“Still on the hunt, I see,” a voice called from the stairs. “You really need to curb that magic obsession of yours.”
Clara Elwin stopped with her hand on the front door of the family’s manor. The voice belonged to Arthur, her eldest sibling, and it had become a trend for him to bug her about her interest in the arcane.
She let out an exaggerated huff as she turned to face him. “It’s hardly an ‘obsession’. It’s just something I’m interested in, and since father can’t afford to send me to a school to learn it, I am forced to make due with what I can find here.”
Arthur raised his hands in defense. “No need to take my remarks so seriously, dear sister. I was just making an observation. So,” he continued on, despite the glare Clara had fixed him with. “Any luck so far?”
“Very little,” Clara admitted. “I have seen books upon books of magical theory and the history of the art. I could describe to you every school of magic and provide examples of spells from each one. But to actually cast them…” She shrugged. “I’ve barely been able to find basic instructions for minor cantrips. As it turns out, wizards are incredibly strict about letting their secrets reach outsiders.”
“To a poor mundane man like me, it sounds to me like you should know enough to be making your own spells. Why can’t you do that?”
“I’ve explained it to you before, haven’t I?” This was, in fact, not the first time Arthur had asked a similar question in his teasing, and Clara doubted he would pay much attention to the explanation, but she adopted an exaggerated scholarly tone and gestured at the air around her. “Sources of magic are ever present in the world. Spells take energy from those places and shape it, giving it form. It requires incantations and gestures to do so, and performing the wrong ones can backfire. Creating a spell from scratch would be a lot of trial and error. It might take years, and there’s no guarantee I wouldn’t blow myself up in the process.”
“How clear and concise. Even a common man like myself could understand,” Arthur responded with a grin. Clara couldn’t help but feel like he was being facetious. “You should be doing lectures at one of those schools. In the meantime, I assume you’re going to keep scouring the market for scrolls, or whatever it is you need?”
“More or less. Devin wanted to meet me today, he says he has something I’ll be interested in.”
“Ah, then I’ll keep you occupied no longer. I’ve my own business to attend, besides.” Before Clara could respond, Arthur had ducked away from the stairs towards the upper hall.
Clara sighed. Her older brother had been cheery, almost flippant, for as long as she could remember. She wasn’t sure how he had the energy to keep it up, and she contemplated it as she turned back to the door and exited the house.
As far as she was aware, the Elwin family had been on the decline since before Arthur had been born. They barely owned more than the house they lived in, and that burden was going to be his sooner or later. If they managed to keep the estate that long. Clara wasn’t privy to the specifics of her family’s financial state, but she was certain that it couldn’t be long before even their home would have to be sold - a sad outcome for a formerly respected noble family. If only there was something she could do about it.
Clara’s interest in magic had stemmed from that wish to help her family. The duties of understanding and managing the estate would fall upon her elder siblings, and she hadn’t received much education in that department. Suitors from other noble families were almost nonexistent, as the Elwin family had little of value to offer in return. She had little in the way of skills with which to contribute - unless she managed to learn wizardry.
She had witnessed the abilities of a wizard who had visited town, years ago. His power seemed infinite, as if anything were possible for him. That had sparked Clara's interest in magic, though it began as nothing more than a minor curiosity, purchasing supposedly magical trinkets from the market. By chance, though, she'd found a tome of magical lore and bought it on impulse. She'd started reading it as nothing more than something to do with her free time, but had slowly grown captivated by the subject, delving deeper and deeper into it, believing that if she could become a skilled magus she could capture what she was sure that wizard held, and perhaps use it to help her family. But, despite all her enthusiasm, she had never managed to learn much more than simple cantrips on her own.
And she had spent so long trying to learn it.
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Almerra was the town the Elwin family called home. A generation back, they had owned farmland just outside of it. Clara didn’t know exactly what had happened, only that her grandfather had ended up losing it in some way or another; her father had never been particularly open about the subject, and her siblings were similarly closemouthed. To Clara, the town itself was unremarkable, of average size and character, and it had a critical lack of magical community. The only thing of particular note was that it fell under the jurisdiction of the Duke of Tevarin, who was notable for his military exploits, something that didn’t interest Clara in the least.
The city was encircled by a low palisade wall that ostensibly protected it from outside attack, and an unpaved road cut through it from east to west. The town center was kept relatively clear and used for everything from market stalls to public displays. Shops and houses sprawled out around the town center, placed with little to no planning. The Elwin estate sat on an isolated rise just inside the southern wall; several other noble estates lay within Almerra, but they had had little to do with Clara’s family, at least during her lifespan.
Clara was at her destination almost before she realized it. Not long ago, she would have been able to ride there in her family’s carriage - but that had been sold, along with the horses. She wasn’t going that far, though: just to a popular cafe near her family’s estate.
The mingling aromas of hot beverages and pipe smoke greeted her senses as she entered. Snippets of murmured conversation reached her ears, and almost every individual her eyes wandered over was well groomed and well dressed. She saw Devin immediately, a gruff young man whose frame seemed to suit a lumberjack more accurately than a trader, sitting at his usual table off in the corner.
Devin was the son of a well-off merchant, relatively wealthy but lacking any sort of title. He was in a better situation than she, Clara often thought, which didn’t sit well with her; a common merchant shouldn’t be living better than a titled family. But he had been helpful in her search for magical lore, ever since they had met two or so years back.
“Good morning, Devin,” Clara greeted him, sliding into the chair opposite before catching the attention of one of the cafe’s staff and requesting her usual cup of tea.
“Morning,” he replied briefly. “Got some things you might be interested in. Seems like they’re some sort of magic, not that I understand the stuff.” He set two cylindrical cases on the table. Clara eagerly reached for them, flipping the lid off of one and sliding out the contents. It was a single piece of vellum, neatly rolled up.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Unrolling it, Clara almost immediately saw that it was the type of spell scroll that could only be used once; most of the hard work had been done by whoever scribed it, and it only needed a simple incantation, usually just a single word, to be cast. The resulting release of magic would burn the scroll up. Not useless, Clara thought, but it required more training than she had to learn a whole spell from just a scroll.
“Thank you, Devin. These should help me,” Clara said, putting on a warm smile and making an effort to keep any disappointment from creeping into her voice. It was a step in the right direction, and she could undoubtedly find a use for the scrolls. But it still didn’t get her much closer to casting anything herself.
“No problem,” he replied. “Matter of payment, though. Cost me near ten talons each to get them to you.”
Clara pulled twenty of the silver eagle-marked coins from her purse. She still had some pocket change regularly available to her, but it was a pittance compared to most other nobles. Haggling was common when buying something, she knew, but she had also never had the patience or skill for it. She slid the coins across the table, and Devin pocketed them with a nod of approval.
They continued to converse politely about nothing of importance for a few more minutes over their drinks. Clara waited until she had finished her tea, then made her farewells to Devin and exited the cafe. There was still another place she might find something today.
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Clara’s next destination took her a fair way across the city. It made her miss the carriage all the more. She ended up in the part of town where roads ceased to exist and buildings pressed even closer to each other than usual. Most of the shops were marked by colourful signs that denoted their purpose without text, and none of them seemed like the kind of establishment Clara would choose to spend her time. Just the look of the area made her feel out of place.
The building Clara was looking for bore a hanging sign with an exaggerated illustration of a wizard’s accoutrements, hat and staff and all, along with the words “Ezexius’ Enchantments, Evocations, and Everything Else” on the opposite side. She slipped inside, eager to be away from the streets. It was strange how the outdoors could feel more claustrophobic than the inside of a store.
Not that this shop was particularly wide open. The walls were lined with shelves, and the shelves filled with all manner of trinkets and baubles, from wands to pointed hats to cheap amulets. Wooden staves of different design leaned against the walls at regular intervals. Incense burned at a counter, trails of its faintly scented smoke drifting aimlessly around the interior of the store. Behind the counter stood the proprietor, a hunched old man dressed in the comically stereotypical wizard’s garb of a robe and pointy brimmed hat, his face shrouded in a voluminous white beard.
Clara knew that Ezexius wasn’t a real wizard. The beard could fool you at first glance, but further scrutiny proved it a fake, and his name almost definitely was too. Most of the goods he displayed in his store were completely mundane charms. Every so often, though, he had something genuine. “Good day, Ezexius,” she greeted him. “Have anything interesting today?”
“Ah, Miss Elwin. Of course, I always have something interesting.” Ezexius gestured widely at the interior of his shop with a crooked grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Everything you see is a must-have if you care about the mystical arts. But if you’re looking something truly unique, I do have something I’ve saved for you in particular…” He bent down behind the counter, returning with two scraps of paper that he placed on the counter. The two pieces were covered in a messy but legible scrawl, which appeared to be the formula for a spell.
Clara reached hurriedly for the pieces of paper and scanned them, but her excitement dimmed upon realizing the spells described were only simple cantrips. One of them would simply cause an object to shed light. Hardly a true feat of magic, and all cantrips were roughly on that level: the effects they created were almost as easily done by purely mundane means. Clara thought these might have been discarded from a wizard’s spellbook to make space for real spells.
She was disappointed, but Clara decided to purchase the cantrips regardless. It was a step towards her goal, however small. It would only take her a night or so to memorize them. On a whim, she picked one of the carved staves from the wall and paid for it, too, before thanking Ezexius and beginning the trek home.
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The sun lay low in the sky by the time Clara had made her way home with her new acquisitions. The few commoners the family could still afford to employ were hard at work finishing the last of their tasks before dark set in. This was the time she normally returned after her daily excursions.
Such was how Clara’s days had gone for what seemed like an eternity now, though it had been but a few years. She would wake up, make her stops, and come back home with anything of interest she had managed to find. The rest of the evening she would spend researching, starting with anything new she had acquired, and rereading old material if she hadn’t managed to find anything worthwhile. It felt like she was going in circles.
But there wasn’t much else she could think of doing. She had few responsibilities in the household; all of the important business was taken care of by either her father or her two older siblings. Beyond basic tutoring, they hadn’t been able to provide much in the way of education for Clara, lacking funds for private tutors and time to educate her themselves. Not that she blamed them; trying to pull the family out of its decline seemed a harrowing task that left little in the way of free time.
So she spent her time hunting down what she could of the arcane. Maybe it had become an obsession.
As she slipped into the foyer of the house, Clara heard voices from the study, situated just down the hall. With a quiet, precarious step she crept towards the room, curious.
“The Duke of Tevarin is calling for more officers to join his campaign. Should you distinguish yourself in his service, he might reward you with a fief, however minor…” Clara immediately recognized that the voice belonged to Lord Matthias, her father.
“You know I’ve never been particularly gifted in war, father. It’s just as likely that I’ll somehow earn his ire. Or worse, fall in battle.”
“It’s rather rude to eavesdrop,” a soft voice whispered in Clara’s ear. “Is it not?” Clara jerked back in surprise, turning to see her older sister, Cordelia. She was unsurprisingly rather alike in appearance to Clara, a bit taller than average with long, dark hair and a soft wave to each tress. Cordelia’s face was a touch more round, giving her a warm and kind appearance in Clara’s opinion. Now, as was frequent more and more often, she had noticeable dark circles beneath her eyes. She moved back into the foyer, and Clara followed.
“It looks like you’ve had some luck,” Cordelia said, motioning to the staff that Clara was towing around.
Clara had almost forgotten she was carrying it. Her face coloured slightly as she looked at the her new prize, a bit embarrassed. “It’s entirely mundane, actually. I just felt like picking it up when I saw it.” That caused a slight smile to appear on Cordelia’s face. “I did find some useful things, though,” Clara continued, pulling the two scroll cases from under her arm. “Devin managed to find these, and they seem like the genuine article.”
“That’s wonderful,” Cordelia said, her voice warm and genuine. That was how Clara always remembered her sister: calm and considerate, as opposed to Arthur’s energetic and cheery demeanour. They always seemed so optimistic, determined that they would be able to elevate the family, that it had inspired Clara long ago. She wanted to contribute to that goal in whatever way she could.
The two continued to chat for a while, before Cordelia excused herself to go attend to some business before night fully set in. Clara, finally noticing the empty feeling in her stomach, stopped by the kitchen to procure some food before retiring to her room.
Her room had become a veritable fortress of magical lore over the years. It was furnished with all the things one might expect from a noblewoman’s room, with a comfortable bed, fine curtains, and several trunks of well-cut clothes. A sturdy writing desk sat against one of the walls, piled high with books and various magical knickknacks. More texts and trinkets were strewn about the chambers at random.
Clara leaned the staff against her wall and laid out the rest of her newly obtained goods on her desk to survey. Sitting down, she opened up the scroll cases and set to deciphering the effects of each scroll. It didn’t take her very long; one spell allowed the user to comprehend spoken and written languages for a duration, while the other would allow its recipient to determine the properties of another magical item. Useful spells, certainly, but having them as scrolls didn’t do her much good without the training necessary to learn them. Regardless, she rolled them back up and placed them in their cases.
The cantrips were more interesting to Clara. There was the light spell, and the other would let her repair a minor break in an object. Not very exciting, but more important than their effects was the fact that they were full instructions, as one might find in an actual spellbook. Clara spent the rest of her night memorizing them, at last retiring to her bed as the candles waned low.