Marin’s energy reserves depleted rapidly over the course of her arduous afternoon, despite earlier assertions to the contrary. Just as the sun began to disappear behind the trees, I stopped the pair as they passed by my resting place. “Marin, if you’d like to trade places, I think I can—”
“Please!” she shouted immediately, throwing her head back to let out a loud groan. “I don’t know how my arms haven’t fallen off at this point. They still might!” After a long stretch, she turned to look up at me and suddenly froze in place, scanning the edge of the arena. “I...uh, I don’t know how to get out.”
I slid to the edge of the pit and offered down an arm with a laugh. “I’ll help you out, just this once. You’ll have to find your own way out next time.”
She gladly accepted the offer and grabbed my hand with both of hers. Once she was safely raised from the arena and back on solid ground, she let out another, softer groan. “Thanks, Lux,” she said as she carefully lowered herself into a sitting position, then flopped backwards all at once, landing spread-eagle in the dirt.
“I thought you didn’t need strength training?” Lia yelled smugly from the pit.
“Stop,” Marin moaned. “I’m too tired to think of anything clever to say.”
I chuckled as I hopped down and took Marin’s spot beside Lia. My enhancements flared to life and pushed away the remaining haze over my brain while the two of us began to work. Without Marin’s depleted energy holding her back, Lia pushed ahead with renewed vigor, and the two of us raced back and forth across the field in a heated competition to cover the most ground. We finished our final pass around the arena as the sky faded from a vibrant orange to a light pink, and the forest had grown dark by the time we leapt out of the pit.
Marin was sound asleep in the same spot where she had collapsed earlier, snoring noisily in the otherwise quiet clearing. Lia managed to scoop her up without waking her, and we began our trip back home. So, what’s the plan now? Lia asked silently. Where do we go from here?
I was hoping to run through all the simple magic Marin hasn’t learned yet to see where her baseline is. Healing, Detection, Fire, that sort of stuff. I looked over at Marin’s sleeping face as we walked, still working through my plans. We need to do some combat training, too. I hope she never needs it, but she needs to learn how to fight those monsters.
How are we going to do that?
I shrugged. I’m sure I’ll figure something out.
Lia laughed, and the sudden noise roused Marin. “Oh...hi,” she said, looking up at Lia sleepily. “Are we done training now?”
“Just for today,” I answered. “Your real training starts tomorrow.”
“Real training?” she whined. “I don’t know if I can handle something more real than today.”
“You can handle it,” I reassured her.
“I could at least take one day off, right?” she insisted. “I’m going to have to sleep all day tomorrow to recover from today.”
“If you’re going to complain, I’m going to drop you in the middle of the forest and leave you there,” Lia teased, stopping to turn off of the main path.
Marin’s eyebrows shot up, and she quickly scrunched her eyes closed and pressed her head against Lia’s chest. “Nope. No complaints here. Just sleeping.” Lia and I shared a laugh as we made our way through the darkening forest. “Should I bring my weapons tomorrow?” Marin asked a second later, cracking one eye open to peer over at me.
“Yeah. Bring everything,” I answered.
“Even the gauntlets?”
“Especially the gauntlets,” I nodded. “It’s time to teach you how to use them.”
---
“You can’t do this!” Marin protested loudly, pointing an accusing finger at my chest. “You can’t keep tricking me like this!”
I rolled my eyes. “Marin, sit down,” I instructed, pointing to the dirt floor of the arena. “If you want to learn how to use magic, you’re going to learn it the way I want to teach you.” We stared at each other quietly for a long moment. “You don’t even have to learn what each of the runes mean right now.”
She squinted at me. “You’re not just saying that, right? This isn’t going to end up being some ‘training’ session where I end up writing each of those symbols a hundred times each?”
“No, but it can, if you’d rather do that than listen to me,” I shot back.
She stuck her tongue out at me as she plopped down into the dirt. “Alright. Teach me about your symbols.”
“They’re runes,” I corrected as I sat down across from her, placing my sword across my lap.
“Same thing,” she muttered, waving me off.
I raised an eyebrow at her, and she sarcastically clapped a hand over her mouth. “So, these are Alderean runes,” I repeated, tilting the inscribed face of my blade towards her. “Each one of them represents a specific word.” My finger ran down the length of the sword along the column of large runes, pausing as I named each one. “These ones are the enhancements you’ve already learned how to use: Agility, Windstep, Sharpening, Combat Acceleration, and so on.” I shifted my finger to the shorter column of small runes. “These, on the other hand, are sort of...concepts. Lesser, Greater, Channeled, Self, Sustained.”
Marin’s brow furrowed. “Why do you need those? What do they do?”
“We don’t need them much anymore,” I admitted. “The system of magic I learned in Alderea was very static. If you wanted to increase your agility a small amount, you would use Lesser Agility. If you were fighting for your life, you’d want to use Greater Agility to boost it as much as possible. It’s a pretty easy system to understand, and it’s how I was originally taught to use magic. Naturally, when I started to experiment with new types of magic, I thought the same rules had to apply.”
“But wait,” Marin interrupted, “I’ve never used those extra words, and I still use magic just fine, right? Why would you even need—”
“Marin, I promise I’m almost there,” I said, holding up a hand. She sat back with a sigh and nodded for me to continue. “The first time I attempted to make fire with magic, I just wrote the rune for fire on my sword and activated it. It worked, but it set my entire sword on fire, which also partially set my hand on fire.” I paused to let the image sink in, which seemed effective; she sat up straighter and pursed her lips as she watched me with unblinking attention. “At the time, I thought the only solution was to add a modifying rune: Blade. When I tried it again, the magic did exactly what I wanted it to do; it created fire only on the blade of my sword.
“However, you know that’s not the only way to do magic,” I continued, nodding to Lia. “When she taught you how to use enhancements, she just taught you the spells without any modifying words. When you needed to increase your abilities further, you just focused harder, and the spell did what you wanted. You don’t need those modifying words at all.”
“So…” she trailed off, tapping her pointer fingers together hesitantly, “why are you teaching me about them?”
“I’m teaching you about them because I need you to understand why it’s so important to focus when you’re using magic,” I answered. “If you don’t know exactly what you’re trying to do, or you’re distracted in the middle of a fight, you should never try to use magic you aren’t comfortable with. You could hurt yourself, or someone else.”
“Okay, I understand,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry that I kept interrupting you.”
“That’s okay. I know magic seems exciting, but it’s also dangerous. We just want you to be safe,” I smiled.
Marin hopped to her feet with a sudden burst of energy. “So, now that I know that, can I try to use fire magic?”
I rolled my eyes as I dismissed my sword and stood up next to her. “There’s one more thing I need to show you.” Her excited bouncing stopped as she watched me pull the silver needle from my bandolier and hold it out towards her. “Those modifying words might not be useful for our combat magic, but they can still do a
mazing things.”
She plucked the needle from my outstretched hand and held it with cautious reverence. “I...don’t know what this is.”
“Look at the decoration on the metal,” I said, grinning. “Look closely.”
She closed one eye and held the implement up to the light for inspection. “What am I looking...wait…” she muttered, bringing the silver closer to her eye. “Are those...runes? Are those ALL runes?”
I nodded. “Hundreds of them. After a few decades of trial and error, I strung together enough runes to make it work without any concentration; you just stick it in one of these orbs, press the button, and it works automatically. If you have enough mana, anyways. It’s not nearly as efficient as using magic yourself, but it has its uses.”
Marin marveled over the needle, spinning it back and forth to inspect the tiny symbols carved along the stem. After a moment of quiet inspection, she handed it back to me. “So, now that you’ve taught me about that, can I learn how to use fire magic?” she asked again, leaning towards me with wide eyes. “Please? I promise I’ll be careful! Really careful!”
I let out a strange noise mixed somewhere between a groan and a laugh as I looked over to Lia. “What do you think?”
“I’m just surprised she sat through that whole explanation,” she grinned, watching Marin out of the corner of her eye.
“Hey!” Marin exclaimed. “That’s not nice! I pay attention to interesting things. Maybe I don’t pay as much attention to your lessons because they’re—”
“You know what, Lux? I’ve changed my mind,” Lia said with a huff. “I don’t think she’s ready.”
“You can’t do that!” Marin shouted. “She can’t do that, right, Lux?” She lunged towards me and tugged on my arm. “You’ll still teach me, right?”
After a comically overblown sigh, I gave her a pat on the shoulder. “Get your sword.”
She threw her arms into the air as she leapt off the ground. “Thank you! Thank you, Lux!” When her celebration was finished, she hurried to the small blanket she had spread out to hold her gauntlets and both training swords, returning a moment later with the sword I had bought for Lia during our brief stay in Atsal. “Okay, I’m ready!” she chirped, twirling the blade excitedly at her hip.
“You have to promise to stay focused, Marin,” Lia said, her voice slow and calming. “You could get hurt if you—”
“I promise, I promise!” Marin waved her off. “Let’s go!”
I eyed her suspiciously for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. Start by tapping into your mana reserves. Let the energy flow up through your body, down your arm, and out through your fingers into the sword. Let it circulate through the metal like it was an extension of your body.” I pulled my own sword from the ether and followed along with my own instructions. “At the same time, picture a fire in your mind: Feel the heat, listen to it crackle, watch the colors dance. You need to understand exactly what you want to make for the mana to activate correctly.”
A crimson gleam ran across the sky-blue metal of my sword, and I held it out in front of me as bright flames danced along the blade, stopping at the crossguard. “The most important thing is to stay focused. You want to activate the mana in your blade, but not the grip. The first few times you do it, it’ll probably help to invoke ‘Fire, Blade’, just to make sure you—”
“Fire,” Marin murmured, watching the edge of her thin blade intently. A moment passed in stressful silence before the air began to shimmer around her weapon, and tiny orange flames flickered to life across the metal. She let out a relieved breath as the light danced in her wide eyes. “I did it,” she whispered. After a few seconds of admiring the flaming weapon, she pulled her arm back and flourished the blade, laughing in delight as the fire hissed against the passing air. “Lia, I did it!” she yelled, proudly turning to address her teacher. “I can even—”
The bright orange flames suddenly flared, rushing along the length of the sword to the handle as Marin attempted to spin the blade a second time. It fell from her hand and immediately extinguished itself as she yelped in pain and jumped away. I winced as a sympathetic ache stabbed at my own hand, remembering too well my first attempt at fire magic in the Yorian dungeon. Lia leapt forward immediately and reached out for Marin’s injured hand. “Let me see,” she said softly, patting her on the arm.
Marin fell forward against Lia’s shoulder and burst into tears against her chest. “I—I’m sorry,” she sobbed, twitching away as Lia’s fingers brushed over her injuries. “I thought I could—ow! I—I thought I could do...better than that.”
“It’s okay,” Lia cooed, rubbing Marin’s shoulders. These burns are pretty bad, she said silently in my head. Can you heal them?
We’re here to train, right? Seems like a perfect opportunity for you to practice your healing magic.
I don’t think now is the time; I’ve never actually done it before.
You healed Miles that night on the road.
No, WE healed Miles. I just used your memories to figure out how to do it. I’m not sure I could do it on my own. She continued to whisper comforting words into Marin’s ear as she looked up at me with concern.
Lia, after all the incredible things you’ve done, do you really think healing magic is the thing that’s going to stump you? I gave her an encouraging smile. Take a deep breath, focus, and do it.
She bit her lip as she looked over Marin’s burned hand again, then closed her eyes and hardened her face. A moment later, the telltale green light of healing magic sparkled across Marin’s scorched palm, and the blisters began to fade away. The relief was plain to see on her face, and after a few moments of channeling, the skin of her palm had returned to its normal pale bronze. “Oohhh,” she sighed, rubbing the newly healed skin, “that’s...wow. Thank you.”
“Of course,” Lia smiled, clearly satisfied with herself.
“Now you know the consequences,” I said, stepping towards them. “It’s not a feeling you’ll forget anytime soon. Trust me, I know.” I held my gloved hand out towards her and flexed my fingers. “It’ll help you focus in the future.”
“I’m gonna try it again,” she answered, her earlier tears immediately forgotten as she searched for her dropped sword. “I know I can do it.”
“Woah, there,” I chuckled, catching her by the shoulder. “I appreciate the enthusiasm, but we have a lot more to do this morning than just fire magic. You’ll have plenty of time to practice later.”
“You’re going to teach me more magic?” she asked, perking up excitedly.
“Something like that. How much has Lia taught you about Detection?”
“Oh, I know all about that,” she replied confidently. Her eyes closed, and I felt a thin wave of energy wash over me. “I can tell you how many fingers you’re holding up behind your back. Go on, test me!”
“That’s certainly impressive, but it’s not exactly what I’m looking for.” I waited a few seconds as I watched her bright pink mana flow around the arena, creating a circle around her about ten feet in diameter. “How far away can you see? Can you see the edge of the arena, over there?”
She cracked open one eye to see where I was pointing. “What? No. That’s too far away.”
“Can you walk around while you’re using it?”
Her lips pursed. “I don’t know. I haven’t tried that before.”
“Can you use it while you’re fighting?”
“If I’ve never used it while I’m walking, what makes you think I could use it while I’m fighting?” she asked, clearly annoyed.
“Do you want to find out?” I grinned.
“If it’ll make you stop asking so many questions, yes, I do!” she yelled. She jogged over to her blanket and retrieved the heavy gauntlets, sliding each one on with reverence.
“Lia, can I borrow your sword?” I asked as Marin prepared herself. “This should only take a minute.”
She eyed me suspiciously. “Sure...I guess.” She drew the paired swords from her belt
and effortlessly fused them together before holding out the greatsword in both hands. I placed a hand over the grip of the sword and channeled my mana through the blade, and after a moment’s meditation, pulled away a nearly exact copy of my bastard sword. I summoned my blade to my free hand and inspected the two side by side, then nodded happily.
“Alright, Marin, time to show me what you’ve got!” I crowed, flipping the weapons into a reverse grip. “Keep that Detection up for as long as you can.” I pressed the point of each sword into the ground in front of me and leaned forward into an awkward ready stance.
“What are you doing, Lux?” Marin laughed as she took her place opposite me. “You look ridiculous.” We stood in silence as she waited for an answer. When it was clear I didn’t plan to give one, she shrugged. “Fine, mess around if you want to. Just because I’m not great at Detection yet doesn’t mean you can just—”
I balled my legs up beneath me and sprang forward all at once, driving both swords down at her chest from above my head like two scythe-like appendages. The attack caught her entirely by surprise, and I pulled back on the blows at the last second to avoid doing her any serious harm. The blunted weapons caught her in the shoulders and knocked her backwards, and she skidded away with a hiss. “Ow!” she yelled as I hopped away. She growled under her breath and raised her fists to a ready position in front of her, then chanted out her basic suite of combat enhancements.
Her eyes bounced up and down rapidly as she examined my odd, hunched-over stance, scanning for either some shred of familiarity with the style or a clear opening in my guard. After a few moments of analysis, she dashed forward with a raised fist, spinning around me at the last possible moment to put as much distance as possible between her and my blades. As soon as she left my line of sight, I leaned heavily against my swords and kicked back at her with both feet, catching her off guard a second time. My kicks landed center mass and sent her spinning backwards with a gasp, and I used the momentum to flip over my swords like a pole vaulter, righting myself midair to land facing her in my crouched, bestial stance.
Restart Again: Volume 3 Page 34
