Work Text:
ta-da!
Gale waved his arm, and in a deep commanding voice said an alphabet soup of calamitous consonants. Within the cavernous space of their shared BGU laboratory, the light turned acid green, and a noise, low and resonant like a gong, vibrated the stone walls.
Sweating slightly but grinning broadly, Gale surveyed his result. He turned triumphantly, hands on hips, chest puffed out—and his smile instantly fell away.
‘Oh, for hells’ sake! Could you at least look?!’
Rolan sighed heavily and reached to the side table for a thin silver bookmark. Marking his spot, he closed the book and set it back on said table with all the deliberate slowness of someone handling rune powder. Once he squared the book up to match the edges of the table, he looked up to see what Gale was on about.
‘Cute,’ he said, reaching again for his book almost before the single word was out of his mouth.
‘Cute?’ Gale gaped at the younger wizard. ‘Cute?!? Are you blind? It's a dragon!’
‘Charming, then. I had an illusory drake at my third name-day festivities. A clown as well, if memory serves.’
Gale sputtered. ‘It’s real!’ He stomped his foot, immediately regretting the action and covering with an awkward kind of two-step. ‘I open a rift to the astral plane, drag down a red dragon, hold it in stasis and resize it to fit on your workbench and you say “cute”?!’
With all the weariness of a grandparent humouring an overly sugared child, Rolan sighed, and stood up. He approached the bench and examined it from several angles. ‘Hrmm, I suppose…but I fail to see the practical application.’
Gale made a disgusted noise, and with a flick of his hand dismissed the dragon into a spray of sparks. The sparks hit the floor with a soft patter, turning to gold coins that spelled out CUTE on the floorboards.
Rolan toed at one of the coins and raised a brow toward Gale. ‘Counterfeit, I assume?’
Gale stared for a long moment as all seven stages of grief washed over his face. He pressed his lips together in a pale line, and his nostrils flared. ‘Yes. Of course they’re counterfeit. Do you expect me to conjure gold from the air?’
Rolan shook his head. ‘Not in the least.’
Gale nodded sharply with satisfaction, only realizing when he heard the soft chuckle behind him, Rolan’s meaning.
‘Aha!’ Gale breathed.
‘Aha!’ Gale said. He drummed his fingers on his work surface, then shifted a couple books around.
‘Ahaaa!’ Gale exclaimed.
Across the room, Rolan rolled his eyes. He plastered a false smile on his lips, and turned his snark up. ‘Whatever is happening over there to make you so excited, Gale?’ he deadpanned.
Gale scowled. ‘If you must know,’ he said peevishly, ‘I’m working on a feedback loop. It’s fortification magic—abjuration, really—and it’s ready.’
Rolan raised a pointy brow and put down his quill, listening in earnest. ‘What are you fortifying?’
Gale glowed. ‘Aha! That’s the best part! It can support all manner of applications. Scrying, healing, divination—I haven’t yet found the limitation. The spell itself is only the enhancement. Each recognized success feeds back into the task, improving the next result. I’ve named the incantation Laudate Omnia.’
A slow smile crept over the tiefling wizard’s face. ‘You’ve made a validation spell.’
Gale opened his mouth, but paused, slower now to answer. ‘In a manner of speaking, I suppose that’s accurate.’
Rolan pursed his lips and nodded slowly. ‘You created an incantation to praise magic into improved performance.’
‘I fail to see what is so amusing about this.’ Gale crossed his arms, raising his chin in defiance.
‘Of course you don’t see it.’ Rolan sighed. ‘Praise driven performance, Gale—why, that’s you to a tee! You practically run on positive feedback.’
‘I do no such thing!’ Gale sputtered. ‘I work in pursuit of academic advancement. Not for…head pats!’
Rolan waved his hand, batting his previous comment like a bothersome insect. ‘Of course. No, never mind. That actually sounds really impressive, Gale.’
‘You think so?’ Gale brightened. ‘I’m going to start working on simplifying the incantation, to make it more stable.’
‘Tremendous idea!’
‘Thanks! I also pl—‘ Gale stopped mid syllable. The last thing he heard before he slammed the door behind him was Rolan’s laughter.
Gale stood back and dusted his perfectly clean hands. Before him, a stone sat on the workbench looking like a stone. Grey, smooth, vaguely round, and stoneish.
‘We’re staring at rocks now, are we, Professor?’ Rolan clasped his hands behind his back and bent down to peer closely at it.
‘Not a rock, well, ok, yes, a rock,’ Gale said, ‘but not just a rock. Oh, no, no, no. I've imbued it with awareness. It now responds sympathetically.’
On cue, the stone began humming, and began radiating heat enough to reach both men where they stood, two feet away.
‘Ah, very good,’ Gale cooed, and the rock warmed yet further.
‘So, it’s a warm rock?
‘I’ve given an inanimate object—arguably the most inanimate of objects—the ability to assess and respond to its environment, and not even that impresses you?!’
Behind Gale, the tone of the rock dropped, and it hummed instead in a minor key. It withdrew it’s heat, and if it could be said that a stone sounded sad, then this was definitely a melancholic cobblestone.
‘Is that what this is? An attempt to impress me with a humming rock?’
‘Forget the damned rock! Would it kill you to say “well done”?’ Gale glowered.
‘Gale, before you accidentally unstitch reality trying to impress me, I should perhaps clarify that I do find your work remarkable. Most of it, in fact.’
‘If you find it remarkable, then remark on it occasionally for Azuth’s sake!’
‘Didn’t I just?’
Gale clenched his teeth, ready to bite back, but noticed how the corner of Rolan’s mouth twitched. He was putting Gale on, taking the mick, pulling his leg. As Gale had no siblings so this was not a familiar concept, but he’d often heard Rolan relate much the same way to Cal and Lia.
‘Yes, fine,’ Gale conceded, deciding to drop it. He’d never been treated like a sibling before, and didn’t hate the idea. But, he also wasn’t going to give Rolan the satisfaction of getting his goat.
‘Show me your rock,’ Rolan said, wearily.
‘Haha!’ Gale clapped his hand together and simultaneously a faint pink aura glowed about the stone. ‘I knew you’d like it! Pretty cool, right?!’
‘I praised you once, already.’ Rolan said, a smile in his eyes, if not permitted to his lips. ‘Don’t be greedy.’