Chapter 16: Novice

Chapter 16: Novice

Novice

(Part One)

The next afternoon, Kalen hugged his mother goodbye and promised that he wouldnt be eaten by hemarwolves while he was away from home. Not that there were any wolves on this side of the islands main mountain range, but the promise was required every time he left.

Shelba waved to him as he set out, and he waved back until the fir trees hid them from each others view. Kalen walked a bit farther, just to be completely sure he was out of sight, then he turned and headed in a new direction.

He took a path he knew would lead him down to the sea while keeping him out of sight of the village. It added more than an hour of walking to his trip, but it was worth it for the privacy. He scrambled down a narrow and steep pebbly slope toward the waters edge, relieved to see that the ocean was calm today.

Halfway down, he picked up a flat reddish stone. Its unusual color always made it easy to find, and when Kalen flipped it over, he saw the marks hed drawn on it during previous trips. It was satisfying to have such a visible record of progress. Even if the progress wasnt in a type of magic he was particularly interested in.

After removing a small sandglass from his pack, he lay it safely away from the lapping edge of the sea. Then, he took off his clothes. The long walk he had ahead of him later would be miserable if he got them wet here.

He glanced upward. Though the aurora hadnt appeared in its full glory, there were a few thin streaks in the sky overhead, just barely visible to his eyes. The atmospheric mana had already begun to thicken nicely, and he had plenty to work with for this spell.

Not a spell, he reminded himself. A thrawning.

He had a bad habit of thinking of every magical working as a spell. But that was technically incorrect. From his reading, he knew other practitioners were particular about their definitions. The basic working of body magic was called a thrawning.

Despite Kalens rejection of the topic, Nanu had been unable to resist supplying him with a pair of body magic scrolls shed found that contained instructions for a single, low magician-level thrawning.

Hed received the scrolls two years ago, back when he'd still foolishly thought he might manage to cobble together something like a real novice practitioner's curriculum in his chosen art. He'd been so disappointed that they werent on enchanting. But in hindsight, he was forced to admit that Nanu had chosen wisely.

It was a thrawning that allowed the user to hold their breath underwater for an extended period of time.

He dropped the heavy rock and his attempts to hold the magic in place at the same time and kicked off the bottom, shooting toward the surface.

He splashed toward the shore and the sandglass as quickly as he could. To his surprise and delight the small glass was nearly empty. It was a quarter hour glass, and even accounting for some inherent inaccuracies in his process, Kalen was sure he must have been below the surface for ten minutes. That was nearing the very limits of this particular thrawning!

Now if he could just find the body magic scrolls that described the next advancement in breath holding, he could

Stupid, he chided himself as he crouched shivering at the waters edge. You always do this.

Kalen would likely never lay eyes on those scrolls. Just like he would probably never find the second volume of Basic Magical Practices of the Leflayr Family. Or any text from the renowned Jerune House Enchanting set, which he had wanted ever since he read about it in a much less-revered enchanting scroll.

The educational texts that belonged to the great practitioner families werent widely distributed. From what Kalen understood, finding a copy here and there of the beginner level texts wasnt terribly difficult on the continent. But even there, finding a complete set of even magician level works was hard.

On Hemarland, he would be lucky to get his hands on anything from one of the great families. He had a feeling that what he did have access to was only available because it was considered badly out of date.

Most of what could be found and afforded on the island were texts from independent practitioners, or things like biographies and histories and encyclopedias. Or oddities. Like Cantripy of the Sorcerer Brou.

A text written by a sorcerereven a book that was a hundred years oldwould normally be too expensive for Kalens family, but for some reason, cantrips were unpopular on the continent. Nanu said her old master had never mentioned them, and Brou offered no explanation for their obscurity or his own use of them.

Kalens education was necessarily made up of such oddities. He tried not to worry about it, but he did sometimes wonder if he was somehow destroying his own future as a practitioner. He gathered from his reading that there was a real need for proper foundational training in magic and a gradual building on top of that foundation.

What he had was more like a teetering perch atop half of the Leflayr familys foundational fire magic text, and from that perch, he just randomly leaped in whatever direction was opened to him.

And that was with no consideration at all for what his natural magical affinity might be.

Nanu seemed to think it wasnt that important for Kalen to know, since it wouldnt change much about the book acquisition problem. But he did want to know.

And the auroras appearance marked another chance to figure it out.