Tristan walked over to the desk and set his Omnitome down. Right, he thought, I need to put essence into the room to get this started. First- he flipped the book open to the dragonbane spell type section, leaving it open to the first pages.
Sitting on the chair, he took several deep breaths and spun his crucible, closing his eyes and peering into his inner world. The effect was almost immediate, and he walked up to the tree to find that the third ring had been fully reached. A long way to Fourth Order, he thought as he observed that the next ring was double the distance he had achieved between the Second and Third rings. And even more essence capacity required for the next one, he observed as he measured the distance between the different rings.
Moving his gaze to the words surrounding the spiral, he took stock of the spell types he had access to. Dragonbane. Ice, fire, smoke, and lightning elementalism. Artifice, flora, illusion, imbuement, enchantment, fortune. He sighed and pondered his options. If I'm going to be focusing on killing dragons with Bertram for the next few days, I should focus my attention on dragonbane spells.
He stood back from the tree and looked at the other options available to him. I have to hold off on Artifice and Imbuement, but those don't really need to be memorized anyways, because I'll pretty much always do that when I'm in a safe location and can look at my Omnitome to reference. I plan on putting fortune, enchantment, and illusion spells into items since I don't want people to know if and when I'm using them. So that means I need to memorize dragonbane, the elementalism types…but what about flora? It only has that one Thornfall spell, and that spell requires plants to be present. I'll put some of those spells into items as well.
He already had an idea as to what he would ask the Gnome smiths to make: a bandolier or belt that could house several well-crafted and artifice-requisite-meeting objects. A means to have several spells on hand and just have to tap his chest or hip to funnel the essence to activate. Plus, he could get some metal vials, he was sure, to put elixirs in so they would be in reach and not have a chance of shattering. Dragonbane, then the elementalism spells.
With a game plan in mind, he returned to the waking world and opened his eyes. Still spinning his crucible, he poured essence into the floor beneath him. The walls, floor, and ceiling glowed a slight yellow color before fading to a dull, brown glow. Tristan could feel the pressure around him, almost like something was pushing against his skin.
Dragonbane, he thought as he flipped to the Third Order section. I already have the Second Order ones memorized.
Breath Weapon - lesser (Third)
Spell Phrase: The power I took from you is now mine to wield, and it responds to my call!
Spell Gesture: As Breath Weapon – minor (First Order)
Other Notes: This spell functions the same as the First Order version, however the area spread is increased. Testing with fire, it's about sixty feet in a cone.
Tristan stood up and faced the wall with the blast marks. Placing his hand up to his mouth with the index and thumb in a ring, other fingers in line, he poured his essence into his throat while speaking, "The power I took from you is now mine to wield, and it responds to my call!" As he spoke, he pictured lightning arcing from the skies above.
He could feel the buzzing sensation in his throat that was on the edge of a tickle or itchy throat, and that sensation traveled through his mouth, and from the small circle made by his fingers, a blasting cone of lightning surged outward – bright, arcing yellow with light-blue tinge. It was not a torrent that continued, but a brief, instantaneous zap that he almost missed – and would have missed if he had blinked.
I wonder…can I do multiple elemental spell types in one go? He took another deep breath and repeated the spell phrase, but this time he envisioned the flames, ice, and lightning all in one go. The essence that he had been building in his throat burned, chilled, and scratched all at once, and as he opened his mouth a gout of steam blasted outward for a brief second before lightning coruscated behind it.
Damn, he thought as he lowered his hand. Looks like opposite spell types cancel each other out. Fire and water I figured would, but it looks like ice and fire do, also. He tried once more with lightning and fire – and found to his satisfaction that the burning torrent and lightning both surged out together.
That's one down. He turned back to the book.
Aspect of the dragon – tail (Third)
Spell Phrase: With this tail, I shall crush my foes!
Spell Gesture: Reach a hand back to your lower back and tap just above your butt with your index and middle finger.
Other Notes: The tail is a good bludgeoning weapon, and you since it is an essence-based construct (just like the Wing Glide spell), if your tail is "hit" nothing will happen. It doesn't have any weight, either.
He turned back to the spell practice side of the room and reached a hand around to his back, whispering the spell gesture as he spun his crucible. But he didn't know where to direct the essence, which was irritating. Swirling it in my chest and just pushing it through my body like its circulating isn't doing the trick. Maybe the fingers? He tried pushing the essence there, but nothing happened. Okay, maybe…just above my rear?
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As he pushed the essence to that point, he felt an unbearable itching sensation. Keeping his head craned back over his shoulder, he could see a phantasmal tail that was long, thick, sinuous, and tipped with a huge, black club-like tip. Moving his hips back and forth, he could almost feel the weight behind it. Spinning in a tight circle, he felt the tail instinctively tuck in, and stopping the spin abruptly, he bucked his waist toward the wall.
The mace-end slammed into the wall with a resounding crack and true to the spell notes he felt no pain. But he did see the deep crack that was left behind. Considering this wall has probably seen thousands of spells…this thing can hit hard with a wind up. He suddenly wanted to try this on a training dummy and see how far he could launch the thing. Walking the length of the room and quickly reversing course, he could feel the balancing weight behind him and almost sensed the odd feeling of it sliding across the ground, swishing left and right.
Letting the spell lapse, he went back to the Omnitome and flipped the page, and that's when he noticed a pattern and flipped around to confirm it. On odd numbered Orders of spells going higher, it's just an improved Breath Weapon and a new Aspect of the dragon. The unique spells are on even numbered Orders. Huh. Neat. So no more Third Order to learn and memorize.
He spent the next several minutes drilling himself on the two new spells. The Breath Weapon – lesser was easy, as it was just a single extra bit to the sentence. But he toyed around with different elemental combinations, and concluded that he could do anything except polar opposites in conjunction.
The tail was fun to play around with, and he unsheathed his sword and practiced several large, sweeping strokes whilst engaging his hips a bit more than he normally would to swing the enormous, mace-end of the tail to smack into the stone wall.
Okay, I think I've got those two down. Now, let's look at some of these elementalism ones. Oh, but first. He ran his hand along the sword, "Feel the power I have claimed," he said as he ran the essence through his crucible and into his palm. The weapon took on a smoky appearance, becoming much lighter weight in his grip, and almost becoming gaseous – still holding a shape, but he could move it deftly. Just like that demon lord did to me with the spiked ball on that chain, he thought as he took some practice swings and took himself off balance with the incredible speed he was able to swipe with.
But what about its cutting power? He took a step forward as he swung and hit the wall – only to see the blade pass through it harmlessly. Huh, so I guess smoke elementalism is not really good for weapon enhancement. Why did the demon lord do it then? I know I felt something when it hit me, but it was negligible. Just to test, he poked the tip of the smoky blade toward the top of his foot.
He could feel pressure, and pushing more, he realized the true potential of this smoke elementalism infused blade. It went past the armor, and he could feel the metal on the top of his foot. Oh, that is neat! It's for armor penetration. Or bypassing it. That will be handy against armored enemies. Maybe even letting me get past dragon scales entirely.
He let the essence fade and pondered his Omnitome. Now…which to start with? Probably ice elementalism, given that I know…knew the First and Second Order spells I could access…
Tristan sank into the chair and felt choice paralysis. Overwhelmed by the sheer number of spells between pages as he flipped. Ice elementalism alone has dozens of spells. Let alone fire, smoke and lightning. How can anyone know all this stuff?
Obadai's words from his parting with Shandra on the docks made far more sense now. "Don't try to do everything. There is so much to learn." Those words rang truer than ever now, and Tristan also realized why Obadai, though capable of all spell types, did not know or practice mind as one of them. He just had too many options.
Just as Tristan now had. "I need to make up my mind," he muttered. "Do I specialize like Obadai did? Dabble a bit in all of them?" Scanning through the Omnitome, and taking some notes on the spare parchment with one of the ink pens, he lumped together the different elementalism spells into their categories of offense, defense, or control.
Well, he thought as he began scribbling some notes about the elemental spell types and flipped to the different pages with the run downs of elementalism. It looks like each of them functions off different stacking effects.
Ice elementalism would cause frost buildup on those who survived being hit by it, which would slow them if they weren't killed outright or injured to the point they dropped.
Fire elementalism had spells that claimed it would set a target struck to be "ignited" which was interchangeable with the word "ablaze" depending on origin of the essence-weaver, and other spells "consumed" that effect to explode for a burst of explosive flames.
Lightning elementalism spells would set a target to "charge" and then when another target in range of a similar spell was struck, a little bit of lightning would leap to the "charged" target, consuming it to replicate the damage.
What I would really like to do, he thought, is put each of these ranged spells onto some artificed item I could easily use. Having a means to do the various offense spells, and rapidly rotating between them, would be extremely valuable. There is just too much to memorize. He tapped the ink pen several times against the paper.
He sat back and took a deep breath. Lightning is useful for dealing with opponents over long distances. Fire is good for applying those ignite effects and then detonating them if the target was grouped up – so that is my area-of-effect type of spell for clumps of foes. Ice is excellent at up close, and single, big projectiles. He tapped the ink pen against his temple a few times, clicking his tongue as he tapped his foot in time with the pen taps.
The backlash for ice and fire were not bad to deal with, since he already had innate resistance thanks to the blood he had drunk, but he could also alternate them to reduce the overall impact – minus the control backlash, which he couldn't really help.
But the lightning elementalism backlash was…weird. Offensive backlash would result in muscles seizing up. The bigger the spell, the more noticeable the spasm would be. Defense backlash resulted in something called a nervous system being impacted – a term he had no clue about except the notation there – but would effectively cause him to move slower. Control backlash would cause random arcs of lightning that would cascade from him to affect things around him.
Smoke's backlash was more tolerable, but the spells were not very combat oriented except for reducing vision – which he could do without the backlash thanks to his dragonslayer heritage. All the spell type categories – defense, offense, control – resulted in the same backlash; smoke would form in the lungs and have to be coughed out.
He set the ink pen down and scratched his head. I should prioritize ice elementalism, since it's so close to my bloodline from the Winterbloom. Then, just offense for fire and lightning elementalism. I'm skipping smoke elementalism. It is neat, but the effects are all pretty one-note until way higher Order.
It made the most sense to him, and he flipped over to the ice elementalism section.
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