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St. Elmo's Fire
“St. Elmo's Fire” is a huge and mysterious bolt of lightning which strikes once every 32 years. There is no meteorological explanation for the lightning bolt, but it usually occurs sometime around late October and early November.
During the Dark Age, the occurrence of St. Elmo saved the Averi population of eastern Toland when they were cornered by the Hollowed. The lightning fell on the army of monsters, wiping out a large portion of their forces. Since then, the Averi has celebrated the arrival of St. Elmo's Fire. During its destructive power, easily capable of wiping out an entire city, Babel Castle was constructed atop the highest mountains as a lightning rod to attract it and protect the surrounding areas.
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Days, weeks, and some months have passed.
By now I think I’ve been… almost a year here in this village…
…And I think, no, I believe that I’ve come to accept this place as a home… There are still times where I get bouts of depression.
‘I miss them.’
Family is…
Here and there. Left where everything was once right, and right here where I am left away.
I am afraid of becoming too comfortable in this village, Daivette… A name I still haven’t gotten used to, it’s foreign, it’s strange…
…not home. My heart still insists on lingering on the past, despite it all.
I look over my drawings, piles upon piles of papers of half-finished drawings and discarded sketches. Some stained with tears, others crumpled and tossed aside in frustration. They were people in those drawings… places, foods, friends, things that I loved, things that I lost.
I am not an artist, maybe I have some talent with it, after watching all those tutorials online. But it was never something I put practice or effort into developing.
I mentally scold myself. ‘Why did I have to waste my time like I had? Now… Now…’
I pick one of them, longingly taking in all of the details of one of the few portraits I managed to complete to satisfaction. ‘Mother… Father…’ I didn’t include myself into the picture, I didn’t dare to, It felt too wrong.
After all… I don’t look like that anymore, and I am not there anymore.
It doesn’t matter how many days or years go by, I resolved myself to never, ever, forget them.
It always hurts… To remember, to reminisce.
But despite the aching, I keep those memories close to my heart in a safe and dear place, and with time, I’ve found myself being uplifted by those memories. ‘...They would’ve wanted me to live.’ They will always accompany me, grief is bound to become a part of me, but I won’t let myself be burdened by it.
。。。
Something pricks my ears, I hear someone familiar calling me.
“I’m coming!” I yell back, a smile making its way to my face.
I put down the drawing on top of my table. Pencils clatter and an inkwell is sealed.
Beside the portrait of my parents, there were other drawings piled in messy piles. These, however, instead of that past, they depict the everyday life of the village…
Gaviel, Clauren, Samyra, Sedia, the cheerful team of cooks from the cantine, the village chief sitting with that granny, groups of familiar children, people who I never really talked with, but have always greeted me with smiles whenever I passed by.
On the bottom of a picture portraying Clauren and Samyra merrily bantering beside a window, smiles on their faces with Samyra wiping breakfast off Clauren’s face. Was written:
What is left when you lose it all. What is right when this is all that's left.
Right here. Wherever I remain. Far from elsewhere I once had.
Nowhere the end will I permit.
Right here. In the middle of somewhere I shall prevail.
——— –– –– -- - -
I arrive at the front door, being met face to face with a Gaviel waiting for me. Gaviel has been visiting a lot in the meantime, whenever he isn’t too busy.
“...” I greet him with surprise, and an inquisitive tilt of the head. ‘Good morning! what are we doing today?’
“...” He pats my head, gesturing with a nod to outside. He implies for me to follow him.
“?????” Clauren just stands there.
I follow, our tacit and silent agreement and acknowledgement going completely over Clauren’s head who had called me over. He dumbfoundedly observes us as we leave.
He… if you wanted to talk to someone he isn’t really the best person for it. Approach him with work or something that he likes and he will easily sink into his element, otherwise, there just isn’t much talking that happens.
‘A silent type of companionship. Comfortable, in its own way.’
We ran out of things to share ages ago, and during that time we came to an agreement that every now and then he let me follow him and sometimes help with his more menial work because I was both curious and interested. And because I craved something to do and to validate my keep in the village.
Sometimes… I felt like a leech, and needed something to work to feed the irrational fear I would be kicked out. I knew that wasn’t and wouldn’t be the case, they had made that clear, but I still felt a responsibility, a need to justify my stay. However long that stay may be.
I was aware, that way led to ruin and bad habits, but I just couldn’t help myself. Having spent my whole life worrying about the financial situation of my family led me to develop a deep rooted anxiety whenever I spent money for anything. Here, while there isn’t really a coin system inside the village or loan sharks… that anxiety hit just as strong, now in the form of resources. Someone somewhere built these houses, cooked this food, wove these clothes, and since I knew everything was specially handcrafted and not plagued by the clinical indifference that comes with mass produced industry, I felt the need to make myself worth these things twice as hard.
Today I followed him to the local carpenter…
…Or sculptor, more like. There isn’t a high enough demand for the services of carpenters strictly speaking. The person in question is more of a master of all things wood related and carpentry and construction just happen to fall into their abilities, even their language reflects that, the profession’s actual name being closer to something like “Master Wood Shaper.”
It encompassed not only carving, but also a significant proficiency in magic that manipulates wood. They often regrow and reinforce wood instead of repairing structures. Their carving skills only come in hand when creating things from scratch.
Gaviel asked the carpenter for some spare blocks and planks of spare and scrap wood. We sat together not far from their house under a tree. In case we needed more wood later and to not disturb them.
“It’s a nice way to pass time, when all you have is a good knife and you are surrounded by trees and wood…” He explained to me, slowly filing a piece of scrap wood into a shape, I see a tiny bunny the size of his hand being slowly brought to life as he keeps steadily sculpting the wood.
Once he was done showing me, gifting me the bunny in the end, he taught me the steps on how to do it along with some tips. The carpenter happily provided some more appropriate tools he had to spare for me to practice instead of the knife Gaviel was using, which was a tad too big for me to wield.
Besides that, Gaviel also showed me some useful tools that can be easily crafted. Arrow shafts, for one, and a bunch of others, like a bow drill, leverage struts that are parts of larger traps, etc. He didn’t tell me how to make a bow though, because we had run out of time for the day, and apparently because authentic elven bows are superior and special in every way. But they need special methods to craft them that just aren't possible to do with ordinary wood alone.
‘Gaviel is… a workaholic.’
He has hobbies, he isn’t a one dimensional pane. But being a ranger is kind of what he has his whole personality built around, his one grand purpose he told me. He has a lot of… not loyalty, but I guess a lot of what he does and what goes inside his head is related to the village, he is always running around dutifully serving.
That’s how I found out that he actually is the handyman of the village. Officially, his main occupation is as a ranger, someone that keeps the surroundings of the village clear of most dangers (or at least the ones that we don’t want near, some of them are used to keep the worse threats at bay from near the barrier) and occasionally is sent on expeditions to bring back items and ingredients people request.
But in actuality, he spends the majority of his time doing odd chores for the people of Daivette. His obligations as a ranger take only a small fraction of his time.
I ended up learning lots of little different skills and neat nuggets of knowledge from him during the times I ended up spending time with him while he worked. Like the different types of axes and the specialized one he uses to cut firewood, or how specialized knives are used to butcher and debone the animals people occasionally bring in. And a variety of little things.
‘He… has an excessive amount of bladed things now that I honestly think about it…’ And I have a sneaking suspicion that he is sneaking in bits of the so-called ranger training he had wanted to teach me, disguising them as these leisure activities we do together. I knew that he knew that I knew what he was conspiring, but I didn’t say anything, it was nice to relax together with him.
He also taught me all the different knots with rope he uses, how there are different types and ways to make a campfire and how to make a makeshift torch from tree sap, he also explained how and why he built the campsites the way he had when we talked about our time in the forest long ago, along with the different monsters that reside in the forest
‘I… received a long overdue chastising on my eating habits in the forest. How was I supposed to know!? Everything was alien to me… And I was really, really hungry.’
The age disparity made it a little hard for him to treat me differently from a kid despite my apparent maturity, though considering he is actually several decades if not at least a century older than me there wasn’t much I could do.
Gaviel… was also not the best at what someone would call parenting, I mean, I don’t know much about elves but I certainly do not believe that showing a kid how to make and handle weapons and exposing them to the things he showed me is something a reasonable adult would do… Nor letting the kid in question consume unholy quantities of snacks and sweets.
‘He certainly makes a good uncle though.’ I laugh to myself.
——— –– –– -- - -
My magic lessons have also been progressing nicely!
‘Or at least, progressing in a way that there is some noticeable growth in my abilities… Nobody told me magic was this hard! It’s like… physics two! No, physics three!’
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Thankfully it isn’t all boring, but the learning curve is horrendous. The whole world of magic spellcasting has a culture attached to it. It’s fun and all to see how the mysterious glyphs connect to make spells, and to unveil all the air of mysticism I had at first, but then each time the metaphorical veil is lifted there is another one under it!
How someone actually managed to create spells boggles my mind. Besides the matrices and the runes, it feels like the spell itself is alive depending on it. Like Conway’s game of life, the functions inside the matrix of the spell are all moving and interacting with each other in an enormous pattern of activity, nudging and triggering each other in a beautiful almost lifelike manner. The runes by themselves have very simple rules they function through, but when you merge them together in a spell…
…It’s as if they dance.
Clauren himself admitted that despite having a huge amount of stuff to learn about magic, it’s only a speck of what magic could be. The tip of the iceberg so to speak. The language used for incantation is the most “stable” one he knows, but, maybe there are others of this sort of language out there in the world.
The sort of spellcasting he knows and is teaching me is chock full of rules and logic, but, magic is by definition something that turns the impossible inside out.
。。。
I know lots of different spells now too!
‘Though… I can only reliably cast a few of them…’
Anyways, I don’t know anything cool like magic that creates a fireball yet… I doubt that Clauren would even dare to teach me how, considering almost everything is made out of wood in this place. What I know how to do is a handful of what one would call “lifestyle spells” like one to water the plants, to heat food, to sweep the floor, to lift things, and one that makes your clothes clean.
Clauren doesn’t really use any of them all the time because casting spells excessively and thoughtlessly would only lead up to him fainting in exhaustion. A condition he called “mind-down” that happens when someone strains their mana too far. And also because he both didn’t bother, and because he had better stuff to use mana for than chores.
I, apparently, don’t need to be so careful with my usage of magic because of my, and I quote: “Stupid, dumb, excessively large mana reserves…”
…Clauren spent even more time sulking because of me. Again.
Samyra… though not really a full fledged mage, learned some things from Clauren through osmosis. And she has gotten down her proficiency of these little lifestyle spells down to perfection. She can’t cast spells frequently, but if she wanted to she could send a magic burst of wind that would make the entire house spotless of dust in one go.
The only spell I know that can be somewhat destructive is, surprisingly, the magic that water plants.
It isn’t supposed to be destructive, nor was it designed to anything beyond a light drizzle of water in a localized area… But if I amped the output of it to exceedingly ridiculous levels…
——— –– –– -- - -
I… essentially made a weaponized hailstorm of rain. It doesn’t really hurt or anything…
。。。
“...And what do you have to say for yourself?” Samyra said to me in a disapproving tone.
I flinched at her tone, she never talked to me with that tone before, or, never had a reason to before today.
“...sorry…” I answered, tightly clutching a broken wand in my hands while looking down. My ears drooped and I wrapped my tail around my ankles.
。。。
…But it can flood a place really quickly. And flood isn’t something you can hide…
。。。
“...And what do you have to say for yourself?” She turned to Clauren, entering an even more disapproving tone. “Weren’t you supposed to be supervising her?”
Clauren opened his mouth to defend himself, but Samyra’s laser glare dissuaded him from even trying. “...sorry…” He mutters. “...I didn’t– I mean, I couldn’t predict that she could push the boundaries of that spell so far.” He pushes his glasses up. ”I’m impressed, even. Too much mana should have definitely overloaded the spell and broken the matrix but she somehow managed to have enough finesse to—”
“CLAUREN.” Suddenly, Dahlia, the village chief, was here. Along with some people trailing behind her.
“HIEE!!!” Samyra and I jumped a meter in the air. ‘W-WhatWhoWhen did she get here!?’’
“Y-yes?“ Clauren squeaked out, looking absolutely mortified.
If someone asked me I would say that she was exuding a very heavy and threatening aura. The look of anger on her face was so bad that I wondered how she managed to frown her eyebrows so much.
“What did you do this time?” She said in an eerily calm tone for the anger she was irradiating. “I got no less than six people suddenly barging into my room, at this ungodly hour,” She threw an arm to gesture to the people behind her “demanding an explanation of why there is a flood around their houses, and demanding someone to fix it quickly before more damage occurs. And I know of only one exact person that has a reputation of creating disasters like this.”
“U-um…” Clauren glanced at me for a split second “Y-you s-see… I was doing some experiments and…”
My eyes widened. ‘Why are you taking the blame, you idiot!?’ He kept talking and making something up on the spot. Samyra, too, looked surprised by him.
“I-I-IT WAS ME!” I end up yelling, cutting Clauren off.
Everyone turned to me, somehow I shrink even more than I already was under their collective eyes.
“I-I-I a-am sorry…” I take a 90° bow, trembling.
Dahlia moaned a long, suffering sigh. Slowly dragging both hands down her face. “Oh gods…” she hoarsely groaned. “Now there’s two of them.”
。。。
I… had to fix the damages after… And the wand Clauren gave me had exploded.
And I got scolded by Samyra too…
…And also the neighbors…
…And then twice from the village chief.
I had to spend what felt like forever kneeling in the ground while everyone took their turn. By the end of it all my feet were numb and my whole body uncomfortably stiff from sitting still in the same position.
And then I also had to fix the whole mess, rebuild anything I destroyed and repair the damages. Clauren, being judged to be partly guilty because he is my master regarding magic, also was forced to help. We spent the whole day going down the trail of damage the flood left, thankfully I didn’t flood the entire village, but since water has to go somewhere, and I cast the spell uphill, the damages were small, but very lengthy since the water flowed down through a bunch of places.
…At least I learned an earth spell out of it in the end. To fix my mess.
Now I have to be really careful with my spells unless I want to bust another wand.
Some days after the fact, word got around, and since I was going to be grounded for a long while… I ended up being conscripted to the rice fields to atone… Ergo, helping the people responsible for the farms.
。。。
“Erm… what… exactly am I supposed to do?...” I meekly ask. I was still grounded, and with the Elves' skewed sense of time, the last few weeks have been both rough and painstakingly boring. So my mood wasn’t the brightest.
“Well ya’ see lassie…” The man had a bit of an accent, “I ‘eard that it was you that made a downright mean magic that flooded a bunch of places– You still grounded eh?”
“...yes.” I sigh.
“So, here’s a mighty deal for you. You’re just a wee kid and kids are supposed to be free to do… whatever it is that they do these days– anyways! Little ol’ me thought that I could throw a bone over your way and help you out! People gotta work and little talents like yerself should be out there flourishing!” He gives me some aggressive pats on the back, I nearly fall from the force. “So I asked around ‘bout it, and the Chief told me to talk to your parents—”
“—PFFT!!!” *cough* *cough* I violently jerk away from him. ‘PARENTS!? No no no… yes? No! What the hell do you mean by that???’ I was not ready for that type of thought to cross my head and now that he planted the seed I can’t get the stupid, terribly embarrassing, and horribly stupid idea out of my head.
“You alright there?” He asks me worriedly.
*cough* “Yeah…” I deflect “Just uh, I gulped down wrong.”
“Oh, ha! That happens to me all the time too.” He barks out a laugh. “So, as I was saying! I talked to ‘em, and they decided it would be a good um… What did she say? “An exercise of humility and conscientiousness.” And in exchange for you doing my job for a little while you can get ungrounded earlier!” He pats my head, hiding an “ouch” when he accidentally misses his aim and gets the pointy end of my horn on his palm. “Don’t worry though, I’ll help ya out!”
I take a centering breath. “...Ok!”
。。。
In the end, thanks to the magic that waters plants and the magic that manipulates dirt that I learned previously I didn’t need to do much physical labor, instead what I ended up taxing out of my body was mental labor, doing these two spells all day. On the flipside, it was actually a fun experience, I got to practice magic, something I will never get tired of. And the people that owned the farm were quite welcoming overall.
While they do know a little bit of magic. They use it sparingly on their day to day, and because they never paid much attention to the arts they are limited on how frequently they are able to use magic since they aren’t trained mages.
‘And well… since I can basically spawn a flood of rain whenever I want with that supercharged spell…’
Some crops that need a lot of water, like rice or watermelons (Or this world’s equivalent at least, the “watermelons” here have ridiculously thick vines and can climb up in trees.), began showing up around the village more thanks to me.
Every now and then Clauren comes with me and lends me his staff to irrigate the fields since he doesn’t want to go through the work of making another wand. He took the opportunity to show me the differences between casting with a tiny wand compared to a much larger magic staff.
。。。
“...Are you sure this won’t explode like last time?” I ask Clauren.
“Yes, absolutely, and this is the eighth time you’ve asked– just get on with it!” He was pushing me towards the fields, and I had his personal staff on my hands.
I was a big thing, taller than I was… It was a thick and long piece of dark wood embellished with carvings and metal reinforcements… Overall it was a… Majestic staff... Streamlined silver… Shining burnished wood… Twin foci… With twin exhausts… stable build and perfectly balanced…
The more I looked at it the more I was drawn to it. I rubbed the gem embedded at the end of it, it was smooth and sent a funny tingling sensation on my skin.
I kept rubbing it—
“Ahem.”
I jumped, startled. “Y-yes?” I turned to him sheepishly.
“I know my elegant staff is a fabulous work of art.” He coughed, “But please stop… holding it… Like that.” He said while grinning teasingly at me. “Also you’ve got a job to do and I got a lesson to teach so…”
I flush red in embarrassment. “Um, yeah. R-right…”
Focusing myself and feeling the flow of mana through the staff I ready my spell. “One, two, three…” I take a breath.“Here I go!” I shout.
“Ｎａｋｖｏｇｅｒｍｉｎａ！” The staff’s foci shines a blinding light as I conjure a supercharged spell, I carefully channel the mana so that it doesn’t break the matrix while also overclocking its flow to empower the spell beyond its intended limits.
I don’t see it, but Clauren has an ear to ear face splitting grin while I am not looking.
At first, a small, puffy little cloud pops up seemingly nowhere above the fields, but as soon as it takes shape more and more mass of clouds begins to surround it. And just like that the skies above are covered in gray and nebulous clouds, though if one were to be looking at it sideways, the thickness of the clouds is actually barely a meter tall.
One.
Two
Ten drops.
Not long after I finish the incantation and the staff stops flashbanging my retinas there is a light, and more importantly controlled, drizzle covering the fields. I exhale in relief seeing Clauren’s staff is intact, only a soft glow being present on its stone.
“So, how did it feel?” Clauren asks me.
“It was…” I clench and unclench my fists, there’s still an electric feeling coursing through my arms, and it feels like my entire body along with my mana just let out a long yawn that it has been holding for ages. “...Addicting! And it doesn’t feel like I’m trying to push clay through a straw.”
He blinks. “...I was expecting an “amazing” but I guess I can work with this.” He comments. “Staves, as the big brother of the wand, is… or at least it should be significantly more difficult to wield compared to a beginner’s wand. I must admit you have done quite a feat with it when you barely have any experience.”
I beam smugly at his praise.
Clauren continues “They have a much larger limit on how much mana they can handle before suffering damage, and also a significantly higher efficiency… Ho-we-ver…” He snatches the staff out of my hands, “They enable you to cast bigger, more complex spells, the downside of this, is that any other spell takes longer to form. Think of it as a pipe, with a wand it is tiny and thin, but because of that when you channel mana with it, it has high pressure and speed. With a staff, the pipe is much larger, longer and thicker, you need to completely fill it and wait for the loading to complete before the spell takes effect. You felt how it took a couple seconds before the spell manifested after your incantation, right?”
“...yes.” Now that I thought about it, when I used the same spell with the wand the little clouds instantaneously formed and I could control it with much more responsiveness and speed.
“While wands are limited in their repertoire. they excel with the lower tiers of spells that are more menial in effect.” He makes an analogy. “You could say a wand is a fine pencil, quick and nimble, but fragile. While the staff is a big flat brush, you can cover large areas, but when it comes to details it’s easier to use the pencil instead of the brush.”
“Depending on what you are doing with the staff the difference isn’t that big, some seconds more to cast and the spells are a little “heavier.” But in a life or death scenario those few seconds are critical, and if you can’t properly control the spell you are more liable to miss a moving target. That’s why usually only established mages use a staff…”
What went on afterwards was an extensive discussion on how magic staffs work, their composition, how they are made, and whatever came to mind about magic that we hyperfixated in.
。。。
‘…He, um, didn’t let me “study” his staff more. Though I tried really hard for him to let me have one…’
I was told that I’m not allowed until I was older. He said that he would reconsider if I proved him wrong though.
Later, after I finally got ungrounded, Samyra gave a very conflicting proposition.
“Let’s go to the festival!!!” She ecstatically yelled while barging in through my poor door.
“Hah!?” I blurt in confusion, also a little miffed that she entered without knocking.
“Let’s go to the festival!!!” She repeated in the same cadence. “Oh!, what are you doing wearing night clothes like that in the middle of the day? Come here, let's get you changed. ” She said as if it was already decided that I would go.
“W-wait! Stop! I can change myself!” Her sudden actions didn’t give me time to think. I backpelled frantically away from her until I hit the wall.
Before I could say anything else her vice grip was already on my shoulders. “Oh don’t worry! We’re both girls after all!...” To me, her smile felt like the end of days the moment as she pulled out a dress.
“Gyaaa!!!”
。。。
Clauren, already dressed and prepared to enjoy the party, was outside Syuufarin’s abode. Though in his opinion he would call it a nest, with the way everything is a cluttered mess inside that place.
He abruptly stopped, hearing the sounds of distress of a little girl and a somewhat familiar demented laughter. Now that he paused to think, this is the first time Samyra had ever let herself into such close quarters intimacy with Syuu… and by the sounds of it she was having the time of her life finally being able to dress Syuufarin up however she wanted.
“Ah…” Clauren looked upwards in hesitant contemplation. “...Should I help?”
More cries of terror sounded from inside.
That was enough for him to make up his mind. “Eyup, nnope.” He said to himself, turning 180 degrees. “Better not to involve myself in that… Your noble sacrifice shall be remembered.” He made a gesture with his hands in a mock prayer.
——— –– –– -- - -