After they had finished dealing with his father’s little test they walked through a few different corridors and Katy finally couldn't hold back her laugh anymore. “The look on his face was priceless.” She always did like it when nobles were humiliated.
“Yeah but that family will never talk to me again. I actually liked them. I can’t believe they had to be the ones my father made me deal with on my own.” He frowned, his father always did know how to piss him off.
“Really you can’t believe that? Which part was out of character?” Katy asked, mock confusion on her face.
He looked at her mouth in a thin line. He managed to hold it for all of 3 seconds before his face cracked and he laughed. Her smirk widened at his reaction. “True, that isn’t out of character for him at all, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.” His smile faded as he spoke, and hers along with it.
“Less than 3 weeks left before we get to begin the journey towards the academy, just bear it a little longer.” She gave him a sympathetic look.
“I know, it’s just so hard to wait. I’m just glad the academy rests on neutral territory, our king doesn’t even have authority there, much less the nobles.” His excitement was palpable, even as he held the bearing of a noble as they walked through the winding corridors.
“It’s still a little early, since you managed to get us out of there in less than hour, but should we start training?” She tilted her head to the side as she spoke.
“No, I think we should use the extra time for studying. Your combat abilities are already up to par but your magic theory still needs lots of work.” She pouted looking down, her cat ears drooping on her head.
“Why do I even have to know magic theory? I already know how to do the spells I would actually use, and what's the point of thinking how magic might work. Just try it and find out.” Her expression perked up as she ranted. He had to stifle a fond smile at her childish antics.
“Well most have to understand theory to stop their spell attempts from blowing up in their faces. We have to know it because it will no doubt be tested during the trials.” He cut off her rant about the unfairness of it all. She pouted once again but nodded nonetheless. “Do you need to grab the books from your quarters?” She did after all get them yesterday.
“No. The books are already in a secret room.” He smirked, this castle had existed for generations there were many secret passages. Not even his father knew of them all. Honestly neither did he, but Katy did. She had explored every inch of this castle. How she remembered them all, but couldn’t remember the factions of the spirit war, he’d never know.
He nodded at her and she took the lead for the first time today. He followed not far behind, Until they stopped at what seemed like a regular brick wall just as decorated as every other, in this case with a painting of a river. She placed her hand on the painting, and began breathing deeply. With each exhale a soft white light traveled from her heart towards and through her right arm. The light went through her hand and into the painting, which began to glow a soft violet color. Azura inspected the painting watching as the violet symbols began to dance across its surface.
“Hmm this enchantment is amazing to think it still takes on the color of its creator, she must have been quite skilled indeed.” Katy looked at him panting slightly from the exertion as the wall slid to both sides revealing a surprisingly well lit passage despite the fact no visible lights existed that he could see.
“How do you know a girl made this passage?” She looked confused even as they began walking down the passage.
“I don’t know if a girl made the passage or not but that enchantment was done by a woman. You can tell because the symbols were rounded, not a sharp edge among them." She nodded, accepting his answer. Enchantment was his specialty after all.
“It’s a pretty long hallway but it ends in a nice little study.” She spoke over the low grinding sound of the walls closing back together behind them, the passage not losing any of its unnatural brightness. Azura was amazed, to think that enchantments existed that could draw in enough natural mana to exist for centuries, and even beyond that while it took a chunk of Katy’s mana. That was still far less than any modern enchantment of the same scale would require.
“It’s incredible the lights, the door, how many years did it take just to create these enchantments? Or was their skill simply that much greater.” He loved enchantments. His father thought the skill a waste of time, he would prove him wrong.
While skill with magic as a whole was much higher now than it used to be as generations of knowledge stacked on top of eachother, enchantment which is considered tedious and largely unnecessary has lost much of what it used to have. Although he was unsure how much of that had to do with the language of spirits that had to be used to create enchantments. The language had patterns sure but for the most part it twisted and changed never the same as it was the day before. How long before the symbols changed? Days, hours, minutes, it all depended. With so many variables he could understand why most would spend their time elsewhere.
Not for Azura though. To him there was nothing more interesting, enchanting was at its core a way to speak to the world and even magic itself. “Jeez you see a wall open to reveal a passage without a care in the world, but some weird glowing symbols appear and you’re but an excited child.” She tried to sound chastising but her fond smile gave her away. Normally he would have retorted, but that would take time away from this amazing enchantment. He placed his hand on the wall of the corridor and took a deep breath. With his exhale came a burst of silver mana through his fingers.
His mana was very different from Katy’s and not just in color either. While hers were soft rays of white light like the moon illuminating the shadows, his was a bright silver light encompassing all that it could reach. The symbols began to glow the same violet as the painting as the silver began to encompass the whole wall glowing blue symbols etching their way into the wall in places where the silver came to rest. Katy watched on with awe on her face. She always did think his magic was beautiful even if his father called it a waste of time.
“This is amazing, can you feel that? It’s like the enchantment is alive. It’s incredibly complex, it would take me hours to decipher it and even longer to copy it. The mana of the women who made this still resides in it drawing on the natural mana in order to extend her enchantments. It’s incredible.” He looked so excited she actually felt a little bad disturbing him.
“You didn’t freak out like this in any of the other secret passages I showed you. What’s special about this one.” The light in the wall began to draw back, the blue symbols disappearing as the silver passed them on their way back to him and the violet runes faded back to the dim light of the hallway.
Once his mana had completely receded he spoke. “None of the other passageways have been like this. They have all been purely mechanical in nature or just hard to spot. This one is different, the magic is so potent once it’s active that it’s mind boggling that it could have ever been hidden. Frankly this level is so far beyond me I only have a basic understanding of what it does, how it does it is a complete mystery..” His wonder hadn’t abated even a little though.
“Well I’m sorry I hadn’t found this one sooner since you only have a few weeks before we leave for the academy.” Her ears drooped as she looked down. Azura smiled at his friend and patted her head between the ears.
“Are you kidding the fact that you found it all is more than enough, I never would have seen this if it wasn’t for you.” She quickly turned her head to the side. “How did you find this anyway?” Now it was her turn to get excited as she looked up with a smug expression.
“It was easy enough the wall made a hollow sound so I knew it was a passage since there shouldn’t be anything on the other side. The hard part was figuring out how to open it. But it didn’t take me long to find out the painting was absorbing mana.” What she didn’t mention was that she found that out when she punched the wall in anger because she couldn’t find the mechanism.
“Wow, impressive as always. As usual you excel at infiltration of all kinds.” She smiled at his praise.
“It wasn’t that impressive.” He laughed at her response, but decided to just shake his head. They walked in companionable silence for a while before Katy broke the quiet. “We’re almost there, it’s right past this corner.” True to her word when they turned the corner he saw the study.
The study was far more impressive than he had anticipated. The bookshelves lining the walls were filled to the brim with books he had never seen before. A simple desk at the center of the room had the books he had asked Katy to grab from the library, and an old leather bound book covered in dust. There were black symbols etched into the far wall, the only wall without any bookshelves. The best part in his mind though was the lack of ostentatious decorations. Each of the books looked well worn and read. The desk looked old and well used. The table closer to the entrance but still in open space had 4 well worn chairs.
“Well I have a new favorite place in this castle.” Azura was giddily heading towards the far wall ready to decipher the symbols on the wall. Katy grabbed his cloak before he could take more than a couple steps.
“It’s too bad magic theory is oh so important, guess we better get to studying.” Even her sigh managed to be laced with sarcasm. This time it was Azura’s turn to pout. He gave a long suffering sigh.
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“Ah having my own words turned against me like that, you would have made a fine noble.” Her face scrunched up in disgust.
“Don’t think I’m as easy to fool as the other nobles you deal with, I have had 10 years to learn your tricks.” His pout vanished along with most of his disappointment.
“Meh it was worth a shot.” He patted her head as he walked towards the desk and grabbed one of the books from the small pile that Katy brought. “Alright, fine. We’ll study magic theory for an hour or 2. After that I think I would like to see what knowledge this room has to offer for a few hours.” He sat down at the table with Katy pulling a chair to sit next to him.
“So Magic theory obviously focuses primarily on the flow of a person’s mana, since spells that can affect natural mana are extremely difficult and typically only possible with unique magic or spirit magic.” Katy nodded along to his explanation. These were the basics she knew but a refresher on the basics before moving to the more advanced topics had always helped her. “Mana is complicated. For now its exact nature eludes us however there are many theories. Care to name a few?” She put her hand to her chin before giving a sweet smile.
“How about Julias? I always liked that name.” He held in his laugh though only just.
“Hilarious, truly. However I am particularly eager to finish our lesson today so I’d have you be serious.” She winced. She after all hated when he entered what she referred to as noble mode.
“Ok ok just stop that, please.” He smiled at her and nodded. She sighed in relief. “Well one theory is that mana is how our soul inflicts its will on the world, another is that mana is simply an energy that people possess.” She put her hand to her chin actually thinking deeply this time.
“The most accepted theory is that mana is our way of connecting to the realm of spirits, and that mana is simply the gate from which the powers of our soul can be unleashed upon the world.” He nodded at her.
“That is correct. Although it actually raised another question I’d like to ask.” He gestured towards her cat ears. “If mana is our connection to the spirit realm, did your mana grow stronger after you formed a contract with that cat spirit?” She looked contemplative for a moment.
“You know I honestly have no idea how that stuff works. I mean obviously after the contract was done my spirit trait manifested.” She rubbed her cat ears. “I can hear better, see in the dark and I have found certain physical abilities to be better than they were. But I’m not sure if it affected my mana in any way. Mana can’t exactly be measured, you know.” He nodded along. She didn’t say anything he didn’t already know but he had hoped that since she had an actual spirit trait she might know more than he did. Still he should have known while one has a general feel for how much mana they had left; it was more of a rough percentage than anything.
“I expected as much, but it was worth a shot.” He smiled at her before he picked the book back up. Katy once again focused on the book in his hands. “Ok, that will cover the review of the basics, so I’ll let you choose the advanced topic today. Unique, advanced, enchantment, or spirit?”
Katy hummed in thought. “What are the odds of enchantment being important for the trials?” Jerk she knew full well the answer to that. He sighed “slim to none unfortunately.” She smirked at him. “Then since unique and spirit magic certainly won’t be tested, I suppose advanced magic is the best choice.” Neither of them particularly cared for advanced magic.
“You’re not wrong, ugh fine. Advanced it is.” He turned a few pages and cleared his throat. “Advanced magic takes many forms. It can be changing your mana into the forces of nature: fire, lightning, ice, water, wind rock, the works. Another form of advanced magic is using your mana to affect things outside of your body, telekinesis and for the truly advanced even a short range version of telepathy. Advanced magic is called as it is because most mages can’t do it unaided. They require the use of shards…”
Katy interrupted him. “Shards?”
Azura gave her a surprised look. “You don’t know what shards are?” He growled in frustration. “Surely they can afford to teach the servants something so basic. I’ll have words with my father later, but for now I’ll tell you about shards, they aren’t very complicated.” She looked on in interest as he put his hand inside his cloak and pulled out a sparkling red diamond shaped gem from behind him. “This is a shard, for most this is a tool to aid in advanced magic. For the nobility it is typically a tool for training and learning to do advanced magic on their own.”
She hummed. “Their?” Azura frowned but nodded at her.
“I am incapable of performing advanced magic without a shard, since enchantment falls under spirit magic. I decided that if I could perform advanced magic with relatively inexpensive materials, why waste months or even years mastering the art of transforming the mana myself.” Her face darkened.
“What about when you can no longer rely on your father for money.” He brightened, looking proud of himself.
“I haven’t relied on money from my father since I was 10. I have been doing odd jobs around town to pay for anything of actual significance I have.” he sighed. “Besides that I meant it when I said relatively inexpensive it is after all more common for commoner mages to wield them then nobles.”
She smiled and nodded. “That’s good, nobles tend to hoard things that give commoners a chance to be on equal footing.” He couldn't blame her for looking so bitter.
“I’m sure they would here to if they could, but making shards is a rather simple affair so there are far too many for them to even try it.” she laughed looking up at him.
“You are such a strange noble.”
He smiled back at her and bowed deeply “why thank you kind miss.” They both burst out laughing.
“Oh you distracted me, I was going to give a demonstration.” He extended his arm palm up with the red crystal in the middle of his palm. He took a breath and the crystal began to glow, next thing she knew a small ball of fire floated above the shard. “The way shards work is rather simple: you pump mana through them and when it comes out it has the nature the shard represents, usually obvious by color. You still have to control the mana after the nature is given though so be very careful. A shard can only hold so much mana at a time so be careful with how quickly you put mana inside of it and make sure to draw the mana out of the shard as well, otherwise it could very well explode violently.”
“Oh that sounds safe.” Katy looked nervously at the shard in my palm.
“Not to worry as long as you're careful nothing will happen.” He suddenly extinguished the fireball and then the crystal began cracking loudly before shattering and seemingly disappearing. “It is important to note that while shards are not one use items, if they are used often enough they will eventually shatter.” Katy nodded, still looking a little weary. “The takeaway here is focus. You must be extremely careful when using shards. While the same is true for using advanced magic without them, the risk of a violent reaction is much higher when using shards.
“Why use them then? Didn’t you say you could do advanced magic without them?” She looked pretty confused.
“You can, but shards can be used with basic mana control. In other words if I gave you one you could use it right now, but to do the conversion on your own it would take months or years of practice to get the same results. Nobles only do it to prove their superiority, and while I admit not needing them does have its benefits, I don’t think it’s really worth the time it takes.”
Azura pulled out another crystal. This one was an unnatural black, almost like staring into a deep abyss. “Here it’s best you see for yourself. This shard changes the nature of your mana to shadows, which suits your skillset well.” Katy took the shard reverently.
“Is it ok for me to just use it?” she looked at it with a surprising amount of awe.
“Sure they really aren’t that hard to come by. That ones pretty much unused, I never had a use for it.” She looked up at him and nodded. Her white mana once again appeared above her heart, guess she was still struggling with internal activation. “Stop.” She looked at him confused, her mana receding having just reached her arm.
“What? Did I do something wrong?” He made a so-so gesture with his hand.
“Not wrong per say, but I’d recommend practicing internal activation first. More so I can be sure you are ready for it then anything.” She looked at the deep black crystal eyes glinting with determination.
“I can do it, I just need to focus right?” Her mana appeared but only briefly before disappearing again. Then her palm under the crystal started to glow.
He smiled but said nothing. She had it. The crystal didn’t glow like the previous one, in fact if anything it sucked seemed to suck in the light around it as shadows spread out from the crystal. It didn't take long before her whole body was covered in the shadows and they began approaching him. Then as if awaking from a dream the shadows were gone leaving only a panting Katy in their place. “I knew you could do it!” He clapped happily. “Got it in one, by the time we make it to the trials you should be more than ready.”
She smiled at him, a wide joyous smile, but she was obviously exhausted. “I can keep going, just let me catch my breath.” She was still breathing heavily but it was more under control then it was when she had started.
“Don’t be in such a hurry. I don’t want you hurting yourself from training too hard.” He smiled gently at her and put his hand on her shoulder. She always was so over eager.
“You’re doing well, your studies have progressed well and your grasp on basic magic is well up to par. You just started so it’s natural that controlling mana outside of your own body would be difficult for you.” She looked at him confused.
“I thought you said I struggled with internal activation.” She put extra emphasis on the word internal.
“And you do. Which brings us to another important topic for magic theory.” Azura smiled. He enjoyed teaching far more than he thought he would, but he imagined that Katy being his friend was a big part of that.
“To start with you need to remember that activation and manipulation are different. Internal vs external activation refers to how the mana is being gathered. Internal activation is when you gather mana in your core and move it through the inside of your body, while conversely external activation is when mana is gathered outside of your body.” She nodded along to his lecture.
“Wait but I can do enhancement magic and that requires running my mana through my muscles, which would be internal right?” She looked so confused. He couldn’t blame her, it was a little confusing in the beginning.
He could see how she came to that conclusion but “While that is true your mana still gathers outside of your body and then you allow it to seep into your muscles.” Her face fell along with her ears. “Keep in mind there isn’t anything wrong with doing it that way aside from allowing your opponent to see what you're doing. Both types of activation have their place and usefulness.” She nodded, cheering up a little.
“So manipulation would be what you use the mana to do once it’s gathered right?” He nodded at her.
“Yup that is absolutely right!” She smiled for a second before she looked confused again.
“Is it weird that I struggle at internal activation and external manipulation, yet am skilled with external activation and internal manipulation?” Huh he actually didn’t know, well that’s a little embarrassing.
“I honestly can’t say, I struggle with external manipulation as well but the other 3 weren’t hard for me to grasp.” He put his hand to his chin in contemplation. Oh well he supposed that’s what the books were for. She looked surprised that he didn’t know, he had to teach her most of what she knew after all. The dark thought that no one else would, crossed his mind for a fleeting moment. His hand gleamed silver as he made a circular motion with his hand. A glowing clock face appeared out of the light. He sighed. “I suppose we should study for another hour or so.”