Spellwright

He shook his head. Maybe he actually had gone mad. “How could I have written you?”

A glow made him look up. Floating before him was a purple spell.

“Who cast that?” Nicodemus called, looking around for the spell’s author. “Who’s there?”

The night was empty save for the rubble, silent but for the wind in the trees.

The spell floated toward Nicodemus. He raised his hands and stepped back.

But the spell stopped and unfolded into two parts.

Now curious, Nicodemus peered at the first subspell. It was an instructional text describing how the purple language could encode for written language.

Familiar with analogous protocols that allowed wizards to conduct silent conversations in Numinous, Nicodemus quickly grasped how the spell functioned.

The second part of the purple spell seemed to be an encoded sentence. Nicodemus grabbed it and applied the translation protocol. The resulting line read, “It was Starhaven who wrote them.”

Nicodemus puzzled over those words until he remembered staring at the tattoos on his hand and asking, “How could I have written you?”

Again fear jolted through him. “Who cast this?” he repeated and again spun around in a frightened attempt to find the mysterious spellwright. “Who’s there?”

No sound came, but as Nicodemus turned round again he discovered another purple spell floating in the air.

Tentatively, he caught the paragraph and translated it.

The indigo language you refer to is called Wrixlan. It is our language for manipulating light and text, much like your Numinous. Wrixlan metaspells fill Starhaven. Your mind sought out Wrixlan because it is eugraphic. You dreamed of these creatures, and Starhaven’s metaspells sympathetically took the shape of your dreams. When your creatures achieved enough intelligence, the language governing Starhaven perceived them as a threat and so banished them. That is why the constructs hated you so. You had unknowingly exiled them.

“Who are you?” Nicodemus’s wide eyes darted about but saw nothing but ruins and ivy vines. “Where are you?”

As before Nicodemus found another Wrixlan paragraph floating behind him. He grabbed and translated it.

I see the products of your adolescent purple prose have forgiven you. They could have stored themselves in your living codex. But they will draw more strength from your skin. I have been trying to convince them to bring you here.

Nicodemus shook his head. “What do you want? Show yourself!”

This time he saw the textual response form in midair. It looked as if the characters were condensing from moonlight. It read,

I want only a small favor. I can offer many answers. You are in no danger; we are weak. We cannot affect the physical world and can affect the textual world only slightly.

Nicodemus swallowed hard, realizing what this meant. “You’re dead?”

The construct appeared first as a soft violet glow among the ivy vines. Then tiny indigo sparks formed in the air and began to swarm, slowly coalescing into legs and a torso.

As the construct moved toward Nicodemus, it became more solid and took on shades of white, indigo, and gray. But its prose never congealed completely. Nicodemus could see through the construct to the collapsed buildings on the other side.

At first glance it might have been mistaken for a human child of eight or ten. Its spindly legs presented knobby knees and wide feet. Its slight torso was covered by a white tunic that afforded a short sleeve for the right arm only.

The construct didn’t seem to have a left arm. But its right arm was long and graceful, with a large elbow joint and narrow forearm. Its single hand was wide, its fingers long and slender.

The spell was climbing toward Nicodemus on an ivy-covered staircase. As it moved, it leaned forward to use its elongated right hand as an extra foot.

Nicodemus stepped back as it reached the top of the promontory. Its skin was pale gray, its long hair snowy white.

Its eyes were as wide as a man’s fist, their pupils slit vertically like a cat’s. Its beaklike nose bent over a soft chin.