Chapter Twenty-Nine

I’ll spare you the details of the trip. It was uncomfortable, okay? We were still packed like sardines, it was ‘brown bombs away’ thanks to the oil on those meatballs, and all I could do was hope nobody hit a farmer. I’ll close by saying I swore that if I could learn flight magic, I’d use that a lot, assuming it existed at all.

It was dark at least, so there was that.

The one good thing was I finally got confirmation. I looked up in the night sky and saw not one, not two, but three moons. A green moon. A purple moon. A red moon. All in different positions around the sky.

They were giants to my eyes, I wondered if that was because they were close to the world or because they were just that large?

I recalled something I learned in school, that in prehistory, millions of years ago on Earth, the moon would have looked much larger because it was much closer to the planet, and it was slowly moving away at an inch or something like that, per year, over millions of years.

If things were the same here, that meant that this world was particularly young. Or at least the moons were. I wondered what they were made of, whatever the case, the soft light that reflected off of them was beyond beautiful.

I couldn’t help but say so. “This is a beautiful world.”

I must have been looking for a lot longer than I realized, it was hypnotic after all. Maybe it was because we were crammed in like beans in a bean bag chair being sat on by somebody who was too big for it, or maybe it was because somebody at the far end of the ship let out a very loud fart right at that moment, or maybe both. But whatever the reason, no sooner than I said that, than Loysa and Dwarguy started laughing at my sentiment.

A little blush came to my face and I mumbled, “I could have timed that better.”

“No. No, you couldn’t have.” Loysa said, right as a thunderous boom went off and a flash of bright orange and red firelight lit up the world below in the distance.

“What…what was that?” I asked as I stood up to see better.

“That,” Loysa said without moving, “is what someone who knows how to really use their magic, can do with it.”

Dwarguy let out a long, low whistle.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Aye lass, that there was one ‘ell of an explosion.” He rubbed his bearded chin in thought, “If’n I were to guess, I’d say that was a spell someone on the thirteenth tooth or better can do. Course there’s no way to know from here if’n that be a specialist or a generalist.”

“What’s the difference?” I asked and looked on as I watched the fire rise up and then die down again to vanish as the night reclaimed the space where the flame thrived a moment ago.

“A specialist can do only one thing really, really well.” Loysa explained, “Like mastering every kind of explosion, or transmute anything, or manipulate the local weather however they like. But then again?” She gave a full shoulder shrug, “That’s all. The master of explosions can’t so much as turn tin into lead… that’s an easy transmute spell by the way. The person who can change the weather, can’t cast the simplest healing spell. A generalist though, they learn whatever magic they can.”

“What’s stronger?” I asked. It sounded like the specialist was better, but to my surprise, Loysa repeated her shrug.

“If you’re dying and you need a heal spell, do you think the weather specialist is powerful?” She asked me in a way I figured was rhetorical, and she made sense.

“So could someone like, maybe learn every kind of spell from every school of magic?” I asked.

“Afraid not. Nobody can use everything. Most compensate by having one that they’re better at than others, and then learning something of a few other schools of magic. I’m a priestess, so cleric is my school, but I have a few gifts for thievery for… obvious reasons.” She winked at me and I thought of my lost sweets.

I wasn’t as mad as I was, but I wanted more of those as soon as possible.

I gave my head a vigorous shake, I was getting off topic. “So, magic, most people are generalists and get their gifts from the gods they serve, like you?” I wanted to be sure I understood, and Loysa gave me an indulgent smile as if I were catching on.

“Now you get it. Whoever did that, is either a very high ranking generalist with an emphasis on explosion, or they’re a low ranking specialist who put all their gifts into destruction and explosion spells. Specialists like that are really rare though. It’s almost impossible for them to grow their skills without serious connections as adventurers.” Loysa explained, and that… honestly didn’t make sense.

“Huh?! Why not?!” I demanded, that didn’t seem fair. In tabletop RPGs specialists were the norm. The same went for a lot of anime and manga and even light novels.

Loysa spoke slowly, deliberately, as if explaining things to a child, and once again, as grating as it was, I knew it wasn’t wholly undeserved. Compared to the simplest child in this world, I might as well have been an infant. I hadn’t grown up here, so I had to learn everything afresh. As such, I listened carefully while she explained.

“Because how often do you think you need to blow something to hell? Cleric skills like mine are common specialists in magic, but that’s it? Otherwise specialists in any other school have very limited uses. They tend to go into the mages guild which go to work for various governments or the military, and those only need so many. There’s probably no more than a hundred true ‘specialists’ per country even across all schools of magic other than mine.”

It was entirely sensible. But as the airship began to descend toward Steelven, it only made me more curious than ever about just what kind of mage Kuduru had in mind for us to meet.