POV Aron Brightcloud
I walked through the door into the classroom. There were too few arcane mages in the academy. Because of that, the students of both years were combined. Depending on the presented topic, more second or first-year students attended.
As a welcome gesture, all the students had joined today. I knew from the memory stone that year one had four general classes. In 1A, 1B and 1D were two arcane mages. Thanks to my bad luck, I had to hold the fort as the sole arcane mage in 1C. With another ten people from the second year, we were nineteen students all together. Scanning the classroom, I realized most were already seated.
The chamber itself encompassed a space of sixty square feet. That amounted to three times the size of the previous classroom. The students didn’t need to pay attention to where they sat. They hung together in clusters or alone, chilling in the chairs, waiting for the teacher to arrive.
Classy wooden furniture and clean marble walls gave a noble feeling to the room. I seated myself at the back. I preferred the overview the position gave me. With my enhanced perception, hearing and reading problems were a thing of the past.
Some of my peers mustered me when I came closer but soon lost interest. All of them had their own problems. For now, I had planned to take a look and see approach. I wanted to first get used to the new place and get a read on people before initiating a conversation.
Finished with arranging my pen and paper, I was in time to observe an elderly teacher entering the room. Thanks to the memory stone I knew his name, teacher Mangrove. There had to be a story there. People with names like this normally had a bloodline of wood elementallists. That he wasn’t told a story of its own.
“Good afternoon, new novices! I am happy to welcome you to our noble group of arcane mages!” He was full of drive and differently to the other elemental mages, seemed to have a different understanding of the value arcane magic possessed.
“You might think that you have picked the short straw when you awoke to our precious element. Yet that is a misconception! Soon you will understand the myriad of possibilities and combination only arcane magic has!”
A theoretician, great…
Well, I would see what part of his teachings I could use in actual life and what not.
“You will find out that arcane magic may not have the strengths of the other elements, but also not their weaknesses. You will realize it has to be used in different ways than the others. Don’t see it as a problem, no, this is a chance for you to lift yourself above the mediocre magicians!”
The more he spoke, the more fanatic he got. At the end he had to curb himself.
“But enough for now. As you know, our illustrious circle of arcane mages entail only the people you see here. Apart from the tower-master, everyone has arrived. She had to take care of important tasks and couldn’t make it. She should arrive back in some months. I for myself am teacher Mangrove. As I said before, welcome to the arcane tower.”
I liked him. He seemed slightly scatterbrained yet cared about the students and earnestly loved his element.
“For today each one of the second years will sit together with one of the first years and teach him or her something they found especially useful when they started here. This will break the ice and bring you closer together. I will observe and help where needed. Afterwards I will give an introductory lesson about arcane magic.”
Following his words, the second years stood up and chose a newcomer.
I got chosen by a lean young man with black hair. He seated himself next to me. “Hi, I am Lucas. Nice to meet you.” Him not revealing a last name instantly clued me in on his mundane birth. That was okay, I only hoped he wouldn’t behave too respectfully.
“Hi, I am Aron Brightcloud. Nice to meet you as well.”
His face showed a quick look of recognition when he heard the name. I really had become famous after my stunt with my light core.
“You are the one who lost his element, right?” He instantly questioned, before realizing how rude that was. As soon as he said it he wanted to apologize. I raised my hand, letting him know I didn’t feel hurt at his instant remark.
“Yes, I am the one and only. As you undoubtedly have heard from others, I had too little self-control and willpower to control it. Because of that, I am now only left with my arcane element.”
I let some good mannered sarcasms flow into my voice. His reaction would give me an indication of how much he believed the rumors.
“I see there seems to be a different reason for your loss. Thanks for not taking it the wrong way. In that case, let’s dive right in. When I started last year, the first thing that really opened my eyes to arcane magic is its adaptability.”
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He didn’t seem like one of the lads that believed rumors with no explanation or facts. He behaved better than most of the people I had met before.
Lucas opened his left hand and a sphere of pure arcane magic appeared, its appearance a turquoise see-through ball of energy.
He pushed it towards me. It slowly floated over. When the orb touched my body, it pushed me away. There was no solid feel to the clumped mass of energy. I felt like we were two negative poles of a lodestone. The push slowly began when I touched the outside of the sphere and got stronger the more I pushed into its core.
Then it suddenly vanished. I intended to speak when a force affected my body, pushing me back. The sphere hadn’t dissolved, it had become invisible!
“Due to its changing nature you can make it see-through. But keep in mind, keeping it hidden will force you to either invest more of your mind to control it or use very little to have better control in the first place. In truth, I can only do this with this orb of mana or similar spells. I will show you another one in a second. A real focused spell with a complex matrix behind it is much harder to pull off. This includes all the elemental spells you are learning in general classes.”
I felt the power vanish. He smiled at me. Suddenly my pen moved and flew into the air, positioning itself between us.
“It is also the only element that accurately controls other objects. Wind can influence, but it can’t control them like arcane magic does. That said, you will have to use exponentially more power the bigger and heavier an object is. So get rid of the thought of throwing humans around. That ain’t possible as long as you haven’t breached Tier 3. On the bright side, it is easier to force the threads to stay invisible. They are not condensed.”
The pen moved. It behaved more like a sword than a pen. Imitating an enemy warrior.
This was going to be immensely useful.
“Enough demonstration, it is time to practice. Conjure an orb of arcane mana and force it to become invisible. The turquoise light is in reality energy that you fail to completely control. Work on it to gain control and make it invisible.”
I followed his instruction and conjured one on top of my hand. I focused my mind on it, at first simply trying to feel the leaking energy. There! I put my willpower to use and forced it back into the sphere. I accomplished it with a lot of effort and stopped halfway.
The power tried to wiggle its way out of my grip, but I held firm. The orb had gotten much paler. I could have made it see trough, but didn’t want to show my high manipulation skills. I put the task on my practice list. This would be en elementary and very useful skill in my future arsenal. I needed to be able to keep my magic hidden from view. The difficulty would change the more energy I used.
“Great, most need longer to induce a change in visibility. Practice it and you will get better. I needed my whole first year before I succeeded in making the weakest arcane arrow invisible. I couldn’t even kill a mouse, but enough of it. Change the orb to a tentacle and grab the pen on the table. It doesn’t have to be see-through like mine.”
I tried and failed. Not because of my control over the tentacle, but due to the energy I needed from my body. To build a tentacle, I had to supply a steady stream of energy through my pathways. In there lay the problem. Supplying a steady stream was much harder for me than for the average mage. The energy tended to seep into the wrong pathways instead of following the correct ones. This was no problem for short spells like an arrow, but a tentacle broke quickly apart due to insufficient or erratic energy supply.
“Interesting, the common mage’s difficulty is the other way around. They have more problems with control, but less with simple spell-weaving. Use your free time to practice, you will manage it.”
I nodded, no need to tell him about my problems.
Before we could continue teacher Mangrove’s voice cut in.
“Good, that’s enough for now. Use the free time to connect with each other. We are a tight-knit group, help each other out and you will improve faster. I expect all of you to work together, the other towers like to make fun of us, but as long as we stand united we will prevail.
Let’s proceed with the introductory lesson. As you know, all the elemental energies have a certain attribute, fire elemental energy, for example is energy connected with the fire-essence. Water, energy with water-essence and so on. Arcane is the only one that is not connected with anything. That’s the general perception at least. But think about it. Why does arcane magic push someone away? Energy as such wouldn’t do that. That is the main reason why it is called arcane. Arcane means mystery in its purest form. We don’t know the origin and its exact composition.
Instead, we could say arcane magic has the greatest potential, as we have yet to reveal it. The general masses don’t like that theory. It makes them weaker. Because of that, they use every opportunity to besmirch our great element.”
Listening to his words it made for an interesting view. I didn’t know if I should believe it, but it opened possibilities for improvement. I liked that. I would need all the power I could get to survive my hitchhiker and family problems.
I learned a lot during the next hours. The sun had already set when we made our way out of the class-room.
“Lucas, thanks again for the help. I appreciate it.” He had stayed next to my seat during the entire afternoon and had given additional information and explanations to theories teacher Mangrove had presented.
“No problem. You know, as Mangrove has said, we need to stick together.”
We bid farewell, and I returned to my room. Seems like I wouldn’t be completely ousted at least. There might be additional reasons why he behaved this friendly, but as long as I didn’t divulge my secrets, he wouldn’t be able to hurt me seriously if matters turned to worse.
‘Little brother, how did your practice go?’
‘Great, boss! I tested my stealth ability against all the second years, nobody caught me. Teacher Mangrove seemed to feel something when I went too close. I didn’t want to tip him off and kept my distance.’
‘Very good, we can work with that. After we have returned to my room fly back to the classroom. I want to narrow down our communication range.’
‘Sure, won’t be a problem. I am awesome!’
I had to grin, my partner had such a positive attitude. I still couldn’t separate the boasting from the actual truth. But that was okay, I liked him better happy and boasting than sad and accurate. I would take care of the accuracy.