Barlor always got up in time with the sun, so he was rather surprised to have not seen any sunlight at all upon his awakening. He took stock of his surroundings and realized they must've been in a really deep part of the forest, the dark trees stood tall and blocked out almost all of the sunlight from above and the few rays of light that could be seen caused the shadows to dance and creep along the trees. The path they travelled was long and winding, looking at the others along the cart he'd seen that the mage was still awake, he kept watch, gazing out into the deep forest.
"Where are we?"
"We'll be there in a couple of minutes, you should wake up your friend over there." He resumed his watch over the dark forests glancing around for signs of movement.
He shook his friend, first gently and then aggressively. His face was as peaceful as ever, Barlor understood what had to be done. He propped him up on the side of the wagon, raised his hand, and with all the fury he could muster, brought it down with crushing force. The resulting sound echoed through the forest and drew the attentions of both their mage and the driver, receiving amused looks from both. Despite this slap Namar was still groggy and tired, the slap seeming to have only barely woken him up.
"Whaaa waaazzzzat?" Namar slurred. The mage gave him a small dark chuckle.
Namar felt his face and was rewarded with a sting from the hand shaped red mark over his left cheek. Somehow not completely awakened by a sudden slap to the face he felt his cheek only to be rewarded with a burning sting. Again and again he rubbed his cheek and the pain slowly began to bring him into awareness.
"You slapped me!" His tone was accusing, and he glared at his friend to no particular effect.
"It was the only way to wake you up." He shrugged and grinned at Namar
"I will get you back for this just you wait, when we learn magic I will kick your ass up and down the streets." He pointed.
"Dream on kid." They both grinned at each other having set an unspoken competition in place; they shook hands, determined to crush the other in the most friendly way possible. They came close to the edge of the forest and upon nearing the edge; were visually assaulted by midday's sunlight. After both having rubbed their eyes, they saw from a distance, a multitude of long roads all interconnected, like the threads of a spider's web, they lead to bridges passing over rivers that served as a natural moat, and channels for long stretches of farmland, where a multitude of crops grew. The large stone walls were daunting, they stood at an incredible height, while the main palace was built directly on to a mountain that looked as though it might reach beyond to grasp at the clouds themselves.
They both gawked at seeing such a city from afar, already they saw more people on the roads than they'd ever seen in their lives. They farmed the land and fished among the rivers, a few followed the caravans that lead an army of wagons along the many roads, and he heard, in the distance the children play, and the chorus of an alter's song.
"Beautiful from a distance, isn't it?" The mage looked backwards, wearing an amused smile. Both boys- men now, nodded at him. It was incredible.
"We'll visit it soon but later, the actual academy is a little ways away, perhaps a few hours travel on horse back. So we still have a little ways to go." For the rest of the ride he watched, taking pleasure in the child like awe the two had experienced, strangely, it was somewhat satisfying to watch. Perhaps he did want kids after all. Something to bring up with the wife when he got home.
******
The Academy had pulled into the distance about an hour ago but it was now that they were able to see it in detail. There were six large marble buildings and a large portion of those buildings were made of a thick clear glass, there were pathways and benches around the buildings leading from one building to another. The three central buildings were arranged in a semi-circle surrounding a near perfect hole in the ground with concentric platforms leading downwards and inwards to a large stadium, a large number of doors and stairs lead in and around the stadium and there were seats positioned closer to the bottom platform, while the three other buildings flanked the central three, placed behind and in between the those at the core.
They were dropped off some distance from one of the central buildings to the right. Walking in through the double doors Namar had noticed the Arcane carvings at the edges and hinges of the the door itself, stopping briefly to examine them before being pulled away towards the counter.
"Hey, I'm here to register two new mages." He handed them the papers, the clerk looked over one and nodded; signing a smaller paper to the side. She looked over to the next paper laid out for her, this time she raised an eyebrow.
"You're sure?"
The mage nodded. She picked up another slip writing a little longer this time, she handed it to the mage, who pocketed the letter.
He turned to them "I'm going to take this to the Archivist, this gentleman will be your new guide." He gestured to a taller man with blonde hair, he was reserved and difficult to notice, but hard to miss once seen. Masked, cloaked in white robes that thinly concealed armor and armed with a glaive. He spoke clearly and with confidence, while you could tell it was almost routine at this point, he didn't seem outwardly bored at all.
"Greetings, I'll be your guide for today, if you'll accompany me I'll show you know everything you need to know, and want to know by the end of this tour."
Now that they thought about it, they weren't sure how they'd missed him at all, armed to the teeth, masked, and easily head and shoulders taller than they were, he was tall, threatening, and obvious, once pointed out to them. This small detail was quickly overlooked after the tour began; as they finally had a closer look at the gleaming marbled structures.
******
Namar was tired from walking for what felt like an eternity, he dragged his feet to the door and opened it using the mana signature engraved on a small card made from smooth polished stone. The signature was the same as the imprint at its peak shortly after he placed his hand on the stone. Opening the door he saw a couple beds with a drawer in between with one student already splayed out over the bed on his left. Looking around he saw a door that lead to the chamber pots and a couple tables out front for reading, and upon closer inspection the candle appeared to be a small potted plant that was on fire. Namar knew that if he wanted to be fully awake during his morning classes he was going to have to go to bed pretty early.
He extinguished the candle flame and watched for a few seconds as the plant appeared to regrow itself in a matter of seconds. A strange curiosity to be certain, Namar was sure to ask about it later on; after, he'd gotten some sleep.
******
Namar woke up groggily as always and headed to the washroom located across from his room, after being throughly cleaned, he headed to the cafeteria and noted that the student that lay over the other bed yesterday was already gone. He pulled the strings on his robes so that they would fit more tightly over him; preferring that the robes not flap about as he walked. The robes were plain with white outlines, revealing to other mages that he was a novice and just barely starting out. The cafeteria food was nice, despite the nation as whole living in a time of prosperity he'd never actually had any meat, the food served to him was decent enough to start the day with a full stomach, some vegetables, a warm piece of bread and a couple pieces of jerky were placed on a tray and water was poured into his flask. He finished quickly, placing the tray on a neat stack and putting the flask away on his belt. He headed to room 120 located in one of the central three buildings on the right. From what he remembered the 100s, 200s, and 300s rooms were in the central three buildings on the right, left and center respectively.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
He was still a somewhat early so he took his time to bask in the cool spring breeze, watching the people as the went by. He noticed a girl walk towards a guy in the distance while her friend cheered her on, he saw some who stuck to the shade, their noses buried in books, while a crowd in the distance broke into fits of laughter; a few walked with purpose, focused on the task ahead while others meandered, wandering the campus aimlessly. He thought to himself, that if given the chance, he would know their story, from every great event to the most minute details. He approached the entrance, unfortunately the time for wondering was over now, there was a task ahead and he would see it through. It was his aim to learn as much as possible, and he would devour any and every scrap of knowledge sent his way, of that he had no doubt.
Finding room 120 just in time for class to start he joined the other students, taking a seat at the front of the class so could hear better and see demonstrations up close. A younger more handsome man sat on a table infront of the rest of the class. His robes were tightened so that few loose ends hung out, they were outlined in red and bore the insignia of the AACT over his heart; a stylistically designed pheonix who's wings stretched out into a fiery circle surrounding it. He heared murmuring from the students and a few giggles from some of the girls in the back corner.
"Hey, I'm Mr. Allenbury" he waved at them.
"Now, I'm sure you're all ready to get started learning how to throw fireballs and whatnot so let's take attendance and jump right into it."
He took out a paper and called out some names; occasionally being corrected. Some "here's" and a few "present!"s later and Mr Allenbury was ready to speak again, this time standing at the forefront of the class room.
"Alright let's get into it! Now I'm sure everyone wants to get to the part where we start launching ice or throwing fire, but that comes much later. In order to manipulate or even create something, one must understand the magical essence of it, and that takes time and practice." He was pacing back and forth now.
"What you do have is a partial understanding of the essence of your own mana. You'll be able to take and manipulate your own mana using some basic shaping skills, and no, you can't use someone else's. Every living being that doesn't reproduce asexually has a unique essence that would require long hours of study to manipulate. The more you understand about an essence the better you can use it." He wrote on the black board behind them.
" So let's start with basics then, you can manipulate mana in different ways by shaping it; other continents do it differently but this is how we do things." He drew a list with the words focus, burst, surge, waver, sever, anchor, and rotate
"Let's go over what these do." He held his hand out.
"Focus brings mana into a single point." A small glowing dot manifested on his fingertip.
"Burst let's you force mana outwards in a specific direction or just let mana expand outwards. You can do it at various strengths, sizes, etcetera." He shot off a small amount of mana from his hand in a short beam, making a thud as it made contact with the wall.
"You can combine these things too." The dot rapidly expanded into a ball.
"I just used burst to expand mana outwards and I kept it focused around the center so the mana wouldn't fly off.
"Surge makes things more unstable and reactive." The ball lost its smoothness and began to grow rough, as he strengthened the surge it began to grow jagged and spikes began to grow outwards at irregular intervals rising and falling across the surface of the orb.
"Waver does pretty much the opposite." The random mana spikes began to dull down as the mana began to waver, once the surface was calm again; it began to ripple, as though someone had dropped a stone into a calm lake, even further and the orb itself vibrated and hummed.
"Sever allows you to cut your connection with mana. People can only effectively control and shape mana a certain distance away from themselves. Once severed, the spell will continue to do what it did before, except you can't directly control it. If it was in the shape of a ball it'll stay that way, if it was going in a certain direction it'll follow the same path at the same speed unless it's interrupted." He threw the wavering, vibrating sphere at the far wall, presumably severing his connection to it, the ball flew into the corner and lasted significantly longer than the burst did before fading.
"Sever is better for far away opponents. Within your effective range you can essentialy shape and control your mana with ease." Three spheres appeared around him and circled him, they went in loops, changed shape and hovered directly in front of students before fading. "My effective range is about half this classroom, for beginners your range is about a foot off of your skin, it'll increase with practice."
"Anchor leaves a spell in place but maintains your connection to it. That spell will do its best to stay in the position you anchored it in and you'll be able to shape it even if you're out of range." Placing a sphere where he stood, he walked across to the other end of the room, well out of his range. The sphere began to surge with mana, spikes rose and fell across its surface.
"Finally, rotate, its self explanatory really." The spike ball began to spin first clockwise, then counter clock wise, and finally in every direction before fading.
"There's more advanced techniques but these are the basics. Now I believe in a hands on learning, so go experiment on some dummies, then we'll do some tournament style combat and we'll call it a day."
There were murmurs of excitement, across the room people whispered in hushed tones while others spoke out ready to challenge any who might dare challenge them. Namar was lost in thought, pondering the various applications of technique, and what he could do to beat Barlor
********
Around Barlor people were throwing dense spheres at dummies, they fired lances and jagged rays- one kid even created a similar vortex to the one his host used, except the student's vortex didn't fire nails. Nearby someone fired a beam similar to a drill. He'd had some similar tricks up his sleeve but nothing he could really count on to win. He was lost in thought when he was struck by an epiphany, why not manipulate his mana while it was still inside his body? Closing his eyes he reached inwards and attempted to apply surge to his natural mana flow.
He opened his eyes and the world suddenly became more vibrant, his vision shook as he eyes flicked quickly from place to place, his mind sped up, and barraged him with an overload of information. He could feel himself moving faster, every movement felt sudden and abrupt and he could hardly focus. He attempted to shape a spell before him but it was too difficult to focus, it changed, shifted and distorted, before he could properly form the spell, continuing the mana surge was difficult enough on its own let alone forming another spell. He ceased the surge of power and fell to the floor exhausted. It was at least, interesting to find out the effects of whatever it was he tried to do to himself.
**************
"Alright keep it clean, I don't feel like dealing with too much blood today, the first one to run out of mana and not have a spell on hand, surrender, or be rendered unable to move, loses. We'll do this tournament style one moves on to fight the next."
He reached inside a box and shuffled some parchment around. He drew one number
"Alright fours, you two are up."
****************
Barlor walked up to the center of the stadium to greet his opponent. He was tall slender and sleek his blonde hair was long and combed.
"I'm Vaeris Woodbrim."
"Barlor Brown."they shook hands and moved to opposite ends of the arena.
"May the best man win" Barlor grinned.
Vaeris smiled "Indeed."
Mr. Allenbury stood nearby another mage standing at the ready. "Fight!"
Vaeris immediately responded by raising his hand. A focus point rose on the air before expanding to an enormous size, appearing as though a boulder was simply hanging in the sky. Hopefully that was all of his mana otherwise he was completely outmatched. Barlor wasn't the type to hesitate, but what looked like a second blue sun hanging in the sky was definitely reason for pause. During his brief pause a blast fired out from the blue sun. The beam moved at a breakneck pace and closed the distance between them within a second.
Barlor had only the slightest of moments to activate and feel the surge course throughout his body, and suddenly the world felt like it slowed; as though he were moving through clear water, and his mind raced with the possibilities, and yet for every immeasurably small length of time spent on the beam, he focused three of them on the world that surrounded him. His focus split and fractured a thousand times over but rallying his will and internally screaming at himself to move, he managed to step within a hair's breadth of the beam just in time to see it pass and leave a dent in the sand behind him.
*************
Vaeris watched as the more muscular farm boy demonstrated an unusually high level of reflexes. Sidestepping and ducking just in time to avoid the high powered bursts made possible by having the entirety of his mana located elsewhere. This one clearly knew how to conserve energy in combat, using only the minimum amount of energy to escape being pummeled instantly. A lesson he could stand to learn from, he stopped firing as he had wasted half his mana already, something that would be undoubtedly obvious to even the most hopeless of peaseants.
Never again would he underestimate his opponents, he learned this lesson once already, he deigned not to learn it again. He watched his enemy closely and saw how his eyes moved, they appeared to jump from place to place, watching, analyzing, and now, they focused solely on him.