Autumn said little to me that night, even sitting at Karl’s side rather than mine. My sister gave us suspicious looks, but soon spouted about the cool and annoying things Carmen was teaching her. “I refuse to be a healer!” She was saying. “But light mages get laser spells! Lasers! Transparent barriers don’t even work against them either!”

That evening I left the others early to work on my inscriptions in the relative privacy of the tent. After only a few minutes of scratching away at the practice stone I finished copying a simple rune from the book onto the stone slab. The dexterity is paying dividends again I thought as I compared my work to that of the drawn diagram.

Picking up the slab, I double-checked the book again and faced my work away from me. With my finger on the input, I channeled a trickle of mana into the new inscription. Immediately the stone grew warm, a sign of inefficiencies somewhere in the design, but then magic began to coalesce in front of the stone. It grew outwards much like the shield spell, but instead of spreading out, it formed a sharp blade like the edge of a sword.

I grinned. I’d have preferred something like a ‘magic missiles’ spell, but this was the only remotely offensive inscription the book offered. A low-cost edge of mana to reinforce your blade. It read. Properly modifying this inscription to align with your blade will reduce power cost and provide stability to the enchantment. I sure as hell didn’t know enough to modify the inscription, which left me with a slab of stone and an awkward beam of force jutting out from its center.

Lowering the ethereal blade, I brought it against a wedge of firewood. To my surprise I felt resistance as if my spell were made of steel and not magic. I pressed harder, feeding in more mana as the blade wavered. The stone grew hot in my hand. Then my blade sliced through the wood with ease and slammed into the ground.

With a yelp, I dropped the hot stone practice slab, the edge of mana winking out. A wave of fatigue and nausea washed over me. It was all I could do to stumble through the tent flap and vomit my dinner across the muddy ground. A glance at my mana told me all I needed to know:

Mana: 6/80

And then:

Level up! Vul’heli has increased to level 6.

Attributes:

+1 Intelligence

+2 Free

I grinned despite myself, slamming my free points into dexterity before moving to clean the splattered contents of my stomach.

**********

“It seems like all inscriptions work by connecting them to a power source.” I observed the next day after Thorn put me through yet another mana exercise in the practice tent. Wolf, and the other inscriptionists were out doing something in the ruins.

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“Not all.” Thorn shrugged “but it’s necessary for big workings lest the mana drain kill you.”

“Kill you?” I asked and Thorn nodded.

“Those with high spirit but lower wisdom and constitution need to be careful. Not at your level of course, but it’s something to keep in mind. Most inscriptions just use gems to avoid that.”

“If you can use a gem for an increased effect, what’s to stop a low level from charging a gem for many days to get an overwhelming edge in combat”.

“Nothing.” Thorn shrugged. “The wealthy do this. They buy charged gems and enchanted weapons to defeat enemies far above their level and skill. Some people build their entire paths and make a career out of selling their mana.”

“Oh.” I said. I guess that made sense. “Could you show me how to connect a gem to an inscription?”

“Just copy an inscription.” She shoved a book in my direction and I frowned at the rather complicated design. “Here, take this but practice on your own time.. You wouldn’t understand its function without more theory first.”

I nodded.

“Speaking of which, Wolf wants me to start you on basic manipulation.” Thorn reached over to grab two writing slates and some charcoal. “Luckily for you, all students start with arcane, as its lack of elemental attributes greatly simplifies the math.”

When I nodded again, Thorn drew a charcoal line on her stone. “Etheric mana traveling in a straight line does not act upon the physical world. Changing its flow direction in three dimensional space will cause that mana to act upon the physical world in a tangible way. The type and magnitude of the effect is based upon the sharpness and direction of that curve relative to your starting length and the medium the mana travels through. The first curve of a rune is the most important in that it sets the base effect of the inscription while subsequent curves modify the first.” Thorn drew her line into the simple Z-shaped arcane light spell.

“Together they make a basic effect and modification of that effect, or a rune. This specifically produces blue light. This,” She changed the final line of a rune with a slightly different curve. “Modifies the base effect to produce purple light. While a rune contains a single effect and modification, an ‘inscription’ is a set of runes strung together in such a way that they produce a desired effect. Today you will be starting with the basic mathematics involved in predicting the initial effect and basic modifications of the light rune.”

I nodded, eager to learn. While I listened and took notes with my right hand, my left held one of the quartz chunks I’d pulled from the river the day before. I absently trickled mana into it no faster than I could regenerate it. Already two stones lay in my tent charged to the limit of what their flawed structure could hold.

**********

That evening Autumn brought her now fully formed bow to the campfire at dinner where she wiped it down with some sort of resin.

“I thought making bows out of wood took years of drying and shaping.” My sister said, watching Autumn work between bites of food.

Autumn shrugged. “I’m not sure. I just do what Wind tells me to.”

“Maagiiic” I said, waving my hands. My audience gave me a blank stare.

“And what have you been up to my dearest brother?” My sister asked. “Your level is a bit low. The rest of us are almost 10.”

Her comment caused me to glance around again, and saw that the others crept forwards even faster than I. My sister and Karl had both reached eight, Autumn was still seven, while I lounged back with Badger at 6.

“Thorn’s been teaching me mana exercises and about the mathematics of arcane light inscriptions.” I said.

“Math?” My sister wrinkled her nose. “Of course you would.”

Just then Mara’s ladle rang out against the cooking pot, driving the entire expedition to silence. We turned as one to see Earth and Rain standing beside the fire.

“Good evening.” Rain began. “It’s been almost a week since the orcs set upon us and together we’ve done well in fortifying the walls and stocking supplies for a siege. There is little else to do but scout and wait. Tomorrow we will return our full attention towards excavating the ruins. We must finish our task before the spring surge.”

The gathering murmured in agreement.

“We will not forget the orcs entirely.” Earth spoke. “Wind, Hendric, and Melwyn will be gone for the next two days searching for signs of activity outside the wardstone’s influence. We will reassess our priorities when they return. Until then, Rain will leade the excavations.”

Both Autumn and I blinked in surprise at this announcement that our mentor would be gone. More time to work on inscription I supposed, or… perhaps this was a gift. With nowhere to be, no one would come to stop me from leaving the plateau for a few hours. But… was I ready to take on a creature ten levels above me alone? Did I have a choice?

If I wanted any chance at all I needed to finish my inscriptions tonight.