A humanoid (and I use that word lightly) was cowering on all fours with a chain around its neck. It looked like an approximation of a human made by someone who had never seen one. It had legs, arms, and a head, but the similarities end there. Its skin was bluish-grey, covered in black boils that protruded from its skin. The creature wasn’t symmetrical with its right arm much larger than its left though its right hand would have been comically oversized if it weren’t so revolting. Its legs were similarly different sizes, and every single one of its fingernails were jet black and enormous. The worst part was the face: The eyes were pail with almost white pupils almost like a body that’s drowned. They were also asymmetrical: not only was one eye twice the size of the other, but they were placed seemingly randomly at different positions on its face. It had no nose but a hole about two inches to the right of where a nose should have been, and it had a large gaping mouth that stretched from one side of its head to the other. It wore no clothes, but was not immodest as it had no genitalia I could make out. I averted my eyes from the monster and saw that Neil had done the same. I glanced over at Emma, and while she looked disturbed, she was still staring forward.
“LOOK AT IT!” Quinn bellowed in a harsh voice I hadn’t heard him use before. Neil and I looked back at the.. thing. “This is the enemy,” he continued more softly now. “It’s what’s called a goblin. Goblins are the result of human souls not passing on to heaven or hell.” That took me by surprise; I guess heaven is real too. “They are spirits but can take physical form for short periods of time; they are completely mindless, violent creatures that have no place in the mortal realm. This one killed two kids barely older than you with their entire lives ahead of them. What should we do with this creature?” Quinn asked.
I wasn’t sure if it was a rhetorical question, but judging by the way he was staring at us, I assumed it wasn’t.
“Send it ‘on’?” I suggested.
“Kill it,” Emma said harshly.
Quinn smiled and spoke, “Right you are Emma. You should feel no sympathy for this creature. Anything that made it human has long since faded away, and only savagery remains.” He then did something I don’t think any of us expected. A knife appeared in his hand; I had no idea where it came from. Maybe he summoned it from another place, or maybe he had it hidden in his suit. He held it up for everyone to see, and then his arm moved so fast it looked like a blur. I assumed he was going to slaughter the goblin in front of us, but instead the blade found the chain keeping the monster in place. The knife sliced through the chain as if it were butter. I could feel my heart beating in my head; was this maniacal lunatic going to get us killed to prove a point?
It took the goblin a few seconds to realize it was free, but when it did, it lunged forward 10 feet in a single bound leaping over the stage completely… and straight for Emma. Without thinking I pushed Emma to the ground putting my body on top of hers to avoid its pounce. The goblin hit the ground whirled back toward us and leapt again. Emma pulled away from me and kicked the monster right in the face; unfortunately, that stunned the creature for only a moment. It lifted its larger arm, and its black nails extended. It looked like it had 4 knives coming out of its fingers. Right before the arm was to slice into my skin, Neil attempted to tackle it to the ground. I say attempted because the goblin barely stumbled and with a minor movement of its arm Neil flew through the air landing on the stage. As the creature turned its head back to look at Emma and me, Quinn appeared behind it and with a brief flash another glowing rune, completely obliterated the thing’s head. I expected to be splashed with blood and guts, but instead, there was nothing left of the head at all. The body of the goblin fell to its knees and vanished like it were never there.
“Don’t look so surprised,” Quinn chuckled, “I told you it was a spirit. It has no mass, no substance unless it uses its power to create it. I believe I have chosen our trainees well,” Quinn said looking at the other spellswords who had not moved a muscle in our defense. I got the sense there was meaning in that last statement as if he had faced some internal resistance in the decision to train new members.
“The three of you will learn to act as one with Kaine as your mentor,” Quinn continued. That was news; I looked over at Kaine, and he looked just as surprised as I did. “Lessons will begin tomorrow. For now, you may explore the grounds and get to know one another. Your rooms are upstairs on the third floor. I’m afraid Dante and Neil will have to share a room, but Emma will have her own next door. Dinner will be served promptly at 6.”
The next few hours passed without incident, and Kaine reopened a portal and helped me move a three suitcases full of clothes and comic books to my new room. It looked like a military style barracks with dozens of bunk beds in it. Neil had placed his stuff on the far left lower bed, so I put my stuff on the far right lower bed.
“You didn’t know did you?” I asked Kaine.
“I had no idea, but I serve at the pleasure of the archmage,” he replied. He didn’t sound bitter precisely, but he clearly wasn’t pleased about his new occupation of teacher.
Later when I headed downstairs for dinner, Emma was lying in wait outside of the door to my room.
“I don’t know who you think you are, but I don’t need your protection,” she spat at me. Her green eyes were almost glowing, and I could see the hate in her face.
“My mistake. Next time I’ll let the monster fucking kill you,” I replied instantly regretting my choice in words.
“How about next time, I kill you?” she said brandishing a small pocket knife and holding it a few inches from my throat. I smiled. I couldn’t help it; I did warn you I’m an asshole.
“Go for it,” I said walking past her still smiling. Somehow, I thought this was a sign that she liked me, and hell, maybe it was. Downstairs, the auditorium had transformed into a cafeteria with tables and Quinn himself served everyone. Neil, Emma, and I ate at the same table in silence before going back upstairs. I tried to read a little before bed, but I mostly just stared at the pages. Around ten, Neil and I agreed to turn the lights off.
“Are you nervous?” he asked.
“Definitely,” I replied.
We spoke no more, but neither of us got much sleep.
At 6am, a bell incessantly rang… and rang, and rang. Neil and I gathered it was to summon us, so we got dressed, met up with Emma and went downstairs where Quinn was waiting for us. Today, he was wearing another suit, this one black and still lacked a tie. The other spellswords had left last night after dinner, so as far as we knew the entire compound was empty except the four of us and Kaine.
“As you probably know Dante, Kaine will not be awake for a while, but that doesn’t mean your training will wait. One of the most important parts of being in the Gnosilepides is physical fitness. You will find that moving quickly,” mid-sentence he simply vanished, “is very useful,” he finished his voice now coming from behind us. Emma whipped around and stood up, but Neil and I just turned our heads. Apparently, Emma was quite jumpy. “As such, you will start each morning here with a two mile jog.” Two miles?? That was farther than I had ever run in my life. “This distance will increase as your learn… tricks,” he said with a chuckle. “There is a track around the building already prepared which is exactly two miles long.”
The run was terrible. Neither Neil nor I were in particularly good shape; we ran the first maybe 500 feet and then alternated between walking and jogging the rest of the way. By the time we finished, Emma had completed two laps running the entire time.
“I have no idea why either of you were chosen. Do you have any idea what an honor it is to be the first students in 15 years?” she asked once we had finally got to the finish line.
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“Fuck off Emma,” I said dismissively.
“You already knew about magic didn’t you?” Neil inquired thoughtfully. That hadn’t occurred to me, but she didn’t seem as surprised by the goblin as we had.
“Maybe you’re not as stupid as you look,” Emma replied jogging back to the building. I would have followed her, but I didn’t have the energy; I just collapsed onto the ground.
“Come on, dude,” Neil said. “We better get back.”
We didn’t make it back to The Krymmeno proper until nearly 8. Emma was already in there; the auditorium had changed into a cafeteria again, and she was eating bacon and eggs. Neil and I got some food and sat together a table away from Emma. After we ate, Kaine was still nowhere to be seen. We waited another half an hour before I decided to put my head on the table and rest my eyes. After what seemed like thirty seconds, Neil jabbed me in the ribs. I jumped up and looked around. Kaine was coming down the stairs; a quick look at my phone told me it was 9:57.
“Sorry, were you guys waiting for me?” Kaine asked sleepily.
“Not too long, sir,” Neil said quickly.
“Over two hours,” Emma sneered coldly.
“I’m sorry to hear that. I guess we should get started. This will be the most important magical lesson of your life.” We all perked up at that even Emma. “The universe is built with energy, and there are rules this energy must follow,” Kaine said seriously. “Practitioners have been determining these rules for thousands of years, and it turns out that pouring pneuma, that is chi, life force, internal energy, chakra, mana, whatever you want to call it into certain symbols allows us to change the energy inside of us into a different type of energy. For instance.” Kaine lifted his hand, and an orange circle with symbols throughout it appeared in front of his hand, and a cylindrical jet of fire 3 feet in diameter shot out and struck the wall on the far end of the auditorium. I expected it to catch fire, but instead the runes on the stone glowed as they were struck, and the fire simply vanished.
“There are 5 basic types of energy: arcane energy, this is the purest form of energy. Before the universe came into its current form, all of the energy was arcane energy. Manipulating arcane energy directly is very powerful but also very difficult as it is very unstable. Arcane energy will suddenly change to different types unpredictably. The other four types are the four elements: fire, earth, air, and water; other elements can be created by mixing two or more of the base elements together. Supposedly, the world was created when the gods gathered a large amount of diffuse arcane energy and it spontaneously changed to elemental types and created the earth.”
Well, that was a lot of information.
“There are gods? Like real gods?” I asked. Emma snorted and looked at me with a wicked smile.
“Yes, there are real gods. At least, there are entities of great power which used to frequently interact with our world performing miracles and smiting people. For some unknown reason, they stopped intervening in our affairs about two thousand years ago, but we still have many records from Gnosilepides before that time bargaining with these creatures. Whether they are actual gods or not is immaterial; they are powerful creatures that live in realm we refer to as heaven – that is the place where ‘good’ souls go after death.”
“Who decides if souls are good?” This conversation was warping my entire view of the universe; how could Kaine not have told me all this. I always got the impression he was agnostic.
“Why, they do of course,” he said with a smile. “But, this isn’t a theology class, and we have work to do. As I was saying, every sentient being has a soul, and souls naturally produce large amounts of arcane energy which we call pneuma. You know of this power even if you weren’t consciously aware of it; anytime you feel great joy, that feeling that radiates out from your core that goes through your body is pneuma. When you get so angry you just want to destroy something, pneuma is the heat you feel spreading throughout you. For most people, this energy naturally dissipates into the surroundings, but you must be different. You must learn to command your pneuma; to send it where you want to. Not only can it be used to cast spells, it can also be used to enhance your body’s natural functions. For instance,”
Kaine calmly grabbed the table Neil and I were sitting it. This was a relatively large table: it could sit 10 people comfortably, and the benches we were sitting on were attached to the table. He lifted it with us sitting on it! With a single hand from the very edge; he wasn’t even struggling. Neil pushed off and fell onto the floor, but I held on tightly to the table as Kane lowered it back to the ground avoiding Neil.
“As you can see, by forcing pneuma into one’s muscles, one can drastically increase their strength. Speed works too,” he said as he traveled 10 feet in the blink of an eye. I had seen this a few times now, but it was still very impressive. I thought it was some type of teleportation trick, but apparently, it’s just super speed. “The same thing can be done with nerves increasing the rate at which the electrical signals fire. Both must be done in tandem for speed. It can also elevate how quickly one thinks: very important if one is fighting someone this fast. Our first and as I said, the most important lesson is to sense the pneuma inside of you and direct it with your will.”
The rest of the class consisted of us closing our eyes and trying to feel an invisible magic inside of us. After of few hours of absolutely no progress while Kaine did crossword puzzles, we ate sandwiches for lunch.
“Don’t be discouraged. This phase of training can often last a few days,” Kaine told us. “That’s not all we have in store for you today though; to transform your pneuma into different elements, to shape it into different objects, to open portals, or summon creatures from the In Between, you need sigils. After several millennia of study, we don’t have a full picture of the mechanisms behind magic, but this is what we believe. The rules the universe follows are transcribed into reality itself, and it’s written in a language of sigils. By using the sigils ourselves, we can bend those rules to our will. For instance, there is a symbol that means fire. If arcane energy is introduced to this symbol, fire is produced, and there are other symbols that can be added to control how the fire behaves. There are similar symbols for earth, water, and air, and by combining the symbols for various elements, new elements can be created. For instance, if the symbols for wind and water are combined in an appropriate way, the element of frost is achieved.” As Kaine said this, he pointed his left hand toward us with his palm out, and a light-blue sigil appeared in front of his hand, and a cold wind emanated forth hitting all of us.
“Some practitioners use wands or staves with various sigils carved into them, but this isn’t a very good answer. There are hundreds of spells one might want to cast on a frequent basis, even slight variations of the same spell require different symbols. For instance,” Kaine gestured with his hand, a brown rule appearing over his hand, and a small pebble dislodged itself from the stone floor and floated three feet over the ground. “This requires a different sigil than this.” The pebble fell to the ground as the sigil disappeared only for another with more intricate symbols appeared as a giant boulder dislodged itself from the stone floor and floated at the same height as the pebble. Kaine then waved his hand and yet another sigil appeared as the boulder fit itself back into the ground and fused back into it. There were no cracks or anything left; it was as if it had never happened.
“The Gnosilepides’ solution to this problem is to use another sigil.” Kaine began to remove his gloves revealing the pentagram tattoos on his palms showing them outstretched. “You all know this symbol is called a pentagram; it has been the symbol for the Gnosilepides for thousands of years. In fact it became a symbol for all witchcraft; the reason why is it is the sigil for creating illusions. With this symbol tattooed on you, you will be able to create illusions which display any other sigil you can perfectly imagine. Because of this, it is very, very important that you memorize every single aspect of dozens and dozens of sigils. We will start with the most basic ones: the ones for fire, water, air, and earth. You will spend the next few hours drawing them over and over and over again making sure to capture every single detail.”
After a few mind-numbing hours of drawing the same four symbols repeatedly, it was time for our last task of the day: martial arts training. Apparently the Gnosilepides have their own constantly evolving form of martial arts which is a combination of dozens of different styles.
“For the first few months,” Kaine started, “You will learn hand-to-hand combat, but we will eventually move on to weapons. Each of you will choose a weapon that will be your weapon; I’ll show you how to enchant it to match your personal style. As the name suggests, most spellswords choose swords, but some use maces, daggers, whips, or even bows. Before you choose though, you must become proficient both using and defending against a wide variety of weapons.”
We learned some basic forms, how to properly punch someone without breaking a wrist, and then we sparred. I guess Emma had some pent-up aggression to take out because she punched me right in the face and nearly broke my nose; dinner was served right as the class ended, and then Neil and I went to bed and passed out without saying more than four words to each other.
This is exactly how every day went at magic boot-camp for the first few weeks: we ran, we meditated to control our pneuma, we studied runes, and we learned to fight. Emma was able to sense her pneuma on day 3, but it took Neil and I until day 6. Yes, day 6. We did not have weekends off.
As the weeks passed, we learned to direct our pneuma into our muscles and nerves; you might think that would make the training easier, but as we got better and better, we had to run farther and farther and spar faster and faster. Eventually, we were all able to cast spells, first using wands and later by projecting images of the runes using our new pentagram tattoos on our hands.