The Enchanter (Journals of Evander Tailor Book 1), page 28
“How much Aura did that take you?” Travis asked.
“Almost a quarter of it,” I said, a bit despondent. What good was a weapon that I was too weak to power? I’d already run into that issue with my flame orb wand, and I’d abandoned it because it was unusable.
He stroked his chin.
“Sorcerer, how much power did you put into the spell?”
“Barely any at all?” she said. “I mean, maybe a fiftieth of what I could manage before I was tapped out?”
Travis nodded.
“That was my worry. That spell may be useful if you were as powerful as a Sorcerer, but that’s something that Witches…”
He kept speaking, but I didn’t really hear anything that he said. In the back of my head, Oracle sent me a rapid series of images. I grinned and held up a hand to cut off Travis’ speech.
“Sarai, can you call up that spell again?”
With a shrug, she conjured the spell once more. When I pumped Aura into the focus item this time, I changed my tactic. This time, rather than attempting to rip the foci in half, I reached the Aura tentacle out, aiming for one part of the spell in particular. The stabilizing lines.
Every spell had some sort of stabilizing line, and as I’d discovered with Victoria’s help, I was particularly adept at noticing runes and lines in spellcraft.
As soon as I was done ripping the stabilizing circle that surrounded her spell, I stopped powering the foci. Sarai’s Aura began to drain. It was slow, but with my third sight, I could see a steady drain of Aura as she had to pour more and more into the force Spear to keep it prepped, the broken lines drizzling Aura out and dissipating it into the world around us. A few moments later, she dissolved the spear.
“What was that?”
Travis had stood from his chair without me noticing, and he strode over to examine us.
“What did you do?” he demanded with the voice of a judge and an executioner rolled into one.
“Oracle,” I said, then hastened to explain at Travis’s confused and slightly annoyed look.
“My familiar. He pointed out that we didn’t have to destroy the spell. You’re right. I can’t match a Sorcerer blow for blow in power. So I ripped a hole in the stabilizing line.”
Sarai grinned like a maniac.
“So that’s what you did! I felt something happen, then my Aura started to drain as if I was crafting the spell, but I knew I had formed the spell right.”
“How much power did it take?” Travis asked, and I thought I detected a note of excitement in his voice.
“Maybe a twentieth of mine? Still not something that I would wanna go blow for blow against a Sorcerer with, but for a spell that they’re holding?”
His eyes widened slightly as he understood where my line of logic was headed.
“That would be useful against any mage who took to the air, or who used spells on their body to enhance themselves or a weapon. They almost certainly would struggle to repair the spell without being able to see what exactly was wrong, so they’d need to end the spell and recast it. Even if they can adapt on the fly, it will distract them.”
“It isn’t perfect. I was hoping to be able to shred oncoming lightning or fire with an effort of will, but,” I said, trembling with excitement, “this isn’t bad either.”
“Your eighth test was designed to push you out of your comfort zone. Was this your idea of doing that?”
I nodded and felt a ball of awkwardness settle in my stomach.
“Yes, I had actually planned to turn it in for the test.”
He nodded and slowly walked back to his chair.
“You shouldn’t endanger yourself and others to get the power that you want, but this is a unique item, and it is very different from your comfort area of light and fire. I suppose I should count it. You pushed yourself more than you should have.”
“So I can get a spot studying artifacts, then?”
“Yes. But for now, we have more testing to do.”
Travis had Sarai and me run through several other experiments. He had me try to rip out runes, which did decrease the power of the attack but took a fair amount of power to manage. He had me try to cut apart the magic once it was released but to no avail.
He had me attempt to destroy Sarai’s rune bond, promising Sarai that he would personally restore it if I managed to succeed, but it drained me dry to even try to touch the rune bond.
He held us through all of Enchanting and Novice Witchcraft, then released Sarai. We went over the spell I had made a dozen times again, and then when lunch rolled around, I was finally let out as well. I suspected that I was released just as much due to Travis’s own hunger as anything else.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Repercussions
I felt sick as I walked into the dining hall. I hadn’t seen Lyn since the night before, and I didn’t know how she’d be taking it. When I sat down, I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw she was still sitting at the table with Osheen, Sarai, and Victoria.
“Lyn,” I started, but I was cut off when she raised a hand.
“Don’t. Just. Leave it. Let’s forget that it happened.”
I didn’t think that would be really possible, but I couldn’t say that I wasn’t wanting to do the same thing. Victoria gave me a confused look, so I gave her a version of the truth, leaning in to whisper it to her.
“I went out last night to gather components from the woods, but we got attacked. Sarai overextended herself, and Lyn…”
Victoria nodded and leaned back as I did. Lunch passed awkwardly. I was able to make idle chat with Victoria, Osheen, and Sarai, but anytime that the conversation started to include Lyn, she would pull away from all of us, including even Sarai.
She was retreating from her perceived weak spots, and she knew that Sarai was making her dependent. I felt awful, but I didn’t know what to do, so I tried to respect her wishes by giving her distance.
Just as Seth asked, when it came time for combat class, I met him in the ring. He cracked his knuckles and grinned, and Sarai gave me a thumbs-up from the sidelines while Osheen looked concerned.
To my third eye, I could clearly see what I had mistaken for a trio of Druidic bonds the night before. Two definitely were Druid bonds. One was the color of ice, and the other glowed a fainter pink. But what I had thought was a blue one was something else, some sort of spirit that was woven into his soul. Looking at it, it almost looked like a bear.
“Ready?” Seth called. I swallowed and nodded.
Instantly, Aura poured into Seth from the ice-colored familiar bond. I saw his muscles bulge, and the spiritual image of a Yeti surrounded him, flowing out of the familiar mark on his chest. The temperature dropped, and he leapt at me.
I poured Aura into my glove and the tentacle shot out. I tried to aim it at his hand and slice through the power that he was calling from his familiar, but the otherworldly magic proved too stubborn—it was like trying to saw through wood with a rusty saw. I had lost the initiative, and Seth’s fist flashed as I was tossed out of the ring. Before the pain could even register, the pink bond began to glow, and he grew a set of pink gossamer fairy wings in my third eye. Pink power swirled underneath me. It didn’t feel like the wind was slowing my fall so much as my weight itself lessened. To my surprise, there was barely any real force when I hit the ground. I stood up and Seth shook his head.
“You’ll need to be faster if you wanna deal with any of the battlemages in the tournament.”
My cheeks burned with embarrassment, but I said nothing. Instead, I whipped out the tentacle again. This time, instead of aiming for the power that his familiar was lending him, I cut one of the lines that stabilized his connection to it. The creature’s power may be otherworldly, but it still had to flow through the connection into our world.
I wouldn’t be able to break the genuine bond to the familiar. In fact, the moment he stopped calling the Yeti’s power, the runes would vanish. It wasn’t dissimilar from any other spell in that regard. But for the purposes of the fight? I hoped it would be enough.
He was so much more powerful that it drained a sizeable chunk of my Aura to even break a few lines of the spell, but I still did it. I stepped back into the ring and nodded. Behind me, Sarai let out a laughing whoop.
This time when Seth charged me, I wasn’t focused on my glove. I threw myself to the side and lifted my knife. I poured power into the foci, barely managing to activate the blade before his fist landed.
I was just able to slide out of the way as Seth blinked rapidly to try and clear his eyes. I drew upon the remainder of my Aura. I twisted it into a glyph and released the Impetus spell at the back of his knee with a shout.
The bolt of force struck…and did nothing. Even with his power leaking, he still had enough Aura to shrug off the blow by calling on the Yeti’s toughness. A moment later, his blow caught me in the side and propelled me out of the ring again. Seth’s magic caught me, and he nodded.
I went three more rounds with him before he moved on to other students, but it was fruitless. I had wasted my flash spell, and while I had managed to force him to deplete his Aura noticeably by the final round, my own Aura was all but empty.
As I was leaving the class, however, Sarai caught up with me. I was a bit surprised—if anyone had caught up with me, I would have expected it to be Osheen.
“You did well!” she said, though I was sure she was just saying that to spare my feelings. I shrugged.
“No, seriously. If you had a way to hide yourself, tear apart the defensive spells of your target, and then stagger them and slit their throat while they’re blinded…”
“You and Seth have both talked about me becoming an assassin,” I said, a little blasé about it.
“Because you could be.”
At the word assassin, I felt a tickle in the back of my head. I’d looked at a spell in the Practical Guide that was about assassination. I hadn’t planned to be an assassin, and I didn’t want to be one, really, but I could fight like one. It may be seen as cowardly, but…it’d keep me alive.
The rest of my classes went by normally enough, but once I had finished my training with Tara, I headed down to the classroom that I had Novice Witchcraft in. I wasn’t sure that I would find her there, but the hall had several different alchemical labs. It took me a few minutes of peeking in different doors, but I eventually spotted Wisteria in a far more advanced lab, looking over some sort of complex glass tube that twisted around and dripped into a bottle. I knocked on the door, and a few moments later, she walked over.
“Ah, Evan. I admit, I didn’t expect to see you today once the last classes finished up. What are you doing here so late?”
“I have tutoring with Tara after my class. I just got out. I need to do fifty hours of work for you as my punishment.”
“That was a stupid move of you. All I asked was that you tell me.”
“I know,” I said, a hint of shame in my voice, “and I’m sorry.”
“Well, let’s get you to work then.”
It was hard work. Since I wasn’t a skilled alchemist, most of what she had me doing was brute force work that didn’t need skill like scrubbing cauldrons. On occasion though, she had me use my third eye to examine components, comparing the relative magical strength. All in all, I worked for about two hours before she called it a night. That became my new routine—classes in the day, then extra studying with Tara, then working for Wisteria, and then finally heading back to my bedroom to spend a bit of time with Osheen before we both collapsed into bed.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The First Cloak
It was only about a week and a half later, with the final exams drawing closer, that my urgency to produce a powerful piece of magic grew to the point that I brought it up with Osheen.
“Hey, listen…”
Osheen’s face went pale, his olive skin lightening with worry. That made it even harder to say what I had to say, but I forced myself to keep going.
“I’ve asked a lot of you recently, and I’m really sorry, but I need to purchase some components for an artifact, and I’m almost certain that some of them are going to be restricted behind the need for a license. Could I get you to go shopping with me for them?”
Osheen visibly relaxed and pulled me in a hug.
“Of course. I promised I would. What is it that you need, though?”
I paced over to my small desk and picked up the Practical Guide, consulting the spell description.
“Let’s see… Six ounces of hallucinogenic mushrooms—the stronger the better, ideally something like Galerina mushrooms. Twelve ounces of ink from a squid or octopus. Three ounces of white phosphorus. One ounce of Hidebehind spittle or blood. And lastly, a bottle with ‘less than air’ inside of it, but I’m not exactly sure what that means, so…”
I shrugged nonchalantly, trying to play off how I was annoyed that I didn’t know how something could be less than air, and continued, “I know I can probably purchase that, the storage crystals, and the ink on my own. But I don’t think the mushrooms, phosphorus, or Hidebehind spittle are going to be too easy to pick up without a license.”
I was actually purchasing three times what the spell needed, but I figured that it would be best to give myself a bit of a safety net. Each charge of the spell lasted for three minutes, so ideally, I’d have nine minutes. But, if I messed up, I’d still have either six or three minutes.
I wished I could have purchased more, but three times the spell’s requirement was already stretching my budget.
“What,” Osheen asked, a strange look on his face, “in the name of the Fallen Void kind of spell are you cooking up there?”
I started to answer but then closed my mouth. I took a moment and answered.
“It’s safe. Unless I mess it up, but then all magic is dangerous. If you messed up a fire spell, it’d blow up and could kill you.”
“I’m also not trying to build Journeyman level spells yet,” he countered, “and while I may not be a Witch, I’m pretty sure that you could kill someone with components like that. Hell, my aunt…”
He trailed off, and I didn’t press him for details, but I still felt I should defend myself.
“It’s a powerful spell, yes, but it has everything I need to cast it. And it’s an enchantment. I don’t know how to go about cursing someone or anything like that. It’s a powerful veiling spell. It’s a bit like what you could do if you had both a mind and shadow rune bond.”
I was fairly sure that it also held components for light, sound, and something else that I didn’t understand. It was close to the mind rune, but it wasn’t quite the same, and I hadn’t had time to run through the library with a divination spell. The spell’s description was clear, so I wasn’t too worried about the bits I didn’t understand.
“Alright,” Osheen relented, “just be careful.”
“I will be,” I said.
We sat on the couch together in a comfortable silence then. I was working on sewing a universal anchor into the cloak that Aldvarri had given me months ago.
“So, what are finals like?” I asked after an hour or so of silence.
“Changes from year to year. From what I understand, each professor calls you in for a meeting to discuss where you’re going next year and what rank you’ve managed to reach, then they score you. Those scores account for seventy points out of a hundred of your overall grades, and the combat at the end makes up for the other thirty points. There are three rounds.”
He held up three fingers and ticked them down as he continued his explanations.
“If you’re out on the first one, you can only make up to five points to add to your score, and you get sent into a loser’s bracket to try and make up some of the rest, but it’s never as many points as the real competition, and the loser’s bracket doesn’t give prizes. The second round can score up to ten more points, and if you pass it and are part of the quarter of the class to enter the third round, then the Archmage in charge allows you to pick something from their private vaults—enchanted items, rare potions, powerful familiar summoning scrolls, and even just things worth a lot of money. They’re all at least Adept-level quality. The third round can score you up to fifteen more points, for a total of thirty, depending on where you place. Those who are in the top three people standing are granted an audience with the Archmage and allowed to ask for a boon. The Archmage has to grant them something along those lines, though they can provide a counteroffer. In years where commoners win, they usually ask for status. Usually, if nobility wins, they forge a link between the Archmage who is presiding over the combat and their own house.”
I sucked in a breath.
“And this year, the king is presiding over the combat final. Whoever gets into the top three will get an audience with him. That’s got to be rare…”
“It is,” Osheen confirmed grimly. “My father is the head of the Treasury, and I’ve seen the king a total of three times. All of them on business, and he never paid me any mind. To be honest, I’m shocked he’s here. He’s normally up near the border of Zheren, acting as a check on their Archmages.”
“He’s that powerful?” I asked, and Osheen made a so-so gesture.
“He’s extremely powerful, more so than my father or Sarai’s mother. The only Archmage with more power would be Eira Talik. I’ve mentioned her before, I believe.”
I nodded, and he continued. “Well, Zheren only has three Archmages, but they have a lot more ordinary mages of Adept and Journeyman ranks. They can’t commit all their Archmages to the border any more than we can. So, normally, they keep one of theirs there. The king is there to match him, and we keep another Archmage to match their group of normal mages, alongside our forces.”
“Why would he come here, then? Especially if it’s with another Archmage? Two Archmages away from the border?”
“He probably has Eira there to take his place and someone else to assist her. But it does leave us vulnerable…”
“We’re about to go to war with Zheren,” I stated flatly. It was the only solution that I could come up with. He needed soldiers for the war, so he was going to push the people in Yesgol to work as hard as possible. It was smart. Those who failed out and were drafted would be stronger than normal, and those who survived could be pushed to higher skill in magic faster and thus graduate faster and enter the military. I wouldn’t be surprised if he provided the prizes and incentives for the next few years as well.
