A week passed, Sepul was back to normal but many of Harlan’s classes were delayed because in that week some number of things that normally Sepul handled like massive outpouring of beasts out of seemingly nowhere now needed several teachers.
He also handled quite a bit of the rapid deployment, so instead of showing up an hour after getting a report, the teams took several to reach their targets, leading to more clean up time afterwards.
Today would be the first day when the teachers were all back.
He started his day with breakfast, then he moved on to Advanced elements, the teacher was… John, again.
Harlan had to question having the same teacher for several classes at once, apparently after spell crafting
John moved onto teaching engineering.
“Hello everyone! I am glad to be here instead of in the maw of some massive slime. Now, advanced elements. I am going to be speeding through some of this because we have some catching up to do.”
He showed the blackboard was covered in diagrams showing exactly what combination of elements made what advanced element.
“Running through quickly, lightning is half fire, half light, correct? No, it can make lighting but to make true lightning you need 40% fire, 40% light, and the last 20% should be air. This is one of the most common ways that we hide how to be a good mage. Magic is inherently dangerous, people who can toss around lightning bolts are dangerous. So we publicly let out the weaker forms of spells to teach people in the wrong way to do it and keep the real ways here for the academy. Now, everyone will start by forming a ball of the element I call out, look at the ratios listed here, and, assuming you have passing control, you will be able to form the element. You will be graded based on how many of these you can complete, but don’t worry about it if you can’t complete them all, you would need a great deal of mana control if you wanted to get all of these. We will be getting more into the quirks of each element as it comes up in the later classes, as well as some of the history around each of these elements.”
Harlan had fun, he passed the first class with flying colors, he had been playing around with mana for a long time, some of the other students who relied more heavily on structured spells lacked the control required for even manipulating acid, which was actually fully water, but with aspects of the water mana shifted around to change it.
His next class was spell crafting, there wasn’t much he could say about it, the class was trying to make spells and when they failed asking for advice, when they really failed the teacher could dispel them.
Harlan tried to learn how they did it but he couldn’t understand, it seemed like they just blasted a wave of mana across the spell and it fell apart, but his experiments with Lugh were like trying to blow out a storm lantern.
Next was Divinations, apparently it was taught by the short white haired woman that Harlan ran into on the first day.
She was an experienced search and rescue worker who could find and heal anything with a pulse, according to herself at least.
The class was small, just 60 people, mostly they were false undead, the only beastkin were birds, Maetus and Tytoans often worked search and rescue, their natural flight giving them a wing up on their competitors.
“I am Hellon, I will be your teacher for divination. As is normal, how many of you have tried to cast a divination before?”
Harlan was part of only a handful of students who hadn’t.
“Alright, you three, why are you here if you’ve never even tried? Why are you wasting my time when you lack initiative?”
Harlan was the first to answer.
“I believe divination will help me to vastly improve my golems ability to detect threats. I don’t know where to start and the books in the library seem to be written under the assumption that I already know how it is done.”
The other two, also from Ragne, gave a halfhearted answer about needing another class to try out and it seemed useful for when they lose things.
“If you two haven’t given up by the end of the year I will have failed the rest of the class, if you want to learn from me you need to have a passion for saving lives, if you came here just to find your favorite shoes after you fail to put them away then you should just leave.”
Harlan couldn’t understand what got her so fired up and angry already, but he figured it was better than not caring enough about the class.
“For starters we will be looking for non-specific items, wood is the first thing for you to find, your desk is wood, so cast this spell.”
She spoke words and moved her hands, she had done this spell tens if not hundreds of thousands of times, there was not an ounce of wasted energy, not a hair's breadth of out of place movement.
“This spell will find other things like what you cast it on.The range is limited and it isn’t a specific spell, but for starters this is how you will learn.”
Everyone cast the spell and touched their desk, in varying ways they saw the spell activate.
For Harlan it was like a wave of heat left the desk and the others around him were covered with sparkling dust that he could see even when he put his hands over his eyes, the more he focused on finding the wood the brighter the dust became.
He wasn’t sure how long his range was, but it reached past the class and into the next one, which he was pretty sure was longer range than it looked because everything here seemed to be distorted in large and small ways.
“I assume you can all see each desk around you at least? I expect at least a range of 6 feet for your first casting.”
Everyone nodded their heads.
“You, tell me what you can see.”
“It is like a pillar of light shot up and then landed on what I was looking for.”
Another student disagreed.
“What? No, the spell is a spreading fog that sticks on the objects you are looking for.”
Before anyone else could disagree Hellon spoke up.
“Divination is a mental magic.”
Harlan was at least 90% sure that was wrong, but he already got a talking too about not telling students about more advanced piece of magic before they were supposed to learn them, like darkness being time magic, apparently a lot of students ended up hurting themselves by speeding up their movement without speeding up their perception to the same degree, causing them to overshoot even a simply step.
“Everyone sees their spells differently because that is simply how the mind processes the output of the spell. For me it is an invisible wave that when it finds its target it makes a trail of flame to them. Now that you have the most basic form of the spell down, you can start on a little scavenger hunt. This can be completed during your free periods, or it can be done over the course of the next few days. But when you return to me, you must have everything on this list in your hands. Each of you will find a paper has been delivered to your room, each item will be harder to find than the next. In total there are 12 items to find and each location has enough of the item in question for each of you to have one. If you take more than one, I will fail you. You can work as a team if you want, or you can go at it alone, but you cannot bargain for information about where the next item is. I am teaching you to find things to help people, not to gain favors.”
For the time they had left in the class Hellon berated those who couldn’t follow her every command to find other items she had hidden throughout the room.
Harlan wondered how she was allowed to teach children at all.
During his first of only two free periods he went back to his room to find that the list had been delivered.
It was a single piece of paper that was enchanted to show the next object when he pressed it against the list.
First was to find another piece of paper like this, it was simple enough, he just kept pulsing until he found another person who also had this as their free period and was looking for.
She was a Golden and thanked him for his help but her name slipped his mind after she said it.
Next on the list was a flower, the image was in full color and had a description of the flower itself.
He tried pulsing the page again but he knew it wouldn’t be so easy.
However he actually already knew exactly where to find the flower, on one of his night runs he happened upon a bed of flowers tucked away behind the staff building.
Hellon didn’t actually teach them how to cast a spell to find what he envisioned in his mind, it took him just a few minutes to clear his mind and make the spell he needed.
He double checked it against the flowers and then tapped the page to them.
Next was a marble, he found a vase full of them in the medical wing healing classroom behind Hellon’s desk.
Unfortunately he had taken nearly the worst possible route and it was the last place he looked.
It was nearly time to eat so he went to meet up with everyone else, he figured he should ask them what their free periods were, just in case they wanted to hang out with him as he wandered around looking for things.
He felt pretty good about already having 3 items checked off the list.
They all spoke of their classes, Adina would be with him in healing and she was really looking forward to it.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
The twins didn’t like that they had to split up because Claude chose arrays while Claudia chose warding.
Zella said she wasn’t supposed to talk about her classes with them since they were first years, but she could talk about them in general terms.
What teachers she liked, other classmates having funny failings, something to keep the mood light.
Unfortunately the only free period any of them shared with Harlan on that day was Claude before lunch and then Claudia before dinner.
Harlan thought it was kinda funny how that worked out, Claudia didn’t.
“So, do you want to tag along as I look for things for my divination class? I can’t promise it will be exciting but I’ve never had a chat with you away from your brother. I just kinda know you both, but I don’t know you both, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t” “I haven’t a clue what you mean.”
“Well, I know you two as a pair, but I don’t know you too much as separate people. I hope I’m not offending you by saying that.”
“None taken.” “We haven’t known each other very long anyway.”
They shared a look with one another and then Claudia answered.
“I would be willing to let you help me with our class.”
Adina nearly voiced her displeasure, but decided against it, Claudia still spoke to Harlan as if he was a danger to her, which was far from the truth, the moment he decided that they were friends he became willing to put up with her petty cutting down of everyone around her.
They finished their meal in silence, just enjoying the roasted chicken and vegetables for what it was.
Harlan made his way to his next class hand in hand with Adina, he was pretty sure that she didn’t need him to guide her anymore, but he didn’t mind.
No one bumped into either of them, but he could tell they were getting side eyed for holding hands, by the end of the week there would be rumors about them, then it would extend to any of the girls he was friends with.
He had already been there once before when on his scavenger hunt so they were the first to arrive at the class.
“Don’t show affection like that in my classroom, I am not teaching you pregnancy prevention magic for another 2 years.”
Adina went red and made her way to her seat, Harlan just ignored her, his hope was that like when he first met with Breken, it was just her testing his temperament.
He was impressed by the sheer volume and speed of her insults as every student filtered in.
It was larger than divination at 130 students, healing was always one of the most popular classes.
“First things first, each of you will heal a small cut on my hand, I will filter you into painful and painless, it is an innate trait of the healer. It will make a difference in if and how many numbing spells you will need to know but you aren’t a worse healer just because you can’t naturally do it painlessly.”
She pulled a scalpel from her robe and sliced the tip of her finger with it, Harlan sat in the front row in the middle, making him 6th in line.
She didn’t make any sound as he healed her, but he could feel that she was upset, he figured it made sense that he was a painful healer.
After she was done she summoned pins on each desk.
“All of you are being given a white rose pin, this is the lowest level of healer, it gives you absolutely no authority to heal anyone, but it will show others that you are a healer. This can either lead to bullying as they think you are weak, or you'll make more friends. Pins with thorns on the stem means you are a painful healer, those with bare stems are painless healers.”
It was barely bigger than his pinkie, but he had no thorns, it didn’t mean much, but he was ecstatic about it, Harlan and Lugh laughed and smiled over their connection.
He looked over to see that Adina had thorns, she didn’t show it, but she wasn’t happy to learn it.
They didn’t cast a single spell the entire class, she even said that they would start casting spells next week, for now they were learning anatomy.
Adina had something she wanted to say, but didn’t, leading to an awkward silence as they walked together until they had to split off from one another due to different classes.
Harlan walked into the warmagic class to find Sepul was there, floating and looking menacing as always.
Before the class started they made small talk, Sepul was glad to see that he was thornless, he even showed Harlan his blue rose pin, denoting him as the highest level of healer.
The class itself was all about casting large magics, but more importantly, it was about casting them without instantly burning out.
By the end of the class Harlan cast a single large fireball, known as nova orb.
He was glad that Sepul had moved them to a mountain range because when it burst it sent a wave of heat that reached the full 300 feet up the cliff.
It was impressive, however Harlan failed the test because he could barely stand after launching it.
Sepul told him that a good warmage should be able to launch a dozen of those, or a dozen of them multicast with other warmages.
He was given advice about where he might’ve gone wrong, Sepul asked him to draw out the runes he used in the spell and then Sepul corrected the mistakes.
Harlan hadn’t actually seen anyone do anything like that before, the ink shifted on the paper to make subtle changes.
The paper burst into flame shortly after he picked it up to look at it.
“Oh, right. Don’t write spells like that on paper, the runes will draw in power ambiently as long as the design isn’t intentionally flawed to have an outlet. Don’t write down spells at all honestly, unless it is truly the most harmless and mundane things, scrolls of magic are generally looked down upon as a way to let any idiot cast something far beyond their level.”
“What does that make my soulsmithed items?”
“Right now they at least have some safeties, anyone could, in theory, perfectly copy a spellform, then pour mana into it to cast the spell itself without understanding it. It loses a great deal of effectiveness and efficiency but they are still a danger, they could carry one in a boot and then cast the spell, destroying the paper, normally it would be alchemically treated by the way, and then there is no evidence left of the crime.
Meanwhile all soulsmithed items are tracked in ways I can’t get into, but if the it was made through official channels then at some point it gets marked so it can be found.”
Harlan thanked him for his advice before leaving, he hadn’t even really thought about spell scrolls, he had seen Redwall use one years ago to make sure he wasn’t Harlow’s son, but he hadn’t seen one since then.
He also thought it was strange that the way he talked about it was almost like he was trying to get Harlan to make them.
Next class was flight, the teacher was… Sepul, again.
He spoke of what was the basis for all flight spells along with what was the different forms it could take, one man he knew had a spell specifically for when he went through towns or forests, dozens of hands grabbed around and pulled him to places, giving him offense and defense unlike anyone else in that environment.
The biggest reason to take the class in the first place was to be taught hover, it was something that anyone could make, but to make one that worked well was a secret that The Confederacy had traded to the academy for the sake of letting them join.
Sepul remarked that the difference between the old and the new hover was the difference between traveling 10 miles and 100 miles.
As it turned out, Harlan was not meant for flight, for the first class Sepul cast hover on the students and then told them to jump around the gym until they were used to the feeling of weightlessness.
Harlan was one of the children who lost their lunch after he went spinning, his panicked attempts to correct himself only making it worse.
Sepul seemed to be having a fun time though, he flew around and corrected the children who needed correction.
Harlan got the simple advice to not think so much about it, let the air guide him.
Instead he went with trying to make hard air hand and foot holds, the only issue was finding them.
He thought he had good control, but it turned out that hard air formed slowly and it didn’t form exactly where he wanted it to, wind was freedom and didn’t like being made solid and constrained.
Sepul stopped him before he seriously hurt himself.
“Moving around with invisible footholds is a recipe for disaster. Try hardlight instead.”
Sepul just laughed after that, Harlan was nowhere near good enough to be tossing out hardlight, he still tried it though.
The alarm spell Sepul set up went off and he started getting the students down before hover wore off.
Harlan waved goodbye again and was off to telekinesis.
He was prepared to see Sepul be the teacher again, instead it was some kind of hunchbacked armored rat looking person, he wondered if this was one of them that he met on his first day.
His desk was on a raised platform since he stood only 4 and a half feet tall on account of the back.
“Ah, h-hello, I am Tenik, I will be teaching you telekinesis. How many of you have experience with it?”
Very few hands were up.
Harlan noticed that most of the students were from Ragne, the beastkin who needed to use it in everyday life learned it growing up.
“Very well. You, um…” He looked down to a class chart until he found Harlan.
“Fomoria, can you showcase your current ability?”
“I am not very good at it but I will do my best.”
On the desk were weights divided by 5s up to 50 pounds, Harlan could lift the 15, but it was shaking quite a lot and the strain was clear on his face.
“Very good, how long have you been training?”
“About a month now.”
He could tell that the small whatever he was called was just being nice, but Harlan knew he wasn’t very impressive.
“Well, here we can see that talent isn’t the determining factor, sometimes you just need to keep at it until you grow yourself.” Harlan couldn’t blame him, he didn’t seem to realize how it sounded until after he said it.
“Moving on. I will now start the process of you finding your aura. You will feel some discomfort, I will be poking you with my telekinesis, you should try to react to it as naturally as you can.”
Harlan felt the claws on the palm of his hand, then he felt like something popped. He tried lifting Lugh with his telekinesis and it just worked.
He would need to ask the teacher about what he did.
The rest of the class was the students lifting weights, Harlan nearly sent another student to the infirmary more than once, whatever Tanik did opened up his telekinetic power to far more than double what he could do before and he he wasn’t used to it yet.
Tanik explained that the aura is more like a muscle than a magic, it reacts to what it needs to do, it can only grow if you grow it, but it won’t get weaker even if they stop using it.
When class ended Harlan approached the small man, eliciting a fearful and apologetic reaction.
“Oh I am quite sorry about my words, I hope I cause no offense.”
“No worries. I just wanted to know what you did? When you clawed at me it was like tearing off a covering I didn’t realize I had.”
Once he realized what Harlan actually wanted he stood straighter and spoke more clearly.
“If you don’t mind my asking, who helped you find your aura?”
“My sister.”
“Ah, well, she should’ve worked with you more then, or perhaps she is just ignorant, but you were left with everything trying to force its way through only a small spot. This is why I always double check my students.”
“Thank you, I thought I was doing it all wrong, my brothers could do it much better than I could. And, if you don’t mind my asking, what are you? I’ve not read about any beastkin that matches you.”
“I am an Armaus, we aren’t very common anymore, the war hit our people very hard, so we prefer to stay out of the public eye.”
Harlan waved goodbye to the somewhat awkward and accidentally rude man.
It was more awkward when they kept walking in the same direction in silence, neither wanting to start a conversation that would be cut short by them splitting up.
In the end Tanik was heading to the classroom right next to magical creatures, they both laughed at the coincidence.