In that peculiar meditative state, reciting the Word of Flame guided his consciousness into deeper, unknown reaches.
To touch, to seek out that language which belonged to him alone.
Amid the wanderings of his consciousness in that emptied state, Ruger naturally recognized the dim points of starlight and the phantom demon horns. It took little effort; in an instant, he understood. They shifted from blurry to clear as his understanding changed. Those were the phantom curved horns of his Demon of Miserliness, and the dim points in that starry sky corresponded precisely to the fifteen nodes that could not be constructed directly-the hardest problem in constructing the Miserly Spell.
Then things changed.
As he had reflected before, all the things he had accumulated along the way, deliberately or otherwise, had shaped him. Everyone was like that. Though he was an unusual kobold, he was no exception in this regard.
Some things he accumulated were beyond his control, and so were some changes.
Fortunately, the situation before him was not entirely unexpected.
In fact, he had consulted his teacher, Immanuel, about this very question.
Could a person-a wizard apprentice, a level-one wizard apprentice who had only just established his Meditation Method-have a spell model in his mental power space quietly changed simply by seeing something?
His teacher's answer had been no.
And he had earnestly explained that if such a thing truly happened-to Ruger, for instance-then Ruger himself had altered his own spell model.
Even if he was only a level-one wizard apprentice, he must have altered that spell model himself.
As for how a novice wizard apprentice who understood nothing, lacked the ability to modify it, and did not even remember doing so could have accomplished this, that was quite easy to explain. There was one possibility.
Perhaps the thing