Copying Magic

Taking out a peculiar magic stone from his pocket, it glowed a faint pale blue and was in a diamond shape. Taking it between his finger and thumb he put put it at the base of the pen.

"Come on, come on," Owen muttered impatiently.

The hissing of the pen slowly subsided and the blue from the gem had faded somewhat. Slotting the gem back into his coat pocket he held his scarf.

"How do you guys do with the cold," Owen asked the three students who weren't engaged with the tree.

They looked somewhat alarmed by this. "Sir, is it that bad?"

"That tree is growing at alarming speed. The only issue is it's using the magic to grow and I sense a big growth spurt coming. There isn't enough magic so it's going to use the energy around us to keep up. Yes, it's that bad."

He plunged the pen into the air, it gained purchase looking like it was floating. Lines started appearing, glowing in the same pale blue glow the gem had, the lines were taking the shape of a magic circle with the pen at the centre.

"Professor's," he shouted. "Brace yourself."

They looked over at the stranger bewildered and then the older professor's complexion changed to alarm.

With one hand he started to rewrite a few of the runes in the circle, the other hand was unwinding the scarf. The cold was starting to make him feel numb and he was using an alarming output of his own magic to keep himself warm.

"Grab the scarf," he told the three students. They just looked at each other hesitantly.

"I can't last much longer," the girl shouted back. Sure enough she was on the back foot, exhausted as she batted the last few roots back.

"Grab the scarf," he shouted back at the students. "It's that or the fucking tree."

The students relented grabbing it. Owen felt their power almost instantly flowing from them into the spell in front of him. The power made the spell glow more vibrant, the magic also started humming more loudly.

The spell was the same enchantment on the door Fane had made, he was glad he had siphoned that spell into the pen, it turned out to be more practical than he expected. With a few modifications he was making parts of the air into the barrier.

It was now the hard part. Feeling a bead of sweat down his brow he focused on repeating this to create a cube around the courtyard. The sweat seemed to almost freezing on his body as his laboured breaths showed from the growing cold atmosphere. He touched the magic circle with his hand and with a wave of his hands he repeated it at the six faces of the cube.

Almost instantly he could feel the tree resisting from the top to the roots.

Taking the pen, straining, he twisted it anticlockwise. The resistance it put up made him grunt in exertion. It started twisting automatically and with it the other circles did as well. The barriers started to shrink and contract towards each other causing the tree to buckle and break apart.

"Run to the edge," he shouted. He grabbed one of the arms of the injured boy as he took the pen from the magic circle.

With a loud snap he a large branch fell a few inches from his feet. The roots seemed to have an influx of energy as they started whipping towards any sort of life they could. 

The older professor took this opportunity to appear next to the girl still fighting off the roots. 

"I'll cover the escape," she told the student letting her fall to her arms.

The barrier came closer encasing them but Owen and the students felt no resistance as they stepped through. The tree was having no such luck.

"I'm afraid that this barrier won't be letting you through," Owen taunted the tree feeling some safety only to remember something could be lurking around any corner.

The professor suddenly appeared in front of Owen holding the girl. "She is incredibly brave and foolish. Reminds me of you, except she holds more talent. Or so I thought, you surprised me today."

The barrier was slowing as the tree filled up every inch and crevice the barrier had.

She gave a almost cruel grin as she looked back at the tree. "When I go back in don't let my magic or it get back out. I presume you can modify the barrier."

In another second she was gone back in the barrier with the tree except the magic started whistling wildly around her. The restraint she had been using was gone.

Owen ran to the barrier that had left gashes deep into the ground. from where the tree roots had been forced back with the barrier. This made the terrain difficult. Taking the pen he imbued his magic in it and putting it to the barrier he tuned it by listening. This tuning allowed him to change the magic the barrier would let past.

In a matter of seconds the barrier looked to be full of nothing but wood until he noticed a greying to the wood. The now stone crumbled and the professor stood there with a smirk on her face.

The Tree's magic subsided but in it's place the foul magic seemed to be leaking from the middle of the university. While there was the recognizable magic of Fane Gillmoore more disturbingly he felt another more familiar magic there.

Owen took the pen and siphoned off the magic again. This was the most ingenious part of the pen, it could copy the magic it siphoned, it held a memory of sorts so could hold a few magics though it was limited to how much it could hold. It held three spells now with two more spells potentially left, the barrier being the newest addition.

"You've got them," Owen asked the professor, gesturing at her pupils.

"Yes but where are you going?" She replied in an almost angry tone.

"That way," he pointed inside to the heart of the university. "It seems that he is in the middle of something new again."

The lines on her face seemed to relax for a moment as she contemplated. "Be careful, I'll pretend I didn't see you today as a thank you."

"Much appreciated," he said already running further into the university.

The magic he felt was that of the fourth prince of the kingdom of Taranelle. While at the academy they had got on quite well as social outcasts, the prince with a curse of awful luck and himself with awful experiments. They had made quite the team.

The main point being that the prince got into trouble far too often.

The corridors brought recent memories back as he ran through them though as he got closer it seemed to get darker. The magic becoming so thick it was difficult to push himself through the corridor, or the corridor was getting longer, it was often hard to tell when it came to magic.

The darkness seemed to be all consuming as he walked deeper into the magic, the only thing he could use to keep his bearings was the sound of the magic, he kept that small but almost beautiful magic Prince Alex held within him. 

He hit a door, the trance he was in broken. He stood outside a lab door. It was a familiar lab door, the one he had once conducted the experiments to make his pen and a few other tools, it was part of the reason he had come in the first place.

Bracing himself he threw the door open.

In one corner Fane Gillmoore stood, long red hair hanging down his deceptively youthful experience. He wore an expression of grim realisation. He wore robes like all the professors of the academy though his where a contrasting white compared to the black everyone else wore.

Facing him stood another young man in a suit of startling white that shined brighter putting Fane's robes to shame. His hair was short and he had a sharp expression. On his left side he had six eyes instead of the normal one you expect to find. In his gloved hand he held a crude pocket watch that most would think was broken. In the other hand was an elegant rapier that looked far too ornate for use.

In front of this figure Alex was kneeling panting on the floor with a dejected look on his face. 

Owen was alarmed to see the watch in this man's hands, it was from another experiment he, Alex and the Professor of Artifice had created. It was called the Time-Teller and it was supposed to be destroyed.

"Fane, it's always awful to see you but I think I'll take my leave." The man in white said. He had either not noticed Owen or didn't care, the amount of magic coming off him suggested the latter.

"Silk, we will find you for this. This will not go unpunished." Fane replied with a hard determination underlining his tone.

"Just try." With a swing of the rapier he heard a horrendous screech, the world itself seemed to cry. A hole seemed to be punched in space, the other side being impossible to see. Silk walked into this hole and with it the magic was gone.

"It seems I'm going to be needing your services," Fane turned to Owen. "We have a lot to talk about."