great goddess Solmay forbid any diety who pratciced this spell to travel across the ocean to our land. We can only assume that, at the time of the Exodus, the spell of soulsplitting was already available as an alternative method for binding avatars.
Because soulsplitting is the only godspell known to requre the consentual participation of its target, many speculate that etching could be cast upon an unwilling subject. However…
Nicodemus’s mouth worked silently. Somehow, he had conducted a search for mundane text without touching the Index. He inspected the page again.
The words implied that the book had used a godspell to teach him this new language. But that was impossible; only a living being could write magic, and only a deity could cast a godspell.
Nicodemus reread the passage to make sure he had not misunderstood. The text was the same, but this time something about the words bothered him. He read again.
There was something strange about the words “ancent,” “langeuge,” and “conscious.” He studied each one, trying to decide what it was that caught his eye.
A horrible idea filled his mind.
“No!” he whispered, a wild fear tearing loose in his gut. “No! I didn’t!” He staggered closer so that there could be no mistake. “Gods of grace, no!”
But there it was.
Los himself could not have inspired a more excruciating fear than that which now possessed him. He knew there should be an “i” somewhere in the word “ancent.” And “langeuge” should end in “-age.” As for “conscious,” only a fool would fail to put a “huss” after the “s”—conshuss. Or maybe it was “cawnshuss,” but definitely not “conscious”—that was absurd.
There was only one explanation: contact with his cacographic mind had filled the Index with misspellings.
It didn’t matter, Nicodemus told himself, pressing a hand to his chest. He had intended to steal the artifact anyway.
But the fear building in his mind would not be ignored. Stealing an artifact was a serious crime, and wizards despised nothing more than the destruction of a magical artifact. If they discovered him now, they would permanently censor magical literacy from his mind. Worse, their hatred for him and for all cacographers would multiply a hundredfold. He would become the most infamous misspeller since James Berr had killed those wizards so long ago.
“Calm yourself,” Nicodemus said slowly. Perhaps only this document was misspelled. It was written nearly four hundred years ago. Maybe the spellings were different then.
Intending to find Magister Shannon’s most recent treatise on spell intelligence, Nicodemus reached out and turned a page. With deep trepidation, he read:
From Concatenation’s Effects on Secondary Cognition in Semi-Atonomous Nonsense & Antisense Numinous Disspells, by Agwu Shannon.
Resent spell inteligence research has focused on the nessesity of imbuing an aspect of the caster’s consciousness…
As he read the last word, Nicodemus groaned and shut his eyes. How could this be? Maybe, he thought, maybe the magical texts hadn’t been affected. Maybe contact with his mind had only misspelled the mundane texts.
Nicodemus pressed his palm to the page and thought of a spell called “touch.” He chose touch because it possessed such a simple, straightfor-ward rune sequence that he would be able to tell if the version contained within the Index was misspelled.
Just as a fisherman’s hook yanks an unsuspecting trout from the river,the Index plucked Nicodemus’s mind from the wetness within his skull and sent it sailing into a vast and airy space.
It took a moment for him to perceive his new surroundings. Here Nicodemus had no eyes, no body. There was no up, no down. Everything was darkness.
Nicodemus’s surprise turned to fear. The blackness became heavy and thick, like humid air. He struggled to free himself but could not. He wanted to scream but had no lungs; he wanted to run but had no legs.
At last he forced himself to relax. Slowly, his mind opened to the strange new world. Tiny glimmers moved all around him. They grew brighter and became glowing gems that hung as if suspended from invisible tree limbs.
His vision became sharper and suddenly it was as if he were floating in the night sky. The luminescent orbs had become stars of different shapes and colors. Some blazed with fierce emerald radiation; others glowed indigo or ivory so dimly that they disappeared when he looked directly at them.
At last he realized that this black firmament was the world within the Index. Now he became aware of his body, swaying somewhere far below on the floor. The realization brought on a wave of vertigo and twisted his face into