The large hole in the ceiling had produced a pile of snow-covered debris on the floor of the warehouse. It also meant sunlight now illuminated what presumably was normally dimly lit. Not that the light revealed a lot other than collapsed shelves and walls, burnt remains of the ship parts that were stored here, and piles of what looked like a mixture of ash and snow. Very little seemed salvageable, and Meleng was glad to know no one had been trapped in here when it burned.
Feviona strode partway into the room, her head moving about, looking in all directions.
“You’ll want to be careful,” the harbourmaster said. “I can’t promise anything in there is stable. Another part of the roof collapsed just two days ago.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be careful,” Meleng said.
“So be it. You get hurt, it’s not on my head.” With a shrug, the harbourmaster strode away.
Meleng gulped and stepped through the doorway. Feviona knew what she was doing.
He hoped.
He hurried over to Feviona, who had gone up to one of the still-standing support beams. It was blackened and parts of it were noticeably thinner than other parts, splinters protruding from where bits had broken off.
She gave him a smile as he reached her. “Watch me carefully. I will go slow.” At his nod, she began tracing symbols onto the burnt wood with her finger. The equation combined stability with length, some reconstruction, and...something else he didn’t recognise. When she completed it, she glanced at him, then traced the activation symbol. Immediately, some of the blackened wood regained some of its original colour. The areas where bits had broken off partially reconstructed themselves. In a matter of moments, the effect travelled up the full length of the beam. It was still in bad shape, but not quite as bad as it had been.
She looked at him again and waited for his response.
Meleng took a deep breath. This was a strange place to have his first proper lesson, and his heart was beating very fast. He knew she would say he shouldn’t be so nervous, but he was anyway. He was also taking a lot of time answering her unspoken question, so he quickly signed, “I think I followed most of it, but there was one symbol at the end I’ve never seen before.”
She looked at him a moment longer, while his heart beat ever faster. Then she smiled. “Good. I didn’t expect you to follow everything. I just wanted you to see. From this moment on, whenever we are together, I want you to watch everything I do as closely as circumstances will permit.”
Meleng nodded several times quickly, blinking back the tears of happiness in his eyes. When Feviona had offered to train him, he’d barely been able to believe it. However, she had needed time to recover from their recent ordeals, and the week of waiting had been torturous.
He closed his eyes for a moment, and then opened them again, just to be sure nothing had changed. The only change was Feviona reaching out to him. This was real.
Feviona wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. Then she stepped back several paces, her wings spreading slightly until she was in an open area. “Wait for me a moment.” Her wings spread to their full width and she leapt into the air, shooting towards the hole in the ceiling.
Meleng loved watching Feviona fly. She had carried him with her a few times, but he much preferred to watch her from the ground. When he had first met Jorvan, he had been enthralled by his ability to fly, but it was much more so with Feviona. Jorvan, himself, admitted she was the better flyer, and there was no denying the truth of that. She had such grace, turning and flipping over, barely needing to slow to change directions. Her wings made the subtlest of movements to beat against the air and propel her in whichever direction she was going. Watching her fly made Meleng realise why so many humans thought of Isyar as angels.
She flew around the hole in the ceiling, tracing equations at various locations while never fully stopping. After that, she flew about the parts of the ceiling still intact, tracing more equations on them, and then the other support beams. Meleng did his best to watch everything she did. It was impossible to see any of the exact equations, but he wasn’t about to start ignoring her instructions only moments after she had given them. Even if he couldn’t recreate the equations, he could start to appreciate how she moved and cast spells at the same time.
It only took a couple minutes before she landed back in the same spot she had taken off from. “That should keep the place from collapsing on top of us.” She walked over to the pile of debris under the hole, knelt down, and motioned Meleng to join her.
Meleng knelt beside her. “What are we going to do?”
“Your first lesson. Check this for magical remnants.”
Meleng looked over the debris—a mixture of burnt wood, remnants of boxes, and scorched bits of metal, all covered in snow. “Will there be any?”
Feviona shook her head. “It’s been much too long. I just want to see how you do it.”
“Right,” Meleng said, then grimaced as he realised he’d spoken it aloud rather than sign it. She made no reaction though. He knew she was learning Arnorgue, so maybe she had recognised the word, or perhaps she just didn’t care, and only wanted him to do what she’d asked him to.
With a gulp, he reached out at a piece of timber and traced. It was a simple, straight-forward equation that took almost no power. As expected, it produced no results. He looked at Feviona, his heart beating fast again.
Her head was tilted slightly and she eyed him for a moment. “Passable, but why didn’t you alter the equation to fit your own physiology? You know your capabilities and reserves, don’t you?”
“It’s such a small amount of power, I didn’t see the need,” he said.
She frowned slightly. “Yes, it is very small, but it could be even smaller. Every bit of power conserved is important. It can mean the difference between life and death in battle.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“But I’m not really a battle wizard,” Meleng said. “I’m not good enough for that.”
Her chest shook momentarily with silent laughter. “But I am, and I am your…” She leaned back a bit while she though. “I’m not sure what to call myself. I’m not your diare, but the relationship here is similar. You may not be a battle wizard now, but when I’m finished training you, you will be.”
Meleng nodded. She had a point.
“Now, do it again.”
With another nod, Meleng reached out again and traced the equation onto the piece of timber. This time, he modified it to more closely align with his body. The difference in power consumption was so small, he wasn’t even sure he could tell the difference, but Feviona gave him a smile.
“Better. Another reason to lower the power is we are going to be doing this a lot. It will add up. Now, we need to work on your base forms.” She pointed to a large iron screw. “Do it again with this.”
Once more, Meleng reached out, but this time, as he started the equation, Feviona placed her own hand over his, lining up her fingers with his. He shivered and slipped, but she took hold of his hand and moved it back into position. Then they traced the equation together, moving slowly, Feviona guiding his fingers. When they activated the spell, something extraordinary happened. The usual tiny drain of energy occurred, but there was also a feeling...a sensation… He couldn’t quite describe it. It was like a tiny shiver, a tiny thrill. It reminded him a little of the thrill he got when he kissed Sinitïa. It wasn’t exactly the same, but there were some similarities.
He pulled his hand away and stared at Feviona. “What was that?”
She stared back. “What was what?”
“There was…” He struggled to figure out how to describe it. “A sensation...a…”
Her eyes widened and her chest shook with laughter again. “That was the effect of our sharing our power. Have you never experienced it before?”
Meleng shook his head. “No, I didn’t even know it was possible.”
“But your previous teacher. You never experienced it with him?”
Meleng shook his head again. “No, never.” His teacher, Hittlevar, had demonstrated forms, and had watched as Meleng repeated them. He had made comments and pointed out mistakes. He had criticised and praised, but he had never guided in such a physical manner. “Do Isyar frequently share power like that?”
Feviona shrugged. “Depends. Only enchanters can share power, and even then it tends to only happen between diare and siare during training. It is much less common in other occasions, but in the Élite, we sometimes have reason to do it. It can be a very intimate thing. The exact sensation is different between different people, and it will be more intense the more power we share. I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you didn’t know. Otherwise, I would have warned you.”
“It’s okay.”
She smiled at him. “Good, because we will be doing it a lot.”
He actually rather liked the idea of that, though he didn’t say anything.
They went through it together several times more, each time Feviona guiding his fingers and the shapes of the symbols. Sometimes, she made a brief comment between runs, but mostly she let her hands correct the shape of his base forms. Meleng found himself enjoying the slight thrill at the end of each equation, and on a couple occasions had to take a moment to check that this was all real.
Eventually, Feviona said, “Now, I want you to go around the room, checking everywhere for magical residue. Remember what I have shown you. The more precise your forms are, the better your spells will be and the less power they will drain. I will check on you occasionally.”
“What are you going to do?” Meleng asked.
“Look for non-magical clues to what happened here.”
So, Meleng moved slowly around the room, testing everything in reach for magical residue. Feviona occasionally came over and guided his hands, or later on, just nodded approvingly. Despite the tiny drain each casting had on his power reserves, he soon started to appreciate Feviona’s insistence that he modify the equations to suit his needs. That tiny drain added up and after what had to have been a couple hours, he was starting to tire.
He also started to get bored, though that really wasn’t that different from when he’d first started his apprenticeship as a child. Hittlevar had had him do many repetitive exercises, often for hours at a time. Hopefully, this time, he would progress onto more complicated things more quickly. Of course, the boredom was made worse by the fact that, not surprisingly, none of the castings ever revealed any magical residue.
Until one did.
A tiny spark of energy leapt from a metal nail lying on the floor, and Meleng pulled back his hand. Not from pain—the spark bore with it only the mildest of discomfort—but from surprise. He licked his lips. Magical residue always had a flavour to it, which identified the type of magic. But the sensation was so fleeting, and he had been so surprised, he had completely missed it.
He retraced the equation and the little spark leapt at his fingers again. No, he hadn’t missed the flavour last time. He’ just been too surprised by it to accept it as real. Enchantment magic had a tinny taste to it, conjuration was slightly salty, and elementalism was sweet. Mentalism could be the hardest to notice. Its flavour was so slight, it was hard to describe, though bitter might be the closest. But this wasn’t any of those. It was sharp and slightly spicy.
“Uh...Feviona?”
She looked up from where she had been carefully moving rubble out of the way for the last several minutes, and he motioned her over to him.
“I found magical residue.” He pointed at the nail.
She looked at him quizzically, then knelt down and traced an equation on the nail. A little spark shot out at her finger. After a confused glance at Meleng, she did it again. Then again. She repeated the equations on other bits of rubble. More sparks shot at her fingers or her wings, depending what she used to write the equations. She moved quickly, tracing out an area near the back wall, roughly rectangular, a few feet on each side.
Eventually, she stopped and looked to Meleng. “This is bad.”
“I...I don’t recognise the magic,” Meleng said.
“Neither do I.”
Meleng gulped. He had been hoping she would reveal that magic could sometimes have different flavours under certain precise conditions. A feeble hope. If such a thing were possible, he would have at least read about it, even if he had never experienced it. This new flavour indicated a lost discipline. It wasn’t quite as shocking as it might have been a couple years ago—Felitïa’s staff contained other disciplines, and she had mentioned encountering necromancy in Ninifin—but it was still concerning. Who could be using lost magic?
Feviona walked into the centre of the area, squatted down, and started tracing more equations. No sparks danced at her fingertips, so she was doing something different. Meleng started to move closer to get a better view, but a shape caught his attention.