Michael
The next stop was the magical academy. The name was way too grand for it though, it was basically Michael’s old house in the city which had been remodeled yet again.
There were also just twelve students ranging from nine to sixteen. Michael knew from his own intel and Kiran that at least a dozen other mages had moved close to the city and even more had made their home in other parts of his lands. Most of them were still watching to see if he kept his word or if he would crumble under the church’s pressure.
He had received a couple of angry letters from different parts of the clerical hierarchy but surprisingly it was the Inquisition that held still for now. Michael doubted that this grace would be afforded to him indefinitely, but he would relish it as long as he could.
As they reached the house they entered the side alley toward the yard between the two buildings. Lance and Erhen opened up the gate for them and Michael rode in.
A pebble instantly flew in his direction, straight at his head. He snapped out of reflex and his mana flared up, creating a plate-sized shield of light in front of him and the pebble bounced off the hardened light.
It had taken him over a year to get this comfortable with his new type of light to be able to even create such a small shield through action casting. He was quite proud of it.
“Jeremy! What did the mistress say about casting outside of the classroom,” Pan admonished the small boy who had thrown the pebble. He and the two girls that had been playing with their magic looked guilty as they all intoned, “No magic outside of the classroom until you reach the second circle.”
Michael jumped of his horse and handed his reigns to one of his guards.
“You are getting stronger, soon I will have to strengthen my barriers against you,” Michael praised the boy who instantly glowed up.
“Lord Michael, you shouldn’t praise them after they broke the rules,” Pan admonished Michael as well. She was still wearing her hood when she wasn’t inside of the academy, but Michael had seen her without it already and his gut feeling had quickly been proven right that she was a satyr.
“Well, I can’t help it when I see promising young mages,” he replied and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Now bugger off, you little rascals.”
The three kids bolted away and instantly started throwing small pebbles and water droplets.
“You are not good for the children’s discipline,” Pan complained.
“Your master is not a paragon of discipline either. I thought she would take care of the wards at the forge,” Michael changed the subject.
To her credit, Pan didn’t even flinch, “The mistress is very busy. She will get to it eventually.”
Michael smiled at her and shook his head. “Your loyalty is very commendable, Pan, but we both know that Rayakan is just lazy when it comes to anything not pertaining her school.”
Pan looked like she wanted to protest but she wasn’t one to lie so blatantly so she just made a noncommittal sound and pulled the hood a little bit lower.
“You don’t have to wear that hood in your own home you know that right,” Michael commented. “You are safe here.”
“I simply don’t like showing that I am ... different while others can see me so easily,” she replied hesitantly.
“Well, I think that you not being like everyone else makes you more interesting but do what makes you comfortable, I just wanted to let you know that you have the option.”
Pan smiled warmly at him, and Michael got a little red. “Thank you. I appreciate your friendship.”
“So, do I.” Pan and Michael had spent a lot of time in the last years training together. Pan was leagues ahead of Michael in her training and talent of magic, but they resonated well with each other and their teachers had noticed greater growth when they worked together.
“So, where is Rayakan,” Michael returned to the previous subject
“She is working with the older students in the combat ring right now,” Pan pointed at the old warehouse.
Michael thanked her and went over to the large building while Pan helped his guard with the horses.
The sight that presented itself to Michael when he entered was something one could not see often. Rayakan was standing with three students at the edge of a ring of metal poles that hummed with power. Inside were the two oldest students, a boy and a girl, throwing magic at each other.
The girl lashed out with a whip of water aiming at the leg of the boy, he stepped back and flashes of lightning evaporated the whip in a moment.
“Keep up your control, Steffen. Magic without control is just a random natural disaster,” Rayakan corrected him.
Steffen visibly took a deep breath, his blond hair sticking to his forehead with sweat.
“Vera, your performance lacks any kind of commitment. I know you can do better,” Rayakan addressed the chubby brunette girl who winced at the words.
The fight didn’t go on for much longer, the boy was much more confident and aggressive than the girl and overpowered her quickly.
“Review the fight and what you did wrong while I talk,” Rayakan ordered her students and turned to Michael. “What can I help you with, Lord Rowan?”
She smiled as if she didn’t know what this was about, causing Michael to frown at her. “You know quite well what this is about. You were supposed to take care of the warding of the artificer complex together with Waren but now I hear that you have continually avoided exactly that.”
“Oh, you know I am very busy,” she replied and hunched a little bit as if her duties were wearing her down.
“Rayakan ... I remember that as part of the deal allowed you to put up your school here and receive financial support from me, that you and your students would offer your assistance but now you do whatever is in your power to avoid that. I feel a little bit used.”
“Oh, don’t be like that. It takes a lot of time to take care of the little buggers ...,” she trailed off and Michael interrupted her rambling.
“Enough with that. Don’t treat me like some kind of imbecile. We are not gonna start into some kind of relationship where I have to hound you every step of the way or shower you in gifts and promises just so that you do your part of the deal,” Michael snapped at her. He had thought to offer her a null magic chamber, but her attitude made him reconsider.
Rayakan looked at him, surprised by his sudden outburst.
“I can’t and won’t deal with you if you can’t behave like a functioning part of this society. So, either get you shit together, or I will have to rethink our arrangement,” Michael added.
The initial shock quickly vanished from Rayakan’s face, and the old mage laughed loudly. “I nearly felt threatened there, milord. Alright, alright no need to get mad at an old lady. I promise that I will go over to the forge tomorrow and start the work on the warding scheme.”
Michael calmed down and looked for any signs of deceit in the woman’s face but couldn’t find anything. “Alright, I will send a messenger to Waren to let him know,” he then concluded and turned away from her without another word. He couldn’t say why but this woman infuriated him to no end with her attitude.
“Have a great day, milord. And visit us again sometime,” Rayakan called after him with an amused chuckle.
Michael grumbled and left the building. He was still annoyed while he pushed past Pan.
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“Everything alright,” she asked.
“Your master is just being herself,” Michael replied shortly but didn’t stop.
“I see.”
Michael entered the main house through the back door and went straight for the study room. He came past the remaining students cooking in the main room and returned greetings.
Kiran looked up when Michael entered the study room. “You don’t look happy.”
“Rayakan is just being difficult,” he replied and then recounted the whole incident.
Kiran looked at him for a while until slightly smiling. “Rayakan is not a bad person, and she certainly is not stupid enough to antagonize you without a reason. What she is is a teacher and not your subordinate.”
Michael frowned while thinking about it then he groaned. “I will be right back.”
He got back up and walked all the way back to the warehouse. Pan threw him a questioning look and he simply said, “Your teacher is a horrible person.” Her chuckle followed him into the warehouse.
The moment he entered Rayakan’s eyes were on him. Michael approached her with a sigh.
“I am sorry for my outburst. I understand that you are not one of my subordinates and I have no right to order you around without explanation,” Michael started, Rayakan watched him in silence.
“We need the warding to start production of precision artifacts. This will also help this school as I plan to build a real null magic chamber for it, for example. Your assistance would guarantee a superior warding scheme so I would like to ask for your help.”
Rayakan nodded and replied genuinely, “I will be glad to help. I will make an appointment with the dwarf as soon as possible.”
The old mage inspected Michael for a moment longer before adding, “I am glad that you are a quick learner. Many nobles have the flaw that they expect everyone to jump at their every whim but respect, especially to people that aren’t your direct subjects, will make everyone much more willing to follow your requests and orders.”
She was of course right. Being in a position of power with every command being followed without question would always put him at risk of expecting everyone to just do what he said.
“Thank you for this reality check. You could be a little bit less smug about it though,” he commented.
She simply gave him a crooked smile and replied, “What would be the fun in that?”
Michael left them to their training while shaking his head and finally fell into a chair in the study room a minute later.
“Are you ready for our lesson now,” Kiran asked with an amused expression.
“Yes, I am done.”
“Good. Today I think it is finally time that we start taking a closer look at the arcane paths of magic. Life and death, time and space, and blood and pure mana,” the mage started.
“Am I ready for that,” Michael asked surprised.
Michael had of course read some things about the arcane schools of magic before, but Kiran had kept away from them for the express reason that he didn’t want Michael to try to unlock one without having a firm grasp on his own element. It was very dangerous to bring another type of mana into one's body if you already had an affinity and could lead to injury or even death.
“Yes, but I still expect you to stay away from attuning yourself to any of them. You are not ready for this kind of conflict but if you absolutely can’t resist then talk to me or Rayakan about it. It is safer to do it under observation than doing it behind my back.” Kiran looked at Michael with a piercing stare until the young lord nodded. He was of course interested in unlocking new paths of magic as he was about most sources of knowledge, but he would heed his master’s advice over his own curiosity.
Kiran leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his ever-present tea before starting his lecture. “Affinities for these are earned not given by understanding the principle behind the mana you try to gain the affinity for. The outlier to this rule is blood magic, you do not need an affinity for blood magic due to its nature of using the mana of other creatures to cast spells but more on that later.”
“The arcane paths are fundamentally different than the elemental in that they are less straightforward and much more tangled. Elemental magic is generally more potent in combat due to that while arcane magic has more different sub-schools and areas of application.”
“A death mage for example can summon the souls of the dead to converse, raise undead minions, just throw around balls of death energy, or other things that even I have never heard about. As such all of them have many different ways to go, some have more discovered than others. People rarely master more than one of these sub-schools but of course, some people try to meddle in many just to a lesser degree of mastery.”
“As with the elemental paths, the arcane paths are different in difficulty and usefulness. The pure mana magic and blood magic are the easiest to achieve. Blood because you just need the right rituals and knowledge but no affinity. The pure mana affinity is the easiest to achieve due to the prevalent nature of mana all around us, we are constantly in contact with it which makes it easier to understand and attune to.”
“Life and death are the middle concerning difficulty. It is easy to observe and learn about the processes of life and death as they are happening around us all the time. We do not learn a lot passively like with pure mana though.”
“The last pair and with a huge gap the most difficult to learn are time and space. Their usefulness is also rather questionable, so there are very few that bother and even fewer that manage to achieve any kind of proficiency.”
Michael frowned, he had expected that mastery of time or space would be vastly powerful. “What do you mean with questionable usefulness? I imagine that a time mage could see the future or rewind time or something like that. That seems very strong to me.”
Kiran nodded sagely, “It does in theory, I agree. In practice though the things such a mage can do are very underwhelming. Having a time mage look into the future is little more than a slightly more trustworthy fortune teller, as time is always in motion, and separating the untold number of futures to find the most probable one is difficult, to put it mildly. Space mages are even worse off, their magic focuses on the barriers between our world and other spheres and realms. They might become stronger with the rising mana but as it is now, there are few that can muster the power to make even a small hole into the veil separating us from the closest realms. The creatures on the other side can’t even survive on our side so the only thing they can even try is to converse with them. It is a lot of work to have a chat with something that might not even want to talk.”
“I see, but with the rising mana, shouldn’t it be more reasonable to invest effort into them,” Michael pressed, not being willing to just write them off.
“Oh certainly. There are records of immensely powerful practitioners of these paths, but they are very few and very far between. The problem is that, aside from them being the most complex paths, they are also the ones that are most dangerous to the mage with the highest mortality rate,” Kiran explained patiently.
“Why is that? I can’t really imagine that it is more dangerous to study time and space in comparison to playing with say fire,” Michael argued.
“The magic itself isn’t that much more dangerous than any magic is to the wielder.” Kiran stopped for a moment seemingly thinking about how he should explain it. “The pillars of our universe are Time, Space, and Death. Time and space are the paths that walk the fine line between what is acceptable and what meddles with the laws of time and space too much. A breach of these laws will incur the wrath of the guardian of the respective pillar, a creature that exceeds the power of gods by an unknown margin.” Kiran spoke with a certain sternness in his voice that brought across the point that there is no screwing around with the guardians.
“What about death magic? Won’t the guardian of death also strike back when you accidentally break the rules,” Michael asked curiously.
Kiran frowned deeply and said, “You can’t break the rules of death by accident. The one rule is that you can’t bring anyone back to true life after his soul has passed from its body and become dead. It is such a difficult thing in of itself that you will have to do it on purpose and then suffer the consequences.”
Kiran waited for him to ask further but Michael didn’t say anything, so the mage continued.
“Good back to the topic, when you achieve the affinity, you will notice because your internal mana will change to that affinity and your mana well will innately convert all mana inside you to that affinity which leads us to the problem of having multiple affinities.” Kiran unrolled another scroll which showed a human body with the mana well highlighted by blue colors. Without even moving, Kiran made a drop of water from a small cup on the table float over the well.
“The problem is that different affinity mana don’t play well together inside of your body because one affinity will try to turn all your mana into, say fire mana while the other will try to turn it into life mana. You would think that they would simply balance each other out but they will turn violent because affinity mana will resist being tempered with like that just as it will if someone else curses you. It doesn’t recognize your other affinity mana as yours. Different types of mana work better with each other than others for multiple affinities but that would be going too deep right now.”
Kiran let another drop float over to the scroll, this time out of his cup of tea. Normally they would just mix but through the mage’s control, they began rippling and pushing against each other in a furious display, until one of them overcame the other.
Michael followed the explanation and then asked, “Does that mean that a pure mana affinity will work because it doesn’t turn violent as it is just basic mana?”
“You catch on fast as always. The pure mana affinity is the one that works best for having multiple affinities because of the reason you said but it is not completely safe as it will try to turn your other mana back into pure mana which causes some conflict,” Kiran explained.
“So how do you manage to do it then? Is there a way to stop them from fighting, something like smoking a beehive?”
“It is a good idea but not how it works. You separate them by creating a wall within your mana well. It is much more complicated than it sounds but it is basically that. The problem here is that you only have parts of your mana for either affinity, depending on where you put the wall,” Kiran explained.
“So Rayakan can’t even use all of her mana for fire magic,” Michael asked incredulously. He had seen her cast a couple of times and the amount of energy she could move at once was incredible.
“Rayakan has probably five percent or something to that effect walled off for her pure mana. She mostly uses it for anti-magic which generally doesn’t need a lot of mana for personal use if you know what you are doing,” his master explained which sounded about right.
“What affinity would you say would fit with me best,” Michael asked with a cheeky grin.
Kiran sighed audibly before replying, “Pure mana is always a good choice but, in your case, it is probably the only choice if you even try for any. I don’t want to pull you down or anything, but I don’t see you managing to obtain another affinity.”
“I see,” Michael mumbled disappointed.
“Don’t worry, I don’t have a second affinity either and I am doing quite alright,” Kiran tried to cheer him up. Michael gave him a reassuring smile but internally he was still thinking about the different affinities.