Word was that Reed Strucker, that honest, straightforward man, was so overjoyed he'd all but forgotten his own name.
Lauren Strucker was the elder sister, Andy Strucker the younger brother. The boy had come out in something of a rush — or rather, his sister had dragged him along after her. Full-term and well-nourished, the sister was plump and fair, while the brother looked a touch thin and small beside her.
Shaw seemed utterly bewildered at having both a son and a daughter, sitting up on the roof day and night, staring into space. Bella was run off her feet on her own end, so she didn't go poking into someone else's household affairs.
In the gaps between caring for the baby, she seized every spare moment to take stock and let herself settle. Five years since she'd crossed over, she now commanded 6th-level spells — an average of one level a year. In a magical environment this wretched, that counted as astonishing progress.
She needed to comb through her own spellwork from beginning to end, plug the gaps, and shore up her foundations.
Besides Flesh to Stone, which she'd already mastered, she now held Disintegrate, along with Chain Lightning — which she'd worked out through the white magic Bolts of Balthakk — three 6th-level spells in all, and every one of them an attack spell.
A mage's spell selection actually followed a very distinctive pattern. At the low levels, what you mastered was mostly survival and defensive magic; what high-level mage enjoys blasting away at random with Fireball? Early on, staying alive mattered most — lose your life and you lose everything. Higher up, past the sixth level, the share of attack spells began to climb.
Learn to take a beating first, then learn to dish one out! Just about every mage walked this same road.
Having come this far along the path of magic — well, across the multiverse there was no counting them all, but on present-day Earth, Bella already ranked among the masters.
At the level she'd now reached, to keep up a steady and efficient momentum, even the Psion — the least reliant on outside aids of anyone — needed some medicinal assistance.
Humans, in the end, weren't those extraordinary creatures born with magic already running in their blood. They were highly adaptable — true enough — but at the heights, hemmed in by the limits of their own bodies, certain shortcomings began to surface.
At Kamar-Taj there was a whole bookcase of hefty tomes on using alchemical draughts to aid magical cultivation, setting out in detail the formulas, brewing methods, and effects of every kind of potion. The average mage would have no call for such knowledge, but it suited Bella perfectly.
She'd begun her preparations well in advance. She blended dragon's blood with magically charged Jotunheim amethyst, then folded in lizard's eyeballs, the fluid drawn from the gallbladders of the great spiders in Arendelle's deep forests, and powdered quartz. The mixture was buried in the earth through February and left for a month — February being the famous Ostara Month of alchemy. The mages of old held it to be the month when the tides of magic ran strongest and the results were finest.
The draught wasn't for drinking but for anointing the body: drawing on the rich magic within it, the human body would slowly absorb that magic and refine its constitution bit by bit. It was rather like body-refinement for a mage. Working from the outside in, the draught would make her body more attuned to magic, sharpen her perception of magic, quicken her casting motions, and give her physique a modest lift on top of that.
Bella could anoint her front herself, but for her back she needed Natasha's help.
"Tsk, tsk, you really go all out! There are lizard eyeballs in this stuff?" Natasha dabbed a finger in the draught and held it up for a close look. The thing was gooey and looked thoroughly revolting — and now that she knew what went into it, the look she gave Bella turned distinctly peculiar.
Bella shot her wife a sidelong glare over her shoulder. "Hurry it up — holding this pose is exhausting."
Ever since she'd gotten the Cloak of Levitation, her drive to study the Fly spell had slipped another big notch. Limited by their physique, mages simply couldn't fly fast; the Cloak, by contrast, could reach nearly the speed of sound — plenty for her purposes — and if that ever fell short, there was always teleportation.
Flight was a lost cause, but leaning on her vast psionic energy, she could now manage to Levitate for short stretches. She hovered half a meter off the ground, legs folded, body perfectly still. At her current level she could hold it for an hour at most — which sounded like a long while, except that once she and Natasha fell to bantering, the two of them could fritter away half the day.
"All right, all right, quit rushing me, I'm starting now." Natasha naturally had no idea how to apply it — this was no oil massage; there were magical pathways and an order to follow. Consulting the sequence diagram Bella had sketched off to the side, she dipped her fingers in the draught and, starting at the nape of the neck, began tracing the lines of the array bit by bit.
"The skin on your back is really lovely — makes me envious just to look at it," Natasha sighed. Then she changed tack. "Your front's another matter, though — still on the small side. Why not try being a mother yourself for once? Look at me — I went up a size after having little Elsa. Jealous, aren't you?"
Bella pretended not to hear and wouldn't make a sound.
"That roommate of yours — Heather, wasn't it? Is she really that outrageous? The kind who can't see her own feet when she looks down? I always took that for just a turn of phrase in books — I honestly can't picture it..."
Bella still said nothing, glancing out of the corner of her eye at little Elsa nearby. The baby watched her mama and papa with wide-eyed curiosity, wondering what on earth they were doing.
"Say, would this stuff work on me? Could I learn magic too?" Natasha asked.
Knowing her wife had a stout heart that could weather any blow, however heavy, Bella spoke without mincing words. "You can't. Your mind's too cluttered — one thought's not even finished before the next comes bubbling up. You're not suited to my path, unless you take the road of arduous cultivation — and that would take ten years at the very least, maybe twenty. Could you endure that?"
Natasha leaned in close and whispered in her ear, "Didn't you tell me last night I'd make a fine mage?"
Bella stared at her, astonished. "No way. When did I ever say that?"
"You said I had nimble fingers, well suited to sketching out the spell's — what was it — modeling? And that I could get a good grip on all the various 'points,' which would make drawing the arrays easier."
Bella...
Natasha went on, "You also said my tongue was especially nimble, that I enunciate clearly, so I'd chant spells faster than most. Does any of that ring a bell?"
Bella...
Did I say that? It rang a faint bell — but surely that wasn't what I meant?
"Liar! Big fat liar!" Natasha's voice was soft and coy, the sort that leaves a curious little itch behind. Bella was so flustered by the teasing that her levitation very nearly gave out.
The two of them knew their limits, though — their daughter was watching not far off — so they didn't get up to anything "serious." Once she'd finished applying the draught for Bella, Natasha went off to wash her hands, then watched her slowly draw the magic from the draught into her body.
She might tease Bella with a few remarks at ordinary times, but when it came to real business Natasha fell very quiet; she didn't understand magic, and dreaded that some interference of hers might bring Bella to harm.
Cultivating, minding the baby, keeping her wife happy — there was no describing how blissful Bella's two months were.