Chapter Text

Falling. The star realized, with detached horror, that it was falling. It felt the icy, coarse air scrape at it, burning its surface and throwing light behind it in a glowing trail. It saw the Earth, which had seemed so small and unthreatening before, grow and consume its field of vision. It looked back to see its home getting farther and farther away, and knew that it would never, ever be able to return...

I was looking out the window of my father’s study, watching the slow turning of the stars, when I saw a line of white streak toward the horizon. And then there was a glow, faint but visible, shining at the edge of the sky where the line had gone.

I’ve always liked stargazing--since I was small, apparently. Enough that I was named for it. It’s one of the only ways that I can slow down my thoughts. I don’t do it for the heart-pounding action. What I’m trying to say is that I wasn’t expecting anything to happen. I certainly wasn’t expecting to see something flash across the sky, and then a spot of black where Proxima Kentauros was supposed to be.

I stood up, nearly knocking over my chair. I reached over my father’s desk, pushed a stack of books out of the way, and opened the window.

The glow over the hills in the distance was silvery, like starlight, and it wavered slightly. It was the wrong color for alpenglow, and anyway it was to the north, not the west.

I looked at the shelf by the desk, surveying book spines for something relevant. I couldn’t actually read their titles in the darkness, but I knew them by heart. There was an introductory alchemistry text which I remembered briefly mentioned spectroscopy, but that was it. I needed something more detailed.

I hesitated to move away from the window. A part of me worried that if I left it, the glow on the horizon would disappear. But I didn’t think that was likely. And the phenomenon was temporary, it was even more important to take measurements while it lasted. For that, I needed books from downstairs.

I walked to the corner of the study opposite the bookshelf, and stepped onto a bit of floor that a person would normally have no reason to stand on. It was awkward to apply the necessary pressure; I had to stand on one foot and jump a little, since I wasn’t heavy enough otherwise.

There was no click or whirr. The corner I was standing in descended soundlessly, and I was in the laboratorium. Cleanly-hewn stone was marred in places by chemical stains and scorch marks. The walls bore books, floor to ceiling, protected behind panels of mercuric glass. Two layers of books, actually, a second row behind each visible one, which I’d found annoying when I was young. Thankfully, these were more organized than the shelf upstairs, so I had no trouble finding several thick volumes on optics, astronomy, and spectroscopy. I would also need light to read them by, so I picked up a glowlamp from one of the shelves. I brought the lamp and books to the ascending room (well, ascending corner) which lifted me back to the study. Where it got its motive force from, I still had no clue.

I carried everything back to the desk and looked out the window again. The light on the horizon was still there.

I shook the glowlamp to get it started, and its yellow-green luminance grew bright enough to cast shadows around the study. I opened up the book on spectroscopy. It wasn’t a spellbook, but it explained things mechanistically. It would do.

I read it twice, paying particular attention to where the new information interfaced with the rest of my knowledge. I went over the edges of my understanding in my head, solidifying the shape of them, until I had something that would be safe enough to cast.

Then I walked back to the window, looked to the horizon, and spoke, outlining a rectangle with my hands as I did so. “ Diffractive spectroscope.” A distortion appeared, which cast the distant glow into vertical lines. Lines entirely consistent with the spectrogram of a class Aleph star.

Which didn’t make any Gauss-damn sense, because stars didn’t fall. The celestial spheres were supposed to be inviolable .

I was so stunned that my hacked-together spell fell apart. Reflexively, I checked over my memory of it, which was mostly intact. As I'd thought, the work done by the spell was negligible. Still, unstructured casting was a bad habit to get into. In theory, each one would eat away at my general knowledge.

General knowledge that I was feeling uncertain about after having possibly seen a star fall . I estimated my distance to the horizon as I walked downstairs and prepared to head out. From the altitude of my second-floor window, the curvature of the earth, a bit of trigonometria- coat, long socks, boots- yes, I could get over the horizon on foot, and my boots were on the wrong feet, and my coat was inside out. Multitasking was not my forte.

I put everything on the right way. Then I checked over my math, which was off by a factor of four. Still a walkable distance, but it would take a while. I stepped outside. The front door creaked shut behind me.

“Where’re you headin’, Aster?”

It was Timmon, the whitesmith, sitting on his porch at this ungodly hour. He fancied himself my guardian, or something, ever since I’d started living alone. He was an incredible hardass whose “kindness” tended to inconvenience me more than it helped.

“Uh. I left my purse at the square today,” I said. I could head in that direction and then double back, out of sight.

“Not good for a boy to be out, this time of night. How about you get it in the morn? Nobody’ll take it or nothin’. All honest folk, in this town.”

“By that logic there should be no danger in me fetching it now, right?”

“En’t right for a boy to be out, ‘this time.”

There was no reasoning with him, really. I sighed and walked back inside. Instead of shutting the door behind me, I held it open a crack, and listened.

Footsteps, circling around. He was expecting me to leave from the back door. Because I’d done so, in the past, in similar situations. I waited for the footsteps to fade, and reached to open the front door again, but before I did I held my breath and listened for a few more seconds.

Whisper-quiet footsteps, heading back around to the front. He was trying to fake me out. Clever bastard.

Thankfully, I had a third exit. As I walked upstairs, it occurred to me to bring a few more books on optics and spectroscopy, so that I could take some measurements out in the field. I took a short detour through the study to do so, placing the tomes in my satchel-bag, and then walked to the upstairs fireplace.

It was late autumn, so I had a fire going, which I put out. There was soot all around and up the chimney, but I stepped in anyway. Getting dirty was a small sacrifice to make for a chance at a truly novel discovery. I looked up at the square of sky above, crouched down, and cast a spell. A proper one this time, the only one I knew, formalized variables and knowledge bounds and everything. Levitate. Weightlessness overtook me, and I drifted a finger’s-width off the floor. I pushed my feet down, and as they made contact, they launched me upward. My trajectory wasn’t perfect, so I got some soot on my back, but I made out and maneuvered myself onto the roof.

The night air was still but clear, and all of the houses I could see down the road were dark. Something about the velvet silence made me want to run, and laugh, and see for myself what the hells was up with that silver glow.

So I did. I set off, bounding from rooftop to rooftop, my landings feather-light and feather-quiet. There was a chance I’d be seen, but I knew from experience that it was small. This wasn’t some northern city with glowmarks lining the streets; at this time of night, the darkness was like nanofelt.

As I reached the edge of town, I leaped over the wall. I touched down on an awkwardly angled rock, but the impact was gentle, and I pushed off again.

A force directly opposing gravity, distributed across every particle in my body, lifted me upward.

Alternatively, gravity itself was weakened. The gravitational constant was lower in the area of space that I occupied.

Alternatively, my mass somehow decreased without my inertia changing with it.

Alternatively, some aspect of the space below me warped, such that gravity treated me as much further away from the Earth than I was.

All of these interpretations were mathematically equivalent. All of this and more was contained in the elaborate construct of knowledge that was my Levitate spell. With every leap, I felt a tug on my memory, but only a faint one; I had studied Levitate for years, and I could sustain it for hours safely. If I pushed myself too far, I'd have to spend weeks reviewing the spell, but it was hard to worry about that when I was having so much fun .

As I sailed over creeks and hills and the occasional ravine, I remembered learning Levitate from my father. I’d spent a month studying, coming up with mnemonics, and solving exercises- and then undid all of that by jumping around the house and lifting furniture. Afterwards, I couldn’t even remember the inverse square law.

Since then, I had learned casting discipline, and barely ever used Levitate . I’d forgotten how much fun it was.

The glow grew in the distance.

In what felt like no time at all, I came upon wide bowl of churned-up earth with something bright at the center. But I wasn’t the first one there.

There were two grey-robed figures, bent over the point of light. They spoke in hushed tones that I couldn’t make out.

A weight dropped in my stomach, and my Levitate spell collapsed. I’d been beaten here. So much for my dreams of a discovery that would immortalize me in history.

And the Collegium wasn’t known for publicizing its findings, to put it lightly. I might never find out what they learned from the star.

But how’d they gotten here so quickly?

I peered over the edge of the crater and muttered a mnemonic from the optics text I’d studied earlier: “ Sir, eir, lir, luv.” A series of distortions gave me a closer look at the robed wizards.

The one on the left bore a symbol of two intersecting circles with an eye at the center. A divinator, then. The other mage’s robes were embroidered with a distorted grid pattern: the mark of a dimensionalist. Neither bore any other markings- no box-and-arrow, no cells within cells, no molecular glyph- so they were specialized. Which made sense: a master divinator to locate the site with precision, and a long-distance dimensionalist to transport them there.

And they were still here, arguing about something. They hadn’t simply taken the star and ported back to the Collegium. So either they were relatively independent, and wanted to take credit for the discovery themselves, or the dimensionalist wasn’t up for a second long-distance porting spell.

Without any sort of conscious decision, I found myself thinking about how I might steal the star from two vastly more powerful mages. What tools did I have?

Mastery over the Levitate spell, which would allow me to alter the weight (but not the mass) of a target. A few volumes on optics, which might allow me to throw together weak optical spells. The element of surprise.

I could Levitate the star into the sky, or make it too heavy for them to pick up… but once they knew something was up, the divinator would find me in an instant. I needed a plan that would prevent the mages from responding.

The dimensionalist pulled out a book and began to read it intently. His spellbook, most likely. That lent credence to the idea that he was too drained for a return trip. He must have been restudying his far-port spell.

When he was done, he and the divinator would take the star and leave.

On the other hand, the moment that they left would be the best chance to take the star. If I could keep the star here as the mages ported away, the dimensionalist wouldn’t be able to return without preparing his spell again.

What form would the dimensionalist’s spell take? An instantaneous change in position? A temporary portal in space? If it was a portal in space, I might conceivably be able to Levitate the star away as the mages passed through, and perhaps it would close before they could retrieve the star… but that would be awfully convenient. They might bring the star through the portal first, or the dimensionalist might be able to keep it open instead of being trapped on the other side.

On the other hand, if the dimensionalist did something more instant, I might be able to keep the star from being taken along somehow, and then they wouldn’t be able to return.

How could I force that outcome?

As I pondered this, I saw the divinator approach the star and open up a dowsing compass. For a moment I worried that he would divine my presence, but his gaze moved only between the star and the compass. Taking measurements, most likely.

Which gave me an idea. I cast Levitate on the star. Not to decrease its weight, but to increase it. Despite the name, Levitate could do either.

The divinator did a double-take with his compass. He waved the dimensionalist over. They spoke more loudly in their confusion, and I could make out a few words.

“...weight fluctuating…”

“... no, the measurements … accurate … but constant mass?”

The divinator bent over and reached for the star. I intensified my spell. The star sank into the ground, and the divinator failed to lift it.

Exerting a force this intense was draining, but thankfully the divinator gave up after a few tries.

The dimensionalist said something vulgar and flipped to a different page in his spellbook. Preparing an instant transportation spell, hopefully. Since they wouldn’t be able to carry the star through a portal.

I grinned. But then the divinator shook his head, adjusted something on his compass, and muttered. Casting another spell?

The divinator’s eyes snapped toward me just as I ducked behind the edge of the crater. “Reveal yourself.” the divinator said. “There’s no point in hiding from me.”

I stood up and did my best to look sheepish and young. Should have seen that coming. What kind of divinator wouldn’t cast a couple detection spells in this situation? Really, it was a miracle that he hadn’t found me until now.

“Walk toward me, slowly.”

I did so.

The dimensionalist spoke. “Come on, Ell, it’s just a kid who thought he was spying on something interesting.”

The divinator narrowed his eyes at me. “Hm. How’d you find this place?”

“I live nearby. I saw the light.”

He muttered something and looked at his compass. Oh dear. He was probably discerning the truth of my words.

“Did you do something to make that,” he pointed at the star, “heavier? Are you a kineticist?”

“Um…” I hesitated. “What’s a kineticist?”

The dimensionalist laughed. “Come on, Ell, let him go.” He stepped forward and waved his hand above my head. “See? No illusionry. He’s just a kid. Exactly what he appears to be.”

The divinator, apparently called Ell, sighed. “I suppose I must look rather foolish. Leave now, child, and say nothing of what you’ve seen.”

I ran away. Toward town, for a while. Then I doubled back toward the crater, stopped a ways away from it, and set up a series of reflective and refractive spells to give me a view from above.

All of this casting slowly eroded my knowledge of optics, but thankfully I had the relevant books on hand, and flipping through them from time to time as I maintained the spells was enough to counteract the memory drain. I adjusted my makeshift spell-periscope to get a closer look at the dimensionalist’s spellbook. It was all notation, too dense for me to decipher.

I frowned. Hopefully the targeting specs were strict enough to be fooled by what I had in mind. I dropped my concentration on the periscope spell and opened up one of the thicker optics tomes to its section on refractive indices.

From one perspective, it would be trivial… was it possible for the illusion to hold up from all perspectives? Perhaps with a curved interface between the mediums? I laid out some paper that I’d planned to record observations on, and started working out the possibilities. Hm.

After an hour or so I had a spell-form that looked promising. I tested it on a pebble. The pebble, and an area of the ground around it, appeared to slowly shift and then stop a handspan or so from its original position. I moved my head from side to side, and the illusion held. I stood up, and suddenly the pebble appeared to stretch backward.

Hm. That wouldn’t work. I looked back to my calculations. Had I messed up an integration layer? I tried specifying the refractive gradation in a different way.

It occurred to me to check back on the two mages. It was hard to tell how much time had passed. Surely they hadn’t already left? But when I looked toward the horizon, the glow was still there.

I set up the periscopic spells again. The dimensionalist was still reading his spellbook. He was still on the same page, actually. No, that wasn’t right. As he flipped to the next page, and then skipped ahead a few pages, I realized that he must have been in the final stages of reviewing his spell.

I crept back toward the crater, lightening my steps with Levitate to make sure I wouldn’t be heard. By the time I got back to the edge, the dimensionalist’s book was closed, and he was speaking with the divinator, again too quietly for me to hear.

As the mages were focused on each other, I cast my new spell, taking care to evoke its effect gradually.

The star, and the space around it, appeared to move slightly closer to me. The distortion was gradual, and not immediately apparent once the spell settled into place.

The shadows cast by the star shifted, too. I hadn’t anticipated that. But the mages didn’t seem to notice.

There was a tug on my mind, stronger than I was expecting, and I felt the spell slipping away from me. Why? None of the other optical spells had been a significant burden. Redirecting light should have constituted very little work.

Ah, but redirecting light directly emanating from a light source , one bright enough to leave ghosts dancing across my vision, was probably a little more work. It was still just light, so any proper spell would have held up, but I wasn’t casting a proper spell.

I pulled out my calculations and read over them. They were already less familiar, like something I’d worked out last night instead of a few minutes ago. Trying to review them while maintaining my spell was like digging a trench in wet sand.

As I read and reread what I’d written, frantically chanting mnemonics under my breath, I could tell I was losing ground. I could maintain the spell for perhaps a few more minutes before I risked drawing on knowledge outside of the spell’s boundary.

I spared a glance toward the mages. They were still talking. They didn’t seem to notice anything amiss, but they didn’t look like they were about to leave, either.

I lost track of one of the mnemonics I was using. What was Tsnelle’s law, again? I rederived it, only to find I had forgotten part of Higyn’s principle.

I looked up again, conscious of the fact that every moment not studying was knowledge lost. The mages were walking toward the star. The divinator had his dowsing compass open, but he was looking north, away from me. Some final checks on their destination, perhaps? I looked back to my notation, and it took a moment for me to figure out some parts of what I’d written. Had I really used theta prime, theta prime prime, and theta prime prime prime as variables? What was this, typographical number theory?

I still knew what my scribblings meant, for the most part, but losing track of details like that was a bad sign. Should I drop the spell? I thought back to the horror stories my father had told me about overdrawing. Ruined mages, perpetually confused about the world around them, missing their deepest intuitions about gravity or heat or light. The risk wasn’t worth it, I had to drop the spell-

There was a deafening CRACK that sounded like a firecracker in reverse.

My concentration fell apart. I dropped my notes.

The mages were gone.

The star was not.