It was a silent study in Xiaxoan Blues, a place of peace and reflection. Tonight, it hummed with the quiet intensity of exploration: candles cast long shadows against stone walls over stacks of scrolls and books. Larin sat at a broad wooden table with open before him the pages of his journal. He was covered in huge drawings of runes, circles of magic, and notes regarding his progress within the concepts of Dernporost. Tyrs and Mynta were on either side of him, their eyes full of wonder.
"We know what [Living Barrier] can do," Larin began, tapping his quill against the paper. "But if we are going to make our magic evolve, we are going to need to break down every spell that we use. No assumptions. No limits."
Tyrs leaned back, her glaives resting across her lap. "Which spell first?"
"Let's take [Thousand Needles], " Larin suggested, recalling the deadly projectile spell they had used so admirably. "We know it makes a tight cluster of shards composed of mana that are attracted toward foes. But what does it do at the very center of things?"
"Compression of mana into solid points," Mynta said. "Directed by intent, stabilized with directional runes."
"Exactly," Larin said. He sketched out a rough approximation of how to structure the spell. "But why do the paths have to be these rigidly hardcoded pathways? Let's [Deconstruct] it."
He drew compress and decompression symbols, applied the rule of [Divide] separating guidance from the shattering, now freed, to "divorce guidance from sharding". If they can now divorce the direction from shards; maybe let those shards float around guided by itself.
"Like a minefield," Tyrs said, squinting eyes alight with interest.
"Exactly," Larin doodled a new series of runes. "Let's call it [Suspended Thorns]. The spines will be suspended there in the air till they will come into proximity or get knocked and will detonate."
They spent the next hour spinning the spell. Mana flowed like threads of silk as they built dozens of glowing shards that just hung in the air, quivering with power. Mynta tested the new construct by stepping into the circle of suspended energy. As she approached, the shards adjusted to guide her, led by a responsive field of force.
"It's a reaction spell, really," Mynta said, ducking the splinters with an easy smile. "This could be very dangerous in confined areas."
They talked over their next spell [Ripple Surge], one he had hurled too many times lately. "The canonical spell sends out an impulse which breaks mana structures" he said "It is perhaps as subtle a means to attack as one can conceive of".
"Not pretty." Tyrs shrugged.
"Let's change it." Larin used Deconstruct to pull the wave pattern off the swell, parceling it out in separate pulses. "If we set the frequency," he said, tracing the intricate runes in the air with his fingers, "we can create a resonance."
"A chain of pulses rather than a single pulse, which when they combine only increases its influence," Mynta clarified.
"Exactly. It will shatter barriers more efficiently with less mana." He grinned. "We'll call it [Echo Wave]. It's subtle, but more destructive."
Their next focus was on [Petal Refrain], a signature spell of Tyrs' that conjured spectral petals as both shield and blade. "The petals are conjured as fixed constructs, each one sharp and reactive," she explained.
"Let's break the rules," Larin said, his eyes sparkling. "What if we used [Combine] and made them self-replicating when they touch an enemy spell?"
"Turning defense into offense," Tyrs thought aloud. "Petals multiplying until they drown the enemy's magic."
Together they wove a new iteration of the spell, threads of petals glowing with fractal patterns. Petals spun into a spiral; when one slammed into a shard of conjured mana, they split into two identical blades.
"Petal Cascade," Mynta named it. "A storm that feeds on its own momentum."
---
They were practicing even the simplest spells, such as [Mana Bolt], the first attack spell an eager apprentice would be taught. "Easy, this one," Larin said. "Raw mana made into an object and shot at high velocity. But why limit ourselves to straight-line force?"
"Think three-dimensionally," Mynta offered. "What if it curved around objects?"
Or what if it made copies in mid-air? Tyrs tossed in.
They used [Combine] and inserted some trajectory modification; they formed a whole new spell, and called it [Phantom Arrows]. Energy bolts curled over in midair; nobody had the least idea how their courses could end up.
"Magic is a language of rules, but those rules are made to be rewritten. Dernporost teaches us that the boundaries of power are illusions. Every structure can be dismantled, every truth reframed. Magic is not about control-it is about understanding the flow of possibility and letting it reshape you as you reshape it.".
They rested briefly, near dawn. Tyrs leaned back in her chair, resting her glaives against the table. "We've deconstructed half the spells we know. What's next?"
"Something original," Larin said, his eyes tired but alight with ambition. "Something we haven't seen before."
He thought of space, of sky, of the cosmic magi whose power was woven, seemed always to be woven, into the very fabric of perception. He thought of the invaders from the sky, who moved as if space obeyed their will. What if they should construct a spell that actually bent space?
"Spacial magic?" Mynta sat up, interested. "That's. ambitious."
"More than that," Tyrs said. "It's dangerous."
"But it's possible," Larin said, his fingers already moving. "We'll use [Divide] to break the concept of location, [Deconstruct] to understand its relationship to distance, and [Combine] to link two points into one."
They worked carefully, the runes more complex than anything they had attempted. The air grew dense with the weight of reality being questioned. Finally, they completed the construct—a spell they named [Veilstep].
He cast it first. His form shimmered and was gone, appearing five paces distant in an instant.
Mynta clapped her hands together. "Now that's magic."
They sat into chairs as the first light of dawn crept through the windows, their minds buzzing with what they had found.
"You realize what this means," Tyrs said, her voice quiet. "We're rewriting the world. One spell at a time."
Larin smiled faintly. "And we're only getting started."