Ber worn out as he climbed the steps in the Mages’ Guild toollock’s office. The day had beeful – he’d had a light assig on patrol in the Crafting Quarter with Torvald. There ickpocket in the m and a vandalism i iernoon, but Torvald handled both before Bernt could eve involved.

  No, his exhaustion was in his mind. But knowing the nature of the problem didn’t make it any easier to deal with. He’d solved one problem by creating another. Ohat was already proving to be annoyingly tricky to deal with, and that he might not be able to fully overe.

  Taking a deep breath, Bernt tried to summon the sense of excitement he’d had developing his new hellfire derivative. He’d do, after all. He was a wizard, and Pollock thought he was looking at an opportunity here, something new.

  With… well, ly a spring in his step, but slightly more energy than before, Bernt opehe door to the Wizard’s Society aered. As he made his way toollock’s office, he noticed for the first time that there were other people here. One of the other offices was occupied today by at least three people who were excitedly talking over one another.

  How many wizards were there in the guild here, anyway?

  Dismissing the thought, Bernt knocked on Magister Pollock’s office door aered at the man’s call. He found him sitting in auffed armchair in one er of the room, books piled awkwardly one on top of another on his p, all of them open.

  “Ah! The young wizard!” Pollock said cheerfully. “So, what did you learn?”

  Bernt swallowed hard. “I cast only pyromancy spells through the iure, and they don’t form correctly. They sort of weave themselves around the plete spellform for the perpetual fme. I ’t modify them as I’m castiher, because the spell activates as it forms. I have to visualize the spellform pletely before I even start moving mana. I don't think I would have figured it out if I hadn't started with a trip.” Pulling up a muodestly proportioned chair from o the desk, Bernt took a seat and expined what he’d learned so far.

  Polloodded along, asking for crification here and there, but he generally appeared tent to listen. Whe was dohe old man smiled, eyes glittering. “Well, that all sounds quite promising to me. I think you may be in a position to explore some rather obscure areas of magical theory."

  “What obscure areas?” Bernt asked, though he retty sure he knew what the old man was going to say.

  The old man picked up the book on his p and held it up demonstratively, giving it an emphatic little shake. “Sorcery, of course! I found the book I mentioo you before. This one, right here. It’s a travelogue by Archwizard Finnerixes of the kingdom of Theuroma.”

  Pollock looked at him expetly, as if expeg a response. Bernt had never heard of the man. Should he have? He shrugged. “I’ve never heard of him.”

  The old wizard gave a disappointed little shake of his head. “He rolific researcher, you should look him up in the library some time. In his younger years, he went and lived with a ountain savages across the sea, south of the Mirian city states for seven years, gaining their trust to eventually gain access to their mysteries. The people there were sorcerers – some of them at least – and he cims that they “ignited” a sorcerous talent by ing the hearts of various fey creatures. There is a lot of mystionsense about meditation and self-discovery here, but the crux of the matter is that they grew a mawork out from a tral point in their belly 'physically maed itself into their flesh’. That’s what I was referring to st night.”

  Bernt pursed his lips in thought. “That’s… strange. Does that tell us anything I use?”

  “Well,” Pollock said, raising both eyebrows. “That’s what I asked myself this m. I went and collected a few texts on the subject from my colleagues here and talked to our fine librarian to get my hands on whatever materials she might have on the subject. As it turns out, there’s actually quite a bit scattered across all these scraps. Nobody seems to have bothered to put it all together into a proper treatise, so far. Maybe a good task for you, when you’re doh it. If we’re lucky, you might be the first person in the guild who personally test the veracity of some of these cims.”

  “So,” Bernt said slowly, “what did you find?”

  Pollock cackled. “Why burden you with my own clusions? I’m just a d old man making guesses based on uncorroborated reports from questionable sources.” He pced the top book carefully down on his desk, and lifted the stack of open ones on his p up, holding them out to Bernt. “Here, read them for yourself and see what you make of them. I already found the most iing bits for you, though it probably wouldn’t hurt for you to look into them a bit more thhly. We’ll talk about it ter, and I’ll tell you if I think you missed something important.”

  As Bernt accepted the books, the old man rose and began to walk toward the door at a geriatric pace. “You use my chair while I’m out, I’m going to get something to eat. Should give you plenty of time to get some reading done. I'm not as quick as I used to be, you know.”

  With that, he was gone. Bernt stared down at the books.

  That oppressive sense of failure, that he’d ruined his future, didn’t go away. He’d made himself less versatile as a mage, weakening most of his magid modifying his pyromancy spells in an unbanced way. But he was curious, too. What could sorcerers do?

  Would it be worth it?

  The first book described the mawork of a lesser drake – a tundra wyvern. The wizard who wrote it had killed the subjed theiculously dissected it, mapping narrow empty els that ran through the creature’s flesh. The substance of the creature’s mawork – a physically maed soul – had disappeared oh, leaving only the spaces where the spiritual els had run behind. The gaps themselves, the author posited, were proof enough that a sorcerer’s mawork, uhat of a mage, hysical thing. He theorized that this was reted to how the body parts of some magical creatures and even pnts gained i magical properties – being magical materials that could be used in alchemy and other types of crafting.

  Bernt stared down at his arm, examining the odd, glowing pattern on it. It might expin why his own spells didn't burn him as he cast anymore. Not a demon arm, as Jori had suggested, but still transformed after a fashion.

  The book was written by a war mage who fought against a tribe of taurs who had allied themselves with the orcish nomads oib’nar pteau to the northeast of Besermark. He described the capabilities of their sorcerers iail, g that some could cast a fireball from one hand and a heat shield from the other simultaneously. Even more surprisingly, the authgested that sorcerers could cast a wide range of different spells, though they teo be variations on a tral theme. It sounded much like the specializations that mages naturally fell into as they developed their augmentations, except that they couldn't – or at least didn't – cast spells outside of their focus.

  The several books had marked passages with theories on how sorcerers formed and greassed for their maworks – likely ones who had read some of these very sources. Their ideas ranged from the i and will of the sorcerer to pure instinct. One suggested that the iures that formed were likely just hereditary. That didn’t i Bernt very much. Growing this odd, fused mawork outward into the rest of his body sounded like something that would only cause further plications.

  One at, though, stuck out. It was by a regur mage, a magistrix of abjuration who cimed to have been friends with a lizardman sorcerer. Most of the text was dedicated to doting the pnts and magical materials found in the lizardmen’s marshes. There was also general cultural information about the tribes who lived there, and a description of the remains of an unimaginably a ziggurat that rose out of the waters he wetnds’ ter, and which the lizardmen shuhe page that Pollock had opened for him, though, tained a segment dedicated to the lizardman sorcerer who had invited her and acted as her guide and, more importantly, some entary oure of his magics.

  “Where mages sense and manipute mana directly to cast spells of infinite variety, sorcerers rely on their sense of, and trol over, their mawork – their spirit – to guide their flow of mana. With suffit practid focus, a skilled sorcerer may learn to manipute it directly to a limited extent, modifying his mana flows in the process. In this way, they may also alter the spells that are produced by the spellforms embedded therein. It is a misuood practiagid ohat deserves further study…”

  Bernt sat ba his chair, reading the passage again. If he could learn how this was dohen maybe he could find a way to use this iure correctly after all. He would have to somehow refigure the mana flows in the iure, perhaps only activating some parts of it to allow them to better mesh with his normal spellforms. It would be a messy process, if it worked at all. He could feel the iure sitting there in his arm, like a physical thing. That meant he should be able to do it, right?

  In fact, Bernt might have gained something important here. Mages couldn’t really feel their maworks or manipute them internally, otherwise they wouldn’t need the iment process. In fact, sidering all this, iures might have inally been ied as a way to imitate the maworks of sorcerers.

  So, what did it mean for a mage, someone who could sense and manipute mana directly, to get access to a sorcerer’s power?

  Bernt ughed incredulously. It sounded a little wooden at first, but then sound bubbled out of him, taking on a life of its own. He closed the book ahe ea Pollock’s table. He o try this out.

  The back down and focused ohways of his new iure. He couldn’t feel the whole thing iail, so just tried to get a sense for it. It was a little like trying to feel the specific shape of an object pressed against the skin. Something that felt like it should be easy, but wasn’t. The mana running through it was much easier to distinguish, but that wasn’t how it was done. He o learn to physically manipute the els somehow and he couldn’t do that if he couldn’t get a proper sense of them.

  –----

  “Well,” Pollock’s voice came from the door, “you look a lot less defeated than when you came in here.”

  Bernt turo find the old man standing there, watg him. He wasn’t sure exactly how long he’d beeating, but apparently it had been long enough for Pollock to finish his dinner and make his way back up here.

  He cleared his throat and oward the books. “I’m trying to work out how these sorcerers maniputed their maworks. If I work out how it’s done, I should be able to trol the iure better and maybe incorporate it into my spells in parts.”

  “Good, good” the old wizard sighed as he sank into his armchair. “That seems like a good pce to start. Now, tell me. What kinds of opportunities did you see, looking through these sources, that you should explore?”