Reg’s nightmares became more varied over the weeks approaching the practicum. Dreams of failing exams in The World Below and having his bow break in Remedial Archery joined nightmares of leading his family in a slow walk off of the branch and of trying to warn his mother’s crew not to go on the rotten bough, but being unable to speak. He always felt guilty that the nightmares of failing exams weighed on him just as heavily as nightmares of seeing his whole family die.
The nightmares weren’t helped by Instructor Mossgate’s The Self and the Other class. The instructor had kept to his promise to expose them to all of the varieties of fear. They’d explored terror, panic, horror, and dread. Today was the last day of fear before they moved on, and despite all of the practice that Reg now had confronting his fears, his stomach still churned unpleasantly as he waited in class to see what horrific finale Instructor Mossgate had for this part of the course.
Reg had grabbed a spot at the front of the classroom near the instructor’s desk. The closer to the desk, the stronger the effect of the emotional spells that Instructor Mossgate cast on them every class session. Reg figured there were two approaches to the class: flinching or embracing it, and he’d decided that he wouldn’t flinch. As his father always said, “Hiding from hard work just makes it harder.”
Today, Instructor Mossgate’s desk had its normal complement of potions alongside an ornately framed painting that rested face down. Instructor Mossgate stood behind his desk, cheerfully greeting everyone as they entered the classroom. The instructor’s cheery greetings were undeterred by the worried faces that everyone wore as they entered the classroom; even with repeated exposures, nobody enjoyed facing their worst fears over and over again.
Class began, as it had after the first week, with Instructor Mossgate taking them through a guided meditation. This time, Instructor Mossgate’s soft voice had them focus on the feeling of their toes relaxing, then their feet letting go of tension through the arches, their ankles loosening up, and up and up all the way up to the scalp. Almost despite himself, Reg felt some of his nervous tension leave as the minutes poured by.
After letting them sit for a few minutes, Instructor Mossgate clapped his hands twice before starting to lecture, “Today is our last day exploring fear. But, before we get to that, what are you currently feeling? Do you feel that relaxed sensation that our meditation brought giving way to stress and anxiety? What do you feel in your gut? In your hands? In your face? Examine that feeling.”
Instructor Mossgate paused for a few moments to let the class reflect. As the prospect of another mental attack neared, Reg felt stress grip him again; it felt like he had a tight ball in his upper chest that wanted to come up into his throat, his eyes felt dry, and his palms were damp.
The instructor continued, “Today, we’ll be exploring anxiety. To start, I have disappointing news for you all: I have not been able to twist any of my emotional enchantments to isolate anxiety. You’ll need to explore this emotion without magical assistance apart from our normal potion. I know this will make confronting and understanding your own anxieties more difficult, so I apologize.
“Today, I want you to focus on one current anxiety that you’ve been feeling recently. I want you to identify it and then think through the root causes of that anxiety. Is it justified? Partially justified? Once you’ve identified an anxiety that you’ve been dealing with, I want you to come up with a single small change to try and address that anxiety. Perhaps that change will be trying one of our relaxing exercises the next time you feel that anxiety. Perhaps it will be talking to a classmate to ask for extra help. Perhaps it will be writing a letter home. Even if your action item has no impact, that’s OK! Trying things to address your anxiety will turn it into something that’s under your control rather than something that’s just happening to you.
“I’ll be at the front of the room if you want to chat while going through this exercise. Feel free to talk with your neighbors if you think that will help: there’s no need to suffer by yourself. Any questions?”
Belladonna raised her hand before asking, “What’s with the painting?”
Instructor Mossgate smiled happily, “Oh, it’s a painting of my family. Despite my failure to come up with a good enchantment to help you explore anxiety in a more concentrated and isolated way, I wanted to do my best to help you experience shades of that emotion before class started.”
There were a lot of things making Reg anxious, but the one that jumped to the forefront of his mind was evocation class; despite weeks of effort, both in and out of the classroom, Reg was still completely unsuccessful at channeling even the smallest bit of energy into the doll. Despite everything he tried and how hard he strained, the doll’s eyes and jewelry remained frustratingly dull. And the constant jibes from Fenjor and others didn’t help; he cringed every time he heard someone call him doll-boy, not because he was ashamed of the doll, but because he was ashamed of the lack of magical skill it represented.
What more could he do? He’d practiced hard and asked for help from all of his friends. It wasn’t fair that he was broken.
Thinking more though, he’d asked for help from all of his friends, but he hadn’t asked for help from everyone. And he’d limited his practice to quiet moments in the library and in his room where he could pull out the doll without people eyeing him oddly. After mulling it over for several more minutes, he realized one thing he could do that might help.
Reg stood up and headed towards Instructor Mossgate, “Instructor, I think I have a good next step to help set myself on a plan to reduce one of my anxieties: permission to leave the classroom to start making it happen?”
Instructor Mossgate’s face lit up, “Excellent, Reg! Of course. Just remember, the important thing isn’t that any particular plan succeeds; instead, it’s important that you look on this as something that you can control by trying things until you find something that works well for you.”
Reg nodded and thanked Instructor Mossgate before making a beeline to his room. In it, he found some spider-silk twine and fashioned a little sheath out of it that he put the doll into before tying the doll to his belt opposite his sling and sling-bullets. He paused, then took the doll back out of its sheath, and changed it into the tiny hunter’s leathers outfit. It felt ridiculous to change its outfit, but if he was going to wear the doll at his hip, he wasn’t going to have it in fancy elven silks.
The doll got a few looks when he came back into class, but there wasn’t a wave of laughter the way that Reg had expected. After class, when Fenjor tried teasing him about the doll again, Reg’s response, “Yup, my magic is twig-weak and I’m trying to fix that. Got any advice?” flummoxed the muscular elf.
The doll at Reg’s hip became a regular sight over the next few days. He didn’t make any progress at channeling magic into it, but he found more gaps to practice. And not feeling like he was hiding anything about how poorly evocation was going felt oddly freeing.
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The World Below continued to be a waste of time. With Val’s help and an incredible amount of effort, Reg, Yeva, and Jashal were somehow able to put together workable essays for the books and essays covered in class. Each essay and book was more frustrating than the last: the content felt like such a waste of time compared to practicing evocation, archery, or going through Tactics practice sets.
Reg and Val were in the library on a weekend night when most had headed into Ithilia to enjoy the city, Reg was slowly working his way through the currently assigned book, The State of the State: Musing on Monarchies and Magic. His slowly expanding vocabulary made it less of a battle to understand these texts, but this particular one was frustrating because the author delighted in needless obfuscating wordplay.
Judging by how much Bartholomew was stroking Val’s ear, the gnome was getting more and more agitated as she paged back and forth through The State of the State.
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When Reg finished muddling his way through a paragraph on wheat varieties and their response to magical stimuli, he turned to Val and asked her what she was looking into.
Val looked a bit troubled and said, “In the old days, I think they were a lot more magically powerful than we are today, and I don’t understand why. Take a look at these passages.” She flipped through the book, showing the passages one after another.
* The quotidian practice of precipitation manipulation for agriculture was one of the precipitating factors in the consolidation of the mages’ guild under monarchal oversight. Impacts on the clime commons caused waves that extended far beyond the point where the enchantment was cast. Monarchical gaps caused droughts; one interregnum caused another.
* Weak monarchies also had to contend with draconic incursion and extortion. It was often cheaper to pay off a dragon with cattle and gold than to pay for the services of an archwizard with capstone spells capable of binding or destroying an adult dragon.
* The Church of Belltrund was famous for using a species of magical serpents to petrify its greatest heroes in their prime. Thus, during times of conflict, the church could magically restore its mightiest paladins and field a force of heroes unbowed by time, leaving any opposing force petrified with fear.
* This apotheosis of arcane knowledge was a moral nadir, requiring forceful mass immolation to power their destructive magical rites. One such lich, known simply as “The Hunger,” sacrificed an entire town in a rite to create an army of wraiths and then used that army to create a miniature fiefdom.
When Reg finished reading, Val continued her explanation, “Do you see how much more powerful they were? Casual weather control; archmages able to battle dragons. petrification restoration being simple and consistent enough that a church could use it as a strategy; and mass sacrifice that could create an entire army. All of these are far beyond anything I’ve heard of the most powerful workings on the Tree today.”
Reg thought for a bit before speaking, “I don’t know magic nearly as well as you do, but I believe you. Maybe they lost knowledge when people fled the mist?”
Val shook her head, “That’s what I thought too, but I’ve been reading through Syclan’s Memoirs.”
“Whose memoirs?” Reg asked. That name didn’t sound familiar.
“Syclan’s. Don’t you remember when Instructor Mossgate recommended reading his memoirs on the first day of class? I still haven’t found an unexpurgated copy, but Jashal said he might be able to help. Anyways, he was an old archdruid who grew up on the Tree. Check out this passage.” Val said, holding open another book and pointing:
When I was only a few decades old, I spent much of my days with the squirrels of the grove. I spent more time thinking as a squirrel than I did thinking as an elf, and the time spent in that state of mind carried over into other aspects of my life. For my mother, I think the leaf that broke the spider’s web was finding a cache of mushrooms that I’d hidden in her jewelry box and her jewelry buried in the garden. My fuzzy logic at the time was that her jewelry box was one of the safest places to stash food supplies in the house, and every other secret spot in the house already held a cache of fungi or nuts.
Reg read the passage and then turned to Val to say, “I’m guessing that’s not normal?”
Val shook her head, “No way. He was sharing his mind with a squirrel when he was incredibly young. Do you have any idea how hard that is to do? Talking with a lovely creature like Bartholomew is one thing, but mind-walking like that? And in other passages he talks about sharing a mind with a spider like it’s totally normal. And I don’t think he was especially precocious.” She paged through the book to find another passage to show, “and then there’s this.”
The practice in those days was for novice druids to draw homes out of the Tree every night as they went on their wanderings. Compared to simply bringing a tent, the effort was substantial, but the practice left safe structures that other citizens on the Tree could use on their own travels. As young druids, we all tried to outdo one another with the way-house constructions that we left on our peregrinations.
“He’s talking about novice druids constructing a whole building over the course of a few hours. I don’t think I could make a small shed if I had a full week. Construction crews have teams of specialists and they aren’t able to move nearly that quickly either.” Val said in a rush. “What’s more,” she continued, “I think our magical knowledge is better today than it was in Syclan’s time. Nest’eff and other universities weren’t even founded yet.”
Reg frowned. “Huh. So, we’re all magically weaker? And nobody is talking about it?”
Val bit her lip and nodded, “Yes. That’s what it seems. I mean, if you read these books it’s obvious, but it’s not something that anyone ever talks about. By bark and bramble, I wish I knew why!”
Reg and Val spent time speculating over the next few days, but they didn’t have enough information to come to any firm conclusions. It made going down into the mist that much more terrifying: those powerful old magics might still linger in the forgotten land below.
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It took several weeks for Fenjor’s frustrations with the lack of combat in Advanced Arms to boil over. Every session focused on more and more difficult exercises that seemed distant from spearwork. They’d sprinted with weighted sacks, balanced on the line while dodging thrown balls, walked on their hands, juggled, squatted, and hefted heavy staves in strange patterns. Almost every session was intense enough to require healing afterwards, and they still hadn’t practiced a single pattern with the spear.
“Weak. Slow. Clumsy. Not ready battle.” The instructor started class with the same refrain he always did.
But this time, Fenjor stepped forward and glared straight at the instructor’s mask, “No. We’re not weak. And we’re tired of these mist-touched exercises. We’re here to learn how to fight.”
The instructor paused for several moments, his body not moving at all. He then walked backwards, still facing the group, to pick up a bundle of spears from the weapons racks. “Lesson.” the instructor growled, tossing Fenjor, Belladonna, and Reg each a spear with a sharpened metal-edged spearhead. These weren’t practice spears and Reg was getting a bad feeling about this, especially when the instructor kept the last one for himself rather than tossing it to Dun.
“Defend.” was the next command from the instructor, with a gesture at all three of them. Dun took a few cautious steps back as the three spear wielders got into position.
“Weak.” the Instructor of Arms said while pointing at Fenjor. In an eyeblink, the instructor went from completely stationary to spear twirling like a club towards Fenjor’s head. Fenjor got his spear up to block, but the blow was powerful enough that it ripped the spear right out of Fenjor’s hands before impacting with a meaty thunk into Fenjor’s skull. The elf collapsed to the ground.
“Slow.” the Instructor growled next and pointed at Reg, before attacking. The instructor’s spear moved like the wind, sharp jabs that came at Reg’s head and torso. Reg backpedaled desperately, twirling his spear to block the blows, but as fast as he moved, the instructor was far faster, herky-jerky movements that made the instructor’s spear almost teleport from spot to spot. Out of the corner of his eye, Reg could see Belladonna sprinting after the instructor to help Reg, but it looked like she was moving through tree sap as Reg and the professor flew backwards. Reg moved the spear as quickly as he could to block, but he was only able to block ten or so quick blows before his spear didn’t move quickly enough to intercept a vicious jab that bit deep into the meat of his thigh and made him collapse to the ground. Blood poured out of the wound, and Dun ran over to help tie a tourniquet above the bloody hole.
“Clumsy.” Reg watched from the rough ground as the instructor turned to Belladonna. The instructor slowed his attacks substantially, but despite moving slower than Belladonna, he still drove her back, careful blows shifting Belladonna’s spear further and further out of position as he maneuvered her around the dim cavern. As she was driven backwards, Belladonna eventually tripped over one of the heavy sacks that they used for weighted sprints. As she fell, the instructor’s spear caught her in the hollow of the shoulder and left a bloody wound.
“Good lesson.” The instructor of arms finally growled before walking backwards, not turning his back on the group of stunned and bleeding students and disappearing into the murk of the cavern.
The stairs out of the cavern were torture.
Dun carried Fenjor over his shoulders, while Belladonna supported most of Reg’s weight while he hopped upwards.
Reg spoke first, after they’d hobbled upwards for a few minutes, “I thought he’d gone mad and was going to kill us. ”
Belladonna grunted a pained agreement, “Yeah, I don't think I’ve ever been so scared and I’m not afraid to admit it. Not even in Instructor Mossgate’s class. I’m not going back to that crazy mist-twist’s class ever again. I’ll talk to Captain Merrin and figure out something else.”
Dun sounded uncertain, “He’s mist-twisted and insane for certain, but I’ve never seen anyone move like that. I saw Carcan and Finpher go the full nine rounds, and neither held a candle to the instructor. I don’t know who he is or how he fights like that, but I’ll do whatever rotten exercises he has and ask for more.”
Reg was thoughtful the rest of the long trek to the infirmary. If this was what classes were like, what would things be like down below? How bad were things that they were willing to put a mist-twisted instructor in charge of weapons training? The practicum loomed on the horizon.