Meanwhile, on the planes near Caelum's walls, Corvo and Sean where training under the watchful eyes of Michael Riddar, a man who had spent most of his life fighting bandits and monsters. Many a foe had left its mark in the form of a scar on his body, but no pain he had ever felt came close to the pain he was experiencing right now.
"BY THE GODS, MAKE IT STOP!", Corvo yelled while rolling on the floor in pain, clutching his ears with all his might.
Sean, startled by his best friend yelling as if stabbed by a knife, stopped playing his flute. It looked like a simple recorder made of wood, with the only difference to a normal instrument being that it was inscribed with the focus rune, and enchantment which would allow the instrument to be used by bards to influence the mana around them with their music. In Seans case, who seemed to not possess any talent in using this instrument whatsoever, it had quite a destructive effect on those who listened to him playing.
A deep sigh of relief escaped Michael Riddar's mouth as the pain in his mind slowly started to wane.
"Guess it's another fail. But don't worry, Sean, we're going to find one you're good at!", he said with a reassuring smile, in an attempt to lift his son's mood.
"We only got two left though...", Sean mumbled sadly and threw the flute on the pile of instruments he had already tried out. When he was meant to buy the one, he resonated the most with, it seemed that there was not a single one he was suited better for than the others, so his father decided to rent cheap practice sets to find one he could use. One failure after the other kept the moral low, but the hope he had just not found the right one yet still remained.
"You know, maybe we are looking at this the wrong way. What if your talent was actually that of a Despair Bard? I know it's not as prestigious as other professions, but it's something, isn't it?", his father suggested.
Despair Bards were bards specialising in weakening their enemies, even to a point where they can cause them serious damage. Controlling the effects to a point where only one's enemies were affected by them, however, was quite challenging. The slightest mistake could cause unwanted collateral damage. Though this profession was not as uncommon as one would believe, it is often linked to criminals, which lead to Despair Bards often being seen in an unfavourable light. For this very reason, Sean was now glaring daggers at his father.
"Hey, hey, it was just an idea! We still got two instruments left! How about you grab the lyre?", he mentioned, his hands raised in defence to defuse the situation.
"HOW ABOUT WE GIVE IT SOME REST?", Corvo blurted out, in a louder voice than he intended to. A wave of embarrassment hit him upon realising his mistake, and he quickly added: "Well...you know, I mean... I want to try out the spell your dad taught me."
Sean's expression was unreadable, but Corvo knew that he had been seen through, so he quickly made his way a few steps away from the other two, and faced the straw dummy which had been placed between him and the city wall of Calum by Sean's father to serve as a target for magic training.
"Alright Corvo, let's see if you paid attention!", Michael Riddar stated, as Corvo started to concentrate his mana.
The spell Corvo had learned was
Corvo focused on the energy flowing through his body and forced a tiny amount of it into the palm of his right hand, which he aimed at the target. In his palm, a small spell circle started to form, and he spoke the words Sean's father had taught them which would release the spell: "Volare et ardeat!"
A small flame exited his palm, but before it could make its way towards the target, it fizzled out.
"Not enough mana, I'm afraid. Try again!", Michael Riddar observed.
Again, Corvo drew mana into his palm, determined to do it right this time.
"Volare et ardeat!"
This time, the flame managed to move away from him, but it dropped to the floor shortly after and started a small fire in front of him. He hastily stomped the fire out before it could become any bigger.
"Still not enough, one more time."
"Heh, looks like I'm not the only one having trouble.", Sean jeered at the pitiful attempts of his friends to cast the spell.
'I'll show you who's having trouble, just you wait!', Corvo thought as he started to pour as much arcanum into the spell as he could out of spite.
"Wait! Corvo!", Michael Riddar yelled out as he noticed the sudden increase in size of the spell circle forming in Corvo's palm, but it was too late.
"VOLARE ET ARDEAT!"
A massive flame in the shape of a shooting star left the hand of Corvo and made its way towards the target, which it missed completely, making it fly directly at the city walls of Caelum. Upon impact, the flames dispersed and set the grass beneath it on fire.
"Shit, Flumen influunt vehementer!", Michael Riddar shouted while hastily putting out the flames with water magic.
During the commotion he caused, Corvo exclaimed "HAH, who's... got a problem... now...", before losing consciousness and slowly dropping backwards to the ground. Sean ran up to Corvo to see if he was alright, but when he saw that he had just fallen asleep, he angrily poked him in his side with his foot.
"Oi, wake up!", he yelled angrily, while continuing his assault.
When Michael Riddar returned to see if Corvo was hurt and laid his eyes upon the scene he facepalmed in annoyance.
"That's exactly why I told you not to spend too much of your mana. Thank the Light it wasn't all of his reserves, otherwise getting knocked out cold would be the least of his problems. You can stop kicking him, Sean, I got a better idea. Aquae guttae!"
A small stream of water exited the spell-circle from the right index finger of Michael Riddar and hit Corvo square in the face.
"AAARGH, WHAT THE...", Corvo startled awake and sprang to his feet. He moved too abruptly and was hit with a sudden wave of dizziness, but he quickly shook it off and glared at his teacher.
"Hey, why'd you do that? What's going on?"
"You knocked yourself out by spending too much of your mana. I told you to try and only use enough to cast the spell, since you aren't used to it yet. Spending too much mana can become dangerous, you know, and not just because you can no longer control the spell after you released it. Mana is the essence of magic. It surrounds us, it keeps us alive and makes us what we are. Spend too much and you get what is known as Wizard Sickness, a state of nausea and weakness, which can even lead to a coma from which you might never awake from. Spend all of it, no matter how rare this case be, and you die. Our souls have a natural limiter, which will shut our body down if we try to draw too much mana, but in some situations, this is not the case. Magi are counted among the most powerful combat professions, but it's also pretty risky business, you know?", Michael lectured the boys.
"But, if Mana surrounds us, why can't we just use that for spells? Why do we have to spend our own?", Corvo asked.
Michael Riddar looked broodingly into the sky, as if to look for an answer there. Ironically, the ones in the sky who would have known the answer to this question no longer existed. Seeing his father struggling to come up with the answer, Sean decided to reply instead: "Our magic instructor told us that souls refine the raw Mana from our surroundings and turn it into what is known as arcanum, which we need to cast magic."
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"I see", Corvo and Sean's father said in unison.
"Nevertheless, this ends our little practice session for today. We don't want you to get the Wizard Sickness now, do we? Also, it's getting late, we don't want to reach the gate during curfew, the fee for opening the gate late is a bit more than I have on me right now, and my colleagues would probably like nothing more than be owed a favour from me. Once we get back home, Silv will probably have dinner ready!"
"Nice! I'll help you with the instruments, Sean! We gotta hurry! Your mom said today we would have my favourite, Paradise Trouts!", Corvo exclaimed excitedly as he grabbed as many instruments as he could carry. Sean nodded and picked up the rest while his father retrieved the target dummy, and all of them returned to town.
Sean stayed silent during their trip back home and looked rather depressed. His father attributed the bad mood of his son to his failed attempts at finding the instrument that would best suit him as a bard, so he tried to cheer him up.
"Come on Sean, there's still 2 more to go! And even if they too turn out to be fails, there's still other options!"
Sean hummed in acknowledgement, but his father's reassuring words did nothing to get him out of his melancholy and he continued to stay silent, even during dinner. Once everyone went to sleep and Sean and Corvo where lying in bed, the events of the day kept Sean from falling asleep.
"Hey, Corvo, you still awake?", he asked, his eyes affixed to the ceiling.
"Hmmhm", came the response.
"Sorry about today. I shouldn't have pushed you to use all your arcanum."
"Wait, that's what you were so upset about on the way back?", Corvo asked, amused by this revelation.
"Hey, I'm being serious! You could have died back there!", Sean replied, slightly irritated at his friend's reaction.
"Oh come on, I started it, didn't I? And to be honest, I kinda deserved it, since I was the one that wanted to show off and all that.", Corvo muttered.
"Yeah, you kinda did.", Sean commented with a grin.
"Hey!", Corvo whisper-yelled, earning him a chuckle.
"Yeah, yeah, enough of that. We should catch some shut-eye, tomorrow will be a looong day, especially if you continue to try and rupture our eardrums."
Now it was Seans turn to retort in mock-anger.
"Low blow, Mr. Wizard."
"Heh, touché. Goodnight Sean."
"Goodnight."
----------------------------------------
The next morning, after a light breakfast, all three gathered back at the same spot in front of the city for the next training unit.
"All right, boys, who's going first?", Michael Riddar asked while looking at his two students.
"Let's go with Corvo, I don't want to try just yet, gotta mentally prepare myself first.", Sean replied while looking at the two remaining instruments in his hands, a lyra and a lute.
"Very well, Corvo, remember what I told you yesterday, don't overdo it!"
"Yeah, yeah, I learned my lesson.", Corvo said, slightly annoyed.
'Okay, I managed to do it yesterday, just gotta pour less mana into it, easy.'. he thought to himself while concentrating his mana into his right palm.
"Volare et ardeat!"
A small ember exited the palm and was carried away by the wind.
"OH COME ON!", he yelled out in frustration.
'OKAY, okay, let's calm down and try again.'
"VOLARE ET ARDEAT!", he shouted, as if to put more power into the spell by putting more force behind his voice, but again, only a small flame was produced, which fizzled out immediately.
About to give up, Corvo sighed a deep sigh and looked depressed at the ground.
"Come on, Corvo! You can do it, we saw it yesterday, you got the potential!", Michael Riddar yelled out.
"Yeah, you can do it! You know, it's as they say!", Sean chimed in as well.
"[Three time's the charm!]", he said and pointed at Corvo with his lute, as his friend attempted to charge the spell a third time.
Suddenly, a wave of calmness flooded Corvo, and he noticed the flow of arcanum in his body to change slightly. He could not describe the feeling, but whatever it was, it filled him with confidence. This time for sure!
"VOLARE ET ARDEAT!"
A small fireball in the form of a shooting star exited Corvo's palm and hit the target dummy in front of him, lighting it on fire. Corvo had successfully cast the spell.
"HAHA, I knew you could do it!", Sean cheered, almost dropping his instruments in excitement.
"Well done, Corvo! Now that you know how it feels to cast the spell, you should be able to repeat it every time. Try it again!", his father added and urged Corvo to try again, after he had put out the flames.
Corvo concentrated again, but, strangely, the feeling from before did not return. However, he paid it no mind, and tried to fuel the spell with the same amount of mana he had used on his successful try.
"VOLARE ET ARDEAT!"
This time, despite Corvo being sure of not having miscalculated the amount of mana he used, the flame he released was much smaller, and just barely hit the target.
"That's strange. Did you try to use less mana this time, or, perhaps, have even run out of mana already?", Michael Riddar asked in bewilderment, as he had never heard of someone misfiring a spell they had successfully cast once before. Humans, as well as other beings capable of casting magic, can instinctively remember how much mana a spell needs to produce the same effect again if they have successfully cast the spell once before. That was, if they were not assisted in some way.
"I don't know what happened! The one time when it worked, I kind of got a strange feeling that it would work for sure, I just didn't get it this time for some reason.", Corvo replied, just as confused as his teacher about this failed attempt.
"Strange feeling? Could you describe it?", Michael Riddar requested, intrigued by Corvo's statement. Corvo thought about it for a moment and tried to find the right words.
"I don't really know to be honest. It was like...a stream of warm water flowing through me? Something like that."
Michael Riddar hummed in thought, then looked at his son, who looked just as perplexed as Corvo.
"Could it be?", he mumbled, still deep in thought.
"Well, only one way to find out. Hey, you two, get over here! I want to show you guys another spell!", he said, and the two gathered behind him.
"Okay, this one is the
"Surge, petram columnae!"
A spell circle formed on the ground where he pointed, and a pillar of solid rock slowly started to rise from it, until it reached at least a yard in height.
"Okay, now, Sean, point at which one of us you think would be able to smash this pillar with one punch. And use your lute!", he demanded and stood next to Corvo.
Even more confused than before, Sean pointed at his father.
"Of course it would be you, dad! [You're as strong as a bear and then some!]"
Feeling the familiar rush of strength flowing through his veins, Michael Riddar turned back to the pillar, and punched it with all his might with his right fist. The pillar shattered into thousand pieces where his fist made contact with it, and the upper half was hurled quite a distance away.
The boys cheered at this impressive feat, and the soldier looked at his fist with wide eyes. He opened and closed his hand a few times, as if to check if it still worked, then a smile started to form on his face.
"Sean, do you know what just happened? You remember the feeling Corvo was talking about? That was support magic! In other words, you used Bard-Skills without actually playing the instrument! Try playing the lute!", he hypothesized, his joy now clearly showing on his face.
Sean starred at his father with wide eyes, then dropped the lyra and looked at his lute. He got in position and plucked the first string of the lute. Immediately after he made contact with the string, the lute started to crack in the middle, and a sound similar to nails scratching over a chalkboard rang out.
"WOAH WOAH, STOP! Stop! That's enough.!", his father yelped and hastily snatched the lute away from his son.
"Still, I'm certain of it! You managed to use Bard-Skills! I'd never mistake that feeling! I just don't know how you managed to do it without playing the instrument. I never heard of something like this happening before...Whatever! Let's go back to town and celebrate! You both managed to overcome the first hurdle! Tomorrow, I'll start the second phase of your training!", Michael Riddar exclaimed proudly while collecting the target dummy.
"I...I actually did it! CORVO, I DID IT!", Sean said, getting louder and louder upon processing his accomplishment.
"Knew you'd get it eventually!", Corvo responded with a smirk while pointing his fist at Sean, which was quickly met by his friend's for a fist bump.
"What do you mean with 'eventually ' ? Hehehe!", replied Sean with a smirk. With this, the first step to making names of themselves at the Rouclier Military Academy has been taken, but there was still a long way to go.