B2 – Chapter 27: Pirates!

The next few days at sea passed much as the first had – Tristan spent time practicing and reinforcing his mastery of First Order spells, to the point where all of them that he knew of were easy to complete.

He had offered to spar with some bored Pathfinders, and using some wooden spurs of spare parts in the cargo area of the vessel, they were able to practice without fear of major injury – just some minor bruises.

This gave him the chance to really focus on utilizing both spells and weapon combat; well, the combat-oriented spells such as Scales of Our Foe and Fireball. And the same went for the ice elementalism spells of the Second Order – he wanted those mastered before moving onto other spell types. Blending essence-weaving and combat, what The Matriarch had taught him was called spellweaving by the Elves of old.

He did not actually release the spells, only performing the spell phrases and gestures mid-combat, then letting the essence fade, and reverse-spinning his essence crucible to pull back the energy. It was not perfect recapture of the expended essence – he estimated maybe a third of it was lost when a spell was cancelled.

Felicity had joined the Pathfinders in their sparring – swapping her paw-claws to small hammers of tough chitin that would bruise just like the wood. She was having fun being a nuisance during fights, bonking Tristan on the head to simulate him being attacked by a flying opponent whilst he tried to focus on fighting his sparring partners.

The Pathfinders all had varying combat skills. The older ones seemed more experienced, and Tristan found them to be more of a challenge. Not to the level of The Matriarch going at her hardest, but close to when she held back. Tristan was pressed to score any counter strikes. William was not a skilled combatant, and Tristan trounced him several times over – but the young man showed gumption and constantly threw himself back into the small, roped off square on the center of the largest deck.

Obadai was spending some time with the now-less-seasick Shandra and began teaching her some basic essence-weaving principles. She spent a lot of time meditating and trying to get ‘into’ her inner world. But she never seemed to get there. The young woman was grumbling consistently at her lack of progress, but Tristan gave her a few brief words of encouragement which seemed to buoy her up just a little bit.

Obadai confirmed Tristan’s theory on loss of essence as he observed Tristan’s practice bouts. Tristan had just wrapped up a round when Obadai commented on it. “When an essence-weaver commits essence to a spell as you have been doing, then lets it fade, they can do as you have been doing by reverse-spinning their crucible to get the essence back. There is approximately a twenty-five percent loss in essence when this is done.”

Tristan nodded, then looked over at the still unable to properly meditate Shandra. “I don’t understand why she struggles so much.”

“She has an essence crucible of high quality, but no essence channels. Even meditating and spinning her crucible is causing her minor pain. And getting to that point of deep meditation where you enter your inner world is more difficult with outside influences.”

Tristan frowned, “How come I found it so easy? I can do it within seconds.”

Obadai leaned back against the railing as he observed Shandra, sitting on a barrel, with her eyebrows furrowed. “Essence crucibles have quality to them. Almost like a rarity, like how precious metals have varying rarity.” He hiked a thumb at himself, “I have the second rarest.”

“Explain more,” Tristan replied as he picked up a water flask that the Pathfinders were passing around in between sparring. “Especially what different rarities actually does to one’s ability to essence-weave.”

“Well, I mentioned precious metals because the naming schema is the same. Copper is the worst of the bunch, followed by silver, then electrum, then gold, and lastly platinum – which doesn’t exist in coinage since it is so rare. Realm Protectors, supposedly, have a wholly different rank that has been referred to by scholars as a ‘divine’ crucible.” He cleared his throat, and muttered quietly, “Shandra there has a silver crucible.”

Tristan glanced at her, “How can you tell?”

“Divination. I’ve checked yours as well. Platinum. Even rarity than my own.” He cracked a rueful smile, “You just got a lot of luck in your life, eh?”

Tristan shook his head and passed the water off to William, who joined them at the rail as he finished a practice bout. “I didn’t have a lot of luck,” Tristan replied. “Or rather, I never felt lucky. Circumstances led to me gaining what I have.”

William clicked his tongue after drinking from the flask, “I would hate to be a half-breed or non-Human – no offense. It just seems so…difficult, you know? Humans are tolerated pretty much everywhere – regardless of beliefs or appearance.”

“Hence why Bhant is a place I detest,” Obadai replied.

“Heck, even essence-weavers – you lot are so rare,” William continued. “I’ve only met maybe twenty in my life – you three included.”

Obadai replied, “There is approximately one essence-weaver per every thousand people. Anyone can obtain an essence crucible from consuming essence in a raw form – mostly through essence elixirs. But becoming trained? A whole different matter.” He looked back to Tristan, “You also wanted to know what differing rarities of crucibles does. Well, the easiest way to put it is the rarer the crucible, the faster it naturally regenerates essence.”

Tristan looked over at Shandra again, “So she could work her way up to having enough essence capacity for over Tenth Order spells, but just would have to wait longer between using them?”

“Correct.”

William raised his hand, “These crucible things you’re talking about – could you ever increase the rarity thing?”

Obadai nodded, “If you harvest enough crucibles of other essence-weavers. Against people it is heavily frowned upon and will earn a death sentence in most countries if the deed is found out. But other creatures who are natural born with a crucible? Fair game.”

Stolen novel; please report.

“Like the demon lord I killed,” Tristan stated. “It had a crucible despite not using any spells against me.”

“Correct,” Obadai replied. “Oh, one more thing. Lower quality crucibles are…tighter, if that makes sense? Picture you trying to enter your inner world through meditation. For you, Tristan, your platinum-quality crucible would be like this-” Obadai held his arms in a large loop over his head. Then, he slowly brought them in on each other, making the ring smaller. “Mine is like this.” He put his arms down and held up his fingers in a circle, “This is what the lowest rarity would be in comparison.”

“I can get through my tunnel more easily,” Tristan clarified. “Which is why it is so easy for me to get into my inner world through meditation…but Shandra is struggling because the space is so tight.”