As Jeb continued pulling water out of the logs, however, he realized that his thoughts were at least somewhat incorrect. When he had worked on his first Harvest, he had to carefully ration his Mana, pulling the moisture out as efficiently as he could. Right now, he was still being careful with how he pulled the water out, though that was entirely because he did not want to damage the wood. Jeb had let his concentration slip for a moment, and the log had split in two before he noticed his mistake. Even though it looked like the better part of a forest was standing in front of him, Jeb did not get the feeling that Sarah believed that there was much spare wood.
When his Mana was close to emptying out, Jeb dispersed his Glyph, pushing it away as it tried to Bind to his soul. Maybe because he was thinking about his life before the Academy, but Jeb found himself thinking about how different his relationship to Magic had become. As a brand new Classholder, Jeb had been thrilled to be able to point to the way that his Status kept growing longer and more complex as proof that he had been on the right path. Now, however, he was proud of how empty it looked.
The moment that Jeb closed his Status, he realized that Sarah was standing in front of him.
“Taking a break?” she asked, clearly noticing that no new water was flowing from the felled trees.
“I ran out of Mana,” Jeb said. “Is there something you need from me, though?”
Sarah nodded, and Jeb realized that there were seven or eight nervous looking Druids standing behind her.
“Apparently we’re behind schedule, so Alex reassigned these to me. They don’t know the first thing about Woodworking, and it would take them more than the time until the solstice to teach them to work with wood safely. They all have Classes of their own, and each has access to Magic, so I was wondering if you might be willing to take them under your wing and teach them the Magic you were using to dry out the wood.”
Jeb began to nod without thinking before catching himself. He grimaced, and Sarah immediately honed into his reaction.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, “I had not considered that you might wish to keep the exact working of your Magic secret. I apologize for that oversight.”
Jeb found a laugh escaping his mouth. He couldn’t help it; that was just so far from what he had been thinking that he could not think of anything to say for a moment. The apologetic expression on her face began to shift towards something more negative before he was able to frame his response.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh at you. I just was not in any way expecting you to ask me to mentor Druids.”
“Are you willing to?”
Jeb hesitated again. “I think that I should be able to change the Glyph into a Druidic Working, but it might take me a little while.”
He shrugged.
“Other than that, though, I don’t really have any objections.”
Sarah nodded, then turned to address the young Druids.
“I am placing you in Jeb’s care. Treat his orders as though they came from me, the Radius, or your mentor, depending on which of those you consider the most important to obey.”
They all nodded, and Jeb almost expected them to salute. There was a loud clanging in the shop, and Sarah turned, rushing to go put out another fire. Jeb turned to his new charges.
“I’m Jeb,” he said, trying to figure out how to deal with the crowd in front of him.
His experiences with Brian had been far different. Brian was trying to Bind to a colony of bees, something that Jeb had spent a fair amount of time considering. More than that, Brian was a single person. If something Jeb said didn’t make sense to him, he knew that Brian would say something. Looking into the children’s faces, he wasn’t sure if they would do the same.
“What are your names?” he finally asked, realizing that he had been staring at them silently for an awkwardly long time.
They all looked at each other, clearly unwilling to be the first to speak. Finally, as though pushed forwards as spokesman for the group, a young woman with hip length hair the color of a winter sky introduced herself as Lillian. That seemed to be enough to get the remainder of the group to begin speaking, and Jeb was assailed with a dozen different names. He immediately regretted asking for names, because he knew that he was not going to remember them, and that was now something rude, since they had told him.
“Um,” he said, trying to stall, “what experience do all of you have with Druidic Magic?”
Once again, Lillian was the first to respond.
“We all learned the basic runes in class,” she said, “and at least a little bit of runic grammar.”
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“Show me what you know,” Jeb instructed.
As his class started to write out their knowledge, he felt a brief flash of pride in himself. Not only did he give them a direction that should look like a test, reinforcing his authority, but it would also be a great chance to see what foundational knowledge he had missed. If there was anything that his Doctoral studies had taught him, it was that learning the basics, while often less than essential for much work, was absolutely critical for anything approaching an optimal solution.
A few minutes later, the students broke out of their circle, and another student gave Jeb the small pile of pages they had filled. Part of him noticed how desperate for his approval they were, and he wondered whether he was the same at their age. Thinking about his first forays into Woodworking assured him that he was, so he focused on the writing in front of him.
It was shockingly little information. Jeb was pretty sure that he had intuited all of it before he had even gotten his new Skill. The flash of pain in his hand when thinking about that moment was gone in a heartbeat, and he felt another flash of pride at that fact. Still, it should be enough to teach them what he needed them to do.
“It might take me a moment to make a Druidic Spellform,” he said, quickly catching himself and adding, “given what you know.”
The students nodded, and at his direction sat down to watch. Jeb used a Glyph to pull a small log over, not wanting to waste too much wood if something went wrong. He pointedly ignored the shocked looks on the children’s faces as they saw his effortless use of Magic, already working to sketch out a simple Druidic Spellform.
For all that Druidic Magic was two steps removed from Enchanting, it did bear a lot of similarities to the School. The runes they used were fundamentally different, however, as was the way they effected change on the world. He immediately realized that it would be incredibly difficult to make a Druidic Magic to draw water out of the wood. Thankfully, Jeb had also matured enough that he was able to keep his actual goal in mind, and forced himself to get out of an Enchanting and Glyph Magic mindset.
When he focused on his Druidic Magic Skill, Jeb realized that there was a relatively easy solution. He shook his head at missing it, so obvious in retrospect. Druidic Magic neighbored both Alchemy and Ritual Magic. Rather than crafting a Spellform for each of the students to use individually, Jeb instead worked on making a long braid. Because he still had some sense of professional pride, he did make it modular for as many people as wanted to use the spellform, but that only added an extra line to the swooping knot.
Even though his Mana reserves were still relatively low, Jeb wasn’t worried about the cost of displaying the knot in the air in front of him while he worked. Druidic Magic was incredibly focused on fittingness, he was realizing. It was like Alchemy, causing something to change its fundamental nature, but in a markedly different manner. Rather than trusting his students to know what wood’s internal structure was when it was properly seasoned, or spelling out a long decision tree for the Spellform to use, Jeb simply set a reference point at his own personal knowledge of what well-seasoned wood was, tying it to small stick he quickly dried out. Part of him cringed at making the knot so reliant on his active presence, but he pushed it aside.
If Sarah wanted to keep the Spellform for future use, he would show her how to have someone act as an anchor.
“All right,” he said, turning back to the students to get their attention.
When he looked at them, though, he realized that he hadn’t needed to bother. They were all watching him with rapt fascination. Questions began to flow out of them, and Jeb had to hold his hands up to keep the torrenting interrogation at bay.
“I will be happy to answer questions once we get the Spellform underway,” he said. “Each of you needs to focus on the same knot, which looks like this,” Jeb sketched the modular unit in the air.
The students nodded, once again focused, and began to pump their Mana into the Spellform. Jeb let out a sigh of relief when he felt the Attuned Magic start to flow towards him. None of them had particularly dense Mana, but quantity was a quality all of its own. Thankfully, he had made the knot unreliant on the density of any individual Druid casting it.
At the helm of the Working, Jeb directed the children’s energy towards the large pile of wood. Lacking a better place to put the water, Jeb had directed it to begin forming clouds, and the sky started to fill. Sarah came out, clearly at least slightly concerned by the sudden change in the weather. Thankfully, she quickly grasped what Jeb was having the students do and did not break his concentration.
A few students collapsed, and Jeb quickly severed the knot. Rushing over, he realized that they had simply emptied their Mana.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, hoping that they would be able to diagnose their own problems.
“I don’t know,” Lillian replied, “I just suddenly felt empty and lost control of myself.”
Jeb watched another student fall and forced the Magic to end on his terms, rather than wait for the rest of them to run out. Gathering them together, he took a deep breath and forced himself to give a direction that felt so much like hypocrisy.
“When you work with Magic, it is vitally important that you monitor your own Mana levels. I built this knot so that it would not harm any of you if you had to drop it suddenly, but most Magics will not be so kindly constructed. Things can go incredibly badly when a Working ends suddenly.”
To his relief, none of the young Druids asked him how, exactly, he knew that. Jeb had begun to think of relatively benign examples while he spoke his few lines, but he was glad that he did not need them. To his surprise, Lillian did raise a hand.
“Is there a way we can refill our Mana more quickly?”
Jeb raised a hand, ready to teach them to Meditate to refill their reserves, before pausing. Given how precise the Radius had been about the need to keep Mana Attuned to Druidic, it was very possible that she had strong feelings about Mana regeneration as well. It was something he had seen in any number of texts, even if he still thought the concept was ridiculous. By virtue of a Magic user refilling their Mana well, they were already Attuning it to their own unique Mana. Still, he knew that life was easier when he let authority win their pointless battles, and so instead of answering himself called Sarah over.
She took one look at the students she had given Jeb, noticed that all of them were completely Magically exhausted, and let out a deep sigh.
“I suppose that this is on me.”
A small voice in Jeb’s head pointed out that even though he was on the opposite end of the teaching relationship now, authority remained equally uncomfortable with his behavior.