Regulus stood beneath the tree, palm pressed to the trunk.
After half a day soaking it in Verdant Magic the day before, the willow had filed his magic under harmless environment. Now he wove his own magic in with the willow's, riding it up from the roots, climbing the main channel all the way to the branch tips.
No force was needed to guide it. The willow's loops kept no defense at all against Verdant Magic. He had only to lay his own magic onto its circulation and ride along.
He drew the willow's magic out through a branch tip, the first drop gathering in his palm.
Bigger than the Mandrake's. A Mandrake was a foot-high seedling, a few drops the most you'd get from one. The willow was a twenty-five-foot adult giant, its total magic on another order entirely. A single branch might hold as much as a dozen Mandrakes.
The drop was a yellow-brown, high in clarity, the edge rippling with the faintest tremor.
It didn't sit quiet in his palm the way Mandrake magic did. It moved.
The whole drop shook, the ripples at its edge flickering fast, irregular, chaotic, yet carrying an overall harmony, as though held by some inner logic, holding a stable structure inside the disorder.
His own magic flared on instinct, his sense too keen, any contact magnified.
He pressed it down and let the willow's drop tremble freely in his palm.
He watched it, and fell briefly into thought.
The Decomposition Curse came from death, returning the whole to the primal.
Verdant Magic came from life, returning the damaged to whole.
Dark Awakening came from the mind, laying one will over another.
The thing in his palm was like none of them.
Pure physical. Not cold, not warm, no leaning, no stance, pointing neither at life nor death nor the mind. It shook. Shake a thing and it broke. Miss, and it scattered on its own.
He crouched and pressed the drop to a stone.
Nothing changed on the surface, but his sense saw the inside, the oscillation spreading through it, holding three seconds, then decaying to near zero. A single dose was too small, enough only for a few microcracks within, never reaching the surface.
He kept extracting, sampling different branches. One, two, five, ten.
Every branch's loop had the same structure, the same entry angle, the same number of internal turns, the same node positions.
He dripped the extracted magic onto different things, one dose at a time, and tested.
Stone, the best effect. Tightly structured minerals came apart from within most easily under the oscillation.
Iron, just as good. The structure of metal was ordered and dense, the oscillation conducting through it fast and far.
Wood, the effect docked. Wood fiber had give to it and soaked up part of the energy.
Water, almost no effect. The oscillation entered and scattered. Water had no rigid structure, no joints inside for the oscillation to crack.
The tighter and more rigid the thing, the better. The looser and more pliant, the worse.
Then he went looking for Gnomes.
During winter Gnomes hibernated. Dig two feet down under the shrubs at the plantation's edge and you'd hit a nest, the scabby little things curled in their mud holes, packed together, snoring.
He plucked one out and carried it to the clearing by an ankle.
The Gnome woke, shrieking and flailing, its short thick arms swinging at the air.
Regulus dripped willow magic onto it. The body stiffened, then convulsed hard. From the point of contact, skin and muscle split, torn apart from inside out, bones snapped into pieces, organs burst, blood and shredded flesh spattering the ground, the whole thing collapsed into a pulp.
Nothing like the Decomposition Curse.
The curse hit a Gnome and dissolved it at the level of existence, flesh and bone losing definition layer by layer until only a pinch of ash remained.
This was physical shattering.
He grabbed two more and raised the dose, two drops each.
Fiercer. The whole body burst straight into slurry, not an intact shard of bone to be found, shattered too completely. A puddle the first time. This time a field of it.
He kept testing. Bigger doses, smaller doses, one point once, one point many times. Once cracked it. Many times blew it apart.
The plantation's Gnomes suffered again after half a year, nest after nest vanishing. No matter. The things were pests, and the mark of a pest was breeding fast. He left a few nests behind so they could go on serving next year.
Toward evening he stopped, the results in.
Best against rigid structures. Reduced against pliant ones. Near useless in loose mediums. Effective on the living, physical shattering, the effect plain to the eye.
A day of extraction, and the first willow looked wrong. The branches no longer swung, hanging limp, the tips dragging in the dirt, the scars on the trunk drier and harder. Its loops still ran, but the flow was crawling, the endless idling oscillation dropped to where his sense could barely catch it. The whole tree had been drained.
It lived, holding to basic function by a thread, but every trace of aggression was gone.
Half dead.
The other stood whole. He hadn't touched it.
Regulus went back to the hut.
Agnes had brought stew and bread and a pot of hot soup. Baruk lay at his reserved spot before the hearth, two feet out, eight legs spread, looking content.
He sat by the window, closed his eyes, and began building the first version of the magical model in his mind.
---
The third morning.
Regulus stayed in the hut, not stepping out all morning, the model taking shape in his mind.
Same process as the Decomposition Curse. First replicate the full loop in his mind with precision, then pour his own magic through for a circuit, until what came out carried the target property.
The Decomposition Curse's model was a spherical.
The willow's model was a branching, forked structure, the trunk thick and bright, the limbs splitting off the nodes layer by layer, thinner and thinner, the very ends needle-point compression-release mouths. Magic flowed in through the trunk, was parceled out by ratio to the limbs at each fork, ran two and a half turns of oscillation modulation, and finished at the tips with narrowing, compression, release.
First attempt. The magic flowed in and scattered at the first node, the branch angle off by under two degrees, the whole limb collapsing without resistance.
He adjusted the angle, rebuilt the first node.
Second attempt. The magic ran the full loop and came out of the end mouth with no oscillation property. The turn count didn't match the oscillation-turning logic at the nodes. He'd tuned two parameters at one node, but the overall ratio was still off, and the oscillation wouldn't build at the third node.
He kept tuning.
Third attempt. The oscillation ran wild inside the model, the whole branching structure shaken to pieces in his mind, oscillation and conduction mixing together. He'd let the magic begin oscillating inside the conduction path, and it shook from end to end, never reaching the tips before shaking itself apart.
He stopped to analyze.
The willow's magic conducted first, then oscillated, the oscillation bound inside the path through the conduction, released only at the tip. His model hadn't managed that. The oscillation leaked during conduction.
He kept adjusting, building the conduction path and the oscillation modulation into two tiers.
Fourth attempt. Magic flowed in through the trunk, the outer conduction steady, the inner oscillation building. Past the first node, on it ran. Second node. Two and a half turns done, and it reached the tip.
Narrowing. At the point the outer and inner merged, the conducting magic and the oscillating magic stacked together, crushed hard by the point, then released.
A stream of magic carrying the oscillation property sprayed from the model's end.
He opened his eyes and looked down at his palm. A small knot of yellow-brown light gathered there, the edge trembling, fast, irregular, chaotic, the structural harmony kept whole.
Done.
The branching model lodged in his mind was his own now, like the spherical web before it, ready to call on anytime.
He pushed the door open and led the modulated magic onto a slab of granite.
Nothing changed on the surface, but he could feel the inside begin to shake, holding five seconds, then splitting from within into three pieces. The mineral grains across the break lay loose, the joins shaken through, the same as what the willow's branches had drawn out. The same splitting from inside out, the same whole surface over a shattered core.
Base oscillation. Replicated.
He found a larger stone and pressed the magic to it.
Five seconds, and a dense crackling came from inside.
He lifted his hand, stepped back, and gave it a light kick. The stone split top to bottom into four large pieces, every break face laced with a fine network of cracks running from the core all the way to the surface.
He crouched to study a break, and nodded.
---
By evening, Regulus sat in the chair before the hearth, palm open.
A small knot of yellow-brown light gathered there, its tremor reined to the smallest, barely a shiver to the eye, though the hand could feel it, like holding a faintly shaking insect.
"Baruk, come here."
Baruk lay warming himself at the hearth's edge. At the sound, eight legs pushed up, a length of silk swinging him to Regulus's wrist.
Regulus tipped his hand toward him. "Try it."
Baruk reared, head craned, eight eyes peering at the glowing thing, then leapt straight in.
Well tamed.
He lay in Regulus's palm, wrapped in the yellow-brown light, and the whole spider went soft at once. Eight legs stretched full out, belly down, back plate up, chelicerae loose, bristles standing one by one and easing down again, like a furry little rug.
"...com... fort... a... ble..."
Regulus watched him, and the corner of his mouth lifted.
Agnes came up the stone path in the distance, a meal box in hand, her apron pocket bulging.
Baruk lay sprawled where he was, all eight legs out, chelicerae twitching now and then.
The model was stable, the replication complete. Tomorrow, into a spell.
---
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