Somer was led into a tent, the tent looked similar to the ones that preceded it but with the stark difference of there being an upright stick of sorts in front of the entrance of the camp with an eerie purple glow aflame above it, which was against the norm of having a mutilated, headless human body on a spike in front of the entrance.
Either way, Somer was led inside and what he found amazed him, all across the tent were pieces of papyrus with some sort of drawings. Some circles with complex inscriptions inside and some triangular with beasts of various sorts drawn therein. All either hung on a string or plastered on the walls of the tent. And what lay in the middle of it was the corpse of what looked like a ‘canine’ beast similar to a dog but with five limbs laid down on the table being studied by a Drathen standing at its ride side.
[Bill]”Hey Aric, got a Skelly for you. Altidor sends his regards, he wants you to teach it magic”
[Aric]*sigh*”How many times have I told him not everyone has the talent or the patience or the predisposition to.... wait did you say skeleton?”
The Drathen Aric leaving the ‘specimen’ aside walked right in front of Somer and began inspecting him. Sometimes his scythes shivering in excitement, sometimes looking disappointed, and then measuring and counting every bone.
[Bill]”Please don’t experiment with him”
[Somer]*shivers*
[Aric]”Bah!!! I’m not so barbaric as to do such a thing. And yes, you may tell Altidor I have considered his request and this will be the last time, we Drathens simply weren’t meant to be mages!! Now be away with you”
Somer felt his bones creak under the inspection of the Drathen in front of him. However, he felt no malevolence, but the Drathen was strange, he could see a glow on him that was vastly different than the other ones he had seen thus far. Maybe his Alpha eye had been the cause of him being able to view this glow?
This was the first time Somer had been so close to a mage and it certainly seemed strange to him.
[Aric]”Hmm, you do seem to have some potential in magic. Alright then, let’s hear it, I want to know everything about what happened?”
[Somer]”What happened? As in? I don’t follow..”
[Aric]”Ah, don’t be apprehensive little one, all I need to know is how you came to posses this magic?”
And like this Somer explained to this adept being everything that happened to him only from the incident involving the genocide and also leaving out about possible survivors within the deeper parts of the cave, after all since no distress signals were sent clearly no one would consider his brethren to still be alive within and it might’ve been on purpose, who knows?
[Aric]”Ah, so you’re one of the mutated ones... Well, something is better than nothing I suppose”
[Somer]”What exactly do people mean when they say that I’m mutated?” ‘I obviously don’t have such a huge gene pool, only bones after all’
[Aric]”Well, lets put it this way, you see all my magical constructs on papyrus here? You’re a being of magic meaning there are these tiny circles within you but only a thousand times more complex and at least a billion in each bone and they work together to make you whole and survive without you needlessly disassembling into many parts. Let’s say, humans being or this mutated dog a ‘game companion’ as Humans term it, it is made of many many organs within in and their nourishment is form this red fluid or blood. So if each organ of it represents a magic circle then this dog is nothing but like you but it depends on its eating to enrich the blood that in turn nourishes it’s organs. Whereas for you, the energy of the earth and air are the replenishment you seek that keep the power of your tiny circles up and keep you whole.
“This is also the reason why you’re so versatile, that is, your magic circles can be easily manipulated to suite your existence in a particular environment, in this case you being bombarded by magic, the magic circles probably mutated to cushion any future such attacks by increasing its absorption capacity of magic of the earth and air. In other words, you didn’t have an aptitude of magic, you, though by great luck, somehow survived a fatal attack and mutated into this, having an aptitude.
“Though I won’t deny it, you gaining this mutation did bless you with an aptitude for magic, the amount of magic that you can learn and the lengths you will go is entirely undetermined since all information about your kind was lost after Rook was killed. So, I will guide you now and teach you the basics after which you’re on your own”
[Somer]”Well.......... shit”
[Aric]”Yup, though I would’ve loved to guide you more I’m currently overburdened by work, we hardly have a hundred mages throughout our camp of which 28 are healers.
And I might add that non-skeleton mages are terrible at this stuff, we need to use a lot of our energy to pull anything off. And I must add, I respect humans on this regard, they’re very good at this magic stuff, by the time I pull off three fireball they would’ve decimated me with eighteen. So we’re at the short end of the stick here, so please make do on your own. Common inside, I’ll give you your own experiment table”
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As such, Somer was led into the corner of the camp where there was a small table on which were certain circles drawn.
Aric said, “This will be your work place until you can stabilise your magic field and activate this circle, I’ll hand you some books in our language as well as that of some beginners in Human tongue guide, do your best”
As such Somer was given two sets of books, one which had hieroglyphics, a pictorial representation of what needed to be done to use magic, it looked like what a seven year old kid would doodle up to impress his mother and the other books which were in the Human tongue contained complex literature something that hurt Somer’s brain deeply.
[Aric]”Also, one last piece of advice don’t worry about the whole chant thing, we’re beings of magical construct so we use tiny simple circles on a day to day basis, after you get to a higher level you won’t even need to draw these circles. Humans however need to draw circles to harness the energy of the heaven and earth, sometimes they use enchanted weapons or gloves or scrolls to bypass that, nevertheless its one advantage and the only one for us sadly, we don’t need to chant. Ah almost forgot, except the Khol, you see since they’ve intermingles with the humans for a long time their bodies have mutated to resemble those humans so they’re even worse than us at the moment”
Saying this Aric went back to dissect the creature placed on his table.
Somer felt like a big headache would soon assault him, too much had happened in the past few days for him to feel whole and hearty.
Just then he felt a buzz in his head and all of a sudden his vision became haze of blue with the circle on his experiment table turning white, all of a sudden his vision was filled with information regarding the circle, its origin, its flaws and how to activate it. It even showed him if his magic reservoir was sufficient to activate it.
The flaws was tremendously helpful, he could pinpoint that 90% of the entire circle was utter crap and only a small portion of it was needed.
But Somer felt conscious of the fact that if he showed too much of his ability he might trigger greed in the beasts around him, he needed to be prudent regarding the whole situation.
Similarly Aric had kept a close eye on what Somer was doing, he felt extremely suspicious of this skeleton, his explanation of the whole event felt perfect, too perfect. So he led him towards the table with the broken circle to observe if what he said was the truth. After having seen him stumble repeatedly with the circle he finally released a breath of relief and continued on with the experiment.
Five days after being introduced to the magic circle Somer noticed a change in the sixth day, one of the unnecessary circle was removed and the circle had fewer flaws now as determined by the Alpha eye.
He still stumbles with it for three tries until he lit it up, but weekly on the fourth try.
[Aric]”Impressive, it took me the same number of days before I could lite it up myself”
[Somer]’This guy definitely tampered with the circle, I need to be careful’ “Yeah, it was really hard, I had no idea what this was at first but I got an epiphany at the end”
[Aric]”Haha, come come, lets introduce you to the rest of the magical entourage”
As such, Somer was taken by Aric to a part of the camp which housed all the Mage oriented Drathen, the tents were similar to Aric’s with staffs placed in front with orbs of various colours glowing on them, all of them arranged in a square manner around a central field on which tables were kept with Drathen experimenting on them with circles, there short introductions were done and everyone greeted Somer and were happy to have an additional hand in the overworked situation they had been placed in.
Somer was given a home at the back of the gridded place and was always provided with a small table to perform his experiments. He was told that to do experiments of a higher order or complex ones or if he felt stuck somewhere he could come here to the central tables and place it up to have someone help him solve it.
As Somer was going about his chores to settle himself into his new home he felt an eerie sensation as a Drathen with a shorter build than the rest walked up to him
“My my, look at you, a skeleton in all his prime?”
He noticed a lithe Drathen walk towards him, the Drathen looked shorter than the rest and had an almost feminine feel to her. She was followed by a bunch of her followers who gave the human equivalent of a giggle when she said that and besides her stood a Drathen with a more masculine personality.
[Somer]”Greetings...”
“Haha, look it even talks”
That won her another round of laughter which seemed to have made her happy and when she was about to say something more a pressure seemed to have been applied on the area that made everyone there to be paralysed by fear.
[Jones]”Really now, kids these days”
[Bill]”Worthless punks, should I teach them a lesson”
[Jones]”No need Bill, they’ll learn eventually”
[Bill]”Kiara, stop acting so juvenile, Aric didn’t raise you right, you want me to teach you a thing or two”
Just then the male besides Kiara retorted
[Darrel]”What’s so special about a dumb bone for you to come here? You want to play fetch with his bones?”
[Bill]”You son of a......”
[Jones]”A second Bill, hi you must be Darrel right?”
[Darrel] replied in the most haughty manner”Yes”
[Jones]”How do you want to die?”
[Darrel]”What?”
Darrel suddenly felt a heavy feeling on his chest, his body shivering all over, his mind blacking out repeatedly, finally he fell unconscious. However Kiara and her companions were none better, they all fainted after.
Just then Aric came rushing towards the location, he became furious seeing what happened to his beloved daughter.
“Jones have you gone mad?”
[Jones]“Hello there comrade, you see Kiara needs to learn certain mannerisms she seems to have missed out on”
[Aric]”What nonsense, this is it, this is the final straw, get out of the mage camp”
Aric looked with unfriendly eyes at Somer he waved his staff and a water like mist congealed out of nowhere and woke the fallen Drathen, all of them looked at Somer in an unfriendly manner and then looked at Jones and Bill fearfully and then left.
Somer felt indignant, he had done nothing from the start until now, he had done absolutely nothing, not even moved a finger or uttered a word, these beasts were strange!!!
[Jones]”Haha, doesn’t matter. Come Somer, Altidor wants to speak with you.”