Ar'Kendrithyst

Erick sat with a circle of seven students, while Professor Rue Downs sat directly across from him, on the other side of the circle. Her white hair framed her white, smiling face, while her ruby eyes looked out across the group. She was obviously happy, and she was not afraid about sharing that happiness with the world.

Joy filled her voice as she said, “Welcome back, everyone. To start us off today, I’d like to ask Archmage Erick, if he has any Esoteric questions for us.”

Right to it, then? That was fine with Erick. Erick smiled, as the group of seven students, and Rue, looked at him. Some with strange fascination in their eyes, others with emotions too muddled to understand at a glance.

Erick asked, “How does [Teleport] work, exactly?”

Rue smiled softly, as she turned to a human male student in the group, asking, “Tuppert?”

Tuppert shifted from a muddled expression, to pure fascination, to utter terror. He suddenly shook his head, and went completely quiet.

Rue said, “That’s fine. I’ll answer. [Teleport] works by moving a person or object from one place to another, without that person or object occupying the space in between.” She added, “Intent does occupy that space between start and destination, though.”

Erick frowned a little. He wanted more than that.

Rue said, “I see you want more than that.”

“Well.” Erick admitted, “Yes.”

Rue smiled, saying, “You must keep in mind, Archmage, that the Script has taken a great deal of what the Old Wizards had to do manually, every time they wanted to enforce their will upon the manasphere, and put those techniques into reproducible, always-available blue boxes. The lessons you might get here at Oceanside in spatial magic are how one joins that known path. It’s a good path created by all those who came before, who each contributed a bit of themselves to this grand tradition in order to engrave that tradition upon the Script. If you learn Arcanaeum magic, it will work for you. But it is a path that never shifts. This is both a good thing, and a bad thing, as I’m sure you can understand without me needing to explain.

“But our personal truths also give shape and form to mana. Sometimes this emotive force produces a deeper magic more powerful than what the Script says is possible. Most of the time, though, this ends in failure.

Rue’s words resonated with something deep inside Erick.

“… Is that true?” Erick asked, unsure if he wanted her words to be real, or not.

Rue shrugged. “It is, and it isn’t. Truthfully, there are many schools of thought to tap into, to reach the pinnacles of power. Some would say my words are sacrilege. Others would find wisdom. The proof is in the cake: both schools of thought have their own champions, and more come out every year, though the Arcanaeum side does have a lot more successes than the emotive side. Archmage Ryul is an Oceanside graduate whose genius at Arcanaeum magic propelled him to his first useful tier 9 spell at age 22, and his second one a month later. And then we have you, who came to Veird with an entirely new kind of magic, never before seen.” She smiled. “Ryul has an entire magical civilization backing him up. You have nothing but a sympathetic, empathic connection to the natural world, and a whole lot of belief, as far as I can tell. But you’ve tapped into something quite real, or at least real to you.

“So the question then becomes ‘how did this happen’? And the answer is that no one knows. Personally, I think you have tapped into the emotive side of mana, and with a bit of knowledge about how this Reality works, you have given the Script the ability to work new magic for the first time in 1300 years.

“But no one really knows how magic works, except maybe Rozeta but she’s not talking. But we do know how magic works well enough. We know the mana responds to imagination, and with Reality and the Script, the mana creates something tangible.” She said, “That said: there are traditions around the world that each use the Script in their own way, and these other ways of thinking might help you with [Teleport] in ways that the math and the study of Arcanaeum Magic cannot. A lot of those traditions are religious traditions, but we don’t cover those in this class except to mention that they exist. We mostly cover the secular, quiet magics, that aren’t magics at all. From pouring out a shot of alcohol for the fallen, hoping that their bodies don’t rise as undead, to carving eyes around your house in a prayer that whatever danger threatens will be revealed before it draws too close.” She added, “This is Esoteric Magic. This is not an easy path to power. But it is a sideways path. One full of emotion, and imagery, and stuff not directly covered by the Script. Usually our endeavors end in failure, but sometimes they do not. Mostly, we just try to understand the world around us in a way not codified by any Arcanaeum.”

“I also teach alchemy. So that crops up rather often.” Professor Rue said, “Topics we usually discuss range from alchemy, to thaumaturgy, to superstition, and Luck.” She smiled toward Erick, saying, “This is also most of the same speech I gave last week, for our first class. Do you think you would like to stay?”

Erick wholeheartedly said, “Yes. I’m staying.”

Rue clapped her hands together, smiling as she said, “Great!”

- - - -

Basic Defensive Theory had Erick in the back of a room of two hundred, again, but this time an orcol woman was the professor. Professor Egallia Stomp was a 65 year old woman with fire in her voice and her step, who went back and forth from the blackboards to the students, demanding answers from the audience while her braided red hair flipped around with her movement, and a telekinetically controlled piece of chalk ripped across the blackboard at her discretion.

Today’s lesson was a continuation of the previous lesson: how to place anti-spell runes around a house. To serve this lesson, she had drawn blueprints on the blackboards, as well as the diagrams for the anti-spell runes she needed placing around the house. Today’s main rune was an anti-[Teleport] rune. But there were also counter-runes for Mana Altering to Fire, and [Stoneshape], set to the side of the blackboards.

At first, her questions and lecture made zero sense at all, because all she talked about was math and design, but as time went on, and students failed or flourished under Stomp’s questions, Erick began to see a pattern in the geometric layout of runes Stomp laid upon those house designs. The layout of a properly made defensive rune array might have had something to do with how mana moved through the air. There was something eerily similar to the Stomp’s diagrams today, and the mana flow methods taught in Calloway’s Dungeoneering class. There was a lot more math involved in Stomp’s designs, but it looked—

“Archmage Erick!” Professor Stomp called to him in the back of the room, as she telekinetically drafted a blank blueprint on the blackboard. “How would you defend this location!”

Erick felt his heart flutter at being called upon, but he quickly steeled himself, and looked over the new diagram. [Ultrasight] was getting a lot of work today, and every other, with Erick sitting at the back of the classroom like he usually did; he was glad for the skill. He briefly thought about Favoring it, but let that go for another day.

… Looking over the diagram did nothing for Erick. As a hundred faces out of two hundred looked at him, he said, “I don’t know. That’s why I’m here.”

“The only truly correct answer! But still wrong.” Stomp said, “Give me a guess.”

“Short term: Fill it with [Force Walls] to prevent [Teleport]s. Long term, [Prismatic Ward]. Can’t [Teleport] or alter a location filled with a [Prismatic Ward]—” He added, “Unless you have [Ward Destruction]. So then I’d probably hire someone like you to put runes everywhere you feel necessary, and consult you on how to defend against the more esoteric threats. And then of course I’d hire your competitor or similar to make sure you didn’t screw me over somehow.”

A cunning smile spread across Stomp’s face, as she said, “I have very competitive rates, Archmage Flatt, and a perfect track record, no matter the client. Consult me at your leisure, outside of class time.” She turned to a student in the front row. “Same question. But with only anti-[Teleport] and anti-[Stoneshape] runes. Go!”

The student flubbed an answer that seemed much better than Erick’s.

- - - -

Erick woke up at a normal enough time. The sun shone across the tops of the trees, but had yet to touch the house with light. When he opened his door, the scent of baking bread filled his nose. Someone was making something very delicious. He stepped to the balcony overlooking the interior of the house, and looked down.

Kiri was already awake, as well as Poi. Right now they were decidedly not looking at each other.

Something was going on. Erick had woken up to some sort of problem.

Erick decided to ignore it, for right now. He went about his normal daily routine, taking his time. Eventually he walked down the stairs to the living room. Kiri was hard at reading her books by then, while Rats, Teressa, and Poi, were all in the kitchen, as Rats pulled a dish out of the oven. It was some sort of casserole, with bacon and bread and eggs and potatoes.

Erick said, “Looks good, Rats.”

Rats said, “Heck yeah it is.” He put the huge dish on the table, saying, “Good morning.”

Poi nodded to Erick, as Teressa got out the plates and stuck a spoon into the casserole.

Erick looked over to Kiri, who continued to fastidiously read her textbook.

Erick frowned, sighed, then asked, “Okay. What’s going on here?”

Poi said, “There’s been an argument. Hocnihai wanted to come and speak to you.”

Teressa began to pile casserole onto her plate, and dug in, not bothering to participate in the conversation. Rats similarly went silent, as he too, spooned a scoop of breakfast onto his plate. Erick’s stomach rumbled as he looked to the casserole; he liked it when Rats cooked these days. Rats always made some sort of one-pot meal, and though it was never fancy, it was always good. Rats was much, much better about not making random messes, too.

But Erick had to get to the bottom of this Hocnihai problem.

Kiri continued to ignore the happenings of the kitchen, as she read her book.

Erick asked, “What’s the problem?”

Kiri eloquently spoke, “I wish to understand a man who could at one point in time, champion for the rights of dragonkin in the Republic, then find himself suborned or otherwise by the Wasteland, and turn to the Wasteland, fully. All the way killing whoever was on the other side of the line.”

“And I say she should not even consider the idea of speaking to Hocnihai in this way.” Poi said, “It’s not her place. And besides! He shouldn’t ever be here, anyway.”

“I understand that, Poi.” Kiri said, “I really do. I am fine with unanswered questions—”

A ripple expanded across the front windows; someone had tapped the [Crystalline Air] around the house, near the front door. Everyone turned to look, but it was only Powell, one of the groundskeepers, standing outside the door, holding a small package in her arms.

Poi frowned, then looked to Kiri, his eyes saying that this conversation was not over. Kiri looked right back at him, wordlessly saying the same thing. Poi walked to the door. Erick followed.

Poi opened the door, asking, “Good morning, Powell.”

“Sirs.” Powell held forward the package. It looked almost like a book, wrapped up in brown paper and tied with twine. “Archmage Hocnihai regrets to say that he is unable to uphold his bargain of trade. Matters have called him home. But he has left this. They are three separate books. The first two are an archmage’s study into [Prismatic Ward] and [Reflection]. The last is a guide on how to spot, defuse, and escape governmental or otherwise control. The last book is illegal in most of the world, just so you know.”

Poi looked down at the package in Powell’s hands. After a moment, he took it. “Thank you.”

Powell bowed, then left, walking away; her job was done.

Poi shut the door and held the delivery in his taloned hands. Lines of intent radiated from his head, inundating the plain brown package.

Erick turned on his [Detect Intent Aura], and Poi’s investigation of the delivery went from a disturbance in the manasphere, to a bright blue cascade of magic. And then it was over. Poi’s blue magic pulled back. Erick saw nothing untoward about the package, either; it looked like a plain brown-paper wrapped object, with a bit of twine to hold it all together. Erick turned off his own aura.

Poi handed the package to Erick.

Erick said, “This solves the issue of actually talking to Hocnihai.”

Kiri stood beside Erick, looking over his shoulder. “What is it?”

Erick Handy Aura’d the package apart, easily slipping three books out of the brown paper. Two of them looked like handmade leather bound journals. One had [PW] on the front in silver foil, while the other had a big [R]. The last of the three books looked like a mass produced guide. It was bound hard green leather and maybe only the size of a hand, while being as thick as a thumb. It read ‘Foreigner Mage’, and reminded Erick of a traveling bible.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

A small letter slipped out of the first book, through Erick’s Handy Aura. Erick grabbed the letter with his own hands, while Poi winced to the side, almost saying something. The letter was just folded paper; no envelope, no seal.

Erick opened the paper and read.