Evren was sitting in the priest’s chair in the sanctuary of the cathedral two days later, staring off into space. He was approached by Walter who asked, “Evren, are you ok?”
Evren turned to Walter and said, “Yep, just got a bit on my mind.”
Walter asked, “About the other day?”
Evren’s eyes flickered for a moment as if to find the answer and he replied, “Oh! No, I’m fine with that. I’m just trying to remember which questions I want to ask during today’s meeting. I wrote them down, but I left the note in my office.”
Walter said, “Oh, boats, politics and commuter.”
Evren smiled, “Yeah, computers, not commuters. I think today I’m going to get a little more active with the group.”
“Active? What do you mean?” Walter asked.
“You’ll see.” Evren said as the morning bell went off. He stood up and approached the gate in the railing and said, “Good morning, everyone.” His greeting was met with others from the crowd.
“I’d like to start with, the same thing, if you think you want to hurt yourself, speak with one of us, or someone else. We want to help. We really do. We may not be able to, but we can get you to someone who can.” He said. “Now on to the next thing. I’ve noticed a lot of you all have gotten bored. Some of you feel like you don’t fit in. Am I right?”
A few heads nodded, “In that case, I’d like to help you. Think about what you want to do. Something you like to do that you’ve wanted to do your whole life but never had a chance to do. Or maybe a job you wanted that you couldn’t get.”
He pointed to a woman in the front row, “What do you like doing?”
She looked around, surprised she was the first one picked, and said, “I like flowers?”
“Flowers? Ok, Orion!” he called out.
“I’m on it, dude.” Orion said as he stood up slowly. He worked his way to the front and sat down next to the girl and said, “What’s up? My name is Orion, and I’ll be helping you with your flowers.”
Evren smiled and looked at a man also in the front row, “What about you?”
The man thought about it and said, “I’ve always wanted to go skydiving.”
Evren raised his eyebrows and said, “Uhm, do you enjoy mountain climbing?”
The man smiled and said, “I know it’s probably impossible.”
Evren shook his head and said, “As it stands now, we don’t have a spell for flying, but we do have a spell called ‘levitate.’ It lowers your weight and makes you float in the air… about ten centimeters.”
The man asked how much that was, and Evren cast levitate on himself to show him. “Now the reason I asked if you like to mountain climb is because with ‘levitate,’ you can climb to a high space and jump off, using levitate to get to the ground.”
“Oh, you mean like BASE jumping.” The man replied.
Evren shrugged and said, “I don’t know what that means. Do you jump off bases?”
The man shook his head, “No, it stands for Buildings, Antenna, Structures and Elevations. You climb up something and jump off it with a parachute.”
Evren’s face perked up and he said, “Oh! That sounds fun. Get with me or Harley (Harley waves) about learning magic and we’ll teach you a few spells.”
The man said, “Thanks!”
He moved on to the next man and said, “What about you?”
“I’ve always wanted to be a firefighter.” He replied.
“Firefighter? I’ve got some magic for you to learn then. We could probably get with Mr. Hill about setting up a location near the center of the city where you could get others to join you and make a fire brigade.” Evren replied.
“Does the spell shoot water!?” the man asked excitedly.
Evren nodded, “Like a firehose. We’ll show you when we teach you the spell. You’ll also learn a few spells to heal cuts, burns and set bones.”
“Oh, that reminds me. Where’s that nurse?” Evren asked everyone.
The woman raised her hand, and Evren said, “Is that something you like doing and would like to continue doing?”
The woman nodded and asked, “Would you teach me that magic too?”
Evren said, “That magic and some others as well. I’ll talk with Mr. Hill about setting up a clinic for you in town. I have no idea what the economy is like, but perhaps we can get you onto the government payroll.”
Another woman spoke up and said, “Can I join her?”
“Absolutely!” Evren replied. “Why don’t you come over here and have a seat with her, and you can chat with her.”
One man raised his hand and said, “I want to be a fireman too!”
Evren looked at the guy and said, “Come on over and sit here.”
Evren continued this for the remainder of the meeting and found one woman who wanted to program computers. He told her to standby as he had something to talk about. One man said he wanted to pilot a ship, so Evren told him to standby as well. Nobody was interested in any politics in this group.
Evren had found enough people to form a party for adventuring. He found some people who wanted to be craftsmen, one man who wanted to be a blacksmith with passion. There were several people who wanted to become farmers.
The meeting had sparked a change for everyone. As people became inspired and pursued passions some had thought to be long forgotten. A school was set up alongside an orphanage. The basics were taught to children and adults alike who wanted to learn. There was a public works section that was established that sought to clean up the town. As the summoned became involved with the rebuilding of the town, it sparked interest from the residents. There were many who were initially against the summoned, thinking they were still the tools they used to be, but after interacting with them, they slowly became accepted.
The Department of Fire Services was established at two locations within town. The individuals who were working the jobs were not only taught water and healing magic, but they were also given a few others that may help to save lives.
The nurse set up a free clinic and became better at healing magic than Evren was. Evren also taught her a spell from the as yet unused necromancy category, ‘revive.’ The use of it is to bring someone to life who died within a minute or two, like a defibrillator. It couldn’t heal injuries; it only started the heart moving again.
Orion was working with the people who wanted to be farmers, and some of the local farmers. He was teaching them better techniques to growing crops, how to rotate crops and fertilization. He was also working on engineering the crops and creating better crops to grow. Evren had found some books with spells in them in a new category of nature, which he taught to Orion along with the spells he had already learned.
The woman, named Kate, who was a computer programmer, turned out to be a network engineer as well. Evren sat down with her personally and taught her the basics of magic. When he was finished, he went over the runes and magic circles he had learned and how to make magic items from it. He had found an old engraver locked in the basement of the palace that needed to be cleaned and restored before it could be used, so Evren set that aside to work on later.
Evren told her that there was a way to create spells in a similar manner to programming but was unsure of the process. He had been told the location previously used was in a tower in the southern continent. So, he was guessing it was Dhuexlia that the tower resided in. Kate was fascinated by the spells she learned and devised there was as hidden code somewhere that allows the process to complete. Just at a glance, she could tell that some of the magic circles Evren had designed could be improved significantly in performance and efficiency.
Evren smiled at this and told her that when he was heading to Dhuexlia, he’d like her to go with him. He wasn’t sure what he would find down there, but from what he’s read, the tower is the center for magic on the planet. All spells that are castable have to be sent there for approval. The composition of magic, how magic spells are made, and how they are ‘programmed’ into the planet can also be found at that location.
“So, what do you want me to do with all of this information?” Kate asked.
“Do? I hadn’t planned on doing anything.” Evren said as if he just realized it for himself.
“Then what are you so excited about?” She asked.
“Isn’t it cool? You can make magic, glyphs, runes. When I make a magic item, I basically copy what I already have or know and mash it together hoping for good results. But you, your understanding of this will probably greatly exceed anything I can hope to accomplish.”
Evren sat down and offered a seat to Kate, “When I … Hmm, Ok I guess I need to explain a little bit. I’ve mentioned that I was from a different world before, and that I was assisted by someone named Anomaly, right?”
Kate nodded but said nothing. “Now, I’m not sure for how long I was with Anomaly, the place we spoke might have been somewhat in a quantum state. I don’t know. It felt like a long time but didn’t. It’s like being in a conversation with someone and you suddenly realized it’s late and you didn’t notice.
“Anyway, he spoke to me and told me that magic is like a computer program. When you learn a spell, you program yourself into knowing the spell. Then you activate a keyword and run the program. As you know, when running a program, it draws on other resources. It uses a separate program for the image, another one for sound, something else for input.
“Those additional programs are actually programmed into the magic of this planet. Like a server. On, or in I’m not really sure, but on this planet are bands of magic called ley lines. Where they interact are called nexus points. These ley lines are what are programmed with the other stuff not included in the spell that we learn.”
Evren frowned, “Is that right? I think it is yeah.”
“Wait, you’re saying that you can program a planet?” Kate said.
Evren pondered the thought for a minute, “Maybe?” He thought for a moment, “Look, take the ‘flame’ spell.” Evren chanted ‘flame’ and a small flame appeared over his hand. “This spell is simple, it basically says, ‘create fire at specific location use this much magic to maintain until stopped.’ What it doesn’t say is how to create fire. What is burning? Methane? Hydrogen? Programmed into the ley lines is the formula for creating the flame. There’s a formula that says this is a quantitative amount of magic to be used as a reference for measurement.”
“Oh, I see.” Kate said as a look of understanding crossed her face.
Evren reached into his backpack and pulled out the basic spell book, opening it to the ‘flame’ spell and showed it to Kate. “Now, this is the spell. As you read it, you have to infuse magic in to the words you read. That information is then imprinted into your own magic reserve.”
Kate turned the book so she could read it more, “How do you infus… nevermind, I got it.” She seemed to be thinking for a moment then said, “Now what do you do?”
“Get a good image of what you want to do, and where you want to do it, then build up magic usually into your hands as a point where it is drawn from your body then infused magic into your ‘flame’ chant. As the spell continues to draw magic from you, you should feel it leaving the point you built up magic. If you use a wand or a staff, it can intensify the effects.” Evren said.
Kate brought her hand up and stared at it for a bit before she chanted, ‘flame.’ A small flame appeared in her hand just like it previously did with Evren. “How do you stop it?”
Evren held his hand up in a pulling gesture, “You pull back on the magic and cut it off.”
The flame sputtered and died in her hand, and she said, “Huh.” She looked down at the spell book she learned the ‘flame’ spell from and said, “Can I learn more of these spells?”
Evren smiled, “If it’ll help you to make spells, you can learn all of them.” He looked around to check if anyone was listening, “Even the ones I haven’t taught others.”
