The radiant golden flame hovered in front of my outstretched hand, filling the entire room with a gentle warmth. I was instantly entranced by the flickering candlelight. a part of me wanted to reach out and touch it, to hold it close, but my rational side quickly pushed that thought away. I may have been able to create the flame by imitating glyphs, but it was not truly under my control like an innate talent should be. Still, it was a start.
I had only a few seconds to marvel at the golden light before a black blur flew past my vision swallowing the flame whole.
“Nox!” I shouted angrily as the small kitten scampered away. Smoke rose from the small cat’s mouth as it ran to a corner of the room. I could swear Nox was taunting me as he looked back over at me, before hopping on a shelf just out of my reach.
“You were actually able to recreate the glyph,” my dad said in disbelief, stopping me from chasing after the obnoxious cat, “This is incredible! I have heard of glyphs imitating innate talents, but never the other way around. Can you copy any glyph or just ones involving fire? We have to experiment with this. There are so many possibilities!” My dad’s eyes were practically sparkling with excitement as he clasped his hands down on my shoulders. “Do it again, I want to examine how the glyph is reacting at the moment of activation.”
I nodded and closed my eyes. Repeating the process of creating the glyph took much less time the second time around. My dad only had to correct me once and within just a couple minutes a new glyph was hovering in front of me.
My dad’s eyes were glued to the glyph as I once again drew the two sides together. The glyph shined bright as a new golden flame was born.
“Fascinating!” my dad exclaimed as he rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "When you activated it, a couple of the runes seemed unstable. Those are the runes that dictate the element of fire in a normal glyph. Try it again, but this time remove all the runes except the two dictating location and intensity of the flame.”
I cut off the flow of energy to the glyph and the small flame disappeared. I heard Nox meow angrily from nearby but ignored it. Following my dad’s directions, I removed a large portion of the glyph when drawing it again and was able to complete the entire process in just over a minute. Once again, a golden flame ignited in front of my hand.
“Simply incredible. A normal glyph would not work without the rune that converts the world's energy into other forms, but your glyphs have no need for that,” my dad mused, “This gives me so many ideas we have to try.”
I stared intently at the golden flame as I tried to sense some connection between it and what I had felt in the Guardian’s illusion. “It is close but I think it is still missing something,” I mumbled as I compared the two, "This flame seems… less alive.”
“Still better than it exploding in your face over and over again,” my dad replied with a hearty laugh, “I think I can even make it viable for combat if you are willing to work with me on it.”
“Absolutely,” I said with a big grin. I was about to extinguish the golden flame when a familiar blur once again flashed in front of me and swallowed it.
Nox did not scamper away this time, instead, he rubbed up against my legs. Meowing loudly, I did not have to rely on my connection with the cat to know he wanted to eat more of the golden flame. I reached down and picked up the kitten. He looked back at me with big, twinkling eyes as he begged for more of the golden flame.
“Does this flame help you?” I asked curiously. Nox started purring as he rubbed up against me. “Alright, I will give you lots to eat, but let me figure this out with my dad first. I will give you any flames I create while we experiment.”
Nox meowed once more before hopping down from my arm. He laid down just out of arms reach, one eye open in case I created any more for him to eat.
My dad had already gathered up his brush and ink as he energetically ushered me over. “First, I want to see if you can use any glyph not involving fire. I am going to draw two beginner glyphs for you to learn. The first will create a simple glowing light. The second will condense a few droplets of water.”
My dad’s brush moved in a blur of motion and in less than a minute he had already created the first glyph for me to learn. In order to avoid any accidental explosions, we started with me drawing the first glyph on paper. Even with my dad’s coaching, it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time until I was able to correctly draw the glyph without any mistakes, but after several hours of practice, I was finally ready to try the glyph.
I carefully manipulated my flames as the glyph was slowly formed in front of me. If done correctly, this glyph would create a small glowing orb of light. I was extremely curious to find out if I could create any glyph and put my all into making sure this one was perfect. My dad even complimented how well it was done as I started to create the last few lines.
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As the two flames came into contact, they bled together, spreading across the lines of the glyph. At first, everything looked fine, but the moment the golden flames touched the runes that dictated the element of the glyph, the entire room was engulfed in a thunderous explosion.
Both my dad and I were thrown backwards as multiple layers of protection glyphs shattered in an instant. It took me several seconds to blink away the disorientation of getting blown across the room. I was not injured thanks to my dad’s caution in applying multiple glyphs to me at a time, but it still took a few moments for my head to stop spinning.
“let’s not try that again,” I groaned.
“Agreed,” My dad replied, coughing a few times as he unsteadily picked himself up off the ground.
I immediately noticed that all of his protection glyphs were gone and ran over to his side to help him. “Are you ok?”
“A little battered, but nothing is broken,” He said as he leaned against me for support, “Next time we experiment, remind me to put as many glyphs around myself as I do you. That flame of yours hits like a war hammer.”
“Do you want to lay down?”
My dad shook his head and gathered up the scattered glyph supplies that survived the explosion. His hands were shaking, but his excitement was not dampened at all. “I still have a couple more things I want to try before we call it a day. Now that we know you can only use flame glyphs, I can start creating something you can use. Do you have any suggestions?”
“We need to keep it simple. If it still takes me a full minute to create a single glyph then it would be completely useless in a fight. If possible, I would like something that I can create in less than ten seconds.”
My dad tapped his finger on the paper for a minute as he considered the problem. “Since you only need direction and capacity runes that should not be impossible if you learn to form glyphs as fast as I can draw them. Give me some time to brainstorm. I will need to create a custom glyph just for you so that there are no wasted lines.”
My dad started scribbling on a piece of paper and mumbling to himself as he tackled the problem. I decided to leave him alone for a time and practice the one glyph I knew that would not blow up in my face.
The ignite glyph took about a minute for me to create after removing the unnecessary parts, but I knew that I could lower that down to half that time if I could get accustomed to the process. Drawing a few dozen lines was not as difficult as some of the other images I had created with my flames in the past. It was just making sure each line was perfect that took so long. Once I got accustomed to the process, I would be able to create the golden flame even quicker.
Every time I created a new flame, I examined the process intently. Using glyphs was still a temporary measure compared to what I knew this power was capable of. If I could just figure out how the flames did not explode when combining with glyphs, I would be able to integrate the process into my innate talents. Unfortunately, even after creating dozens of flames, I was no closer to figuring it out than when I started.
Over and over again, I practiced drawing the glyph. Each time, I fed the golden flame to the gluttonous cat. He gobbled up the flames with enthusiasm. I had never seen Nox look so content. His belly even started to look slightly bloated as he finally stopped asking for more fire. For the first time since I had drained Nox’s energy so long ago, he was no longer hungry. Curling up into a ball in the corner, Nox immediately fell asleep, purring happily.
After some time, my dad finally stopped scribbling incoherent shapes and called me over. “I want to try something simple first, if this works, we will expand from there,” my dad said, holding up a single piece of paper.
I blinked a few times as I looked at his design. “This is just three lines and a circle. Does that even count as a glyph?”
“No, this is a simple directional rune. A normal glyph can have dozens of these. I want to see what happens if you only use this first. Keep your fire small. This might blow up in our face.”
My dad renewed the protection glyphs surrounding the two of us as I took my position in the center of the room. I noticed that after using the glyphs he had started to look pale, and he was out of breath.
I recognized the signs of someone overusing their energy and knew that if this experiment did not work, I would have to make him take a break, no matter how excited he was about me being able to use glyphs.
Extending my hand in front of me, I recreated the drawing my dad had shown me. I did not need to practice this one first. It was so simple I could complete it near instantaneously. Green and blue flowed together and another explosion filled the room.
However, unlike every other time my flames exploded, I was not thrown back. To my surprise, the explosion did not even touch me. Instead, the explosion only impacted a single direction, turning the small area in front of my hand into a fiery hellscape.
As soon as the explosion faded, I heard my dad shouting joyously. “It actually worked! I did not expect the simplest rune to have any effect. This is marvelous.”
I looked down at my hand and smiled as the explosion faded away. This was something I could use. With some practice, I would be able to create a simple rune like this without any delay. If I could master this, anything close enough to touch would have to face the full might of my explosions.
“This is great, Dad,” I said with a big grin on my face, “What do you think would happen if I did not hold back?”
“Let’s… not test that yet,” my dad replied hesitantly, “simple runes have limits on how much energy they can contain. If you use too much, it will just blow up in your face like normal.”
I nodded as I committed the simple rune to memory. “I will test the limits another time then,”
My dad started thumbing through his papers as he tossed aside a handful of useless ones. “Aright since that works, I have a few other things for us to try. None are as simple as the one you just used and given how much trouble you have with learning glyphs most of these will have to wait for after you have had some more practice but in total, I have four simple glyphs I think you will really like. If you can learn them all, I will try and teach you some of the more complicated glyphs.”