The Failing Light Prequel

Once we returned to the lab with our prize a new type of research began, and this time it was I rather than Turner who was married to the project. How could a rock absorb magic? Where could it go? Was it a physical property, or perhaps was the stone occupied by something which actively resisted our manipulations? Was it cursed, or perhaps somehow living itself? These and many other questions passed through our minds in those early days.

We eventually confirmed the early observation that the flickering golden flecks signaled when the stone would absorb a casting, but as to what caused the flickering we were never able to determine. After several absorbed castings I noticed that the flickers occurred more often however, which lead to the discovery that the castings truly were being absorbed, that they were being held within the crystal rather than snuffed out of existence.

To demonstrate this to the master and Turner was a simple matter:  I created a cloud of dull gray smoke that flowed in a ring drifting about the crystal. When the flecks flickered the ring seemed to be torn apart and drawn into the gem, reappearing trapped within the stone. Of some concern was that the ring seemed to be fractured within the stone as if it had somehow been cracked, but it was there none the less. We experimented with this several times and managed to trap several other visual spells within the crystal, but were unable to find a way to extract them.

After several weeks we returned to the cave to gather a few more crystals as the original was now dark with trapped spells and flickered so often it was no longer easy to interpret the effect of a casting. Luck was with us as this turned out to reveal the secret of the crystals: While examining one of the new smaller samples with the master and comparing it to the murky flickering of the original stone, I happened to rest one on the other; the result was the sudden and instant release of  all the castings the old stone had absorbed up to that point, throwing me across the room and upturning the workbench while filling the arena with gloriously misplaced rings of smoke.

We quickly surmised that the ensnared castings were released when one crystal came into contact with another, and after some experimentation we were able to determine that the casting was actually released through the crystal that didn't hold any magic rather than from the one that had absorbed the spell. This presented some problems, mainly in that it was very difficult to know where a casting was going to be directed upon release, but none the less we had discovered a way to harness the stones potential and were quite excited.

Such a discovery, that a spell could be held and released at will, was truly a revelation worthy of Starswirl's reputation. Curiously, he never presented it to any scholastic circles that I was aware of; I think he had reservations about how such information could be used or misused by those less cautious that himself, or perhaps he better understood the unpredictable nature the crystals than I did.

Despite such reservations on the master's part, Turner was quite taken with the phenomenon as was I and we all began studying it in detail. Turner approached the crystals with logic and observation while I studied them through experimentation and manipulation, and the master through insight and careful prodding. After a few days we discovered quite by accident that certain materials could be used to connect the gems with the same effect as bringing them into direct contact, and that they could be made to absorb a casting by placing a reflective surface behind them which seemed to make the flecks glow indefinitely. From this Turner and the master developed a hypothesis that the release was triggered by magic flowing from one stone to the other and they quickly set out to determine what this magic signal was and how it worked, leaving me to study the effect from a more practical standpoint.

Having always been fascinated by complicated mechanical devices, the possibilities our discovery presented were almost beyond imagination and I could have happily explored them for the rest of my life. The only problem that remained unaddressed as I saw it was how to control and direct the release of the ensnared castings; releasing them through primitive means was so sudden and undirected it was impossible to predict what would happen even knowing the effect the original casting should have... A casting intended to change the color of a bottle of ink could be thrown in the caster's face for example, or out the window, and who could say what effect that would have?

It was only after I had the idea of creating an array of smaller crystals to direct and focus the release of the ensnared castings that we started to make real progress towards our original goal. The device was elegantly simple in its design, consisting of the original large crystal, a collection of copper tubes and soft canvas bands, a handful of crystal fragments, and a few wooden supports to keep the whole thing upright.

The main crystal was tightly wrapped about the top and bottom with several layers of canvas, which was then held in place by a pair of copper bands. These copper bands were connected by a copper tube from which 8 smaller tubes snaked out to support 8 small crystals arrayed at the corners of a cube, forming a cage of sorts. The smaller crystals were supported by the copper bands, and while empty didn't trigger any magical disasters... With the swinging of a lever, however, a small copper plate was pressed against the side of the main crystal connecting it to all of smaller crystals at the same time, causing the ensnared castings to be released through the smaller crystals and, because of the array they were in, the spell was pushed and pulled into the center of the cage rather than sent flying in random directions.

The first spell we tested the device with was one of Starswirls, a simple shimmering spray of silver light often used to light a dark area. Though many tens of years have passed since that day I will never forget the exhilaration of seeing that spray of silver light suddenly reappear within the device of my design, contained and directed as neatly as you'd like, looking for all the world like some kind of magical lantern.