After the meal, Nia’s day returned to her regular routine. Her father forced her to wash up after being outside and began his lecture on basic glyph drawing.

The chalk in his hand drew a basic curved U-symbol into the black board.

“Nia, can you tell me what the next stroke would be to mark this as a Wind glyph?”

“An X to the left?” Nia stared blankly at the board, her father shaking his head and placing the chalk at the top of the U.

“It’s a straight vertical line through the middle.” He sighed and drew the line through it, and immediately erased it from the board as it briefly glimmered brown.

“Sorry, Papa. It’s really hard trying to learn these weird squiggles when I can’t write them down.” Nia’s face looked sad and her father gave her another stern look.

“It wouldn’t have been a problem if you didn’t ‘accidentally’ pack the Mahana Dictionary that Grandpa Mya bought you last fall into Mama’s bags before she left for work.” One of his eyebrows arched upwards.

“Hehe, oops!” Nia’s sad face was immediately replaced with her playful laugh.

Before he could get in another word, Nia’s father was interrupted by a loud knock at their door.

“Mister Nelson --”

“Frank, you know this is my lesson time with my daughter.”

Nia’s father opened the door to the red-faced and sweating plump man, who was dabbing away at the moisture with his trademark white handkerchief, trimmed with silver on the sides.

“I’m really sorry, it’s a genuine emergency this time. One of the Protection Constructs suffered a catastrophic failure and the town guard has been receiving reports that goblins have been sighted outside the village.”

Nelson sighed, and dug a few coins out of his pocket.

“Nia, go find Grandpa Mya or Elder Phalk and ask them to teach you something useful. If I don’t pick you up by dinner, you can visit Khyl’s family. I’ll let them know in advance.”

Nia gleefully took the coins from her father and slipped her shoes on for the second time that day.

“Please take these coins too. Take them as my apology for interrupting your time with your father.” Frank dropped a few coins with his free hand into Nia’s open palm.

“Don’t worry, Uncle Frank! I know my Papa is a busy man.”

Nia flitted out the door, taking her time skipping to the town center.

---

“Grandpa Phalk!” Nia chased down the small figure who was strolling from the town center, which was still being repurposed from the duel that had occurred a few days prior.

“Hello, Nia. You’ve just caught me at a great time for tea.” Elder Phalk received Nia’s hug, then brushed off the dirt that she had transferred to his clothes.

“Sure! No tea for me. I just want some coffee and milk.” Nia made a serious-looking face as Elder Phalk patted off the rest of the dirt from her dress.

Elder Phalk laughed. “That must be Elder Mya’s influence on you.”

The two entered the nearby cafe and before long, a waitress brought out a set of coffee and tea for the two. A pitcher of milk came by after Nia gave the waitress a few of the coins. They chatted about the new toys that the Students had brought home, and Elder Phalk indulged Nia’s questions about what her grandfather had been up to.

A sudden thought struck Nia while Elder Phalk was chattering about how Elder Mya refused to pay for the teacup that he had thrown.

“Grandpa Phalk! Could you explain to me what you did to that ball?” Nia’s eyes shone as she interrupted Elder Phalk.

“I guess it isn’t a secret.” Elder Phalk sighed before looking upwards, as if hesitating to explain.

Nia pouted at him. “I promise I’ll tell you when Grandpa Mya is out of the house, so that you can play some tricks on him for revenge.”

Elder Phalk beamed. “Perfect!”

He motioned at the waitress, requesting a piece of paper and piece of charcoal to write with.

“It was actually very simple.”

The charcoal in Elder Phalk’s hand began to dance across the paper, iridescent sigils trailing behind it until an indecipherable painting of symbols was all that Nia could see.

“Grandpa Phalk… This is simple?” Nia tilted her head to one side.

“Of course! Your father could probably improve this structure quite a bit. In fact, if I exchanged this Earth sigil here for a Mud sigil, and added an accent to this Fire sigil...”

Nia let Elder Phalk experiment while she gazed into her coffee and milk mixture and fiddled with her remaining coins.

“Elder Phalk?” Another thought suddenly sprung into her head, the previous question erased from her mind.

“...But the integrity of the spell might be ruined if I don’t have the Cloud sigil here to bind the eight-way connection. Oh, yes Nia?”

“Why didn’t Brother James have to draw any sigils for his weird glowy polearm yesterday? Did he have a scroll on him that let him make one?” Nia made polearm-swinging motions with her hands.

“Oh, you’re talking about his Enkt technique? That’s fundamentally different from Written Mahana. Let me seal this paper and I can show you the difference.”

Elder Phalk rolled the glowing sheet of paper shut and clasped it with a leaf that had landed on the table. He sketched another sigil onto the leaf, and the glow from the paper faded.

“Do you remember what I said when Student James was holding the wooden plank yesterday?”

Nia thought back to the end of the duel, and nodded.

“When you are using Enkt, you are putting energy into something. Can you tell me the basics of Mahana that your father taught you?”

“Uhh.” Nia’s eyes drifted upwards as she attempted to remember. “I think Papa said that Mahana occurs when you directed outside Mana to act a certain way.”

Elder Phalk nodded. “To put it in another way, Mahana is similar to how we have conversations. In the way that we organize words to create meaning, we can organize sigils to create effects from external Mana. These glyphs are a form of Written Mahana, which is considered the easiest form of it.”

To emphasize what he had said, Elder Phalk traced a yellow Wind glyph in the table with his finger. Nia recognized the glyph from earlier as it gently glowed silver before fading away.

“Enkt is different in that there is no need for external Mana in order for it to work. It comes purely from internal Mana.”

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Elder Phalk held up one finger, and a gentle yellow aura gathered at its tip, eventually forming a tiny golden orb.

“They say that the color of your internal Mana represents the type of person you are. I was told that yellow meant that you were destined to be a great Elder.” Elder Phalk chuckled to himself, before waving his finger and causing the golden orb to fade away.

Nia scrunched up her face while looking at Elder Phalk, who could see a question slowly forming.

“But Grandpa Phalk, if Mahana can do fancy stuff, like the Protection Constructs that Papa made, and supports itself once it’s set up, what’s the point of Enkt? The stuff that James did poofed really quick, and you made your yellow ball go away by just waving it around.”

Elder Phalk’s face lit up once Nia finished her sentence.

“Good point, Nia! It’s smart of you to notice that Mahana looks more useful than Enkt. Once you have created a Construct, it will not go away until the formations are broken, or another Construct overrides its current effect. If there are acceptable amounts of external Mana, it will continue to work.”

Nia began to sink into her seat, and Elder Phalk rushed to not bore her.

“Enkt is fundamentally different from Written Mahana. The most basic form of Enkt is projecting your internal Mana, which was the yellow ball you saw on my fingertip and the polearm that you saw Student James wield. The common term for this is Projection.

The more interesting form of Enkt is what Student James did with Student Peter’s staff, and the wooden plank that he picked up.”

Nia straightened a bit in her chair at the word interesting.

“That form of Enkt is called Imbuement, which is when you force your internal Mana into your surroundings, instead of simply projecting it outside.”

Elder Phalk picked up his cup of tea and closed his eyes to focus. The characteristic golden aura emerged from his hands, but seemed to enter the ceramic cup. When his eyes opened once again, the cup itself glowed with the golden aura.

“Depending on your internal Mana, you can do different things with Imbuement. I believe that Student James’s internal Mana is related to the connection of material. Mine is related to the fulfillment of my desires.”

Elder Phalk suddenly let go of the cup, which remained floating until the golden glow began to fade. When the golden aura was completely gone, the cup surrendered to the will of gravity and dropped.

Luckily, the cup was caught before it shattered on the table. The elder chuckled at Nia’s panicked face.

“To explain what just happened, I told my internal Mana to stay still. Since my internal Mana was Imbued into the cup, the cup stayed still until my internal Mana faded. Any questions?”

Nia slumped back in her chair for a bit to think.

“How do you know what your internal Mana is related to?”

“If you have the talent for it, then you can try to experiment with Imbuement until you figure it out. The only alternative is to seek someone who is an expert with Enkt and ask them to evaluate it for you.”

“Do we have anyone in the village to look at mine?” The young girl’s eyes glimmered with excitement.

Elder Phalk took a moment to take a sip of his tea.

“Now that I think about it, I believe your mother is the only expert Enkt user in the village. Did she never explain it to you?”

Nia tilted her head to one side. “Mama has always made me exercise and go on camping trips with her. She has never mentioned anything about Enkt, Projection, or Imbuement.”

Nia briefly caught the elder’s graying eyebrow rise and fall.

“In Mama’s defense, I never asked her or Papa to teach me anything. Papa just teaches me about Mahana because he thinks that smart girls are prettier than dumb ones.” Nia pouted at Elder Phalk.

“I suppose that makes sense. You could ask your mother to evaluate your internal Mana for you when she returns tonight.”

Elder Phalk nodded to himself for a moment.

“Why don’t you ask your mother to teach you about Enkt?”

“Sounds boring.”

“I guess Mahana classes are enough work for you.

Before Nia could quip back, a loud scream echoed from the village’s border.

BOOM!

“East? Nia, quickly get inside the cafe.” Elder Phalk pushed Nia towards the cafe, before stepping into a shadow and disappearing.

Is Papa over there? Nia completely disregarded Elder Phalk’s command, her concern for her father compelling her to run towards the direction that the noise came from.

“What awful timing, Mister Nelson was about to finish the repairs on the Protection Construct!” A group of hastily equipped village guards ran past Nia, one of them dropping a crudely fashioned spear from their bags. Nia grabbed the spear and followed after them.

“Nia? What are you doing, you need to take shelter!” One of the guards looked backwards and saw the young girl following them. “Your father won’t be happy with us if he knows that you aren’t safe!”

Nia shook her head and continued to follow. The village guards looked at each other in hesitation, before one of them peeled off to pick her up and get her somewhere safe.

“No! I need to make sure Papa is safe!” Nia jabbed at the guard’s side with the blunt side of the spear, his face wincing every time it glanced off him.

BOOM! BOOM!

The guard carrying Nia turned back to view his comrades with concern. He noticed smoke rising from the treeline that marked the edge of the village, and came to a stop. He put Nia down, looking her in the eye.

“Nia, I need you to promise that you’ll go back the moment we see that your father is safe.”

“Uncle Timmy, if Papa is fine, I promise I’ll go home immediately.” Nia’s teary eyes stared back at the guard. Timothy grabbed her hand and they both began to run back towards his group.

The acrid smell of burning plaster and wood grew stronger as they approached the location of the explosions. Nia couldn’t help but notice that the debris from the nearby buildings began to litter the ground the closer they got to the edge of the village.

BOOOM!

Nia could feel the explosion rattle her bones, and Timothy gritted his teeth. They rounded the next corner of the village and came to the site of the battle.

“Guard Timothy?! What is my daughter doing here?” Clutching his broken arm, Nia’s father was leaning against a tree surrounded by sigils roughly carved into the ground. Arrows laid scattered around the tree, as though they had been repelled by an invisible force.

“Father!”

Nia took a step forward before becoming overwhelmed by the smell of burnt flesh and fresh blood. Before Timothy could pull her back behind the corner to block her view, she turned and noticed the splatter of corpses on the ground that used to be goblins.

“Huegh!” Nia quickly turned to the wall and vomited, the sudden graphic site overwhelming her senses.

“Fredrick! Samuel!” Timothy saw his fellow guards fighting the remaining goblins. He took a step towards them, before remembering that Nia and her father were behind with him.

“Mister Timothy. Aid the guards, I will protect my daughter, whom you decided to bring here.” Nelson said through gritted teeth as his eyes glared at Timothy.

Timothy met his gaze, and ran to help his friends. Before he could reach them, arrows sprouted in his legs, and he tumbled onto the ground, screaming in pain.

“Useless!” Nelson pushed himself from the tree and dropped to the ground beside Timothy, hurriedly scribbling sigils into the ground.

Although their equipment was notably worse and their numbers were vastly reduced, the goblins still posed a massive threat to the barely trained and unprepared guardsmen.

“Samuel, watch out!” A goblin leapt towards one of the guards, its dagger being narrowly parried by the man next to Samuel. “Agh!”

“Craig!”

The man who had protected Samuel collapsed to the ground, a hole in his back back becoming moist and red with his flowing blood.

“He!He!He!” The goblin who had backstabbed the man danced gleefully.

“YOS YVP NOSU, O PUQXYSU, LUYG HVYU”

A blood-soaked Elder Phalk suddenly appeared from the goblin’s shadow, two of his fingers pointed at its neck.

CRACK!

A flash of orange burst from his fingertips and the goblin’s head left its shoulder, the wound cleanly cauterized and smoking.

“MEPPUHH EN CEEP YVP UYSGL, O USYI, LUYXOVM GEAQL”

The elder dropped to his knees by the unmoving figure, his palm glowing golden as he placed it on the open wound. The pale shade on Craig’s face slowly regained its color.

“Elder Phalk, stop pushing yourself! I already requested Elder Mya’s immediate assistance.” Nelson called out to the heavily breathing elder as the rest of the guards protected his hunched figure with renewed vigor.

“Elder Mya arrived long ago. He demanded that I come back from the goblin’s nest to protect the village.” Elder Phalk’s usually cheerful voice was replaced by a rough and tired growl.

He turned to look at Nia, who had regained her senses and was attempting to bandage Timothy’s wound.

“Why is Nia here?” His eyes darkened a bit.

“Don’t ask me. Guard Timothy arrived with her.” Nelson gritted his teeth as he struggled to help her daughter with bandaging the unconscious guard.

“I begged him to let me come, Grandpa Phalk. It isn’t his fault. I’ll take the punishment for disobeying you and coming.”

Nia’s voice was surprisingly clear. The hard look in Elder Phalk’s eyes softened a bit.

“Nia, I hope you’re ready for the punishment that you requested.” The small figure of Elder Mya appeared from the trees, a bloodied staff at his side.

“Elder Mya!” The guards all breathed a sigh of relief. Samuel and the three remaining guards grabbed Elder Phalk and Craig, pulling them to the relative safety of where Nelson and Nia were huddled.

Elder Mya shook his head. “This is my fault for lightening the training for guards and relying on Constructs to protect the village.”

“Hii!Hii!Hii!” A goblin rushed towards Elder Mya, who casually swatted it aside with his staff.

--- End of Chapter 2