Michael

It took a while to pack everything and then an even longer for Kiran to say his farewells to the people but now they were finally back on the street, Michael and Kiran sitting on the cart while Geron and Eydis were riding alongside it.

“So, what are you going to teach me first,” Michael asked excitedly. Kiran smirked at that, “Don’t you want to wait until we are back in Reen?”

Michael shook his head decisively, “It has been weeks since I did anything else but martial training and self-study. I really miss my lessons, so I would like to start immediately if that is fine with you.”

“Alright, let me think for a moment,” Kiran answered while watching the passing landscape.

“I presume you have been taught that there are two different ways to cast a spell, right?”

Michael nodded, and quickly said, “Instinctual casting and phrase casting.”

“As I thought, the church hasn’t changed a single bit in the last ten years.” Kiran sighed before he continued with a sour expression, “That is wrong. First of all, phrase casting is not one of the ways to cast, the true name is action casting of which phrase casting is a part.”

Michael looked at him in confusion, not understanding what he meant. Kiran brushed back his hair, “It is going to be hard Michael, but the order of purity is not good at magic and that is why many of the things you have learned are either wrong or not the best way of doing things.”

“But why?”

“Much was lost in the purge following the great betrayal, mages killed, and books burned. The church forced its dogma onto their mages and eroded that old knowledge even more. The church of Idas was the worst thing that has happened to the magical community in the last one thousand years. They probably would have wiped them out if they didn’t need them.”

Michael was confused but strangely he wasn’t too surprised, his opinion of the church was falling farther and farther. He reminded himself that he needed to be careful in expressing it though, spouting heresy would be a good path into an early grave.

“Then please correct them in whatever they are wrong and teach me the right way of doing things,” Michael said with resolve, he would not let religious dogma stand in the way of his pursuit of knowledge.

“Okay. Phrase casting is not one of the three main ways to cast because you don’t need to speak, you can bind a spell to finger signs for example, I even heard about people singing or dancing their spells, which is why it is correctly called action casting. The church just likes phrase casting because they can incorporate their faith into it with prayers.”

While he explained that he snapped and an orb of water appeared in his hand, sucking the humidity out of the air to form.

“Now the more important thing they are wrong about, or more likely the more important thing they are not teaching is the third way of casting. For humans it is called sigil casting, the dwarves call it rune casting for example but, in the end, it is the same.”

He held up his hand and in front of it letters began to appear in a concentric shape, the sigil looked like a plane disc with the ever-moving letters spinning around the center.

“With a sigil, you simply write down what you want the spell to do with mana, eliminating the need to keep every part of the spell in mind. It is more flexible than the other kinds of casts because you can make a spell as big and complicated as you want on the spot. You can technically cast spells that you never had any practice with if you want and can just cast them.”

He raised his hand over his head and closed his hand; the sigil lit up in dark blue light and activated. The water bubble he held in his other hand moved in front of the sigil before it shot into the sky, changing direction multiple times before the magic dissipated and the water bubble burst, raining down next to them.

“Wow,” Michael said as he stared at the mage with wide eyes, “Why would anyone use something else if you can do cool stuff like that?”

Kiran chuckled and replied, “Every type of technique has its advantages and disadvantages. Instinctual, is the fastest casting, it is unpredictable as the enemy has no indication of what you are doing, but it is simple in nature and hard on the mind. Action casting is the middle ground, it is fast and can cast more complicated spells, but it takes a lot of training and preparation to bind a spell to an action. Sigil casting is the slowest, writing instructions is simply slower than just saying a code phrase and most certainly slower than a thought but it is the most flexible, you can do anything with sigil casting, your imagination and ability to express your thoughts are your only limits. Well, except for your understanding of your element of course but that counts for every one of the casting types.”

“So, how do we start with sigil casting,” Michael asked excitedly.

“First you need to make up your own set of letters to use.”

Michael frowned at the old mage, “Why can’t I just use normal letters?”

“Think about it, you might get there yourself.” Michael leaned back and stared at the clouds while thinking about the problem he had been presented with. It took him a while before he finally, exclaimed, “Because anyone could read them!”

Kiran nodded affirmatively, “Correct, if the enemy knows every detail about your spell before it even activates you will have a bad time, especially if you are fighting an anti-mage. That is one of the problems of phrase casting, even though phrase casts are the easiest type for connecting spells they will give the enemy an idea of what you are about to do. Some have even developed their own languages to reduce that disadvantage but at that point, you will be better off just doing something else.”

“Anti-mages are mages that use affinity-less mana right,” Michael asked, he hadn’t learned too much about the arcane mana types yet but of this one, he was pretty sure, and he wanted to show his new mentor his knowledge.

“Yes, anti-mages are a type of pure mana mages, they focus on disrupting enemy magic as the name suggests, and if they know how your spell works, they will have a field day with dismantling it.”

Michael wanted to ask more questions about the arcane mages, but he settled on sigil casting for the time being. “So, I just make up my own letters?”

“Yes, and make sure they have as little in common with their real counterparts as possible because if your letters are deciphered you might be in big trouble.”

From this point on Michael spent the rest of the trip back making up letters, starting all over again multiple times, and internalizing the letters he was sure he wanted to keep.

- A couple of days later –

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“We are finally home,” Michael cheered from his spot on the cart as they rolled through the north gate of Reen. He had enjoyed his time in the capital and the trip back was also more interesting than the trip toward Lionsgate, but he was happy to be finally back in his hometown.

“Let’s go to our new home first and see if Sola and Solon are there,” Michael decided as they moved through the busy streets. Some people recognized him and bowed while he passed them by, and he waved and nodded at them politely.

“It’s a nice town you have here,” Kiran said while looking around.

“Yeah, it is the best,” Michael replied with a smile.

It took a little bit to reach the house, but Michael could barely hold back his excitement when they finally turned onto the street. The house looked not too much different from the outside than before. The sign was gone, and some parts had been repainted but all in all, it looked the same.

They turned into the alleyway connecting the street with the courtyard between the two buildings and Geron opened the gate into the yard. As the cart rolled in, the backdoor of the main building opened. Sola and Solon stepped through it and smiled at the new arrivals with huge grins.

“We are home,” Michael said with a similar grin and jumped off the wagon before it had even properly stopped.

“Welcome home,” Sola said with a warm smile and embraced Michael for a short hug. She then went over to Geron and greeted him as well.

“A dwarf huh, long time since I have seen one of your kind in these parts,” Kiran said as he climbed down the cart himself. Solon inspected the old mage with an interested gaze and introduced himself, as did Kiran, both handled each other with respect.

“It doesn’t look like much has changed,” Michael noted as he looked around. He could see an archery target on a wall, a weapons rack at the wall of the house, and a target dummy. Aside from those things he couldn’t see a difference.

“Most changes have been made inside, and we added a large gate to the warehouse,” he pointed at the building where the women were kept before, and Michael could see the gate that he hadn’t noticed before. “Let me give you a tour of your new home and then you can tell us what happened on your journey and who our new friend is.”

Michael was glad about that, he wanted to enjoy the happy atmosphere before he broke the news, that Sola was probably not going to be happy about her new coworker.

Solon, first guided them toward the large gate in the warehouse and explained, “It is not quite done yet, a month wasn’t enough time to do everything, but this building is going to be the workshop area.” Geron and Eydis pulled the gate open, and a large hall-like room came into view. Here Michael could see different workstations, from a fletcher table over a workbench for pottery to a small open space close to the gate where he could see some smithing equipment but neither an anvil nor a furnace. Many crafts were present here and Michael was sure he would spend a lot of exhausting hours in this hall.

“Some of the smithing equipment will follow later but I think we did good work,” Solon said with a proud expression as Michael took a look around.

“You are learning all this,” Kiran asked, sounding impressed. Michael turned around and nodded, “I won’t be able to master everything but having a basic idea of the crafts will help me advise in subjects that are connected to them later.”

“We also thought about converting a small part of this building into a stable, you need to learn riding anyway,” Solon continued his explanation. “Come on I will show you the main building.”

They followed the dwarf as they made their way over to the building. Everything was different, it was as if they had torn it down and built it anew. They walked through a hallway and Solon pointed at the different doors.

“We put in a couple more walls to get more rooms on the ground floor. That one is a storage room, there is the kitchen - we left it as it was basically - and that is the new study room.” They entered the study room and Michael took a look around. The walls were covered in shelves, some books were already filled in but not too many. In the middle of the room stood a large table with multiple chairs, further back in the room was a sofa and two armchairs around a small table.

Solon walked over to a cabin and opened it. It was filled with paper and other writing utensils. “This will be the main study room, we have the big table for lessons, and the seating area over there for reading and self-study. The shelves are a little empty right now, but I am sure we can fill them over time.” Solon looked satisfied as he explained.

“This is great,” Michael commented with a grin. Kiran walked over to the shelf where the only books they had were situated, skimming over the titles before saying, “This will indeed do very nicely for theory lessons.”

Sola looked at Michael with a questioning look, but he just said, “Later, let’s see the rest of the house, first.”

They left the study room and made their way to what had been the large bar area. It had shrunk in size considerably but was still large. Instead of the many tables and long bar, there was a seating area in front of the fireplace and a large dining table to the left of the room.

“We went for a simpler look, there is enough space to host larger dinners but at the same time, it’s not too large to use for day-to-day life. Because of that, we have some more space behind there,” and he pointed toward a door on the right side of the room, “We put a wall there and left the room empty for future use, maybe you have an idea what you want in there.”

Michael and the others looked around a bit before they made their way upstairs. “We combined a couple of rooms as they were small with just a bed having space. We have made enough room for seven bedrooms, we did put in basic furniture yours, because we didn’t know how you would like it.” They looked into one of the bedrooms, there was enough space for a wardrobe, a table with chair, a bed, and then some.

“We also decided not to make your room bigger, Michael. I guessed you wouldn’t care too much and not spend much time in there anyway, but we can knock down the wall to the neighboring room if you like,” Solon explained, but Michael shook his head. “You have done a great job, thank you.”

Kiran looked around and said, “How did you even get a house like this? Was this a tavern before, this is way too large for a normal family but also too simple for a rich merchant or noble.”

“It was a brothel,” Michael said as he walked past him into the hallway. Kiran turned around and said, “A brothel? Huh, well that makes sense, I guess.”

Solon led them down to the old office of Fredrick. “We left the office for you to use, it might not be of much use for you now but later it certainly will once the smithy gets going and we might even be able to expand the business. Next to your office was another bedroom that we didn’t manage to combine so I allowed myself to take possession of it and make my own office if that is alright with you.”

“Yeah, that is okay.”

As Solon opened the door he kept explaining, “We pulled out all of the pomp and sold it, replacing it with more modest elegance, I am sure you appreciate that.”

Michael did and stepped into the office. It wasn’t recognizable, the trophies gone, luxurious furniture replaced by well-built wood, and the whole atmosphere was less needy for attention and more of an aura of work.

“We have some empty rooms here and there that we can assign if anyone needs more space but in essence this is it,” Solon concluded his tour.

“I am very impressed, you two have turned this into a home and you have done a mighty fine job of it,” Michael said, Geron and Eydis agreeing quickly.

They talked a little bit about changes and what else needed to be done until they made their way down into the common room and took their seats at the table.

Michael started telling them what happened in the capital. When he got to the part with the monster attack, he had to explain himself to a concerned Sola.

He finally got to the point of his return from the capital and his detour to the village and Kiran. Michael took a deep breath and finally said, “Kiran here is a water mage, and I have decided to employ him as my second magic teacher, just like with Eydis and Geron.”

He tried to explain himself as quickly as possible to try to hamper the reaction before it happened. It didn’t help much as Sola’s head spun around and fixated on Kiran with open hostility, who looked back with a calm expression. Michael could feel the mana level rise around them and Geron grabbed Sola’s arm, “Calm down, Sola.”

“Calm down,” she growled at him, “He is dangerous.”

“You are a mage as well, Sola,” Michael said carefully, he had expected this, and he needed to be careful.

“I am a follower of the light and not one of the betrayers.”

“He is not part of the betrayers. They are all dead, Sola. I know the church preaches they are all evil but being born with an affinity is not a crime.”

She kept staring at him, so Michael tried something else, “Sola, look at me.”

Her eyes moved over to him, so he continued, “I understand that this is how you were raised but I ask you to trust me on this. You can make your own picture of him while he is here.”

“How could you let this happen,” Sola angrily yelled at Geron.

“He didn’t break any laws and the count agreed so there was no reason for me to do anything.”

“Oh, you know what, no one cares about my opinion anyway so why am I even voicing it?” Sola rose from her seat with those words and rushed up the stairs, followed by a slamming door.

Kiran looked around at the faces of the other inhabitants of the table and said, “That went better than I expected.”