Aran Pov

The ‘light show’ as Magus Aran put it was a disappointing performance, which he already expected due to the students only just starting to learn control.

There were only two performances that interested him one being Zar and the other being Jax. Zar’s control was exemplary for someone of his age while Jax continued to impress him partially due to his control but mainly because of his unique Mana and the sheer amount of it.

He briefly recalled the first practical test he had given the new class and the ball of mana Jax had created. While it was large, even students could create a ball that large, however it is likely to take some time and leave them incredibly fatigued, but in Jax’s case it was near instantaneous ending with Jax looking like he wasn’t fatigued at all.

Aran had been informed to keep a close eye on Jax, when he had asked why he was told to not ask questions.

Jax POV

The first month of classes had been a let-down, I understood the necessity for control as we could harm ourselves and others but I really wish i could just fast forward these lessons as they had quickly become repetitive and weren’t challenging anymore.

I stopped my pondering and got back to the task at hand, gazing down at the short stick on my bench alongside my book of the basic runes.

Aran hadn’t said a thing about not being allowed to practice inscribing runes outside of class, with that being said although he had described how runes work, he never actually explained how to inscribe them in to an object.

I pondered briefly if I needed to use a knife or something sharp to carve the runes. The idea didn’t sit right with me, it didn’t feel right that something that resulted in something so amazing, required a process that was just so…. Simple.

If I can figure out how, I will inscribe the rune ‘Light’ on to the stick. I honestly have no idea what the result would be even if I managed to get this to work. What I wished to happen was for the stick to become lighter in terms of weight but whether that would happen or if the stick would become glow in the dark, I had no clue.

All I could go on was that Magus Aran said that the Arcane is heavily affected by the desire of the caster.

I eventually give in and decide to just try the simplest way I can think of to inscribe the rune into the stick, pulling out a knife I took from the mess I shrug and decide to just give it a try.

I enter a sort of trance while staring intently at the drawing of the rune ‘Light’ for a few minutes trying to burn the image into my mind so that when I carve the rune in I can at least attempt to carve it accurately.

My focus disappears as the burning sensation of my eyes continues to escalate and I realise that I had not blinked once for minutes.

I wipe my eyes, clearing away the tears that had unwillingly fallen from them and turn my attention to the stick. With ‘Light’ still fresh in my mind I grip the knife firmly in my right hand and prepare to carve the rune on to the stick picturing the rune being created perfectly.

And just like that I feel a miniscule amount of mana leaving me and the rune that I had been studying for hours formed before me glowing in the colour of my mana.

It hovers there aimlessly as if waiting for direction. And wait it did, because as soon as I saw the rune word in front of me I dashed out of my seat and dived under my bed thinking that I had messed up.

With my heart racing after waiting for a few seconds and realising nothing had happened I turn my head around and see the rune still floating there although it appeared slightly dimmer than before.

I laugh quietly to myself glad that my friends weren’t here to witness my display of courage, or the lack of.

I hop out from beneath my bed and approach the rune word.

“Was it really that easy?” I say to myself as I circle around the word trying to get a different view of it, however regardless of which direction I was to it however it always appeared to me as the flat image that I saw in the book.

I study the rune trying to organise my thoughts for minutes and watch as it becomes dimmer and dimmer until it eventually dissipates.

Once it disappears I ponder the idea that the rune word was formed by intent to create it.

Focusing once again of the rune word ‘Light’ still freshly burnt into my mind I will it to form before me.

Once again the rune word appears and floats motionlessly awaiting purpose.

As I had been expecting that it would work, I did not react so… interestingly.

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“If its intent to form the runes perhaps it’s also intent to inscribe the rune into an object?” I say to myself.

I attempt to picture the rune inscribing itself on the stick but it doesn’t react in the slightest.

After an hour of attempting to attach the rune to the stick and reforming the rune multiple times I become frustrated grabbing on to the sides of my hanged head to try alleviate the headache that’s started to form.

“AHHHHHHHH!” I scream to myself and slam my forehead into the table.

“Why won’t you just engrave yourself into the stick!?” I whine to myself as I picture what the stick would look like with the rune engraved into it.

And with that thought the rune shrank to a tiny size and flew to the location I had pictured the rune being at on the stick, this event was closely followed by the same colour of my mana briefly brightening my room.

After the light show I do a celebratory dance, I call it a dance but it was more of me hopping around whooping and patting myself on the back.

Eventually curiosity overcomes my self appreciation and I move back to the stick and see a colourless tiny rune word depicting ‘Light’ near the top of the stick.

“Well it’s not glowing in the dark so maybe it weighs less?” I say as I pick up the stick but I cannot feel any difference in weight.

I slap my forehead with my freehand in annoyance at how forgetful I can be and remember that Aran had said that most runes need to have mana with the appropriate affinity channelled into it.

And with that thought instead of slapping myself this time I pat myself on the back to congratulate myself on my new idea.

The rune word ‘Light’ could be interpreted in different ways but the way it will work is likely to be affected by the affinity I channel into the rune. For instance, if I use a light affinity it would likely become bright and maybe if I used air then it would weigh less.

I focus on the idea of imbuing my mana with air and supplying the rune with my mana. The rune starts glowing a dark azure blue and I instantly feel the stick that I originally guessed to weight around 2kg became near weightless in my hand.

I cut off the mana supply out of curiosity to see if the weight would instantly become heavier again as I suspected but to my surprise the rune continued to glow.

After a few minutes I got bored of waiting for a change and decided to play with the stick pretending I was a hero.

I swung my ‘sword’ around trying to copy some moves I had seen a few soldiers doing at Reigar.

In my imagination I was a great knight that was battling a evil demon and easily coming out victorious, to any outside viewers I would have been a child aimlessly jumping around and swinging a stick around incoherently.

Throughout my ‘battle’ the stick slowly became heavier and heavier eventually returning to its original weight.

This time I decide to channel a larger amount of mana into the stick to see how long it lasts.

I manage to stay awake a few hours until sleep claims me and I fall asleep on my chair.

I wake up to my ‘alarm’ which is just a piece of wood with the rune ‘noise’ chained with ‘7’ and ‘Draw’. I didn’t understand how it worked originally and no one had bothered to explain it but now I found it likely that a runes effects are set by the intent at the time of the inscribing, in this case the ‘noise’ is just that, it creates noise, ‘7’ in this instance being thought of as 7am and ‘draw’ likely drawing in mana to keep the runes filled with mana.

Coming out of my train of thought, I remember my experiments with the stick the previous night and look to see if the rune still holds mana.

It does and is the glow hasn’t dimmed in the slightest.

I ponder multiple ideas as I go through my morning routine in preparation for class.

After a period of time I leave my room to go meet up with Jake, Pete and Aria to walk to class together.

Aria seems to be finding the lessons rather easy, while Jake has been roughly in the middle of the class, in achieving the tasks given by Aran and Pete is generally one of the last to succeed in any of the tasks.

We head to class and the majority of the day passes in a blur for me, as soon as Magus Aran stated that we were going to continue more lessons on control I lost interest and started planning on the experiments I wanted to do after class.

“Do my lessons bore you Jax?” Aran says suddenly.

“No Magus Aran. I’m sorry it won’t happen again.” I say with reddening cheeks.

Aran laughs quietly to himself

“I am curious to what is so interesting that you seem to be able to stare through me like I don’t even exist.” He says with a straight face and raised eyebrows.

The majority of the class giggles at the situation with the loudest laughter coming from Gils group of asshats.

I drop my head staring at my table not wanting to make eye contact.

“Oh? So not only can he not see me, apparently he cannot hear me either.” He says dramatically causing another wave of laughter to echo through the class.

Irritation overcame my embarrassment after being the joke of the class, yeah I wasn’t listening but these lessons are boring and other than my first mishap I haven’t found any of these lessons hard.

“I was thinking of some experiments I can do after class Magus Aran.” I say.

“What experiments could you possibly be conducting when all you’ve been learning thus far is control and basic rune words?” He asks with a frown on his face.

“I was thinking of which other runes I can try inscribing and if I channel more mana into the initial rune if that will make the inscription stronger.”

Upon hearing my words Aran’s composure breaks and he starts laughing loudly.

“Ahhhh, that was a good joke.” He says with a smile on his face.

“It was not a joke!” I snap back forgetting to address him properly due to being frustrated of people laughing at me.

Instantly Aran’s smile disappears.

“Do not lie to me.” He says in a serious voice at a completely different tone than the voice he puts on to teach his lessons.

“I am not lying!” I yell in retaliation.

“You are very close to crossing the line Jax. First and most importantly there is no way for you to have inscribed anything without the appropriate tools, and second even if you had the tools it takes people on average months if not years to be able to inscribe perfect runes. Yet you expect me to believe that you, a student that has been here barely more than a month has not only managed to inscribe a perfect rune but has somehow done it without the tools?” He says irritably clearly starting to get annoyed at me.

“What tools? It wasn’t even hard I just pictured it and it worked.” I ask more curious than angry at this point.

Upon hearing my words, he stares at me with squinted eyes for a few seconds.

“Show me.” He states.

I nod my head eager to prove I’m not a liar, I pick up my pen and think of the rune word ‘Light’ which I find a lot easier to picture now than my previous attempts.

With my intent the rune flared to life in front of me in the familiar dark azure blue.

The class remained relatively silent with the exemption of the sound of Aran’s chair being flung away from him as he abruptly stood up.

My focus was uninterrupted and the rune shrunk to a miniscule size and flew toward the pen.

After the process was complete the class was silent.

“Impossible…..”