I awoke with a start in the darkness of the morning with my limbs trembling and my breath heaving in my lungs. A vivid image of a descending axe cleaved through my thoughts before I forced it away.

A dream. It was just a dream.

Beside me, Badger groaned and shifted in his sleep. I lay back down, wide awake now, thinking. A nagging doubt prodded the back of my mind. Could I really face the wilds alone? No matter how I looked at it, I needed something beside some mundane trap to give me an edge over the creatures in the forest. All I had going for me right now were two daggers and very rudimentary knowledge of inscription theory. Maybe I needed to be firmer with Wolf to get him to show me more. I just needed enough to get started on my own.

I was still awake an hour later when Karl and Badger roused themselves for the morning routine. At breakfast, Autumn shot me a worried look, but in the end said nothing about our conversation from the previous night. The usual companionable silence that filled the space between us was edged with tension.

After breakfast Autumn left to train with Wind on ‘ranger skills’, while I retreated to the inscriptionist’s tent. Wind, Wolf, and I had agreed it would be best for my path chances to split my time between with each of them day by day. I found Wolf and Thorn inside pouring over the old runes while Badger sat nearby practicing drawing Heli script with charcoal and a flat stone.

“This is ridiculous.” Badger grumbled as I entered. “I already know how to write, why do I need to copy the alphabet over and over again like a child.”

“Because your letters look like chicken scratch.” Thorn shot back, not even looking up from her work. “To qualify for or gain levels in a professional path you need to prove skill, knowledge, and mastery. You have the skill of a child.”

“I already gained a level today!” Badger huffed. “I can’t be that bad.”

“Getting from level 4 to 5 in three days? You must be so skilled.” Thorn’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

“I’m inventing a fucking keyboard.” Badger grumbled under his breath. “Or a typewriter. Or a printing press.”

“You’ll find abilities and magic are much more effective than your silly little machines.” Thorn scoffed.

“What are you all working on?” I asked, interrupting their bickering.

“Hello River.” Badger nodded at me. “I’m just trying to gain a few levels and unlock my path before I die a horrible death. Nothing too exciting.”

“Me too.” I sighed.

“Wolf and I are still working on this fancy lock.” Thorn told me. She sounded more chipper than usual.

“Not going well?” I asked.

“Not at all. Come sit. We could use your insight.” Wolf patted the empty stump beside him. “Now, what did people in your world do when they forgot a combination to a lock?”

“They usually had a separate mechanism to open it like a key.” I answered, taking the offered seat. “If there was no secondary key access, you would either pick the lock or just physically break it and buy a new one.”

“You know you could have just asked me.” Badger called out from across the table. “That’s common knowledge.”

“Being forced to break the lock would be unfortunate, assuming we could even do it.” Wolf looked thoughtful. “A key might be possible, but what?”

“Maybe there is a specific object like a scepter or something else important?” I suggested. “Otherwise they probably just wrote down the combination on a piece of paper somewhere.”

Thorn shook her head. “Writing down the combination? I can’t imagine anyone being that inept at memorization. It’s just a few runes.”

“When you have to memorize a few dozen of them it gets pretty difficult.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“They should have just used a normal lock. I can pick a normal lock.” Thorn grumbled. “Ugh. I suppose you came to study then?”

“That was the plan.” I sighed. “Although I was hoping to try inscribing some working runes today.” I nodded to the stack of practice stones in the corner. “And yes I understand the risks of inscribing runes on different materials and shapes without the proper background. I just feel like I need to do something real and useful.”

“Practice inscribing your intent is not a bad idea.” Wolf nodded. “If you succeed in another rune, I think we can use it as part of our next few lessons. Why don’t you start with a simple shielding rune. We should have a book on simple arcane inscriptions somewhere.”

I grinned, surprised that he agreed so easily, before setting off towards the stack of books in the corner where I found a reference book with a few dozen runes and inscriptions designed for arcane mana. Each rune was drawn in four very slightly different configurations for four common materials. Stone, steel, bronze, and adamantium.

“These are for pure, flat surfaces.” Wolf explained. “An inscriptionist is expected to make their own corrections for alloys and shape. We practice on stone because it’s usually the most forgiving for new inscriptionists.

I nodded and got to work with the etching tool. To mine and Wolf’s surprise, holding my intent to draw the mana pathways wasn’t the problem, but my precision was. Even for the so-called ‘simple’ rune, it took most of the morning to get my work to a place where Wolf and Thorn decided it wouldn’t explode in my face when powered.

“Inscribing is something you can practice on your own time.” Wolf said, handing me the inscribing tool. “Just don’t try to activate any rune without us watching.”

“I don’t even know how to use or activate mana.” I said. “I don’t even know if this rune I just drew even works.”

“Neither do I, and without an arcane affinity I can’t test it.” Wolf grinned at me. “For practical magic, you must first learn to manipulate your own mana.”

“I thought I needed a whole bunch of theory first.” I said, not daring to get my hopes up.

“The hardest part of inscription theory is building your foundation in math, which you already have enough proficiency in to get started. The rest of the equations are best learned in tandem with simple runes and real life examples to build intuition. For that you need to be able to use mana.”

“And where do I begin?” I asked, my eagerness leaking into my words.

“Your mana comes from a place of power within you.” Wolf poked me in the sternum. “All you need to do is find that place and draw out your mana.”

“That’s it?” I asked when Wolf went silent. “Don’t you have any more tips than that?”

“That’s it.” He said. “The more direct way is rather… uncomfortable, but most can figure out their mana on their own within a few weeks of trying.”

“A few weeks? I’d prefer to use the ‘direct way.’”

“I don’t think you would. Remember what I said and work on it on your own.”

“Great.” I sighed, and settled myself in for a long day.

**********

I spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out how to call upon my magic. Yet try as I might, I couldn’t manipulate, let alone sense my arcane affinity within me. I didn’t know where to begin beyond looking for a ‘place of power’, and all Wolf and Thorn had to offer was ‘Just keep trying’. I knew I was missing something simple or looking in the wrong spot, but whatever it was eluded me until I forced myself to take a break for the frustration of it all. I went back to practicing etching the inscriptions into the stone block. At least there I saw some progress.

“Why do inscriptions not work on something like wood, but spellcasters can draw runes in the air?” I asked after a rather boring hour of scratching lines in stone.

“Biological material cannot preserve the ‘intent’ of the inscriptionist like other materials. The intent imparted into a rune drawn in wood fades just as quickly as one drawn in air. By the time you finish carving a precise rune, the rune would be meaningless. Biologic material, if it’s living, also tends to resist the flow of foreign mana.”

“Is that why nothing in camp seems to be enchanted despite there being five inscriptionists here?” I poked my finger at the canvas wall of the tent.

“Not at all.” Wolf said. “Mana is a precious resource. You’ll find that even our metal gear is often not inscribed.”

“Meaning?”

“Inscriptions require mana to function such that an individual with the proper affinity needs to draw on their reserves to charge it. An expedition like this can only use as many inscriptions as we have magic users to keep them charged and functional.”

“And I assume you have a list of affinities and mana regeneration rates to know exactly what the expedition can support.” I concluded. “What do you use to store mana? None of the inscriptions in the book can do that.”

“We mostly use Inorganic objects with a regular crystal structure.” Wolf explained, rooting around in a bag to place a small red crystal on the table. “Mineral crystals often work well in this regard with different minerals being able to store different types of mana. This gem is garnet which, while common, is a rather inefficient medium to store fire mana. A good gem is often the most expensive part of an inscription.”

I sat back a bit on my stump. I had assumed that a soldier wouldn’t need to channel mana through an enchantment on their gear during combat, but the more I thought about it, the more I began to consider the possibilities. A low level soldier or commoner could theoretically take on something powerful on the strength of his gear alone, assuming they had someone to charge it. Even I could use this to stand up to the monsters of the Heartwood alone despite my abysmal physical attributes. Although if Wolf was right, I needed a specific set of expensive materials to make something worthwhile. Not to mention the ability to call on my mana.

“What kind of gem stores arcane magic if garnet stores fire?” I asked while inwardly praying the crystal needed wasn’t diamond or something else ridiculous.

“Quartz is the best for arcane.” Thorn said.

I blinked. “The best? Isn’t that super common?”

“Yes.” Thorn grumbled. “It’s one of the reasons why arcane inscriptionists are so sought after despite that affinity being rare. Arcane mana can’t produce some flashy fireball, but shields and durability enchantments are still useful.

“Is that why Earth was so set on my learning inscription?” I asked. “Arcane mages are basically cheating.”

Thorn snorted. “Not cheating. Cheap. A budget inscriptionist for a poor expedition like ours.”

“I think I preferred the ‘cheating’ interpretation.” I said.

Then I paused, my mind straying to the ruins all around us with their pristine stone blocks protected by mana. “If all of these inscription effects cost so much mana to use and maintain, how is it that the durability inscriptions in all the millions of stone blocks in these ruins are still active after more than four thousand years of weathering and abuse?”

“I have no idea.” Wolf grinned at me. “That’s one of the things that makes this place so interesting.”