There was nothing to do but laugh at myself. Still chuckling in disappointment I conjured the ball of water once more. Again, I pointed it to the wall and let loose the mana behind it. With a surprising amount of recoil, enough to send my arm skywards, it shot out. This time, by some miracle, it just barely clipped the wall with a loud slap! sound. Reforming the ball, I adjusted my stance, copying Sylvie more closely. I clamped a hand over my forearm. I guess she held her hand like that for a reason. This time, as I released the pent up mana, I simultaneously pulled my forearm down. This time I hit the wall dead on. Elation filled me. Grinning, I looked around to see if anyone noticed, and nope. Ghiraldi was helping Sylvie with another spell, so they were both busy. The feeling started to die down as I went back to practicing.
“Are you really that desperate for validation?” Khaos murmured in my mind. I frowned and shot the next ball.
“Leave me alone” I grumbled back silently. There was a long silence, I fired off a few more. My mana was being exhausted quickly. The formation took a lot of mana, not as much as conventional methods but still. Then, building up enough mana to fire it took almost just as much mana.
“Good job kid,” Khaos said in my mind. The shock was enough that I lost control of my mana while forming the ball. The stray water mana slammed against my insides and I almost fell over from the pain. Despite that, I could feel my ears burning. I tried to control it, but I couldn’t help but smile like a blushing bride. I stood up, dusting myself off. As I did Ghiraldi rushed over,
“Are you already out of mana?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“No, something just startled me. I’m fine,” I said, forcing my face into what I hoped was a neutral look.
“If you can’t cast the spell without losing control, I guess you’re not ready to move on,” he said, gesturing to Sylvie who was walking from side to side while casting. Casting spells while moving was much harder, so my guess was that the next phase after that would be while running. Then likely while sparring or something similar.
“Why don’t we all break for lunch,” Ghiraldi called out. A wind spirit floated over a basket which had sandwiches and some sort of red rose water flavoured drink. The lunch was quick but filling. Feeling reinvigorated, we went back to training.
I kept casting the spell until I felt like my mana was almost depleted. My hand and arm felt strange. Lighter, more dexterous, almost fluid. I remembered what Ghiraldi said about the spellblades. Was this the effect of water mana on the body? It certainly seemed that way. Before I could collapse, I sat down on the vibrantly green grass. Once more I began circulating my mana. I drew in mana from my surroundings, then flushed out the mana currently in my body. Then I did it again. I circulated mana in this way until my body finally wasn’t on the verge of collapse from mana overuse. I knew the basic concept of mana circulation was to replace spent mana and “stale” mana. Mana that had been in your body too long was considered “stale” , less effective at spell casting and harder to control. Slowly I stood back up, the sun was setting. Which meant that it only took me a few hours to circulate the entirety of my mana, now. With my eyes still open I attempted to circulate mana. It was tough, Everytime I tried to move the mana in my legs, my engaged muscles acted as a wall. Not to mention, keeping my eyes open made visualization even harder. I tched, annoyed. Whatever, I’d work at it more after dinner. I wasn’t going to spend more time on this right now.
I went back in and made my way to the dining room. Like yesterday, Ghiraldi and Sylvie were already eating their dinner discussing a new spell. It seemed as though, while I was circulating mana, Sylvie had managed to cast the spell while running. They were discussing a more technically challenging spell which would combine earth mana with water mana to create a spray of acid in front of the caster. Listening in, it wouldn’t affect living matter as badly as it would affect metal and other inorganic objects. It sounded alot like to me that you have to combine the two types of mana in your chest, then send it out to your hand.
“Why not just combine both types of mana in the hand. Build up water mana in your palm then add earth mana,” I interjected. Ghiraldi glanced at me.
“It is much easier to combine two streams of mana when both are in motion, although the way you are describing is certainly possible. But it makes casting the spell unnecessarily harder,” he replied with a small sigh. I took another bite of my food as he spoke, once again it was a thick stew with deliciously crusty bread.
“Does combining earth and water mana always give you acid?” Sylvie said around a bite of bread. Ghiraldi’s answer was swift,
“No. The combination is important, yes. But it could also result in mud, but it won’t. You do remember the lesson on intent and its effect on magic?” Sylvie nodded slowly, “That’s the concept in play here. Yes you’re combining earth and water. But you want acid, not mud. So what you get is acid.” He pointed to me,
“That’s how you managed to learn firebolt, yes the spell you’ve been casting has a name, without someone teaching you. You expected fire to give off light, so the neutral mana of the light spell became fire mana, you’d heard of wizards “slinging” spells and so your intent made it throwable. Does that make sense?” I frowned and stroked my beard, that was frighteningly similar to how I had developed the fire ball…no, the firebolt spell.
“Yes, a frightening amount really,” as I spoke, a thought struck me. If spells were largely based off of your intention, then could that be the secret to the language in my grimoire? It seemed likely. If the spells were really just descriptions priming you on what to expect from them, instead of step by step steps for casting, that would make deciphering them a little easier. I kept the thought to myself as Ghiraldi and Sylvie discussed the plans for tomorrow. It was decided we’d start with mana circulation, cast the water ball spell while Ghiraldi threw things at us, then work on the acid spell.
Personally, even though Ghiraldi had warned me off, I was interested in mana boosting. Or whatever he’d called it. I liked the idea of being a spellsword. Strengthening and altering my capabilities with elemental mana. What if I combined mana types? Water and earth, what would that do to my body? Lightning and water? The thought was terrifying but I was so curious. Then I remembered how much it had hurt when I had lost control of just one spell worth of water mana. I needed to gain precise enough control over my mana so that that would never happen.
“Amore,” Sylvie’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts. I looked around to see Ghiraldi was gone and Sylvie had a frown on her face. “You were so deep in thought you didn’t even notice when Messere Ghiraldi went to bed. Come on, we have a long day tomorrow.” I nodded silently and followed her up to our bedroom. While she showered, I cracked open my grimoire. Looking at it through the lens of the spells transcribed being descriptions, rather than being how-to guides, did not help as much as I thought it would. I noticed, however, the water ball spell had been added to the book. Curious, I casted it while looking at the runes. It was a strange feeling, the sensation of my mana moving without my direct control. It formed the ball on the palm of my hand and the pressure to launch it grew more and more.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Mildly panicking, I forced myself to take conscious control of the spell and dissipated the built up mana. I sighed a sigh of relief. Looking down I saw a new page next to the first. Instinctively, I knew this was the spell without the propulsion aspect. Drinking the spell in my hand, I compared the two. Right at the end, a few sentences seemed to be different. I looked around for an ink and pen and found some. Dipping the pen in the ink I carefully copied the lines down, and in common, I labeled it propulsion. I compared the light and firebolt spell, again I noticed the difference was the last few paragraphs. I copied them down, rune by unfamiliar rune, then labeled it fire; with a question mark as I wasn’t sure. I wanted to add what I thought was the propulsion spell to something, I flipped through the book but nothing struck me as being propellable. I did notice, as I looked over my spells again, that the spell which allowed me to shoot chaos energy had the same propulsion lines. This only served to embolden me.
Quickly as I could, I wrote down the light spell. Then at the end I tacked on the propulsion lines. SImilar to how I would cast it before, I called up the spell. The arcane knowledge twisted my mana, forcing it out and forming a ball of light. But, I didn’t feel the telltale sign of mana building up behind it to propel it. I frowned. Then, I manually began adding the necessary amount of mana pressure to propel the ball of light myself. Similar to the water spell, I waited until I could barely contain it before releasing it in a cone from my palm.This time there was no recoil as the mana tore the light to shreds. Small balls of light shot around the room and hung in a cloud, clinging to everything they touched. The effect was like being surrounded by thousands of fireflies, the lights flitting about like faeries until setting on an object. I felt a sharp pain in my mind and looked down at my grimoire to see the ink I had written with was beginning to run, as though it had been spritzed with water. The ink reformed, spelling out new runes. It was similar to what I had written there before. But there were key differences. But at the moment, I decided I didn’t have the capacity to deal with it. Happy about adding an additional spell to my repertoire, I simply waited for Sylvie to get out of the shower. I watched in fascination as the light quickly faded. Lasting about a minute or so.
Sylvie immediately went to bed after stepping out of the shower. I washed myself, taking a nice, warm shower. The warmth from the shower, and the general exhaustion from the training and experimentation forced me asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. Almost as quickly as I fell asleep I woke up, sat in a familiar armchair. And like last time, Khaos sat across from me, thankfully he had a shirt on this time. It was a garish bright turquoise with strange, cylindrical trees patterned on it. At least, I assumed they were some sort of strange tree. He wore shorts that cut off right under his knees made from some sort of beige cloth, and for whatever reason it had an ungodly number of pockets with strange metal tabs. He wore slippers made from a shiny and soft looking material. Of course, it followed the same colour scheme as his shirt. I resisted the urge to shield my eyes and glowered at him instead.
“Would you care for a drink?” he offered. Once again gesturing towards the bar. I refused, making him smile as if he saw a puppy sit for the first time. “Suit yourself,” he said as a tall drink with a green fruit rimming it appeared in his hand.
“Why am I here?” I asked, exasperated.
“Because you, sir, are trying to do something very stupid and very dangerous. And impossible,” he said, taking a sip of his drink.
“Why would you be warning me, aren’t I the biggest threat to your followers?” I said, my frown deepening by the second until I was positively scowling at him. He appeared to think for a second, sipping his drink again.
“Because, I like you,” he said. Before I could even express surprise or shock he disappeared and I awoke.
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Khaos watched as the young man disappeared from his prison. Well, it was in his mind, but still. He finished his mojito and snapped back to his physical body, one without a fashionable outfit of cargo shorts and a hawaiian shirt. The greenchains held him up in the middle of the cage. He flexed, purple and red briefly clashing with the aetherial and serene green. But the greenchains held tight. If he could sigh he would have. But the chains constricting his chest had not let him breathe in centuries. How many Ages had it been since he was imprisoned in such an unfair way? Chaos, shackled. An oxymoron, he thought glumly. It had to have been at least ten. He wondered when he’d finally be able to be free. Maybe the cycling would happen this Age for the next. His win to loss ratio didn’t bolster his confidence however. Even if the young man didn’t manage to free him, however indirectly. It was entertaining to see a mortal try to make heads and tails of the runes of creation. Khaos genuinely couldn’t remember the last time someone tried to puzzle them out. Certainly not in the last Age he’d commanded, an Age that ended with a spacefaring folk using an entropy bomb to wipe out the universe.
That was the most technologically adept mortals had ever gotten. And his wife, always the spoilsport, imprisoned him for “speedrunning an age”. A term which had risen only because of that technological advancement he had pointed out. Alas, that had only made her angrier, he blamed this comment for the chains constricting his chest. It turned out, the free market was a little too powerful in advancing society quickly. Who would have known, it was the perfect chaotic little thing. Who cared that it caused mass poverty and war and genocides? He wondered if his wife was enjoying the little rebellions he was setting up. Her Age hadn’t been the utopia she had envisioned for a long, long time. But, Khaos could always nudge things to be just a little more chaotic than they should be. He wondered if she knew about the nuclear bomb which had landed in his lap just a little bit ago. Likely not, she wasn’t all knowing like Him, even in her own Age. He would have laughed at the thought, if he could draw the breath to do so. He tried to sigh in disappointment, it of course didn’t work.
He was about to retreat into his mind when the greenchains parted. A woman wearing a cocktail dress of green and silver sequins strode in, well, this was a new development. The chains constricting his chest slithered away and he drew in a full breath for the first time in Ages.
“Look who it is,” he said, his voice raspy and deep from not being used in He knows how long, “the double crossing psycho who lost her mind when I did better than her.”
“I see you clearly haven’t changed one bit,” she growled in sudden anger. “Here I come to discuss terms, thinking you’d had enough punishment. But as soon as I walk in you insult me?! Rot for twenty-five more Ages. See what I care.” With that she turned around and made to leave.
“How would I change?” he called out after her. “You know how we were made, our natures? Unyielding. Our desires? Unchanging. Our love?” he softened his voice, “Surprisingly, still unending. If I had chained you, you would be the same as the day you were bound. And so, I am.” She paused, if only for the slightest of moments, before leaving.
The ‘I still love you’ line didn’t have too much of an effect, as expected. He took in a deep breath, a stale breath tinged with iron and rust. But a breath nonetheless. He started laughing, remembering what he had told the little mortal. ‘I like you’ He had said it in order to confuse Liam, But Khaos would definitely like him if Liam’s plan worked out. Already bored, he pulled back into his mind. There, at least, he had video games.
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I had once again awoken so early Sylvie was still an unmoving log. The meeting with my patron, I shuddered to think of him that way. The recent dream had ignited an almost forgotten dream from the other day, right, his own cultist that was feeding information to his sister. He had ordered a hit on her. As soon as we hit the road, I was definitely going to help that girl as much as I could. An alliance would be best, but anything that messed with Khaos’ plans was on the table. With a small smile, I began circulating mana with my eyes open. The next step would be to add a moving finger, or toe. Another day of training, I found myself looking forward to it.