Daniel Newwyn
patreon
Chapter 22
🕑 Added 2025-06-30 11:02:00 +0000 UTCFabrisse lingered by the pedestal a little longer than necessary. He cradled the Stupenstone like it might protest being returned, turning it one last time in his palm.
The Systemâs glyph flashed before his eyes.
[Final Step Required: Invocation.]
[Manifest attunement.]
âPut it back in,â Severa said crisply.
Fabrisseâs fingers hovered over the pedestal, but didnât move. An Invocation? Right. That makes sense. But how?
He couldnât expect to cast at Invocation here without triggering the containment ward or making Severa suspicious. But he didnât need to chant any mnemonic, did he? The glyph had told him so, as least during when he was trying to open the sub-sections.
Concordance isnât about saying the words. Itâs about embodying the state.
âI just need a second,â he said, stalling.
Severa narrowed her eyes. âWhat for?â
âI want to test something. If this really is about layered imprint resonance, then the placement matters.â
She looked dubious but didnât argue. Maybe she thought he was adding flair. She liked things done cleanly, ceremonially.
He turned the stone slowly in his palm, as if aligning runic vectors, though in truth there were no visible glyphs. Just an instinctâshame, memory, tetherâand the quiet pressure rising behind his ribs.
He angled the Stupenstone a few degrees to the left, tilted it, then moved it back. He then took half a step clockwise.
âAre you just spinning it in a circle?â Severa asked suspiciously.
âNo,â he said. âIâm observing sympathetic resonance displacement.â
That part, he probably didnât lie.
But his hand was sweating, the kind that made his palm tacky against the surface of the Stupenstone, like his skin was trying to hold on tighter than he was. His fingers felt clumsy. He adjusted his grip again, not because the stone needed realigning, but because he couldnât seem to make them stay still.
[Invocation Window Available â Confirm Emotional Attunement â Trigger Emotion: Anxiety]
[Quest Objective: Initiate invocation through recovered emotional signature.]
Anxiety? Thatâs the trigger?
He didnât even know there were invocation triggers for anxiety. That wasnât a sanctioned channelânot in Thaumaturgy, not even in the joke papers the undergraduates circulated when they'd had too much scrawlwine.
So what am I supposed to cast? A nervous breakdown?
No. He needed something familiar. Something the stone already recognized. Something that had tied them together once before.
He lowered his hand to just above the pedestal, cradling the Stupenstone like a secret.
He let another shameful memory return. Not the grand, ceremonial failure in front of classmates. This one was smaller but even meaner somehow, for how petty it was.
He was nine. Dubbie had caught him in the backyard trying to teach a frog how to bow.
Not magically, but with string and patience and the solemnity of someone who absolutely believed the frog could be trained into polite behavior if addressed with proper ritual phrasing. Heâd even drafted a tiny cape for it out of torn handkerchief and told her it was a âformality in channeling respect.â
Sheâd laughed so hard sheâd choked on her tea.
Heâd stood there, one hand outstretched with his âceremonial instruction twig,â the other clutching a scroll titled âBasic Tenets of Amphibian Discipline,â which heâd written himself in red ink and overly large letters.
She never brought it up again.
But he did.
At least once a month. Usually while lying awake at night. Wondering if the frog remembered. Wondering why heâd tried to bow back when the frog twitched its jumpy legs by accident.
Aether pulsed in an amber burstâbrief, weak, almost apologetic. It radiated no farther than the edge of the pedestal, thinning like smoke drawn through a cracked door.
[Spell Triggered: Shameflare (Concordance Variant)]
Invocation Source: Emotional Imprint â Recovered
Resonance Thread: Aetheric Echo â Stupenstone Catalyst Confirmed
[Quest Step Complete: Invocation Performed at Site of Abandonment]
Bonus Objective: Severa Montreal â Not Yet Noticing
â Quest Complete: Weight of the Words Left Unsaid
⌠New Spell Unlocked: Stupenstone Fling (Rank I)
Aetheric force applied to emotionally imprinted object.
Effect: Launches object with targeted intent. Damage and arc scale with resonance.
Bonus: Wards and glamours destabilize more easily when object carries failure imprint.
Fabrisse clenched his jaw. Please, please let that not have triggered the wards.
I did not trigger the wards.
The chamber didnât even react.
But Severa did.
He could feel her eyes snap toward him like a spell-lock clicking into place. âWhat was that?â
âWhat?â Fabrisse replied, too fast. âNothing.â
âThat was amber,â she said sharply. âAetheric amber. Did you try to cast an Invocation?â
He straightened and tried very hard not to look like someone whoâd just weaponized a memory about frog etiquette.
âItâs aâuhâresonant feedback leak,â he said, clearing his throat and praying she didnât know that wasnât a real phrase. âThe stoneâs, um, stabilizing the emotional imprint. I believe it let out a minor discharge.â
Severa took a step forward, and her voice was suddenly sharper. âThat wasn't a containment leakback. That was a cast. Are you a fool?â
Fabrisseâs heart jolted. The spell residue still lingered in the air, curling faintly like heat off stone.
âIââ He swallowed. âIt was harmless.â
âThatâs not the point!â Her voice stayed low, but each syllable was knifed with precision. âThere are active ward lines layered beneath the pedestal. Any unsanctioned invocation, even a passive flare, couldâve disrupted the null-field suppression matrix.â
She pointed to the aether haze. âWhat did you cast? Why is it amber? Thatâs not a spark I recognize. And donât lie to me.â
His brain flailed. The shame was still clinging to him, sticky as pond water. âIt was just a diagnostic trace,â he responded. âI needed to confirm something.â
Severa narrowed her eyes. âNo sanctioned trace emits that hue.â
Fabrisse exhaled. âIt was personalized.â Severa has never seen the color of shame before? Maybe even she doesnât know everything.
That gave her pause. Not because she believed him fully, but because it alignedâtenuouslyâwith the theory heâd been feeding her. Also, probably because of his ominous choice of words.
âNext time,â she said icily, âyou donât test theories inside a reinforced relic vault with reactive bindings unless youâve warned me. Or unless you have a death wish. Do you?â
âNo,â he said. âDefinitely no.â
Her glare didnât soften. âGood. Then donât do it again.â
Fabrisse nodded quickly, his hands already sliding the Stupenstone back into the containment pedestal. The stone gave no further glow as it settled into place. The runes around the pedestal dimmed. Whatever power it had shared with him, it wasnât eager to make a show of it now.
Severa stepped back, brushing a bit of dust off her sleeves like it had offended her. âWeâll file this under minor anomalous activation. Keep the emotional resonance trace if itâs stable. Iâll log it later.â
âRight,â Fabrisse muttered, resisting the urge to wipe his forehead. The spell had fizzled out. The pedestal hadnât exploded. The wards hadnât howled, and more importantly, no alarms had sounded. No instructors had burst in.
For once, nothing happened. And that was a small miracle.
Severa keyed the final rune by the door. âWe must go.â
He followed, doing his best not to limp from residual tension. As they stepped back into the outer corridor of Lower Containment, the chamber door sealed behind them without a sound.
Fabrisse didnât relax until they were well down the hallway.
Still, somewhere in the back of his mind, a single, treacherous thought echoed: That went too well.
But he didnât say it out loud. Even he knew better than to tempt the architecture.
