Present Day - 2020 A.D. (0 A.R.) - February - New Richmond
Cassandra was not a nice teacher. Even though she was preternaturally hot due to obviously altering herself through the powerful magics of my wonderful Flesh Golem, it didn’t take away from her severity. In fact, it made it worse. After she found out that I had brought an undead to the town of New Richmond and then played doctor to a bunch of vulnerable pregnant women, she too quickly agreed to be my teacher in the basics of wizardry. Probably because she was stressed about running the town more than the damn council that was supposed to be running the town. She kept cracking a solid rod of cherry wood against my knuckles and head every time I made a mistake. Her brown eyes, which would’ve knocked any red-blooded male on his ass, glared at me like a child who spiked the teacher’s lemonade with laxatives.
“Woman!” I snapped, glaring at her in the bright sunlight. “This isn’t the 1600s! You don’t need to be smackin’ me. I’m learning!”
“Are you!?” SMACK! “Are you really?!” SMACK! “Did we learn not to bring undead zombies that eat people NEAR more people?!” SMACK!
I didn’t deserve that vitriol. So I cheated. Happily so.
My hands were conveniently numbed through a careful application of Flesh Sorcery and my healing factor was through the roof allowing me to concentrate without having to pay much attention to my harsh taskmistress. Damn lady was taking out other issues on me. Apparently there weren’t enough good looking Sun Aelves to go around and Cassandra was stuck in the greenhouse when they initially came to visit so she got passed over. And even leaving Kraken and Gungnir back with entombed Susan wasn’t good enough for Cassandra. Then again, leaving a deadly spear that no one could touch in the middle of the road on top of where a zombie was buried might not have been the best idea.
So I kept right on working on the simplest, supposedly, spell taught to wizards everywhere, the ‘Mana-Bolt’. Also known as the ‘Wizard-Bullet’. I divided my attention in two, using my Consciousness Sorcery to keep the mental part steady. The first thread of my brain concentrated on envisioning the little bits of Centauri rune-script that I’d been given and the second thread of my brain paid attention to Cassandra.
“You’re using ‘Air’ because it’s not one of your sorceries. You don’t have an affinity to lean on here. The ‘Mana-Bolt’ spell is extremely variable, capable of being used in its purest form or upgraded with different elements. This spell also forms the standard practicing tool for offensive spells whereas the ‘Monocle’ spell. It has many names to many cultures: ‘Mana-Sight’, ‘Magic Window’, ‘False Window’, ‘Veil Lifter’, et cetera. The list goes on but I prefer ‘Altered Sight’ due to that name encompassing the myriad uses and upgrades available to those with the skill to do so.”
I struggled to keep my temper in check, worse than not accidentally using my sorceries to make this process easier. But I needed to do this, I needed to learn wizardry so that I would have the proper tools to understand how I could properly shut down a portal for good without blowing it up. Cassandra was ignorant of my more pressing issues but that’s fine. It’s not her job.
“The basics matter!” Cassandra said proudly, pointing her whacker stick in my face. “But so do the differences!” I took one eye off my own efforts to examine what she was doing. In her left hand floated a swirling ball of densely packed air that looked like a cyclone contained in a glass ball. Her right hand held what appeared to be an ethereal bullet that glowed a pale gray. It did feel like air but it didn’t look like it. “Our best side by side comparison we have available to youngsters is the usage of creating an air-based projectile through Centauri rune script,” she waved her left hand, “And Dwarven block rune script.”
I waited patiently.
Sighing because she knew that she had to explain from the beginning, Cassandra very slowly, step by step began to depower and take her spells apart. “The Centauri use far more runes designed in an extremely precise manner to get a certain result. Define the air variable as all free-flowing gaseous vapor within ten meters of my position. That sets up the necessary material. Then, it’s surrounded by the gathering function with a mana governing input, clearly the more mana I input, the more the ‘distance’ rune grows beyond the initial specifications. Containment sequences surround those so that what you gathered plus extra mana do not just fly away willy nilly.”
I watched, fascinated as she rebuilt the spell again. “And so we get to the compression bit, also incomplete without the containment sequence AND the mana governing input. With all of this in place, you can use your will and your mana control to determine how much air is actually used for this spell, how much extra oomph you can stick into it, and then compress it as small as you can handle. Carefully stamp the propulsion rule set into it and it’s complete. The inputs governing every single facet renders a very precise spell.”
Pointing behind me, Cassandra took aim and fire. FFFOOOMPH! KRRACKK!
I ducked as splinters showered over my back making me lose my concentration. Turning around to look at the small apple tree with a giant bite taken out its trunk, I gaped for a moment before turning back to Cassandra.
Putting the Dwarven version of the spell in front of me, Cassandra looked me in the eye. “And this version is different, not just because of the intent. Dwarves use similar spells like this to gather up dust while mining and also to clear the air, but it does have a quick combat purpose to it due to its simplicity in their runic block language.”
Pure mana coalesced in her hand, forming into a three-dimensional triangle. The triangle glowed a soft blue, quickly hollowing out until it looked like a blocky capital letter ‘A’ from the English alphabet. As the rune slowly rotated in the air, Cassandra pointed out the differences. “Dwarves are big on history and even bigger on Symbolism. For all their vaunted magitech, they’re almost mystics and shamans with how they approach magic. It’s why their stuff is either the absolute best or the absolute worst. But look, the rune for ‘Air’ is the symbol ‘A’ which is our first letter in the English alphabet. But it’s older than that. The pointy nature of the rune commands attention, the blockiness serves as the storage container itself for the mana, and the legs of the rune even serve as imaginary propulsion points. So they point this symbol, crafted by mana, forged of their will, aim it, charge it, and fire.”
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As she spoke, the Dwarven rune lit up bright, pulling air towards itself until it was a contained hurricane in the palm of her hand. The wind picked up, drawing all of the nearby air into itself as if it were taking a huge breath. Cassandra had to yell to be heard. “Because there are less runes in this, the effects are different person to person but the most notable difference is that it requires FAR MORE WILL TO CONTAIN AND USE!”
Pointing her hand straight up, she released the angry ball of wind into the sky where it shot off expanding until it burst forty yards away. “Wow!” I said, my eyes huge as I crafted my own Dwarven ‘Mana-Bolt’.
Cassandra smacked my hands again. “Wait!” She snapped, separating my hands with the knobbed oaken branch. “What did you learn?”
Standing up and dusting myself off, I leaned back to crack my spine. “First, you have some issues with authority, as in you can’t handle it.” SMACK! “See . . . there you, beating someone you don’t like that much but have to put up with due to the karma.”
Grinning as her face turned pink, I laughed. “I learned that the languages used in crafting a spell play a key role. Different races created different effects and spells and their own variations based on their viewpoints and needs at the time. So could the dwarves make a wind bullet like the Centauri without using the Centauri rune-script? And I thought we were making a ‘Mana-Bolt’, not a ‘Wind-Bullet’?”
“So what’s the difference?” Her face moved too easily from experiencing the wonder of magic to barely contained condescension and it made me want to knock her off her high horse. But I didn’t have time for that and I didn’t have time to putz around. I needed answers.
Seeing my hesitation, Cassandra huffed. “It’s not that hard! Seriously, just substitute the Centauri part referencing wind for mana. You get what you’re looking for. BUT! And it’s a big butt, the Dwarven rune for air is different. So when trying to make a ‘Mana-Bolt’ like a Dwarf, you need a completely different base rune whereas for the Centauri version you just need to substitute out one piece.”
Rounding on the poor apple tree, Cassandra quickly made a real ‘Mana-Bolt’ and blasted the sad target in half. “And this pure version of the spell scales with mana gathered from the surrounding area and whatever you’re willing to input from your own mana stores. But see, you then have to change the mana gathering rules to include the part defining where it gathers and alter more mana storage runes to the entire structure so you don’t overload your spell. If you do it enough, you can just summon the entire spell apparatus at will and fire as fast as you can think.”
Holding out her outstretched hand, my combative mentor simultaneously created several elemental versions of the ‘Mana-Bolt’ spell that rotated around the pure version serving as the focal point. The elemental versions orbited around until Cassandra held what looked to be mini nebulae floating just above her palm. Hastily wiping the sweat that threatened to drip down her face, the miniature solar system wobbled as she fought for control. I was impressed. I couldn’t do that. Each one had its own orbit rotating around the pure ‘Mana-Bolt’ which served as the central point. I watched as different orbits maintained their own speeds, noting just how far I had to go with mastering the basics.
Two days were spent in New Richmond, me working on ingratiating myself with the young colony by solving magical problems or by studiously creating new tools to help everyone out. Obviously most of my time was spent learning the Centauri rune-script, which was easy to commit to memory, but the practice of it was far more difficult. I kept having to start from a place where my various sorceries could cheat a bit, giving me the edge in learning the spell and then using that as a springboard to learn it the right way.
My attempts at making a wind bullet spell failed miserably, and all of my attempts at making a fire bullet also went down the freaking toilet. So again, I cheated. I used earth and water to start, using those building blocks to get used to making the spells ‘the right way’, whatever that means. After that, I was able to use my affinity to pull the water essence out of the water bullet spell and convert it into a pure ‘Mana-Bolt’. And once I got it, I got it. My Mana Sorcery just let it click, letting the understanding and inner mechanics settle in my soul, almost like picking a language back up that you used to know as a child.
Oddly enough, the Dwarven block runic spell attempts were far easier in my book. They required one or two three dimensional runes, a crap-ton of mana, and then a metric fuck-ton of willpower. Which, that combination I could pull off in my sleep! So I did the smart thing, I used the combined powers of my Consciousness Sorcery and my Mana Sorcery to consume wizardry as if I were a super computer on magical steroids. And my progress was so fantastic that Cassandra was even willing to explain the difference between a spellbook and a Grimoire!
Or so I thought. There were ‘primary lessons’ that I had to get through first.
Pacing in front of me like a hot drill sergeant, Cassandra conjured multiple images of different cultural references to the elements and how they balanced against each other. The closest one was a rainbow next to a wider, more scientific breakdown of light in terms of frequencies. “All of these matter!” Cassandra’s lecturing style really harped on the basics. “And it’s because it’s all tied together. The basics define basic magical use. Different races and cultures believe different things so they all have a different interpretation of the basics. The Centauri view elemental affinity based on color, more accurately labeled ‘frequency’. The highest frequency is known as pure healing light and the lowest frequency is pure destructive entropy. Their scale is from white to black unlike our old human scale goes from red to violet.”
Every floating hologram of elemental charts was different. The Buddhist five-pointed star of related elements sat in contrast to the Japanese elements which were arranged in a stack. The Dwarven belief of light and earth being completely opposite where fire and water were considered siblings meant to nurture life. The Aelves held the sun as their center and the moon their nemesis with the elements either being more closely aligned to one or the other. The ugliest chart in the back almost made my temper buck at my control. It was a picture of a rotten human hand, Undeath, holding all of the elements in the palm of its hand save the element light which was under its foot about to be smothered.
I didn’t mind Cassandra’s latest smile. “And now we can move on to spellbooks and Grimoires.”