magic stamina

"A lot of reasons. Bad timing. Other relationships. You know." I took a long, deep breath and said, "Keep an eye out. I've got to pull off something hard here."
"Right," Susan said. She went back to watching the gloom, her club held ready.
I closed my eyes and summoned up my will. Time for some real razzle-dazzle stuff.
Illusions are a fascinating branch of magic. There are two basic ways to manage them. One, you can create an image and put it in someone else's head. There's no actual visible object there, but their brain tells them that it's there, big as life - a phantasm. It's walking real close to the borders of the Laws of Magic to go that way, but it could be very effective.
The second method is the creation of an actual visible object or creature - a kind of hologram. Those things are much harder to produce, because you have to pour a lot more energy into them, and while a phantasm uses a foe's own mind to create consistency within the illusion, you've got to do it the hard way with holomancy.
Murph's image was easy to fix in mind, as was Rudolph's, though I admit that I might have made him look a bit skinnier and slouchier than he might actually have been. My holomancy, my rules.
The hardest was Tilly. I kept getting the image of the actor from The X Files confabulated with the actual Tilly, and the final result was kinda marginal. But I was in a rush.
I pictured the images with as much clarity as I could and sent my will, including a tiny bit of soulfire, into creating the mirages.
Soulfire isn't really a destructive force. It's sort of the opposite, actually. And while I used it in fights to enhance my offensive spells, it really shone when creating things.
I whispered, "Lumen, camerus, factum!" and released energy into the mental images. The holograms of Murphy, Tilly, and Rudolph shimmered into existence, so absolutely real-looking that even I thought they might have been solid matter.
"They're coming!" Susan said abruptly. She turned to me and practically jumped out of her shoes upon seeing the illusions. Then she waved a hand at Tilly's image, and it flickered straight through. She let out a low whistle and said, "Time to go?"
The thunder of the Ick's heart grew abruptly louder, a vibration I could feel through the soles of my shoes.
Vampires boiled out of the central stairwell, a sudden tide of flabby, rubbery black bodies and all-black eyes, of spotted pink tongues and gleaming fangs. At their center, in their flesh-masked forms, were Esteban and Esmerelda. And looming behind them was the Ick.
Susan and I turned and sprinted. The three illusions did the same thing, complete with the sounds of running footfalls and heavy breathing. With a group howl the vampires came after us.
I ran as hard as I could, drawing up more of my will. I should have been feeling some of the strain by now, but I wasn't. Go, go, Gadget Faustian bargain.


Changes Chapter 35, Page 361-362