I Hate Dungeon School

We sat there in a sort of exhausted silence as the wagon trundled along. Despite the wonderful rest and food at the kobold village, the return trip still wore us out. There's also a special kind of tired that soaks into one's soul in the winter chill. It sucks the energy right out of you. In a way, winter was the most dangerous monster of them all.

The missing exuberance of Smitty was felt strongly as well. It was like half the cheer of our party was gone. Added to this was the uncertainty of what we were heading into.

It was understandable. Sometimes you just need to be inside your own head for a while. To let your thoughts stew in the silence.

Silence was boring, though. Time to do some training, since I had the opportunity.

I felt a lot better than I had in a while. Having my magic return was like waking up from having a sickness that had been there for so long, you forget it wasn't normal.

It had been quite a while since I could use mana, and I was doubtless rusty at it. I hadn't really practiced or studied magic at all since the incident. I hadn't admitted it to myself, not really, that it hurt not being able to do it. I had trained as a sword-witch, and being just a swordswoman had messed up my regimen a great deal. Like letting an invisible muscle atrophy.

The returned mana also felt different than what I had originally. Not bad, just different. The dungeon mana I had previously was mixed with it, like sugar in a glass of water.

I sat there and focused. Breathe in. Mana out. Form the light ball in front of you. Pure white light. Breathe in. Mana out. Pull mana from the air, keep my reservoir topped up. Continue. Repeat.

"Your mana flow is really smooth now, Alta." Myth piped up. She had been my training partner for magic stuff for a while now.

"She's right. Its like, buttery smooth. It feels a bit weird too. But not really in a bad way. Hard to explain." Eira added, furrowing her brow in curious concern.

"I don't know why, but ya'll talking about buttery magic and all that is kind of creepy. I'll never understand you magic types." Cori huffed and looked away out the back of the wagon, her face a mask of bored disdain.

"Completely agree, but for different reasons. I have nothing to compare it to, but I imagine divine magic is much better than whatever you all are talking about." Mariana chimed in, not satisfied to be left out of the conversation.

"Don't act high and mighty, oh high priestess of getting your tits out." Cori snarked at her. Mariana responded by folding her arms and wallowing in a huffy silence.

Eira turned to me after the others had gone back to whatever internal worlds they decided to dwell in.

"Do you need any help or anything? It's been a while." She asked softly, holding my hands in hers. Her hands were rough but soft at once, but felt so right in my own.

"I think I've got this. At least I need to try. If I meditate for too long, please make sure I'm still breathing. Or at least not just asleep." I cracked a smile at her, and she rolled her eyes and kissed me on the forehead.

"I think I can do that, sleepy ears. Good luck!" She gave me another kiss and settled back close to the fire crystal for warmth.

Magic in general was one of those things that was hard to explain to those who didn't use it regularly. Everyone had the ability, but getting through the first hurdle to being able to use it was more than most people wanted to deal with.

Meditation was hard for a lot of people. You had to sit silently, clear your mind, and focus internally. Eventually, you should start feeling where your mana is in relation to your body. It's not a physical thing, but it helps many people to imagine their reservoir somewhere in their body. I like to imagine mine in my chest. Just made more sense to me.

From there, you start getting a sense for how much mana you have. From there, you usually get a teacher to start guiding you on how to turn that mana into some kind of effect.

You draw in mana, you visualize the spell, you make it happen. There were more moving parts in there, but the technical aspects were beyond me. The real trick was the visualization.

Lots of things could affect visualization. Really, that's what incantations, spell poems, chants, songs, and so on were for. They helped you visualize what you were trying to do with the mana.

It was a really involved process. How you visualize, the direction you push the energy, and how you think about the energy can really change what the spell does.

Again, very hard to explain if you've never done it, and I'm no teacher, so my attempts to explain it would absolutely fruitless.

I used spell poems. Little couplets that helped me focus on what I was trying to do. I'd been learning them as far back as I could remember. Even before I had started to do magic, as this seemed to be a skill my family decided I would have from the get-go. I had the spell poems drilled into my head so long, it was hard to do spells without them now.

That said, outside the abandoned fortress, now dungeon, I had done one without the spell poem. If I could do that, it would change my magic style completely!

I steadied myself, trying to shuffle any doubts out of my mind. Let's try to see if I could do that again.

I focused really hard, trying to visualize the light ball brighter and floating above my hands.

Nothing.

I couldn't help but sigh. Must have been a rush of adrenaline from waking up from near death or something.

Let's try it again, with the poem this time.

"From shadows deep and dark unknown, light my step and my path be shown!" I uttered, and saw the light bloom in front of me. Brighter than I had ever done before.

"Well, that's pretty neat!" Eira said as I unsummoned the shining orb.

"Looks like when your mana came back it came back strong!" Myth added, her earlier moping shaken off by her sudden interest. It was good to see. I smiled despite myself.

"Ok, that's cool and all, but did you have to burn out my eyes! Gods above and below, that's bright!" Cori grumbled as she covered her eyes.

Now that is interesting, I thought to myself as I undid the spell. Something to experiment with for my repertoire later.

I focused just for a moment to assess my mana after the spell. This was the real moment of truth.

I focused on my reservoir and it hadn't even moved. Well maybe a little, but nothing like it used to. I had a much higher limit, and my ability to draw in mana from the air was far more efficient than I was used to. Beyond efficient. I didn't even need to focus to do it. It just happened.

I wonder what had happened. Was it a side effect of nearly dying? The dungeon core? Something else?

I know I shouldn't look at such a boon too suspiciously, but it was curious. And curious things had a bad habit of turning into a problem if you didn't poke at them hard enough.

I decided silently to keep my spell usage to a minimum till I had more time to revisit the change in my magic in a safer location. Like back at school. Awkward and possibly politically devastating weddings were not an ideal choice for that.

Just add that to the increasingly long list of things to discuss with Danica and Calderon when I got back to Dungeon School.

It really made me wonder what would happen if I channeled mana into Ice Moon. Nope, definitely wrong time and place. It was cold enough without ice magic.

That didn't help my brain trying to follow the lines of logic to think about what my new magic limits could do with that power. Part of me itched for an excuse to try it out, but reality set in, and if things got to the point I needed it, at a wedding of all places, things had gone too far.

There were admittedly people I wouldn't mind using it on, but those were not thoughts to entertain too seriously. The spiderweb of problems, both personally and politically, was so tangled I could've worn it as a metaphorical sweater.

Nobles were probably the scariest enemies I could make right now, no matter how much I loathed them.

Liches were one thing. Nobles were another.