“‘Need to teach a’… Good lord Marcolo…” I cringed as I imagined Marcolo furiously penning the letter in front of me. In my mind, he had devil horns and was billowing steam, but the reality was probably not too different…
Instead of the servant, Gideon had volunteered to take the letter there, but had come back with this angry reply only half an hour later.
You might want to buy him a coffee or something when we go back. Gideon remarked.
I glared at the drake on my shoulder. It must be nice not having to be the one who dealt with all the actual problems, only ever reading books and making potions. Even now I was covered in bruises and cuts from falling down those stairs and flying into that bridge.
Wait, didn’t he do this back on Earth too? I seem to remember always being the one who got bruised and punched while he sat back in the dorm lab and made potions. I was being scammed, wasn’t I? Batman both invented and fought criminals, didn’t he? Why couldn’t Gideon!
Though I suppose you could say the same for me and inventing.
“You know, you remind me a lot of my brother back in Minua.” Auro laid on the bed, slowly during the pages of the banishment book. “My parents always used to threaten him so.”
“I wish he wouldn’t.” I threw the letter aside, trying not to think of Marcolo’s wrath. “It’s getting to be such a pain. Maybe that’s something to look forward to once I get to the academy.”
Once I moved- assuming that Marcolo didn’t find some excuse to come with me- I’d finally be free to move around as I wanted. As a freedom loving American, I was of course looking forward to it. Hopefully the dorm situation wouldn’t be too bad…
“Actually… Auro, the academy’s in Minua, isn’t it?” I asked. “What do you know about it?”
“The academy?” Auro stared at the wall for a second. “I’ve only been there a couple times, when my brother went in and graduated. They have a huge library.”
“That’s it?” I was a little disappointed.
“Ah, let’s see…” She perked up. “My brother said it had some weird system, where you would be teamed up with seven other people per tutor, and they would give you work to do outside of tutoring time. Don’t know how the teacher manages so many people though.”
I blinked.
If we were starting there… oh thank God this was going to be really easy, wasn’t it?
“But he said the worst part was by far the physical courses, followed by the stewardship ones. And apparently the scouting trips were absolutely horrid and lasted weeks.” She slammed a fist into her palm. “Oh! And apparently you have to share a room with three other people, though I think he might’ve just been trying to trick me with that one. I mean, even this room is a little small with just two people in it...”
As she went on, eventually all of my previous misgivings came back. If girls actually had to do the physical courses that’d be hell of course, though I wasn’t convinced that I would be with the slight sexiism I’d seen already. For the others though… well I had no idea what stewardship could entail, but long trips and four person dorms would be huge pains. I’d have to quickly find some secluded place to practise thaumaturgy and transmutation, and I wasn’t sure if I would want to risk anything while on a camping trip. Hopefully they wouldn’t be too common.
Should I just run away then? Though I couldn’t see that going great either, and in fact the thought of camping around with little to no resources sounded like an even bigger pain than the academy.
In any case, I had another two weeks before I had to worry about it.
“He probably wasn’t.” I warned. “We’d be lucky they don’t have barracks style housing.”
“Barrack’s housing?” Auro rolling over onto her stomach. “Don’t soldiers have their own rooms?”
“What? I wouldn’t think so.” I supposed it could’ve been different here in Verol, but I couldn’t see why any army would waste that much space. They wouldn’t be bringing individual tents on campaign after all. Or were armies here actually really small?
“I stayed at the home of one of the captains in Minua though.” Auro argued. “And he had his own house to himself.”
“Yeah, a captain would.” I picked up Gideon and placed him on the desk beside me. “Soldier’s sleep dozens to a room.”
“What?” Auro studied me, looking for any sign that I was lying. “Wait, then it really will be four to a room? How will we fit everything?”
“You don’t bring furniture or anything.”
[Jesus], how protected was this girl? Was Saphry like this?
“By the Star…”
“More importantly, let me see this.” I grabbed the book as she stared off in shock. “Because we, my friend, have some studying to do.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
…
“Are you two going to bed yet?” The servant said from behind the door. “You can’t be picking up bad habits now, Lady Auro…”
“We will be in just a moment!” I said, not taking my eyes off of the light.
I watched as the glowing red orb in Auro’s hand crackled and popped, a little afraid that it might explode.
“Your inputs are off.” I stepped back another foot, so that I could leap under the bed if it got much worse. “And I think you might be visualising it wrong…”
“I can’t… see it…” Auro bit her lip in concentration, focusing on the magic.
Eventually, it was too much, and the magic slowly began to drain from her construct before dissipating before our eyes. The room grew dark again, lit only by what little moonlight made its way through the drawn curtains.
“It looks like you’ll need to master ‘Spark’ first.” I pat her on the back. “A sealing spell like this is a little high level to start with.”
Auro rolled her eyes.
“Then have you ‘mastered’ spark then?” She scoffed. “Because it didn’t look like you were having too much trouble with this…”
I gave her an awkward smile, unsure of how exactly to explain it. From her point of view I had first picked up a magic book literally hours ago, only to master a spell and be able to cast a few spells from the banishment book with only a little effort. What she didn’t know was all the hundreds of hours of practise I had back on Earth, practise that had polished my fundamentals to a serviceable level already. It was no wonder why she’d be a little jealous.
But really, I was probably at a state where I could be told the inputs and spell name and be able to at the very least cast most basic spells here after an hour or so. Unlike some of the other disciplines like enchantment or ritualism, thaumaturgy skill was pretty transferable between spells. I would only have two big problems with the physical casting from here on out. The first was Saphry’s abysmal spell resistance which, while expected, already had me feeling a little dizzy from an hour or two of light practice. That one wasn’t likely to go away any time soon, unless I decided to take a month or three off to power level by casting myself into a stupor each day, but it was something I could deal with.
The other, more serious problem was something I had discovered just a few minutes ago.
This was probably something I should’ve expected, but as it turned out quite a few of spells crafted in Verol, were specifically tailored to take advantage of the ‘hot’ part of fire. Or at least, that’s what I assumed the problem was, as I only had access to ‘spark’ and a handful of banishment spells contained in the book Auro stole. Of the four spells I had tried to cast, three had sputtered out pathetically, as if some ignition in the spell’s ‘formula’ had gone wrong. I had originally thought the problem was my own technique at first, but when the fourth spell had worked perfectly fine I had quickly realised something was off.
Even without having access to the exact spell ‘code’ as you will, that seemed like the most likely culprit. For back on Earth, with only the element of ice at our disposal, I had found quite a few spells that worked like that, by basing the whole spell on the assumption that whatever was summoned would be cold. For an easy example, there was a spell back on Earth meant specifically to freeze a large amount of water by spreading out summoned cold over a huge area. This spell would pretty obviously just fail completely with a fiery element, or it might just boil the water instead if it did manage to cast. Spells that functioned like that would behave somewhat erratically when a different element was shoved in.
On the other hand, I really couldn’t see how a banishment spell would require heat to function. Perhaps the spell creator had used some funky energy conversions in the input that relied upon it, or maybe heat had some spiritual effect upon the dead. To be honest, these more complicated spells with such esoteric and contrived effects as ‘banish spirit’ or ‘heal wound’ still boggle my mind when I try to think about how they were coded.
How did you banish a spirit using just heat and force anyway? In fact, what even was a spirit?
“I just got lucky.” I shrugged. “I happened to guess correctly when gauging how much mana the inputs needed.”
It was a lie of course, but I really didn’t want to have to explain myself any further. That whole conversation could very quickly become awkward really quickly.
“But how do you even organise everything?” She sat back down on the bed. “It’s like there’s some mental block standing in front of me…”
I picked up the book again and began to thumb through it, flipping past the thaumaturgy and stopping at the rituals. All of those were meant for bigger demons than the one we intended to seal, which was apparently kind of low on the threat scale.
“That’s just a matter of practise.” I said without thinking. “Don’t worry, once you get it everything else will-” I looked up apologetically. “I mean, that’s what I’ve heard at least.”
“Just what you’ve heard?” Auro chuckled. “Do you have an attendant mage or something?.”
“I don’t.” I turned away. “I just… read a lot of books!”
“Uh-huh.”
“It doesn’t matter. Just keep practising.” I tapped the book again. “I’m going to see if I can figure out why they wanted this book before Alisone gets too irritated.”
…
I squinted at the small words in front of me, wishing for all the world that I hadn’t lost that magical lamp.
The moons were now high in the sky, and though their light was added to that of the building glyphs I still could not quite make out everything.
“I just don’t know, Gid.” I sighed as I laid the book on the window sill. “Unless there’s some secret code in here, nothing in here is even particularly dangerous. It’s looking more and more like a demon cult.”
Are you even sure this is the book they were looking for? Gideon poked the book with a talon. For all we know, the whole ‘book-stealing’ charge could just be a pretext for the search. It’s more likely they’re after you for the whole snow mage part.
“But they were-” I stopped for a moment as a loud snore ripped through the air from the bed. “They were looking through the section even before that.”
And nothing says they didn’t find whatever they were looking for anyway. Don’t you think it’d be a little too coincidental for Auro to grab the right book?
“Fair enough.” I agreed. “But that still leaves the question of-”
Why does it matter? Gideon interrupted. This is just another conspiracy you’re trying to entangle yourself in, but really it has nothing to do with us. You should just be focusing on banishing that demon.
I frowned, but couldn’t quite argue. It was obvious a lot of things were happening in this city, seeing as there were assuredly more than just the events we happened to walk into, but the only ones that really mattered were the ones that prevented us from getting home. And if I had any luck saved up those soldiers wouldn’t end up mattering. I just needed to keep on the down low and get what we needed.
But still, if there actually were a demon cult…
“It doesn’t really hurt to look, does it?” I nodded at the wall. “I mean, if the discovery of a cult just so happened to fall into our laps, it wouldn’t be such a huge pain to anonymously inform the guard, would it?”
Ryder. Gideon stood up onto his back legs and rested his front paws on my chest. We’ve already had this conversation. Remember back when you woke up? Right before you ignored it and agreed to help Andril anyway?
I looked away sheepishly.
I just want to get home. Back to our own lives. He continued. Don’t you think Saphry and Silst want to continue their own? Let the Veroline solve their own problems, and let's hurry up and fix our own.
“Fine, fine.” I sighed. “You’re right, as usual. I’m gonna need a few more days before I can purge that thing though.”
Of course. I never said to be hasty. Gideon pushed off and landed all his paws onto the window sill again. Only a few days though? Did you have a plan for the mind control part of the demon? Because I don’t think Auro’s going to be ready to cast any kind of spell in that timeframe.
“That’s the last problem I need to solve. But I have a few ideas.”