“And?”
“That’s about it.”
“But you’ve been up here doing some sort of spellcraft form,” she said.
“You could tell?”
“I could tell you were doing something, but I couldn’t tell what it is that you’re doing,” Rowan said. “I suspected that it was some type of spellcraft form. You have this look on your face when you do that. I don’t even know what it is that you’re working on, or whether or not there’s anything I might be able to help with, or if any of the others of us can, but you don’t have to do this alone.”
“The connection between the dragonborn and the dragon is strange,” Laric said finally. “I felt what the dragon felt. I felt what the dragonborn felt.”
“How is that even possible?”
“I don’t know. Everything was blurring. The dragon wanted me to have an idea about the attack. At first, it came from the attack the mages used on the dragon. I was aware of it. I could feel the different textures. There was an earth-based spellcraft form I tried to use.”
“That’s what you’ve been practicing,” she said.
Laric nodded, as there was no point in denying that.
“But that’s not the only spellcraft form you’ve been working on.”
“There was one for wind, and one for fire,” Laric said.
“And what about them?” Rowan asked.
“Just that I could feel them. It’s weird. I was aware of the contours, almost as if I recognized the spellcraft form. And…” He frowned. He was still struggling to process the elements of the memory that were coming through, as if it was far too complicated for him to be able to identify every aspect of that memory, only that he could still feel some part of it that bloomed in his mind. Some part of that dragon image that was there. “I think the images came from Malinar.”
“So through the dragon, you have access to Malinar’s memories,” she said.
“It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?”
“Probably no more ridiculous than you now having a connection to a dragon.”
“And my grandmother. She knew glyphs, had a powerful dragon connected to her, and would’ve shared knowledge with that dragon.”
“If you’re saying so,” she said.
Laric started to pace as a different series of thoughts came to him—thoughts he hadn’t even considered before, but maybe he should have. Maybe that was the purpose of Sashaak showing him those images. There was a merging of memories from dragons and dragonborn, wasn’t there?
Sashaak had left some part of himself behind.
“If there’s a merging of memories,” Laric said to her, “and the dragon expresses the memories and death in the form of glyphs, then what if I could use these glyphs to help me understand my grandmother?” he asked, waving his hand behind him.
If so, all he needed was to find some way to use those memories.
But how?
They reached the main part of the cavern. Laric wondered what way Xavier had used to get in here in the past. He and the others had climbed up here once again, which had taken a while, but now that they’d done it more than once, it had become easier to replicate.
The others were sitting around, and all of them looked as if they were working on different types of spellslips. The forms were simple, but they were ones Laric had been working with them on. That surprised him.
Spellslips were an interesting type of magic, primarily requiring the user to know a specific pattern the magic would take, and then to distribute some of that power out from themselves as they held on to the spellslip. A bit of internal energy was required, which was why not everyone was capable of a spellslip, but the amount of power wasn’t that much.
Laric had demonstrated these spellslips to them early on when they had been practicing. They were all getting more skilled, which was good. He hoped that the spellslips would be enough, but eventually they would all have to start learning spellcraft forms. They would have to know the magic of mages.
“Look,” Iveris said excitedly. “I’ve figured out how to make this earth one work the way you were showing us.”
She formed the spellslip, and the ground in front of her began to crumble, and as it did, there was a faint shaking sensation. It was subtle, and had Laric not been paying attention to it—and, truth be told, using a bit of a detection spellslip himself—he might not have been able to identify what she did.
Rowan smiled. “Very good. Now, if you move your hand like this,” she said, taking a seat and showing her sister a part of the spellslip, “you can harness the effect a little bit better. And if you do it that way, you can usually control where it goes.”
She was far more patient than Laric would’ve been.
“Now you can see. If you notice,” she said, looking from Iveris to Joselle, though her gaze also partly swept over Malcolm, who was still working on some of these basic spellslips as well, “small changes of your hand position will lead to great changes in what the spellslip can do.”
“I’m able to do that one just fine,” Malcolm said, seemingly recognizing that Rowan was looking at him too.
This was what Laric had taught them. This was also what the headmaster wanted him to teach others in town.
Was he willing to do that?
It meant sharing what his grandmother had shared with him. And that was something he wasn’t sure he wanted to get back to the mages.
Laric took a seat farther away from them and started to work on the earth spellcraft form, which was a bit complex. It required more mental focus, and he was mixing an earth spellslip with it. He concentrated on his own form of earth spellslip, thinking about the way that his grandmother had used a detection spellslip, and how that detection spellslip seemed to be a combination of another form. The combination had been the key.
That was odd, but then again, it made a certain sort of sense, especially given everything he had seen with different spellcraft forms and the way the power would flow. If that was how it was going to work, then he had to think that perhaps there would have to be another aspect of her that he would be able to draw upon, and some other way for him to better understand the different spellcraft forms and the kind of power that was there.
As he worked on his form, he attempted to master the connection.
