'The Wondrous Language of Magik by Master Ilio Polim', the main title stated boldly, in Empire's Common. Written under the title, in a much smaller script, was, 'Volume One of Three, An Introduction for Beginners'

Tercius ran his hands over the gargantuan tome and noted in an errant thought that it was easily the biggest book, by sheer volume, that he ever had the pleasure of being near. Its smooth, dark brown covers were kept locked by a small leather belt that he had to unclasp to get to the goodies that waited inside. He was about to do just that, only to remember that he had eyes on him.

"Sior, Millie, you are free until morning," Tercius said as he looked at the two standing statues. The window behind the two figures gave Tercius a glimpse at the sun that had almost dipped into darkness, its job on the northern hemisphere at an end for the day. Both of them bowed, the sole feather of their masks gently giving small bows of their own, and the young man and woman slowly left the room. Tercius, well-fed and under pain-numbing medication, was left in the company of one napping river lioness and the subject of his interest.

Unsurprisingly, most of the texts dealing with magical professions that were available to the public in the Librarium— the central library of the city atop the Pyramid, came in only one form— written in Runes.

Tercius didn't mind that one bit.

After all, a language was just a barrier, one that could be made nonexistent with effort and time. It was not the first time he had started learning foreign languages for the pleasure of reading books written in them, and he guessed that it wouldn't be the last. Looking at the tome in front of him, the first of three volumes that the Mistress had mentioned in passing, Tercius felt excited. A new language, filled with new rules and subtle nuances for him to grasp and learn. He took a deep nasal breath, as he opened the book, inhaling the smell it carried upon its pages.

The smell of paper and ink was divine.

“Will I be able to even finish reading this volume, before I form the Well?” Tercius murmured quietly, genuinely curious.

***

23rd day of the 3rd month, Cycle 1323 of the New Pyramid Calendar

The last day of a three-day celebration called the Festival of Spring.

While most guests of the House of Pain and Pleasure went and enjoyed the Festival's jolly atmosphere, where people of Chameos and Pyramid gathered to enjoy music, food, drink, magical spectacles, and the company of others, there were a few guests that never left the premises of the House and its gardens.

Tercius was one of those who stayed behind, as he didn't want to stop with the daily streak of painful effort that went on for seventeen days now. He just wanted to finish the first part of the development of his Well and move onto the next one as smoothly as possible. Introducing chaotic elements into his schedule seemed foolish, at this point in time.

Most guests that stayed at the House only decided to do so because of Tercius, thinking that he was going for the record-holding places.

The Mistress had made a proclamation that he was already a record holder of the House in two categories: the longest continuous days of development without pause— sixteen, for now. The previous holder had thirteen days; and the largest number of sessions in a day— fifteen, for now.

Teen mages in training and those older ones seemed offended to let a kid have those spots, so they pushed forward to get ahead of him. Tercius found it incredibly amusing, hilarious even when he realized who was the one that was fanning the flames of competition. It was miraculous what simple praise was capable of doing, in its manipulativeness.

He had always actively avoided being included in any kind of contests or rankings, as he could see the allure behind these things. It was a heady feeling, to feel the praise of others, to feel people being jealous of him, one that he never learned how to properly deal with. Tercius's first true friend, an aging retired teacher, had told to a pre-teen Tercius, decades ago, the kind of influence others have had on his long life through the simple use of praise and critique. Those stories had opened Tercius' eyes to an invisible world.

Tercius remembered his siblings, of a past life, and the ease with which they fell under the sways of parents, teachers, coaches, boyfriends, or girlfriends, always willing to go out of their way to earn more praise and receive less critique, over and over again. Sometimes, in his darker thoughts, he imagined them as hamsters on one of those wheels. He had tried to pull them back and open their eyes, but they were too far gone. The only reason Tercius turned out any different was because his eyes were opened in time to see the double edge on that sword.

It wasn't as if Tercius was immune to these influences, no, and as years went by he kept wondering if it was worth it, the price of having that knowledge. He had only built up some resistance that allowed him a measure of control over outside factors, but nothing absolute that could work every single time. Tercius' awareness of the influence of this metaphorical sword that hung over his decisions had led to him developing a conscious habit to downplay the importance of words of praise and critique from those around him, and that was it. It was exhausting to constantly analyze the words of others in the search for the core meaning while downplaying and discarding useless parts.

There were better ways to spend his time.

In between his daily sessions, he thought about various things, events, and people from his life, from the Academy, and back home in Nurium. At night, when he took his medicine, had a meal, and a warm bath, he went back to the book he borrowed from Librarium, through Sior.

He read about Runes, Rurds, Ruces, and Ruges and their basics.

For example, he learned that every Rune ever written was composed of only three basic components: a dot, a straight line, and a curved line in the shape of a crescent moon. He took a look at the more complex Runes for words he learned, like 'green', 'mana', and slowly destroyed their Runes into pieces and examined them in detail and that small titbit turned out to be true. The sizes of the components varied, but it was true nonetheless.

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From those three components, twenty-seven Runes were created, and together these thirty made up the basics of every single Rune ever made. By comparison, Empire's Common had forty-seven written characters.

Thirty basic Rurds were present, as well, each represented by a single sound. The curved line sounded a lot like a 'S', the dot Rune sounded like a 'P', while the straight line sounded like an 'I', from the Empire's Common

Tercius read about Ruges and saw illustrations of finger, hand, and wrist movements for the basic thirty 'letter' Runes.

He read about Ruces and observed illustrations of movements of the body for basic Runes. Some were illustrations of moves a ballerina would have, graceful and dignified, others were wild and feral, something primal screaming at Tercius from the pages.

In six days he had the book with him, he learned the basic rules of using the 'letter' Runes to create a 'word' Rune. He learned the spots from where the Runes were read and so on.

There were a lot of rules about simplifying Runes, as they climbed the tiers from 'letter' to 'word' to 'sentence' and so forth, mostly by simplifying repeating sequences and making marks of these simplifications around the Rune. These marks, the author dubbed 'keys'. Apparently, Magik had two kinds of these 'keys'.

Standard keys, for words, sentences, and so on, that the Repository used for all the stored knowledge, and then there were the private keys that mages could invent to keep their writings and conversations private.

'Simplifying' or 'compressing' using 'keys' was only the gate of the process of climbing tiers. The rules of Magik were fascinating and complicated to the extreme, just the way he liked them. Every day he would return to his room tired and spent, only for the book to restore him in mere moments. Master Ilio, the author of the book series, had a masterful grasp of both Magik and the Empire's Common and that showed throughout the first volume, earning Tercius' admiration.

In his further readings he learned that if a paragraph written in Empire's Common had ten sentences, the same paragraph written in 'sentence' Runes would have ten, as well. But if the writer decided to up the tier for the Rune into 'paragraph' Runes? Suddenly, there would be only one Rune, an extremely complex pictogram that only those with a close familiarity of Magik and its standard keys for paragraphs could decipher, slowly. Even private keys could be deciphered, in theory, but that was a much more difficult and lengthy process. After all, private was meant to remain private.

The same thing happened for Rurds, Ruces, and Ruges. Each of these had their rules of simplification and standard keys, parallel to those that Runes had. Just thinking about the level his Language Acquisition could have climbed to, if he had enough Energy, made him sigh at the wasted opportunity.

Tercius had about four hours each night, five if he stretched it, to learn the basics of Magik. The book had been with him for six days and he had already clocked the full thirty hours.

The Mistress, using her expertise, medical equipment, and Tercius's current speed of development of new mana channels, made an educated guess that he would form his optimal Well somewhere around the 20th of the next month, two weeks later than if he had opted for the natural Well.

Tercius was of two minds about it. On one hand, he was learning the language that the true magi culture was based upon, yet at the same time, he was skipping a lot of lectures given by the teachers. He was told that he would get private lessons to help him catch up, but if he ended up stuck at the House for two months? By the time he caught up and got all of his grades, the second half of the student year would start. It wasn't the mundane classes that he worried about, but rather the basics of magic he was skipping. A good start was half the job, Tercius had often heard, and he had to remind himself that he shouldn't become complacent no matter his advantages.

Rush ahead or slow and steady?

***

8th day of the 4th month, Cycle 1323 of the New Pyramid Calendar

As days went by, the guess that the Mistress had made about his Well seemed ever more likely to come true. He had even increased the number of daily sessions to sixteen, spending almost eleven hours of each day on that single activity. It didn't seem to do much for speed, even though the Mistress assured him that it did.

The woman was simply ecstatic about his record breaks, blabbing every evening that his scores would get her more new data than she ever had the pleasure to have. Logically, he doubted it, yet when he saw how many more neophytes seemed to gain a second wind from a simple glance at the scoreboard, he had to think again. One morning, in the large dining room, the scoreboard suddenly appeared and haunted everyone who ate there.

The flirty woman was a harsh taskmistress with a wickedly sharp mind, and Tercius pitied the poor simple souls to whom the Mistress helped develop a Well. Still, if he had to do this a second time, he would only choose this woman to be his guide. She was committed to her interest, he would give her that, and to him that meant something.

He never gave up on learning Magik, no matter how hard things got. Learning the basic Runes and Rurds of Magik led to the grammatical rules which were different based on which tier they occurred on. Still, no matter the tier most of the grammar of Magik was carried using standard keys, but not all.

Even when he learned 'letter' Runes, he still had to learn 'word' Runes, to fill up his new vocabulary. Master Ilio gave a lot of examples of commonly used words of all kinds, Runes stretching pages after pages. Nouns, pronouns, verbs, on and on the written words went. He even learned a few new types of words that no previous language he ever learned had, and that alone led to occasional confusion.

Once he wrote a sentence using Runes, he would usually focus on spelling the sentence using Rurds. The Mistress spoke some Magik, and she was more than willing to have a conversation with him, during the daily medical examinations. He focused on basic things like, 'My name is…' 'Today is a hot day' and the woman gave him pointers on pronunciations of specific sounds and words.

Just last night Tercius had started going for standard keys for 'sentence' Runes, which were available in the second volume made by Master Ilio, and had tried to move up the next tier. He failed.

"Most mages only use the second tier of Magik, anyway," the Mistress had confided in Tercius. "I myself never bothered going further. Only Archivists use the third tier of Magik,"

There were so many factors to consider when moving tiers, that they left Tercius boggled. The first tier of Magik, 'words', was created by the Repository and given out in dictionaries and existed in two forms: the expanded one and the compressed one.

The compressed form was created from the expanded one using standard keys, creating a single Rune out of any number of Runes.

The second tier, 'sentence', were strings of 'word' Runes, and once more they could be in the expanded form of the compressed one.

The same thing went on for paragraphs, the so-called third tier Runes, and so on. Theoretically, Magik allowed a single Rune to be the compressed form of whole books and more. Master Ilio called these gargantuan and complex Runes, Glyphs.

It all boiled down to the preservation of keys, which were by tradition written around the Runes. Usually, each key carries all the previous ones as well, but sometimes a mage wants extra security and then they hide the keys. In this way, especially when private keys were used, the data was as safe as it could ever be.

For example, without correct keys for every tier, no one would ever obtain the true meaning of the books written in Glyphs along the Pyramid, even though they were visible to anyone and everyone to see.

Of course, a lot depended on the strength of a key, yet in Magik, even a weak private key could be a considerable obstacle, one that usually required weeks if not months of decoding using special techniques only the Archivists knew.

Tercius saw more and more that the world of the magi had layers, much like an onion. Much like the space that the Pyramid inhabited. It was fascinating and mysterious and making up theories about why things were as they were, made the time fly by.

***

17th day of the 4th month, Cycle 1323 of the New Pyramid Calendar

"Yes, I think that today is the day," the Mistress said. "And it's three days early! Well done!"

Tercius stood up when the Mistress moved away from the examination table. He picked up his shirt and made himself decent.

"Don't leave the mansion today. I want you to be present here… hmm… you can use this garden—" the Mistress pointed at the door. "— if you must, and make sure that your servants call for me in time, understood?" The Mistress said seriously.

"Yes, Mistress," Tercius said, oddly excited. "Can you tell me what to expect when it forms?"

"Easy there…" the Mistress said, holding up her hands. "Once you form the physical Well, the work is almost done. Of course, the first dig of the metaphysical Well is pretty painful…"