by Dakota Krout
“You may not understand how much this will affect the realm, but please know that we need to begin your training immediately. Grieve during downtime. Come along.” He shifted the portal, opening it to a strange-looking place none of the others had entered. Master Don stepped through, impatiently awaiting her on the other side. Much more hesitantly, Taylor edged across the threshold and looked at what her future would hold.
“What is this place?” Her eyes were already roving the world around her, and she was breathing heavily in relief that the portal hadn’t fried her.
“Taylor, it is my great pleasure to be the first to welcome you to ‘mundi sunt nominibus singulorum’ or, roughly translated: ‘The World of Names’. Literally translated, it is: ‘the names of each of the world’.” Don chuckled at a fond memory, taking a deep breath. “It is good to be home.”
They were standing in what appeared to be a living library. A short distance away, an extremely tall bookshelf held thousands of books neatly stacked in rows. Orderly calligraphy swirled and shifted across the ground, flowing like a river to the south. Animals, made of all sorts of different materials for writing, roamed the moors of the Library’s orderly stacks, which seemed to stretch forever in every direction.
“Oh… wow.” Taylor’s fear for her friend had been completely overwhelmed by the vastness of the new world around her. “This is… this is amazing. This is home?”
“Isn’t it, though? I’ll never forget my first time here; I imagine my face looked just like that. Well, no time like the present. We need to get you a spell book and teach you how to tame spells!” Don started toward a distant stack of books.
“Okay, let’s - wait, what? Tame spells?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Good! I’m being purposefully unhelpful. Let’s begin.” With that frustrating conversation as the starting point, Master Don guided her toward a bookshelf. He pointedly ignored all of Taylor’s questions, until she took the hint and stopped asking. Approaching the shelf, he gestured to the neatly organized volumes.
“To entice your first spellbook, you need to slowly release your mana into the air around you. It will be much easier in this world, and as such, you need to be very careful when you do so. Here, mana is to creatures what blood is to sharks. When you release it, you need to know exactly what you are trying to entice, or everything in the area will try to feast upon you.”
“If they succeed in overpowering you, they will only stop when every bit of your body has been consumed. First, you make this hand symbol, which means ‘release mana’.” Don motioned with his hands, and had her repeat it until he was satisfied that the motion was correct. “Then you focus on what you are trying to lure, and relax the control you have in your brain. Literally try to relax your ‘brain muscle’.”
“Why am I doing this, if everything is going to try to eat me?” Taylor shook herself, already regretting asking the dumb question. She grinned wryly. “Sorry, I’ll just do it. Also, I bet Andre would be great at relaxing his brain.”
At her botched attempt not to laugh, Master Don snorted with only a touch of mirth, “Laugh it up, but if you find a better way to describe it, please let me be the first to know. I get laughed at every single time I say that line, though I admit you hid it better than most. Now, Taylor, I want you to focus on those books and try to convince one of them to be your friend. The strongest one you can convince.”
She glanced at her instructor, trying to determine if he was messing with her. Noting his serious demeanor, Taylor shrugged and got into position, made the symbol with her hands - pinkies together like she was holding a book - and tried to release her mana. Feeling foolish, she peeked at her Master, but quickly refocused after he gave her a dark look.
“Convince them to be my friend,” she whispered, trying to relax. “Never been good at that. Only had three friends my whole life, and one of them was a Bard that made me think he was my friend. Come on, mana. Come on!”
Taylor aggressively attempted to breach the barrier in her mind. With that push, she felt punctured, like a water skin with a dagger stuck into it. Feeling as though her hands were gushing blood, she opened her eyes in a panic… only to find mana dripping from her hands like purple-tinged water. Upon contact with the air, it evaporated and rose like a cloud.
“Too much already… try and stop,” her master calmly ordered. She tried to close the breach in her mental space but was immediately distracted and lost focus as a horrendous shriek filled the air. The cloud had reached the first row of books.
The books erupted into motion, exploding into the air like a murder of crows. The covers flapped like wings, and the volumes literally flew above her, crashing into one another and fighting in an attempt to be the only one to feed on the free mana source. Taylor panicked, and the mana redoubled its explosion from her body, getting caught by an updraft and reaching almost all of the higher shelves. The air was suddenly teeming with flying books, some of them larger than she was by a significant margin.
“Help!” she cried to her Master.
“I cannot.” Master Don’s bearing was still calm, but his words made Taylor realize a terrifying fact: he wasn‘t going to step in. No matter what. “You’re fine. If you can’t overcome this fear, you will never make it as a higher level Namer. Hurry up; one of them will win soon. You want to be ready for it.”
Breathing deeply, Taylor tried to regain control, building a dam to slow the rushing ocean of mana. The flow cut off as suddenly as it had begun, making her stumble as though she had taken a blow to the head. She scrutinized the swooping books and still-spreading cloud of mana, and tried to focus all her thoughts on gaining a new friend and partner. Her intent reached out to her mana and released a concussive wave that knocked several books from the air even as it nearly flattened her.
“Good, you gave your mana a purpose.” Master Don was still calmly observing the hurricane of books overhead.
Taylor ignored him and kept her thoughts on her need, focusing on the chaos above her. Books returned to their places on the shelves, quivering in apparent fear. Some flew away as fast as they could, and Taylor felt an echoing concussion rebound onto her. It knocked her to her knees, and a long moment passed before she was able to determine what had caused the shockwave. Then she saw it. Her mana had reached the highest shelf, and the only book upon it had just peeked over the ledge.
“Oh, dear.” Master Don maintained an infuriatingly calm tone. “This should be interesting.”
Several of the books were still bickering when the top-shelfer started to tumble down. About halfway between its starting point and the ground, it opened its covers, gaining speed like a raptor and attacking the still-flying books viciously. The few tomes that hadn't returned to the shelves or escaped were quickly reduced to confetti, which was somehow feasted upon by the victorious book. When the sky had been cleared, the book circled Taylor once, then descended to float a few feet in front of her face. Words scrawled across the open pages, adjusting themselves until she was able to read them.
“Make a deal with it. Agree to feed it mana and spells, so long as it allows you to cast from its pages.” She repeated his offer to the spellbook, and the volume halted in midair, as though considering. Eventually, it bobbed, agreeing with the deal.
“Yes, sounds good!” she confirmed, even as Master Don shouted in a voice suddenly far from calm.
“No!”
Too late. The pages swirled with color as she re-lived every moment in her life, the book recording it all and reducing the story down to a single page.
When Taylor was finally able to look away, it was well past dark and they were in a different location entirely.
“What?” she croaked as she attempted to stand, swayed, and fell to the ground.
Chapter Eight
&nbs
p; Master Don seemed to be alternating between annoyance and… something else. “You let it read you! It now knows absolutely everything about you, and will record everything that happens from here on! Think of this as the most intrusive diary ever. Should this book ever leave you and partner with another, that person will be able to read your entire life. All your strengths, all your weaknesses. All emotional high or low points. Everything.”
“What?” she spat in horror. She looked at the book, now cradled in her arms. Was it… sleeping? “What is this?”
“This is your spell book, your Grimoire,” her Master replied with a sigh, letting his anger go. There was no help for it now. “Here is where you keep all of your spells, and how you will cast magic. If it helps you feel better, you have started with a Grimoire of exceptional quality. If a book from a low shelf had read you, I would have simply destroyed it and made you start again, but then you would have lost your starter bonus.”
“What do you mean?” Taylor pulled in the book protectively, even before she realized what she was doing.
“Well, the quality of these books has an effect on your ability to progress. Basically, the number of spells you can learn is based, in part, on how many spells the book can hold, in addition to the quality of those spells. Here in the Library, books are like birds, and they follow a hierarchy. The overpopulated first few rows are pigeons, plentiful but stupid. They eat and eat, but only give you scat in return. You can learn tier one spells at best. As you climb the shelves, the books become smarter, eating less, but requiring a certain,” he waved his hands, “something. They want a specific diet.”
She nodded, easily following along. Master Don continued his impromptu lecture, pointing out a few still-fluttering covers. “Also, they are made from better material. The low levels are made from papyrus, a weak material, a weak Grimoire. As they go higher, the durability increases. Paper, vellum, hard leather, and finally, whatever the top predator is for the shelf. In your case, it appears that yours is made from the hide of a cockatrice, which should make it nearly invulnerable to physical harm. Again, an excellent start for you. Less chance of losing all of your hard work to a simple swing of a sword.”
She looked at the book in wonder, surprised by how interesting it was. The book was surprisingly light, and had no markings of any kind on it. This was to become her book of spells? It seemed too… alive. Taylor voiced her concern while continuing to cradle the precious tome.
“Of course! To be magic is to be alive, and to be alive is to be magic. Even humans, whether or not they become Ascenders, have some mana in them. That is what allows healers to cure injuries, and Necromancers to animate corpses. Earth Mages don’t actually move the earth; they move the mana that flows through the earth like rivers, the ley lines. Everything is interconnected, and mana even has physical properties if enough of it is released, as you just observed for yourself. In the right conditions, it acts like water before evaporating.”
“Oh!” Taylor exclaimed as she remembered something. “What did my book mean by ‘no disease, or I leave’? That has to be part of its ‘diet’, right?”
“Correct. There are spells that you can cast that cause disease or specific illnesses, perhaps self-propagation as well, and to some books they ‘taste’ foul. Every book seems to have particular palates, as I mentioned.” Master Don shook himself and started looking around the shelves.
Taylor waited, but he didn’t continue speaking. “What did you mean about the starting bonus?”
“Oh, that.” Master Don pursed his lips, hesitated, then decided to answer the question. There was no point in hiding the information. “The maximum tier of the first spell you can learn is determined by an aspect of your Mind characteristic called ‘talent’. The very first spell you learn, or in our case, the first Grimoire you bind to yourself, is not beholden to your natural talent. It can be practically any tier, so we as trainers watch very closely at the start. That’s why I brought you directly to one of the most dangerous areas you could survive in right away. That Grimoire is tier five, and I know that means nothing to you right now. Just know that it does mean to cast a spell above tier five, you will need a new Grimoire. You can have as many as you can control, but they are very territorial.”
“Can you explain more, so I do understand?” Taylor pressed him. “Can I increase my ‘talent’?”
“Yes; very easily, in fact. But… all in due time. Too much information all at once is like filling a glass with water. If it overflows, you lose whatever is on the ground.” Master Don turned to his pack and pulled out some rations for them to munch on. They sat quietly for a while as Taylor looked at the wonderous world around her, ate her food, and stroked her practically purring Grimoire.
“This is all so amazing.” Taylor took a deep breath. “Master, can I try casting a spell now?”
“You don’t have any, do you? How could you cast one?” Don smirked at her stricken face, and coyly offered, “Would you like to go get one?”
“Abyss, yeah.”
“We’d better get moving, then. Nowhere around here to sleep, anyway.” They began walking, and Taylor made it nearly a half mile before she fell flat on her face.
“Ow.”
“I did tell you not to let out so much mana, didn’t I? Even if you can regenerate it, unless your mana channels are well-practiced at handling large mana flows, you can utterly exhaust yourself.” Taylor’s suddenly-hated mentor chuckled. “I suppose a break is in order… can you sit up? Good. Eat this.”
“I obviously didn’t give you enough to eat.” Handing her some dried meat, he started going through his pack as she voraciously gnawed upon the salty beef. “Drink some water, and eat some of this honey. You used far too much energy in one go. With the amount of mana you pumped into the air, I could have burned a small village to the ground. I have, in fact. While we are here, why not read what your book has to say about you?”
Chapter Nine
Taylor looked at the book in her lap, contemplating it for a moment before running a finger down its spine. It shuddered and fell open, revealing details of her life that even she had forgotten. “Oh neat, it details the date that Zed showed up in town! I’ve only known him for six months? Sheesh… that was a messed-up situation. What’s this section?”
She covered most of the text, leaving only the page filled with numbers. Master Don looked over and nodded. “That’s an easy one, and an explanation of something I referenced earlier. It is you, boiled down to numbers. They are ‘characteristics,’ or ‘stats’ if you are lazy. Your body, mind, senses, and presence. Those can be grown from study, training, and… ugh, leveling.”
“Leveling?” Taylor poked at the obvious sore spot.
“Yes, some morons… no… let me do this properly,” her mentor growled and turned to face her directly. “When you start defeating monsters, either here or back in our world, you will gain a portion of its potential. Specifically, you will gain ‘Etheric Xenograft Potentia’, commonly known as ‘exp’ or ‘Potentia’. As a better explanation, it is the ‘total potential energy field of an outside source’. When you kill something, you add a portion of their Potentia to your own potential, and slowly start to become more than you were. This will change you. Power, strength, speed, willpower. Eventually - if you live long enough - you will stop being a mere human, and become an Ascender.”
“I don’t know what you mean. Aren’t we already Ascenders?”
Don shook his head slightly. “I mean that our world will no longer be enough for you. It means that to get stronger, you will need to search for bigger, deadlier, more powerful planes of existence. But once you ascend… you can never return. If I were to ascend, I could meet someone on this world, The World of Names, but never back on our own world, known as the ‘base world’. I can't really tell you much more. Not many Ascenders have ever bothered to offer details.”
“I see… if there is nothing else, can you tell me about my stats?” Taylor politely asked him.
&
nbsp; “Characteristics. Don’t fall into the trap of those… reductionists. Yes, just hold on one moment. ‘Leveling’ is the term some bureaucrat came up with to generalize mutating and altering yourself. It means that you have gained enough Etheric Xenograft Potentia to radically improve a single aspect of yourself. You can save it and store it up, gaining many levels at once if you want. There are certain incentives to doing it like this… but there are drastic downsides as well.” Master Don took a deep breath and looked into her eyes so that he had Taylor’s full attention.
“Once the process of leveling begins, it must be completed.” He swallowed in an attempt to soothe a suddenly dry throat. “If you try to level yourself too much at once, there is a likelihood that you will not be able to endure it, or you will mutate into something else. I have seen people die from trying to gain too much at once. I have seen others turn into literal monsters as well. On the other hand, you can devote some of your ‘exp’ to your spells to increase their potency as you level.”
“This is why people will often delay leveling themselves. They can pour exp into their spells, and still train their body to its natural maximum potential before ever using their gained Potentia to do so. The trade-off is that you stay weaker for longer, but your spells become more powerful. Some do the reverse, and work to train their current characteristics to the maximum before using the leveling bonuses. Still, there is a limit. The Sigil we placed on all of you Initiates contains a few safety features to help you survive. Now, say ‘status’.”
“Status?” Taylor yelped as a chiming sound played in her head.
Contribution Activity Log is online! Scanning…
Unbeknownst to Taylor, the Sigil on her forehead was glowing, now fully visible to anyone looking. Mana left the Sigil, spiraled around her body, and returned to her head.