The morning in Vane Gloria started early, away from the town’s center. The farmlands on the outskirts that stretched into the cleared forest to the east of the guild always woke the earliest, the faintest rays of the sun waking the livestock, alongside the birds in the trees that bordered each property. The distant murmurs and chirps buzzed like waking nerve endings as the sun brushed along the roads and crept up the hills towards the guild, which stood like a sentinel against the dangers beyond the frontier.
Slowly, the runelight of the sleeping people starting to fade out as they came back to consciousness. They starting to mill about their homes, and then between buildings as people left for work, for schooling, and to the masters that oversaw their apprenticeships.
Deya threw her door open, still groggy, a yawn rising in her throat – which she petulantly pointed at the glaring sun, exhaling the lingering slumber like a curse towards the harbinger of the dawn. She descended the steps of her house, a small thing with a enough of a yard to lay in on lazy days, and headed up the slight hill towards the businesses that clamored for space near the guild.
She smiled as she patted the small bundle hanging from her belt, the contents tinkling inside, ready for her wand to be done. She’d waited for long enough already, but there would still a day’s worth of waiting as the core was ground and polished, and that was before the teeth were set into the enchantment. She was hoping it would only be a day. She didn’t want to be without this thing for a week, or however long the patrol contract ended up being.
Deya marching in and among the clutter of storefronts and workshops that gathered around the base of the hill upon which the guild sat. Prancing up to the wand maker’s shop, she shouldered the entrance, only to run into a locked door. She grumbled, and stepped away from the door to sit on the short wall that bounded the shop. As soon as her rump hit brick, though, the door opened, and a weathered but sturdy woman peeked out.
“Girl, I haven’t even had a chance to make my coffee yet. Did you even sleep last night?”
Deya smirked and nodded. “I just went to bed real early so I could wake up real early.”
The woman looked stern for a moment, but her features softened after a moment. Deya was the best, and worst, student that Evaia ever had. Enthusiastic, bothersome, brilliant, and exhausting. About three times a week, she’d come up to the old wand smith and enchanter with plans for a brand new crystal core. Most of the time, she had to explain carefully why the drawing would result in an exploding wand or the least efficient mana light the world had ever seen. Sometimes, the girl brought her something that made her frown at how elegant her solutions were. Even if the entire enchantment she planned wouldn’t work out, some the facet logic and mana conversions she thought up were just genius – aspects that she’d struggled to incorporate into more traditionally styled crystal cores.
But as she stepped aside to let Deya spring into the workshop, she smiled and followed the girl with an energy that her own work rarely inspired these days. These plans of hers, this wand made of teeth and Ice power, this was a project that excited her. It wasn’t because of the effect alone – rapid-fire wands like what she wanted to make were a thing that already existed, just not with the kind of mana efficiency that her design would allow for. No, her design was using monster parts in ways that a more standardized core crafter would have laughed at, had they not looked into the intricacy of Deya’s plans.
Deya was getting ahead of everything, already grabbing a wand-length enchantment crystal core, and bringing it over to the grinding station where enchanters shaped the facets on the surface of the rod.
Evaia interrupted her preparations. “Hold on, girl! Let’s take one more look at the plans before you do something you can’t reverse later on.”
Deya looked back at her, confused. She’d been planning for this for more than a week, she was pretty sure she had the right core for the process. But she shrugged, trusting that the old woman was a lot more knowledgeable about the specifics than Deya herself was, and she went over to the shelf where she’d hidden her plans last time she was in the shop, bringing them over to a lit table and flattening the rough drawing out.
Evaia hemmed and hawed over the drawing, tracing the lines of the vertex logic she’d carefully outlined and expanded on in the margins. She counted out the vertices along the edge, measured the distances between them, made sure the scale of the planned logic matched the scale of the whole drawing.
“Ha. Well, good thing I stopped you. Go put that core away – we’re going to have to make this a scepter, not a wand.”
Deya cocked her head to the side in question, but shrugged and did as asked. She started to slot the new, larger core into the grinder as Evaia took a third look at things. She didn’t want to screw this up any more than Deya did – it would take so long to find another Ice Queen nearby, and for as much as she had to chastise Deya on her impatience in these matters, on this project she shared the anticipation. Best to get it right on the first try.
Once she was done studying the drawing, she brought it over to a board by the grinder, and tacked it well in view of the machine. She looked over to Deya with a crooked, wicked smile.
“You ready to make a weapon, girl?”
The gleam in her eye said everything.
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Geon came to slowly, pulling the covers off his face to let his eyes adjust to the morning light streaming in through his window. His head ached he forced his body to start moving, but it was a gentle throb instead of a raging clatter, and he was able to sit up without his body trying to kill him. His eyes fluttered open over the next few minutes, but he stared into the middle distance as one injury from yesterday's drinking did rear its head.
Pick!
He heard it like a memory, automatically recalled every few minutes, interrupting his thoughts with it's piercing crack. He looked down at his hand as he cycled his mana, at the rune there glowing red.
He was a Lancer, had been for three years now. This was supposed to be a time of advancing his power, to ready himself for new runes with a stronger core. But after three years, he was still-
Pick!
-weak.
He was doing something wrong. He'd made a poor choice somewhere. He wasn't training in a proper way, or maybe he wasn't exercising the core enough. He looked over at his wand. The thick wooden shaft wrought with golden wires hid what was supposed to be the core of a sniper's wand. It was a wand built for firing powerful shots that originated remotely, for projecting his Fire power at a distance without the mana inefficiency of throwing a hundred-yard-long trail of burning flame.
It was a gift from his father, given as he was getting ready to strike out west, towards the frontier. His father hadn't become a parent until his later years, not settling down with his wife until he was nearly forty. His old wand had hung in the parlor of their family home for his entire childhood, and his bedtime stories were tales of the great fights he'd been in, the monsters he'd slain, the conflicts he'd ended with a single judicious flick of that wand.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
When he'd taken it off the mantle on the day Geon planned to leave, and handed it over to him, it was the proudest day of his life. Given the choice to walk his same path with his same weapon, mythologized in his mind after years of stories, he took up the wand as a personal quest. He would imagine himself wreathed in the streaks of white Fire his father used to produce when he was still an active militiaman, and he would dream of attaining that height of power.
Pick!
In his mind's eye, Geon's blue Fire struck the golem with the sound of a chisel stabbing ice, shattering the recollection of his younger self's aspirations.
Pick! Pick! Pick!
Did he do anything to that creature?
He ruffled his head, relishing the hungover ache it induced, trying to smother that yawning pit of hopelessness that peeked out of his frustration. His eyes fell on the wand, sitting innocent on his bedside table.
I have to know.
Geon pulled himself off the bed, and marched himself into the kitchen. He guzzled a glass of water, then spent a few minutes making himself a simple breakfast by throwing a couple eggs into water and letting them boil, while he quickly washed himself in the next room. He peeled one of the eggs, damp and naked in his kitchen, and wolfed it down as he pulled out some clean clothes to slip on.
Once he was dressed and full of eggs, he snatched his wand off the table and headed off to the guild.
Vane Gloria was in full bustle as the sun crawled upward, carts sprinkling the road as goods were moved from farm to shop, from shop to shop, and shop to the roads outbound to the East of town. He waved to neighbors as he passed, and most of them waved back with cheer. He saw Deya, stretching outside the wand maker's shop, probably on break from her wand's crafting, and he raised his chin in question. She responded with a restless wriggle and excited stamping. Geon continued past the street where she was working, chuckling at her open glee.
He started up the hill leading up to the guild, passing the blacksmith that made most of the weapons sold at Villara's booth. He was currently working, and Geon could hear the pounding metal from the street outside as he passed. He grit his teeth as he walked, though, as the pounding of hammer on thinning metal grew higher in pitch, until the hammer matched tone with his stewing memory.
Tink! Tink! Tik! Tik! Pick! Pick!
He gripped the wand tightly as he walked on, up the stairs, and pushed open the door to the guild. The room was still busy, and he stopped by the board to see the state of things. Glory had made room by moving all the Rank 1 contracts to a small sliver of space on the margin of the first board, then marking the rest of the space with a zone marked just for these new patrol contracts. They filled the space, contracts that were a number of different Rank 1 jobs all mushed together, the details of each individual part all stapled together. He nodded at the approach; at least it didn't look like all the work had dried up anymore.
Geon shook his head and turned away, waving to Glory as he moved over to Villara's booth. He pulled the wand out and stared at it longingly before reaching her desk.
She studied him as he approached. She knew he was one of the mercs that occasionally gave Glory some problems, or at least seemed not to have his own head on straight enough to have a good chance of survival. But she didn't know anything about his situation. As he raised the wand and placed it onto her counter, however, she looked into his solemn eyes and realized that she was probably about to know him rather well in the next short while.
“Villara. Uh, hi. I'm Geon, I know we haven't really talked much, but...I had a few questions for you.”
She just raised an eyebrow and waved for him to continue.
“Can you take a look at this wand, and let me know if it's a good fit for me or not? I've been training to be a Fire sniper, like my dad was, but I'm not really able to get the kind of power he was able to from this thing. He said that I should be able to grow into it, but the more I've used it over the last couple of years, the more I realize that I'm not progressing as fast as I feel I should be.”
Villara smiled. Finally, someone with the right questions.
“Alright, I think we can do that. In order for me to help you though, you're going to have to do some demonstrations for me first, okay?”
Geon nodded, and Villara led him out to the training yard out back, after letting Glory know that she was going to be stepping out.
They made their way outside, the yard empty but for a couple of older mages that were doing some practice exercises and stretches, chatting amicably with each other as they worked.
Villara led him to a cleared spot in the yard, and pointed at some target out in the distance. “Why don't you go ahead and take a few example shots at those targets for me?”
Geon nodded and faced them, breathing deep to prepare himself. He wanted to make sure that he showed her the range of his control with this wand, not just the maximum force he was able to output, though that would come up. He flicked a few shots out at the targets, and blue flames lashed out from spots in the distance near the places he aimed for, knocking cans off their stands, and striking targets with burn marks near their center points. He hit about five targets in all before Villara called for him to stop. Then she gestured for him to pass her his wand. He did so.
Villara held the wand up, carefully studying it's gold trim. Then she pulled a small device out of her pocket, and held a glass circle over the wand, staring through it. She pushed mana into the handle through her offhand Telekinesis rune, and the light through the glass penetrated the outer layer of the wand in her hand, showing her the crystal core. She studied the make of the core, tracing the vertex logic that focused Geon's Fire power.
She held it for a few minutes, occasionally making small hums and grunts as she put together what his problem was.
“I think I know the issue. You've only used this wand, correct?”
“That's right. I tried some others during my initial training after taking the Fire rune, but ever since I left home years ago, yeah, I've only used that wand.”
Villara nodded, then handed the wand back. She bit her lip. The answer would be rough, but best to rip the bandage off.
“It's crippling you.”
Geon reeled, the answer not entirely surprising him, but hurting just the same. “How? Why didn't it hurt my dad?”
Villara shrugged. “Well, I'm not one to assume, but I'm going to guess he didn't get this wand until he was well into his time as a mercenary, or a soldier. That about right?”
Geon nodded. “He said that he got it a couple years before he turned thirty. He was already heading his own teams of mercenaries at that point and picked it up after a long trek out towards the frontier.”
Villara continued. “That wand was built for a developed mage, it's designed to account for the higher mana pressure that a trained core can generate. But it isn't built to assist a developing core. It assumes you've already done that work. What you need, in order to keep developing, is a simpler wand, that focuses your mana more than this wand does. You actually need the kind of resistance you find in a cheaper, more general wand. Pushing against that resistance is one of the easier ways to make your core stronger in the long term. This wand is just letting you blow your mana, full force, out the other side of the focus.” She turned to him, pursing her lips in thought. “I'm going to make a guess. Your father – did he use white fire?”
Geon hung his head, and nodded. “He always told the stories of his fight using that wand. That fact was one of the things that made him distinctive in his later years. The White-Fire Sniper.”
Villara nodded. “Yes. Well, he was only able to do that because he already had the strength of core that would have allowed for that power. For your father, this wand is a small straw that he could force a lot of power through. For you though, this is a wide tunnel, and you're blowing through the door at one end, hoping to make a gust. You do have some strength that is your own; I bet if I gave this wand to any other Fire mage, they would only get red fire or smoke out of it. But you've also... plateaued in your skill with it. It won't make you any better from here on out, most likely.”
Geon looked down at the wand, worry creasing his brow. Then he looked up at Villara, face hard. “Villara, could I sell you this wand, so that I can afford to buy another?”
She beamed down at him. “Come on, Geon. This is Vane/Gloria's. I can make you a slightly better deal than that. Let's go inside.”