Chapter 02
“Good afternoon!” The trainer said as he strolled to the front of the indoor cavea. That’s how the interior was arranged after all. Tiered seating flowed at a slope until stopping about a dozen feet from the stage where “Garmar! Pleased to meet all of you!” paced.
“Throughout the coming year,” Garmar siad, “I will get to know every one of you personally. For now, let’s jump right in, shall we?”
Pelle shot me an excited smile. She was practically squirming with delight. I was too, I couldn’t help myself.
“First,” our trainer continued, “is there anyone who cannot flow mana into a ball? Anyone?”
Garmar looked out at the students and I naturally scouted for hands as well. There were perhaps 3 dozen of us and only one student had their hand up. It was a shaky hand, and their face was red with embarrassment.
“That’s ok, it’s not a bad thing,” Garmar said. “We’ll talk after class today and I’ll help you get started. You’ll be flowing mana by the end of the day I’m sure.”
The student was relieved to hear this. His comrades all gave him warm encouragement. Garmar cleared his throat, directing the attention back to him.
“First off. Whew. Wow. Quite a bit of healers this year. I’m not usually so blessed. Thank you for being here today. Let’s continue with mana. We’ll measure your mana at the end of class today. In the meantime let’s go over mana crystals.”
Garmar held aloft a glowing mana crystal the size of his palm. He set in on a desk set aside by the stage. The crystal had 3 crystalline fingers from a clumpy base.
“Hexagonal prisms!” Garmar said. “Encased within is raw unclaimed mana. These crystals are the tools that you can use to cultivate your mana pool. What does this mean?”
A student started to answer but Garmar wanted none of that and cut them off.
“It means that you can either buy mana crystals—expensive—or you can explore dungeons to earn them. Question: Which is the obvious way to go about acquiring crystals? Answer: Dungeon crawling. Not only will you be rewarded with loot that gives you a 70% chance of acquiring mana crystals, but you level up your spells and abilities, and you earn other loot as well.”
He strode back over to the table and began pulling mana crystal after mana crystal after mana crystal from his private inventory. He set them in rows upon the table, then matched the number of crystals with the number of students before calling us down to grab one.
All the mana crystals varied in shape and luster but they were common in their crystalline structure and their color.
I twirled mine in the light. The crystal was mostly clear. Sheens of blue hues bounced beams of light around the room. All of us looked about in wonder as the entire building was dancing with thousands of small beams of blue. The crystals sparkled as they tumbled through our hands.
This was the first time I’d ever seen one in person. I’d only encountered illustrated depictions. An ethereal ghost of blue floated lazily through the crystal. Some of the other student’s crystals were a deep blue. The mana would coalesce into a texture that mimicked chiffon fabric and reach an opaque marine-blue. Then it would disperse again and lighten. Other crystals were almost entirely opaque throughout.
“These are now yours!’ Garmar said. “They range between… mmmm... 3 and 5 mana points. You’ve picked them at random, and the clarity, or saturation of color, has nothing to do with the value of mana within each crystal.”
“Lesson number 2 for today,” Garmar went on, drawing our attention back to him. It was hard to concentrate through the forest of blue beams that danced as mana crystals were handled. “Dungeons,” he said.
The excitement in the students was unmistakable. I’d seen dozens of dungeon entrances on the voyage here. None I would dare enter at my skill level. Which is a whopping zero. Zero experience. Zero levels.
“There are a few types of dungeons. For this year’s purpose we will be focusing on one of two main types of dungeons: Tamed dungeons. The other main dungeons are feral dungeons, but we won’t be dealing with those quite yet.”
Garmar brought up a gilded chest from beneath the table and spun it around once before leaving it closed at the foot of the stage.
“The promise! Every dungeon has a promise for loot. That loot will be locked away in a chest like this one. The more difficult the dungeon, the better the reward.” Garmar paused for a moment and held his hands up to signify an important clause. “There is more to mana crystals and dungeons than we can cover today. These are the basics. Please bear with me.”
“At Magic & Lance,” he continued, resuming his pacing, “all our dungeons are tamed. Another term you’ll hear is: controlled. They are frequented and carefully grown to develop on their own to specific levels and difficulties. Be cautious of feral dungeons. Adventurers such as yourselves are the antithesis of a dungeon. You are the force that interrupts the progression of a dungeon. Hence, that is how they are tamed. Frequent a dungeon too much and it will diminish to nothing.”
“Excuse me, Garmar?” said a student near the middle of the tiered seating.
“Yes?” our trainer said.
“Don’t they just go dormant for a few years or something?”
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“Details, details, but yes that’s almost correct. It doesn’t matter at the moment. What matters is that our dungeons are tamed. Now if a dungeon were to go unexplored, then it would grow to massively dangerous proportions with a wide berth of danger and destruction, eventually forcing monsters out of the dungeon mouth. These dungeons often evolve to have an abyss.”
A fugue of whispers rippled around Pelle and I. Abysses were said to be the deepest parts of legendary dungeons. Until now I think most of us had assumed they were the stuff of fable and lore. Nothing that still existed.
Garmar gave a clap and rubbed his hands together, preparing himself for the next part of today's lessons.
“Lesson number 3,” he said with a bright and enchanting smile. “My favorite part! You will learn to measure your mana pool.”
We were told to flow mana into a ball which Pelle and I easily did. All the faces around us were cast in blue hues with ripples of white as though sunlight were playing through water. While we all delighted in the light show, Garmar delivered a sheet of paper to each student one by one.
Pelle’s paper was the same as mine. We’d all been given the same sheet. On it was a rune drawn in ink. The ink must have been a deep garnet, because in the multitude of blue lights, it shone a nether purple. The rune was an absolute mystery to me. Pelle too. She shrugged when I questioned her. The rune was a perfect circle with a simple script inside it separated by equally simple lattice work just on the inside rim of the circle. The ink was thicker than the paper itself and weighed it down so much that the parchment crinkled beneath it.
Garmar returned to the stage and spun on his heel to address us once more.
“I’ve delivered a simple rune. It is a healing rune that you will undoubtedly learn a few seasons from now. Runes: After a rune is scripted, it must be filled with mana. Once it is filled, it can be executed at any time by trigger, or by flowing 1 too many points into the rune. The rune before you is called Breath of Heart. After we’re done today, you can refill it at your own leisure to use during your dungeon crawls.”
Garmar held his hands before him and flowed his deep blue mana into a bottleless sphere.
“I want you to maintain your concentration on your sphere of mana,” he continued. “Then I want you to pull it outward. Watch what I do.”
He drew his hands outward and away from his ball of mana. The ball began to transform and stretch into a circle until a hole appeared in the middle and it formed a large ring. Through the beautifully gossamer ring of mana, Garmar grinned widely.
As one, we all did the same until our mana achieved the ring shape. Garmar patiently waited and sprinted around, helping students that were having difficulty. “Maintain your ring!” he said, jogging back up the front.
I was starting to feel the effort of maintaining such a long flow of mana. Pelle too, if the sweat on her brow was any indication.
“Excellent,” Continued Garmar, “now listen closely. Focus on the center of your ring and flow mana into the rune before you. The rune will only allow one point of mana per second. Your mana bar will start to deplete clockwise. Small chunks will start to vaporize in order and flow into the rune. It is the utmost importance that you count each one of those points as they happen until you have depleted your mana bar.”
A student began counting off, “1, 2-”
“Count silently please,” Garmar said.
The chamber was suddenly alive with the sound of paper whipping against the absorbing runes. Ethereal swirls of mana started to leap off my mana bar in chunks and dissolve into the shimmering rune. I counted 14 points of mana until my bar was depleted exactly as a clock hand would carve through the hour..
“16,” Pelle whispered.
By the end of it, all the blue light had faded away and we were left with the true colors of the world again. The runes before us sheened a nether purple as if lights were striking across them every 4 seconds.
“Well done healers. That is your mana pool! Now on your own time, you will work with your mana crystals and reverse this process--like so.”
Garmar held a mana crystal before him and summoned his mana bar around it. The crystal floated to the center of the ring. Wisps of sky blue mana, the texture of chiffon began to bleed from the crystal and join the massive mana ring.
“My mana pool is large,” Garmar said from within the glow of his mana bar. “It’s probably imperceptible to you, but up close you can count the amount of mana points you are permanently adding to your mana bar.”
The crystal began to vibrate and it shuddered as though undecided in which direction to spin. Silent cracks formed through the crystal as it drained of color. Then it imploded with a soundless boom we all felt in our chests. Garmar let his mana bar flow back through his hands until it was no more.
“Another thing about mana. Mana doesn't regenerate on its own. There are plenty of ways to regenerate your mana pool. One of which is to cultivate your mana pool. Each time you claim the mana in a crystal, your mana will replenish—on top of permanently expanding our mana pool. Level 1 crystals will replenish 50 points, level two will replenish 100, level three: 150, and so forth. Any questions?”
A few students raised their hands but Garmar ignored them. He pressed on to the next lesson. Lesson number 4. Our first tool of healing. Garmar enlisted the help of two students to wheel onstage a large chest. It had one wheel, two legs, and required two people to man that thing. It was a glorified wheelbarrow with a chest instead of the ’barrow’ part.
“Later this week, you will be entering your first dungeon!”
As a class, we went wild with cheers. Garmar smiled through the clamoring and let our celebrations ring through its momentum. When the noise simmered, he continued.
“In the chest is your first healer's tool. Every year, our students' range of spells, tools, and abilities, differ in order to diversify the experiences of our healers. You will be starting with healer’s powder. This one,” he said, hefting the chest lid open and lifting up a droopy leather sack, “is called Dust of Life.”
Garmar enlisted two different students this time to pass around the sacks. Some of them puffed out a fine powdery light from the tops as they got thrown around. The powdery light was first gold, then glittered through a range of colors as it expanded its reach like spilled liquid.
When I received my sack, it was lighter than I expected. The only weight came from the leather and cord that attempted to keep it closed.
“Your sacks are enchanted with one refill. I want you to practice using the Dust of Life until dungeon day. Be sure to leave the remaining fill for your dungeon crawl.”
“Will we have to find a party?” A girl asked from the front.
“Ah yes,” Garmar said. “Your first dungeon will be a duo crawl. You can enlist a partner at the trading post--er--guild post.
Garmar spread his hands high and a white light coalesced into a multitude of small white blades. The blades fanned out in several rows, layered 3 deep. We were awestruck by the glinting blades. They tilted down until their points aimed at each one of us. Garmar stepped forward and flicked his wrists with a gnarled spread of knuckles and fingers.
Students cried out in pain and shock. A white blade struck me in the shoulder and Pelle in the face. The total length of the miniature weapons--hilt and blade--was the size of my pinky finger. A bead of blood swelled where the blade stuck embedded to its hilt.
The students screamed and the chamber erupted in a cacophony of suffering.