Ravensdagger_Kittypunk_Cyberpunk_Kitrpg

Chapter Twenty — Magic

Chapter Twenty — Magic Magic.If Samuel Colt made man equal, than magic made man even.In theory, anyone could practice the arcane arts. There were several disciplines, and while a number of them required some items and resources to work, an even greater number only required knowledge and perhaps a promise or two made to extremely powerful, otherworldly beings.In practice, magic was rarely used by the common man or woman. That knowledge was esoteric, the tools needed to practice it were bizarre.Why spend three hundred hours learning a single spell able to light a candle when you could climb into perpetual debt and come out of it with a bionic finger that had a built-in lighter? There was certainly a certain level of commodification with magic, but a lot of it simply required hard work on the caster's part, and hard work wasn't something a proper capitalist society could sell.Alyssa looked like she was in her mid-twenties. I couldn't imagine someone like her knowing all that much about magic at her age, but maybe that was just my own older age speaking. There were a few schools in Cambridge which taught some forms of magic to their students from a young age, and she was just old enough to be a college graduate."Magic is as beautiful as it is dangerous. It isn't something for people to just pick up on a whim," she said. She was really leaning hard into the whole edgy spellcaster stereotype. "If you mess it up, it can cost you your life, your soul, or worse. Understand?"Sharp nodded quickly. I wasn't sure, but I suspected that she was primed to agree to anything that Alyssa said to her. "I promise I won't use what you teach me for great evil."Jenny next to us snorted, then choked on her spaghetti."Don't worry, I won't be teaching you any spellwork," Alyssa said."You won't?" Sharp asked."I hardly have the time for that. Let's just cover the basics. Do you know how many kinds of magic there are?""I don't," Sharp admitted. "But I think I know a few? There's stuff with Eidolons, then summoning, casting spells, and... I think there's a kind where you need to move to cast?" She wiggled her arms a little in a mock dance.Alyssa nodded slowly. "That covers five broad types of magic. In all, there are eighty-four categories for what counts as magic.""Eighty-four," Sharp repeated. "I don't know if I could memorise that many.""If you can't memorise things, then most magics aren't going to be for you. Regardless, most magics use some shared principles." The young mage raised a hand, then started counting down on her fingers. "The mage, the body, the mind, the soul, the spirit, and the cant.""Can't?" Sharp asked."Cant, one word," Alyssa corrected. "It means a mantra, saying, incantation, or some other way of binding a spell to the world and activating it. Some cants use motions, others supplications, and there are some kinds of magic that don't seem to use a cant at all, but in reality the cant is just hidden somewhere else.""I think I got it," Sharp said.Alyssa eyed her for a moment, and the doubt in her eyes was painfully obvious. "Sure," she settled on. "Most different types of magic are more about taking different approaches to using magic itself to accomplish something.""What do you mean?" Sharp asked.Alyssa frowned, then reached over and grabbed a napkin from the centre of the table and placed it between herself and Sharp. She crushed it into a little ball, then set it down. "I want this to move from here." She pointed to where the napkin was. "To here." She pointed to the edge of the table. "I can move it physically, obviously."Sharp nodded as Alyssa plucked the napkin and placed it back down on the edge. She brought it back a moment later."No magic. But I could do the same with magic. As a warlock of the Veilwing Sovereign She Who Whispers in the Dark, I could beg my patreon to move this napkin for me."Nothing happened."But I won't, because testing an Eidolon like that is foolhardy. Instead, I could link this to something similar." She grabbed and crushed another napkin, then set it down. The two were next to each other for a moment while the girl muttered something under her breath and focused hard on both. Then she moved her arm to the right, and the second napkin, without anything touching it, shuffled along the top of the table.This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there."Whoa," Sharp said.It wasn't exactly an impressive sight, but it was still interesting."That's synesthetic magic. The linking of two similar items," Alyssa said. "Fewer cants, simpler mental images, but a decently high price to pay in body.""I don't know what that means," Sharp admitted.Alyssa shrugged. "It doesn't matter. The point is that this is one way to move an object. Another could be..." She grabbed the original napkin and replaced it. Then she reached over to the end of the table where a small candle sat. "Jenny, have a light?"Janny shifted to her side and tugged a small lighter out of her shorts. She took the candle and lit it.Alyssa thanked her with a nod, then carefully fed the second napkin into the flames. It burned rather brightly.Then she muttered something else, and the first, original napkin rolled over to the edge of the table."There are a few types of magic that can do what I just did," Alyssa said. "Voodooism, sacrificial magic, a few others. The point is, I sacrificed something of equal value to affect a peer item. Same result.""But it was different," Sharp said. "You burned that napkin, is it gone now?""Yes. And if I want to move that one back, I'd need another. Sacrificial magic is generally very unpopular for that reason."She was right. And the matter of cost could be complex to calculate. There were some assassins that had used that kind of magic before, but killing three or four people to maybe kill their target was a lot of bloody work, and it wasn't exactly subtle as far as magical things went. At least, as far as I understood it."Is there any magic I could do?" Sharp asked."You'd need to be smart for that," Jenny said.Alyssa gave Jenny the stink eye. "You can't cast any spells either, Jenny," she said, her voice entirely flat.Rather than be insulted, the smaller woman just laughed. "Okay, fair. You got me.""As for your question... Sharp, was it?""Yup, that's my name," Sharp said as she sat up. "But you can call me Fasmine too. That's my first name. Most people call me Sharp though.""Can't imagine why," Jenny said."Well, Sharp," Alyssa said. "There are some spells that even a newcomer to magic could learn. Some are even pretty useful. Here let me send you something. Do you have an email address?" Sharp nodded, and then grinned as Alyssa sent her something from her phone. "That's the Create Water spell. It's a mage spell, so there's a long incantation with prescribed movements and you need several reagents, but none are complex. Chances are you'll do nothing but wave your arms around and mumble for a few hours and get nothing for it, but hey, if it works, then it works.""What do I need for it to work?" Sharp asked."Reagents wise? Salt, mostly. It won't even be used up by the end. In terms of other things, you'll need to feel that out for yourself."Sharp's order arrived just then, putting an end to our little Magic 101 course, but not before we were both rewarded for paying attention. Sharp tightened up, and gasped. Fortunately it was in time with the fries arriving, so it could be played off.I stared at my own prompt in the meantime.Magic Has Levelled Up!Magic 0 1That was interesting. Not just the raise in the skill, which I wouldn't say no to, but the fact that we both got a stat increase at the same time and presumably from the same experience.Did this mean that having someone teach either of us might be a way to grow faster? Not much of what Alyssa said there was beyond common knowledge, though the demonstrations had been novel.If the value of a trainer was that high... I knew exactly what Sharp and I would be doing the next time we had a day off. Sharp had actually fallen behind me in terms of sheer number of stats, and I felt like that wasn't entirely right.A few days of concentrated training might help."So, Sharp, you busy tomorrow?" Jenny asked. "Because if you're not, I think we could make use of you. Ya know, if you still wanna make some cash."Or we could lose those training days and end up tugged along into some trouble instead.

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Chapter Twenty-One — The Job

Chapter Twenty-One — The Job "You have a job for me?" Sharp asked.This was dangerous. The first job came in and we needed it. It was a bit of desperation but came at a relatively low level of risk. This next job? We didn't know the level of danger, but from what I knew of these two girls, it wouldn't be entirely safe.And Sharp didn't need the work.We had a nest egg right now that could theoretically last us a couple of years if Sharp was very careful about her spending, and two simple jobs that, while they didn't pay super well, did bring in enough income to keep us going for a long time.I didn't have too much more time to debate with myself as Jenny leaned to the side and hummed while twisting her pint. "So, the job isn't anything too complicated. We need someone to check out the area around South Boston. Specifically, Back Bay."Back Bay was its own sort of district, sandwiched between South Boston and Central. Though both of those had expanded so much into it that the area's unique identity had been erased. It was still geographically relevant, but not culturally."Check out how?" Sharp asked. "I've been picking up work as a courier lately, and maybe that'll have me going around that area.""A courier, huh?" Jenny asked. "That's alright work. But yeah, you heard about that big cult blowout a couple of days ago?""Yeah," Sharp said. She wisely didn't mention that we were right next to the epicentre of that whole mess. "I heard about it. A bunch of weird people chanting about Him attacked the Riveters, right?"Jenny nodded. "That's the gist of it. So, turns out the cult really pissed off the Riveters something fierce, and now they're being put down, hard. They called in favours from the Iron Workers to chill things out between them.""Oh, that's big," Sharp said. I glanced up to her, and she caught the moment and explained. "The Iron Workers are the second biggest gang in South Boston, right? They're a union, I think?""Yeah," Jenny said. "And the Riveters aren't union at all. They get paid to scab all the time, and generally they don't get along too well. You're either in one camp or the other, and it can get pretty ugly. Plus the Iron Workers have a stick up their asses.""Jenny," Alyssa warned."What? It's true," Jenny said. She reached over and stole one of Sharp's fries. The girl gasped at the theft, but Jenny ignored her. "Anyway. We don't see the two getting along all that often, but sometimes they agree about some shit long enough to put their differences aside. This is one of those times."Sharp nodded while she subtly pulled her plate of fries away. "Yeah, I can see that," she said. "Anyway, neither want anything to do with the weirdos.""I'll be honest I don't want anything to do with them either," Sharp said."Nah, that's fair," Jenny replied. She waved the stolen fry around in a little circle. "The thing is, the cult's right on the edge of Back Bay, right? That's also where the Mutes are.""The Mutes?" Sharp asked.That was one I knew about, if only by rumour. The Mutes were a smaller gang out near Central Boston. They had a community of mutated humanoids, supposedly escapees from some labs in Cambridge, but also people affected by experimental drugs or mutated by drinking water from the river running through the centre of the city.The gang was noteworthy for two things. Their mutations, which made them... somewhat less than desirable to look upon and very rarely had positive benefits, and their natural affinity with magic.It wasn't a secret that more than one Eidolon had picked a mutated person to be a warlock, and with their general physical dysfunctions keeping them out of the public eye, the Mutes had developed their own magical prowess.They also spoke mostly in sign, or on occasion telepathically. Not that they were all actually mute. It was just another way the gang kept themselves separate from the rest of the city."They're a bunch of weirdos that live out under Central," Jenny said. "Honestly? Not the worst folk around? Bit weird lookin' but a damn sight more polite than some others you'll meet.""Okay," Sharp said. "So what's the job then?"The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.Jenny gestured vaguely. "We wanna know what's going on. Taking out cultists is always great work. Decent pay, you get to keep most of what you find, and no one is too pissed if one of them gets their head shot in.""I don't think..." Sharp began."Not asking for you to fight 'em. Asking for you to check in on the Mutes and ask them what's going on.""Why don't you do it?" Sharp asked."Bitch, I'm busy," Jenny said."And we're a known factor," Alyssa said. "Jenny and I have both done merc work, our faces and records are on the Mercnet, and the Mutes are fairly security-conscious. Also, as a courier, you'll be able to go places where others cannot, just because your job allows you a certain level of casual access without raising suspicions."I frowned as best I could. They hadn't known about Sharp's job before we sat down. That entire thing was a post-hoc addition."I suppose," Sharp said."Look, we'll give you a hundred bucks to snoop around and listen to rumours for a few hours. Use it to buy yourself some local snacks and talk about the weather with some strangers. It ain't a big deal," Jenny said."Tell them, that you're not going to be exclusively selling them the information. Then demand five times as much.""F-five times as much?" Sharp asked."Five bigs ones?" Jenny asked. "Girl, you nuts? I'm a little busy, but if I'm gonna lose five hundred I'll find the time to do it myself. Merc rep or no. We're doing you a favour here.""Five hundred is a little excessive," Alyssa agreed. "But maybe I can sweeten the deal.""Y-you can?" Sharp asked. She tensed up as the girl across from us leaned forwards, then she pulled back and revealed a small phone.Alyssa nodded. "I have some old standardised magic texts. They're from one of the universities in Cambridge. These are crash-courses on the basics of spellwork. Pirated, of course. But the principles are sound enough and with a... lot of practice you might be able to summon a flame or create a small gust of wind. You could buy the textbooks outright, but they're extremely expensive, and the pirated versions usually have magically-enforced DRM that I'm certain a novice would never be able to break.""And you have them broken?" Sharp asked."I do," Alyssa said. "Does that tempt you more?""Ah, you are very tempting," Sharp agreed. She looked down at me, questioningly.I considered it. On the one hand... paw? On the one paw, it was putting us at a bit of a risk. On the other, we might well have to deliver in that area regardless. A slight detour for a few more dollars while also getting some questions asked? That was maybe worthwhile.Being a courier wasn't something Sharp could do long-term. Information brokering? That was a much better job in the longer run. And the texts were admittedly very tempting.We could now afford to buy them outright, but legal channels sometimes raised suspicions."I can't promise anything," Sharp said at least. "But I guess if I have deliveries in the area I can stop and ask around a little. I'm a bit curious about that cult too. Do you, uh, know anything about it?"Jenny shook her head, but Alyssa scowled and nodded. "A little. There was a maelstrom in the magic of the city. Boston Two often feels like... a shore with many rocky outcroppings and treacherous waves, but there's a pattern and a flow that you can grow used to. Over the last couple of weeks, there has been a shift. As though a tide is receding before a great swell. I thought nothing of it, but I suspect that this shift is centred around the northern end of South Boston, which...""Is where the cult is," Sharp finished. She shivered. "That's creepy. Weird murder cults are bad, but magical ones feel like they'd be way worse.""You got that right," Jenny said. "The only kind of cult that's acceptable is a cult of personality, and then only when I'm in the middle of it."Sharp giggled, and soon the conversation turned to lighter things. Talks of shows and celebrities and local gossip that I only followed with one ear.This could be a big mess we were skirting around, but it might also be a great opportunity. I just hoped that chasing this wouldn't take time away from growing in other ways.

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