Cira awoke at the crack of mid-morning ready to start the week off right. There was a lot to get through and not much time to do it, so breakfast came straight off the branch.
Breeze Haven descended unto the golden plains—she had risen because she liked seeing the clouds out her bedroom window as she fell asleep—and there was already a large group formed outside her garden. The Council appeared beyond her staircase along with the two from Plackelo and she met them at the bottom.
“Good morning,” Cira yawned, stepping through the gate, “I trust you all slept well.”
“Kinda hard with the sun out,” Dutchy complained with dark bags under her eyes.
“You’ll have to get used to that.”
Surprisingly the only members of the Council who wanted to learn sorcery was Jimbo, so she got the rest started on planning out Paradise’s development. Among the other guests, however, almost everyone chose to learn sorcery. This didn’t leave the Council a lot of manpower to work with, but to no one’s surprise, aspiring students started dropping off in the first hour.
“You just like—” Jimbo huffed and puffed, “—watching people suffer don’t you?”
Cira ran next to him without breaking a sweat, “If you’re getting tired, you can always do some pushups.”
As her father once said, a strong body begets a stronger mind. The reason why Cira was joining in on the fun this morning was because she had been incredibly lazy about physical exercise for about six years straight, but it was actually a crucial facet of advancing one’s sorcery. The healthier the body, the sharper the mind. Like a sword and the hand that wields it.
This first measure of instruction consisted of spending three hours in motion. Those who wished to become her students, however temporary, had to clear this trial to be considered. Naturally those who showed up tomorrow in defiance would be given a second chance, but that was a secret. Some of them may end up enjoying municipal work better. In just an hour and a half, the Council’s workface had doubled.
“Come on, no one can do pushups for more than five minutes straight. Even that’s a stretch,” Jimbo desperately attempted to hydrate from his flask, panting with a flushed red face as golden froth dripped from his mustache, “And you should know better than anyone how much worse this is with a damn wooden leg! When are you gonna fix it?!”
He fell behind as his knee buckled.
“Hopefully later today,” She laughed, dropping to do a round of crunches, one of the three permitted activities, while he caught up, “But I need to get everyone started, and ensure you had what it took to follow the path, of course.”
“Wipe that stupid grin off your face, Miss ‘my legs have become obsolete’” His arms started failing as he put on his best Cira impression, “What does this even have to do with sorcery? I can already make mist you know!”
As he argued, mist slowly spread across the ground from his hands.
“If you do pushups that slow, I’ll have to disqualify you,” Cira admittedly could only do thirty or so sit-ups in a row before her belly burned. She got up to run circles around the struggling pirate while she continued jibing away, “You might consider trying water instead of booze one of these times.”
Aha… I should craft flasks for all of my crew that condenses ambient aether into spring water. A never-ending source of water so that my men may stay hydrated. I need to get back to the forge.
“I agree with master,” Tawny had joined by Cira’s side as they encircled and belittled the one-legged man, “You should really take care of yourself better.”
She looked tired but was trying not to show it. To her credit, she was doing fine.
“And since when were you two so buddy buddy?!” A loud pop sounded, and Jimbo rolled onto his back, letting out a cry. After a short glare from Cira, he groaned his way into his first sit-up. “I don’t wanna be a sorcerer anymore…”
Despite his pained, shallow breaths, he kept at it. Cira took this opportunity to leave the two alone for a while and jogged through the rest of her prospective students. By her highly accurate spatial count, she was down to three hundred potential students with less than an hour to go until lunch.
Almost the entirety of the Stick Brigade, Far Shore Pirates, and apparently random crews from Acher had ended up here on Paradise. Cira didn’t know how that happened, but she knew she downplayed the dangers of this place when she noticed a fair deal of the rescued damsels and their kids on her golden shores as well.
The fully-grown women were afforded no mercy, but Cira was forced to create a junior division because every single child on this island wanted to learn sorcery, despite their complaints the other day.
They had the exact opposite challenge. All thirty-two individuals below the age of sixteen were made to meditate for the same three hours. Those who could not sit still and remain silent with their mouth shut—no those who could not stolidly attune themselves to the world around themselves for this short period of time were forced to join the adults in the physical gauntlet.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Their punishment for failure again was a second chance in the form just switching back over, but they surprisingly toughed it out either way.
“Then there’s you all…” Cira came face to face with a group of not eight, but nine women in form-fitted shorts and crop tops who dripped in sweat and excitement at her arrival. “I have to admit I’m impressed.”
They were all winded but showed no sign of nearing their limits.
“I’m notorious for exceeding expectations,” Ember subtly whipped the matted hair from her face and spoke in a tender voice, “and for my stamina as well.”
“Right…” Cira had to admit, they were taking the news of her imminent departure well. It almost made her think they had some sort of scheme in the works, but so long as they put forth the effort today, Cira had no complaints for them. “Well keep it up. I’ll return when lunchtime arrives.”
Cira recalled her father in all his grandeur. Any great sorcerer, she thought, had a menagerie of great exits. Void lightning opened the door in her mind to disappearing swiftly, but becoming a one-trick pony was a fate meant for a magician, not one striving for the greatest heights of sorcery.
Thus, she had put great consideration lately into making an impression upon exit. No sorcerer should disappear in the same way twice, and just as lightning rarely struck the same place, she should not disappear within it repeatedly lest people start to think they’ve figured her out.
A sorcerer’s merit is only exceeded by their mystery, after all.
Given her minor undine constitution, Cira decided to trickle away like rain this time, to the gasps and applause of her imperial harem.
This led Cira to a location she had her eyes on. It was a concave cliffside that sat above a flat stretch of earth leading to the shore and flanked by a stream from each spring to either side. On the opposite end of the Fields of Valor—her designated training grounds, this piece of land was overlooked by Agora Aurellia and next to the orchard.
Below the cliff in Cira’s empty lot would become the site of her newest experiment. This was something she wanted to do ever since attaining the pendant of ownership over this realm. The gem-encrusted chunk of gaudiness incarnate which was strangely beautify if she ignored her shame appeared in the air and she took it in her hands.
“Okay, so it’s not like there’s leylines to tap into. Typically, they serve as the binding crux and framework of the aethereal realm… but I can’t just say no aethereal realm exists in Paradise because there are no leylines.” Cira had kept a close eye on the workings of this world since she set foot in it. There existed a shroud of aether beyond the spatial realm which formed the air, sea, and island she saw here. “I don’t know how to create a mana well, but doesn’t the absence of a leyline take all the hard work out of it?”
Leylines were natural currents of aether. Conceptually speaking, they existed only in the sense that it was pure aether moving in a direction. To reduce that instead to a particular element of mana flowing from a single point in space was to interfere with the direct nature of a leyline. Even Cira’s father had settled on a pure aether well for Breeze Haven because directly altering the laws of reality in a consistent and autonomous manner was not easy to accomplish artificially.
Of course, that meant Cira had a clear-cut path to surpass her dad in at least one area, and the first step to doing so was creating an artificial mana well here—or six.
Within the bounds of Paradise, Cira had authority to lay her hands upon any mana found in this place. The aether belonged to her.
“Let’s start there… I know I can channel aether in its base form.” The first monument jutted from the earth, a radiant crystal that reflected the sun and thrummed with power. If one looked at it, they could see a thousand instances of the other side refracted onto countless jagged surfaces. Conjuring crystal was easy, but the difficult part was stabilizing it as a pathway to the ambiguous aether shroud.
The earth quaked and cracks formed in the crystal, a shattering echoed across the sky. Cira quickly reclaimed the refuse and forced out more crystals from each crack, increasing the gravity and mana density in kind to contain its form across two planes at once.
Mana seemed to resist, throbbing into her mind like a hundred simultaneous casts as the elements danced across her aura. For a moment it felt like a wild mess, impossible to tame, until a jolt of lightning threatened to crack the soul she spent so much time and effort reforging.
That’s it… This isn’t a matter of synergy. I am not constructing a lightning rod to lure the elements in by natural order, but a pylon to command their presence. This realm belongs to me, as does the mana within. This crystal is a part of the aether, I’m only manifesting it.
The crystal cracked and grew through so many cycles it was like a looming tree as its jagged branches blocked the sun, but its form hardened and brilliant twinkles settled on its surface. The tremors stopped and Cira admired her crystalline canopy with a studious eye.
There it is. The unmistakable flow of aether. But it’s flowing inward… not out. This is no mana well, but it accomplishes the goal I set out for. For those within the spatial realm, they could sit next to it and it would basically be the same thing as a mana well.
Next, Cira started with an element she was familiar with. Directly on the shore of the spring, she began building a pylon of pure water. This took form similar to the amorphous gem of Aquon, and mist constantly fell from it as sunlight or air was converted into water on contact. A cerulean glow bathed the gold a mithril hue and she moved onto the next one.
Earth manifested as a rugged crag where three peaks met to form an orb of tan radiance from which golden sand fell to a conical pile like an hourglass, only to seep back into the earth and power the spires all over again.
A crimson temple of aether flame formed beneath the cliffside where its heat would fall back and recycle, surrounded by a moat of molten gold. Air’s pylon sat just beyond the shore, a swirling tower of pure wind which only those brave enough to forsake the earth beneath their feet could reach.
An array of crystal lenses floated in the air to focus a column of light, but space was somewhat tricker. Without growing more crystals, Cira could only make the spatial pylon a space above the aether monument that glowed with its shifting light. Worst case, they could take a boat there.
The site looked like some kind of ritual was happening with all the lights and waves of pressure exuding from it, but this was to be a place where anyone could go and soak up mana of their choosing, or aether in its entirety. It only just happened to take up a moderate span of the island’s surface.
“You sure don’t waste time to exploit these lands.” An ancient voice spoke into her mind.
“They were given to me as a gift. Is it possible to exploit them?”