Chapter 15: Drawbacks

Victoria gathered her courage, looked me over, saw the same scruffy, greatcoat wearing individual Merri and Luna had seen already except now I had another day of walking without a bath or shave, a little bit of immolation, a touch of mauling and a added to the look.

“You look like you could use a sit-down, come on in.”

I followed grateful to get away from the staring eyes outside and into the dark-wood panelled entry hall this side door opened to. Victoria opened a door on the left and I followed her into a library that easily contained over 1000 books. My eyes went wide at the sight of it, hundreds and hundreds of books in three rows of shelves that divided the room as well as floor to ceiling shelving around most of it. A large red-stained window let in light but couldn’t open to permit rain or gusts of wind to play havoc with the papers.

“That’s a lot of books Milady and your sister says you’ve read them all.”

Actually saying Milady felt rough and I didn’t think I’d be able to say it again without visibly cringing but I bit my tongue for the moment and watched Victoria freeze like a deer in headlights at the attention to her hobby.

Victoria turned away from me with an awkward, forced laugh. “No. No, of course not, I’ve read a few but I do… I do other things too.”

That seemed doubtful based on Luna’s comments and her general appearance. Victoria's skin was milky white in contrast to Luna’s tanned complexion and her near-sightedness had likely been contributed to by countless hours of concentrating on small print and crabbed cursive in the volumes and volumes of information, accounts, poetry and fiction that surrounded me.

I mustn’t have looked convinced because she turned to face me with a blush colouring her cheeks. “I like reading ok, it’s a big part of how I improve my class as well so it's not all for fun.”

I knew how she felt, my dad hated the amount of reading I did when I was younger, but he had grown to accept me over time and I had refused to change that aspect of myself even as I grew to be a son he was content with. It helped that my younger brother never picked up a book due to his dyslexia and brought my dad no end of strife with antics that made me look pretty good by comparison.

“I love reading too Lady Victoria, I haven’t read any of these books though. Honestly I doubt I've read even a single one of these. Do you have anything on magical theory?”

Now Victoria went from embarrassed to almost shocked. “You read?” she sounded utterly incredulous and then a moment later added. “I’m sorry, that was rude. I have a lot on magical theory actually, I’m a wizard, only 3rd level at the moment but I've raised my spellcasting, theory and various lore skills until they're very high for my level. Which discipline do you follow?”

I had left my trolley at the stable and didn’t have any of my candles because I didn’t want to smell any more like canned fish than I already did but there was a wicked lantern on the large, well-worn reading desk while a candle sat in a small saucer by a window side reading nook.

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“I’ll show you if you want, you're welcome to laugh when you see it by the way. No, i mean it, you look like you have a pretty laugh so don’t bother holding back for the sake of my dignity.”

Victoria’s pale cheeks turned the same colour as the window but she watched with curiosity as I raised my hands and clicked my fingers once, then twice, like before I felt the connection between the mana in my body as it flowed to the only compatible items in the room, first the lantern and then the candle flickered to life. Victoria looked puzzled, then even more puzzled. “Your class is set to private, but if I had to guess..."

Victoria bit her lip and looked between me and the candle before having a go at it. "Well, based on the effect I’d guess evoker, elemental or illusionist but those items are mine and non-magical so that rules out evocation, the glass on the lantern is too thick for a heat-based cantrip to get through it and a higher-level spell would have caused a mana drain that I could feel so it mustn't have been any stronger than a cantrip.”

She cocked her head, looking at the lantern from several angles then held out her hand to feel the heat coming off of it. “Hmm, not an illusion. Ok then, I have no idea.”

I grinned at the pure look of curiosity in her eyes, she was interested in this as an intellectual endeavour, too bad my magic was such an immensely stupid thing. “I am a Spell-Chandler Lady Victoria. And that means I can use mana to influence candles.”

She did have a very pretty laugh, tinkling, sweet and not at all damaging to my already-ragged self-esteem.

Later, when Victoria was done giggling she helped me out as best she could, together we searched through her library until she let out a little cheer that stopped my search. I looked over and saw her pulling an ancient-looking book from the window-shelf and blowing a cloud of dust from it. I looked over with anticipation.

Victoria thumbed through the dusty old tome until she found what she was looking for. “All variety of mages fuel their magic via unique methods, the sorcerer uses his own will, the warlock borrows from a master and Evokers harness the latent power of magical items to enact their stunning displays of power” She looked up at me and smiled shly. She had an extremely sweet smile. “The Spell-Chandler takes their power from candles, the burning of fuel and wick releases magical energy potential that the Chandler can then harness directly, higher level Chandler’s can magically influence the quality, type and lifespan of even the cheapest of candles without using any of this energy. Curiously, after hundreds of years of existence, the Spell-Chandler class has gained very little traction and may perhaps die out entirely as an arcane tradition.”

She delicately put the tome back in its place, adding. “That was written 300 years ago and the author guessed correctly, in today’s world we don’t have any Spell Chandlers. Although I do think that someday we mortals will crack the code of the Akashic Archive and find thousands of other disciplines and traditions now long since lost to time.”

I wanted to scream, Victoria’s magical class clearly required lots of tutoring, reading, practice. My own would likely require the same but there would be no one to help me. I had a lot of candle crafting knowledge to start off, but I could see where I would hit the ceiling and had no idea how much power I would have accrued by that point. Instead of screaming I rubbed my palm over my forehead and dragged my fingers through my hair, thinking about a positive spin on the situation. “My power is based on 2 things I can see so far, the actual candles I can make and use as well as my class level. One improves via work, practice, reading and experimentation while the other improves via killing since there aren't any mentors for me to train under.”

Victoria furrowed her brow a little.

“That’s mostly a downside Jack, it means you have to level 2 disciplines in tandem, you’ll need to learn how to cast magic, channelling and cultivating mana like a normal mage while also dedicating years to gathering the secrets of candle craftsmen. Meaning you’ll need to do a ton of reading just like me on top of essentially taking an apprenticeship”