The casting was complete, but that didn’t finish the job. El Tar had made the spider’s fang come to a triangle point at the bottom and that needed to be sharpened. He polished up the rest of it and attached the handle.

“Okay, this will work something like a punch dagger.” The weapon smith put the handle in his hand, hollow blade going through the middle and index finger. He swiped the air a couple of times and mimed punching. “Will this do?”

“Oh yeah! You’re the man.” I shook his hand.

“Three elixirs or an oil and an elixir as payment.” El Tar said, not handing it over quite yet.

“What? Two elixirs or a single oil!” I feigned outrage.

“This is a permanent component, right?” El Tar held up the fang. “You’ll be able to cast using it for all time. The alchemical items are one shots. It’s fair to get more of them.”

We dickered for several more minutes and agreed to two elixirs or an oil. That and if I got anything that could change properties of forged items, he would get it. Future consideration aside, that was a good deal. I walked back to Instructor Falaise’s office, whistling and mock stabbing my nonexistent opponents in combat.

When I got to her office, she was with another trainee. That meant I waited in the hall until she was finished. Oyyed out of first squad left the room with a pensive look on his face.

The human gave me a nod but walked off, stroking his chin. I swear his hair was black, wasn’t it? It looked like he had dark red streaks in both the long hair on his head and his short-trimmed beard. Could we do that? I wonder if the memory place allowed for customization of our body? I’d have to check.

“Mike, I’m ready for you!” Falaise yelled. I stood and walked into her office. She had a little satchel and was gathering up some papers. “Let’s head up to the magical study.” I followed.

We went back upstairs to the study with the scribed circle. The instructor put her satchel down and grabbed the tome. “We’re doing a spider poison spell, right?”

I nodded. “It’s the one I can think of that will still be useful once I can cast first order.”

“That means we’re starting from scratch. I’d like you to stretch one first, just so you can get the hang of it.” She told me.

“Uhh, okay.” I thought for a moment. “Can we maybe add an area effect to Snowball?”

“Like it explodes when it hits?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, something like that. It’d be great if it exploded into a sticky, frozen web that prevented them from moving, but that sounds like a higher order.” I shrugged.

“Oh definitely. That might be a third or fourth order spell.” The instructor said distractedly as she flipped through the book. “Okay, please open your spellbook to the page for Snowball.” I did and turned the book to her. “Great! Now you’ll deconstruct the runes to add an explosive effect.”

I grabbed her book and went through, researching what each of the spell runes I had to memorize actually did. “What’s this symbol?” I pointed to a swirl that had several tops.

“That symbol expands on the water used as a component. It uses the liquid you pour into your hand as something of a trigger. Keep in mind, this is a shifting spell. It changes a thing into another thing. The less energy required, the lower the order.”

“It changes the water into an ice ball?” My brows furrowed.

“Yes.” Falaise nodded. “Now start with the rune for Shifting.”

I wrote down the shifting rune and the empty circle around it. The plain circle indicates zeroth order, that generally indicates the amount of power you have to shunt through the spell. Now the symbol for water, which was a wave. The magnification rune expands the water.

“What’s this explodey looking thing right here?” I pointed to a rune with lots of straight lines meeting in the center, surrounded by a circle.

“The explodey thing indicates radius. That’s what makes the ball of ice round.” The instructor told me with a snort. I heard her mumble, “Explodey thing.” And shake her head.

Then the symbol for removing heat. What this spell actually did was increase the water component used into a globe, then remove the heat. Thus, you end up with a snowball.

“Its pretty cool to break it down into components like this.” I told Falaise.

“Isn’t it?” She grinned. “I just love knowing how it all operates.”

“Now I stretch it. I’m guessing I put the spinneret into it somehow? What’s the rune for that?” I flipped through the rune manuals pages fruitlessly.

“The runes are representational figures. They don’t cover every little thing. Draw a spider and focus the image on the rear of its abdomen or have it sitting on a web. It’s the image that means spinnerets to you that matters.” Falaise told me.

I thought for a moment. I did like the spider on the web idea. Setting to drawing it on another piece of parchment, it took me several tries before I had anything I was remotely happy with. Once I was finished, I showed it to my teacher.

She nodded. “That’s pretty good. I like the stylized element.”

There hadn’t actually been a stylized element in the drawing. I just wasn’t that good. I’ll take it though. I drew this next. “Is that it?”

“Now you do the contact rune, or area effect, or however you want it to go off.” The instructor flipped through to the trigger and contact runes section of the manual.

That area effect rune looks really good. “Ooo, this would be so sweet with an area effect.” I told her.

“Be careful. You fill the primary rune with mana, and that activates the rest of the runes. If it doesn’t have the juice to power all of them, it must be a higher order spell.” Falaise told me.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Can I try a couple of different ones?” I asked, pursing my lips.

“I don’t see why not.” She answered.

I drew an area effect rune that triggered on contact. I also drew a cone rune that triggered on contact and took a little less mana. Passing the pages of parchment over to my instructor, she reviewed the drawings. There were a few corrections, but overall, she agreed with my rune chart.

Then I sat down in the magic dead circle and put them all together. Each one got scribed on a single page, one rune flowing smoothly into the next. After a few moments, I realized I had my tongue sticking out my mouth as I concentrated. Laughing at myself, I handed the rune script to Falaise.

The instructor carefully got out her own quill and copied the runes. She read them over and over. “I don’t like the area of effect one, but the other is really good.” I was told.

“Are you saying don’t memorize it?” I asked.

“No, you’re welcome to try. I just don’t think the origin rune is going to be able to power the full script.” She handed back the parchments. “Don’t let me stop you, though.”

I smiled and took the papers. “With my new priority point, I have 33 mana points. Do you want me to try to memorize these over and over?”

“Be sure and get a couple of Discern Magic’s in there. I can be critical for studying what goes wrong, if anything does.” Falaise shrugged. “Maybe three Discern Magic’s and four apiece of the new spell?” She stood and walked over to me. “That’s a really good mana total for a zeroth level character.” She patted me on the shoulder.

Rare praise indeed. I grinned at her and got to studying. The Discern Magic was already written into my spellbook, so it was pretty cut and dried. The others were harder. I’m calling them Exploding Snowball and Snowcone. That second title made me chuckle.

For each of those, I had to form the memory place construct before memorizing. I tried and failed several variations on that. Finally, Instructor Falaise sat down and put my hands in hers. “Relax Mike. Flow into your memory place.” She chanted in a soothing voice.

I stopped pushing, releasing my conscious mind. Flowing, relaxing, like water. I opened my internal eyes and saw a skeletal tree looming over a bleeding red landscape. Falaise was standing beside me and laughed. “You relaxed too much, big guy. This is my memory place. Close your eyes. Let’s visit yours.”

Sort of hard to concentrate after that. I could hear the scraping of bony branches rubbing across stony ground. My memory place. The hall of scrolls. My gemstone eyes drifted shut.

The hall of scrolls. I sank into the ground. The instructor and I stood side by side in the hall of scrolls. This was my memory place. Pretty relaxing after the realm of nightmares in the sea elf’s head.

Falaise took a parchment and pinned it to the wall under the column for Shifting. “What’s your mana form?” She asked.

I mumbled the answer, embarrassed now that I knew someone else would see it. “What was that?” She asked, leaning towards me.

“I said it’s a cone of fries.” I told her, looking the other way.

“What’s that?” The instructor asked.

“If you spent time in our world, then you’ll know. It’s the red paper thing McDonald’s fries come in.” I looked at the ground and shuffled my feet a bit.

There was a long pause. Then the laughter started. “When you’re memorized spells, the mental structure you create is a thing of fries?” Falaise leaned against the stone column of scrolls, tears running down her eyes.

“Look, I didn’t really understand the question, okay?” My arms crossed my chest. “I mean, I was asked to come up with a format off the cuff and I was hungry!”

“That’s so great!” The instructor laughed, wiping her eyes. “That’s the most American way to construct a spell I’ve ever heard of.” The laughter subsided into giggles. “So how do you fill it? Is it from the ice cream machine that never works?” She chuckled at her own joke.

“No.” I sighed. “I put fries into it until the spell form fills.” I mumbled. She started laughing again. I patiently waited.

“Oh, I needed that.” Falaise grinned.

“I’m glad it amused you.” I huffed. “Can we move on?”

“Of course.” She nodded. “So start filling your fry cone.” The instructor snorted and covered her mouth with her hands.

I rolled my eyes at her. Concentrating on the runic formula for Snowcone, I filled it with fries. One at a time, slowly. The salted potato goodness packed the construct. This is sort of making me hungry, but I press on!

The first rune fills. I mean, it’s filled up with French fries, but it still gets completely filled up. Once it starts, the mana is like a waterfall. It crashes down from the origin rune to the next, then the next. The origin rune drains, leaving the final rune completely full.

“I did it!” I cried. “Snowcone worked!”

“Great job of memorizing. You’ll still need to successfully cast it but that’s a huge step.” Instructor Falaise told me.

Then I started over on Exploding Snowball. I filled the first rune. Since this one was chance, I packed it until it was about to blow. Then the origin rune started to drain. It crashed to the second level, then the third. Once the mana finally reached the spherical explosion at the end it didn’t fill it completely, leaving about a third of the rune free. I told my teacher.

“Hmm, we’ll need to try it, but that doesn’t look good.” She shook her head.

We retreated from my memory place. Now to test the spells!