Chapter 3.2: Wake Up, It’s Time For School, Part 2
I was happy to have Professor Andsware as my instructor again, this time for spellcasting. Although he had to teach the basics, I knew that once we got past that he’d be an incredible instructor – I just had to be patient. I quickly sat down, and found myself next to Julian and the pair of friends he had made.
“There are four formal Runic Circles,” the professor began once everyone was seated. “The First Circle is one you should all be familiar with. It consists of drawing a rune,” he drew a rune in the air with a dark brown mana, “and shifting it to another,” he shifted the rune so that it was another one entirely. Immediately, a small, star-shaped pillar leaped out of his desk, leaving behind a star-shaped hole. “There are two types of Runic spells – Instantaneous, like the one I just showed you, and Continuous. Instantaneous spells only require two runes – its start and end, and only need a moment to cast. On the other side, Continuous spells require a set of runes, and are continually cast over a period of time. Sometimes, a set loops, sometimes it doesn’t – sometimes, you may want to choose a non-looping set because it’s more efficient, but that will place a time limit on how long you can keep a spell going; sometimes, you may want to choose a looping set if you plan on casting a spell for an extended period of time. It’s always useful to memorize as many sets as possible, even for the same spell, so that you’re always equipped for any situation thrown at you.” He turned to the board, and drew two lines on the board – one vertical, one horizontal. “This is the Spretta Evocation set. It is the simplest evocation set, but also the least efficient – even less efficient than most Flowform evocations. It’s a great way to get started with spellcasting, though be careful if you have a dangerous evocation like flame.” He paused, and made a motion with his hand as though he wanted us to try it out. Around a quarter of the class did so, and there were a couple astonished gasps as the room filled with light and sound. “Those of you with liquid attunements may notice that you may have more trouble than your peers with evocation. This is by design – the more solid an evocation is, the more Change is needed to evoke it. You can easily subvert this by supplementing more mana into your runes, but eventually this tactic will stop working, as there’s a limit for all of us on how much mana we can control at any given time. We can exercise our souls to make them stronger, but just like any other muscle, there’s a limit to how much they can grow. Those of you with solid attunements likely won’t be doing any evoking until – if – you make it to the Third Circle, which we will be going over at a later time. I recommend you focus on manipulation spells, and that goes to students with liquid attunements as well.”
He then went on to explain the differences between each of the Circles. He was much more animated during this period than during enchanting. My guess was that he was passionate about spellcasting, but was still overexcited to teach enchanting as well. The First Circle, or Runic Circle, of runes consisted of relatively simple shapes, like oddly shaped circles or triangles. The Second Circle, or Greater Runic Circle, built off of the First Circle by complicating the shapes. It was trickier to pull off, but overall the spells were much more efficient, allowing a mage to pull off greater feats with the same amount of mana. I was unable to, as was most of the class – only around two of the fifty-or-so students in the class were able to mimic the professor’s runes. I tried not to care, but I was silently annoyed that there were already some Second Circle mages, despite them only being mages for a year. The Third Circle, or Labyrinthine Circle, was the first “big hurdle,” as Professor Andsware called it. While around a third of all mages were likely to reach the Second Circle, very few would reach the Third within their lifetime. Third Circle runes were circular labyrinths, where every nook and cranny had an effect on the resulting spell. No one was able to cast a Third Circle spell. The Fourth Circle, or Greater Labyrinthine Circle, took the Third Circle and kicked it up a notch – a huge notch. An entire dimension’s worth of notches. Fourth Circle runes were three-dimensional labyrinths – how anyone could memorize one, let alone an entire set, boggled me.
Finally, around two-thirds into the lecture, Professor Andsware began going into crystallization. “There are two types of crystallization – temporary, and permanent. They’re pretty self-explanatory. Those of you who wish to be battlemages, I recommend you pay attention. Most attunements don’t have the luxury of being able to create shields out of nothing that certain others do, such as Force,” he explained. “So, as humans do, we got creative. Enter temporary crystallization.” This, I was actually excited for. It was finally something new – my parents had tutored me on enchanting, but they weren’t battlemages, so probably didn’t care much about temporary crystallization. But my mind was already buzzing with possible uses. He started drawing runes and a murky brown, rectangular mana crystal appeared in the air next to him. A second set of runes joined in, which I assumed were holding up the mana crystal. “As you can see, I’m able to manipulate the mana crystal despite not being a Crystal mage because the crystal is made of Starcarve mana. Temporary crystallization allows us to quickly defend ourselves against attacks. Admittedly, it doesn’t have many other uses – an enchanter probably wants their enchantments to be permanent, after all,” he said with a chuckle. “And once we’re done using a temporary crystal, all we have to do is–” the runes winked out, “and tada!” The crystal had completely disappeared, and my eyes widened. “Permanent crystallization, as the name suggests, creates a permanent mana crystal. Granted, it’s an excruciatingly slow process – a permanent crystal of the same size as the temporary crystal I showed you could take months to years to grow, depending on the skill of the mage. However, it’s something you’ll all want to learn– ah, looks like that’s time,” he said as the bell rang. “Your homework is to memorize ten looping and twenty non-looping First Circle sets, as well as at least three Second Circle sets in your textbooks by the end of the week. You will be tested on this at the end of the week, and each Second Circle set past the first three will earn you extra credit.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
As we made our way to exit the class, I introduced myself to Julian’s friends. “Balmung Decimation, of House Decimation.”
“Othili Whisper, of House Whisper. It’s a pleasure,” the girl said, taking my hand. She had tan skin and short, wavy silver hair. She was short and a bit muscular, with a couple scars along her arms and legs that told me that she was likely trained for combat.
“Garberend Whisper-Arlyss, of House Wh– of the same,” the boy said, correcting himself mid-sentence. From his name, he was either an adoptee or a spouse – likely an adoptee considering our age – and a recent one considering he had to correct himself. He was very tall, though a bit gangly. He was a touch paler than the rest of us, though nowhere near the peachiness of Julian, and his hair was a light brown.
“An adoptee? Or..?” I asked, glancing between the two.
“No, no, he’s an adoptee” Othili giggled. “He was a raffle-winner. A blend between Wind and Speed mana, something House Whisper has been looking for for ages. Once he’s a trained enchanter, he’ll be able to greatly assist our House in delivering messages.” Raffle-winner – that was lucky. When one got an Aethermold soul, they usually had to pay for a specific location within the Aether during their core-opening ritual. However, there was a ritual that would place the core within a completely random location, that Yppath mandated for free, and highly encouraged its citizens to use. Usually, it resulted in an unattuned location, or if the person was particularly unlucky, an unusable esoteric location like Andsware’s, but every so often someone got lucky – and sometimes, they got really lucky. Those people were called raffle-winners.
“I remember reading about that in the papers. Has the House decided on a name?” I asked.
“Haste,” Garberend replied. “It was a dream come true.”
“That’s great,” I said. “I hope your good fortune continues. I’d best get to my next class. I have history with Professor Kendra Whisper.”
Julian smiled. “So do we!”
[break]
“This, class,” Professor Kendra Whisper said, “is a relic of ages past – of before we harnessed Aethermold. Its value is immeasurable to understanding magic as a whole.” The object in her hand was a small, yellow-white mana crystal. It was shaped oddly – a circle with several lines crossing through it. “And this is how we used it.” She placed it on the table and brought out a hammer– a hammer?
The hammer smashed down onto the crystal and it exploded in yellow-white light. Professor Kendra cackled as we all rubbed our eyes. “It is what is known as a Breakstone. And don’t worry, I can make more, using this,” she continued, bringing out a small clay brick with the same pattern carved out of its top, “and this,” she said, pulling out a small vial of yellow-white liquid. She dropped the liquid into the carving, and placed it down onto her desk. “In two to three days, that liquid will harden into mana crystal, and I will have a fresh Breakstone to terrorize next year’s class with.” She took the brick off the desk and placed it into a drawer – the same drawer where she had taken the Breakstone out of. “The Breakstone is a perfect testament to human ingenuity. We had nothing – and yet we created everything. At first, Breakstones were created by carving out mana crystals using knives like these.” She pulled out a knife from one of the drawers behind her and placed it on her desk. “Mages were rare, back then – we couldn’t crystalize mana ourselves like we can today. We had to scavenge for it in mana-dense environments, and hunt for it in the bodies of magical beings. That liquid is liquid mana crystal, or more specifically, Light mana crystal. It can be found in the bodies of wisps and some dragons. Granted, magesmiths of the time had to place it into a template quickly as it begins to solidify when exposed to air for a prolonged period. This is also why you’ll often see webs of mana crystals on the ground in the wild. For a long time, liquid mana crystal was difficult to come by, but as we industrialized, harvesting it became just a little bit easier.”
The lesson continued on for a while. It was genuinely interesting, and we were able to get into the meat of the lessons as you didn’t need to learn the foundations to be capable of learning more.
When the lesson ended, Julian and I made our way to our room together. Othili and Garberend joined us, as they had no plans for the evening. On the way, we ran into Dohtor, who was eating lunch – apparently, only freshmen had four periods, while the other classmen had six. We chatted for a bit, and then continued on our way to Julian’s and my room.
Finally, we made it to the room.
And the door was already open.