Crawler looked up as he heard voices entering the longhouse. He stood and peered around the divider of his cubicle. He saw a trio of teenagers coming into the building. He knew them all; they had only been three years ahead of him at the Children’s House. They saw him looking out from his divider and dashed over. They were all dressed like he was in simple linen pants and a shirt. Each was stained with mud and had a speckling of shining fish scales and stank of the river. Two were blond boys, a full head taller than Crawler and twins. The third was a black-haired girl like Crawler. They stopped before him and said, “Welcome to Trouble House.” In near unison.
One of the twins said, “I’m Gill!”
The other said, “I’m Fin.”
The girl said brightly, “I’m Rose. What’s your name?” Crawler remembered her as being kind and the boys as being a rough-and-tumble competitive pair.
“I’m Crawler.” He said to the trio.
“Crawler? That’s a good name! Why are you standing up? Shouldn’t you be crawling around?” Asked Fin jokingly.
Rose elbowed him, saying, “Be nice. He just got his name today. You remember what it was like on your first day.”
“Oh right, sorry, Crawler. Not trying to be mean, just joking with ya.”
“It’s okay. I’m just happy to have a name finally.”
A moment later, more voices, crackling and straining against puberty, entered the longhouse. This group of eight was all returning from some apprenticeship. They were twelve-year-olds that Crawler remembered from their time in the Children’s House. They all introduced themselves to him, and he did likewise. Another sixteen older kids, fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds, crowded into the building. Some of them came to introduce themselves, some not. They were an assortment of herder and hunter apprentices. The other two-year groups arrived, bringing the total of kids to forty-three.
Some apprentices did not come home during the week, hunters and herders being the primary groups that would foray into the plains for days at a time.
Crawler was grouped with another seven ten-year-olds who got him up to speed on how things worked, who was who, what to do, when, and the like. Crawler took it all in quickly. Between his Adept Learner and the lifetime of experience as Wallace, he slid into life in Trouble House easily.
The first seven days of the week were filled with an apprenticeship to one of the six main job groups within Colri society. The first year was Gardeners, the folks who grew the vegetables and few crops that the Colri village didn’t trade for. The plains were not fit for long-term farming despite the richness of the soil. Frequent flooding and swarms of voracious insects would decimate wheat fields or other grains. Rice paddies, raised racks of split bamboo herb planters, and small lots of garden vegetables were tended by Gardeners and their ten-year-old charges.
The six years of rotating apprenticeships for the kids had multiple overlapping goals. For the kids, it was a way to keep them busy and educate them about how the whole community of the Colri worked together to thrive. It gave them skills and exposure to adults in various roles and responsibilities. It gave the adults spare hands to do things that they might not want to do otherwise. Lastly, it gave the kids a view into the lives of these different roles to see if they wanted to advance into that field as an adult. Often the adults became true mentors for the kids as they grew, otherwise leading to a more direct and permanent apprenticeship when the children reached the age of sixteen.
Crawler was unique because he spent that time with the Spirit Talker on the eighth day.
------------------------------------
The Spirit Talker had Crawler call him Longtooth and carried three totems and three glyphs. Longtooth taught the boy all 36 glyphs. He taught him their meanings, primary uses, and secondary and tertiary meanings. Some folks were glyphed like himself and Crawler, but that did not limit anyone from learning how to use the glyphs. He taught Crawler how to devise words of power by linking the glyphs together. The order of the glyphs mattered, as did precise pronunciation. The three glyphs of Air, Water, and Breath were most commonly used to create a water-breathing spell. If used in a slightly different order and by putting the accent in another place, the spell fills someone’s lungs with water. Crawler took it all in; his Adept Learner gift absorbed it all. The language of Glyphs was almost like a computer program. More extended rituals using many different words could be created if the logical sequence of the terms and effects added up at the end to do what the caster wanted.
The language of magic was the glyphs, but there were two other important aspects to being a mage: intent and power. Refining one’s mind to both imagine the effect that the caster wanted. Then, focus on the glyphs and apply the necessary force of will. The process of magic took a toll on one’s mind. One could say the magic words all day, but if the caster could not also imprint their will onto the words and apply the magical power into the glyphs, the results would not be as intended. An unfocused mind that casts a spell to cut down a tree might be able to cut down the tree, but how the tree fell and how many pieces were another part of the equation.
The magical power to create that effect had to come from somewhere, and there were many names for this power. Magicka, mana, chi, life force, shakti, or cosmic energy. All were the same, just using different terms. Most talented folks unconsciously used a bit of their life force to create the effect. Someone glyphed with Earth and Fortitude might be inhumanly tough, but they could not channel enough of their mana to maintain that forever. A minute of stonelike skin was exhausting for most. Collecting, storing, and using that mana required skill and patience. One could pull it in from the air, but that was a slow process. Certain materials and creatures, especially monsters, held a significant amount of mana. The Spirit Boar that Crawler had killed had contained a fair amount, the Blood Crystal that every Colri child wore had been able to collect some of that, but most of it had been lost. The most common way to collect this energy was to kill the beast, but most beasts carried some stored somewhere in their body. The boar’s tusk had been such a piece, unknown to Crawler at the time. This had supercharged his naming ritual. Some unscrupulous magi in far lands could even harvest the life force of a dying human, but this was often tainted in some way. Mana could also be extracted from the environment in specific areas.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
Another aspect of mana was that it often became flavored by certain Aspects or Glyphs. If mana was drawn from the environment, this was common. A pristine waterfall would provide water-aspected mana. Crawler thought of these like different flavors of seltzer water. Mana flowed through the world in ley lines that crossed and intersected. People and animals often congregated in these ley lines, and natural roads formed; cities were often built over nexus points. Longtooth taught him how to access the world's natural mana in all its forms. How to draw it in and feed it into the glyphed words he crafted in his mind, forcing it into the spell through his intent.
He taught Crawler how Totems worked and what they did for the Colri. Longtooth taught Crawler that every different culture had another way of working with magic and how it was taught. All of it was loosely based around the same glyphs, but how they were used differed wildly. Colri Totems were natural spirits of the wild that were somewhere between ghosts and gods (with few exceptions who were actual Gods corrected Trickster). They could be enticed to bind with a person, family, bloodline, and even certain items. The effects of the various totems differed, but all of them were able to provide mana for what it was bound to. A house decorated with certain glyph patterns and with a bound bear totem was more durable and helped folks within that house sleep better. In an emergency, the spirit of the bear could be summoned to defend those within. A man with similar patterns was far stronger and tougher but did not need to expend his mana to fuel that additional power; the bear totem fed that. As a Spirit Talker, Longtooth could interact directly with these totems in ways few others could. He could call Totem spirits to manifest themselves for a great many reasons. Empowered with glyphs and directed by the Spirit Talker, he was a one-person army.
Longtooth spent much time teaching Crawler how to find, bind, and call out Totem spirits. As Crawler was Spirit Glyphed, he came to this easily. By the time he was 16, Crawler held totem bindings for Boar, Water Moccasin, Crocodilian, and Nighthawk Owl in addition to Trickster. None of them were more than animalistic spirits that Crawler could call forth, unlike Trickster. Trickster who also taught Crawler about the world and magic. These Totems had some fantastic effects; each could be called forth as a ghostly creature to act as a companion to Crawler. They could also be called into Crawler’s body to enhance some aspect of his physique. The Boar made it so he could sprint a short distance at superhuman speed and increased his toughness and speed. Water Moccasin allowed him to swim like a water snake and added a deadly corrosive poison to his hand strikes. Crocodilian added a set of hard armored scales to his body and a sort of supernatural camouflage that allowed him to blend into his surroundings if he was still or moved very slowly. The rare Nighthawk Owl increased his sense of hearing and allowed him to see in near-lightless conditions.
Crawler had little time between apprenticeship duties, chores, additional training, and the like. What little time he did have was not spent lazing about or socializing. It was spent on more training. The Trickster was a wealth of knowledge regarding magical theory that was above and beyond Longtooth. Longtooth had a Master’s degree in Spirit magic with a minor in Magic Theory. Trickster held multiple Doctorates in Practical Magic, Theoretical Magics, Magical Engineering, Alchemy, Rituals, and Glyph Crafting. The Totem Spirit fed the boy the background, side notes, cliff notes, and cheat codes to the building blocks that Longtooth taught him. The skills and techniques from eons of being the personified Aspect of Cleverness, many lessons the Trickster had learned the hard way or stolen from masters in the craft in some way or another. He helped Wallace and Crawler integrate through meditation and by guiding the dreams of the growing young man. Trickster taught Crawler how to use his Spirit, Clever, and Heart glyphs. Longtooth specialized in the Spirit glyph, Trickster in the Clever glyph, and both knew the Heart glyph. Trickster taught the boy to link the Clever and spirit glyphs to give his summoned Totems more independence and stronger minds. He led the boy to use the Heart glyph to heal his body, store a supply of mana inside his heart, and survive deprivation by slowing his metabolism. If he linked his Heart and Clever glyphs, he could sense the emotions of those around him and very closely control his emotional responses. Crawler was the only kid in Trouble House who never caused trouble. Linking all three allowed him to sense the emotional state of creatures, if an animal was a Spirit Beast, and give him some sense of impending danger if that danger was brought by ill intent.
Crawler did his best to fit in with the other kids, becoming friends with the other children. The rolling cycle of kids coming and going made for exciting combinations of children. Everyone became a sibling within weeks of coming into Trouble House and almost a stranger when they left. When someone left Trouble House, they were considered responsible for themselves and went through their Ritual of Passage. Until one was twenty-five, there was little responsibility, and they held no legal rights to own a home, a business, or participate in the political councils. At twenty-five was the third and final ritual of the Colri’s ascension from child to adult. Most young adults went to work for the mentors they found during their time in Trouble House, becoming a part of those households. Between sixteen and twenty-five, they could finally earn wages as were paid for those jobs.
Many went on what the Colri termed as the Long Walk. Akin to an Australian Walkabout, this was a journey of self-discovery and a way to earn money working for the caravans as a guard, wandering the wilderness, or finding a new place for themselves. The Long Walk was a timeless tradition of the Colri. Some held it to be a necessary part of a Colri’s life. When a Walker returned to the Colri, they were celebrated and integrated into the community. Walkers brought back experiences from the world outside the plains, which enriched the Colri as a whole.
Crawler’s time with the Gardeners was mostly tedium to the young man; agriculture was not something that interested him. Rivers was notable for finding his ‘first’ Totem, the Water Moccasin, and then later the Crocodilian. Herders was far more difficult than it sounded on paper. Animal Husbandry and learning the basics of Colri warfare to defend the herds, traveling for extended periods with little more than can be brought in a small sack, and surviving with little more. Boar came to him then with a sense of an old friend reuniting. Herbals was a second look at agriculture and survival on the edges of the delta. He learned the basics of Alchemy and harvesting Spirit Herbs, plants similar to Spirit Beasts that have absorbed sufficient mana from the environment to cross a certain threshold. Crafters was hard physically but also very satisfying, as it echoed some of his life as Wallace. He learned the basics of scrimshaw, bow and spear making, pottery, and leatherworking. At this time, he crafted his two boar tusks into ivory knives, carefully decorated in delicate scrimshaw of his Totem spirits of Crocodilian and Water Moccasin. With the guidance of Longtooth, Crawler infused them with magic into a pair of curved ivory knives hard as worked steel. He had created powerful magical daggers as tokens of his Boar totem and combined them with the other two spirits. One injected poison that was caustic to flesh on command; the other would rend a gobbet of meat like the bite of a Crocodilian. They were his masterwork for Longtooth, confirming the Spirit Walker’s teachings and marking his primary education as complete to the old mage. His fifteenth year was as a hunter, working as part of a ten-person team to hunt the plains for monsters, patrol the borders, and bring meat for the village. Here he trained with and mastered the spear. It was during this time that the Nighthawk Owl totem came to him.