By Spell and Blade (Part 1)

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN AGES, I HAD A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP.

Sure, the room is unfamiliar, and Xana got busted by George trying to sneak inside in the middle of the night… But the bed! Oh, the bed is glorious! For the life of me, I’d never appreciated how good it is to not sleep on the floor.

Back in the temple, I could only conjure up a slab of stone to lie on, which was marginally softer than the dragon’s scales. And in the forest, the best I could do was to cover a pile of leaves with a bear’s hide. Next to those nightmares, even a simple bed feels like the very embrace of Maladriel herself.

Goddess of Mercy, banzai!

Then, after a hearty breakfast made by Cerys, the girls and I went to the cellar.

You see, the ground floor of the Briar Hall has a lounge area, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a guest room, while the second floor has a central study & strategy room, with the girl’s bedrooms to the sides.

So why are we going to the cellar, one might ask?

That’s where the training room is located.

As it turns out, being a mage has its perks. The Briar Hall has a fairly modest backyard, too small for the girls to train. So, Cerys outfitted the cellar with dimensional magic. It works using the same principle as a bag of holding: expanding the interior of an enchanted space.

In practice, the cellar can be expanded to about half the size of a football field. According to Cerys, it can go bigger, but will run out of energy quickly. So for a training session several hours long, this size is best.

Incidentally, George’s magic circle is also kept in the far end of the cellar, next to the girls’ vault. They have an entire room fortified with defensive spells, to keep their valuables safe while they’re out of town. If you ask me, anyone invading the thorn elemental’s territory would need to have a death wish, but I guess it’s better to be safe than sorry.

“Shall we begin, John?” Cerys asked, snapping me back to my senses.

“Fufu,” Xana laughed. “I wonder what John can do.”

She looked at me expectantly. Heck, even Amelia seemed curious.

At Cerys’ suggestion, I would undergo formal arcane training with her, and learn swordsmanship from Amelia. I’m all in for it, too. The magic I’ve learned so far is self-taught, so having a proper teacher is a blessing.

“Let’s do it,” I said, eager to learn.

At my words, Cerys extended her hand, and a runic circle manifested in the air. Although I can’t read the runes themselves, I do have a general understanding of what they do. By the looks of it, it’s dimensional magic.

And lo and behold, Cerys’ spell activated, and the room grew bigger.

“This was a magic circle,” Cerys explained. “The way we mages cast spells is by drawing these runes in the air, using raw mana. Think of them as a blueprint, or a set of instructions, to tell the mana what we want it to do.”

“I see,” I replied. “In a way, it’s like coding.”

“Coding?” Cerys asked, lightly tilting her head.

“Ah, it’s a kind of technology we have on Earth,” I explained. “We have these devices called computers, which you can program to do things autonomously. The way you achieve this is by writing a set of instructions, called code. Except computers don’t use magic; they work with electricity instead. It’s like… a controlled form of lightning.”

Cerys’ mouth was wide open with awe.

“By Astrevon!” she exclaimed. That’s some kind of God, I suppose. “And what can you do with these computers?” she asked, her eyes sparkling with curiosity.

“Uh, they’re mostly used for communications,” I recalled. “You can send messages with them to any part of the world, but you can also use them to handle vast amounts of data like finances, medical records, commercial inventories, and more. They’re also used to play games, and watch… videos. Yeah.”

I had to omit a word there, but that’s the gist of it.

“Fascinating!” Cerys said. “Videos, I’ve never heard the word. What’s a videos?”

“Cerys!” Amelia interrupted before I could correct the spelling. “You’re here to teach him magic, not to explore technologies from another world.”

“But this coding of John’s could also be magic!” she reasoned.

“Ah, it’s not,” I lamented. “Truth be told, it’s as good as magic to me, because I have no idea how computers actually work. But the mechanism is pure technology.”

“Is that so?” Cerys said, growing pensive. “We could still find some practical application here. If you’re familiar with coding, which follows a similar principle to that of magic circles, we might expedite your learning.”

Ah, I see what she’s getting at. If I look at the construction of magic circles as a way of programming a desired result, it might become more simple for me to visualize.

“In any case,” Cerys continued, “let us begin by having you show the magic you already know. You can use elemental spells, right?”

“Just a few, yeah,” I replied.

“Let’s see,” she said, before making a magic circle that conjured a pillar of water. “Can you strike that with a spell?” she asked, pointing at it. Given that it’s water, I don’t have to worry about shrapnel or the like.

“Sure thing,” I said, raising my hand.

I can’t draw magic circles like Cerys, but the truth is, I don’t need to. All I have to do is to will the magic to manifest, and it does. So, I conjured a firebolt in front of my hand, feeling the heat surging from me before shooting it square into the pillar of water.

“Bullseye,” I said as the water evaporated. It was a good shot, if I say so myself.

Cerys, however, didn’t reply. Instead, she gawked at me in wonder.

“Did you shoot without a circle?” Xana asked, perplexed.

“That he did,” Amelia confirmed, before looking to Cerys.

“By Astrevon… It can’t be...” Cerys said, her voice just over a whisper as she staggered backwards a couple of steps.

Uh oh.

I think I broke some convention here. Hopefully it wasn’t heresy or something.

“John,” Cerys called, her eyes fixed on me. “You’ve inherited innate spellcasting. It’s the form of magic used by dragons and other mystic entities, like angels…”

“And demons,” Amelia added the disturbing comment.

“Eh?” said Xana, growing anxious. “But what does that mean?”

“It means I don’t have much to teach him,” Cerys admitted with a resigned smile. “I’m not well versed in innate magic, but chances are John can learn simply by seeing new spells and copying them on his own. He can probably make original spells, too.”

“Well, that’s how I learned on my own,” I noted. “It was all trial and error, until I got the feeling right.”

It looks like my spellcasting is based on intuition, rather than stiff memorization. Cerys must’ve had to learn a plethora of magic circles, and how to draw them from memory in real time. I can’t imagine how hard it was to achieve, or how powerful her ability to project mental images must be.

“So if you see a spell, you can learn it?” Amelia asked.

“Probably,” I replied. “It will take me a while to copy and perfect, but if the theory holds, then I should be able to.”

“I see,” she said, closing her eyes. After a moment, she reopened them with renewed determination. “Then let us focus on combat training, John.”