When I set out on my quest to master the magical arts, I studied under a mage of great renown and incredible power. He taught me many things, but one of my greatest lessons came after he, as a joke, convinced me that raw chicken was a delicacy in his homeland.
Take it from a man who once spent four continuous days on a toilet: don't take shit from anyone.
-Basen Koh on deferring to one's betters
Basen stepped into the ring, and people around the room chattered and whispered. Reid finally realized that perhaps Basen was more well-known than he'd assumed. It didn't seem like people recognized him on sight, but his name certainly stirred up the room.
The guild master didn't acknowledge Basen with words. Instead, he summoned a weapon that appeared in a flash of light. It wasn't his cane but an intricately carved staff made from purple crystal that blazed with a powerful glow. Reid couldn't sense its power with his own, so it was greater than three stars. That, of course, wasn't saying much.
"Will you prepare a weapon?" the guild master asked.
Basen was still holding the stave he'd procured. Now that Reid was really looking at it, it looked more like a regular stick than a weapon. Basen held it up and examined it with a critical eye.
"This will do. I found it outside a few minutes ago. It's really sturdy wood, though."
"Very well," the man sounded grim but nodded at Basen all the same.
Leah had said the guild leader, Gadren, was a six star Greater Mage. Reid now knew that Basen was a True Mage with seven or eight stars of power. That was more than the level of power Trace had spent the last week preparing the city's dueling arena to withstand.
"Is this safe?" he whispered to Leah.
She shrugged. "They wouldn't endanger us...I don't think."
Basen turned and addressed the crowd.
"Dear members of the Dusk Guild, outside observers, and, of course, members of my personal fan club," he gestured at Reid and Leah. "I am here to impart a lesson. It's one I learned long ago but one that people tend to forget. If the guild master will indulge me, I will show you what it is."
He turned back to the guild master, who nodded reluctantly, signaling the start of the fight.
Reid expected either man to charge forward, but instead, a purple mist filled the bounds of the arena. The guild master conjured a massive ball of pink energy above a hand and raised his staff, another orb forming on its tip.
"Mind control?" Basen said, kicking at the purple mist creeping up his legs. "I suppose it does fit your station, but it's a rather bad choice against me. Either way, I'm not here to put on a flashy show, young man. No magic."
Something in the air around the room changed. Everyone except Basen and one or two onlookers staggered. Even Reid felt the effects of Basen's command. He couldn't feel his power anymore, and he couldn't touch his mark or his ledger.
The guild master roared. His magic was completely gone. His orbs had vanished, and the mist had disappeared. Even his purple staff had stopped glowing.
He charged Basen, and to Reid's untrained eye, a very mundane fight unfolded. The guild master's supernatural speed was replaced by movements Reid could follow. Basen knocked away blows with casual swings, even as he ambled around the arena.
"I came here today because I've recently learned something about myself," Basen began monologuing while almost completely ignoring his opponent. "I've relied too much on my power. Throughout my years, I amassed ever more, and I thought that with it, I could do anything. I had never had a reason to question that—not until yesterday."
Basen bent over and picked up a coin from the floor. The guild master's purple staff flew over his head, missing by an inch.
"Oh, did someone drop a coin? Silver? Ah, here you are. Try to be more careful. Now, where was I?"
He sidestepped and tripped the guild master. "Ah, yes. That helpless feeling, thank you, Gadren. Yesterday, I had to confront the fact that there was something that I couldn't do despite having amassed great power throughout my life. My failure didn't just occur yesterday. I'd been failing for months, but I refused to admit it. I refused to come to grips with the fact that there was something that I, with all my prodigious strength, could not accomplish."
He turned and faced the guild master. The following exchange was more interesting than the last, and it stopped with both men fighting for advantage, weapons pressed together. Reid could practically feel the guild master's frustration and rage bubbling against Basen's impassivity.
"It took me meeting someone with little power and less experience to realize the errors of my ways," Basen said, maintaining a level voice. "This is a valuable lesson that I learned long ago. There is a point when power will fail you. You will find yourself confronting something greater than you or something you simply are not equipped to face. For many of you, this came at the hands of the very man I now stand before. We forget that feeling in the fullness of time and the shortness of memory. What of you, Gadren? Had you forgotten what helplessness is like?"
The guild master did not speak, but they broke from the stalemate and faced one another, unmoving.
"In those moments, you cannot reach for more power. In those moments, power might do you no good. Thus, I come to my lesson. Remember that when you feel powerless, it is something you have known before and something that each of you has risen above. While you strive for power and growth, do not forget that they are not everything in this world, and power, for power's sake, will never take you far. Build yourself and your community. Maintain connections and better yourself in whatever way you can so that when you come to the moments where you find yourself most helpless, you remember that not all is bleak darkness."
The guild master lunged again, dropping his staff and grabbing Basen's weapon. He hauled on the stick, trying to pry it free from the older man's hand. A sharp crack filled the silence, and the guild leader stumbled back, holding half a stick.
"Perhaps I have been too hard on your guild and your assessment, Gadren. At the end of the day, the lesson it teaches is the same as what I wanted to convey. There are times when grit and tenacity are not enough. When your power can and will fail you. It is from those moments we learn. Push yourselves. Fail at something. Only through those failures can we grow beyond what our potential might say about us."
Basen tossed away his half of the broken stick and clapped. The crowd perked up. Reid felt his magic return, and the glow returned to weapons around the room. The dueling circle flashed red. The guild leader's left foot was just breaking the plane of the arena.
"Now, does that mean I can join?"
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Gadren laughed—full-belly laughed. He pulled off his mask, revealing a sweaty face and broad grin.
"Well played, Basen. I shouldn't have expected anything less. By all means, would you like to join the Dusk Guild?"
Basen rubbed his chin. "Hmm, I think I'll have to pass. Too many rules about proper public behavior."
The guild master shook his head. The crowd was talking animatedly. People chattered about losing their power and what Basen had done. Gadren waved his hand and summoned his staff from the floor. He slammed the butt against the arena floor, and the room went silent.
"Please, everyone. It's a rare treat to experience the power of a True Mage first hand. Basen is right. I had forgotten what it is like to feel powerless. I am powerful within the city, of that there is no doubt, but there is always a bigger fish in the pond. We should remember this feeling. We should use it to drive ourselves and remember that though we might be brought low, we can stand up again. We can move forward."
Basen nodded. "Well said. Just let me know when you want that rematch."
After that, the crowd slowly broke up, but plenty of people swarmed Basen for questions.
"Reid!" Basen said, quieting those around him. "It seems I will be occupied for a little while. I'll meet you back at the shop in, say, two hours?"
Reid gave him a thumbs up and didn't try to shout over the din or fight through the crowd. Basen acknowledged his response and turned back to the crowd around him.
A few guild members stopped by to offer Leah congratulations, which she graciously accepted, and a few offered her drink or dinner invitations, which she less graciously turned down. For his part, Reid noticed more people taking notice of him since Basen addressed him.
"Should we get out of here?" Leah asked.
"Good idea."
A couple minutes spent retreating from the guild's main hall later, they were back in their suite. Leah laid on the couch, sprawled, and Reid slumped in the chair. They soaked up the comfort and silence.
"That was exhausting. I'm beat," Leah said.
"Yeah. I feel like I'm more drained than I should be."
"Might be because Basen cut off our magic. That is so unfair."
"I wanted to ask about that," Reid said. He'd had the same sort of commanding power used on him three times now. Twice by Basen, and once by the magic serpent, Vessiem. "How did he do that?"
"True Mage power," Leah said casually. "True Mage is the rank above Greater Mage. Seven or eight star power."
"He mentioned he was a True Mage, but I didn't think too much about it."
"Yep. I told you he was famous. There aren't very many True Mages in the country. I think it's basically Basen, the King, the King's High Wizard, and a few more high ranking military leaders. Basen is officially retired as an adventurer with the Royal Adventurer's Guild, but I think he still has a duty to the King to defend the country from invaders. Otherwise, the King might have forced him to pass on his item."
"Do you know what his item is?" Reid didn't think it would be common knowledge, but it never hurt to check.
"No one knows—or at least those who do aren't saying. The more powerful mages are typically very secretive about the source of their power. The one exception is the King. His scepter is passed down his line and loaned out to his heir for use occasionally."
"Huh, good to know, I guess. So we don't know his item, but we know his ability? The command?"
"No, no, no. I forgot you don't know anything about anything," Leah sat up. "Remember how I needed to select my specialization as a plain old Mage?"
"Yeah, what did you choose anyway? I heard your ability, but it didn't hurt me."
"Later. At Mage, you unlock magical specialization. At Greater Mage, you unlock magical mastery. At True Mage, you unlock something called magical authority. Any True Mage can use that authority to speak commands. According to my teachers, it's really, really hard to use. I didn't know something like cutting off magic to a room full of people was possible."
"Basen didn't seem to have trouble with it."
"Yeah, that's because he's Basen fucking Koh. He was a True Mage before the King was even born. He's probably the second oldest True Mage in the Kingdom. Some say the King's High Wizard is older, but the High Wizard's item belongs to his position, and he's only been High Wizard for something like ten years. Basen's been a True Mage for something like forty years."
"Wow. You know, it kind of explains his carefree attitude. I can't imagine he worries about offending many people with power like that."
Leah nodded in agreement. They let the silence linger for a while. Reid tried to decide if he'd treat Basen any differently now that he knew more about the man's power. He didn't think so. Basen seemed to thrive off of honest and silly interaction, and that happened to be Reid's preferred communication style. After deciding on that, he remembered why they'd come back to the guild hall.
"What do you do now? Now that you're a full member, do you have official duties or something?"
Leah pulled herself out of her thoughts and shook her head. "No, nothing so formal. I'll be right at the lowest rank. No official duties, but now I can take on full fledged guild notices. I can also move into Guild housing instead of temporary housing, if I want. If I stay here, I'll have to pay, but I think I'll get a reduced rate."
"No service writ?"
She smiled. "No. The regular guild contracts pay well enough. Speaking of, I should go check what's available. I think the no-magic sluggishness is wearing off, and I can feel the fire to get better coming back."
She stood up and grabbed her weapon from where she'd casually discarded it when they came in. She clipped it onto her belt.
"Hey, why did you always carry your sword around in that cloth instead of clipping it to your belt like that?"
"Non-guild members aren't allowed to carry weapons openly in the hall, and I'm a member now—finally. You don't have a weapon—which we really need to fix, by the way—so they probably didn't mention it to you."
"Ah, that makes sense."
She nodded. "It's one of the ways you can tell guild members from non-guild members. Sometimes, a random person won't know the rules and walk in off the street with one, but it generally works. Anyway, I bet the main hall has cleared out a little. Thanks for coming with me today, Reid."
After Leah departed, Reid returned to his room to tinker. He'd finally had time to think about his ledger and wanted to try an idea.
He'd explored all the menus last night. While manipulating the ledger and moving through information, he noticed it was highly customizable. Basically anything he wanted to see directly, he could.
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[Personal Statistics]
Magic Level: Lesser Mage (2 Star), 3/3 Stars used
Bindings:
* Merchant's Mark
* Scribe's Orrery Stone (Cracked)
Active Abilities:
* Mark
* Create Scribe Supplies
Passive Abilities:
* Ledger
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His magic level was his mage rank. He discovered that it was tied to the level of his highest bound item. When he mentioned it to Basen on the walk over from his shop, the mage said that he was largely correct, but there were known combinations of items that, when bound at the same time, could grant the mage a higher star level. Reid didn't know any of those combinations, but he'd look out for them.
Since his current level was a two star lesser mage, it meant that his bound items didn't synergize well enough to push him into the next level of power. When he came back to the idea, he realized that just because his items didn't synergize perfectly, it didn't mean they didn't synergize at all.
Focusing on his small list, he activated the ability from the Scribe's Orrery Stone.
As soon as the magic connected, his vision faded, and his head throbbed. Fortunately, he still only had his bed to work on, so when he fell over after nearly blacking out, the landing was quite soft.
"Forgot about that," he said, wincing and rubbing his temples.
The pain faded after a minute, but his bone weary exhaustion persisted. Now that he felt it, he remembered Basen's warning to not use the fortitude draining ability again for a few days.
"Did it at least work?"
He sat back up and tried to shake out the exhaustion. That didn't work, but he felt a little better for having tried. He opened his eyes when he thought he wouldn't need to pass out.
On the bed, he found a small scrap of paper with the title "Personal Statistics" scrawled across the top in his handwriting. He pumped a fist into the air in triumph.
"Yes!"
He was able to combine abilities. Just like his ledger ability could use his mark ability to record information, it could use his scribe stone to reproduce it. He didn't know how far that combination would extend. Could he combine abilities between bound and unbound items? Reid didn't know.
He looked forward to his combination of powers allowing him to identify items and then produce cards for them without so much manual work. Judging by his current headache, he would be a few days away from starting that work. For now, he was content that it was possible. Reid thought trying more experiments today was a bad idea, so he decided to head back to the shop.
With all the excitement of the last day, Reid hadn't thought much about the Immaculate Collection's potential failure. In fact, he had pruned the thoughts from his mind like weeds from a garden. His excitement and interest were real, but so was the seed of nagging doubt. What if he couldn't save it?
The thought crossed his mind, and with it came the memory of Basen's words.
Push yourselves. Fail at something.
The words were a challenge in and of themselves. Reid would do whatever he could to save Basen's business. If he failed once, he would try again. He would push himself through his failures. When he thought it all said and done, the only true failure would be if he hadn't tried at all.