The young apprentice made his way up the stairs and started clearing his head along the way. His master may have a great many things in mind for his test. Though he did not relish the idea, he had spent many nights studying a wide variety of spells. He just hoped that he wouldn’t have to fight up there. He shuddered, this time having nothing to do with the cold. Combat magic was not his strong suit. Top that with slippery stone and a long drop off all sides, he did not favor his chances up there if it came to a fight.
He reached the top, the last flight of stone stairs covered in snow and ice, so he had to pay careful attention to his step as he ascended. At the top his master waited for him, arms crossed, his foot tapping incessantly. He seemed entirely unaffected by the cold, and the wind whipped at his robes slowly, giving the impression he was standing in slow motion through high speed winds.
“About time you got up here, m’boy.” He grumbled amiably. “Your test is simple. You must remain conscious for five minutes.” He stated, taking an hourglass from out of his sleeve and setting it on the utmost highest remaining block. The sand started trickling down slowly.
Endrance frowned as he looked at the hourglass. “That can’t be all there is to the test, is there?” he asked defensively. Already he brought several spells to mind, and started preparing himself to throw energy into a spell in a hurry. He already knew the answer his master would give, but he had to ask. A line like that just begs to be answered.
“Of course not!” Master Kaelob replied, rolling his shoulders and stretching his legs a little for show. “I get the pleasure of trying to render you unconscious.”
Yep. Combat magic. Endrance sighed. “Of course.”
Chapter 02
Master Kaelob lost no time and began his assault, flicking his left hand in a quick, up and down motion, and his right hand came up, his fingers in a claw. “Ignatius!” he hissed, and flames roared out of his hand from his palm, spraying out of his hand in a rolling, shrieking cone.
Endrance was prepared for combat to begin, but had no magic to directly counter it, so instead he dove to the side, his hands shuddering as he attempted to cast his spell. The cold had made his hands mostly numb, and the added confusion of trying to not die made him unsure if he could pull it off.
The fingers of his left hand rapidly twisted into a swift pair of mudras as his arm moved from right to left across himself. His right arm swept into a circle in front of him. “Peltaeus!” He responded, his shoulder hitting the ice slicked snow as the spell took the energy he imparted into it. The flames washed across the area he was still in, but drew a strong hiss of steam as an eggshell thin bubble of congealed frost swept up from the snowy ground around him.
Endrance scrambled to his feet as his hastily constructed ice shield diverted the bulk of the flames, leaving him standing unharmed behind a cloud of steam. Warmth had filled the air around him for but a moment, but was swept away by the freezing winds. The steam cleared as the wind howled by, and Kaelob had not moved since the attack began.
“Excellent!” He exclaimed. “Use your environment to bolster your magic, very good. Using fire in a place like this is a bad idea, with so much cold and wind around!”
He thrust his arm forward, his hand formed into a claw. “Culare!”
Endrance dove to the other side, receiving a matching bruise on his other shoulder for the effort. Unseen force rippled past. It was invisible, but the effects it left behind were not. For the split instant that the spell shot through the sky, the snow in its path got caught up by it, hurtling past Endrance’s side and clear out off the side of the tower. A column of snow-less air as thick as his waist traveled on past Kaelob’s hand and beyond, and in an instant it was filled in as more snow fell.
Endrance skidded to a stop and flinched as his arm fell into the stairs leading down. He rolled in the other direction, and came to his feet again. He knew he would never be able to defeat his master in combat, especially not in a place of his choosing or preparation. He could, however use his environment to his advantage. He thought quickly, and devised a plan he thought was at least somewhat clever.
He dropped to a knee as Kaelob prepared to launch another spell at him. Again he brought up his shield of ice, but this time made a conscious effort to put more power into the spell. This time, the frost congealed together and thickened, forming a half-dome of ice nearly an inch thick. It’s sloped side deflected whatever it was that Kaelob had thrown at him, and Endrance smirked. He felt the tingle of his master pulling more energy into a spell, and quickly went to work.
He brought his almost entirely numb hands together and entwined them into the sign of the dreamer and quietly whispered “Praestigius.” More of his power drained into the spell, and he felt himself starting to feel the wear. Master Kaelob could also force him to knock himself unconscious from overusing his magic, if Endrance wasn’t careful.
He then immediately rolled back on his heels, sliding onto the top most steps of the stairs down. A quick twist of his waist, and he slid down the stairs on his back, his feet held out before him and his arms out to either side for stability. His image remained behind the frost barrier, appearing to be holding his hands out to the ice with his eyes closed in concentration. He appeared to be muttering, and his voice could barely be heard over the wind. To all purposes he appeared to be maintaining the barrier.
Endrance came to a stop at the landing, popping to his feet and stepping aside the stairs. He intended on maintaining the illusion from down below, and keep Kaelob focused on fighting it while he took shelter from the cold, which would most assuredly bring him down. There he could figure out how to defend himself against the cold, and come back up when he was certain of achieving his goal.
He turned to find a safe niche in the room and immediately spotted Kaelob standing in the same room. He had his arms up and oddly bent as if he was controlling a puppet, and he looked at Endrance with wide eyes, and his lips pursed. He appeared as a kid caught in the middle of doing something he knew was wrong.
“Ah, well.” The apprentice muttered, scratching at his cheek. “I guess… damn.” There went his plans. It looks like my master had the same idea. Now what?
Kaelob cleared his throat and brought his arms down, smoothing the front of his robes. “Hmmm… yes. Awkward.” he responded quietly, his eyes still wide.
A tense moment passed, the only sound the wind whistling through the stone structure. Then they both broke into action at the same time. Kaelob thrust a finger out at him and cried “Gelare!” A ray of icy white and blue light shot through the air at his apprentice, who yelped and scrambled up the stairs again. The ray met stone, and a layer of ice burst outwards along the sides of the stone, encasing it several feet across.
Endrance came up the stairs in a rush, and hopped over the shield he had left standing. He skidded on his heels and fell on his rear, narrowly avoiding a bolt of force that Kaelob’s illusory double launched at him. He was unsure if the attack would have done any actual damage since it was an illusion, but considering the power his master had at his disposal he was fairly certain that it was best to just avoid it.
A second Kaelob came up the stairs just afterwards, throwing a duplicate bolt of force at Endrance’s prone form. He rolled, and cried out in fear as the whoomph of the energy crashing into the floor sent him skidding several feet to the side. That one hurt. As he saw Kaelob step onto the roof, a third copy poked his head up and glared at him as he ascended the stairs.
This was bad. If he was keeping these illusions running, he could be any one of the three. He could subdue him as he tried to take on a copy. A frightening thought shivered through his spine. What if all three of them are copies?
Uncertain, he knew he had to avoid all of their attention long enough to save his hide. He forewent standing in exchange for getting a spell off. He held his hand up into the air and shouted aloud as the spell released. “Inumbrae!”
The air around him went black, wrapped in the deepest of magical shado
ws. It swelled out, encapsulating almost the entire top of the tower. He couldn’t see anything within the dome of darkness around him, but Kaelob and his duplicates couldn’t see either. He wasted no time; He pulled himself up to a knee, but stayed low. A low profile meant less likely to be hit by a blindly thrown spell.
He shivered again, and realized he could barely feel anything. His feet had gone numb long ago. The exertion of casting and running around had helped to keep him warm, but he was tiring quickly. He quickly rubbed his hands together and breathed on them to try to warm them. As he puffed into his hands he had a brilliant idea.
He channeled more energy, formed the correct signs in the darkness as he drew in an icy, chilling breath. It was the long style of casting, so he had to waste precious seconds composing the spell. He muttered a long incantation, pleading the magic to grant him what he desired, taking one last breath. He exhaled, his breath coming out hot. Instead of being swept away by the wind, the hot air spread and wrapped around his body. Heat started seeping into his aching limbs, and he could feel the tip of his nose again. The spell should greatly reduce the effects of the cold. It might even keep the wind chill at bay since it would continuously warm the air around him so long as he kept the spell active.
He waited quietly, listening. Though it didn’t give him much advance notice as, say, watching a wizard form hand symbols, mudra, or weave patterns as they prepared to cast a spell, hearing the final word of power might give him a chance to avoid the spell or even counter it if he knew what the word of power meant.
His skin prickled, and he rolled to his left, quietly summoning up his frost shield as he came back to his feet. He hadn’t heard a word, but the wind was whistling through the air enough to hide murmurs and whispered phrases. Something collided where he had once stood, and he felt his newly forming frost barrier shatter under the blow. The spillover force knocked him on his back, and his head rapped against the stone floor. Stars swam across his vision, and he couldn’t concentrate on anything.
Master Kaelob must have started tearing his darkness spell to pieces, causing light to gleam in cracks along the outer boundaries before it fell apart entirely. One of him walked up to the stunned apprentice and looked down on him, his face full of disappointment. Endrance’s vision started clearing up again, the pain of his knock to the head fading slightly.
He held a hand up, pointing a finger at Endrance. From under his arm, Endrance could see that though he had lasted a goodly amount of time, some time still remained in the hourglass. He had no chance of casting any useful spell before Kaelob would be able to hit him. His mind raced as he saw his master take a breath to incant something dangerous.
Desperate, he twisted his hip, kicking out with his foot at his master’s leg. It barely connected, causing Kaelob to shift his weight to try to keep from falling. His other foot slipped on the ice, and the High Magus looked surprised for an instant before he dropped to the ground on his back. Endrance slapped his hand on the icy stone below him and shouted “Deserpo!”
More power siphoned out of him and into the ice, he felt momentarily light headed as the spell came into effect. The ice below and around Master Kaelob experienced an explosion of growth, spreading across his robes and over his form. It only took an instant to completely cover over his opponent, leaving him encased in ice. The frost glinted with the faint suns light that pierced the clouds above.
Endrance stood up, and carefully looked down at his master. The old man looked up at him through the ice, and grinned at him. He looked pleased.
“Most excellent, m’boy!” Kaelob exclaimed, walking up the steps onto the open floor. Endrance did a double take, and looked down at the ice cage, which was still occupied.. The other duplicate he had fought was gone. “Not afraid to mix up physical combat with magical. Good!” the elder mage assessed. “And you creatively use relatively simple words of power. I’m impressed!”
Endrance panted, his hands on his knees. “Well,” he stated. “You know me. Use all of what you learn, I always say.”
The High Magus bobbed his head, rubbing his hands together. “Of course. Is that a warmth spell I feel you using?”
Endrance stood up, and half shrugged. “More of a wrap of warm air. It’s not the most efficient when there’s a lot of wind, but it won’t melt the ice around me like others would.”
Kaelob smiled approvingly. “Good. Good. Gelare!” He suddenly thrust his finger out, throwing another ray of frost at him. Endrance didn’t try to block the spell or dodge. He instead thrust both hands out in their complicated mudras and shouted “Ignatius!” with more force and power than he suspected his master had initially used on him. From his hands poured forth a literal flood of bright orange fire, roiling and boiling outwards as it easily absorbed the freezing ray with no apparent loss of momentum as it swept over more than half of the roof and into the sky beyond.
“Oh my.” Kaelob managed to exclaim before the fire was upon him.
Endrance didn’t wait for the spell to peter out on its own, knowing that his master would survive such a simple attack easily. It wasn’t weak; those flames were more than powerful enough to sweep across forty feet of open terrain and burn anything flammable within, or wash through seventy or so feet of enclosed spaces. It was also unexpected. Kaelob had never taught him that spell. He was also certain he had estimated the amount of power Kaelob was putting into his spells and put enough into his own to defeat it.
It wasn’t a sure thing though. There was a great deal of theoretical math that would go into perfectly defending against a spell. A wizard would have to know not only the full properties of the magic being opposed, but also be able to provide just enough energy to cancel it out once cast.
He dashed towards the edge of the building, leaping out and grasping for the one thing that would grant him victory. His body ached, and he felt he was pulling out the last dredges of his energy just to keep the spell keeping him warm active. His aura was likely dangerously close to empty. His fingertips had just barely touched it when unseen force caught him and slammed him to the ground. He struggled with all his might and barely managed to flip over onto his back. Whatever it was, he was pinned. He didn’t even have the strength to pit his will against the bindings he was trapped in.
Kaelob who stood before the cage was gone. Nothing remained at all except scorched stone and a swiftly vanishing waft of smoke. The ice cage he had encased the double in shattered, shards of frozen ice flying everywhere. “That was close, m’boy.” Kaelob muttered, pulling himself to his feet. “And here I thought I had you all figured out. Then you surprise me like that.” This time he kept him held with magic as he approached.
“You have done admirably so far. You have even managed to learn some of my spells just by watching me use them a few times. Only two other people have ever pulled off such a trick, learning the short form of a spell just by observing it a few times. How did you do it?”
Endrance struggled against the barrier a moment, trying to catch his breath. He took a breath and tried to shrug, but was unable to move enough. “Well, you know.” He began. “I could sense the shapes you formed your magic into whenever you cast spells. I just held my own energy in the same patterns and imitated your mudras and words of power.”
“You could sense the patterns of the spell, inside of me, with all this cold, under stress, and in combat?” he asked.
The young man clamped his mouth shut for a moment to stop the involuntary chattering. When did his warmth spell fail? “I had to guess at a bunch of it, to be honest, and I think I used many times more energy than was needed for a properly made spell, but it was a good show, yeah?”
Kaelob shook his head. “More like dangerous, and not for me. You know what can happen if you channel too much energy, and you still did it anyways.”
Kaelob held his finger out towards his apprentice one more time, this time Endrance was not so sure he was doing it for a spell.
“Any last words before I flunk you out of this te
st, and send you to scrub the floors for the rest of the week?” he asked.
The hourglass Endrance had bumped teetered over the edge, finally tipped over by the whirling snow. It tumbled down to land on Endrance’s stomach. He looked at the empty top half and then back up at his master. “I win?” he said hopefully. Chill winds whistled through the silent tower. Kaelob looked at the glass and grimaced.
Chapter 03
Endrance awoke the next day, later in the morning than was usual for him and yawned as he sat up in bed. He had long since moved to the only other room in their cottage, and Endrance appreciated the privacy as he washed himself and got dressed in clothes he was comfortable in.
He wore rugged pants of thick cloth, threaded with leather down the seams. Like most of his clothes they were at one point someone else’s, but given to him as a hand-down. His father neatly cut them down to fit his son, and fixed the wear and tear before giving them over. Endrance slipped a pale cotton shirt over his chest, long sleeved but light and airy. He pulled soft-soled deer hide boots onto his feet, a commonly found kind with no cuff around the ankles.
Splashing water from his small washbasin into his face to help clear the cobwebs of sleep from his mind, he opened his door and walked into the other room of his father’s house. The room had an earthy feel to it, stone walls and thatched ceiling, with only two crossing rafters and one wooden pillar in the center of the room to support the whole thing. Aside from a pair of wooden chairs, some shelves and a table, the only furniture in the room was his father's bed near the hearth, which was already empty as Endrance could hear his father was outside the cottage. The floor was packed dirt covered in wooden planking, with a large tattered rug covering the majority of the floor. There was a small fire in the hearth, with a kettle hung over the flames.
Spellscribed: Provenance Page 2