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91. Glamour
🕑 Added 2024-02-24 15:00:04 +0000 UTCAs he peered into the mirror, Oz caught sight of his eyes. Dark blue, tired eyes gazed back at him, the left one ever so slightly darker. He squinted. A paper-thin ring of bright neon blue glimmered in the center of the darker iris, fluctuating slightly like dust particles in the sun.
Oz touched the skin just below his eye, pulling it back to get a closer look. The sclera, that is, the whites look normal. The color is a bit off, but not noticeably. There’s just that thread. That thread of bright blue light. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t there when I saw myself in the mercury earlier. Is it keeping track of my progress cultivating? A kind of tracker of how I’ve mastered the eye, or grown in overall power?
I’ll keep an eye on it. It seems important.
Heh. An ‘eye.’
“Are you done admiring yourself? Going to cast a spell, or just drown in your own eyes?” Linnea mocked him.
“Oh, come on, come on.” Oz sat back, closing the mirror. It’s been so long since I saw myself that I couldn’t help but get distracted. It’s not like in my world, where you see yourself in perfectly-forged glass and mirrors everywhere you go. Mirrors, and glass, alike, still aren’t mastered in this world, nor industrially produced. Like this compact mirror, I’m sure individual mages can create industrial-level mirrors, but they aren’t common. There’s precious few opportunities to get a good look at yourself.
I was never a narcissistic person, nor do I care much about how I look, but after so long deprived of all mirrors, is it weird to want to look at my strange magical eye that I don’t fully understand?
He flipped the mirror open again and set it down in the grass in front of him. But there’s no point wasting time arguing with Linnea over this. Better to get down to business.
Linnea gave him a look. “Are you sure you want to cast that here? You won’t be able to move once you start.”
“Uh, that’s a good point.” There’s spiders out here, and such. He grabbed the mirror and stood, glancing at Linnea. “Do you want to come into the library?”
“Do you want me to? All those concerns you mentioned are still valid,” Linnea pointed out.
“Yeah, but…”
“But you want to be a good person?” Linnea asked, cocking a brow at him.
“Yeah…” Oz bit his lip. He ducked his head and looked away.
Linnea shook her head at him. “Don’t be a good person. Just do what profits you. Otherwise, you’ll get stabbed in the back one day, and sooner rather than later.”
“Won’t that happen if I only do what profits me, too? Won’t I end up like Roan, brash and dead, with no one to shed a tear over his death?” Oz asked, looking at Linnea.
She chuckled. “Maybe. Or maybe you’ll end up standing at the top, looking down at everyone else, so powerful that you’re free to become a good person. Who knows? If you die young, though, you’ll never find out.”
“That’s true.” Oz hesitated another moment, then looked at Linnea. “Then, er, if you don’t mind, would you, er, stay here for a little while longer?”
She leaned backward. Her spider body materialized behind her, and she ‘sat’ into it, relaxing onto her rear six legs, arms making the final pair to count eight. “I still have spiders to conquer. I’ll keep myself occupied.”
Oz scratched the back of his head. “Are there that many spiders in here? I thought those dark mages brought them in, or something.”
Linnea chuckled darkly, almost swallowing the sound in the back of her throat. “Oh, it’s infested.”
Dry scuttling sounded from the grass all around him. Oz looked around, but he saw nothing. He considered activating his fey eye, then gritted his teeth. Do I want to know?
Suddenly itchy, Oz jumped up. He brushed his robes down a little too thoroughly and snatched up his books, hurrying for the World Door. Lifting the mirror, he called over his shoulder, “Thanks, Linnea!”
Linnea smiled. She waved after him.
On the far side of the World Door, Oz took a deep breath, wiping himself one last time. I’m not that bothered by spiders, but there’s a limit to everything!
Retreating to his nook, he set the books down beside him. He glanced at the swaddled dark magic tome, then shook his head. I’ll keep it close in case I need it, but I’m not going to open it until I have to. I don’t know how corrupting dark magic is, so let’s play it safe and only use it at the absolute last second, even if all it is, is a reference book for constructing a necromantic army, rather than a book of actual spells.
It's probably safe to read dark mage reference manuals, right? I mean, it’d be crazy if reading “the ideal composition of an undead army is 500 zombies to every lich” corrupted me, somehow. But who knows? Maybe all dark mage books are encoded with corrupting magic, and even reading a tiny amount will affect me. Maybe I’m being crazy, and they’re all fine to read, even the ones with actual spells in them, and it’s only at the point of actually casting the magic that I have to be careful.
It would be nice if I had something to consult, but all the righteous books are going to strongly denounce dark magic, and, even if I considered it safe to consult the dark magic books, they’re all doubtlessly going to claim that dark magic is fine. Both have a strong bias. What I need is someone I trust, who’s done dark magic, who can guide me through avoiding corruption in my search for knowledge.
Oz wrinkled his nose. Baltair! Baltair, dammit. He’s a dark mage! He—
—totally fails on the ‘trust-him’ point. He gouged out my eye! I don’t trust him a whit. He’d probably try to mislead me, either by giving me bad advice outright, or worse, giving me ever-so-slightly bad advice, such that I got corrupted way faster than I should have. Right. I’ll keep an eye out for a dark mage I can trust. Or at least, kind of trust, enough to understand how to interpret their suggestions.
In any case, all this is for the future. I’m still not sure I need to read the fey or dark magic tomes to qualify as reading all the books on the first floor, so I might not even need these to advance to the next stage. I would like to read every book in here eventually, so it’s not something I can totally disregard…but right now, what I need, is to cast a glamour, not worry about dark magic books.
He lifted Linnea’s mirror. He peered at his left eye for just one more moment, then set the mirror down on the table. Adjusting the angle, he made sure the mirror faced him, yet didn’t reflect him.
Oz licked his lips. He glanced at the books. What now?
Should I go back out to the trees? Ugh, but Linnea’s out there, she’d see me do the walk of shame all the way back out into the forest, and—
The words appeared in his head, glowing in white light.
Face oneself, without seeing oneself. Project the unseen onto the seen, and become unseen.
In this way, become invisible.
The words swirled in his head, circling around in his mind’s eye and streaming into a swirl of silver stars, almost like a galaxy. The stars spun three times, then settled, taking the form of eight dots, aligned in a vertical line.
Oz stiffened. Meridians! Yes! I recognize it.
At the same time, his breath caught. These words…I didn’t even realize it, but a spell form illusion was burned into my mind. The possibility of dark magic corruption is no joke!
The illusion stuttered. Oz quickly mastered his thoughts and breathed evenly, and the illusion continued. Light spread from the meridians through the illusory form’s qi passages, lighting them one at a time.
Oz’s brows furrowed. This…is an ordinary spell. Fey spells use external qi, environmental qi, not internal qi. There’s no way this is the true spell. Do I need to do the comprehension outside, under the tree?
A moment later, he gasped, sitting forward. He looked around him. He, himself, floated in his mindspace, facing the illusory qi formation.
I understand! I know what I need to do!
The illusion broke. Oz returned to reality, facing the mirror. He took a deep breath, gathering qi to himself. The blue motes swirled into Oz’s dantian, replenishing his core. He reached out to the mirror, to the world reflected in the mirror. For a long moment, nothing happened.
Then, abruptly, a whole world opened up before him, and Oz fell toward the mirror.
