By the time noon rolled around, the novelty of traveling forth into the unknown had worn off for Bernt. There were fields, copses of trees, more fields, villages in the distance, and even more fields. This region was the northernmost portion of Besermark’s heartland, which was roughly a triangle marked out by the cities of Teres, Yetin’s Harbor and Fergefield. These lands were well-protected between the Uvner River, which they’d just traveled down, and the Aelan River to the west, which ran south from Besermark’s geographic center to Teres and the Illurian Sea. It was also, incidentally, the ancestral home of Besermark’s gnomish population.

  The expedition stopped at a level spot with a nice view for lunch, overlooking more fields and a small farming village. The adventurers mostly sat down in smaller groups to eat, while a few, including Elyn, stood sentry. Nirlig, ever sociable, immediately wandered off with Regin in tow to exchange a few stale cinnamon buns for whatever fresh-ish rations the others might have brought.

  As far as Bernt could tell, the gregarious goblin had by now made the acquaintance of everyone on the expedition, and he stopped to exchange a word or two with nearly everyone he passed by. The way he moved between people made him look in control and in charge somehow, especially with the young nobleman following behind him like that. It made Bernt wonder what kind of future Nirlig had in front of him.

  “So, Bernt,” Torvald said as he dug a wedge of hard cheese out of his pack. “You said yesterday that you were planning to be an adventurer back at the academy. How did you end up as an Underkeeper? Josie said you were a volunteer. Like, a real one. How did that happen?”

  Bernt shrugged, considering how to answer. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. I thought it would be a good way to save some money without getting wrapped up in other people’s business. I thought I could be a real, independent adventurer – self made, but without all the risk of getting myself killed for lack of armor or a healing potion at the early ranks.”

  He scratched at the back of his neck, remembering his grand plans. He’d thought everything was working out perfectly until what, three months ago? It felt like a lifetime. “It didn’t go like that, but I don’t regret it, I don’t think.”

  “Huh,” Uriah grunted. “That explains a few things. You were always practicing spells down in the sewers and thought we wouldn’t notice. All the time. I always said it was too much for somebody who didn’t have any ambition.”

  Bernt flushed, oddly embarrassed to realize that his secret practice sessions hadn’t been so secret after all. Not that it mattered now.

  “What about you?” he countered, deflecting. “You were a volunteer, too, right?”

  The older mage’s jaw clenched. “Of course I was. I messed up my third investiture pretty bad, so I had to be realistic. Underkeeping is a worthy vocation, regardless of what the upper classes or the higher ups at the academy think of it. Besides, it’s a well-paid job for a guy who’s practically a hedge mage at this point, and we do a public service. I made the best of my situation.”

  “You’re right, I was just asking.” Bernt said.

  Uriah scoffed, but didn’t argue further.

  “So what happened?” Torvald asked curiously. “I mean, with your magic?”

  Uriah sat back and dug out a cup, which he filled with conjured water before taking a slow sip. It generally wasn’t polite to pry into these sorts of things, but Torvald didn’t know that and Bernt wanted to know, too. So, he didn’t say anything until Uriah finally sighed and answered.

  “I accidentally created a tangent in my third investiture – one of the glyphs is touching a join line from an entirely separate cluster in the spellform. It destabilizes the mana flow entirely, so the entire spellform is unusable and manifests as nonsensical chunks in my spells.”

  “Ah…” Torvald said, in the tone of someone who had no idea what that meant. Bernt winced. There were several ways for an investiture to go wrong – a misaligned glyph, a double-traced line, or just an unsteady wiggle in the spellform could all have a variety of effects. Sometimes, the investiture would just be a little less efficient, or it wouldn’t manifest quite as cleanly into spells. Other times, the investiture wouldn’t be able to fuse properly, effectively ruining the mage’s augmentation and their architecture with it.

  Mages in this position would have to work with three discrete investitures, which meant sorting through the influences of all three on every spell with each casting. It was slow and difficult to the point where even cantrips would take several seconds to cast with practice. In these situations, mages often attempted to repeat the same investiture again in hopes of finishing their augmentation. Once fused, its three constituent investitures would work together, synergistically empowering spells in a controlled fashion, like a single greater investiture. Of course, the bum investiture would still be there complicating things, but the effect was manageable with practice.

  Uriah, though, had it even worse than this. A tangent would allow mana to flow back on itself through the point of contact, leading to chaotic interference throughout the structure. His third investiture wrecked his existing spellforms in strange and unpredictable ways, meaning that parts of them might go missing during casting, while other bits of the broken investiture’s spellform might manifest randomly. Worse, that tangent existed inside Uriah’s mana network, so the mana in his body had to deal with unstable flow as well – Bernt had no idea what that might do to a mage, but he very much doubted he would get an answer if he asked.

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  It was something that further advancement simply wouldn’t fix. Uriah could try finishing his augmentation, but that wouldn’t significantly improve his casting speed at this point. And if he messed up again, he might not be able to work through the mess at all anymore. But… well, that wasn’t the only thing a mage could try, right?

  “Magister Pollock told me people can learn to exclude portions of their spirit while casting with enough practice.” Bernt mused aloud. “Maybe you could learn to do that? I heard it takes years, but if you could do that, then you could just ignore the problem, right?”

  Uriah sighed in exasperation. “I’ve looked into everything, Bernt. Everyone in my situation does. That technique requires extremely well-controlled mana flow to master, and mine is chaotic. Maybe if I’d learned how to do it before – but nobody learns archmage-level techniques before even becoming a magister.”

  “Right. Sorry.” Bernt apologized. For a moment, he considered shutting up, but only for a moment. This was, in a very roundabout way, almost his area of expertise as a wizard. Or it might be, someday. Maybe. “Has anybody ever tried cutting a broken investiture out of a mana network before? I mean, I’m sure you could. Question is if it would work.”

  He’d managed to heal a damaged channel. What if he could do more than that?

  Uriah shook his head wearily. “No, it doesn’t work. Cutting the spirit is traumatic, you can’t just reconnect it to itself at will like that. You’re crazy. You know that, right?”

  “But that means someone has tried it, right?” Bernt replied. “And you looked into it. Do you know what they did?”

  Uriah clenched his jaw, and for a moment, Bernt thought he wasn't going to answer.

  “The Madurians tried it with a demonic ritual forever ago," he said eventually. "That went about how you would expect. Someone else managed to get divine help from a priest of Aedina about a hundred years ago. That one survived, but ended up with a split mana network. The patient couldn’t circulate mana anymore and ended up joining the priesthood instead.”

  “Hmm,” Bernt considered. That option was probably out, then. He couldn’t operate more cleanly on the spirit than an actual god. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t do anything. Pulling back the sleeve on his right arm, he showed the other mage his arm, shapes glowing softly under the skin.

  “Did I tell you about how I got into the Wizard’s Society?”

  Uriah frowned down at the pyromancer’s arm.

  “No?” he said warily. “What did you do to it?”

  “I was trying to fix spiritual damage. I nearly burned myself out after the kobolds invaded, and with the Duergar invasion right afterward… well, that’s all beside the point. I worked out a way to fix the damage during my next investment procedure. Problem was that the affected portion of my mana network manifested physically in my body when I did it. It still works, but it’s different – like a sorcerer’s channels. The spells activate instantly, and the only way to modify the spellform is to sort of pinch off portions of it during the casting process.”

  Uriah stared at Bernt as if he’d grown a second head. “What? Wait… No. What?”

  “No, still not the important part.” Bernt said, waving a hand dismissively. “What’s weird about it is that when I cast through the investiture, it draws on my entire mana network. But when I draw mana from somewhere else, like my left hand, it doesn’t. That means I can cast normal spells without using the sorcerous investiture, as long as I don’t cast from my right hand.”

  “That doesn’t help me.”

  “No, not right now,” Bernt agreed, growing excited now as the idea came together, “but think about it! If I can figure out why it works like that, maybe we can flip it around so the sorcerous investiture can function without drawing on the normal ones. You could start over, sort of, but as a sorcerer! It would be almost like having two separate mana networks. Your regular one would be just as difficult to use as always, but the other one would be completely different.”

  “Sorcery…” Uriah said, not quite managing to keep the distaste out of his voice. It was, by and large, considered a more primitive form of magic. The kind employed by monsters and people who couldn’t be bothered to understand mana and the language of magic at a more fundamental level. But it was also the magic of the fae. True elves were highly secretive about their magical abilities, but rumors had always abounded about them. Flight, fully mobile protective magic, even teleportation. These were considered to be impossible by modern scholars – no one reputable had ever seen and clearly documented anything of the sort. But… well, the elves didn’t share their knowledge. What secrets might they be hiding that humanity could now discover for themselves?

  Bernt had no idea, but he could practically watch as the possibilities warred with the potential stigma in Uriah’s mind.

  “There’s going to be a lot of human mage-sorcerers around, soon.” Bernt said encouragingly. “My treatment for mage burnout is going to force the issue, and Fiora told me that a lot of veterans are probably already trying to work out how to do it on their own, now that they know it’s possible.”

  “Hmm.” Uriah grunted noncommitally. “How does it work?”

  Bernt explained the procedure, though he glossed over a few things. Specifically, when he got to the part about the hellfire-derivative, he renamed it his “soulflame” and didn’t mention what he’d adapted it from. Uriah had been a bit oversensitive about things relating to demons lately. Or maybe he’d always been that way. Bernt hadn’t really known him that well before. When he was done, Uriah got up and shouldered his pack with a faraway look in his eye. The others were rising as well, and the sentries were coming back in, getting ready to go.

  “It might be interesting, eventually,” the hydromancer allowed, finally meeting his eyes. “But you’ve still got a couple of big ifs in there. If you work out how to actually use that thing independently… then come talk to me, alright?”