Furthering his art [Training]

Despite what others might say, creating a new magical spell is not something that's very easy. Magic is formed by instructing the rukh to follow a series of commands, and the most powerful spells relied on hundreds of commands interweaved into each other.

You could, hypothetically, tell the rukh to make a ball of light and it would be about as large as that on the end of a match, or it could be as big as the sun. The more rukh you instilled into a spell, the more commands you had to weave to make sure that they didn't destroy everything without pause.

After all, it is a bad magician who gets hit by their own spell. Often deaths are laughed about in magical circles when people find out magicians somehow turned themselves into a charcoal croquet. Seti had even found himself being told about his fellow court magicians who somehow ended up destroying themselves by sheer acts of careless stupidity.

That was why, when forming his own spells, Seti always took almost disturbing levels of care. For example, the one that he was currently making relied heavily on the fundamentals of the other light spells he already knew, saving him a lot of work. However, and this was where the danger lay, it was a lot more complicated than anything he'd done before.

The room that he had lived in for the last week was filled with torn up reams of paper that he had jotted notes on as he continued to form the spell. It had to be just right, every little thing had to be perfect or else... well, he would be the next joke that was being passed around the court.

Finally, he put down the last piece of paper that he was working on, wiping the still wet ink off of his quill with a small rag that he had left on his desk, and setting it down. This would work. It was complicated, and if he aimed it wrong it would likely make the wounds he had suffered on the way to Portsmouth look like a papercut, but... well, magicians always had to take risks to further their field.

He was ready for its first test run.

Judgment of the Righteous - 376 / 1000

The second step, after designing the spell on paper and working through all the kinks that way, is practicing it personally. The most important thing to remember when dealing with something like this is that you're going to be using a very dangerous, untested spell and that there is a chance that it could backfire. That chance is raised exponentially if you screw up the calculations and the commands, but the chance exists even without making any of those mistakes.

That was why Seti had to choose somewhere perfect to be able to practice the spell. No matter what he did, he would always be in danger until he was certain that he had gotten all the kinks straightened out, but that did not mean that he had to put other people at risk as well. Besides, this spell relied on firing a large amount of light energy at a singular spot, and if he didn't choose the right place for that it could hit an innocent and then he'd be in serious trouble.

There were plenty of good places that he could have chosen to train. The wilderness, but then he'd have destroyed years of plant growth; a quarry, but he could hypothetically cause an avalanche of rocks and then he'd be in even greater danger; the middle of nowhere, but then he might draw unwanted attention from locals. In the end, he had chosen the one that seemed the most harmless - The ocean.

There were benefits to having gravity magic, and one of them was not being bound to the ground any more. Standing above the ocean, the sea wind causing his long hair to flap behind him as he continued practicing encoding the rukh with the correct commands, Seti was once again thankful of the experiences that he got to see because he was a magus. A goi could never do something like this.

Once again, he muttered the incantation of the spell, triggering a giant pillar of burning light to come down from the heavens, slamming into the ocean, and (going from the smell) cooking a good few fish that had gotten in the wrong area at the wrong time.

Judgment of the Righteous - 740 / 1000

∞/∞:

The next hour was spent idly spamming the spell over and over again. The spell put a large amount of exertion on his body, but his body was strong enough from his years of experience as a magus to be able to deal with this level of hardship. It wore him out a lot, but on the plus side he wasn't a magoi manipulator. Whilst his body would no doubt regenerate this level of energy, he knew that the vast majority of gois who would attempt to master even basic magic could end up killing themselves in the attempt

After the ninth use of the spell, he found himself panting and exhausted. Not only had he had to use the spell, but the continued abuse of gravity had worn through his magoi like a forest fire. He had to get home, and collapse. Or, alternatively, collapse and fall right slab into the biggest fish platter that he had ever seen.

Turning around and shooting back to shore, deciding that if he was going to pass out outside of the room then he might as well do it where he wasn't going to drown afterwards, Seti panted with exhaustion. Magnostadt might have had high expectations of their students, but at least he never wound up half dead from attempting to practice something in Magnostadt.

This place was beautiful, but it sure as hell was demanding. Or, perhaps it was just his boss that was demanding. Either way, as his feet touched the ground and buckled underneath him, he knew that he needed a break. Well, he thought that for a few seconds before his head collapsed with the ground and he passed out cold.

Judgment of the Righteous - 1000/1000