. "Vanion, are you willing to go over some counting with me, then? Just so I know if we're using the same terminology."

As it turns out, it's not quite as bad as I feared. I can't be too surprised at the fact that their numbering system is base ten - since humans conveniently have ten fingers - and has much in common with arabic numbering. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are all well within his knowledge base, and he has a basic understanding of both fractions and percentages. He sort of grasps the concept behind exponents once I explain it to him, but roots don't seem to click for him even after I try to explain it as an inverse to powers. There is no concept of irrational numbers; the locals calculate the circumference of a circle as twenty two sevenths of its diameter. If I remember correctly, that was disproven on Earth by Archimedes around 300 BC, so it doesn't speak highly of the advancement of the field of mathematics here. Zero is understandable, negative numbers are considered a useless oddity, and he seems absolutely lost when I try to introduce him to precalculus.

I honestly have no idea how they use catapults here - they do use them, he reassures me - and expect to actually hit anything. Unless he just didn't learn anything more in math as part of his education, which is honestly a distinct possibility given it's something of a specialized discipline even on Earth, and many people go their whole lives without making use of it after high school. I find myself wanting to introduce them to a slide rule, but I don't actually remember how to proportion it - or precisely how to use one for that matter.

"Okay then," I say after a half hour of this increasingly frustrating exercise. "All this stuff, it's basically the beginner counting of what I'm doing to harness free floating mana that's just... everywhere," I say to him. "And by counting I mean just the initial number learning part. It functions like mathematics in a lot of ways, but the kind of math I'm doing is both a simplified version that leads into more complex realms, and a mnemonic for patterns I have to hold in mind-"

"What was that word?" he asks.

I think back over what I just said, before tentatively offering, "You mean 'mnemonic'?"

"Yes. That."

"It means... like a short cut to remember something. For instance, classifying stars in astronomy is memorized by the sentence, 'Oh Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me' and denotes in order the spectral classifications of O, B, A, F, G, K, and M."

"... Your magic cut away about halfway through that," Vanion admits, "And I didn't understand anything after that."

I sigh. "The magic didn't fail so much as you apparently don't have any equivalents for it to latch onto." I think for a moment; most of the mnemonics I know wouldn't really have anything to compare to here, given a lot of them are rooted in biology, physics, engineering, and the like. "The language barrier isn't helping; the spell is letting me pick up some of your words but that sort of thing takes a while to learn, and I've only been here... what, less than a full day?"

"We'll discuss your memno... menom..."

"Mnemonics," I prompt. "Honestly, even for us it's terrible to pronounce. Awkward syllables."

"Then I won't feel too badly for avoiding its use," he says. "You were talking about how it helps you remember patterns."

"Yes. The magic formulae are stepping stones to enhanced versions of themselves with wider application, greater power, further reach. In time, when I've practiced them enough I can skip steps, activate them reflexively, and even bend their rules in ways large and small."

"How difficult would it be to teach them to someone?" he asks.

Teach them? "That... I honestly have no idea," I admit. "Why do you ask?"

"Because as Sephrenia said last night, your magic doesn't follow the rules as we understand them, and the best way to be able to judge what you're doing is to have someone on hand who understands it." He shrugs. "Specifically, since I'm the one who is supervising you, I would like you to teach me."

I give a shrug of my own. "I suppose I can do that," I say. "What do you want to learn?"

"What can you teach me most easily?" he asks.

"Well... probably what I have the best understanding of is to alter objects, change their form and their composition from one thing to another," I say after a moment. "Like making volcanic glass into more normal glass or crystal."

"Then it seems to me that you can probably instruct while making the things you need," Vanion concludes.

"Not exactly? Teaching magic is something of a full time job; walking people through the basics means I'm not doing the more advanced forms that let me keep the items around for more than a minute, much less retain the forms I want them to take on a permanent basis. That said, teaching the basics SHOULD, theoretically, give a good grounding and jumping off point for being able to advance on one's own thereafter."

"How many hours a day can you spare while still practicing and advancing your healing magics?"

"Probably about two hours. Any more than that, and it'll probably start to slow everything else down. I still need to sleep, eat, and let my mind recover."

"Let's set up a schedule, then. I'd like you to teach me and a few other knights I select."

"You're the boss," I say.