Chapter XIV: Advancing Spells
(Bor's pov)
"I am telling you, you shouldn't have told them anything. The fewer people know about the Thalmor the less likely we are to get stuffed into one of their dungeons for an 'interrogation'" Brienne berates me for the tenth time since I decided to inform the Archmage about the black soul gem situation.
"But what he did was wrong, no matter the situation, the souls of people shouldn't be played with" I protest weakly.
Brienne rolls her eyes "Oh please, the elf bitch deserved it"
I prepare myself for another argument when I suddenly feel a chill down my spine and feel a gauntleted hand grab my shoulder, I slowly turn my head around and all I see are two glowing red embers surrounded by blackness.
Before I can say or do anything I am dragged away, suddenly getting panicked I turn to my sister only to see her give me a sad wave and make a sign of prayer to Talos.
(Reyvin's pov)
After repeatedly and thoroughly showing Bor the error of his ways via blunt-force trauma to the face, I removed my hood and mask and left for the library.
I realized during the expedition that my spells were lacking, even if I could defeat every foe I fought up to this point, if a truly powerful mage faced me I knew I stood no chance. So it was time to focus on empowering my spells and growing my reserves as much as possible, and while I couldn't get heart stones on short notice for growing my reserves, I could cram arcane script until I start thinking in the damn thing. So I decided that was exactly what I would do, even if it would cost me part of my sanity.
The next week was hell, while I took a break from my physical training to properly rest, I used that time to focus on runes instead, the material was as always drier than a Thalmor's sense of humor, and to make everything even worse I had to deal with a grumpy Morrigan and sulking Bor for the entire week, maybe I should get that land the Jarl offered sooner rather than later.
Many times I thought about quitting the boring process but my desire for power was far greater than my boredom so somehow, barely I managed to understand and memorize the entire damned thing.
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Today I was going to finally attempt to add runes into my casting, I could have done it sooner and it probably would have gone a long way in the caves, but everyone advised that I get used to basic channeling of larger spells first for whatever reason. It probably made the process easier or it was one of those 'tried and tested' things.
I went over all of the runes I wanted to try in the library and descended into the training ground.
The first spell I tried was flames, firstly I would try and add a single rune and then work my way up from there.
I focused on the rune for empower and pointed my open palm toward the practice target, Magicka exploded from my hand in the form of blue flames, and the enchanted target was, to my surprise, actually singed for a moment before repairing itself.
I giggled like a madman and proceeded to start adding rune after rune to my spell casting, at one point making the flames spell take a third of my reserves in a second but basically turn itself into a continuous fireball, but casting that one took me an entire minute of prep time.
Thankfully my new robes helped a great deal with my constant casting by shortening my resting periods after I repeatedly exhausted my reserves with my manic experimentation.
The unfortunate part of everything was that adding runes to a spell takes a great deal of focus and spending more than a moment casting a spell in combat is like asking your opponent to end your life. So I would have to limit myself to the most efficient combinations and then practice them ad nauseam.
Deciding to take my time and advance each and every destruction spell I know to it's best possible form I ended up with something like this:
I focused on making my flames spell as damaging as possible while also making the fire stick to the targets, for whenever I really needed that heavy flamer.
For the firebolt I doubled down on my usual usage of it, turning it from a bolt into a fire spear and greatly increasing its penetrating power.
The fireball was far simpler in application, I just went full power with it and turned the usual explosion into an implosion. That unfortunately meant it now took large chunks of my reserves to cast even one.
When it came to my lightning spells I turned sparks into chain sparks, because even if inefficient force lightning is a must. The lightning bolt was really useless in my current arsenal so I turned it into a lightning beam, after taking some inspiration from that one Falmer mage, the new form of the spell was perfect for destroying magical defenses.
Finally came the turn of my least favored element, since my efficiency with ice was terrible when compared to my other destruction magic I decided to focus in the debilitating effects of ice magic, making my frostbite do barely any damage but slow my targets to a crawl.
After I finished with destruction it was time for alteration, for this one I decided to focus on self-buff spells that would be complemented by my robes.
I decided to split the flesh spell into two focused parts, now this might seem counterintuitive at first, but casting two spells took barely any more time and the focused version gave bigger boosts than the general one. Also, with my skill the 'buffs' lasted enough to get me through a fight. I turned the stone-flesh spell into stone-skin and giant's might, the effects of both were very self-explanatory.
My experience in the caves taught me a very valuable lesson, a flashbang can and will always be handy, so I perfected the light burst I did during the tower battle and christened it blinding flash.
I didn't find much use for telekinesis except that one time I launched my spear, so lacking any brighter ideas I just focused on overpowering the base form of it.
Finally, the wind-ward. It was an absolute lifesaver of a spell, got to thank Tolfdir for it later, and now that I actually gained some affinity for wind I decided to turn the entire thing from being merely defensive into a full cloak spell. My new wind-cloak both protected me from projectiles and cut any weakling that dared approach me to pieces.
Unfortunately while my repertoire of spells was greatly expanded, the more complex I made a spell the more costly it would be to cast, making my relatively small reserves a problem.
On the other hand there was a benefit to my more basic spell forms, adding runes coinciding with the basic spell effects made them cheaper to cast instead, so I spent some more time training myself with those as well.
Realizing that there is no way to instantly grow my reserves an external solution would have to do, thankfully I was an expert enchanter so the solution was rather evident. There was a tiny problem however, if I wanted to make a full set of enchanted items without turning into a pauper I would have to find a way to earn a lot of money, something to ponder on.
There was one thing left for me to try out, I left it for last just in case it went horribly wrong, I had to make at least some progress.
So, focusing and calming myself I pointed my palm to the target once more and instead of using an arcane rune I added the Dovah rune for YOL into the spell.
Surprisingly it worked, a mighty flame exploded from my hand, it seemed to have actual weight and took an entire chunk out of the enchanted target!
Unsurprisingly it took every drop of Magicka I had and then some, thankfully I had a blue potion nearby so I didn't have to deal with the hell known as Magicka-exhaustion.
Deciding that was enough experimenting for one day I left the hall to do my daily meditation and relax after that rather unpleasant experience.
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A/n: The new spells will be added with the old ones as alternate forms, he still has his basic spells.
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