FSE

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Once done eating I find another strange little trick to this place. Almost as if sensing that I am done the tray, along with the dirty dishes just floats back up in the air and begins heading back towards the counter they had originally come from. Convenient as that may be it is more than a little creepy. Our next stop was to stop at a place I could only describe as a library where we could pick up my spell book. And she wasn't kidding about it being big. The thing must weigh at least thirty if not more and not something that even Hammer could easily hold in just one arm.

"Well, here you go," another imp comments, handing over the book to me. "And this is your copy. Feel free to write in it all you want. When you're done with this place, by leaving or death we'll auction off your book to whoever wants it."

I smile meekly at the imp before sliding the book slowly in my arms so that I can get a good grip, leaning back a bit at the weight. But of course the smile is fake. No one really cares about being told about what will happen to their things when they die when just arriving there. Though I suppose in some contexts I'm already dead. It's just a matter of which death it is, death of mind or death of body. At any rate, especially with this build I should see if I can't learn to cast that floaty spell thing myself. It'll be difficult for most to lug around, especially for me. And considering how costly it'll theoretically be to replace it would make it extremely impractical to bring along on those battles. Though I wonder if perhaps that might be the point. This would mean that people are being very strongly incentivized to only learn a smattering of spells, probably only picking those of their element they can memorize and ignore the rest.

Which makes me wonder what all is actually in these books. The outside of the book is oddly plain. No title. No indication whatsoever of author or what it is. Just a fairly simple design of blues and purples. The paper seems high quality from what I can tell. Either way, I bow a thanks at the imp and head back towards the exit to this place.

"So where to next?" I ask.

"I figure I'd take you to one of the spell labs and then leave you there for a while, then tell Hammer where you are so they can pick you up for training later. No offense intended but I do have my own duties and preparations to make for tonight. I can't afford to just babysit you all day."

Oddly the spell labs were conveniently close to the library like place. Siren opens the door for me and roughly explains it to me before leaving. The spell labs almost look like a shooting range. One large room that is not well lit but you can see just fine. Supposedly it shields against magic attacks by not being there, or rather that your spells are sent to a place without space. Thus your attacks cannot destroy anything because there is nothing to destroy. Or something. But it will still let you see the effect so that you can see if the spell works or not. Shrugging I move to a bench and place my book down with a heave and open the front cover and grimace. Apparently they are dead set in mocking this name. Embroidered on the first page is an elaborate red rose that glows a light blue when I touch my hand to it, and a text right below that says "Property of Rose." I half wonder what would happen if they had put my real name on it instead.

"Names have power," I state out loud to myself as a reminder to what was said to me earlier.

On that note does that apply to books as well? Can a book have a true name? Would using it have any impact or influence on the thing? I suppose that given the society, important books might be left unnamed as a common superstition or tradition, which would explain why there is no text on the cover to this book. I turn the page and find a nice and handy table of contents; a rather in depth one too as it takes up several pages and is broken down by element and individual spell.

I wonder what is needed first when I notice the introduction section. I sit down on the bench absent mindedly and end up sitting on my tail, eliciting a small yelp. I quickly recoil at the response and clamp my mouth shut. Stupid sensitive appendage. Why couldn't it have had the decency of not having any feeling at all? Sighing, I lift the skirt of this so called uniform and I push my tail back and sit down so that it goes behind the bench. The tip of it drags a bit along the ground, but it can suffer there for all I care. I can't wait for this damn thing to go away. I can't even think of one upside to having the thing. But I'm not stupid. I remember what the doc said and won't just try to cut it off. I smack the thing once for good measure and set about reading.

The section goes into general theory about how magic works, how to use it and what to be cautious of when using it. It does mention some common spell crafting components like Spell Paper, which is apparently something that can not only hold certain spells but is reusable. The biggest warning seems to be at those like me as it says the first spell that should be mastered is the release spell. That and to be always conscientious of our limits. Casting magic puts a strain on the body and there is only so much of it that can be used at any given time before we'd need to give our bodies a rest As such we should never deplete our reserves so much as to be able to use the release spell, unless we are in a situation where we are unable to use it anyway.

The release spell is itself a sort of special form of enchantment. The body will fight it off and that's why we revert. It taps into our magical essence to draw out a form and by casting the release spell we are refreshing the enchantment. But the body wants to get rid of it completely but is only able to remember what it is supposed to look like so long as the person under the enchantment does not accept the new form. And for a human body it will take on average about a year before the body can purge the enchantment completely. Meaning that once the year is up the release spell will no longer have any effect.

Using the spell is rather easy. It is like an itch when tapping into our magic. An itch I can already begin to feel, like a joint that doesn't exist just asking to be cracked. And all I have to do to use it is to give it what it wants and release that pressure. Satisfied I can do it I flip through to browse the healing magic section and note that the actual spells are written in that strange little language that I can somehow read, albeit with a bit of difficulty. And yet the page numbers are all in English, which is somewhat odd but I think nothing past it.

Many of the healing spells seem simple enough, but my is there a lot of them. A spell to mend broken ribs, another to fix a broken bone. There's like twenty of them just to deal with ordinary injuries alone. No way I can do much of that without the book. Might just memorize the "Stop Bleeding" spell but to do any more I'd need to bring my book with me. Feeling a need to feel productive and do something cathartic so that I switch over to my other element so that I can learn how to cast a fireball or something. It takes me a while to find it, mainly because it was called "Projected Flames" rather than something simple like Fireball. It starts simply enough. Create a magical flame in dominant hand. The act of getting it to go anywhere is the problem, however.

It seems that to do that is to mentally launch it at the target as if fired from a bow. In fact the act of moving it involves pantomiming firing a bow and mentally firing it as I release. It takes me a good fifteen minutes before I get the knack of it enough that it at least flies in a forwardish direction. And this from an element I theoretically am supposed to be good at. Though the entire time I'm doing this I can help but feel as if I am a single step away from something, causing me to reread the book a a few times to make sure I was missing something. I wasn't as far as I can tell. Yet it still felt like it was missing something.

Either way I have to stop as I'm starting to feel it. I stretch my arms for a few minutes to try and loosen them up a bit more. While doing this I notice that I kinda have to pee, but I can still hold it for now. If anything I can call it an act of defiance at this body, for being as it is. I sit back down and browse through some more fire spells, finding the notion of one particularly interesting. It requires Spell Paper and can be prepped ahead of time. One then charges it up with magic and places it somewhere. As soon as it contacts something it arms. There is a symbol cared onto it to the user's discretion. Anyone that gets within a food of it without that same symbol on them will cause it to release an explosion of fire magic. Effectively a spell that would create mines that can detect friend or foe.

Of course that distraction is starting to make it a bit difficult to concentrate so I start crossing my legs to try and hold it in. I almost jump a moment or two later when I hear a knock behind me, but Hammer comes in shortly afterwards.

"Ready to go?" they ask.

"Sure, but first, where's the bathroom?

Going to the bathroom is certainly an ordeal. For starters, some idiot felt the need to go with the generic setup for bathrooms, i.e. having a bathroom for men and a bathroom for women. Probably the result of some bureaucracy deciding that it had to be compliant with all government buildings, which meant it had to have the standard arrangement for bathrooms rather than a unisex or co-ed bathroom situation. But there is no way in hell that I am ever going to deign myself to going into the woman's bathroom, to hell what my anatomy currently says. I place my spell book on a nearby table and stare at the bathroom. And then there's the other part of it. I don't really know how to go to the bathroom with this form but I'm not going to surrender to it on this matter. But I don't want to look too much of a fool so I still go into one of the stalls and face the toilet as I try to figure out how to go about this. It strikes me only now that technically under this dress I'm technically naked. No pants or underwear to speak of. That'll have to be something I have to rectify. But that can come later. For now, though, there is a much more pressing matter.

I hike up uniform a bit, especially the front in case I do a really bad job of aiming and get closer to the toilet, trying to straddle it a bit while standing up, a task that though doable is extremely uncomfortable. But I manage and after going about distracting myself very strongly from what it is really coming out of I do my business and then flush and leave, making sure to wash my hands afterwards, as I did have a tiny bit of a mess from the act but not too bad. I shrug and recollect my book and move back towards the exit, seeing Hammer there with an amused look on their face.

"Have fun?"

"Shove it. Now are we stopping at my room first to drop this big thing off first or straight to wherever?"

"Take it with you. Consider it to be strength training. I'm sure you could do with some," they laugh, flexing an arm by contrast.

I would try and take a harmless swing at them but my arms are full from huge spell book so instead I shift my weight onto one leg and try to kick at him instead. Because I'm still not really confident with my balance and telegraphed what I was doing so well that it was no problem for them to step away and dodge it. Heck, they could quite easily have knocked me over if they wanted to but chose not to. The trip to the wherever we were going was fairly long and might have even been a bit longer than it needed to be and I'm pretty sure that when this is all said and done I'm going to have a lot of back problems. But there likely is a spell for that so I'll have to look that up before going to bed so that I'm not that sore in the morning.

Would that be considered cheating though? To use magic to undo and prevent any wear on the body. I suppose using magic would be its own kind of wear and that can't be treated by using magic, only time from what I gather. Though I suppose there might be a spell or two in there that will let one person transfer magic energy with the other.