Harlan was exhausted, he spent hours training telekinesis and he ate nothing but cookies. He could go to the cafeteria and pick up premade foods but he lost track of time and didn’t realize how much he was burning himself out. He only realized the time when he heard the morning knocking telling him it was time to wake up. He took a quick shower and headed out to eat breakfast, finding Adelwulf and Tau waiting outside.
“Oh? Did you guys wake up late?”
“I thought I should answer your question from last night.”
“Adelwulf?”
“Tau was absolutely sure I needed to be around for it.”
He had no delusions of what the answer would be.
“I would. The population of Reino grows and so does its military might, which has relied on numbers and their landlocked magic. The Border was pushed back when a seawall fell and things from the deep killed many. When Reino is strong it is everyone's problem. Your question is not would I kill a million to save 2 million, but rather would I kill a million aggressors to save a million defenders. Life is not equal, there is right and wrong, good and evil. Suffering would be lessened if they were gone.”
Adelwulf was baffled, but he agreed.
“That makes a lot of sense. Though I don’t know if I think about it like that.”
“Why not? Do you not agree that to kill evil is good? Would you not wipe out every Fomorian down to the last man if you could in an instant?”
“Of course I would, they are-”
“They are people. What of Harlan? Is he not Fomorian? Would you put Amber through that sadness? Or would you rather he died on the side of the road, so you didn’t have to deal with her?”
“It isn’t the same.”
“It is. You condemn him to death because of what, and not who he is. He is not Fomorian, he is Amber’s brother.”
Harlan felt like he was being used as a pawn to teach Adelwulf, but he didn’t mind much.
“Fine. I get your point. Harlan, I am sorry for how I acted before. It wasn’t right of me.”
“Let’s pretend it never happened.”
Tau smiled and they started walking, a small crowd had formed around them for their little argument but was dispersing as they moved realized it wasn’t going to end in a fight.
“I should clear this up. But my honest answer to your question is no. I would not do it. I simply put on an act to make Adelwulf go onto the path with the best outcome.”
Harlan didn’t mind it at first, but then he started to think thoughts he didn’t like, he was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“Do you enjoy acting? Theater and all that?”
“You are not quite as subtle as you think yourself. I have heard of your paranoia already. I am not acting as your sister’s friend, I am her friend.”
“How would I know?”
“You cannot. There is no defense I could ever use when you assume everything could be a lie. You must simply have faith in your sister, that she is smart enough to not fall for such a trick.”
“I trust her.”
“I am glad that you do.”
Tau had Harlan walk in between him and Adelwulf, leaving him unbothered during their walk to breakfast.
Harlan sat with his group and while the others sat at their normal spot.
Both Zella and Adina were being weirdly quiet which led to not much being said over breakfast.
Harlan and Adina were part of class group A.
There were 1000 new students in the first year as its limit, which was then broken up into 5 groups of 200 for the duration of the mandatory classes and then broken up as they transitioned into chosen classes.
The solution to not having enough teachers was to shuffle around class order and in some cases have a substitute teacher to fill in a timeslot if that teacher was in charge of more than one class.
Before night classes were implemented the academy only took in 600 students and split them into 3 classes.
Harlan walked to the first class with her.
Basic elements.
The teacher was a man, early 30s. Brown hair, brown eyes, 5’10, average height, the academy teachers robes were not much different from students robes, the gold robes denoted that the man was from Ragne, the tassels on his shoulder were in the colors of the other student groups.
There was an expectation that during one's stay as a teacher that they act as an impartial employee of the academy and not allow themselves to be mired in the politics of their people.
Harlan thought he was a perfectly basic man for a basic class, but he also felt odd, like he knew he had seen him before but he couldn’t place him.
Everyone filtered into their seats and the man spoke after looking at his watch.
“Good morning, I am John, your teacher for basic elements. Now there is something I am going to clear up. Some of you might have noticed that your monthly schedule doesn’t have many of your chosen class for this first week, the reason is simple. Mandatory classes are not going to be running for the entire 4 years you will be here. We are teaching you the basic things which you need to know to be able to perform in your chosen classes and to let us get a baseline for your abilities and aptitude so we can correct you before you make mistakes and end up behind in other classes. This is not true for soulwork however. It will be thrown in across the years as we feel it is needed. Much of that magic is changing day by day and it would be foolish of us to teach you for a week and then never again. When those changes happen you will be notified in your monthly schedule. We are not going to be tossing in a class in the middle of the month unless it is decided that such information must be learned as soon as possible.”
Harlan silently let out a sigh of relief that he wouldn’t be stuck with classes he didn’t care for his entire time here.
“Now, I am going to ask some simple questions and those who want to answer simply raise your hand. For starters. Fire mana represents fire.”
A girl with red strands in her otherwise black hair was picked.
“Yes.”
“Wrong. Fire is heat, it is movement. This is something you will learn if you figure out imbibing magic, but for now simply rub your hands together and feel what happens.”
The class felt a little foolish but did as asked. Everyone knew what would happen but did as asked anyway.
“When you move things quickly together they make heat, fire magic isn’t making fire per say, but rather it moves things against each other in such a way that fire is the result. Fire also needs fuel, but fire magic ignores this by changing things, turning the air you breathe into a proper flammable gas. This process, like most magic is very automatic, the mana cost for converting air into flammable gas like what is something tapped into when mining is actually higher than a simple fireball, this is one of the very many mysteries of magic which most simply throw their hands up and say ‘must be the will of the gods’ and I am one to agree. Next question. Water magic, what is it to you?”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
A boy raised his hand hesitantly, he was sure he knew the answer, but now he was questioning himself.
“Does it mean cold and liquids?”
“Be confident when you answer questions. But before I answer that. How many of you have tried to move mud or liquid metals?”
Only a handful of students raised their hand, Harlan among them.
“Sir Fomoria, what have you found when trying to do this?”
“Metals, even if you melt them, take pure earth mana to move. Mud is half and half, if you just try to move the water you won’t be able to move it smoothly and you risk separating the water from the mud itself.”
“That is correct. Water magic works on most liquids, from wine to blood. But not all liquids are water based, but even those which are receive this seemingly divine help. Healing a blood borne affliction with light magic works, but, if you implement some water magic into this the treatment will be more effective. But back to the original answer. Much like how fire is movement, friction causes heat. The slowing of things is what cold is. The examples I like to use are how ice does not flow, or if you could rub your hands in reverse and instead it would pull heat out of your hands. Now, next question, do you all know about elemental dualism?”
Almost the entire class raised their hands.
“Alright. I will explain this for the few who don’t know. At its simplest form, all mana is neutral but has an alignment somewhat like the soul does, water and fire, air and earth, light and dark, these make up each side of a coin. Now, why is it dualism? Each mana should be 6 sided instead of two sided? Simply put, you can flip part of water to fire with the right spellwork, but you cannot flip water to air. The reasons for this aren’t really known. This is why I say somewhat like the soul has, instead of saying they have an alignment like a soul. Many things I’ve just said are simplified explanations of things. You don’t need to know how everything works to cast each spell, but knowing too little leads to issues. For example, if any of you tried to make a spell to create unburning, or cold flames as they are sometimes known. But you simply thought heat was removed instead of simply lessened and held, you wouldn’t make a cold flame, you have made a timed explosive.”
Harlan raised his hand.
“I have time. But please make it quick.”
“Where did you get that example for cold flames?”
“A messenger for the academy told it to me as a good example of a failure which is easy to avoid but is also very dangerous if the person is ignorant of dualism.”
Harlan wasn’t sure if he should be glad that he technically helped with the lesson, or annoyed that he is being used as an example of a failure.
“Now, back on topic. Air magic. What is it?”
A Maetus girl raised her wing. Harlan had been stealing glances at her as he could, her front was white with black speckling from her neck down, her back as far as he could tell was a dark brown. But what interested Harlan was that she was, compared to Ibery, big. He assumed since they were both first years that they were close in age but she was larger as Ibery and more bulkily built, Harlan eyeballed her at 6’6 at least.
“Air is movement but without friction.”
“That is almost correct. Air is movement with reduced friction. There have been cases where past a speed limit that heat is still there, leading to an upper limit of what flight can be without extra equipment to deal with such issues. Honestly there is less I can say about air compared to the others. The unique aspects of air magic really come out in how it affects other elements when it is mixed with them. So let us move to earth magic. What is it?”
A Minos answered.
“Earth is earth, it is solid and unmoving, it is physicality.”
“That is a good answer. There isn’t much I can add on, so I will go into an example of how magic automatically simplifies itself when you use it. If any of you have ever made stone from dirt it isn’t really that hard right? Wrong. Stone is, in simple terms, compressed dirt, but if you ever tried to, for instance, make a hammer and press dirt into stone it is very very hard, and very very mana intensive. But doing it with a spell? Well that is quite simply, most of you should be able to do it without issue. This is the one which I throw my hands up and say it is divine work the most, to create a diamond with heat and force takes a lot of time and energy. But a specialized spell? I could make dozens every day, granted they would be worthless because there are also spells to know if a gem is fake or not. But that is beside the point. We will get into light and dark tomorrow. I used too much time and you all have 10 minutes to get to your next class. Have fun.”
John walked into a room near the large chalkboard, but Harlan was very sure there shouldn’t be anything but another classroom past the wall.
Harlan got together with Adina and walked to the next class.
Despite the words of the teacher it wasn’t actually very far at all.
They walked into their next class with 5 minutes to spare, and their teacher was… John.
He was shuffling papers and looking over a stack of books until he checked his watch again to let him know the class should start.
“Good morning, I am John, your teacher for spellcrafting. Most of you should already know how to make spellforms and those who can’t can memorize spellforms through repetition. As for what a spellform really is, well, a year ago I would be forced to say this is something to throw your hand up for. Now however I can explain that the lesser gods of Aarde manage and control mana that flows from the soul of the world.
You can think of the movements and words for magic as being a polite way to ask that you be granted magic, runes as letters in an alphabet that they use to write the rules of reality within a space. Now, as for how people form those runes in their mind which are set in your mental book of spells as it were, that is a matter of translating your knowledge of how the world functions into a way in which you can ask reality to bend to your will. This is why you can think of anything and you might get it eventually, but in reality if you wanted to get an advanced spell to function you would need to draw those runes and then color them in with the correct mana in the exact right portions. There was an experiment in which 3 soldiers were told to make a spell, 1 was taught nothing about it, the second was given a basic rundown, and the 3 was given and in depth explanation of what the spell was supposed to do. The experiment took 1 week, training the first man took no time, the second took a few hours, and the third took 2 days. Who do you think finished first? It was the last man, having an in depth knowledge of what can be done makes the process of translating that knowledge into a spell an almost instinctual process, even just knowing the temperature that water freezes or wood burns can make a difference in how your personal version of the spell works, because almost no two spells are actually exactly the same. Now, questions?”
“How do the gods control that? There is supposed to be nearly 80 million people on the continent, even if only 30% of people are trained in magical use and use it regularly surely they can’t filter so many requests? And that isn’t even getting into animals that use magic. What if they wanted to stop somebody from using a spell, could they do that?”
“That is two questions, but I will answer both of them. The answer is that they don’t react to each person individually, think of them like an array that activates when you have the right pass and opens a door. If you tried to use that door without the pass they would block you, but if you have the pass then they don’t even look your way and they keep on with their business. For the second question… we really don’t know. I am sure somebody here has spoken to a god, but I doubt they would be given that kind of answer.”
Harlan raised his hand.
“I can’t answer for the others but I don’t believe that the gods of dark, wind, or water mana would ever stop somebody. Each of them believe in the freedom of every being to make choices, to deny a spell wouldn’t make sense for them.”
He could tell from the look on his face that John would’ve rather not let Harlan say that.
He could tell from the stares of every other student that they wanted to know more, Harlan had expected this kind of reaction so he didn’t mind, if the academy was officially teaching that there are gods of Aarde then he hadn’t done anything he shouldn’t do.
“Please avoid bothering Sir Fomoria about the subject. We will be moving on to the spell crafting portion of the class now. Make whatever you want so long as it causes no harm to yourself or those around you. I will be here to judge everyone's efforts, but don’t think that making a certain number of spells will be the correct answer, simply put your all into whatever you are trying to make and I will know. Just don’t try to skate by without even trying.”
Harlan thought of what he could do that wasn’t harmful and was coming up blank.
He could make a little lightshow but he didn’t understand the refraction of water was what made mist act as a prism, so he threw that idea away, there really was only one subject that he had a truly in depth understanding of.
He focused as if he was trying to contact The Mother and formed an idea, then that idea faded in and out as he moved his hands and said whatever sounds he thought were right.
Slowly the bramble of runes was cleaved away until it became something that he could somewhat understand, he kept going, making the lines clearer, it shifted ever so slightly and Harlan knew that he was making it better.
Then Harlan was pulled out of his crafting by Adina telling him that it was time for class to end.
“I almost have it, I’ll be done in just a minute, go on ahead.”
He blanked out the rest of the world and went back to work.
It wasn’t perfect, he knew that somehow, but he cast the spell.
Ranged soulsight.
The classroom turned into a festival of colors as the souls of his classmates became visible to his sight.
Souls were… smaller than he thought.
When he looked at them with normal sight he had been focusing on them so heavily that he couldn’t really pay attention to anything else, so they filled his full sight.
In reality human souls were roughly the size of a pinecone.
The students started itching themselves and Harlan stopped the spell, he wasn’t sure if it was him, but the chances that it wasn’t his fault were pretty low.
John gave him a little talk that trickster spells like that are not acceptable, Harlan was just glad he didn’t explain what he actually made.