by Andrew Rowe
I looked down, dejected. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not allowed to take it into tests anymore.”
“Oh.” Sera was silent for a moment, then put her hand on top of mine. “Well, it doesn’t matter. We’ll find another way to handle it.”
“Yeah.” I thought for a moment. “Seems like we both lost to fire, actually. And ice was useful on both sides for this test.”
“True. You thinking we should learn more ice spells before the next test?”
I nodded. “Yeah, that’d be good for you and Patrick. I can’t cast ice. Not sure about Marissa.” I sent the Guardian a questioning look.
“No’ at my level,” Marissa denied. “I’ve ‘eard some Masters can, but I’m a long way off from that.”
That was interesting. I hadn’t heard of higher levels of attunements giving access to more types of mana. I’d have to research that more later.
I really needed to do more research on higher levels of attunements in general, especially after that conversation with Vellum. If being a Carnelian Mage was going to be necessary for manufacturing anything useful, I needed to make that a high priority goal.
Patrick pointed at my glove. “Couldn’t you make an ice gauntlet or something?”
I chewed my bottom lip, considering. “I’d need help from you or Sera, but yeah, it’s possible. Not sure if the gauntlet is the best option. We seem to need defense more than offense.”
“Could you make us shield sigils that use ice magic?” Sera asked.
“Maybe. Not sure how exactly that’d work. I think I’d have to find a rune that detects fire mana or just generally intensive heat to turn the shield on, then trigger an ice barrier. The problem is that ice is harmful to us; that’s how I nearly killed myself.”
I took a moment to think about it. “If I could make the ice barrier show up outside of our normal shield as a first line of defense, theoretically our normal shields should protect us against the cold...but I’m not sure the shield sigil would even activate. Maybe I could link them so that the normal shield always activates when the ice one does...”
“Could you make the ice shield a second function of the same item, like how your gauntlet can do two things?” Sera offered.
“That’s not a bad idea, but I’m not sure our normal sigils have the mana capacity to handle a second function. I might have to make new ones from scratch, probably out of a higher capacity material... but that’s not a bad idea. I could make the normal shields stronger, too, that way. It’s just expensive.” I nodded anyway. “I’ll look into it.”
“I can’t learn ice spells,” Patrick mused, “but if it’s a flying monster, maybe I could learn some air magic.” He turned to Sera. “Any chance you could teach me that ice storm thing? I mean, I couldn’t cast the spell itself, but if it’s half air and half ice, I could probably learn the air part. Maybe I could make a lightning storm by modifying it or something.”
She shook her head. “I can try to teach it to you, but I don’t know if you could learn it. I’m directly invoking one of the creatures I have a pact with; it’s not the same kind of spell that Elementalists use.”
“Oh. Shame.” Patrick frowned, and then shook it off. “I’m sure I can find something.”
Sera tilted her head to the side. “We could still try it... Let’s talk about it later. Besides that, I thought you were training with Meltlake? Wouldn’t she be able to teach you better air spells?”
That was news to me. Sera seemed to be keeping better track of Patrick than I was. Not surprising, really... I was pretty bad at keeping up with what my friends were doing. I’d need to improve on that.
“Uh, she’s training me,” Patrick confirmed, “but Meltlake doesn’t really teach air spells.” He looked sheepish. “Or lightning spells. You know how a lot of people don’t live up to their name? Yeah,” his voice cracked as he drew out the word, “she’s not one of those people. On the plus side, I know lots of ways to light things on fire.”
That got some snickers from the group, but it also got me curious. “Has she given you any hints on how she does the big stuff? Like, you know, whole lakes?”
He shook his head. “She’s been pretty tight lipped on that. I’ve heard some rumors from the other students, though.”
“What sorts of rumors?” I asked.
“Well, the most popular one is that she’s ascended.”
I raised an eyebrow at that. “Seriously? I know Meltlake is impressive, she’s probably one of the most powerful people here, but... Are Ascended Attunements even real?”
He shrugged. “Some people say that a parent or a friend saw her duel, and that her hand was glowing gold when she cast that spell. I know, I know, that could be anything, but the whole ‘Ascended Attunements glow gold’ thing is a popular story.”
It wasn’t impossible; there were numerous witnesses to her duel and they agreed her power was on an unbelievable scale. Still, just being an Emerald Elementalist might have been sufficient to do what she had. There were, supposedly, only a dozen or so Emeralds in the world. Their capabilities weren’t broadly known.
I decided to move on. “Okay, anyone else have suggestions for next time?”
Marissa looked nervous, so I turned to her. “Marissa, what’s on your mind?”
She startled, glancing from side to side. “Well, I don’t mean t’be rude, but... M’lady Sera, you’re a Summoner, yes?”
We all knew the answer, but Sera nodded. “Sure?” she replied.
“Well, I don’t know much about yer attunement, so I don’t aim ta presume. But I didn’t see you actually... summon any monsters?”
Sera shrank. “I, uh, can’t actually do that just yet. I’ve only made one pact, and I don’t have enough mana to summon it. Not even a fragment.”
That made sense, but it made me suspicious. What kind of thing did she make that pact with? The ice theme was obvious. I’d initially assumed she’d found some sort of low-level ice elemental. Could she have found a strong one? Maybe I wasn’t the only one who had an atypical tower adventure.
“Oh, forgive me, I didn’t mean—”
Sera waved her apology away. “No problem, Mara. It was a fair question. I’ll practice. I doubt I’ll manage a summoning in ten weeks, but maybe by the last test.”
In spite of brushing the comment off, I could tell Sera looked pretty bothered by her admission. I leaned into her. “Don’t stress about it. At least you have an attunement that works in combat. And that ice storm spell is the strongest thing we have.”
She nodded without answering.
I looked back at the others. “Okay. Anything else? Actually, maybe you can all give me a wish list with the types of magical items you’d be interested in? I can’t promise anything soon; I’m pretty much out of money. But maybe I can scrape some things together over time. I’d like to get each of us at least one new item before we hit the real tower.”
Patrick and Marissa looked introspective. Sera, on the other hand, folded her arms and narrowed her eyes at me.
“You already owe me a gauntlet,” she reminded me.
“Oh. Right.” I grabbed one of the papers we’d used and wrote that down on the blank side. “Do you want it to be any different from mine?”
She considered. “You can make them use any type of mana, right?”
“As long as someone else can provide the mana to power it, sure.”
She glanced at Patrick. “Right now, I’m limited to only throwing ice. That makes me a lot less versatile than Patrick. But if Patrick is willing to help charge a gauntlet for me...”
I nodded at her logic. “You could be throwing fire or lightning, even though your bound monster only gives you ice. Yeah, that makes sense. We’d need it to recharge itself, though, since you wouldn’t be able to power it with your own mana.”
She nodded. “You willing to help us with this, Patrick?”
He blinked. “Uh, yeah, of course, Sera. Whatever you need.”
I looked at him quizzically. He d
idn’t usually sound that nervous.
“Okay, great,” I said, dismissing it. “That can go on my list... after the ice shields.”
Sera shot me a withering glance, but I put my hands up in a warding gesture. “The gauntlet is a good idea, but it’s not practical for the immediate future. We need the ice shields more for the next test or two.”
“Assuming the dragon and statues are the biggest problems we run into, yeah,” she retorted. “But what if there’s an ice elemental further in?”
“We need to survive the dragon first,” I pointed out. “I don’t think we’re equipped to do that yet, unless we can figure out a way to bypass it entirely. If ice shields are too specialized, maybe I’ll just make us higher capacity shield sigils. And we can ask Jin if he thinks he can handle the dragon through invisibility or something. But since we don’t even know how to unlock your door, I don’t know how far speculating will get us.”
“Fine, fine.” She sighed. “But I get the first improved shield thing.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay.” Turning to Marissa, I asked, “You need anything?”
She blinked, pointing a questioning finger at herself. “Me?”
“Yeah, Marissa. You’re a part of this team. It sounds like you did great in there, but I’d still like to know if you’d benefit from anything else.”
She blushed openly at the compliment. “I, erm, s’pose I could use somethin’ that makes me hit harder? If that wouldn’t be too much trouble for you, m’lord Corin.”
“Sure. I seem to be making gauntlets into a theme, and you punch things. Would wearing a gauntlet interfere with your techniques?”
She shook her head. “No, m’lord, many Guardians use gloves or punch knives. I’d prefer somethin’ light, though, if ye don’t mind too terribly. I like ta move my hands.”
Hm, maybe cloth gloves, then? But they don’t store a lot of mana... I’ll have to think about that.
“Makes sense. I’ll see what I can come up with.” I scribbled ‘Gauntlet of Punching’ down on my list and turned to Patrick. “You got any ideas, Patrick?”
Patrick brightened at finally getting his turn. “Something to amplify my spells. Give them a little more kick.”
Not a bad idea. Might be good if we could get him to the point where he can handle that shadow monster in one or two hits.
“Amplification items are tricky, but I’ve already done a little research on them. It’ll probably have to be a single element one for now. You good with something that makes your fire spells stronger?”
His eyes went wide and he vibrated with enthusiasm. “I’d love that.”
“Okay. I’ll see if I can put something together, but you’ll probably need to help me build it, since it’ll take fire mana.” I looked at Marissa. “Also, I might need your help for your own gloves, Marissa.”
Marissa nodded. “I’d be glad to serve you.” She was still blushing a bit. I didn’t understand why.
I wrote down ‘Fire Amplification Amulet’ below Sera’s gauntlet. “Okay. I think we’re good for now. Let’s plan to meet up and talk about ideas again in a week. We’ll grab Jin next time, too.”
After that, I nudged them gradually out of the room. I had a lot of work to do.
***
The next few days involved a lot of studying.
Professor Vellum had assumed that telling me that using my attunement was already draining my mental mana would make me more comfortable using it directly.
She’d been wrong. It had the opposite effect.
I was now deathly afraid of using my attunement at all.
I knew it was irrational. I hadn’t suffered any obvious side effects from using the attunement, and I knew that other people used their attunements actively all the time. The attunements were built for people to use them.
But I still couldn’t get past the idea that I was going to burn out my mind.
So, I turned to alternate ideas for how to make my attunement stronger.
I dug through books, bothered teachers, and nagged second year students for ideas. Advancing attunements was one of the main goals of any student, so there were lots of studies on different ways of doing it.
Most techniques were designed to supplement practice with the attunement itself. Some of them were attunement-specific exercises. Summoners tried to make as many small summoned fragments as possible, or to quickly summon and dismiss the same one. There were different schools of thought about how Elementalists should train, but usually they involved casting the biggest spell you could and then resting and doing it again.
For Enchanters, the most popular method was just to enchant progressively stronger items, but relying as heavily as possible on the mana that was directly connected to your attunement.
So, pretty much the exact opposite of what I’d been doing.
I hit up the Divinatory and learned that my mental mana had advanced from my minimal use of my attunement, but only a bit. I’d gone from starting with 18 at the beginning of the year up to 22.
I was informed that most students had somewhere between 30 and 60 mana in their attunement’s location by this time in the year. I was lagging pretty far behind in that area, but I’d improved my right hand’s mana considerably. It’d gone from 24 at the start to 40, just under double.
Apparently, having more mana somewhere outside of my attunement was a very bad idea, because I got scolded for it by no less than three different students and teachers before I left.
No one seemed to be able to tell me why it was so bad to have my mana unbalanced like that; they just seemed to be regurgitating what they’d heard elsewhere. Still, I tried to internalize a core part of the message. I really needed to bump that mental mana up as quickly as possible.
On the plus side, I knew my enchanting was working for improving my mana. I’d just been improving the wrong type.
My first idea was looking into a way to shift my mana from my right hand into my mind. That way, I could keep training the same way and just convert the mana over.
So, I did some reading on that. Apparently shifting a person’s mana balance was an entire field of study, and strongly connected to ongoing research in how to make artificial attunements. There were some promising studies coming out of Caelford, but the essence of what I learned was that I’d need to study for years to even start attempting that kind of thing.
It was a fascinating subject. The idea of making artificial attunements appealed to me on a very fundamental level. I kept some of the books and planned an eventual trip to Caelford to talk to some of the researchers there, but for the moment, that was nowhere close to a viable approach.
Next was looking for ways I could boost my mana without exercise. This was, of course, also something that had already been heavily explored by others. Virtually everyone wanted to avoid doing work, or find ways to make it more efficient.
I found out that they were having a relevant lecture in the alchemy class the following week, so I dropped in on it. The teacher, Professor Zou, was a short woman that looked like she hailed from Dalenos.
“Many of you have asked me how to distill enhancement elixirs. The answer is simple: don’t. You are not ready.”
She pointed to a student. “Yun. Why do Enchanters not transfer mana into other attuned?”
The student stood. “Every person has slightly different mana, Professor. The body resists and rejects foreign mana.”
Professor Zou nodded. “Yes, this is true. You may sit.” As the student sat back down, she lifted one of the vials from a stand on her speaker’s podium. “This is the simplest of enhancement elixirs. To create one, a student must learn to collect their gray mana into a liquid state, which is already a feat that most students cannot learn until they are of Carnelian Mage level. Then they must purify it. Even some Citrines cannot do this through their attunement alone. Instead, we have studied how to distill mana. But an ordinary still will not work for this purpose; heating the mana to evaporate it will alter it toward an
affinity with fire.”
The teacher drew a multi-chambered device on a slate at the back of the classroom. “This is an elixir still. It is not a standard alchemist’s still; it is specifically designed for this purpose. This chamber houses the liquid mana. This funnel,” she pointed at the design, “is used to add in a distilling agent. The agent is a unique mixture based on the exact composition of the base mana, designed to force it to evaporate while exposed to room temperature air. From there, the evaporated mana collects here.”
Professor Zou pointed at another chamber above the vial. It led into a diagonal-facing tube that pointed toward another large chamber. “This tube is a condenser. Typically, a non-magical apparatus is used to cool this chamber, gradually re-forming the mana into a liquid state. It gradually drizzles down the tube into the collection chamber, here.”
The professor pointed at the last chamber in the diagram. “If you have succeeded, the elixir will be collected here. There are numerous points of potential failure. If you were incorrect about the original composition of your mana, the potion is toxic. If you mixed it with the wrong distilling agent, your potion is toxic. If you mixed in an extra drop of the distilling agent, your potion may be toxic.”
She steepled her hands in front of her. “And, for all this effort and risk, a basic enhancement elixir,” she raised the first vial she’d shown us, “will not raise any of your mana types by a single point. You would need to drink these elixirs for weeks to see any noticeable effect. Stronger elixirs exist, of course, made by Citrines and Emeralds. The least expensive of them are sold for hundreds of gold. The greatest elixirs are often traded for artifacts or entire plots of land.”
...So, that approach was going to have to be put on hold.
I considered asking about the liquid that I’d taken from the inside of the tower, but I wasn’t comfortable sharing its existence with a teacher that I didn’t know. I decided I’d try to do a bit more research on the water on my own first, and I’d approach her or one of the other teachers about the fluid later on.