Intro to Spell Theory was still about basic casting principles today. It was all review content even for the less well-educated students in the class, but there would always be one or two people for who this would be helpful review for.
Alexis Lance, the graduate student running the class, did not seem particularly enthused about this particular part of the topic.
“Vocal components are a key part of spellcasting,” she recited, not bothering to look at the slides projected on the screen. “Does someone want to tell me why?”
Lance made direct eye contact with Syl there, as if challenging him to speak up. He wasn’t sure why she was singling him out. After establishing that he was well aware of magic principles on the first day, he hadn’t spoken up in class at all. He’d done the work properly and had been a fairly decent student otherwise.
Maybe her ego was still hurt.
She looked over to where someone else had raised his hand, rolled her eyes, and pointed at him. “You. I forget your name.”
“Jackson,” the class 3 boy said. Syl had seen him and marked him as a potential threat early on. Though his FCDs were standard and his magic seemed to be on the weaker end, Jackson had some level of combat ability and was from a mostly unnotable family, which meant he was a potential attack vector for disenfranchised groups like Sanguine.
“Jackson, then. Explain.”
“It’s because they’re command phrases to make a spell’s components complete,” he said. “Like a spark from a lighter.”
“I see someone has taken high school casting,” Lance said drily. “You are correct, but the explanation is incomplete. Magical command phrases are often phonemes in languages that don’t exist, but they also resemble real words or phrases occasionally. The reason for this lies in how spells are actually formed. The shape of a spell is greatly affected by the magician that casts it. You will notice that magicians who lose and replace limbs tend to change their method of casting, because the body matters when it comes to flux. Certain phonemes stress the vocal cords in ways that are particularly conducive to the effects of certain spells, accelerating the casting process or enhancing the spell.”
That was an apt explanation. It was also what frustrated Syl the most about his own casting. He had always been forced to keep a careful eye out for every detail. Vocal casting was less precise than what he could manage, but it was fast.
“As a practical example, I am going to cast the F-class spell Glimmer Spark,” Lance said. “If you have sensitivity to light… then you probably shouldn’t be in this class. See the doctor about it.”
She held her wand-style FCD out, and the class watched with expressions ranging from idle curiosity to sleepy boredom to perfect focus as flux circles formed around the FCD one by one, representing the start, modulate, and stop parts of the spell. Unlike Syl, she didn’t craft them on the fly, instead opting to create the activation process last.
A brief shower of harmless blue sparks blew out from the tip of the FCD, lighting up the classroom for a moment before fading into nothing.
“From start to finish, that was about six seconds,” Lance said. “Obviously, I slowed down for your benefit, but you can see the difference in concentration required compared to this—aux flage.”
At her snapped incantation, the spell circles formed seamlessly, and the exact same spell flashed out immediately.
Syl was above jealousy for something as simple as this. He’d grown used to his lot in life a long time ago now.
Still, it was a reminder of what had been taken from him.
“There’s not much more material for today, so I guess we’re doing an exercise,” Lance said. She tapped something on the screen up front, and displays flashed into existence at everyone’s desks. “There are a list of F to D-class spells in front of you. Try each of them with and without vocal components. Partner up to get through them faster. Don’t get in each other’s way”
This was what was to be expected out of an introductory spell theory class for class 3s. Even future years would suffer from some of the same issues. They were taught by dregs, students on punishment duty, and others that just didn’t care that much. For later classes that were designed to shape them into magical soldiers, they would receive better instruction—though to be fair, even this lackluster teacher was doing better than most non-Academy programs would.
Syl didn’t mind. He was partnered with a long-haired class 3 boy by the name of Len Jeksen. He was a swordfighter, Syl had noted, and his FCD was a custom like so many other students here had. Somewhat abnormally, it was a sword’s sheath.
“Let’s go with the harder spells first,” Len said, all business. As was his usual, he wore his hair tied behind his back, ensuring it wouldn’t get in the way of his sword. “I’d rather get proper practice out of this class if we’re just going to be doing inane practice.”
“Sure,” Syl agreed. “Finding the other classes useful?”
“Of course,” Len said, picking his way through the spell list in front of him. “First offers opportunities you can’t get anywhere else. Now, here we are—thesq praes!”
Absorption-type D-class spell, Simple Shield. It was a common spell to learn early on in one’s education, and it was even more commonly used in combat upcast to a higher class. It was brute-force but simple, and simple worked when you were also managing six other spells to fight back.
A shimmering wall of force appeared in front of Len in a half-dome, and he nodded with apparent satisfaction.
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“It could still use some work,” he muttered to himself.
“It’s a solid cast,” Syl offered.
“Not solid enough to get me out of this class,” Len said. “No offense, of course.”
“None taken. There’s a second part, yes?”
“Right. Here we go…” It took a much longer time for the swordsman to cast without a vocal component, but he managed in about ten seconds. A bead of sweat slid down Len’s forehead as the second shield popped into existence. “Ugh, that feels wrong.”
Then it was Syl’s turn. Not wanting to expose too much of his bag of tricks while in a relatively pointless class, he took his explicitly non-verbal cast nice and slow. Even then, it was hard to intentionally throw a D-class spell to the extent of taking nearly as long as Len had. Syl had gotten so used to casting like this that even intentionally slowing it down took it only to three point six seconds.
“Wow,” Len said. “You cast really fast non-verbally.”
“I have practice,” Syl said. “You do martial arts, right?”
“You can tell?”
Syl pointed at Len’s sheath.
“Fair. Yes, I do. I practice fulminata. You might know my sister, Lia? She does the same, just better.”
Syl did recall that name. “I was partnered with her in practical magic, I think. We chatted some.”
“I imagine she invited you to our dojo already, but I’ll extend that offer too,” Len said. “You’re an interesting fellow.”
“All this from one spell?” Syl asked, shaking his head. “Let me try the second part of this, at least. I might change your mind. Thesq praes!”
The pronunciation felt off coming out of his throat, which was partly because it was. There were no vocal cords moving, just a throat-mounted FCD identifying what he wanted to say and replicating the words in the voice he should have had.
His spell was just a hair slower than Len’s vocal cast had been, but that had nothing to do with the words. No vocal casting had been involved, just smoke and mirrors and a quickened non-verbal formation. This spell was simple.
“Impressive still,” Len said. “Do you take constructive critique?”
“I take all kinds,” Syl said drily. “Most of it isn’t constructive.”
“Your pronunciation is awful,” the other boy said frankly. “Honestly, I think that speaks more to your flux control than anything else. I’m sure if you fixed that, you’d be incredible.”
Syl smiled, pushing down the ghost of his past that wanted to be irritated at anything less than perfection. “Thank you for the compliment. Let’s keep going.”
#
The end of the school day rolled around soon enough, and with that came tryouts for the circuit team.
Syl had never been terribly interested in sports, but he was aware enough of the tournaments to at least have a general understanding of the basic events that would be occurring. Dueling was one of the major ones, of course, but there was also a three-on-three terrain-based knockout duel, a seven-on-seven capture-the-flag style competition, and a whole host of other one-on-one contests that checked other kinds of combat competency apart from who was more effective at killing their opponent.
Tryouts were open to most class 1s and 2s and would try to fit people into the optimal event for them. There were very few class 3s, but there were always a few—some of them turned out to be more suited for the circuit than for magical life. The years varied substantially as well—only well-performing competitors got a free ride to the next year, while the weaker fifty percent of the team would have to try out with the rest.
“I hope I get into the trio duels,” Bianca said. “I would be bored to tears in the regular one.”
“You should be able to,” Syl said. “We’ll see if I even get into one.”
They, alongside about a hundred other students, were milling about the dueling arenas, which had been repurposed for this specifically. The first stage of this would just see them rotating through accelerated versions of the standard events for a while, team captains judging them in the meantime.
Uriel was officiating alongside Waylan, which was not a surprise. Jennifer’s presence, on the other hand, was.
In terms of people from his year, Syl recognized Lyon Red, Lia Jeksen, and Trevor Rokho, the class 1 boy who’d tried to duel Lyon at practical magic. Any other familiar faces were only like that because he had done a threat assessment on them.
“I’ll be disappointed in you if you don’t,” Bianca said. “Don’t throw this, okay?”
“I would feel uncomfortable letting you go into a Gate with an active terrorist threat,” Syl said. “I won’t.”
At four o’ clock on the dot, Uriel clapped her hands together, the sound resounding throughout the entire arena, and the ongoing chatter died down.
“I’ll keep this brief!” she called out. “Welcome to the tryouts for the twelfth Intra-Academy Tournament Circuit. In a moment, the assignments for your first round will be sent to your FCDs. Please proceed to your assigned arena as stated or to the designated waiting area if you have a bye round. That is all. Good luck, have fun, and don’t die.”
Syl and Bianca both had bye rounds for the first cycle, which was more than a little suspicious given that there were only twelve people who had byes thanks to the restrictions on the number of arenas they could use at once.
He wasn’t going to complain if Uriel showed him some favoritism, but if she kept doing this, it was going to become too obvious for others to not notice, which would bring its own set of problems.
There were five of each type of main dueling event active, though the seven-on-sevens were on arenas that were only about a hundred meters across—substantially smaller than the regulation fields that it would normally be played on. The time for the event had also been shortened.
Syl’s attention was drawn towards one of the three-on-threes in particular. A hulking berserker of a man was dual wielding FCDs, one on his wrist and one on his club-like baton. He stood nearly a head taller than either of his teammates, and even from the stands, Syl could sense the flux coming from him.
“Looking at Wildcard?” one of the other bye-round students asked, leaning forward to follow Syl’s gaze. A class 2, it seemed. Not a first year.
“Wildcard,” Syl repeated.
“James Rokho,” the student’s friend jumped in, apparently eager to share circuit gossip. “He’s a fourth-year and should already be on the team—hell, he picked up the name because that’s what they call him when he’s shown up on the National Circuit. He still does the tryouts every year.”
“I hear it’s to scare us,” the first student said. “Make us realize we’re not shit compared to the real titans.”
When the call was made for the first round to begin, Syl could see why. Despite looking like a living giant, James—Wildcard, apparently—moved like the wind, using A-class and even tactical-class magic with ease to reposition himself. Notably, he never directed one of his spells at the other team, instead opting just to knock them over physically and disarm them of their FCDs, ending the match in a matter of seconds.
The student behind him whistled. “Impressive.”
“It’s taking candy from babies,” Bianca said dismissively. “I’ll put stock in him when I see him get into a real fight.”
As it turned out, the time until they would get to witness that was less than they might have thought.
After the first round ended, there was a rest period for everyone to recover their flux and any physical injuries they’d sustained. Second round assignments went out shortly afterward.
Syl’s FCD flashed.
Match determined.
Type: 1 vs. 1 Standard Duel
Arena: 3
Opponent: James “Wildcard” Rokho
He sighed, looking over to where Uriel had just finished judging one of the seven-on-seven events. She caught his eye and winked at him.
Sure enough, he thought. There it is.
“Well then,” he said. “I’ll see you all in a bit.”