Chapter 20: Non-magical Trials

The scarred professor swung her book, almost like bringing down a sword, and a spell shot across the room. It only opened a cabinet at the side, but an ominous series of obelisks floated from it like instruments of doom. There were at least a dozen of them and they lined up along the side of the window.

Suria released half a sigh of relief. At least they wouldn’t be tested one at a time, as that would have been showy and time-consuming, not to mention humiliating if she was removed from the class. But she couldn’t relax, not when there was a very real possibility that she would wash out of the combat course. Would she be allowed to transfer to a different class? Even if she did, could she catch up after the term had already started?

“These devices will test your runic capacity,” the professor explained, “as well as make a record of a spell, which we can use to judge your skill. Cast the biggest spell you can, unless you’re really rather confident that it would cause damage. This room is warded against harm, so I suggest you be extremely sure of that risk before swaggering up to me.”

It looked like that warning put off a few students, while Suria was struggling with the opposite concern. She had increased her runic capacity to six before classes began, which had felt like a proud accomplishment before this point. Would any of the talismans she’d prepared be adequate?

While she worried, the other students formed into lines in front of the stone pillars and used them to cast a spell of their choice out the window over the forest. There was only one indication of what the pillars were detecting: small bars of light lit up along the side, apparently corresponding to the number of runes used.

It shocked her how many students were casting spells that used twelve runes, and based on the ones she saw, many were using the same star-like formation. Students who used a square with two augments – eight runes – were below average, which made her feel woefully inadequate. Even if the professor said that capacity wasn’t as important, Suria didn’t have the expertise or knowledge of inscriptions to overcome a gap like that, so she’d have to work even harder.

What should she cast? She had so little experience with fire that she was just as likely to blow herself up as make a good showing, and healing spells cast on nothing seemed like a poor choice. Just when she began to despair, she noticed that some of the other students used force or shielding spells, and the pillars seemed to record those just fine, which meant she had a choice.

She’d learned a shielding inscription back in Convocation Hall, and of course she’d made another talisman of it, because a little defense was better than nothing. But as Suria fished it out of her satchel, she realized that she’d left it at the base runic square because she hadn’t had the strength to do any larger than that.

Suddenly the line in front of her seemed too short, not too long. Suria fumbled with her stylus and realized that her hands were trembling a little. She bent down to stabilize the talisman on her knee and added two more runes for an enhancement inscription. After the lecture about precision and skill she was intensely critical of her work, but she resisted the urge to redo the glyph on another talisman. There weren’t many extras in her satchel and she was running out of time.

When it was her turn, all too soon, Suria took the pillar from the previous student and immediately struggled not to drop it. The stone was far heavier than it looked and oddly hot. Trying not to get distracted by all of that, Suria took a step closer to the edge and cast her shield spell. She maintained the sphere around herself for a few seconds until six lights appeared, then released it.

Not long after that, the remaining students were tested and the professor addressed the class again.

“Thank you for getting through this without any fuss or starting fights,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe the trouble we’ve had some years. Now, all of you are free to practice spellcraft while I go through your results individually. Be careful not to strike other students, and if anyone decides to become rivals and try to sabotage one another in class, I swear I will throw you out the window.”

The students split up across the full room as the lesson ended, which gave them plenty of space. Suria didn’t see anyone she knew, so she took a corner that seemed safe enough and began practicing with her fire talisman – not augmented, of course.

By willing a little mana through her glyph she could create a little candle of flame over her finger, though it tended to gutter out or flare up too much. She remembered how much she had struggled to control her first healing spells and this felt similar, though the consequences were potentially more dire. At least she discovered that it was difficult to burn herself, though she wasn’t sure why the flames didn’t seem as hot as they should have been. A weakness in her work, or was she protected by some sort of mana resonance?

Those results encouraged Suria to try some of the other elemental inscriptions she’d learned from Elemental Inscriptions in the New Age, since it seemed like basic spells weren’t going to explode on her. Her experimentation went more easily than she expected, though she also didn’t suddenly discover a secret hidden talent for any specific element.

Taking herself from basic competence to mastery with an elemental spell was clearly going to take some time. Before Suria could even grow confident enough to light a candle with her finger, the scarred professor appeared beside her, watching for a time before she nodded.

“Your basic spell control is solid,” the older woman told her. “At least I won’t have to throw you into the remedial group that’s a bigger threat to themselves than anyone else. But a runic capacity of six is going to limit you… are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to take this course later? It’s offered every term.”

“I would like to try,” Suria said with all the determination she could muster. “Is… is there really so little I can do with this?”

“If you can’t practice larger glyphs, you could start working on specialization. I see you’re using a generic enhancement inscription. A well-crafted one, compatible with everything, but generalized. There are augments specific to every type of spell, from fire to shielding, and that’s before you begin to explore improving them in more precise ways than just adding more power.”

Before leaving, the professor gave her a few suggestions on her technique and hints toward finding inscriptions, though regrettably she didn’t give them in the form of book recommendations. She’d been nicer than she needed to, so Suria didn’t take up any more of her time and returned to practicing.

Most paid no attention to her at all, but when a few students looked in her direction some of them snickered. They didn’t cause any trouble, though, so she could only endure it and focus on her own work.

A twisted part of Suria hoped that something would go wrong: she could easily imagine a scenario where students were injured and she would sweep in to heal them, impressing her professor and silencing those who had mocked her. It was just a fantasy, of course, and the worst injuries anyone received were a few scorched hands and stubbed toes.

She told herself that was good, but as she practiced her feeble little spells, she didn’t really believe it.

~ ~ ~

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

That alone wouldn’t have depressed Suria, but the shine wore off her experience at Darkmoon University as one negative experience piled on top of another. None of her instructors were as positive toward her as Professor Gwaslos had been, and in fact she was sure most of them barely knew she existed.

At least the classes themselves were still fascinating, and she was learning more every day. Foundations of Modern Spellcraft continued to cover new subjects, giving students both a basic grasp of how magic worked and a sense for the theoretical underpinnings. Some of the students already knew the basics, so Suria could understand why they were uninterested in those lectures, but she didn’t see how anyone could be bored by the theory.

Their newest subject was the origins of mana and how it was generated by both living creatures and the environment. Very simple in theory, but made more complicated by occasional reference to ancient terms. She was extremely glad that she’d been advised to read the Classical Glyphos Primer so she wasn’t completely lost.

“Now, mana is spiritual and flesh is not,” the professor was saying. “How do our bodies interact with mana, then?”

Up to that point, Suria had never spoken up in class, and she couldn’t believe that she was considering it. The silence stretched and it seemed like no one else knew the answer, but she actually might. She had read over a bunch of complex vocabulary about the soul, which had included the word “kan’tin” – that one stuck in her memory because it had a strange apostrophe in the word. Fortunately she had been paying more attention to the context, so she had an idea…

“Isn’t there a bridge between body and soul?” Her answer ended up sounding more like a question, but the professor turned to her with a smile.

“Are you guessing, or do you know?” he asked.

“I remember reading about it. There’s a shroud that they called the engine of the soul… the proper word is kan’tin, I think.”

To her surprise, her answer caused laughter across the classroom. One of the students mimicked her pronunciation and shook his head, as if she’d done something absurd.

“The proper pronunciation is kan’tin.” When the professor said it, he made a clicking noise for the apostrophe. “It’s commonly used in Covenant ceremonies as a word for the soul, so I suppose you aren’t the most devout, are you?”