After sighing deeply, Sarah turned back to Jeb.
“I will fully admit that I have no idea how pedagogy has developed in the Republic, but I would hope that you will not put the young Druids at so much risk in the future.”
Jeb nodded, and began taking notes as Sarah lectured him on what he could have done better. When she finished, he pulled out another piece of paper and summarized her pedagogical notes. She looked over and for some reason let out another sigh. Jeb had no idea why, “don’t kill the children” was the core of her message.
Whether because she realized as much or because there was still far too much to do, Sarah left them to continue drying wood, taking a large armful with her. Jeb turned back to his wards, who were looking up at him, most still lying down.
“Let’s treat this as a learning experience,” he said happily. “Now that you know what it feels like to have a completely empty Mana pool, stop pushing Mana in before you get to that point.”
One of the kids, whose name Jeb was pretty sure was Alfred, raised his hand.
“How do we know when we’re close to the bottom of our Mana?”
Jeb hummed, unsure how to answer.
“Can you feel your Mana refilling right now?” he asked.
The boy nodded.
“So whatever it feels like now is probably a good place to stop,” Jeb said. “It is generally better to stop too early than too late, especially when you are first learning something.”
Lillian raised her hand again.
“You said that there were ways to refill our Mana pools more effectively?” she asked, tone making it clear that she was used to having to repeat questions to distractable teachers.
Jeb realized that he had forgotten to ask Sarah about it. Looking at both his notes and summary, he saw nothing to suggest that he could not teach them Skills.
“I find that Meditation is an effective way of opening your Mana pools up so that they can refill faster.”
He walked them through a guided meditation, unsure how long it would take them to refill their Mana pools. After an hour or so, each of them was standing, which was how he had told them to signal that they had finished refilling their pools. While halfheartedly taking them through a breathing exercise, Jeb had also worked on revising the Spellform. Now, rather than trusting the user to cut themselves off, it would emit a bright flash and sever the young Druid’s connection if they fell below three Mana in their pool.
“Is everybody ready?” Jeb asked, noting that his own Mana reserves were fuller than he had expected.
“Ready!” the children chorused in unison, pouring their Mana into the Druidic working.
The large pile of wood, which had finally stopped growing, began to shrink. As he had reworked the braid, Jeb had also realized that it would be more efficient if it targeted the entirety of the wood pile, rather than individual logs within it. Why that was, he had no idea. Even as he resolved to figure out the answer to that question in the future, he made the changes to the weave. Thankfully, the portion of the weave that each young Druid was responsible for had changed so slightly that he doubted any of them had noticed it.
Seeing how stable the Spellform was, Jeb nodded to himself and began to push his own Mana into it. The logs, which had been slowly if visibly beginning to dry suddenly almost crackled as the cells within them released trapped water. Since he did not need to focus entirely on the working, Jeb added the question of why drying wood as a pseudo Ritual was so much more effective than doing so himself to the ever growing list of questions he had about Druidic Magic.
I guess that the Academy did approve this trip on the understanding that my Post Doctoral Research was focused on understanding Druidic Magic to the same extent that we do the other Schools, he idly mused.
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
Jeb was distracted from his musings by a sudden flash and boom. Alfred was blinking rapidly, and the other students seemed equally wary.
Jeb tsked, “I told you that you were supposed to stop feeding Mana into the Spellform before your pool emptied. Look what you’ve done now, distracting the rest of the class.”
Realizing that his words had come out harsher than he had meant, Jeb winked and smiled at the boy. That seemed to work, and he laughed a little.
One of his classmates also spoke up. Jeb realized as they did that they had severed their own connection to the Spellform. He trusted that it was because they had run out of Mana.
“Yeah Edmund, did you forget to look at your Mana pool or something?”
Edmund, not Alfred. Good to know. Jeb made a mental note, already knowing that he was going to forget it again.
Edmund chuckled and sat down, beginning to meditate.
Thankfully, no one else needed the Spellform to forcibly stop them, and the rest sat down as they ended their connections. When everyone was sitting and meditating, Jeb saw that Edmund was walking towards him.
“Dr. Jeb, sir, I was wondering um,” even Jeb, as unaware of common social cues, had no trouble picking up on the boy’s nerves.
“You don’t need to call me doctor or sir,” Jeb said in as comforting a tone as he could manage. “Is there some way that I can help you?”
The boy nodded vigorously, his wild brown hair flopping over his eyes as he did so.
Wiping the locks off his eyes, he tried to speak again, “How do I stop putting Mana into the Spellform?”
Jeb blinked.
“Are you putting Mana into anything right now?”
The boy shook his head.
“How do you start putting Mana into the Spellform?”
The boy shrugged, “I just visualized the knot you showed us and then started putting Mana into it.”
“So why can’t you just stop?”
The boy frowned slightly, looking off to the side.
“I don’t know,” he finally answered, “I guess I just thought there must be more to it than that.”
Jeb felt the boy’s Mana enter the Spellform again, and he was suddenly glad that he had not spun it down while all of the children were recovering their Mana. After a second, Edmund’s Mana stopped pouring into it, and the boy beamed at Jeb.
“I did it!” he whispered excitedly.
“Great job,” Jeb replied, ruffling the boy’s hair.
He ran back to his place and started pushing Mana into the Spellform again. That set the tone for the rest of the day. Because all of the students had different sized Mana pools and different rates that they felt comfortable pushing Mana into the Spellform, they quickly fell out of phase with each other. Jeb had no complaints about their work ethic, though. He watched as they continually emptied their Mana pools before focusing to refill them as quickly as possible.
As night finally overtook the clearing, Jeb realized that the only source of light the children had was his still glowing demonstration knot. His class didn’t say anything about stopping, though, so he kept them going. They continued the cycle throughout the night, and if one or two of them occasionally took an extra quarter hour to meditate, Jeb did not particularly mind. When the sun started peaking over the horizon, Jeb looked at the pile of wood in front of them, glad that he had begun to save his Mana. He was relieved to see that it was nearly dry. Sending a final pulse of Mana into the Spellform, he slowly spun it down.
“Great job everyone!” he said. “The wood is dry. Let’s bring it inside so that Sarah doesn’t have to worry about making someone else do it.”
The children slowly started to walk towards the wood pile, exhaustion written plainly in every lumbering step.
“Actually,” Jeb said, remembering his own experience at First Tier, “why don’t you all get some sleep? I can grab the wood in and figure out what it is that we’re going to do next.”
The children didn’t cheer, but Jeb could tell that was more to do with how tired they were than any lack of enthusiasm towards the new orders. Rather than go back to whatever dormitory they had been assigned, though, they simply curled up on the dewy grass and immediately fell asleep. Looking at them fondly, Jeb continued to walk towards the wood pile. It was only when he reached it that he realized he did not need to model Druidic Magic to the children any longer.
Looking at his Mana pool, Jeb was shocked to see that it was nearly full. He had practiced a few techniques for refilling his Mana pool while it was emptying over the course of the night, but he had not truly expected any of them to work. Happy to be proven wrong, he created a Glyph and picked up the large pile of wood. Jogging with it behind him, he opened the large doors to the Woodshop and moved them inside to where he had seen Sarah direct the first few dried logs he had made.
When he released the Magic, Jeb was surprised to notice that the shop was just as busy as it had been before he was reassigned. He thought that the Woodworkers were the same ones he had seen at each station, and wasn’t sure whether that was because they had taken a break and come back, or if they, too, had worked through the night. Underneath the piles of sawdust and the smell of carved wood that filled his nose, Jeb did smell the slightly bitter tang of freshly dried sweat, and he was pretty sure that it was the latter. Impressed with the Druids’ work ethic, he looked to see what progress they had made.
Hundreds of tables were standing against a wall that Jeb was sure had been much closer the last time he had been inside of the room. Each was decorated in the style that Jeb was more and more associating with the Circle of the Fields. Simple but technically perfect decorations were sparsely placed throughout each table and chair.
Sarah finally seemed to notice the sudden influx of wood, and she quickly spotted Jeb. She began to hurry over to him, and Jeb, not wanting to be rude, walked to intercept her.