Several runes ford in his mind, accompanied by a discordant choir of voices that made it impossible for him to understand a single one.
"Fuck sideways!" Lith fell to one knee, holding his ears to muffle the deafening noise.
"What's wrong, child? Talk to ." The Mother had to repeat the question multiple tis before he managed to hear her.
When Lith was done explaining what had just happened, Baba Yaga sighed in relief.
"You've just bitten more than you can chew, child." She said. "A tier one spell can't have so many effects. You need at least tier three for that. Also, you didn't define what kind of explosion you wanted.
"A burst of pure fire? A blazing shockwave? A series of concussive blasts? You left your spell open to too many interpretations, and the Lodestar delivered all the possible answers to you at the sa ti.
"Scale it down to sothing simpler, and it will be a perfect tier two spell. Either keep the piercing effect, or make the Cinder blast explode upon contact."
Lith did both, obtaining Iratho Het and Iratho Rak.
"That works too." Baba Yaga nodded. "Now move up to tier three, but this ti picture the effect you want clearly, step by step."
"Iratho Ghet Rekhat!" The three runes fused together, conjuring a pillar of Cinder the size of Lith's arm that pierced through the Firing Range's Zero counterspell.
Then, Fire Stab exploded in a hot flash that consud most of the oxygen in the room, making what little was left too hot to breathe. If not for the Firing Range cooling the temperature and injecting fresh air, Lith would have suffered more than a brief fit of cough.
"Thank my paranoia, I sent Elysia away." Lith cleared his throat. "I would have never forgiven myself if sothing happened to her."
"Don't worry, child. Elysia would have been fine." Baba Yaga replied. "The Firing Range's timing was impeccable. Not a hot gust of wind reached Solus or . The only reason you coughed is that you were too close to the point of the explosion.
"Next ti, make your spell detonate at a safe distance. The fire of your own Cinder spell can't hurt you, but the heat and lack of humidity can still turn you into a dried-up mummy."
"That was a safe distance." Lith inwardly cursed at Cinder Magic. "I couldn't risk the spell exploding too close to the wall and hurting Solus. I didn't expect the side effects to spread so far despite the Firing Range."
"I'm afraid sothing similar will happen with all the other Cursed Elents." Solus shuddered at the thought of the kind of damage Cinder could do to the tower and how it might reflect on her.
"Chaos is relatively safe because it doesn't affect its surroundings. Its power is focused on destruction, whereas the other Cursed Elents alter everything in their area of effect, and destruction is just a consequence of that."
"Solus has a point." nadion said. "To make matters worse, when I created the enchantnts for the Firing Range, I wasn't aware of Cursed Elents other than Chaos. Are you sure you want to continue with your experints?"
"We still have over twenty hours left." Lith replied. "We're practicing the Cursed Elents to learn how to use them and warn the children about their potential danger when they grow up.
"I'm still reeling at the idea Ely might have gotten hurt, but we've just discovered sothing important. Besides, we still have no Choke Magic Spell. I want to give Bazek a go and then see if we can use Cursed Runes to cast arrays."
"I'm confident in your work, Mom." Solus said. "Moreover, the more we learn about Cursed Elents, the better the Firing Range can neutralize them. It will protect the kids from themselves in the future, and us from enemies who can cast Mirror Magic spells."
"I'm with them." Baba Yaga nodded. "Also, I'd like to try a few more Zero Spells. I'm curious to understand if they are as dangerous as Cinder Spells and Lith was just lucky when he used them in Amrok, or if we're overlooking sothing."
The Mother practiced the Cinder Spells Lith had just created until she mastered them. Once she deed to have reached a deep enough understanding of the Cursed fire, she created one tier one, one tier two, and one tier three Cinder Spells.
She needed much longer and many more attempts than Lith, but she succeeded a bit faster than with Chaos.
"I'm getting the hang of Cinder Magic." She nodded. "Yet I have to admit that without Elysia to reveal the chore magic rune and you to pave the road for , Lith, using Mirror Magic would have been a pipe dream.
"I would have never discovered the existence of stable Cursed Runes on my own. Even after all this practice and watching your progress, there's a large part of that is still scared stiff of even the basic Cursed Runes.
"Creating tier one Cursed Spells and above requires my full focus, willpower, and the guidance of the Lodestar. Without the latter, I would be too busy fighting against my primal dread to notice a single rune."
"I know what you an." Solus nodded. "I'm doing my best to follow you guys, but whenever you conjure a Cursed Spell, sothing inside of screams at to turn my head and cover my ears."
Baba Yaga needed no rest thanks to the endless vitality of her white core and the flood of world energy accumulated inside the Lodestar. Lith moved on to practice the Choke Rune, Bazek, developing several tier one spells, a few tier two, and a handful of tier three.
Bazek turned the air into a noxious gas, and the lightning bolts it conjured did more than release electricity. They scrambled the magnetic field of everything and everyone they ca in contact with, destabilizing their victim like a disease.
The Firing Range needed ti to adjust its spells and find the perfect way to neutralize the Choke Spells, but even then, they were still dangerous when utilized in the confined space of the Lodestar.
Lith often coughed, and when he failed to visualize a controlled form of his new spells, his hands beca numb and his armor consud lots of energy to protect him from injuries.
Baba Yaga followed his lead, limiting herself to the weakest spells of every tier she could think about, sacrificing destructive power in favor of surgical control.
"Interesting." Lith said after carefully observing the Mother as she cast her spells. "Until this mont, I thought that the stable Cursed Runes conjuring one Cursed Elent while also releasing and scattering its opposite all around the caster was sothing similar to Mirror Magic's effects.
"That you couldn't call upon any Cursed Elent without summoning the other, and that the stable runes simply got rid of the second Cursed Elent in a way that doesn't endanger the caster and doesn't require their focus. I was wrong."
"What do you an?" Solus asked as the Mother was already glimpsing the revelation behind those words.
"It's easier if I show you." Lith set the Firing Range to neutralize the Cinder Magic Spell that had almost hurt him before, Fire Stab.
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