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 so 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 beco 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 seed to be growing in potency every ti he drew breath. He hoped the aurora would last for a long while this ti. Sotis 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 ant for storage. Perhaps the ancients had kept the tools they used for so 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 erged 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 seed to take exception to Kalens work.
He was relieved to see it wasnt too bad this ti. A recent storm had washed away so 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 tis, when he couldnt work very effectively because of the auroras absence, Kalen read and read. He practiced shaping his internal magic, and he ca 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 so 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 thod 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 workedsothing 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 sothing.
Most interestingly, the glow lasted for around nine days or until the coin was flipped, whichever ca first.
Kalen thought this must an the coin had so 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 seed like an absurd percentage since hed nearly morized a basic runic dictionary.
Maybe Tomas Orellens father had a much bigger dictionary than Kalen. Or hed made up so of these runes on his own. At the very least, he must have possessed titanic ntal 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 sothing 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 environntal components like the ti, date, and thod 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 ti over the past months carving these, making them the sa size as the coin. Each one had a different rune circle etched into the surface, all of them inford by the symbols and patterns on the coin but much, much simpler.
To set the enchantnts in place, practitioners relied on sothing 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 sa ti 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.
Mostly, nothing happened.
One coin split down the center, and Kalen set it aside, making a note in his grimoire to figure out why.
He was nearing the end of his wooden coin supply and his patience when sothing finally happened. The coin he was trying to imbue turned strange in his hand almost as soon as he started pushing his magic into it. He couldnt tell what exactly hed done to the wooden disc, since it looked exactly the sa, but he sensed an enchantnt settling in place. It felt like a tickle in his chest.
It wasnt going to hold raw mana for him to use later, but perhaps this was a success of a different kind!
Excited, Kalen stayed up for hours, trying to figure out what was different about this coin compared to all the others. He tapped it on the rock and flipped it and subrged it in water. He tasted it and held it to catch the light of the full moon and spun it like a top. He dribbled a minuscule drop of ink on it.
He was right on the verge of setting the coin on fire to see if hed sohow rendered the wood immune to flas, when he realized what the new enchantnt actually did.
After yet another experintal flip, the coin landed on top of one of its discarded fellows. And it stuck.
Surprised, Kalen lay down on his stomach and prodded the two bonded coins curiously. They didnt fall apart from each other. But when he dug his thumbnail between them, he could separate them easily enough.
He had made so kind of weak wooden magnet.
Well, that wasweird.
And good!
Kalen had never heard of an enchantnt like this, but any new magic was good. It wasnt even one of the harder patterns hed designed for this experint. Maybe he could improve on it and strengthen the hold. Or maybe hed find so wonderful use for even the weak version.
Wood that stuck to other wood with no need for nails or glue had to be useful in so way. He lay in his bedroll, writing idea after idea in his grimoire until sleep finally took him.
#
The next morning, Kalen woke to a world full of magic.
The aurora was overhead, shining as bright as hed ever seen it even in full daylight. It was a perfect day for practicing.
Thrilled, he ate a boiled egg from his pack and reached for his favorite book.
Cantripy of the Sorcerer Brou was a thin volu, and it was surprisingly lacking in explanations for the spells contained inside. Even the introduction was only a sentence from Brou that said, These cantrips being the proof of the fullness of mine mastery, I offer them up as an edification for those who remain behind in this anemic world.
Kalen wished Brou was inclined to explain himself better. But the cantrips themselves were wonderful spells.
There were forty-seven of them. Each one filled two pages of the book. On one page was the spell chant with its rhythmic guide. These were short poems or songs of varying length that had to be recited in a very precise way. On the opposite page was the mana pattern that went along with the chant.
The pattern was ford internally by directing the flow of your mana, and it had to be created simultaneously with the chant. Certain points had to fall into place in ti with certain syllables. The pattern and the chant together ford a complete cantrip.
It was easy enough to understand.
More importantly, for Kalens particular needs, most of Brous mana patterns werent too complicated.
He turned to a page he had marked with a dry leaf and eyed the pattern, studying it carefully once more even though hed been practicing it for weeks. In his typical fashion, Brous description of this cantrip was brief: For the weakening of tal.
Strengthening tal would have been better, in Kalens opinion, but this sounded interesting enough. The real reason hed chosen this one was that the internal pattern only had twelve critical intersections. Which ant it should be doable, even if the accompanying chant was one of the more elaborate ones.
It had taken Kalen a long ti to realize that sothing was wrong with his magical pathways. One of the first things a practitioner was supposed to learn was the map of their own internal magic. Everyone had a unique mana flow. Studying it was supposed to help you figure out your natural affinity if you didnt have access to a master who could assess it for you, and morizing its layout would make your spellwork cleaner and more effective.
One cannot shape that which one does not comprehend, Basic Magical Practices said.
So Kalen had dutifully tried to comprehend himself.
Only, his magic didnt feel anything like the example diagrams hed seen in various texts. He was supposed to have clean and clear imaginary lines of power running through his body. It should be like a slender tree with well-defined branches. Or even the whorl pattern on a fancy carpet.
It had taken Kalen weeks of feeling around inside himself to determine his overall magical shape. And that shape looked like what might happen if the pigs got into Aunt Jaynes basket of yarn.
For a long ti, he assud it was because he was a beginner. Perhaps a practitioners magic beca more orderly as they learned. Annoyingly, Nanu hadnt corrected this misconception when he first presented it to her. She thought that Kalen was just oversensitive to his own minor magical fluctuations and that hed eventually sort it out.
But there was no sorting to be done. Kalens magic really was a tangled monstrosity. And neither of them had a single guess as to why.
The result was that he had a lot of trouble reshaping his magic to form clean internal patterns. He had a hard ti choosing which of his threads of power to tweak, and when he finally chose so to work with, several others inevitably ca with them. It almost felt like trying to work with a single strand of cobweb inside a shed that was cramd full of them.
But sufficient practice eventually yielded results with the more basic patterns, and Kalen at least had plenty of ti 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 perford by any type of practitioner, but it stood to reason that soone 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 so clue as to what type of magic suited him best.
If only there had been one that had sothing to do with spatial magic
Well, no use in dwelling on such things. For the weakening of tal was probably a cantrip that worked best for people with an earth magic affinity, and that was sothing 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 ti!
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 rhyd all the way through because it was easier to rember 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 mont 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 shalessly, 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 sa as if soone 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 sa.
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.
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