Chapter 17: Novice, Pt. 2

Chapter 17: Novice, Pt. 2

Novice (Pt. 2)

The rock was a four hour long walk from the village, down a path so rough it was only a little more obvious than the trails made by the local wildlife.

The enormous stone lay in the middle of the deep forest, surrounded by trees up to its very edge. It was seventy feet tall at its highest point. Its sides were smooth, and its top was gently rounded but still flat enough to stand atop comfortably.

It had been a sacred place in the distant past, and some long-dead islanders had carved narrow stairs into one of its faces. Nanu said weddings and naming ceremonies had still been conducted there when she was a girl. Now, it received only the occasional curious visitor, and it was no longer used regularly by anyone.

Except for Kalen.

Most of his fellow villagers didnt mind seeing a bit of magic every now and then, but none of them were comfortable seeing a lot of it. So it had become necessary for him to practice in private.

Nanu had been a little horrified when, six months ago, shed found Kalen painting spell circles all over the top of the rock. But so far, nobody had noticed them. Or those whod noticed them hadnt cared enough to complain.

You might as well be my rock now, Kalen told the stone cheerfully as he clambered up the steep stairs to the top.

He was in a good mood. The atmospheric mana seemed to be growing in potency every time he drew breath. He hoped the aurora would last for a long while this time. Sometimes it stayed for a week or more. Thanks to his thorough planning, Kalen could accomplish much in a week.

At the apex of the stairs, just before one reached the top of the stone, there was a carved nook. It was as long as Kalen was tall, and it was deep enough for him to fit himself inside of it. The space was clearly meant for storage. Perhaps the ancients had kept the tools they used for some rite here. Kalen kept a bedroll and a few other supplies inside.

He tucked his pack in beside the bedding and removed a jar of water and a large cloth. Grunting with the weight of the jar, he teetered up the final few steps and emerged on top of his domain.

Kalen had been surprised to learn that the main problem with painting your magic circles outside on top of a giant rock was not sun or water damage ruining them. Magepaint was made of sturdier stuff than that. Nothe problem was bird droppings.

Magical diagrams were supposed to be clean and unbroken. But the islands birds seemed to take exception to Kalens work.

He was relieved to see it wasnt too bad this time. A recent storm had washed away some of the usual damage. But there was still an afternoons worth of cleaning ahead of him if he wanted to get all of the circles back in functional condition.

He set to the task with a will, and by evening, he was sweaty, tired, and ready to practice.

He sat cross-legged at the edge of the largest circle, reading through his grimoire by light of a sun crystal. Nanu said it wasnt proper to call the journal a grimoire when it was really just an optimistic to-do list, but Kalen ignored her. He had so few of the tools a practitioner needed that he wouldnt be denied this one, even if it was make-believe.

In the between times, when he couldnt work very effectively because of the auroras absence, Kalen read and read. He practiced shaping his internal magic, and he came up with ideas for things to try when he finally had access to enough power. The best of these ideas were written in his grimoire.

As usual, he started with enchanting.

Ages ago, he had read a tantalizing passage that indicated some practitioners on the continent carried enchanted mana storage devices with them. Kalen would have given up several of his fingers to have one. Or even just a method of producing one.

What he had instead was a vague notion that such things involved esoteric ingredients and secret runic patterns. And, of course, he had his coin.

Assuming Tomas Orellen wasnt mad and it really workedsomething that was more or less impossible to determine for surethe coin was the most valuable magical item Kalen possessed. It still glowed when he imbued it with a sufficient amount of mana, so he thought it must be doing something.

Most interestingly, the glow lasted for around nine days or until the coin was flipped, whichever came first.

Kalen thought this must mean the coin had some limited raw mana storage ability. And the secret of it was surely contained in the concentric runic circles inscribed into the gold.

That was the theory at least. Kalen couldnt confirm it because hed yet to determine which set of symbols influenced mana storage. Nine-tenths of the markings were utterly unfamiliar, which seemed like an absurd percentage since hed nearly memorized a basic runic dictionary.

Maybe Tomas Orellens father had a much bigger dictionary than Kalen. Or hed made up some of these runes on his own. At the very least, he must have possessed titanic mental focus to be able to pull off such a complex working.

In enchantingas in many other types of magicevery little detail mattered. The aspect that influenced the coins mana storage might be six runes placed side by side, or it might be sixteen different ones spaced all over the coin. It might have something to do with the distance between the correct symbols or the interaction between certain ones and the material the coin was made of. In the worst case scenario, it would be all of the above, plus environmental components like the time, date, and method the creator had used when they were enchanting the coin.

If it was that kind of working, then Kalen figured he could study it his whole life and still never find the answer.

So he had to operate on the assumption that it was an easier solution. He pulled a pouch full of wooden discs out of his bag. Hed spent a great deal of his free time over the past months carving these, making them the same size as the coin. Each one had a different rune circle etched into the surface, all of them informed by the symbols and patterns on the coin but much, much simpler.

To set the enchantments in place, practitioners relied on something called magical sympathies. They had to shape their internal magic into the appropriate patterns and hold it that way while performing a permanent imbue on the object that was their target.

Kalen had no trouble with the sort of permanent imbue that worked on wood. But holding the right internal patterns at the same time wasproblematic to say the least.

So he had to keep it much more basic than he would have liked.

He went through the wooden coins one by one, pulling large amounts of magic in, shaping it as best he could, and forcing it out into the coins.

But sufficient practice eventually yielded results with the more basic patterns, and Kalen at least had plenty of time for that. He couldnt empower the cantrips fully when the aurora was absent, but he could still shape his own pathways. So, he studied and he waited, and when the sky lit up, he was always ready.

Cantrips could be performed by any type of practitioner, but it stood to reason that someone whose affinity matched up with the cantrips sphere of magical influence would see greater results. One day, Kalen hoped he would complete one and discover it felt different from all the others. If so, that would give him some clue as to what type of magic suited him best.

If only there had been one that had something to do with spatial magic

Well, no use in dwelling on such things. For the weakening of metal was probably a cantrip that worked best for people with an earth magic affinity, and that was something to try at least.

He sat in a comfortable dip in the rock, breathing deeply to focus himself.

Brou never specified how much magic a practitioner should use to empower his cantrips. But Kalen had found they needed rather a lotfar more than any of the other workings hed tried. He wasnt sure why, but he was grateful for it. He had terrible difficulties shaping magic, but he had no trouble at all with this part. And it was fun.

He opened himself up, and power saturated his wildly scrambled pathways. He let it fill him to the brim.

He held a single needle in his outstretched palm. Focusing on building the necessary pattern, he began the chant:

Be thou the handmaiden of time!

Rust to iron, as age to man.

Take and take and take.

At the rivers bottom the stone fades,

so fades this, too.

Break and break and break.

Break and break and break.

Break and break and BREAK.

It was fairly poetic to Kalens inexperienced ears, though he preferred the chants that rhymed all the way through because it was easier to remember which words had to be stressed.

At certain points in the chant, he sent jolts of mana into the pattern he was building, locking it in place, and at the end, on the last break, he emptied every bit of the magic hed drawn to himself into the casting.

Collapsing backward, more than a little dizzy, he took a moment to catch his breath. After a minute, he held the needle up to his face.

It hadnt changed visibly, but hed felt the cantrip working. Sitting up, he tried to bend the needle. At first, nothing happened, but after he increased the pressure, the slender piece of iron snapped neatly in two.

Whooping excitedly, Kalen leaped to his feet. He raced around the rock, celebrating shamelessly, accidentally kicking Cantripy of the Sorcerer Brou aside in the process. When hed worn himself out, he tucked the broken needle carefully into a small case so that he could show it to Nanu. Shed no doubt be out to visit him if he didn't reappear in the village for a few days.

Nanu couldnt perform any of the cantrips herself. She said she couldnt output enough magic in a single go for it, and she had no interest in learning a lot of silly phrases. But she was always willing to discuss them with Kalen at least.

He looked forward to surprising her. With the needle and the wood coin, he had already had more success with this aurora than he had with the past two!

Humming happily, Kalen bent down to pick up the book. He glanced at the page it had landed on, and his hand froze. It was the second to last cantrip, and it was one Kalen had long-since dismissed as too difficult. Unlike most of the others, the spell pattern for this one was fairly intricate. He doubted he could shape it without mistakes if he had a month to try.

But...how strange.

Viewed like this, upside down and from this odd angle, the pattern looked familiar. Kalen tilted his head this way and that, squinting and then widening his eyes, trying to see the diagram differently.

Its similar, isnt it? he thought. More elegant and sensible, but still

There was a particular snarl of Kalens internal magicone he always steered clear of because it was impossible to work withthat looked a little bit like the pattern on this page.

Well, it looked the same as if someone had taken the Sorcerer Brous lovely pattern, layered it with a few more, and then scrambled them aggressively.

That seems unlikely.

Really, if Kalen was being honest it wasnt even that the pattern looked particularly like this cantrips. It was more like it felt the same.

Confused by the odd sense of recognition, Kalen glanced at the description on top of the page. Of course, it was no more verbose than any of the others.

Atop the pattern, in Brous neat hand, it said only, For the stirring of air.