Chapter 9: Admissions
Wizardry allowed mages to pass on their knowledge and this led to the traditional method of learning. Mages would take apprentices with similar affinities to their own and teach them the constructs for the spells. The sorcerous Fonts available to a mage were used to place masters with apprentices.
-Tallen Elmheart, On Mages
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The line moved quickly, and as they got closer to where it entered a large building, a crier could be heard shouting out instructions.
“Read the signs! Follow the path for the primary curriculum you wish to enroll in! If you can’t read, follow the path marked with an ’X’ to be enrolled in the remedial program!”
The man announcing the instructions repeated them every minute and had a few dozen times by the time Kole and Amara saw the first signs. The path branched into five, each marked with one of the major schools of the academy. They read ’Academia,’ ’Art,’ 'War,’ 'Magic,’ ’Craft,’ and ’Nature.’ Beyond each, the paths branched further. Some splitting seemingly without end, but the Nature path simply split into ’Assuine’ and ’Horticulture’ before the latter lead into a building while the former, lead to a large tree in the center of the art school’s green.
At the crossroads where they would part, Amara stopped and looked to Kole as she marshaled her courage to speak.
“Let's meet under that tree after all of this,” she said quickly as if spitting the words out would lessen the chance of Kole saying no.
“Sure,” Kole said, having been about to suggest something similar.
Amara perked up at the accepted offer and then pulled something from a pouch at her belt.
“Take this! If you imbue Will into it, it will point to mine.”
Kole examined the object. It was a set of small circular stone discs set atop one another. The top of one disc was subtly shaped into a cone, while the other’s bottom was slightly concave. The features allowed the top disk to spin on the bottom fairly freely. Faint runes that meant nothing to Kole covered the objects and following Amara’s words, he held the object in his palm and imbued it with Will.
Immediately, a small white light began to glow on the edge of the top disk and snapped around to point directly at Amara.
“The light will glow brighter the closer you get. It should work so long as we are both in town, but don’t use it too much, it's just made of pewter so it won't last forever.”
“You made this?” he asked, impressed.
He’d seen Amara tinker with that rod, and draw runes in her book, so intellectually he knew she was a runesmith, but aside from the Light disks she’d made—which were extremely common—this was the first thing he’d seen her use.
Amara—as she still occasionally did—grossly misread Kole’s state of mind as he inspected the tracking device.
“I know, I should have used a better material, but I used the pewter cups on the ship, and it was all that I had at hand. I can—”
“You made this on the ship?!” Kole interrupted. “That’s amazing!”
Kole didn’t know much about making things, but the fine detail done on these devices was impressive even to him.
“I don’t think you will need to worry about a scholarship.”
Amara beamed, finally understanding that he was impressed.
“Thank you.”
After testing the device a little more, they separated. Amara went down the crafting line, then rune smithing, and then out of sight towards the crafting quarter of the school. Kole went down the path of ’magic’ and then followed signs for ’wizardry.” Kole walked among a large group of prospective students. The path continued straight towards the central tower of the Dahn, with the occasional branch with signs denoting specific fields of study. They passed branches for ’enchanting,’ ’medical magic,’ ’construction,’ ’war,’ ’art,’ and more, each taking a small number from the group out to the other colleges of magic, but Kole and the rest continued on until they saw a sign posted in front of the entry to the Dahn which read “general wizardry.’
While that might not sound as exciting as things like ’war wizard,’ general wizardry was the track most common for those who wished to be adventurers. While a war wizard would learn magics useful on campaign and on large battlefields, they had little skills useful in a small team setting or much theoretical magical knowledge. The needs of war, and the best methods for killing large groups of men with magic were long since settled, and the field was not one-for-one seeking novel innovation in the art of magic.
General wizardry was much like the curriculum taught at the Tower of Illunia of old. It was structured to give a solid magical understanding so that the students could learn the fields of magic necessary for them to pursue their own goals. While the other curricula were each capable of producing Master Wizards, very few reached the rank of Grand Master following that path.
Up close, the Dahn was impressive. The stone was solid marble, devoid of seams or cracks as if it were raised from the ground as a single white piece of stone. Large stained glass windows adorned its surface, evenly spaced, and set all the way to the top. The windows depicted important scenes dating back to the battle between the Wardens and Faust which resulted in the creation of Kaltis. Unconsciously, Kole looked down at his feet. It always made him uncomfortable knowing that the god of fire and destruction resided at the core of the planet, and he didn’t understand how more people didn’t worry about it.
The crowd passed by him as he admired the scene, the tower was the tallest building he’d ever seen, and he was trying to judge if it would even fit within the dome of his home. Eventually gathering his wits about him, he headed into the massive black stone double doors that were held open. Within, he saw the tip of the massive crystal shard that hung from the large hole in the fifty-foot ceiling, down to a dozen feet above the ground. The crystal was white and gave off a magical light that illuminated the room without producing shadows. The grand foyer was devoid of any furnishings, save for the ropes guiding the students to the left. The room was a great circle, with doors set evenly apart. The door to the right was open, and Kole could see the library within, which was very odd because if he looked up through the large central hole, he could see the library above.
I’d heard this was disorienting, but that doesn’t do it justice. Kole thought, looking back and forth between the two.
Kole was not the only one to stop and stare. Many of his peers paused with him at the tip of the crystal shard, then through the door where part of its middle could be seen.
Eventually, the gawkers built up to the point of forming a blockage, and Kole moved along. The door opposite the entry was closed, and a grand staircase started to either side of it and met well above it. Oddly, the staircase led to nothing. There was a landing over the closed door, but no door or hall.
The Dahn was sometimes called the “Flightless Tower” from its lack of stairs due to the magic doors, but here was a flight of stairs leading nowhere.
He didn’t have time to reflect, as his group was ushered into the next door. This room was far less impressive. There was a smaller foyer, with halls branching out in three directions. The central path lead to the center of the floor where one could access all the large lecture halls, while the left and right paths lead around the perimeter of the floor, where all the small classes could be found.
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The applicants were all directed into a large lecture hall at the very center. The room was a massive pie shape that seemed to take up a fourth of the floor. They entered at the top, and saw nearly a hundred terraced rows of seats leading to the bottom where there was a large slate set in the wall. Before the slate was a long table, with dozens of young adult wizards sitting, looking over papers.
The slate said, ’Take a seat and begin.’
Many prospective students were already doing so, so Kole found an open desk in the middle with a stack of paper on it and made himself comfortable.
The top sheet of paper had a list of fields one could study with brief descriptions and a check box of ’major’ and ’minor’ beside each.
Kole was prepared and quickly found the ones he needed. He’d long since researched the class requirements to enter the adventuring track, and he found those all quickly.
He checked major next to General Magic, Combat Magic, and History.
He then checked minor next to Martial Combat, Alchemy.
He then filled out a few fields about himself. He listed his name, age, race, and gender, and stopped when it asked him to list any innate magical abilities.
He considered lying, but he knew that they would ask him if his answers were honest under some sort of truth detection effect before he could formally enroll.
Reluctantly he wrote ’Illusion primal’ and ’Pacted dragon blood sorcerer.’
Then it asked him to list all the wizardry he could cast. He listed Shield and Magic Missile—the second of which he’d confirmed his ability to cast one night on the ship, sending the spell into the ocean. He then listed the long litany of cantrips he’d learned over the years.
Once he was done, he flipped to the next page, which was blank.
He looked around the room confused, but when he looked back at his page it was covered with print.
Magic paper!
Kole smiled. He’d already seen many wonders, but this had really hit home the nature of this place. He dealt with paper a lot in his studies, and the potential of magic paper to clear some of the tedium of it all excited him.
The text on the magical paper excited him far less. It began with a multiple-choice reading compression test, which was frankly insulting in its simplicity. When he finished a page, his correct answers would turn green, and the wrong red. Then the print would vanish and be replaced with another test. This repeated for math, but the math questions were far more in-depth. Kole was quite good at math, as the field was necessary to accurately reproduce the strange shapes that made up spellforms and were integral to the spells themselves.
Once he’d cleared those fields, the questions moved on to alchemy. He did far less well on that test, failing to identify plants by their descriptions or sketches, and not remembering many common safe potion combinations. He didn’t feel too bad about it though. To get accepted into the adventuring track, only a passing knowledge of alchemy was required, and that was why he was here—to learn.
The martial combat test was very short. It simply asked him to judge his martial combat prowess accurately and list any weapons he was proficient in. He wrote ’poor’ and ’none,’ and the page went blank.
It's probably fine...
Kole thought, reminding himself that this was a place of learning.
For the history exam, he had to answer some basic questions about pre and post-Flood history of the Basin. After that, he was asked an essay question about the aspects he’d been most knowledgeable.
He wrote a dry essay on the lost civilization of the pre-Flood Basin, but he thought he did pretty well. His father had always told him knowledge of history was key for any adventurer. Half the battle of being an adventurer was finding lost places to explore, while the other half was—well—battle.
For combat magic, he was asked questions about various common, and some less common, monsters. He did okay in that, having done some research on magical beasts and other common adventuring foes, but it hadn’t been his focus.
And then the magic test began. Well, the first. It started with the basics. Spellforms appeared on his paper, and Kole had to identify them.
No way...
Kole marveled at the spellform that had appeared before him.
Could it be?
Tentatively he touched the swirling shapes and found that it was imbued with Will.
How?
Copying spellforms was something that must be done by hand. Attempts had been made to use printing presses to copy the shapes, but they never held the Will long. Even less progress has been made in finding a method to copy the Will within.
But here, before Kole, a spellform had appeared. He looked at the pages of the students around him and saw that many of them too had spellforms on their sheets.
“Keep your eyes on your own paper!” a proctor shouted from the side.
Kole’s eyes darted back to his sheet, and he got to work.
The spellform before him was a Firebolt, he knew without even needing to read the Will. It wasn’t a variant he’d ever learned, but the basic components of most spells at the lower tiers varied little. He identified ten more spells in this manner before he had to slow down and start reading the Will and examining it in his mind. His pursuit of lost spells taught him far more about spellforms and their components than was typical for a wizard of his age—or really any age—and he could identify the most common spellform components by sight.
Then the second-tier spells came. At first, Kole could recognize these on sight as well, but they grew more difficult much faster and he had to resort to reading the Will within to piece out their functions. When he saw the first third-tier spell, he didn’t even try to figure it out by sight.
He made it through three before he got stuck. He knew he was close to figuring out the Barrier spellform in front of him, but he couldn’t recall all of the details. He looked up to clear his mind, and he noticed that others around him had books out and were using them as a reference.
“Keep your eyes on your own papers!” a voice shouted again.
Kole raised his hand, and the shouter came over to him.
“Yes?” he asked, irritated
“Can we use our spellbooks as a reference?”
“Yes,” the proctor said, still irritated, and then left.
Kole pulled his spellbook out from his bag and set it next to his test. Then, he got to work. In his pursuit of old spells, he’d begun to catalog spellform components meticulously in his spellbook. Books existed in the library with their descriptions and shapes, referencing areas of common spellforms where readers could copy the Will from there, but Kole had found that tedious, Instead, he’d copied the individual spellform components into his own spellbook, and imbued them with the proper intent, creating a library he could quickly copy from to repair the old spells he found.
The cost of such a convenience was rather absurd, the ink required to scribe spellforms being very expensive—though cheaper than it had once been even a few decades past. While Kole hadn’t known why Lord Oldhill had supported him and his studies financially, he’d not refrained from taking advantage of it, and he’d spent an obscene sum of money to create this reference.
With his spellbook, Kole’s progress accelerated once more. He made it through the third tier, and then the fourth before the spellform stopped. He obviously couldn’t cast any of these spells, but it didn’t take a master musician to hum out some sheet music and identify a song. It was all about finding the key parts of the spell and putting them together with the Font to determine a purpose.
Once the spells had stopped appearing, individual spell components appeared. These were devoid of intent, and Kole figured he was supposed to fill them, so he did. Again, and again, squiggles and shapes appeared. He couldn’t do them all from memory, but between what he had stored in his vault, and his spellbook, there weren't any he couldn’t replicate.
Then, something strange happened. A black dot of ink appeared. Kole touched it and sensed the intent of a spell component within.
How?
The whole point of a spellform was that it was constructed of shapes that stably held the spell’s intent without degradation. A random dot shouldn’t be able to contain the intent he sensed now. The answer became clear as he watched as the intent faded into magical noise and then nothing, but then the dot dissipated and an identical one appeared with the same intent.
Kole quickly got to work, sketching out the shape that was needed to hold the Will. He repeated this for an hour, students around him coming and going.
After completing a particularly obscure component Kole had only ever seen once on a very old Light spell, words appeared on the page.
“Please come to the front.”
Oh no...