Three days after my magic assessment I was in the forest with Abraham. I told him of my magic assessment in a disappointing tone. He tried to cheer me up though. He explained magic to me. Spells ranged in tiers from 0 to 7. Each spell had an affinity as well. You needed to have the affinity to learn a spell. As long as I person had an affinity of 0 they could learn a zero tier spell, but just one. At affinity 3, 5 and 7 you could learn another tier 0 spell in that affinity. He knew of two 0 tier spells for healing, one assessed injury and ailments and the other reduced the pain someone was feeling. For space he wasn’t aware of the zero tier spells as space magic affinity was rare. For fire he knew there was warm body, flame touch and thermal vision. So I would have at least three magics. Abraham then explained my 3 strength in healing would allow me to learn one tier 3 healing spell, three tier 1 healing spells or a tier 2 and tier 1 spell. I then asked about increasing my magic potential in affinities. Abraham sighed and said the essence of powerful beasts could raise a person’s potential but the king commands all essences must be sold to the crown. I asked Abraham about his magic and he laughed. Asking a person about their magic was like asking a woman her age. He told me anyway, nature at tier 4, water at tier 4 and fire at tier 2. He wouldn’t tell me his spells other than his zero tier spell for fire was thermal vision. He then cheered me up even more, about half the population had just a single affinity at tier 0. About 10% of the population had magic potential over 0. And only 1 in 5000 people were strong enough to be admitted the magic academy. It did cheer me up.

I didn’t see Abraham for a few weeks. I checked his three tree forts daily but he was gone. Eventually he returned with an aged man who he introduced as the Duke’s wizard advisor, Lionshire. Lionshire was a retired war wizard of the king. Lionshire had wanted a tour of the forest for a while and Abraham brought him out and figured he would be better to answer my questions about magic. I did have dozens of questions that he answered as Abraham prepared a meal.

Spells could be learned by forming, imprinting or by construct. Forming was the most difficult and inefficient. It meant a mage sculpted his magic to make a spell effect. Imprinting had an experienced mage transfer the knowledge to an apprentice. Construct had a physical manifestation of the spell effect that a mage could ‘absorb’ to learn a spell. You could start learning spells around your 10th or 11th birthday on average. I asked about zero tier spells for all my affinities trying to plan which to learn. Healing had four that I really liked. My top choice was enhanced resistance to disease. It just worked on myself and was a passive spell. The injury assessment and pain reduction were also interesting. The fourth was a vitality recovery. It had a side effect of using your body fat to instantly restore your stamina. Maybe if I became a soldier that would be useful.

For fire the thermal vision and flame touch were my final choices. Flame touch was basically a 3 second mini flame thrower the size of your finger. Useful for starting fires. Now space had three interesting zero tier spells. Pocket space was basically a 6” box that was a dimensional bag, extremely useful for a messenger. But Lionshire said there was a tier 1 spell that gave just over a square yard of space. He then followed up by telling me of a student he went to the academy with a long time ago who stored water and used it for practical jokes all the time. So the other two zero tier spells for space were movement sense, which made me aware of all movement in 10 yard sphere from me. Very helpful as it ignored invisibility but it took a long time to learn how to filter all the inputs when it was active. The third option I liked was a phase spell, making me insubstantial for a brief second. So many options…

Soon we were eating and I was offered an apprenticeship by the war mage. It was as the mage’s scribe not student. It didn’t pay well but I would be in the Duke’s castle, have my own room, learn to read and write, receive clothing and food. Talking more I would prepare the mage’s traveling trunk when needed, read his missives, write down his dictations and bring his breakfast from the kitchen to his room. He ate lunch and dinner with the duke. Lionshire was technically retired but the Duke was son of his best friend growing up so he retired here and served as an advisor for modest pay. It didn’t take me long to accept. I just needed to convince my parents.

My parents approved and three days later and I was off to the duke’s manor. I made many mistakes in the first week, getting lost, bringing the wrong breakfast, forgetting things and not cleaning the study to Lionshire’s satisfaction. I was diligent and learned from my mistakes and soon fell into a routine. I spent the morning and evening with Lionshire and the middle of the day I spent learning to read and write. Writing was the worst as it had to be perfect and I had to write fast. My two teachers were the scholars that taught the duke’s family. After two months I was able to read fairly well and a month after that my writing was passable. It helped having another lifetime to draw on.

I privately smirked at the amazement of the teachers at my learning speed. The only problem was my life was pretty isolated. The teachers didn’t converse with me beyond lessons and Lionshire was always busy. My room was very small but at least it had a window to the courtyard. I watched the palace guards train when I could and wished I could be out there. After 7 months my duties were finally in full force and I was writing letters and reading letters for Lionshire in the evenings. It was mostly correspondence with his mage friends. They kept trying to persuade him to come and teach at the academy mostly or participate in one research project or another. This job only took about 4 hours of my day giving me a lot of free time to read anything that struck my fancy in Lionshire’s study or the Duke’s modest library. The arcane books were in a magic language that I couldn’t read but I read a lot of biographies, bestiaries and histories. I was in a full fantasy world. We were sheltered in the center of the kingdom from the more exotic beasts and other dangers which is why I hadn’t heard as much growing up.

After a year had passed I managed to join the new guard’s training in the morning. These new trainees were between age 10 and 12 and were the sons of the current manor and cities guard. There were 15 of them and I was able to join them for their after breakfast conditioning and some spear practice. These boys would spend two years on the spear, then a year with the spear and shield, then they would learn the sword and shield for the last three years of their training. The progression was due to the fact that they needed to build their bodies before training and wielding the sword according to the arms master.

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I made a pair of friends, Caleb and Damian. They were brothers two years apart. They were always getting into trouble, sneaking into the wine cellar at night, going AWOL on holidays, flirting with young women in the city and playing stupid pranks on their eldest brother who was already a manor guard. Nervous I might get in trouble I was usually just an observer when it came to the pranks.

Well the conditioning was fantastic, I liked the fatigue, building my body and getting stronger. I only got to the woods once an eight day to hang with Abraham and he taught me to use the short bow. Any game I killed went to the castle pot but it was definitely my favorite weapon, and I liked using it in stealth, stalking prey.

On my 12th birthday I got new clothes from my parents and a beautiful saddle and travel rucksack that could be used as a backpack or saddle bags. I had a nice lunch in the city with Flicka as well around my 12th birthday. She was still apprenticing just outside of the merchant quarter and was getting married soon. After the lunch Lionshire gave me the best gift. Two spell construct gems to learn tier 0 spells. They were two of the zero tier spells I had mentioned I planned to learn. One was the vitality recovery for my healing affinity. The other was movement sense for my space affinity. Magic, finally I would be able to use magic. Lionshire said they were both costly constructs but he did some favors and got them as barter. He wasn’t able to get the tier 1 dimensional pocket spell or the tier 3 healing spell I had wanted that repaired soft tissue rapidly. The healing spell was more powerful than what my mother had. Abraham also gave me a riding horse and transferred the thermal vision tier 0 spell for my fire affinity. It was an awesome birthday except for the fact that my new riding horse was stabled in the manor and all my earnings went to her upkeep. I had to wait a day to use the gems. You needed to sleep with them touching your skin. The thermal vision spell was only useful in darkness and I regretted my decision. How often would a scribe need to wander around in the dark? I should had have gone for the fire starter spell but during my stalking sessions with Abraham I mentioned I wanted the thermal vision spell.

That night I used the gems and I went to sleep excited. On waking the gems were dust. I spent the next week under Lionshire’s tutelage learning to access and use my magic. My magic ‘well’ so to speak wasn’t deep, more like a shallow puddle. The thermal vision spell used almost no energy and was easy to sustain. The vital recovery also cost a little magic but also an estimated 3 ounces of body fat. And I wasn’t very fat. Master Lionshire said the cost would also increase a little as my body grew. The movement sense was a magic drain. I could sustain it for only an hour so before I was drained, so it was more of a combat ability. Lionshire said with time I could increase the efficiency of my spells and after a decade or so they would cost only half as much magic to cast. Unfortunately the cost in fat stores would not decrease, just increase as I grew. Also my magic pool was a fixed size, it could only grow through special methods Lionshire didn’t have access to or if I absorbed specific monster essence. Neither were unlikely to ever happen for me. But he would teach me tricks to help my magic pool recover quicker. So instead of progressing to learning the sword with the other guard trainees I practiced my magic. I still did most of the morning conditioning and sometime sparred with them using a spear against their sword.

On my 13th birthday master Lionshire got me the spatial storage spell. After learning the spell from a construct he had to infuse his magic into me to help me cast the spell as I was just short on having enough magic. Lionshire said over time if I could recast the spell and practice it the dimensions of the pocket space would slowly increase but that was not in my future. Fortunately the spell didn’t require a lot of magic after it was cast, bringing items in and out just took a minor amount of magic. Well the spell had a massive benefit to Lionshire. I became Lionshire’s porter. It meant I now travelled with him when he ported to the capital and other cities. I carried his luggage, coins, and books in my dimensional space. This was good and bad. The good was I got to see many different cities, received more tutelage in magic, met many nobles and learned the basics of etiquette, got to eat lots of great food, and received a few gifts because some nobles thought I was Lionshire’s apprentice and not just a scribe and pack mule. The negative was my free time was cut down sustainably. I was also mostly in limbo on trips as a young boy with no money. The great and copious amounts of food did allow me to practice the vitality recovery spell.

Just before my 14th birthday I had used my healing affinity to develop a tier 3 healing spell, it had taken 18 months of focus and work reading reference books from Lionshire’s library on magical theory. It was much more difficult than the other two methods for learning spells. And I kind of screwed it up. The spell healed extremely well but only restored myself so I would not be able to make extra money healing others. At least it didn’t take its pound of flesh like the vitality spell. After two months experimenting with the new spell, which cost nearly all my magic pool to cast once, I learned something insanely powerful about the spell. It restored my body to its previous state. That meant what, I could halt my aging? I experimented for three months to confirm my guess. And yes I could renew my body’s state up to 72 hours past. The spell wouldn’t stack though so I could only effectively turn the clock back on my body up to 3 days. If I waited 7 days and cast the spell then I could only get back 3 days, effectively aging just 4 days. I found I could lose my conditioning and strength gains as well. After confirming my findings I wrote them out and brought it to Lionshire.

He at first didn’t believe me. Ageless was a tier 7 spell and just slowed a person’s aging by half over a two year period before needing to be recast. Well my spell was just a little different it required constant casting. We spent five weeks testing the spell and confirming my hypothesis. A scar that was 4 days old was barely healed. More injuries, such as an arm I broke sparring, took multiple casts to heal. Lionshire said I just needed more magic pool to heal serious wounds completely in one cast. But yes I had a path to immortality it appeared. So Lionshire’s next step was to educate me enough to scribe the spell onto a construct or to teach me how to imprint the spell knowledge on another person. Both were quite difficult to learn and would take me years. There was a shortcut, there was a tier 1 spiritual spell that acted just like imprinting. But Lionshire said the cost was too great for the essence to get me the spiritual affinity. If we went public to the king then I would most likely be bound to the palace under constant guard to prevent the knowledge from getting out.

So after two months of trying to learn artifice construction Lionshire moved onto imprinting as I was terrible at it. The mental exercises for successful imprinting were done in stages. Although my progress was slow I was at least making progress. Lionshire was certain that once I mastered the spell I could barter it with the crown for some essence to raise my magic well. But he wanted to put me into the best position to do so before approaching the ruling family.