By the time he returned to the market square, Zain was tired, hungry, and had a hell of a headache. But he had successfully arranged for a cart ride back and convinced the cart rider and another mage-for-hire of the benefits of physical labour. The benefits were mostly Zain pinching his wallet, and agreeing to pay them a gold drachma each for helping him with the hard part for the next day. He had also agreed to pay for the food and drinks naturally.

It was an expensive arrangement, and it hurt having to pull the coins out of his wallet, but it would be worth it if could get the work started as quickly as possible. Zain had already figured out that he was massively out of his depth on the walk back to the city, a little bit of help would make things go so much easier.

It wasn't long before Zain was heading back towards the farms. By his side was Asha, another hedge-mage. She had purchased some manner of physical magic that allowed her to boost her strength and endurance and was currently hawking her services in the city market to gather enough funds to apply to train for the city guard.

The cart driver was the same teenager he had met yesterday, and Alric, as he was named had apparently sunk all his money into buying a spell that gave him a monstrous amount of stamina. From all the chatter, he had figured out that Alric's dream was to one day own "a herd of carts" and retire early enough to enjoy his youth while he still had it. It was a simple wish, but respectable.

Physical "mages" like Alric and Asha hadn't yet completely replaced oxen, cattle and horse-driven labour but that was only because you didn't need to teach them magic, every beast simply learned a little throughout its life. Still, it looked to be going that way, mostly because using a beast of burden meant that you would have to have a human simply to oversee the work.

Still, they must use oxen and horses in villages and towns near the city, he thought. It was simply far easier for the city to have everyone in the town be initiated than it would be for a far-away village to do it.

Initiation was a simple ceremony, typically conducted as one turned thirteen, where an elder mage would guide a novice through their first act of magic - it needn't be anything great or spectacular, some simple sparks or gust of wind, anything would do. The importance of the initiation ceremony was that it allowed the empire to safely introduce its young people to magic. He had read once that before the empire discovered how to initiate people, fatalities were distressingly common when trying to awaken one's magic.

After the discovery of the standard method about a hundred and twenty years, the empire had rapidly undergone a period of expansions and military campaigns which led to a quick absorption of the city-states nearby. It certainly had led to a startling explosion in the population of the initiated among the citizens of the empire. With even the passive spark of magic lending an undeniable vitality, there were hardly any people in the bigger cities who were uninitiated. Still, this didn't mean that spells were a common thing as well - those were hoarded jealously by the various academies and clans around the city. A single new spell or a novel application could indeed be a family inheritance. Zain himself had paid a total of hundred and seventy golden drachma for his two spells, and he considered the cost entirely worth it. A few more months of work and he would be back in the black - and then it would just be smooth sailing and quick money.

His life was looking up.

All this woolgathering meant that enough time had passed that they had reached the city gates, and it would only be a little bit longer to the farms themselves. There wouldn't be much time before the sun set but he was determined to at least get through the de-weeding process.

There was a semblance of a plan in his mind - he would have Alric and Asha take a section of the farm each, their task being to pull up the weeds in the entire area and then distribute them somewhat evenly. Then, he would spread around his spell-slips in the field - having had the chance to stock up on them, in the market itself. Once it was all set up, he would trigger one of the slips and let the fields burn. He had bought a little bit of lamp oil to hasten the process along. As the fire spread, the three of them would move on the fields besides the one already burning, and make sure there was no break in the dry grass.

He only had to make sure that the area around the barn was wet enough that the fire did not spread towards it, but it wasn't a major concern, since he could keep up a constant wall of rain clouds for a considerable amount of time. It wouldn't be safe to sleep before the fire burnt through the entire farm but it would be far less work than having to pull out each weed up by its roots.

Zain found himself oddly eager, looking forward to the evening with anticipation. Even though the work would involve some hard labour, the blaze was going to be so pretty. Perhaps he'd even get enough practice that he would able to improve his heat spell enough to spark fires instantly, instead of having to go the slow route of gradually increasing the temperature enough to have most things spark to fire naturally.

"We'll be there soon, Zain. Just a couple more minutes. You better work fast if you want to get any use out of us today, haha. I won't hesitate to thank you for free money"

He shook his head as he patted his pockets, once more paying attention to the road. They soon passed by the lake shore and reached the farms. Zain had Alric secure his cart in the barn since it wouldn't be safe enough to leave it outside without keeping an eye on it. They all sat down on the floor, mostly to let the young man have a breather.

"We should start soon, but have something to eat first. Makes no sense to work on an empty stomach" Zain said once Alric's breathing seemed to have calmed down. There was a light sheen of sweat on his brow, but aside from that he looked entirely unbothered, which was impressive for a man having ran six miles dragging a cart, two people and not a small amount of supplies.

Their meal was a simple affair eggs, onion and bread. The eggs and onions were crushed and spread out on a simple bun, which Zain toasted with a simple twist of his will. The air around his hands quickly warmed, and in only a bit of time, he had a pair of buns toasted for the three of them. They quickly tore into their meal, washing it down with some cold water, and then headed out to the farm.

It looked just as daunting as it did in the morning, the vast expanse lying barren and uncultivated. But now that Zain had a semblance of a plan, his task wasn't so hopeless. It took only a couple of minutes to direct Asha and Alric to their sections of the farm, where he told them to clear about a small block's worth of farmland. By his estimate in the morning, it would take about twenty spell-slips to burn through an entire field, and the entire farm was divided into a grid of thirty fields total.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

While Alric and Aisha started pulling out and spreading the weeds around, Zain sat down and took out fresh paper and started preparing more spell-slips. He had only prepared about forty in the morning, and if he needed enough for the entire farm, that would be five hundred and sixty more slips.

The magic academies in the city were curious things, operating less like schools, and more like shops for magical artefacts, spells, warding formations and other knick-knacks. Once someone purchased a spell, they were assigned a tutor to make sure that they were initiated and that they wouldn't blow themselves or others up in the process of learning the spell. The entire 'course' was typically three weeks to a month, depending on how long you took to learn, and you ended up with 'certification' at the end. Zain wasn't sure the certifications were quite necessary to use the spell itself, but hardly anyone would hire a new mage if one did not have the necessary paperwork.

Zain had gotten the hang of basic applications of heat quite easily, the spell application being straightforward and quite obvious. It only took him a week. So, he ended up paying a little extra to learn how to apply the spell through warding arrays. That was how Zain earned most of his money, going around refreshing and repairing heat arrays and kitchen stoves around the city.

Farm work was an entirely different beast, and he had only taken the job because of how much it paid. Regardless, now it was his responsibility to finish it.

The spell-slips were something he had figured out on his own, being a derivation of the warding arrays. They were easier to make, requiring nothing but paper and magic, but quite a bit more unstable. He had noticed how the warding arrays drew on the natural mana around them, not pulling energy from his reserves to run, and had been inspired by the necessity to create something similar that would allow him to exceed his mana capacity if he for some reason required a lot of fire at once.

The only issue was that the spell slips were inherently unstable, simply being woven mana and paper, and they spontaneously burst into fire and ash in around a week. For the same reason, they could be triggered at will, or stuffed with more mana in an instant. This would result in a quick conflagration that would die out instantaneously unless it caught other stuff on fire.

The act of making a spell slip was simple, Zain would simply tear out small slips of paper, the size didn't matter much as long as it wasn't too small - and weave his mana through the fibres of the paper impressing upon it the flavour of heat and fire. He would only give each slip enough mana that magic wouldn't immediately dissipate, and then the paper would do its job, the fibres within causing the magic to stick around unable to dissipate but not having enough energy to burn the paper to ash. As he made one slip after another, the act slowly became meditative.

It was as if he was in a trance, he could feel the mana rushing from his lungs and down his arm before it was expelled from the centre of his palm, and caught by the tips of his fingers. He then slowly and methodically weaved it into the paper slips, making sure to give the spell-pattern only enough energy to stick to the paper fibres like gum to sticks.

It took him about two or three hours before Alric and Asha were back for a small break.

"We've gotten through about a quarter of the farm of weeds and spread the dry grass through all of it", Asha told him. "It shouldn't take much more than a little oil and spark to have the entire thing go up in flames."

"Damn, you guys work way faster than I expected". Poor planning had delayed Zain about four hours, so while it was close to noon when he had started walking back to the city, he reached the market near about an hour and forty minutes past noon. With it taking him half an hour to gather materials, and another forty minutes to find the two of them, he estimated it was nearly two-thirty in the evening before he left for the farms again.

He had expected Asha and Alric to be out pulling weeds till the damn sun set, but they were so much faster than his estimates.

"You fire-slinging morons always underestimate us physical types." Asha flexed her biceps, the corded muscles in her arm going taut, reflecting a quiet strength. "It might not look like it, but what we do is also magic" she continued.

"I'm nowhere near strong enough for an adventurer party", said Alric wistfully, "but I never tire unless I run out of mana. Us pulling out some weeds was never the hard part, we could even do the rest of it, it'll only cost you slightly more time and coin"

Zain shook his head back and forth almost on instinct, a denial slipping out of his lips. "I've spent so much time and energy planning this out, might as well test it out. I can always consider other options later."

He wasn't going to consider other options, because he was going to burn the freaking weeds down to the roots if he could. It was almost a matter of pride at this point. He picked up the slips he had prepared and started distributing them, dividing them evenly between the three of them.

"Take these, and spread them evenly around the farm, about two meters apart from each other."

"What are these?" Asha asked.

"You'll find out soon enough, don't worry! It'll be a nice surprise"

Before he forgot, he also picked up the clay pots of oil he had bought and handed one each to both of them.

"While you place the spell-slips around, please also soak them and some of the grass around. Should make things a lot easier, I think"

"Are you sure this is safe? I don't fancy burning to death myself" Alric said, but shook his head and walked alongside.

The two of them followed him outside, and it took only a little bit of time to prepare the arrangement. Once done, Zain directed the three of them towards the barn-house. There they prepared a clean fire-break from the surrounding farm, digging a miniature moat around the house itself.

Zain and Alric then stacked the earth in a small mound following the inner curve of the trench, before a small casting of conjure rain filled the trench with water. They also compacted and drenched the earth-and-grass dam in water. There was no way any fire was breaking past this barrier. A steady casting of conjure rain would continue to keep the ground wet, and they could safely rest here.

Then, it was time.

Zain walked out to the nearest slip, overloaded it with a bit of his own mana, and set it off. He could feel the rush in the air as the slip eagerly burst into a small inferno. It was as if the rush of magic and fire had set off a domino, with nearby slips catching on fire as well.

Zain could feel the heat on his face, his mouth splitting into a wide grin as the fire spread. He could sense the mana in the air rushing towards the slips, setting off the barely stable spell woven into each of them. There wasn't much time to safely admire it, however as the temperature spiked almost immediately.

He turned around and almost ran to the firebreak, feeling the heat on his back all the way out.

"Guess we are having no sleep tonight, yes?" asked Asha as he jumped over the small mud ramp.

"You two can, but I will have to maintain the damn and water level. I can not, I think" Zain said.

"We can sleep in shifts, and one of us will wake you when the water gets low"

The entire farm was lit up by flame, and It looked hauntingly beautiful. Zain felt like he could feel the wind on his back, air rushing towards it.

It was indeed the most beautiful thing he had seen. He could almost feel the current of the environmental mana, rushing down towards the unlit spell-slips and among itself, maintaining a steady fire as it rushed outwards, catching dry grass on fire. The fire almost seemed like a living creature as it swallowed more ground.

Eventually, he was forced to maintain an active casting of conjure rain, as the mud wall around had gotten visibly dry. While Asha and Alric took a well-deserved break and ate, he walked around the barn house, making sure not an inch of the firebreak was dry.

There was a little struggle, as the mana he expelled seemed as if it wanted to rush into the roaring wildfire they had set off, but with the ease of long practice he moulded it into the spell he wanted, and the air around them visibly darkened with humidity.

Slowly, water began to fall out in little drops, and he could smell the pleasing scent of wet earth.

He walked back around to his companions and joined them for dinner.