Science of Magic

[WP] You’re suddenly transported to another world where magic is cast by perfectly pronouncing an ancient language. This language happens to be your native tongue

*****

The roar of the cheering crowd was only matched by the sheer cacophony coming off the Ceres Waterfall. Platforms had been erected to fill in the half moon that the Ceres River fell off of. Citizens of three kingdoms gathered here yearly to watch the mages perform and the auditorium had to be built higher every year.

I watched last year's performance as a newcomer not only to the event or this kingdom but as an inhabitant of this universe. Back home we had created a gate, a break in what must be the multiverse due to trying to circumvent the limitations of light speed. It was fascinating. The ripple in the fabric of reality called to me like nothing had. Not that I had anything other than this. I pushed past it without a moment's hesitation.

My life's work had led me here. Now if you have ever wondered what you would do with basically ultimate power in seventeenth-century France where magic was real, I have a potential answer. It’s basically what you do in video games with that setting. Turns out I don’t like making people feel bad and ended up becoming a fairly powerful healer.

Secretly, well as secret as one can be when several people knew telepathy, I did study other forms of magic. It was hard not to when I had grown up and used the language that magic was based on for my entire life. Better yet, magic seemed to follow the rules of logic that I used to program the machines that I use to use.

Now, as you can probably imagine, with a doctorate in Engineering, an interest in computing, fluent in two languages, and being lost in a time of time, I did not come off as right in the head. During my first couple of weeks, I was mostly locked up. Not that I blame them for my isolation now but it was still hard to be bitter about it.

When my panic attacks became less frequent and I was able to communicate with the locals a little better, they brought me to Healers on High. In those halls, I first heard someone say something that I could recognise as the Mages of the Ceres Competiton were drowned out by the waterfall. The healers panicked of course because what I was saying was part of the Words of Wisdom.

The following months led to me becoming a sort of a savant in the master's eyes. I practised their language, I healed their sick, I got paid well enough to live comfortably, and I even dated a bit. Weird experience as it was, dating turned out not to be as let's say one-sided as I thought ancient cultures would have been. I mean it went bad. I had the communication skills of a toddler and, even with coaching, their idea of romance was rather foreign.

I still enjoyed my research more than I did interacting with other people. Spending most of my nights by candlelight had smoothed out a lot of the sleeping problems that I had back home but I was able to figure out how to specify spells further than most had. Every mage on this planet knew some words evoked magic, some mages knew how to use logic to manipulate it, and very few knew how to string multiple spells together. The best any of them could do, as far as I could figure out, was about a sentence.

There were resources on top of the words of power that were needed for the spell but they were pretty self-explanatory. If you needed fire, you had to have some sort of fuel. Need water to appear? You need enough air to condense it. If someone needs their bones healed? Well then, I got to raid the kitchen for eggshells.

The teams of mages on the platform around me had chests full of powders and specially prepared packs of who knows what. Smelt like death with a side of bad eggs. Even with the wind, it was hard to breathe at times when the team from down south opened up their equipment for inspection.

“Healer Mack!” a tall, well-built man in his late fifties caught my eye and exclaimed before coming over to pat me on the shoulder. I patted his back far more gently. “You heal me good if I hurt?”

“Yes,” I said with a nod to the man, I couldn’t remember his name for the life of me. We had probably talked a least a dozen times in the last two months but it was something like Teth or Loth and one of them I learned meant something akin to shit-hole. After rubbing my now sore shoulder, I lifted my bag and explained, “I attack today.”

The man was taken aback for a second but then let out a laugh loud enough that others heard it over the waterfall. His team seemed to take notice and ask him and his explanation had them in stitches as well. There had only been a handful of single combatants enter this event since the inception of the Ceres Competition. I was something like the forty-second. Everyone had failed miserably but considered helpful control subjects for the audience.

I had saved up for the competition, I had my notebook, and more supplies than I thought I needed. This was going to show them that I needed access to the mage's library more than I needed their condensation. Their library was rumoured to have books on advanced magic beyond what anyone had the skill to use. I didn’t learn about that until quite recently and I chose to be a healer first. I kept running into the fact that the mages thought that was all I could do regardless of what I showed them.

“Mages, take your places!” a call came out as the announcer brought the crowd to a frenzy.

“Let us show you attack,” the man said through tears of laughter still in his eyes as his team was up first. I had learned specific sentences so that I knew where to be and when but most of the words went entirely over my head.

What I didn’t learn was that I would apparently go last.

The man that had patted my shoulder walked forward with his team of eight other mages to the top platform and readied their supplies. In front of them swung three large wooden pillars with coloured patches painted all up and down them. The goal? Hit all the patches that were called out for you and then when the judges declared you successful, you were to destroy the pillars in their entirety. Most used the last as a competition of flourishes.

“Red! White! Purple!” the announcer’s voice echoed through the canyon as the team started up.

Most of what they did was single-shot, straight-line trajectory spells that required the mage's hand-eye coordination more than it required their brain. They were good though. The pillars were cleared within ten minutes and their explosion at the end included smoke of the colours that they were supposed to target.

Cheers went out for them only to be matched by the team that came two after them and then beaten by the reigning champions after them. The time to be was about eight minutes. The worst time though was half an hour as the team from Helcus had their powder get wet.

“Next up!” the announcer started with us usual hype but then quickly descended into just asking, “Healer Mack?”

I didn’t care at this point. I had spent the last two hours being told by every team that they would show me how this was done. Worse was when they were done and of course, some mages got hurt they would come up to me and ask to be rid of their burns and scrapes. I almost said no to a couple of them but gave them a definite glare after their remarks.

Now, if you program at all, most would know that going into something like this without testing would be a bad idea. Going in blind was really all I could do though. I had no way of testing this spell beforehand because I could only really afford the supplies by taking out a loan and that was hard enough to get with my communication skills.

The crowd did not cheer as I set up and took out my notebook.

“Healer Mack, your colours are!” the announcer tried his best to sound enthusiastic, “Red, Orange, and Teal! Oh, no, should we have colours that close for him? We can’t change it? Okay, sorry Healer Mack, maybe just try your best.”

I wasn’t sure if I got all that right but I gave the man a cold stare before entering the colours I had been given into the spaces I had in my notebook. When I was ready I activated the spell circle and started my enchantment.

“Activate fire missiles on target placement at one-hundred-fifty feet, target core material, Cellulose and target specified material, triglyceride with impurities. Conditional parameters. Condition one. If the oil wavelength reflects photons at six-hundred-eighty nanometers with a variance of fifty nanometers then strike the compound. End Condition One. Condition Two. If the oil wavelength reflects photons at six-hundred nanometers with a variance of fifty nanometers then strike the compound. End Condition Two. Condition three. If the oil wavelength reflects photons at five-hundred-twenty nanometers with a variance of twenty-five nanometers then strike the compound. End Conditions. Spell release.”

It took every ounce of my willpower to say all that correctly in an unblinking state of focus. My material hummed as I spoke but to my disappointment only stayed on the ground around me. What had I done wrong? I went back over my notes as the crowd seemed to get bored with my unheard handwaving.

I spent a good couple of minutes staring blankly at my book when I saw it. Scribbling in a closing bracket into my code, I got ready for attempt number two knowing that at least if this went right the second part should be fun.

“Healer Mack?” the announcer asked as I doubled checked each of the end conditions, “are you going to attack your pillars?”

I only gave them a thumbs up and began my spell again.

“Activate fire missiles on target placement at one-hundred-fifty feet, target core material, Cellulose and target specified material, triglyceride with impurities. Conditional parameters. Condition one. If the oil wavelength reflects photons at six-hundred-eighty nanometers with a variance of fifty nanometers then strike the compound. End Condition One. Condition Two. If the oil wavelength reflects photons at six-hundred nanometers with a variance of fifty nanometers then strike the compound. End Condition Two. Condition three. If the oil wavelength reflects photons at five-hundred-twenty nanometers with a variance of twenty-five nanometers then strike the compound. End Condition Three. End Conditions. Spell release.”

My fire rose like fireflies into the air, swarmed like bees after their nest had been attacked, and landed like guidance missiles. Every aspect of the pillars took a simultaneous beating where the red, orange, and teal oil paint had been. Only holes now remained. What sound was left in the crowd stopped in a moment and even the waterfall seemed to get quieter.

“What was that!” the announcer argued with someone. Was it me? Was I supposed to answer that? I am not sure how I could standing where I was. I watched as panic started to ripple out as the announcer asked, “Do we accept that? Did he hit them? He hit them! How’d he hit them? Could he hit us with that spell?”

That’s… that’s not how they were supposed to react. The big finale I had planned was suddenly very questionable. Maybe this wasn’t the time to show them what a thermonuclear detonation looked like.

*****

THE END