MageCrafter - 27. Chapter 27

There was a time not that long ago that Kotik would never have agreed to have gone to the Undersea Kingdoms. To Kotik, the depths of the oceans was a vile and dangerous place filled with unspeakable horrors. To this day he had no idea how foolish humans and demi humans could trust those flimsy vessels they call ships that could be brought down by ocean waves on a moment's notice. Fish ranged from being small and gross to being terrifyingly huge with innumerable rows of jagged sharp teeth. Then there was the recent discovery of King Morcant, that horrifyingly huge Gigantes who dwelt in the depths of the Muirren Sea and radiated so much power even in an illusory representation of him.

By rights he should be throwing an absolute fit over the idea of being pantheon knows how many leagues under the sea at the moment. Both Shahnaz and Baldric were watching Kotik, expecting him to have such a reaction. Baldric had even contemplated needing to restrain Kotik should he try to attack some of his subjects. Yet for some reason the Lynxian was handling himself much better than they were expecting.

“Kotik?” Baldric asked with a bit of apprehension after the teleportation had been complete, “How are you feeling right now?”

Kotik looked like he was deep in thought for a moment before he started to speak. “I still hate the ocean and everything in it, but ever since I awakened these powers of emotion I’ve been able to handle things like this better I guess? I can feel it in there wanting to react violently to this situation, but it wont move unless I let it if that makes sense. Honestly it’s a bit surreal. It’s like my emotions are physical limbs that I can control now.”

Count Raudh nodded at that. “That’s a good way to describe it. When you gain an esoteric MageCrafter title over an emotion, they become something like a limb you can feel with your mind but you can’t actually see. I don’t know what it’s like to have all your emotions controlled like that, but for me that’s how my rage feels. You can still lose control of it like you can with a limb that spasms on you from over exertion, but overall you have a much firmer control over the emotion than you did before.”

“Well that’s good to hear.” Baldric said with a bit of relief in his voice. “Now, My sweet, if I may ask you to refrain from referring to my subjects as demons and similar pejoratives in their presence while we are here that will help things quite a bit.”

“Fine. I’ll still think it though.” Kotik said while crossing his arms. Even if his emotions were in check that didn’t mean his distaste for the undersea kingdoms and water itself had gone away. It just meant that he wasn’t going to immediately try to attack the first denizen of the deep that he saw. Not on accident at least.

As that was running through Kotik’s mind there was a firm knock on the door of the Lair. All eyes turned to Kotik who let out a loud cat like hiss. The Lynxian cleared his throat and blushed a bit before he turned to Baldric.

“Lord Baldric, may I be excused?” He looked pleadingly at his master as he said this, desperately not wanting to be near that door when they open it. “ I uh, I think I can handle the idea of being in the ocean right now, but I think I’ll need some time to adjust before I actually want to risk going out there. Otherwise I might do something that’ll get you in more trouble like I did at my party.”

Baldric sighed and nodded with a bit of a smile. “That is actually really mature of you Kotik, Let me seal you in a room real quick and I’ll take care of things out here, then you and I can have a Magic class as a way to settle your nerves a bit and reward you for handling this so well.”

Kotik beamed at that. He really liked Baldric’s classes. They always had such interesting information in them! He was bouncing on the balls of his feet by the time the steam closed in around him as a wall and cut off sound from what was going on towards the entrance. He had a content smile on his face now. He had such a good relationship with Baldric, he was handling his fears and hatred better towards water, he had really good friends in Shahnaz and Count Raudh; Over all his life was going really nice lately. Sure there was this hiccup with people coming to the Baldric estate, but he was confident his smart and resourceful lover had a plan and solution for that. He always felt so safe and secure around Baldric.

Kotik’s heart leaped into his throat and he froze in fright as he felt something appear behind him. It was several entities, six or seven of them from what his ears were picking up. They felt wrong. Their emotions were all over the place, never resting on one emotions for more than an instant at a time. Even less than an instant. Their emotional state was in such a state of flux that it actually hurt his head listening to the din.

He screamed in pure fear when he turned around. What the hell were those things?! Pressing through the walls of Steam was Eldritch horrors the likes of which he had never seen before. One of them only vaguely resembled a human, and he kept growing and shrinking at a rapid pace. One moment he’d almost have normal proportions, the next one of his arms would be stretched and warped out in a spiraling pattern with silently screaming faces growing out of the skin. The worst part was their heads. They not a single one of them had a face where they should have had one. They all were pale white and faceless on their heads, but everywhere else on their body they seemed perfectly content with putting faces on them, each with twisted and exaggerated emotions.

Their physical forms were so fluid. Nothing about them stayed the same from moment to moment. Not their proportions, not how they were standing, not even something as basic as how many limbs they had. Kotik could have sworn he saw one of them have over a thousand arms at one point and grew out a bunch of necks and heads from his torso as if he was a hydra.

Then they started to speak. Each one of them had a different sounding voice, ranging from so deep it dwarfed even Sargis’s speaking tones to so high that Kotik’s human ears almost didn’t hear them. It felt like they were struggling to say the words, like each word took an eternity for them to actually say, and it frustrated them that it took so long.

“We know you” “We know you” “We know you” “We know you” “We know you” “We know you” “We know you”
“We Knew you” “We Knew you” “We Knew you” “We Knew you” “We Knew you” “We Knew you” “We Knew you”
“We will know you” “We will know you” “We will know you” “We will know you” “We will know you” “We will know you” “We will know you”
“We Saw you” “We Saw you” “We Saw you” “We Saw you” “We Saw you” “We Saw you” “We Saw you”
“We’ve seen you” “We’ve seen you” “We’ve seen you” “We’ve seen you” “We’ve seen you” “We’ve seen you” “We’ve seen you”
“We will see you.” “We will see you.” “We will see you.” “We will see you.” “We will see you.” “We will see you.” “We will see you.”
“We love you” “We love you” “We love you” “We love you” “We love you” “We love you” “We love you”
“We Loved you” “We Loved you” “We Loved you” “We Loved you” “We Loved you” “We Loved you” “We Loved you”
“We will love you” “We will love you” “We will love you” “We will love you ”“We will love you” “We will love you” “We will love you”

“GET AWAY FROM ME!” Kotik screamed as his eyes and mouth burned with power. He was so revolted and horrified looking at these things writhing and morphing before him. What the hell were they?! Where did they come from!? He wanted to attack them, to kill them, but he didn’t want to get any closer to them. They scared him so much that he couldn’t control his fear even with his new abilities. He could feel his fear spasming inside of him, struggling for control to make him run away.

“SEVEN! Back away from Kotik! Now!” The voice of Lord Baldric boomed behind the Lynxian as he stepped through the wall and pointed at the abominations. Kotik watched the horrifying creatures writhe and warp before they shuddered and violently shrank back into the steam. Some of them crawled away, some dropped onto their bellies and slithered away, others seemed to just stretch their body out into a thin strand before floating off like a sheet of paper on the wind.

Kotik trembled as he pressed himself against Lord Baldric and tried to get control of himself. He was hyperventilating with how frightened he was of those things. Lord Baldric had to hold the lynxian for minutes as he cried and tried to cope with what just happened. His love helped to ease his fear by stroking his head and kissing him gently, hugging his trembling Lynxian close as he recovered from the shock of it all.

“I didn’t want you to see them like that.”

“What are they Baldric? I’ve never seen or felt anything so horrifying. Their emotions felt so wrong.” Kotik violently shuddered in Baldric’s embrace, “I’ve never felt anything like it. It was pure chaos, writhing, maddening chaos. They felt like a nightmare come to life.”

“They are, in a way. I don’t usually allow them to manifest illusory images of themselves, but they seem to have acted on their own accord here.”

“You-You control those things? Why do you have things like that inside your Lair?!”

“Come, lets go to our classroom. I will explain it as well as the lesson I had planned for us. They are, in a way, related to one another.”

The shaking Lynxian let himself be carried as Baldric walked and waved to have a Classroom set up. However he used different hand gestures this time. Kotik noticed that the room that had been made was much smaller and had a couch for him to sit on while Baldric still had his teacher's desk. It was a more intimate setting with dimmer lighting and felt more like an office than a classroom. Kotik actually welcomed the change, as when he was put down on the couch he promptly laid on his side and curled into a ball, hugging his knees as his tail curled up between his legs. Every time he blinked he could see those creatures writhing, unfathomably horrifying bodies and hear their strange voices speaking in unison.

Lord Baldric let the two of them sit for a moment in silence before he actually started. This was both to give Kotik some breathing room and to give himself time to think about how he was going to broach this topic with his love. The Seven had forced his hand on the matter. He couldn’t just not tell Kotik what they were after they had made their presence known so suddenly. Why had they chosen now of all times to show themselves to Kotik? Did one of their vision walks tell them to do that? Baldric knew he sure as hell didn’t ask them to. Especially not with illusory manifestations of themselves. They had gotten even worse since the last time he had seen them do that. He wasn’t even sure if they were even close to being human anymore.

“Don’t feel too bad about getting scared. They scared King Morcant the first time he saw them as well.”

Kotik actually brought his head up at that, an incredulous smile growing on his face despite himself. “He was? But he’s so huge!”

“A maiden is bigger than a mouse or a bug as well, but they jump on the table to get away from them all the same.”

Kotik had the mental image of the giant imposing undersea King screaming like a maiden and jumping on the table, holding up his tentacles like a dress to keep it away from a mouse, and he burst into a fit of giggles despite how scared he was. In fact the relief from being able to laugh after such a fright only made him giggle harder. Baldric was glad he was able to amuse his love so well and played on it as he continued.

“He gave me a big scolding for having them as well.”

“I agree with him!” Kotik said through his laughs, “I think I wet my pants back there! Where did those things even come from anyway? Why do you have them?”

Kotik was sitting upright now, wiping his eyes with his mirth, feeling a whole lot better after that. It helped as well that it was easier to get himself under control with his emotional dominion.

“They are a mistake I made when I was very young and arrogant.” Baldric said with a sidelong look to the corner of the room. “One of a large number of mistakes that I can’t undo now. You met one of them back on the estate actually.”

“One of what?” Kotik asked with a perplexed expression. “I think I would have noticed if I saw one of those things before.”

“Not all of my copies are like them.”

Kotik’s blood ran cold and his face paled at what Baldric just said. His throat went dry almost immediately as he tried to ask a question that was on the tip of his tongue, but Baldric nodded before he could vocalize it.

“Yes Kotik. Those are copies of me. The first Seven copies I ever made. They are actually not made of vapor like the rest of my clones. Each one of them resides in a small orb of silver.”

The Lynxian thought for a moment before he looked up in realization. “You made them before you were a MageCrafter?” Kotik Jolted in his seat as he remembered that none of them had faces where their heads were. “You made them when you were the faceless wight?!”

“The first one I made was even before I started working as the faceless wight. You see Kotik, back then I was so eager to experiment with magical items that I thought of these outlandish ideas just to see if they would work. One of those ideas was being two places at once. Through experiments I learned I could copy my consciousness into a Magical item and make a perfect duplicate of myself. Not only did it work, the copy was able to share my attunement slots as well. I also learned that my copy could draw from natural magic in the area just like a normal magic user could.”

Kotik looked confused. “Draw natural magic from the area? I thought magic came from attunement slots?”

Baldric grinned at Kotik. “That is true for Supernatural Magic Kotik. Do you recall the difference between Supernatural and Natural magic?”

Kotik sat up straighter as the class really began. “Yeah! Hold on,” He thought for a moment, stroking his chin before he snapped his fingers as he remembered it, “Natural magic works with natural processes and doesn’t require attunement slots. Supernatural Magic draws power from other realms and requires at least one attunement slot.”

“Very good! I’m glad you have such a good memory for this stuff. I haven’t even really taught you how to memorize things with your collar cause you’re so good at doing it already.” Baldric pulled out a blackboard from behind his desk that was smaller and tossed it over to the side. It halted in mid air before Kotik, floating in place as it began to write out words on its surface.

“Magic 103: Natural Magic, Lairs, and why Baldric wants Kotik to be careful while learning magic.”

Lord Baldric stood up and assumed his teacher's persona. Now that the class was fully underway, he felt it was a good time to fully embrace that deadpanned way of handling himself that Kotik found so funny and attractive. He began the lesson with a question.

“Kotik, what do you think I mean when I say natural magic?”

“I’m… not exactly sure.” Kotik admitted sheepishly. “The things that require attunement slots and the things that don’t still are rather confusing and random to me. I know there are items that don’t require attunement slots, and I know they use natural magic, but I’m not sure what that even is.”

“Well lets start with this. Do you think the powers of a MageCrafter are Natural or Supernatural? You’ve seen what MageCrafters can do, what do you think the answer is?”

“I mean...It has to be supernatural right? You are gaining the power from gods from another realm right?”

Baldric smiled and shook his head. “Nope. A MageCrafters abilities are natural magic. In fact it is the most natural type of magic a person can wield.”

“Okay now I’m confused. What do you mean by that?”

“Pop quiz Kotik,” Baldric said, pointing to his love. “What is the first law of Magic I taught you?”

Kotik mulled it over. It took him a minute or two before he pulled it up. “‘The most efficient magic items are the ones that assist natural processes, not generate supernatural ones.’ I think that’s how you worded it.”

“That’s exactly how I worded it! This is also what I mean when I say MageCrafting abilities are the most Natural type of magic. The reason for that is it takes far less natural magic for us to use our MageCrafting than it does for us to actually use a magic item. With Magic, the true goal is efficiency, not raw power. If you can do both, even better, but efficiency should always be your priority.”

“But why does it take less natural magic to MageCraft than it does to use a magic item? How do you know what is efficient and what isn’t?”

“Very good questions Kotik.” Lord Baldric leaned against his teachers desk and pointed to the Black Board. A scale was drawn upon it. One side of the scale was labeled Natural while the other end was labeled unnatural. In the middle there was a dash called the Attunement Threshold, and after that there were additional dashes that indicated the first, second and third attunement slots.

“This realm, just like any other realm, has magic permeating everywhere.”

The world went black for Kotik and Lord Baldric. The next moment they were in a strange field that was sliced up almost exactly like a pie. In one slice of the field, there was a flowing field of grass that was sunlit. Next to it was a slice that looked like an Endless Desert radiating sweltering heat. Another one Slice was a frigid rocky plane, and yet another one looked like foul marshlands. Every type of environment you could think of was in this strange pie like field.

“However, the magic behaves differently depending on what environmental factors are present. For example, I cannot use my MageCrafting abilities in a place completely bereft of water like a Desert or a Volcano. The less moisture is in the air, the less compatible magic there is for me to work with. It’s the same for other MageCrafters. They need to be around their preferred Material to be able to use them, however mine reveals a truth about magic in and of itself. Do you want to guess what that is?”

Kotik looked around and scratched his head as he looked at all the slices. “Is it that Natural Magic works with the environment?”

“Very close my sweet.” Baldric said with a grin. He then caused something that looked like water to rise up from all the slices at once to about their hip level. It didn’t feel like anything on Kotik’s body, but it did remind him of very still waters, which annoyed him.

“Natural Magic is a lot like Water. It will take on the shape and form of whatever container it finds itself in. What do you think the container would be in this context?”

Kotik mulled the question over as he turned around on the spot, looking at the different slices of environments and trying to see what Baldric was getting at. Then he recalled Baldric’s words from earlier. MageCrafting was the most natural form of magic someone could wield. That’s what he said.

“Is the container what materials are available? Like if there is more wood in an area, then there’d be more magic that is ready to work with wood?”

Kotik found himself taken into a deep and passionate kiss, which he leaned into quite happily after the initial shock. He knew whenever Baldric did something like this Kotik had figured something out that made him so excited that the young lord just had to express it physically. He loved whenever he could work Baldric up like that.

“Such a brilliant little Lynxian you are.” Baldric cooed as he pulled away from Kotik, and the cat boy realized he had dropped the illusion during the kiss and had brought them back to their smaller and more intimate classroom setting. “Yes. Natural Magic takes on the nature of the materials around it. That includes everything from how hot or cold it is, to what time of day it is, to even something as small as what you happen to be thinking at the time. Whatever is present in the environment is what the natural Magic wants to work with before anything else.”

“So when you use an attunement slot to draw power from another realm,” Kotik said, trying to parcel out the information, “you’re reaching out to magic that fits what you are trying to do? Would that mean if I was in like, a Volcano, or in a fire, I could use a magic item like a fire rod and not need to attune to it cause the magic would already be there to use?”

“You have no idea how badly I want to bend you over this desk right now and just pound into that delicious rump of yours for figuring that out.” Baldric said in a lusty, sultry voice which made Kotik blush and squirmed at the open flirting Baldric was doing.

“I guess I’m being a good student today huh?”

“A very good student.” Baldric gave Kotik a playful swat on his rump and sat him down on the couch as he sat down beside the lad. The lynxian’s face flushed as his pants that were made out of Baldric’s preferred material vanished off of him and he was plopped onto his young lord's lap. He bit his lip and leaned back into Baldric as he felt him stroking his small shaft between his fingers, letting out a purr of appreciation for the attention.

“Now, my sweet, brilliant little Lynxian, with that information in mind, what do you think a Lair is? You’ve been to mine a few times now. You also saw King Morcants Lair. What do you think makes a Lair what it is?”

Kotik tried his best to think even as his cock was stroked so nicely. Baldric wasn’t playing fair at all, as he was using the moisture in the air to make the boy’s shaft more and more sensitive while simultaneously preventing him from coming until he wanted him to. Kotik’s toes curled and his legs squirmed in Baldric’s lap as he bit his lip and tried to think about the question.

He could vividly remember the first time he saw into Baldric’s Lair. Back then it seemed like he was walking out of another realm of existence, out of a world that only knew steam and heat.

His eyes opened up wide as puzzle pieces started falling into place, he could see Baldric’s face close to his own growing a big smile as he saw the realization growing on Kotik’s face.

“Lair’s are made to look like another realm of existence aren’t they!”

Kotik felt himself buck as he climaxed right as he said that, and his hips quivered as his little cocklet spurted out rope after rope of cum onto Baldric’s hand. Kotik flushed as he panted and leaned back against his love and watched him lick the lynxian seed right off his hand sensually before responding to Kotik’s exclamation.

“You are even more right then I’d thought you’d be my sweet. Lairs are designed to mimic and emulate another realm of existence, as well as craft it in such a way that the natural magic that permeates the Lair is geared specifically for one user or a small group of users and no one else. Every single Lair is made with this concept in mind, be it in the form of a Lair like mine or a Temple for a god that Clerics, Paladins, and Priests use. However, a Lair also does something else.”

Baldric gestured for the Black board to come over as he kissed Kotik on his cheek and hugged him against his body affectionately. Kotik loved the closeness, especially after the afterglow of a climax like he just had.

On the black board it showed the artistic representation of the Greater Pantheon of the gods with all the intricate circles. Baldric then animated them and caused the various circles to collapse into each other until they were one main circle.

“You see Kotik, the walls dividing the different realms of existence are not as impenetrable as you would initially think. All realms of existence exist simultaneously together and divided. However, the more a portion of a realm resembles another plane of existence, the thinner the dividing line between them becomes. A Lair in effect exists partially in two realms and is fed the natural magic from both of them. The reason it can be so hard to make a Lair is you need to emulate another plane of existence in this realm without seeing it. You have to pay attention to the flows of natural magic and feel out what is getting you closer to your goal and what isn’t. There’s a reason it took me two years to make this place.”

“What happens if you go too far and you make the walls between Realms too thin?”

“That would be very difficult to achieve. You would need to mirror the other realm of existence in that exact spot perfectly. However if you did manage such a feat, you could find yourself transported to that realm of existence. However Lairs are built with failsafes to prevent yourself from being trapped in another realm. One of the biggest ones is it’s built in an interior and has a specially designed door that will always open from the Lair to your realm of existence. Even if this lair were to faze into the realm of water, it is sealed off in such a way that I can always come back to my realm and I don’t have to see or interact with the greater realm outside of the lair. However there have been instances of people stumbling upon a naturally occurring lair that didn’t have such failsafes and found themselves in another realm of existence. Preja Bog comes to mind.”

“Oh that’s right, Preja Bog is a Lair isn’t it!” Kotik exclaimed, and then shuddered, “So you can be walking through preja bog, and then suddenly you’d find yourself in a plane of existence that is ONLY a bog?”

“Exactly, and then finding a way back would be extremely difficult without going to Babica for help. She’d be able to see and interact with you, but no one else would from our realm. Or rather she would have been able to. Now that she’s gone that lair would be even more dangerous.”

“That is a lot to take in.” Kotik breathed, “Before I ask for a break though, could you tell me what that attunement threshold thing was? It was on that graph from earlier.”

“Ah you noticed that!” Baldric waved his hand in front of the black board and brought back up the graph. “Have you ever heard of ritual magic my sweet Kotik?”

Kotik nodded. “Yeah that’s that thing where someone spends hours to cast a spell right? I’m not sure why it would take hours to cast a spell when you can do it pretty much immediately from the item though.”

Baldric kissed Kotik on his head between his ears. “Well think about it like this. Natural Magic fits whatever container it is put in as you recall; Well you can pour a little bit of natural magic into an item that would otherwise be supernatural over a long period of time, and as long as you do not hit this proverbial threshold, you will be able to charge the item with magic without it needing an attunement slot. The more supernatural the magic, the longer it would take to fill it with magic to avoid the attunement threshold. Shahnaz got quite good at avoiding the attunement threshold back when we were working as the Faceless Wight.”

Lord Baldric bringing up the Faceless Wight made him remember those terrifying creatures that were clones of Lord Baldric. The Young Lord noticed him immediately tense upon hearing the name of the faceless wight and knew it must have been because of the experience he had had with the Seven from earlier.

“They weren’t always like that.” He said sadly to Kotik as he held his love tightly in a hug as they sat on that couch. “They used to be just like my childhood self from back then. We were all friends in a weird way. Friends that thought just like me and had the same ideas I had. Back then I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just thought I did because I was smart enough to make the item in the first place.”

He took a deep breath. “I had these items that I used which allowed me to think really fast. So fast that it made the world around me seem slow. I used to sit in that state for hours in a meditative state. It was such a great way to think and visualize how to solve problems. My parallel minds did the same thing all the time as well. At first we had a limit on how often we could use it because Shahnaz had to be the one to charge the items. However even back then Shahnaz and I started to notice something was going wrong.”

“What went wrong?”

“My copies were starting to think differently than I did. They started disagreeing with me, or making decisions on their own that I wouldn’t have made. They started not wanting to link back up with me, and I had to hold my attunement slots over their heads to get them to cooperate. It was a short term fix, but that changed when I became a MageCrafter.”

He sighed. “I made a bunch of copies of myself after that, and this time I stayed connected with them so what happened to my rebellious seven didn’t happen again. We also figured out how to make our lovely assistants during that time, and we began to assign the assistants to various parallel minds. I made so, so many copies of myself Kotik. I am talking about thousands upon thousands of them. I have what is in effect a small army of myself that are made out of vapor and water. I grew intoxicated with making them, because each copy of me could access his own pool of natural magic, and we could perform feats of magic together with our assistants that was so much more impressive than what we could do on our own. I hadn’t realized the kind of danger I was placing myself in until I met with King Morcant and showed him what I had been doing.”

He squeezed Kotik, “I am so very lucky I didn’t hurt myself permanently this whole time. You have no idea how dangerous what I had unwittingly been doing to myself was. However my original seven do give some clue as to what could have happened to me. You see My sweet,” Baldric paused before he continued, “My original seven became addicted to the thought acceleration items, and they began to isolate from the rest of us and just steep themselves in the items all the time. It got even worse when I made my Lair. At the time, I confess I didn’t care because they had become so unruly and rebellious that I just let them do whatever they wanted. I had my army I made, I didn’t need them. I still regret treating them so coldly to this day.”

A sad look came on Baldric’s face. “It was because I didn’t try to intervene and help them that they became what they were. They started exhibiting strange powers that I had never seen before. They started being able to go on these vision walks and had these dreams that were so far outside of my realm of experience I couldn’t understand it. Their minds by that point was so much older than the rest of us because of the thought acceleration. Yet they weren’t older in a natural way. It was more like they were stretched far too thin. They became stranger and stranger, more and more erratic, less and less human. It got to a point where even their illusory representations of themselves didn’t look human anymore, and I forbade them from manifesting like that anymore. Then they got even worse. I brought them to King Morcant to try to figure out what to do and he told me they had become artificial Heralds of the realms of dreams and illusions, and that I needed to keep them in my Lair from that point on and take responsibility for what I had done.”

He looked over at Kotik. “I started to learn from them though. I learned about you through them. Those weird and psychedelic visions they showed me all pointed to you coming into my life. They seemed to know you were coming before everyone else did. I think it was because of their connection with the greater Pantheon.”

Kotik gasped in understanding. “You said you found a way to get messages from the gods, but that it was really unreliable!”

“I was referring to The Seven when I spoke about that, yes. I know they are terrifying, but they were once me a long time ago. Even longer for them than it was for me. I’m not even sure how old they are now, but I’m sure it’s in the order of thousands of years by this point. Thousands of years of perceived time spent in an endless deluge of psychedelic vision walks.”

“Th-that sounds horrible. It’s like they are trapped in their own minds.”

“It’s one of the many reasons I want you to treat learning magic with the greatest of care Kotik. I already made enough mistakes for the both of us. Please learn from me and avoid the pitfalls I ran into in my haste to gain power to fix everything. I don’t want to put you in a position where you end up needing to constantly make sure you aren’t going to lose your mind thanks to the thousands of copies you made or something similarly stupid like I did. I’ve managed to turn those weaknesses into strengths, but I am walking a very thin line most days.”

Kotik nodded. With everything he learned about magic, he grew more cautious of it. For every advantage it offered there was a secret cost it was ready to spring when you weren’t looking. It made him wonder if he hadn’t already made a mistake or two himself.