"Eight."
Merric smiled again.
"Eight. That is good. That puts you on a level with the highest of us, and we need all the high ranking wizards we can get. With you in our ranks, we would have four wizards, and that would bring us into balance with the four on Mortow’s side."
"So he has four wizards as well? Are they more powerful than those who side with you?"
"More powerful, no, but they are at least a match for us. Mortow is almost as strong in magic as I am. Maklin and Megan are on a level similar to Mathis, and Mael, well Mael is not quite as strong, but what he lacks in power he makes up for in ruthlessness. I was not surprised in the least when I saw him standing with Mortow. He cares for no one and nothing except the magic and the acquisition of power," Merric said with distaste.
Michael laughed.
"And you expect me to be able to help you against wizards who have had a lifetime of training, who know magic inside and out? Your confidence in my abilities far exceeds my own."
"I know it feels like you are being thrown into the wolf pen, but I will do my best to train you in the skills you need to learn. I am hoping that your unique magic will provide you, and us, with an edge over the opposition. You are an unknown to us, but that makes you an unknown to them as well. They will not be able to account for your abilities since not even you know what they are. And now that you have come here, we can try to unlock some of the mystery surrounding those powers. Who knows? You may have some new talents that you can teach us. Anything that we can learn from you will be something that they do not know. It could prove to be the difference needed in being able to defeat them."
"I find it hard to accept that I could possibly teach you anything," Michael gestured around him.
"This is a world of magic. You were born here and have lived here all your life. Hell, you are the Headmaster of the school of magic, the authority on the subject. What could I possibly know that you have not known for most of your life?" Michael stated dejectedly.
"I do not know, Michael, maybe nothing, maybe everything. I simply have no idea. I feel that your magic has great potential and, although you do not yet know what you are doing with it, I hope to be able to give you some insight into its working and, in turn, to be enlightened myself. I will not presume to count you among us when the battle begins, but I would plead for your assistance. However, it must be your choice. I am not like Mortow. I do not demand and expect the loyalty of others as my right. I ask for and offer friendship, and I hope that a loyalty grows out of that bond. I will train you no matter your decision, and you need not decide now. Just know that I am here to help you regardless," Merric said sitting back in his chair.
Michael looked at him long and hard.
"I have not come all this way just to learn to use my magic. I have come to kill the man responsible for the death of my wife. And since that is the same man that you are fighting against, we are allies. I do not yet know if we will be friends, because I don’t know you well enough. I trust you will not begrudge me a certain amount of wariness. What I have seen of you so far leads me to believe we could be friends. But, as I told Micah, I am not the greatest judge of character and, therefore, I do not often trust my first impressions of people. I would appreciate any help and training you can give me, but I want you to know that the training is only a means to an end for me. My goal is to settle the score with my wife’s murderer. The trigger man is dead. Now I want the one who ordered it. I will understand if knowing my reasons make you no longer desire to train me, but I want to be honest with you about my intentions. I would much rather have you deny me the training now than to regret having done it later."
"Michael, I cannot in good conscious deny you training for feelings that I myself have harbored in the past. I lost my wife in a war many years ago. I, too, sought vengeance for her death. I know this will not make any difference to you right now, but I want you to know that I direly regret my actions from that time. I had my vengeance, but the cost in lives and to my heart was dear. You see, Michael, when you set out on a mission such as the one you are on, it is not always the guilty who pay the price. It is the inherent nature in these types of situations that those who do evil will hide behind the innocent. They will manipulate and deceive others to obtain their own goals. Mortow will not meet you on your terms. He will shield himself with the armies he has gathered. His wizards will be a line of defense all its own. Killing him will not be an easy task, even if he had none of those barriers before him. He is almost my equal in magic. In shear physical strength, he is daunting, to say the least. You will need all of our help in order to have any hope of achieving such a goal."
"I know that I am a long way from the realization of my vengeance, and I know I have everything to learn, but that does not diminish my desire for his blood. If you are still willing to train me, then I give you my word that I will stand with you against Mortow and his armies. I don’t know what I can do, but whatever it is, I’m with you as long as his death is the ultimate goal. I want to make it clear that any punishment short of death will not satisfy me. If I die before we can get to him, I want to know that he will still pay with his life for what he did to Karin," Michael said, his eyes never leaving Merric’s.
"I maintain no illusions to his reform. He caused the death of many magi here in Kantwell. His death and the death of his wizards are my goal as well," Merric said with a sigh.
"Then we are in agreement."
"Aye, but unlike you, it is not vengeance that motivates me. It is fear, plain and simple. Fear of what will happen and what will become of our world if Mortow is victorious. If he were to destroy us and take charge, there would be no one left to oppose him."
"Then we must not fail. Now that you know my feelings, what say we return to a lighter subject? Like the second and fourth keys."
Merric chuckled.
"Good idea, my boy. Enough of the doom and gloom, eh? All right then, the second key deals with illusion, the conjuring of the insubstantial and changing appearances. Let us say you need to throw up a barrier to prevent someone from coming across. You do not wish to hurt the person, so you conjure a line of illusionary fire. Most people will not see through illusion because they have no idea that it is not real. Therein lay its strength and its weakness. If I were to conjure the line of fire too close to that individual, then he or she would be able to tell it’s an illusion because the flames would put off no heat. Or if I put a wall of stone immediately before a charging animal, then the animal will not be able to stop in time and will run right through the wall. There is a balance to be maintained in the relationship of distances. Illusion is easy and requires very little power. The changing of appearance is good for being able to blend. You can change hair color, eye color, and other characteristics of that nature. It does not actually make a permanent change, but gives the illusion of change," Merric instructed.
"How do you go about it? I mean, I know how to conjure fire, but how do you conjure fake fire?" Michael asked intrigued.
"We use the word phasmatis when conjuring illusion. It roughly means ghostly, giving the rest of the spell illusionary properties. I will demonstrate." Merric raised his hand and opened it, palm up.
"Phasmatis incendia." A small ball of fire formed above Merric’s palm and roiled there. Michael rose and extended his hand towards the flame. Merric held it out to him so he could reach it. Michael passed his hand through the fire feeling nothing then returned to his chair. Merric closed his hand around the flame and it vanished.
"You see? It looks real, but has no substance."
Michael tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling.
"Say I wanted to change my hair color to, I don’t know, red. How would I do it?"
"You would say Phasmatis meus saeta rutilus."
Michael cocked his head to the side and said.
"Phasmatis meus saeta rutilus." He raised his eyes, but he could not see his own hair. He looked to Merric and found him barely containing himse
lf with a hand over his mouth.
"What? Did I do it wrong?"
Merric waved his hand negligibly still trying to stifle his laughter.
"No, no, you did it right, that is, if you wanted your hair the color of a cherry." Unable to contain himself any longer, Merric let out great peals of laughter.
Michael looked around the room, but did not see a mirror. He walked over to the window trying to see his reflection in the glass. He caught sight of himself.
"Oh, you weren’t kidding. I guess red doesn’t get any redder than that. Wow, I could signal planes to land with this hair." Michael walked back to his chair and sat down.
"Ok, how do I fix it?"
Merric was wiping his eyes and still chuckling.
"Just think of your hair as it should be. That will be sufficient to break the flow of power keeping the illusion in place. It takes so little power that we do not have to consciously maintain control over it."
Michael thought of his hair being brown again.
"Did that do it?"
"Aye, all is back to normal. Next time, concentrate on the shading a bit and you will do fine," Merric told him.
Now it was Michael’s turn to chuckle.
"I’ll remember that. Now, what about the fourth key?"
"The fourth key deals with substantial conjuration, things not elemental in nature. Like say, a loaf of bread or a wooden bowl. These things would be real. The main thing to remember with this type of magic is that you cannot conjure sentient, living beings, like a horse or a person."
"I see. So then I could conjure up an apple or an orange because even though they are living, they are not sentient."
"Correct. They are merely the fruit and seeds of a living plant."
"Then I could conjure a flower or a tree as well?"
"Flowers, yes. Trees are much larger, thus requiring a great deal of power and some trees are sentient. So, yes and no on the tree."
"You have sentient trees here?" Michael asked astonished.
"Not only sentient, but highly intelligent. Oh, there are not many, but there are a few. You may even meet them one day."
"That’s right! I remember Micah telling me about some called oak something. Talking trees, the surprises just keep coming. It’s going to take me years to get used to all this.
"The Oakrin are a good example."
"Well, I think you have covered the first six keys, now, how about letting me know what this seventh one does," Michael said changing the subject away from a topic that could lead to more questions he did not want to have to evade.
"Well, the seventh is a bit more abstract than the previous six. It involves force creation. It is mainly used in summoning."
"Summoning, like the summoning of demons?" Michael asked slightly uncomfortable.
"Yes, but that is one of the darker aspects of summoning. Only truly evil wizards walk that path. What I was referring to was the summoning of something more mundane. For instance, just a few days ago I summoned Drakkin. He is a Swiftclaw who lives in the surrounding area."
"A Swiftclaw? You mean one of those small dragons?"
"I see Micah has told you of them as well. Good. Yes, Drakkin is of the small species of dragons that inhabit this world. They are very intelligent and incredibly fast, and they love to feel important. I summoned him to ask him to carry a letter to King Brose."
"You have a king in this world as well? A real monarch?"
"We have several kings in this world. The elven nation has a king, though they prefer to think of him as the head elder. The trolls have a king. The ogres have a king, and we humans have a king. King Brose is the human king and rules over all of Branna. Branna is the land that you are in right now, by the way. It extends north and west of here to the ocean, south to Spanning Ridge, and east to the dwarven lands and the Glimmen Marsh." Merric reached down and opened a desk drawer on the lower right side of the desk and pulled out a rolled up parchment tied with a red ribbon. He untied the ribbon and spread the parchment across the desk placing the two books at its sides to hold it down.
"This is a map of Thelona." He pointed to a spot on the upper left of the landmass.
"This is Kantwell." Running his finger down to the south east he pointed out another spot.
"That is BranninCastle, King Brose’s castle."
"I love maps. You don’t, by any chance, have a copy of this that I can borrow to study, do you?" Michael asked still looking at the map.
"You may borrow this one. I have several of them. This one is fairly detailed and should be a good source of information for you. It would be to your advantage to learn it. Keep it as long as you like. You never know what information will be useful, nor when."
"Thank you. I’ll take good care of it, and I will return it when I am finished." Tearing his eyes away from the map Michael asked another question.
"So other than summoning dragons, what else can you do with the seventh key?"
Merric stood and picked up the books, causing the map to roll back on itself. He returned them to the bookcase and sat down again. He rolled the map up and retied the ribbon around it, placing it on the edge of the desk near Michael.
"Force creation can be used for a number of purposes. You could use that force to fracture stone to cause an avalanche, to shatter a wall that is blocking your path, or to shatter the bones of your enemy. Of course, if your enemy happens to be a wizard as well, and is expecting an attack, it becomes force against force with the stronger or the more imaginative one prevailing."
"If you don’t know what your opponent is going to do, how do you defend against it?"
"The seventh key unlocks one of the greatest tools in a wizard’s arsenal, the wizard’s shield. Prior to going into combat, all wizards will raise one of these shields. In its basest form, it requires very little to maintain, and its advantages are beyond measure. The shield will let you know when an attack has been directed at you. It gives enough initial protection against magical attacks so that you can then strengthen it to ward yourself from greater assaults. It turns arrows and sling stones completely. Given sufficient power, the shield can even deflect more forceful hand attacks such as swords."
"So you could walk through the enemy lines with this shield around you and not get hurt?"
"Depending on how many of the enemy there are and how much power you have, it is possible. However, I would not advise it. To protect yourself completely from hand to hand combat requires you to maintain the shield at a high level. Every attack against it uses up some of your power. If you were to walk into a group of four or five foes, you would probably be ok for a few minutes, but you would be weakening as each strike would require you to pour more and more energy into maintaining the shield. Walking into a large group would most assuredly be fatal."
"How do you raise one of these shields?" Michael asked.
"Concentrate on a protective barrier surrounding you and say Contego ab vulnero."
Michael thought about a barrier surrounding him, protecting him from harm, and repeated the words as instructed.
"Contego ab vulnero." The familiar cool wind began to blow through his mind, and he felt a tingling in his limbs as the magic extended out from him.
Merric stood up and motioned for Michael to do the same. He walked out from behind his desk.
"Ok, I want you to go over by the door. I am going to stand right here and cast a weak attack against your shield. I want you to concentrate on how it feels when it hits."
"Are you sure my shield is strong enough? I’m not sure if I even constructed it right," Michael said a bit apprehensively.
Merric smiled reassuringly at him.
"Do not worry, Michael. I have taught many magi. Trust me. I would not do something that would harm you. The attack against your shield will be no more than tossing a small stone at it. It is not the strength of the shield we are testing right now, but how you perceive an attack against it. Have no fear, you have cast it properly. I felt the magic respond."
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br /> "You’re the expert." Michael conceded as he walked over by the door and turned around to face Merric.
"Are you ready?" Merric asked still smiling, trying to put Michael at ease.
"As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess."
"Relax, Michael. This will be easy." Merric whispered the spell to raise his own wizard’s shield then cast a weak attack spell.
"Pello."
Michael felt a gentle thump against his shield at about chest level. It gave the impression of an object tossed at him at a very low velocity.
"That wasn’t so bad," he admitted.
Merric merely smiled and asked.
"How did it feel?"
"It felt like a hard, round object hit around my chest. It was moving very slowly and had very little force behind it," Michael answered.
"Excellent. That is precisely what you should have perceived from it. Now, I am going to hit it a bit harder. I still want you to concentrate on keeping the shield intact and pay attention to what the attack feels like. Are you ready?"
"Aye."
"Pello," Merric repeated.
This time it felt like someone punched his shield hard in the area around his stomach. The force was a little shocking, but there was no pain involved. Michael described the sensation to Merric.
"Very good. Do you think you are up to testing the shield’s strength now? We can leave it to another day if you are tired or uncomfortable with it."
"How do you test its strength?"
"Testing it is different from attacking it. I will apply force to the entire shield, a steady pressure that builds until you tell me to stop. It will require you to concentrate on maintaining the shield and will show you what the power drain of maintaining the shield actually feels like. There will be no discomfort at all, just a drain on your energy. You will more than likely be very tired after this, and need to rest for a while, but I feel I have given you enough to think about for one day, and it is nearing lunch time. Do you want to try it?"
"Why not? I’ve got to learn sometime," Michael said with a huge sigh.
The Chronicles of the Myrkron: Book 01 - The Nine Keys of Magic Page 33