The mystical diagram had everything it needed, as far as I was aware.

A circle to contain the sigil's elements, set a distance from the focus of exactly three-sixths the diameter of the entire sigil. The focus itself was sound, mathematically and theoretically perfect albeit very simple. I'd drawn it on the sheet of paper with a protractor I'd sourced from Mina. The circuits of my designed sigil led out in straight lines from the center of the focus.

"It looks fine," Kara told me. "But it's not all about understanding the math and theory. You have to be able to construct and maintain the sigil with your mana. It's just as much art as it is a science."

"I know," I said. "I still need to try to make it right before I can cast it."

She then looked up to Garron. "You don't agree with me, do you?"

"I do not disagree with you," he said. "I just think it is more about the memories in your muscles than about any art."

"Same thing," Kara waived his comment away. "Painting, for example, is muscle memory as much as it is feeling the process."

Garron nodded, apparently knowing something I didn't.

Kara froze when I looked at her.

"You paint?" I asked her.

"Well, I—" she paused. "Yes."

"What do you think of the lines I drew then?" I asked her. "Are they straight?"

Her slight fluster turned into an almost relieved sigh. "Do you two try to make everything about magic?"

She might have had a point.

"I believe he just wanted a trained eye—" Garron began.

"They're fine," Kara said about my lines, cutting Garron off. "They're mechanical, but fine. Garron, you cast sigils. You can weigh in too."

Garron didn't flinch or seem bothered by her effort to gain his help. "I practice my father's magic. I have not created any sigils of my own."

She met his eyes and tilted her head a little, as if surprised—and perhaps committing the detail to memory. "You really should try sometime. Or you'll fall behind."

"My father passed enough down to me to keep me practicing for some time. Until I surpass him, I know my path; it is laid out for me. I find it expedient."

"I guess there's some truth to that," Kara admitted and then looked back to me.

"I think there's a lot," I admitted to both of them. "The first floor of the library doesn't have hardly any spells available. It's nothing but theory and research. There's nearly nothing completed and almost no formulized sigils to practice. I'd love to have some passed down to me."

"Perhaps there are on higher floors and we have to earn our way there," Garron offered.

"Or maybe they're trying to tell us something about learning the basics of magic ourselves," Kara said. "You should practice summoning the sigil. It helps to look at it while you try do construct it with your mana the first few dozen times."

I didn't need to look at my drawing. Now that I'd put it paper, constructed it and worked it out, I could see it in my mind's eye exactly as I'd designed it.

"I'm going to give it a go," I said and stood up from the courtyard table.

Kara studied me carefully, no doubt noticing that I wasn't following her advice exactly.

I shifted my hand into the sign for a ward.

"You're going to need more mana for a proper spell than you need for just a sign," Kara told me. "Like Master Elrica says, you need to form a ring of energy around your soulcore to store your mana before you release it from your sign. But you also have to let enough mana release from your hand to form the sigil first."

"Hold the sigil you drew in your mind," Garron offered. "Imagine it and create it."

This was the hard part. Theory could design spells, but it couldn't cast them for you.

Druidry was not arcane magic. I was used to spreading my mana throughout my magical circuits, while inundating it with the empathy needed to resonate with other living things.

But arcane magic? Arcane magic required the opposite. I needed to build my imagination and mana up, hold it around my soulcore, and inundate it with my will. Until that raw will, knowledge, and imagination was so concentrated that, when released, it boxed a small facet of reality into a temporary new shape.

I pulled my mana into my soulcore, drawing it back from my circuits. It felt wrong, like I was removing a sense from myself—as if my skin was suddenly deadened, unable to feel everything simply living around me. I endured, however.

Pulse by beat, my soulcore released mana with every thump of my heart. And I captured what I could; I failed to capture some of the mana, but, if nothing else, I knew how to move my power within myself. What mana I at first failed to capture around my heart, I mostly pulled back with my mana-control attribute.

Slowly, as I forced it into shape and held it in place, my mana began to circulate in a ring around my heart. It hummed. It resonated. It felt alive with potential. And I knew I'd succeeded in the first step.

I next brought to mind the sigil I'd crafted. I saw it perfectly, and used my born trait to overlay it in front of my own vision. The next step proved harder; harder, but not impossible.

I allowed a few heartbeats of my mana to escape and redirected the energy down my arm. I allowed it to flow out of my signing fingers. Once the mana left my body, it wanted to dissipate, but I did not let it. Controlling my druidic aura had given me a point of reference for manipulating a rather raw form of my own mana outside of myself, and I now used everything I had learned to do so in this different way.

I lost some of my released power to the air, but much of it I funneled into the memory of the sigil I'd drawn. Thanks to my born-trait, I could practically see an invisible overlay of my sigil before me in my mind's eyes.

Kara and Garron watched closely, with both of them seeming suddenly impressed, as my mana shone into life before me in the shape of the same sigil I'd shown them on paper.

"Now release the power in your mana circle," Kara prompted me, her voice suddenly encouraging.

"Do not lose the will that holds it together," Garron urged. "And feel the emotion of the sign you are casting through."

I could feel it. The spell circle spinning around my heart was mostly raw mana, but as I'd forced it to form it had been infused with my will. Much like my druidic spells were infused with my empathy and intentions.

But I'd almost forgotten about the sign. I was still allowing some of my mana to escape into my hand to maintain the glowing, sigil I'd summoned. I now poured the emotions and intent I used to summon my ward sign into the sigil. The magic circle shone brighter.

"Now, hurry, before you lose it," Kara urged.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

I took a deep breath. And I allowed the mana ring around my heart to collapse, condense, and then explode. There was no druidic empathy now, just pure will-tempered imagination. The energy of my exploded mana ring and surged down the path of least resistance: being the already semi-charged mana-circuits of my signing hand.

My sigil flashed as my suddenly released mana filled its components and circuits. My signing hand locked up and felt like it'd become a wall; no, I realized, I was feeling the strength of what I was creating.

A half-bubble of blue force expanded out in front of me. Unlike my lesser ward sign, which released a fluttering plane of mana, my sigil created a uniform, rounded wall of semi-opaque and blue energy.

[You have acquired the Shield spell at the novice level.]

Kara stood up in shock. I didn't notice her consciously.

I only managed to keep my shield up for ten seconds before my soulcore and brain started to burned. I was breathing hard.

"That was impressive, Pery," Garron was the first to speak.

I looked to Kara, who was staring at me inquisitively.

"What's wrong?" I asked her.

"How many times have you practiced that without us?" she asked me.

"That was the first time," I admitted.

"Have you been practicing your ward sign by yourself?" she asked, seemingly searching for something.

"Yes; I practice it every day," I told her; and it was true, when I wasn't studying, or hunting with Mile, I would exhaust any energy and mana I had left practicing my wind-scythe and lesser ward.

Kara crossed her arms. "That makes it a little better I guess."

"Did I mess something up? I got a notification saying I unlocked a spell?"

"No, but most people can't cast a new sigil right away. It's like with how it took you a lot of practice to unlock your first sign. It's hard to control your mana while trying to remember a new sigil."

"I probably just got lucky," I tried to feign ignorance; the simple fact was that I didn't have to try to remember sigils—and that my mana-control was already nearing the limits of the novice tier through training alone.

"He is already a skilled druid, Kara," Garron interjected. "It is not as if he is a novice to shaping mana."

"But he doesn't use sigils for any of that other magic," she countered and dropped her arms from across her chest. "It's just... unnerving."

"Unnerving to what?"

"To understand why Cedric is annoyed by you," she admitted.

I felt a bit of annoyance at her for that statement.

"Don't look at me like that," she said. "I didn't mean it like that."

"She is complimenting you," Garron said.

Kara glanced to Garron. "I am... but, who said you could speak for me?"

Garron chuckled at her, as if he was endeared.

Kara deflated, sat down and, after looking at Garron with some kind of warning I didn't quite understand, she turned her attention back to me. "Don't start hating me. I still remember what you said about it being so inconceivable that Cedric should have so much trouble fighting me."

I laughed at her now. "I didn't mean it like that either."

She smiled. Garron was still smiling slightly.

"Exactly," she said and then, after thinking for a moment, added: "at least I know I chose a promising ally with you." She looked to Garron again. "And maybe you'll do too."

Garron met her gaze. "Is that so, Kara?"

She punched him in the arm, in a reserved way.

I was definitely beginning to notice something understated between them—more and more lately too. They were acting a bit like my parents did around one another, though filtered through their own distinct personalities.

I just couldn't bring myself to ask why.

***

I only ever felt fully in-tune with my druidic power when I was in the forest proper. The city, even the Towers with their mana-filled air, dulled my connection to life somehow. It wasn't as bad as it once was, but it was still a major detriment.

Mile chased butterflies on the bank, while I sat cross-legged as my father had taught me, in front of a softly bubbling river.

The winter sun providing some warmth to my face in the growing chill.

My mind was particularly on my father's teachings now. I'd combed through my mental-copy of one of his self-authored druidic treatises last night in bed. I'd been looking for options to aid me in shoring up my deficiencies. I thought I even may have found one.

I had a proper arcane spell at my disposal now. I was even fairly certain my shield spell could take one, or even two, of Cedric's lightning blasts. However, I did not have the mana to cast it consistently with my current abjuration proficiency. Doing so even once would greatly limit my ability to follow up with offensive magic—which I needed with how dangerous being close to Cedric and his lightning cloak was.

And I did have to admit: I was now training to beat Cedric. At least partially. I tired to tell myself that surprising him was just the immediate goal that would get me to the next one.

Thankfully, I had leads as to how to discover methods to do so now. Mina had caught me in the library earlier in the day. She always seemed to be in he library. She had told me that Luke agreed to meet me tomorrow evening. I got the feeling that Mina was fond of him; meaning he was probably sitting down with me as a favor to her.

But I needed to know what questions to ask him. Which meant I had to bring something to the table for him to hopefully help me refine.

I doubted he would give me the secrets of his runes and how he stored his magic for later use. But he might just help me with my own theories on sigilcraft if I could ask about them intelligently.

Which is why I'd been reading through my father's journals in my mind while in bed.

As I'd mentioned to Mina the other day, I'd discovered in the library's tomes that some mages could create spell-scrolls. These were sigil-crafted items that stored spells for a single time-use. However, normal paper couldn't contain mana safely and the parchment needed to be made from monster skins or rare flora. That was without even accounting for the fact that the ink itself had to contain rare reagents or crushed monster cores.

I needed all the cores I could get. And I was fairly certain that novice monsters wouldn't do for creating scrolls.

Furthermore, I wasn't sure I would feel comfortable reaching for a scroll in the heat of battle if I was wielding Mytharis. It was... suboptimal in my mind.

I didn't know how to craft runic armor to store my spells. I probably wouldn't ever. But I did have an idea.

My father could shapeshift. It was a druidic ability. Which meant I could learn it—and much faster than I could learn further arcane, or runic magics, from the ground up. And I only needed to learn a little bit of how he did it. I didn't need to become something entirely different to accomplish my current goal.

To that end, I'd been staring into my reflection in the river for the past four hours. Just as my father had said in his treatise that he once had. My own reflection had many hours ago stopped feeling like mine, as I actively tried to dissociate from it.

Only when I was hopefully sure I was ready, and for the first time in those four hours, did I move and lift my palm up to peer at it in the water's reflection. I stared at it for another half-hour, until my arm burned, and it became numb—until I didn't feel connected to it, or its hand, anymore through the numbness.

I held this feeling of not recognizing myself in my soulcore, mixed this dissociation with my mana, and allowed it to rush into my hand. I imagined the reflection of my palm was in fact not my reflection, that it looked wrong, and that my mana could make it my own again—with just a few changes.

Slowly, but surely, the pigmentation of my raised palm began to shift in specific sections. I had my mana draw lines in exacting detail and ratio on my skin. Until the sigil of my shield spell was emblazoned on my palm in a darker shade of flesh. The sigil was mostly the same as the one I'd used to cast [shield], with a few minor alterations I'd learned about when studying how to make spell scrolls. According to my reading, the changes I made in my sigil would allow it to store the mana I would put into it for a later quick-casting. And, in theory, allow it to be cast without a sign—and instead with a verbal command.

[You have acquired the Lesser Shapeshift spell at the novice level.]

Just as I had when I'd first cast my [shield] spell, I circulated mana around my heart. I filled it with intent and will, and then funneled it into the modified [shield] sigil. The pigmentation on my hand flashed and soaked up the mana. I was surprised by how easily it took in my mystical energy, but I figured that was the modifications to the sigil doing their wok—I took this as encouragement that I had done well.

I felt drained instantly, just as I had each time I'd practiced the [shield] spell since unlocking it.

But the shifted pigmentation on my palm at least stayed and their glowing abated. I could feel the tingle of stored mana on them instantly, even through my numbed skin.

Unfortunately, I felt something else as well. Even after it was fully charged, the stored sigil on my hand continued to draw a steady, though relatively small, bit of mana from my soulcore. It wasn't debilitating, but it was noticeable. It wasn't what I had wanted. It would still, over time, drain me dry; I couldn't wear the stored sigil for long periods of time like this. Which defeated the purpose of storing spells, and pre-spending mana, well in advance.

But maybe Luke could help me with it.

I pushed myself to stand on shaky legs and thrust my palm forward. Finally moving my arm felt good, but ticklish—though the arm's shoulder still hurt from being held aloft for so long.

"Valarys," I spoke the word of power that meant "shield" in the Arcane Tongue, which Mina had helped me to translate.

The sigil on my palm flashed. And my [shield] burst to life in front of me. Unfortunately, I felt a further drain on my mana—nowhere near as bad as if I'd cast [shield] again, but it was present nonetheless.

My shield dissipated and I lowered my hand.

My eyes hurt and felt off from starring at my reflection in the water for so long. I was tired. Minorly disappointed, if I were being honest. But also only minorly. Partial progress was still progress. And it was possible Luke could give me some answers.

I had to hope he could.