I had an uneventful night. I had been worried as I closed my eyes but unable to fight off the drowsiness, I'd eventually fallen asleep—resigning myself to the inevitable—however, what I’d been afraid of never happened, for the first time in days I’d had a good night’s rest.
I made my way to the training ground, my steps noticeably merry, I was practically bouncing.
“Did something good happen?” Aurel, who beat me to the training ground, asked as soon as he saw me.
“Why do you ask?” I asked back instead of answering.
“I was watching you, you practically skipped all the way here like a child who was given sweets, not to mention that goofy smile on your face,” Aurel said as he walked towards me.
“Oh, I didn’t know I was smiling,” I said, “I didn’t have any dreams last night,” I whispered to Aurel when he got close enough to me and started giggling. Aurel looked taken aback by my behavior, but I simply ignored him and carried on.
Since the rain festival wasn’t too far away now, we weren’t going to meet for training again for a few days at least, so I didn’t want training to run long today. I organized the recruits as I had an announcement to make to them, although what I wanted to say to them didn’t need saying, it was proper procedure to always announce these things.
“As you all are aware, the rain festival will be starting soon, there hasn’t been any news from the astrologers yet, but I estimate the skies will be pierced by the first rainfall in about three days,” I began to speak once the recruits were all standing in rows in front of me, “so until the first rainfall, this will be our last training session; you all are to take this break to prepare your offerings to the gods. However, do not neglect your training, move your bodies and continue to practice your mana channeling, it is very likely that your weapons will be ready by the time we meet again.”
The last bit caused a stir in the crowd, murmurs broke out as excitement took over the recruits, I could pick out people wondering what it was their weapons would be able to do. I looked at Aurel to signal him to continue from where I left off, even though we hadn’t coordinated with each other before I made the announcement, I expected him to be able to complete what I’d started.
“Since most of you have learned mana channeling, when we meet again we’ll move on to visualization and mental focus. I told the little de—Minerva not to come today, as today you'll only be sparring with each other again, after all, we are warriors, not mages, you all must still sharpen your fighting techniques. This time won’t be a random selection, I shall assign your sparring partners,” Aurel said to the recruits.
From the pairings he made it was evident that he'd been closely watching the recruits' sparring sessions and had a significant understanding of their fighting style. He chose the most difficult opponent for each recruit to spar against; I was very impressed.
The spar dragged on, but eventually, our sparring session came to an end, with the results not surprising. Most of the male recruits headed straight to the lake to wash the sweat from their bodies, so did Aurel, I chose instead to head straight to the library. The sky was cloudy, cold winds blowing, and since Aurel didn’t ask me to spar I didn’t work up a sweat—but most of all, I was very eager to continue what I’d started with my sister the previous day, so I chose to forego washing myself.
I found my sister and Aoirsha sitting at the same place we sat the previous day, even though the library was mostly empty, with everyone busy preparing for the rain festival very few people visited the library, my sister still chose to sit in the same place. She was a creature of habit, once she settled into a routine she rarely ever broke it. I smiled as I thought to myself what would happen if she'd found others occupying that seat—“You’re sitting in my spot,” she probably would've said.
“What took you so long?” she asked as I sat beside her.
“Training took longer than expected,” I said to her, then I faced Aoirsha who seemed preoccupied scribbling something in the small book in front of her, “hello Aoirsha,” I said to her.
“Hello,” was her short reply, glancing up to look at me as she spoke then focusing back on her scribbling.
Out of curiosity, I asked my sister, “How did she do with her task yesterday?”
My sister looked at me with a curious look on her face, I wondered what was going through her head, but it was hard for me to guess what the expression on her face meant so I simply ignored it. That expression didn’t last long, and it was soon replaced with a silly grin, before she spoke I knew immediately the next words that would come out of her mouth were going to be idiotic.
“You're very oddly interested in Aoirsha,” she said, craning her neck and moving closer to me, observing my face from up close.
I pushed her face away as it was getting uncomfortable, and a little annoying having her face so close to mine.
“I only asked a simple question, Minerva, must you make everything more dramatic than it needs to be?”
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“Well… it's just odd, you're not the type that takes interest in the life of others,” my sister said as she finally relented and sat up properly again.
I resented her words, they stung a little. She made it sound like I was a selfish person that couldn’t care less for those around him, I wasn’t, and I resented her for insinuating that I was.
“What do you mean I don’t take an interest in the life of others?” I asked back, my displeasure evident from the way I sounded.
“Our dear Aoirsha still has a ways to go. She knows the basic symbols that make a rune by heart now, but creating runes herself is still too big a task; she failed spectacularly.”
I glanced at Aoirsha after hearing my sister's words, and her cheeks were red with embarrassment. She was making an effort to not look up, I could tell because even though she looked to be concentrating on her writing, she was only scribbling lines, she wasn’t writing anything.
“You know what they say, failure of the student is a failure of the tutor,” I said.
My reply evoked peals of laughter from my sister, she then said to Aoirsha, “You hear that? Silas is saying it isn’t that you're a bad student, the problem is that I'm a bad teacher.”
“Stop fooling around, let's get started,” I said as I grabbed the grimoire on the table and dragged it over to us, I flipped the pages until I was on the page we stopped last night and we continued from there.
Before sunset we had finished reading, but we still couldn’t figure out the system for when to choose which conjugating phrase.
“Whatever, we'll just have to experiment,” my sister said, and I agreed. By process of elimination, we would naturally come to know which phrases worked best for which runes.
“OK, how about we write some runes and show them to father, you can present the runes and explain what we've learned to him,” I said.
“Do you have a rune in mind you'd like to try?” my sister asked me, her excitement so blatantly exposed on her face.
“No, but we can think of some to try, I’ll write some, you do the same,” I said to my sister, then I turned to Aoirsha and said, “can I see some of the runes you wrote yesterday?”
Aoirsha looked very confused, she looked from me to my sister then back to me again, “Why?” she asked.
“I simply want to use them as a reference, even though both me Minerva and I understand runes a lot more than you do, we aren’t as creative, and to make new runes a creative mind is needed,” I said to Aoirsha.
“Hmph! Speak for yourself Silas, I have no problem creating new magic,” my sister, displeased by what I’d said to Aoirsha, replied.
“You think so? Alright then, go ahead, make some new runes,” I said to my sister, feeling certain she would fail at the task.
For mages like her who knew magic like the back of her hand, coming up with new magic was very difficult. Once a mage understood the principles of magic well, they become very accustomed to its limitations too, this prevents them from pushing the boundaries as amateurs would. Knowing what magic cannot do is what makes one an expert mage, but knowing what magic cannot do is also what prevents experts from trying new things.
Father was special because even though he was an expert he still tried to create new spells, of course, since he was a contract mage, creating new spells was significantly easier; with runic magic, the difficulty increased substantially.
I waited a little for my sister to start, but after some time had passed it didn’t look like she was getting anywhere, so I ignored her and asked for Aoirsha’s book, the one she'd written her runes in. Aoirsha was very reluctant to show them to me, but after assuring her multiple times that I wouldn’t laugh at her, she finally gave me her book. Looking through the runes she attempted to write, I was convinced that asking to show them to me was the right thing.
None of the runes she wrote down would work the way she wrote them, even though they were simple runes, it was clear to see that though she knew the basic symbols individually, she didn’t know how to combine them to make commands. That notwithstanding, she still was very ambitious in the types of runic magic she tried making, she had a lot of very good ideas. After examining what she'd written, I got ideas myself, so I took the book in front of my sister and started to write.
Since the runes I wrote would most likely be engraved on a weapon, I thought of making battle-oriented runic magic. In the stack of commands, the first command was one for self-healing, imagining a warrior able to heal themselves in battle caused my heart to beat faster with excitement. One of the reasons the Lycans were such difficult opponents was their incredible healing ability, this magic would close that gap between our warriors and the Lycans I thought.
The next command was flame magic imbued with a curse, I made this with the goal of slowing down the healing of the Lycans. The theory behind it was if a weapon imbued with the magic had the magic activated at the time it was used to cut or pierce an opponent, some of the flames of the blade would be transferred onto the wound and the fire would continue to burn until the opponent was consumed by the flames. For the Lycans with their incredible healing ability, this magic at best would only keep the wounds from closing, as the flames would prevent their healing ability from working, however since they healed quickly, the flames wouldn’t be able to spread and consume them.
I wanted to add a third command, but the two commands had many lines of runes with different functions, it was significantly complex already. The flame magic was the simplest command, and even that had up to seven components, from the gathering of mana, movement of particles to gather energy, ignition, and then placing the curse, it was significantly complicated magic.
My sister at some point had gotten up and stood behind me, she was looking over my shoulder at what I was writing. When I finished she snatched the book from the table and studied the rune I’d made, pacing back and forth—luckily the library was practically empty so no one complained about her actions.
“What do you think? Will that work?” I asked my sister, suddenly feeling nervous.
“Aoirsha, get your things, we're going to the smithy. Silas, you can stay here, or if you have other things to attend to you can go do that. I'm going to go show this to father, I’ll let you know how things go,” my sister said, gathering her things as she spoke.
“Well, the sun has already set so I'll head to the pub, Aurel will probably be there. Besides, I need to enlist the help of a hunter to help me prepare my gift for the rain festival,” I said as I got up, also preparing to leave.
“OK, trying out this rune could take some time, so I don’t think I’ll finish today, how about we meet tomorrow?” my sister asked.
“I plan to go hunting tomorrow, can you ask father for permission? Let me know when you finish and where to meet,” I said to my sister outside the library before we parted ways.
I really hope it works this time I thought to myself as I made my way to the pub.