Chương 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. ~ ~ ~ Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve.

Read this novel on Royal Road. 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?" Suria shrank back into her seat as the students laughed again. Why would they expect her to follow a religion that was only common on the northern continents? How dare they mock her for not knowing how to pronounce a word she'd only read? But as angry as she was in her mind, she only slumped in the real world, wishing she had her peasant's cloak to pull her hood up over her face.

For once she hoped that she was still trapped in the time loop. If she got a second chance at this class, she would already have mastered the material, and could pronounce every word perfectly...

"Now now, the answer was still correct." The professor looked a little chagrined, as if he hadn't meant to mock her, not that it helped much.

"We think about the kan'tin in a spiritual sense, but it was originally a technical term, and it bridges the divide. This relates to what I was teaching you about how runic capacity is generated..." Things only got worse after that and Suria didn't dare speak up again. She was right to do so, too: she had been misinterpreting a diacritic on another ancient word and would have pronounced it completely wrong, but apparently everyone else knew exactly how to say it.

The lesson should have been interesting, because it was talking about how runic capacity built up around the soul and in turn generated mana capacity. Runes didn't seem to be the only thing involved and the professor kept referencing ancient history, which she didn't grasp. She'd only had enough time to learn the basics of the language, not every detail of the Glyphic Imperium. She ended class in a miserable mood and was struck again when her next combat class was direct challenges.

They were supposed to be fair matches, but they were only fair in the sense that both parties had to use the same number of runes in their glyph. It didn't at all equalize that her opponents had better materials, more inscriptions, and private instructions. Whoever was put against her always complained, and she usually lost anyway, unless the competition was in healing or one of her other focuses.

There was no relief even when she went back to her room, because Maut-mai was moaning over some incident that had damaged her reputation. She wasn't insufferable, not most of the time, but she was absolutely no comfort when she was complaining about her social dramas. After trying to study for a time, Suria gave up and headed to the Sequential Library. Thankfully it was mostly empty at this time of night, though the Sequential Guard was still standing by all the doorways.

In her current bitter mood, she hated their stupid hats and how self-serious they looked, guarding as if someone was going to bring a siege engine to break through into other library rooms and steal books. While searching for a place to sit, Suria heard someone whimpering. She looked around and was surprised to see Kiznua curled up in a chair and crying. Instead of acting, Suria pivoted away before she could be seen. Right now, she had nothing to give.

After such a miserable day, she was almost shocked when she got a stroke of good luck: Orinyan was on duty, shelving a set of books. When she came up beside him he flashed a smile, then winced as he saw her expression.

"Rough day?"

"It was a bad one," she said flatly.

"But I don't want to burden you..."

"Why not?" Orinyan shrugged as if it was nothing.

"I'm just working." She took a deep breath and explained, first about struggling with her runic capacity compared to the other students because that seemed like the most legitimate grievance. But when Orinyan didn't criticize her, she ended up spilling all her other frustrations, even the incident with being mocked for mispronouncing a word.

"Ah, sorry, I didn't think about that," Orinyan said once she'd finished.

"Like he said, some of those words are common here, most people just don't know the real meanings. But it's bad behavior on their part. My mother used to say that if someone mispronounces a word, you ought to think better of them, because it means they learned it from reading."

"Did she really say that?" Suria asked with a skeptical frown.

"She did, though she also used to say that babies sprouted from turnip patches, so maybe don't take her too seriously." Despite herself, Suria let out a choked laugh.

"You're just saying things to try to distract me."

"Is it working?"

"I guess so." She wiped her face on her sleeve and did her best to smile.

"I do feel a little better now."

"You shouldn't take them seriously, and I'm not just saying that." Orinyan had been grinning while her mood improved, but now he set down his books and regarded her seriously.

"Nobles who compare runic capacity like that are idiots. You have a capacity of... five? Six?"

"Six."

"Nobles will have more, but what you don't know is that a lot of them have already taken potions and done rituals to increase their capacity. Now, if you've done the same I'll look like a jerk, but I'm guessing you haven't, right?"

"No, I've only seen temporary potions." Suria perked up a little as she anticipated what he was going to say.

"You can cheat your way through about eight to ten runes, depending on how rich a family is." Orinyan leaned against the bookshelf and folded his arms.

"So some noble brat with a capacity of twelve has actually done less training than you. In the future you'll keep growing, and you can benefit from those potions and rituals anytime, but they've already picked all the low-hanging fruit."

"I... didn't know that."

"It's like an open secret. Everybody likes to claim that their child is a genius who developed naturally, but when alchemy advances, new geniuses all mysteriously get a little better. There have been papers on the statistics about it; you can look them up."

"That does help." Suria favored him with another smile.

"I imagine those potions and rituals are terribly expensive, but can I eventually afford them? Is it better or worse to take them early?" Orinyan shrugged.

"Usually they say you want to build up some runic capacity naturally before you use artificial means, but I'm not sure it makes a difference at the really high levels. Once you get into the archmage tier glyphs, everyone is pushing up against serious boundaries." They discussed the issue for a while longer, Suria feeling a little lighter with every minute. Based on the information she gathered, such methods were still far beyond her, either purchasing them or reproducing them herself.

But if she kept progressing, one day her runic capacity could shoot upward, and Suria wasn't above a petty little vision of showing up her arrogant classmates. When she left Orinyan to his work, Suria was almost skipping. On her way out, however, she saw that Kiznua was still wrapped up in her chair. She hesitated for several heartbeats, then bent down next to the other woman.

"Are you alright?" Suria asked. Kiznua flinched back as if terrified, then recognized Suria and looked sheepish.

"I... I don't want to bother you..."

"You wouldn't be bothering me. What's wrong?"

"I can't do it!" Kiznua leapt forward, wrapping her arms around Suria's neck and sobbing.

"I've been trying and trying, I've been here for years, and I just... I just..." Such a display of emotion was the last thing Suria wanted, and she was uncomfortable holding the crying woman, but after someone else had helped her, it would feel wrong not to do the same. So she put on her best healer face, rubbed the other woman's back, and let her pour out her feelings. And, somehow, that made Suria feel better in an entirely different way.