Lorvan walked beside him back to his dorm, determined not to give Fabrisse the satisfaction of blaming time for his stress. They passed the Hall of Copper Stars, two empty fountains, and the statue of Pelrian the Arbitrary, who had once banned footwear inside lecture halls for reasons still unknown. Fabrisse remained quiet throughout.
After a while, Lorvan said, “You’re unusually silent.”
Fabrisse had been staring at his new, hard-earned spell, Cindermark. It had taken him two days just to unlock the Rank I version, but somehow it felt more than worth it.
[NEW TIER I SPELL REGISTERED: Cindermark]
Cindermark (Rank I)
Type: Active (Signal / Utility)
Tags: Fire / Line-of-Sight / Instant / Tactical
Element: Fire (Flare)
Casting Time: 1.2 seconds
Cooldown: None (limited by concentration and reagent fatigue)
Aetheric Reaction Equations:
• Mnemonic-Based:
35% Mnemonic Precision + 30 % Synchronization + 30% Physical Alignment + 5% Sequencing Control → "Ash above, ember below. Sight the flame and let it go."
• Intent-Based:
40% Synchronization + 30% Rapid Sequencing Control + 20% Physical Alignment + 10% Emotional Input
Effect:
Launches a narrow vertical flare of orange fire upward from the caster’s palm, extending up to 3 meters high at Rank I. The flare produces no heat, sound, or smoke, and dissipates cleanly after 2.5 seconds. It leaves no burn or residue.
Uses: Position marking, silent warnings, line-of-sight beaconing
Visibility Range: Up to 30 meters in open terrain
Detection Risk: Low (no ambient emissions; visible only when active)
Stability Notes:
Mnemonic casting provides higher consistency and stability in early training stages (strongly posture-dependent)
Intent-based casting allows faster deployment once mastered, but has reduced tolerance for internal noise or mental fatigue
Switching profiles mid-cast will disrupt flare formation
Casting Requirement: Requires SYN ≥ 7
The SYN requirement was just enough for him to cast even without help from the mitts nor the lodestone, so he just needed to get the mnemonic and the posturing right. Those two; he’d practiced diligently.
He stayed silent for another second before saying, “I’m doing maths.”
Lorvan arched his brow. “For what?”
“For how to fit stone thaumaturgy, lectures, fire training, and my upcoming lorekeeping job into a 24-hour period.”
“You haven’t gone to the lorekeeping interview yet.”
“Okay. How do I fit in stone thaumaturgy, lectures, fire training, and practical sessions then?”
They both knew he wouldn’t go to practical sessions.
Lorvan allowed himself the thinnest breath of judgment as they walked up the stairs heading to his dorm room. “You know, you wouldn’t have been under so much pressure had you been diligent with your Practical.”
Fabrisse didn’t answer. He let himself slide down the door with a sigh that had a higher EMO stat than he did.
He was met with sudden heat. Greg, wearing an apron, stood in the doorway with a look that said I warned you. The room smelled like burnt parchment.
“Just so you know,” Greg said, stepping aside, “I tried.”
Inside, Tommaso had upended two of the lounge chairs and built a makeshift arena out of rolled-up rugs and magical ward chalk. A dish of fire salts sat precariously close to the edge of a table. Dubbie, his sister, crouched beneath the other chair with a tea tray in one hand and a half-melted spatula in the other. She looked alarmingly focused.
Why’s Dubbie here? Coming from the same commune, Dubbie used to hang out with Tommaso whenever Fabrisse hung out with the guy, though he doubted Tommaso went out of his way to bring his little sister over.
Tommaso grinned with the evangelical fervor of someone who had invented a game ten minutes ago and already declared it a tradition. “Okay, okay, new rule,” he said. “If the flame hits above knee-height, you lose two points but gain a style bonus. Unless it sets something on fire. Then it’s disqualified unless the item was flammable by design.”
“You made that up just now,” said Dubbie, not even blinking as she caught a flash of fire in her tray like a seasoned circus juggler.
“I’m adapting to the meta,” Tommaso replied, deadly serious.
Fabrisse stared at the spectacle. “Why are you all like this?”
Lorvan stepped in behind Fabrisse and stared at Tommaso. “You have three seconds to extinguish whatever this is before I call Campus Safety and cite all of you for arson and terminal idiocy,” He was already reaching for the room’s emergency suppression rune.
Tommaso opened his mouth—likely to argue that controlled infernos built character—but Dubbie had already stood, tipped her tray, and doused the main fire source with a hiss and a small plume of smoke.
“Two seconds to spare,” Lorvan said.
Tommaso clicked his tongue and rolled his wrist, all the while muttering some mnemonic. A gust of air spiraled through the room, snuffing out the last wisps of flame, lifting ash off the carpet, righting the chairs, and neatly herding the salt dish back to the table like a sheepdog for kitchenware.
Wow. He’s also gotten much more finesse with Air-based spells.
Lorvan clamped a hand on Tommaso’s shoulder. “Out. Now.”
Tommaso sighed, but obeyed, brushing off soot from his sleeves as he stepped out into the hallway.
Fabrisse remained frozen by the doorframe, staring at the now-clean lounge. The silence after chaos always rang the loudest. Greg had returned to the kitchenette, stirring something with a nonchalance Fabrisse couldn’t quite read—either he’d adapted to Tommaso’s entropy or given up trying to resist it.
Through the door, muffled voices drifted in. Lorvan, low and precise. Tommaso, louder, maybe defensive. They were probably arguing about his guardianship over him.
It really was his fault Tommaso was here.
If Fabrisse hadn’t got himself entangled with the Eidralith, Tommaso would still be posted somewhere on the front, probably saving towns from goblins, sand serpents or collecting danger pay from setting controlled charges beneath collapsing ley points. He’d given up a lot for him—months of salary, actual recognition, a life away from student mess—and for what?
I shouldn’t be dragging people down.
He was this close to getting his Stupenstone Fling to Level 3, and he needed it. The Arc Pebbles game was in two days. Basic synaptic control was finally stabilizing; his velocity was so close to 95%. That was a measurable improvement. And he was like, 21 EXP away from levelling up and gaining 3 Attribute Points. It had to start getting easier now.
“Aren’t you going to say hi?”
Fabrisse blinked, still halfway trapped in his own head. Dubbie was standing over him now, tea tray in one hand, the melted spatula in the other like it was a weapon of emotional warfare.
He waved at her. “Hi.”
She stared, then said flatly, “That was the worst hi I’ve ever heard. Are you concussed?”
“No.”
“Is your soul temporarily detached?”
“No—”
“Did you look inside yourself again and find nothing but a thesis-shaped hole and the echo of responsibility?”
He didn’t answer.
“Are you eating well?” Now, she started asking the right question.
She dropped the tray onto the table with a clatter, thunked the spatula into his hand like she was passing a baton, then arranged some good-smelling pastries on the table. A round, slightly lopsided merryberry pie sat on a scorched trivet, its crust a little uneven, the glaze a little too thick.
Fabrisse stared at it. “Is that—?”
“Yes,” Dubbie said. “Merryberry. Your fourth favorite.”
“That’s oddly specific.”
She crouched beside the table, inspecting a scorch mark on the rug. “Yeah, well, your first favorite is Mum’s honey-crust almond tart, and she guards that recipe like a state secret. Your second is mingleberry pie. Your third is merryberry, but made by Mom.”
“The glaze is—” He squinted. “Kind of sad.” And she was also wrong. Merryberry was only fourth place, behind mulberry.
“I was going for rustic trauma chic,” she said. “Eat. Then we can go for a short walk and let your roommate have his peace again.”
Greg was already scraping the melted mess off the hearthstone (that wasn’t in the room before) with a damp cloth.
He was about to nod until he remembered he was never supposed to be alone. Sure, Dubbie would be with him, but his sister wasn’t going to provide him protection.
Then he saw Ilya’s crow perching on a tree branch out the window.
That should be good enough, right?
“Yeah,” he nodded. “Let’s head out.” Then he grabbed the merryberry pie on the tray.
2025-07-18 18:36:27 +0000 UTC
View Post
“I’m going to show you this spell. Let’s see how good your intuitive understanding of Thaumaturgy Spellcasting is,” Rolen said as he extended one hand, palm open, the other resting lightly behind his back.
Fabrisse stared, trying to track every detail. The angle of the arm, the steadiness of breath, the fractional delay before ignition. It’s a bit similar to Severa’s Basic Combustion Funnel. However, there was no whisper of a mnemonic, no incantation at all.
A soft snap of light curled upward from his palm, flaring briefly into a flame no bigger than a candle’s. It hung there, perfectly still, like a trick of the air.
“This is my own twist on Combustion Funnel. If you do it a certain way, you can keep the mnemonic in your head,” he said as he ignited another candle atop the existing one.
“Are you allowed to cast non-Synod-approved spells?” Fabrisse asked. “Also, are you allowed to cast Fire spells inside a room inside a room full of combustible material?”
“The rules only apply to sub-Archmagi level, Kestovar.” Rolen shrugged.
Well, that’s unfair.
The second flame flickered above the first, perfectly balanced. Fabrisse realized neither was emitting heat—at least, not in the usual way. The air wasn’t warming and his skin didn’t prickle. It was Fire in shape alone, not in nature.
“As much as I want to learn, I have yet to gain an affinity with Fire,” Fabrisse’s voice came out even smaller than he’d intended.
“That means you kind of suck, Kestovar,” Rolen said.
“Uh, thanks.”
The conventional Synod-approved method of gaining affinity worked over an extended period of time. Conducted in controlled thaumaturgic environments, candidates are gradually exposed to raw elemental pressure (like being near controlled flame-cores). This process was part of every Apprentice’s education. If, after months of sweating, murmuring mnemonics, and accidentally setting their eyebrows on fire, a student still failed to resonate with even a single element, they were politely asked to consider ‘alternate academic paths.’ Meaning they were expelled.
Fabrisse somehow managed to achieve an affinity with Earth and Air, so he got to stay.
He opened his Diagnostics again to look at his affinities.
[AETHERIC DIAGNOSTIC]
— Aetheric Core: Active
— Resonant Element 1: Water (Trace Affinity — Unintegrated — 3%)
— Resonant Element 2: Earth (Latent Stability — Partial Integration — 29%)
— Resonant Element 3: Air (Trace Affinity — Inconsistent Channel — 17%)
— Resonant Element 4: Fire (Trace Stability — Suppressed Link — 9%)
— Concordance Element: Internal Hoarding Alignment (UNIQUE – Unstandardized)
— Trait Detected: Hoarder’s Mental Structure (Persistent — Cognitive Layer Integration)
[NOTE: Anomalous emotional cross-link detected between Earth and Concordance channels.]
CATEGORIES:
[SYSTEM DIAGNOSTICS]
[SETTINGS]
“What’s on the wall, Kestovar?” Rolen’s voice pulled him back to reality.
Lorvan spoke, “The Eidralith is communicating with him, Archmagus. Best we let him be.”
“Hopefully the artifact doesn’t make it a habit to communicate when he’s taking a dump,” Rolen replied.
Fabrisse saw the word ‘Affinity’ glowed slightly if his vision hovered over it, so he mentally tapped on the word.
Affinity Levels (for quick reference)
Level
Description
0% – Null
No access. Cannot shape or bind spells of this element.
1–24% – Trace
Can observe and imitate, but not reliably cast.
25–59% – Latent
Can cast with assistance (e.g., mnemonics, foci, or catalysts).
60–84% – Full
Self-sufficient casting. Emotion Sync stabilizes automatically.
85–100% – Deep Affinity
Element bleeds into caster’s presence. Passive effects occur.
According to this, a caster probably needed at least a latent affinity to be able to cast spells.
“Am I too old to gain affinity with an element?” Fabrisse swatted the glyph away and asked meekly.
“Too old?” Rolen scoffed. “You’re not a cheese wheel. You don’t expire.”
Fabrisse flushed. “I meant thaumaturgically.”
“Oh, then yes. You're absolutely on the brink of magical menopause. But there are ways.” He leaned in like someone offering a bad idea at a tavern. “Unorthodox ways.”
“Archmagus, if I may—” Lorvan stood.
“This is an extraordinary set of circumstance, don’t you think, Lugano?” Rolen said without turning back. “The boy will be fine.”
That doesn’t sound fine.
Lorvan stayed silent, then sat down again.
Fabrisse perked up. “Illegal?”
Rolen replied, “Absolutely. But only in the ‘frowned upon by polite society’ kind of way. Not the ‘summoning demon centipedes in the library basement’ kind of illegal.”
“That’s a specific example.”
“Because I’ve seen it. Not pretty.” He turned and rummaged through his robes, eventually pulling out something wrapped in worn, purple silk, and placed it on the nearby shelf. Inside: a small obsidian sphere with silver veins crawling across its surface, softly pulsing. “This is an Elemental Lodestone. Synod says they’re unstable, unreliable, and liable to ‘dilute the sanctity of natural magical attunement.’ I say they’re fast, painful, and effective.”
[UNREGISTERED ARTIFACT DETECTED]
→ Lodestone, Elemental (Attunement Catalyst, Epic Tier)
Origin: [Pre-Synod Thaumaturgic Rebellion]
Stability: Volatile – requires constant emotional regulation
Effect: Boosts EMO, SYN, ARC by 25%. Boosts DEX, INT, STR by 12%.
Warning: Side effects include nausea, spellbacklash, personality bleed, temporary possession, and spontaneous planar displacement.
Usage beyond sanctioned environments constitutes a felony.
Fabrisse’s eyes seemed to have lit up at the mere idea of an aiding stone. His fingers hovered, hesitant, reverent—then closed around the Lodestone like a drowning man grabbing a rope. The pulse of it was irregular, hot and cold in cycles, as if testing him back.
He didn't care.
This was speed. This was a cheat code, a shortcut past the long road of meditation, diagrams, and emotionally taxing feedback loops that always left his fingertips numb and his mind knotted like old wire.
He didn’t dare chancing a glance at his mentor. Lorvan was probably looking at him very judgmentally.
“But . . . Headmaster Draeth hates rocks,” Fabrisse murmured.
Rolen said, “Some people in the Synod abhor artifacts because it democratizes magic, Kestovar. If anyone with a bit of coin or luck can grab an affinity stone and start casting mid-tier spells? The hedge-mage market will be booming. You’d do well to remember that.”
Lorvan immediately added. “Artifacts also introduce unpredictable variables, and more importantly, dulls the emotional and cognitive feedback training.”
“That, too, but the downsides are vastly overstated. Don’t worry about it.”
Rolen sounded like he’d cheated plenty of times using artifacts during his youth . . .
“We’ll train with this. But of course, only if you want to,” Rolen smiled.
“What’s the minimum time I can achieve Latent affinity with this stone?” Fabrisse asked.
“Hmm. I’d say . . .” He glanced up the ceiling. “Two weeks.”
“Let’s make it one,” Fabrisse placed a firm hand on the shelf, Lodestone gripped tight like a war-banner. A crackle of displaced air signaled the Lodestone syncing slightly with his own arcane signature.
[ARCANE INTERFACE UPDATE]
→ Initial resonance detected. Calibration in progress.
Warning: You are not emotionally stable enough for peak synchronization. Consider journaling.
“Please adjust your expectations to match your abilities, Kestovar,” Lorvan said.
“. . . Three weeks.”
2025-07-18 08:26:42 +0000 UTC
View Post
She stood just inside the gate, silent enough that her presence hadn’t even registered on the perimeter alarm thread.
He flinched slightly. “How long have you been standing there?”
She tilted her head a fraction. “Mentor Lorvan requires your assistance.” She hadn’t answered his question, which just made him more aware of how sweaty his palms were and how ridiculous he must’ve looked lobbing pebbles at a scarecrow like he was trying to offend it into submission.
“And he sent you?”
“He asked his mentees. I volunteered.”
Sometimes Fabrisse forgot that Veliane was also a mentee of Lorvan. She was sharp and poised, articulate in five languages and a terror in structured invocation trials. People said she’d written her own echo-thread parsing method in her first year of higher education, which would mean she was only 14 at that time, and no one had disproved it.
And she was Lorvan’s student.
Just like him.
The comparison made his stomach twist.
What must that feel like? To mentor someone like Veliane Veist—an Exemplar in training, already halfway to crafting a codex before her certification exams—and then pivot immediately into tutoring him?
He’d seen the teaching sequence chart once by accident. Veliane had Lorvan for Structured Resonance on Tuesdays. Fabrisse came right after her on Wednesdays.
Fabrisse kicked the nearest pebble with the toe of his boot and immediately regretted it. He would have to walk a further distance to retrieve it.
“Well,” he said, brushing dust from his sleeve, “what does he need?”
Veliane rubbed her cheek with the back of her thumb. That was one of the few weird ticks Fabrisse had observed from her. “Assistance,” she replied. “We are to assist him with some codex-crafting.”
“We? As in you and me?” Fabrisse felt a slight flush on his own cheeks.
“Yes. Do you want to grab a pie before this? I don’t think there’s any mingleberry left, but we can get mulberry.”
He wanted to say yes. He wanted to say yes so much. But the better part of him was sniffing out all the weirdness.
She hasn’t once talked to me since the failed confession, and now just after I’ve bound with the Eidralith, she’s offering me pie?
“That’d be fine,” he replied, still. Why did I say that?
“Nice,” she said with a small smile. Her smile was so elegant, like the curve of a sealing rune.
Okay, maybe that smile is the reason why . . .
“Can I get a cup of water first?” He asked. The System had urged him to drink more.
“How about tea?”
“That’s fine.” I asked for water though . . .
The moment Fabrisse walked out of the training field, he received a notification.
[Training Completed: +38 EXP]
[Progress to Level 5: 891/1500]
Today’s training had been less fruitful than his last. Yesterday, he’d gained 79 EXP.
They walked in near silence for the first few minutes.
Veliane didn’t seem to notice—or didn’t care—that Fabrisse kept glancing sideways at her every time she stepped slightly ahead. Her stride was quiet and efficient, like another version of Severa’s.
“Did Lorvan say what kind of codex it is?” Fabrisse finally asked, because silence was growing fangs.
“Pattern-weave, I believe. Possibly linguistic.” She tilted her head thoughtfully. “He asked for assistance with contrast-ink formatting and symbol pairing. I volunteered for the formatting.”
Pattern-weave.
Fabrisse frowned. “That means I’m on symbol pairing?”
Veliane nodded. “I’ve seen your glyph sketches. They’re legible.”
“. . . Thanks?”
She glanced at him. “That was a compliment.”
Pattern-Weave was one of the oldest codex architectures in recorded thaumaturgy. It was used to design magical codices, which were books or scrolls that execute spells rather than simply describe them. Other uses included automated reactions to aetheric stimuli—like a passive shield activating when danger is near, constructing magical devices, constructs, or wards that run without constant caster attention, and other uses Fabrisse had yet to learn about.
Fabrisse checked his skill list again. The only Pattern Recognition skill he had was Pattern Intuition (Rank I). He seemed underqualified for this job, to say the least.
They passed the East Clockline, and the outer tier of the Hall of Codex Theory came into view, its tall hexagonal tower marked with shimmerstruck glyphs and a central dome that pulsed faintly with arcane memory. Then the reached the pie shop and Veliane ordered some mulberry pie and two cups of chamomile tea.
“I’ll pay for this one, as I’m the one inviting,” Veliane said to him with a smile. He didn’t object.
Mulberry pie was his third-most favorite pie, and also the third-most susceptible to falling victim to his Scoot of Dire Retrieval. He’d eaten more than a dozen of those from the scullery without anyone knowing.
There was little chit-chatting between them beside the how flaky the crust was. Eventually, though, Veliane glanced at him over the edge of her cup.
“What’s it like,” she asked, “being in a class with Severa?”
Fabrisse chewed slower. “Intense,” he said. “You always get the sense she’s already thought three layers ahead of you. Or the instructant.”
“She always seems like that,” Veliane agreed. “Though not always to her benefit. I wish she could overthink a bit less and be a bit less rigid.”
He offered a noncommittal nod, then deflected. “I heard you once sat in on a lecture three semesters above your cycle?” Tommaso had told him about it, since he went to that lecture too.
“Twice,” she said. “The first time, I understood only half.”
Veliane was only eighteen, which meant she was still technically studying with a few sixteen-year-olds, though she never mentioned it, and no one ever questioned it. She was a semester behind him in Structured Invocation, but she’d done in three years what it had taken him nine. It was astonishing to learn she only entered the Synod once she was fifteen.
Fabrisse took a bite of pie to avoid having to say anything about that.
She didn’t press. Soon, they moved again.
The building where Lorvan’s office was based loomed over them—not in height, but in presence. Like most structures within the Synod’s inner cloister, it bore the hallmarks of reverence disguised as academia. Vaulted archways framed the entrance, their curvatures inlaid with etched script so fine it could only be read by tracing it with focused glyphsense.
The architecture made no effort to be warm, and it’d successfully sent chills down Fabrisse’s spine. The more he stared at the building, the more he realized there were so many people more fit to be in that kind of building than himself. He slowed, just a little. “Why did you volunteer to come find me?” he asked.
Veliane didn’t pause. “Because I was available.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.” Then, after a moment, she added, “Also, I know the others would’ve asked you too many questions.”
He blinked. “About the Eidralith?”
“And about why you’ve been avoiding your peers.”
He didn’t think he’d been avoiding his peers. It wasn’t like he talked to too many people before the incident.
They reached the entry stairs to Lorvan’s office, Veliane suddenly said, “Montreal seems mad at you.”
Fabrisse stopped. Of course Veliane Veist would have seen them together. Veist was probably Severa’s number one fan.
“She didn’t take to the Eidralith binding very well,” Fabrisse muttered.
“Understandable. Though I’m sure there’s a reason behind the artifact choosing you,” she said. The way she delivered her line sounded diplomatic to Fabrisse.
The large door to Lorvan’s office—a darkgrain metal blend with passive echo-barrier etchings—opened before they could knock.
2025-07-17 08:57:29 +0000 UTC
View Post
“You will not get to know who’s been protecting you,” Inside his room again, Rolen said as he walked past a perfectly good set of chairs and instead perched sideways on the edge of a bookshelf like a contemplative cat.
“B-but why?” Fabrisse asked. He sat on the same seat he did last time he was in Rolen’s room, only that this time there was no need to touch his nose. Lorvan, silent as a shadow, had also taken his seat, again near the emerald ball game table.
Rolen didn’t answer immediately. He was too busy trying to balance a steaming teacup on his knee without using his hands. It wobbled with each breath he took, yet somehow didn’t spill. Fabrisse couldn’t detect any aether manipulation involved.
“They’re not Synod staff, Mr. Kestovar,” Archmagus Rolen sighed. “We are having to go to great lengths to ensure your safety.”
“Ah.” Fabrisse turned the word over in his mind. A simple sound, but it held far too many questions.
At least this rules out Rimmar Ciemnosc. Rolen is deliberately not getting the Synod involved. But why? Draeth seems like an insufferable old hag, but is he untrustworthy?
It only made sense that the Synod would protect him. So why?
“Are you going to report this incident to Archmagus Terevin Sil? She asked us to,” Fabrisse enquired.
“Sil is the best Darkness Thaumaturge in the Southern reaches of the Order, Kestovar.”
Ah. That’s why. His attacker could come from within the Synod itself. That might have been why blatant attacking attempts had been ignored completely. It would make sense there were better protection programs in place otherwise.
“Right. No, then. But I’ve got a question. Did the earlier magi bound to the Synod receive protection?”
“No.” Rolen shook his head. “There were no known methods of artifact unbinding back then. It seems that this might have changed, judging from the circumstances.”
Four archmagi ran the administration: Headmaster Draeth, Iveta Monasterie, Karius Fullmann, and Mikhael Rolen. Draeth hated his guts, Iveta’s help would come with conditions, and Karius . . . he had never seen Karius do anything about anything. He wasn’t sure if Karius was present during the Vothiculum ceremony itself.
Fabrisse looked between the two seniors in the room and felt his stomach twist. He clenched the edge of his robes, wishing he could shrink into one of its multiple pockets like a tortoise.
This was getting too big. He only wanted to fling stones and feed ducks.
Lorvan, Tommaso, and now even an Archmagus were involved—all because he, Fabrisse Kestovar, couldn’t even fend off a shadow strike without someone saving him.
How many more people were going to be dragged into this mess on his behalf?
For a fleeting second, he didn’t want the Eidralith anymore. He didn’t even want to be a Thaumaturgy student anymore.
But isn’t this my chance? My chance at something bigger in life? He stared at Lorvan, who wasn’t staring back at him. ‘Only in deep discomfort can you bloom’, his mentor had told him.
“Do you have any idea who may have been targeting you?” Rolen asked.
One name immediately jumped to mind. “I’ve met Magister Elon Montreal once and learned that he possesses the Pre-Binding Cotex.”
Rolen nodded as he looked up to the ceiling. “I got the same information. Montreal is a man of deep passion for research, and he doesn’t seem to let nuisances like governing laws get in his way. He’s been taken to court once over an alleged dispossession of an existing Codex. He claimed it was within his right to peruse any unanchored artifact for research. The tribunal dismissed the case—insufficient evidence, they said. But the scholar whose vault he ‘investigated’ was never seen on campus again. He seems to be alive and living okay, though, just no longer an employee. I’ll make sure to keep a closer look on him.”
Magister Montreal would definitely be interested. But he had respected Fabrisse’s wishes before, so why would he go out of his way and potentially ruin his career and reputation stooping down this low?
“Kestovar. Whatever edge the Eidralith gives you, you may want to capitalize on it now,” Rolen said. “You will need to get good, and get good fast.” The way he pronounced ‘get’ made it sound like ‘gid’. “I expect you to be able to form an elemental weapon in three months’ time.”
“Can we start with basic synaptic control?” Fabrisse asked immediately.
“Synaptic control?” Rolen arched his brow.
“Yes. I need to learn to move my arm in a perfect arc.”
Rolen turned to look at Lorvan. Lorvan sighed exasperatedly.
“I thought you passed Synaptic Control I?” Rolen asked.
“I scored a 12 in Practical. I wish to change that.”
Rolen stayed silent for a moment, then said, “It’s never too late to start.”
Then Rolen moved.
His motion was almost identical to Lorvan’s standard form: right arm lifted, curve narrowing in at the shoulder. But where Lorvan’s had been precise, Rolen’s looked loose, offhanded, almost lazy.
And yet—
Fabrisse felt the aether shift instantly. They pulled him closer, almost physically, as shades of pink bloomed around Rolen’s arm.
NOTICE: Traceable Aether Output Detected
Caster Signature: ARCHMAGUS ROLEN – Verified
Classification: Emotional Echo [Unfiltered]
Duration: 0.7 seconds
Auto-flagged for review.
Then the aether disappeared the moment he finished his arc.
Fabrisse’s breath hitched. “You released aether from a synaptic control exercise.”
Rolen shook out his hand, inspecting his fingernails like he’d been swatting dust. “Now you try it.”
Fabrisse stood and moved to a less cluttered space. He closed his eyes, felt for the thread. He lifted his arm.
And this time, it felt different.
The arc came naturally. His 99% progress made him see things clearly now.
There was a subtle tension at the elbow he hadn’t noticed before, and he adjusted for it mid-motion. His shoulder aligned without protest. Even his breath seemed to match the movement, as if his body and the thread had agreed on a rhythm.
Fabrisse reached the apex of the arc and began the downward glide. He could feel the aether curling at the edge of his palm, soft and light like a pre-dawn mist. He had control.
Long fingers reached out and pinched his scapula between two knuckles. A jolt went through Fabrisse’s spine—not magical, just anatomical.
“You’re off,” Rolen said.
“Huh?”
Rolen’s hand ghosted along his back, tapping once below the shoulder blade. The correction was already sinking in.
Fabrisse drew his shoulder back and shifted the tilt of his wrist by a degree to compensate. As his arm dipped through the final stretch, a whisper of aether stirred at his fingertips, not imposed or dragged, but rising of its own will. He had called forth the aether.
[Basic Synaptic Thread Recognition: 100% Progress]
[Basic Synaptic Thread Recognition Achieved]
[Reward Received: SYN +4]
The reward was on the lower end, but it didn’t matter. He’d done it.
“Lugano,” Rolen turned to Fabrisse’s mentor. “Don’t hesitate to physically correct form—after asking permission, of course.”
But you didn’t ask me . . .
Archmagi seemed to have a rather big problem with consent.
Before he could speak the words aloud, Rolen turned to face him fully. “I want you to train under me, Kestovar,” he said, tone neutral, but the weight of it made Fabrisse’s chest tighten. “Not indefinitely—just until we can be sure you’re no longer an obvious target. You’ll continue your other studies, but I’ll supervise your synaptic threading and spellcast forms, and—if you prove worth the effort—emotional modulation.”
The last phrase felt like a test. Fabrisse didn’t answer right away.
Behind Rolen’s shoulder, Lorvan gave a nod. Then, as if afraid Fabrisse didn’t see him the first time, he nodded again. His mentor hadn’t spoken a word since Rolen’s demonstration, but his eyes were serious now, almost stern with urgency.
This is the safest path for me, Fabrisse realized.
Fabrisse bowed his head slightly, the words catching in his throat before finally emerging, quiet but certain. “It would be an honor to study under you.”
Rolen didn’t smile, but he looked slightly more satisfied than before. “Good. Let’s start now.” He raised one hand, palm angled downward. A soft pop echoed in the air as a flame sparked to life at his fingertips without mnemonic. The fire didn’t roar or surge; it hovered, balanced, like a candle flame that had learned restraint. He rotated his wrist slowly, and the flame coiled into a tight spiral in precise twists. “My brand of magic . . . starts with fire control.”
2025-07-17 07:49:24 +0000 UTC
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“What you saw was Subduction Glyph,” Lorvan said. “Advanced Darkness Thaumaturgy. It displaces the space beneath a target’s feet and pulls them through a shadow fold. Shields don’t always stop it unless they’re specifically tuned to collapse barriers.”
They were in Lorvan’s quarters, a room so precise it felt more like a meditation chamber than a living space. The walls were unadorned stone, smooth and pale, the kind that absorbed light without ever seeming cold. Every object had a place: scrolls aligned by height and ink origin, quills stored upright in appropriately dark-colored holders, a single cot folded with military precision. The only thing Fabrisse could feel was out of place was a glass display case, narrow and vertical, holding three intricately painted miniature airships. They had taut aether-sails, delicate brass fins, and every other little detail. One had a chipped wing, carefully repaired with gold leaf. Fabrisse never knew the man was into airships before he stepped into his mentor’s room for the first time. He’d never dared ask about it. The image of Lorvan, hunched over a paintbrush with surgical focus, haunted him more than any spell.
“I don’t get it. Where does the shadow fold lead to?” Fabrisse knew spatial displacement spells existed; powerful and terrifying and the world would definitely be better off without them.
Lorvan’s expression didn’t change. “That depends. Some shadow folds are shallow—they drag you into containment runes, magical null zones, prisons of layered ink. But the one you saw might not have been shallow.”
He let that hang in the air for a second too long.
Fabrisse’s throat tightened. “Then where?”
“To wherever the caster wants,” Lorvan replied. “If they’re powerful enough, they can create, say, a miniature darkness realm to entrap their prisoners there.”
“Then what about . . . the other spell?” Fabrisse asked. “The one fake Kairon used. It didn’t feel like Subduction.”
Lorvan didn’t answer at first. His gaze drifted to the edge of the room, as if searching for a word hidden in the mortar.
“I’ve been considering that,” he said eventually. “What you described doesn’t point to physical displacement. At least not in the traditional sense. Your body never moved.”
Fabrisse nodded slowly. “But the world changed around me.”
“Or you changed around the world.” Lorvan stepped closer to the scroll rack, but didn’t touch it. “I suspect it was a perception-altering spell—high-grade illusion layered with localized memory suppression. Possibly a Glass-affinity derivative.”
He doesn’t know for sure. And Lorvan knew everything. That alone scared Fabrisse more than the spell ever had.
Wait. Glass?
“Mentor. Earlier, Archmagus Monasterie used a Glass spell on me.”
Lorvan turned to him fully. The movement was small, but immediate. “Describe it.”
Fabrisse told him about the mirrored veil and the tap to the forehead.
And then, haltingly, he recalled the sensation—the clarity that had overtaken him. The sudden unraveling of arc patterns. The vivid geometry. The knowing. The spell that had named itself:
Lorvan said nothing for a long time. The silence grew cold.
“She cast that on you?” he asked finally, voice lower than before.
Fabrisse nodded once.
“That spell is restricted,” Lorvan said.
“She said I needed a glimpse,” Fabrisse murmured. “She said she erased my struggle.”
“Do you feel changed?” he asked.
Fabrisse hesitated. “No. I mean—yes. I think I still remember what I saw. A little.”
“It could’ve gone much worse for you.” Lorvan nodded. “But the Archmagus has a . . . complicated personal life, and whoever is in her private circle all enjoy a rather unusually unchallenging life for practitioners of their rank. She invests heavily in those she selects,” Lorvan continued. “And she selects them young.”
Fabrisse knew full well what that meant.
“I have not seen her cast a Darkness spell, but we can never be too safe,” Lorvan said. “We will need to inform Archmagus Rolen about this. The choice is entirely yours, but I would strongly recommend against accepting her offer.”
Fabrisse nodded. He might not agree with Lorvan’s methods sometimes, but he knew without a doubt that the man had his best interest at heart.
“Let’s go back to the topic of Darkness magic. There are a total of eight staff members within the Synod that can use Darkness magic, that I know of.”
“And they can freely teach Darkness magic to their students?” He had seen Rimmar cast darkness spells in a lecture room. It didn’t seem like Rimmar had gotten any repercussions from it.
“They can,” Lorvan confirmed. “They’re not supposed to, but they can.”
Fabrisse frowned. “But that makes no sense. The official Synod curriculum doesn’t recommend Darkness Thaumaturgy at all—some sections outright discourage it.”
“They do,” Lorvan said. “And yet, the moment a licensed practitioner uses it, that recommendation becomes conveniently optional.”
Fabrisse stared at him. “So why allow it at all?”
Lorvan exhaled through his nose. “Because the Synod isn’t a monolith. The Department of Curriculum Affairs leans conservative—they push for standardized, sanitized spellwork, mostly Light and Order affinities. But the Committee on Research Authorization? They’re another matter entirely. Most of the senior researchers on that side are Darkness-aligned. Or funded by those who are.”
Ah. So it’s politics.
Fabrisse shut his trap and just nodded along. The instant politics became involved, he lost interest.
“Do Void and Darkness stem from the same affinity?”
“Yes.” Lorvan nodded. “Both are hybrids of Water and Air. In fact, Void is the direct derivative of Darkness.”
That made it all the more concerning. Now they knew there was at least Darkness-type user actively trying to kidnap Fabrisse, and at least one actively trying to protect him.
Rimmar Ciemnosc couldn’t have been involved, could he? As creepy and potentially powerful Rimmar was, he was just a student. Fabrisse doubted he had learned the basic iteration of whatever that Shadow Hand spell was, much less had the ability to drag a person underground with it.
Lorvan suddenly glanced down at his communication glyph on his wrist, even though it didn’t seem to have given him any visible signal. “Archmagus Rolen wishes to see us. Now.”
“Now?”
“He’s already in the east wing,” Lorvan said, slipping into motion with fluid certainty. “He likely anticipated the conclusion of this conversation before it began.”
Fabrisse stood, his pulse quickening—but not entirely with fear this time.
At least now, he thought, I’ll finally get to know who’s been protecting me.
2025-07-16 07:19:25 +0000 UTC
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The Moonbear Room wasn’t marked by a placard, nor did it bear any wards at the entrance that a normal student could see. It simply existed, tucked behind the western observatory dome where dusklight pooled like slow-spilling ink across the marble.
Fabrisse followed the Kairon up a curving corridor until they reached a door that looked like frosted glass, though it neither shone nor reflected anything. Kairon gestured once. The door dissolved, like salt melting in warm water.
What’s happening? Why do you have to dissolve a door? That implies that you have to cast a spell to create the door in the first place. That’s so extra.
Inside was a study, or what began as a study before changing its mind halfway through and deciding it would rather be a planetary sanctum.
His whole body tingled the moment he stepped inside, and he immediately realized why. The floor was laid with mirelith, a volcanic sedimentstone so rare it was once thought to form only in realms where ley lines intersected at unnatural angles. Veins of pearl-gold filament ran through it, but it wasn’t the gold that caught Fabrisse’s breath—it was the subtle lattice shimmer beneath the surface, a telltale trait of mirelith’s aetheric conductivity. The stone was alive with a latent presence as if it had its own inner resonance. A mosaic of inlaid runes pulsed every few seconds beneath the mirelith slabs, their rhythm like the slow breath of something massive and asleep.
Kairon led him past a tea set floated silently near a crescent-shaped couch. Along the far wall stood rows of instruments—half-orbs, tuning forks shaped like bird bones, and an enormous scrying basin filled with liquid that flowed like starlight slowed to syrup.
Archmagus Iveta Monasterie stood at the center of it all, wrist-deep in a rotating glass globe that contained a miniature galaxy. Her face was all angles—high cheekbones that caught the rune-light like carved quartz, a straight nose with the faintest tilt at the tip, and lips that rarely parted unless words were already sharpened behind them. Aged 35, she was the youngest Archmagus in the South Westeros Branch of the Unified Synod of Thaumaturgic Studies, but she wore those accolades like silk gloves: delicate in appearance, lethal in implication.
Nothing about her expression changed when Fabrisse entered, but the tiny nebula in the glass globe at her fingertips swirled faster.
As he took a step further, Fabrisse’s attention snagged on something across the room.
Tucked between two vertical columns of etched crystal was a mural—small, discreet, and deeply out of place. It wasn’t animated like the kind the Synod liked to flaunt in procession halls. No, this one was static: a brushed-steel relief of Thaumarch Muradius himself, rendered in impeccable detail down to the folds of his regalia and the scepter in his uplifted hand. His expression was beatific, eyes cast downward in what was clearly meant to convey divine insight, though it just looked vaguely constipated.
Fabrisse squinted at it.
Why would she have that?
The rest of the room looked like a research sanctum designed by a stellar cartographer with a private god complex—ancient, aether-reactive, built for precision. Nothing here hinted at politics, at propaganda, at anything performative. And yet, there he was. The Thaumarch. Right next to a resonance lattice calibrated for gravitational harmonics.
Was it mandatory? Did they just . . . hand those out?
Fabrisse passed the mural cautiously, then he realized another man was there. He sat cross-legged on a suspended divan stitched with dull copper thread, his posture lazy but feline—no, not feline. There was something ursine about the way he sprawled: immense, patient, and entirely unbothered by Fabrisse’s presence, as though the room belonged to him long before it ever belonged to Monasterie. His skin had a soft luster, silvery in certain light, and his eyes—when they flicked toward Fabrisse—were the precise color and smoothness of polished opal.
He looked human, but didn’t seem human.
He was sipping something from a thin ceramic cup. Fabrisse couldn’t tell what it was, but the scent suggested honeyed mint, if he were to trust his own sense of smell.
Why is there another man here . . .
His robes weren’t standard Synod issue. They were deep navy, edged in stormsilver, and cut in a way that was either out of fashion or two years ahead. His gaze flicked toward Fabrisse with mild amusement and zero interest.
Monasterie didn’t introduce him. Neither did the man speak.
“He has arrived, Archmagus,” Kairon gave her a light bow.
Monasterie didn’t glance at him. “Yes. You may go now.”
Fabrisse expected a formal dismissal. Instead, Kairon hesitated, just enough for Fabrisse to notice, and then bowed again, lower this time, like a courtier knowing his place.
“As you wish.” The High Magus straightened, eyes briefly flicking to the man lounging on the divan. He didn’t speak to him, only nodded. Then he turned and walked out. The glass-door reformed behind him with a whisper.
Monasterie waited until the door finished sealing. Her hands withdrew from the miniature galaxy as she said, “Fabrisse Kestovar.”
He stood straight.
“You seem capable of sending messages discreetly. Rolen receives them, I assume?”
He struggled to find an answer. How does she know? I just walked in. Does that mean she was present when the fake Kairon try to lead me astray, or did the real Kairon just give her the clue?
Possibly the latter. If they could really spot the secret attacker and consider me an important asset, they would’ve caught that person. Monasterie is an Archmagus. She seems more than capable.
“I . . . yes, Archmagus.”
The man on the divan let out a soft snort. Monasterie stepped away from her galaxy globe, brushing faint starlight from her fingers as if it were dust. “I wish to extend formal apprenticeship.”
“Pardon?”
“Apprenticeship,” she repeated, calm and absolute. “Under me. You would be bound to my tutelage, effective immediately.” She continued, “In return, you would sign a contract excluding you from instruction under any other Archmagus, Exemplar, or High Instructant, save for those within the standardized Synod curriculum. You are either mine, or you are not taken at all.”
The man on the divan nodded lazily at Fabrisse.
Fabrisse gulped. “B-but you’ve only met me once.”
“But I have met the Chosen Ones of the Eidralith quite a few times before. You’re holding unquantifiable power, young man.”
[SYSTEM NOTE: PRAXIS-NOTE Affinity Signature detected. Estimated Output Potential: 873 scael-units ± 4.2. Quantifiable.]
“This . . . is sudden. May I know the exactness of what what you’re offering me?” His voice came out shakier than he would’ve liked.
Monasterie simply tilted her head, her tone mild. “You’re not wrong to ask. You should always ask.” She stepped closer, the fabric of her robe scattered scintillating dust like starlight drawn across the pulsing mirelith. “Do you want a glimpse?” she asked.
He shuddered. No. I’m scared of what she might do to me.
Before Fabrisse could answer, she raised two fingers and tapped the space between his eyes: lightly, like a teacher nudging a student’s forehead with a ruler. There was no accompanying flash, no flare of glyphs or chanting.
Suddenly, he could see the threads.
Everything unspooled at once.
The arc patterns he’d spent hours trying to brute-force into shape now traced themselves in perfect logic. He could see the reason his form had stuttered: his anchoring angle was wrong by a single degree, his dispersal timing lagged by half a breath, and his aether thread was taut where it should’ve been loose.
Every mistake he’d made was suddenly visible, not as failure, but as solvable geometry.
[SPELL CAST DETECTED]
Neural Pattern Unbinding (Rank VII)
Primary Affinity: Concordance (Meta)
Secondary Affinity: Fire (Glass)
Description: Concordance thread synchronized with recipient’s aetheric lattice. Internal resistances unbound. Latent potential elevated to conscious access. No prior consent registered.
Side Effects: [Elevated risk of overperception, neurological fatigue, hallucination potential: mild].
Caster ID: [Redacted: Archmagus-Level Encryption Active]
Trace Signature: Confirmed — IVETA MONASTERIE
What . . . did she just do? There’s a Rank VII spell? Glass is an element?
[Basic Synaptic Thread Recognition: 99% Progress]
Fabrisse staggered back half a step, breath catching in his throat. There was too much light—no, not light. Structure. The spelllines in the air hadn’t suddenly appeared; they’d always been there. But now, under the lingering effect of Neural Pattern Unbinding, he could see them. As if some fog had lifted from behind his eyes and the world had redrawn itself in radiant vector.
The brilliance faded gradually, like the dying echo of a bell. Fabrisse blinked again and again. The spelllines that had been so clear, like etched pathways of arcane intention, now shimmered faintly at the edges of his vision before bleeding into nothing.
He gasped softly. “Wait—no—”
Gone. They were gone.
What remained was a frustrating, translucent afterimage. Shapes he knew had been there seconds ago, now as intangible as a dream dissolving in daylight. The arc patterns were no longer visible, but his body remembered them. His fingers twitched, hungry to trace the lines he couldn’t see. His aether still tingled at his wrists, as if it, too, mourned the clarity it had been shown for the first time.
He exhaled. “It’s over.”
Monasterie said nothing. She let him sit in the haze of it like a teacher watching a student realize how much more there is to learn.
He glanced up in shock. “You didn’t ask.”
Monasterie gave him a patient, almost amused look. “You needed a glimpse. I gave you one.”
“That’s—” Fabrisse searched for the word. That’s illegal, isn’t it?
“You were struggling. I erased the struggle. Imagine a life where that continues . . . under me.” Monasterie gave a faint smile as she appeared to have bent gravity to step forth. “This is just a glimpse, Kestovar.” Another step, and he could feel the warmth of her proximity—just enough to prickle the skin on his neck. “Imagine the whole world I can give you.” She leaned ever so slightly closer, just enough that he could feel her breath ghost across his cheek, cool and sweet like mountain air laced with something sharper underneath. “A fine young man like you,” she murmured, “would blossom under my tutelage.”
His lungs locked as if his own body refused to inhale while she was that near.
No. Nope. Absolutely not.
This feels too easy. It must be wrong.
“I—uh—I think I should—I’m gonna—thank you, Archmagus,” he stammered, stepping back. His heel caught on the edge of the mirelith and he nearly tripped, but he didn’t stop. “I’ll give it some thought. Lots of thought.”
She didn’t stop him. She just stood there, that same faint smile on her face, as the man on the divan lazily sipped his tea.
Fabrisse turned and bolted.
As he fled, the door re-dissolved for him without permission. It just knew to let him go.
2025-07-15 20:13:25 +0000 UTC
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The date had been set for his Synaptic Resonance practical retake: two weeks from now, on Tuesday. And Fabrisse had become increasingly confident he’d be able to fully recognize the basic synaptic thread in time.
[Basic Synaptic Thread Recognition: 40% Progress]
The fact that he could track his improvements tangibly did wonders for his confidence. If he could keep up this diligence for the next two weeks, he’d get there. He even got some more gains with his experience accumulation too.
[Progress to Level 5: 1152/1500]
Over the next two days, none of the weird things happened. He categorized rocks during the morning, went to theoretical lectures and practiced Synaptic Threading, went home before eight, then obsessively checked his attributes until he fell asleep even though nothing had changed.
Tonight, he was also doing the same time wasting, obsessive staring thing. At least he was able to calculate his Health Point replenishing rate by staring at the screen after bumping his toe into a table and losing 3 HP. Every five minutes, he would gain 1 HP back. He’d also learned that the shape of the rocks mattered, at least for Stupenstones. The rough ones would give him a STR bonus, but he decided to not move them to the robe pockets for now. He didn’t feel he would need STR at this moment, as this specific attribute didn’t seem to have anything to do with spellcasting. However, he did make a mental note to only practice Stupenstone Fling with the smoother stones that didn’t grant him anything.
There was no Tommaso to bother him the last couple days. Apparently he had been recalled for a couple of days to meet with a disciplinary liaison from the Northern Engagement Corps—something about ‘reckless conduct unbecoming of a junior field affiliate’ and ‘a worrying comfort with improvised combustion.’
Tommaso had sent him a single message via communication glyph—one of the older single-use panels etched on cheap slate. It took thirty minutes to arrive and would probably dissolve by dusk.
It read, ‘being lectured by a guy whose last name is Protocol. literally Protocol. wish me luck, he allergic to jokes.’
Fabrisse had stared at it for a moment, then sighed and scratched his reply into the return strip, which the glyph would convert and pulse back once the ink dried: ‘try not to explode anything.’
He almost added especially your chances of survival, but ran out of space. Budget glyphs had character limits.
No new quest had popped up during that time. However, he did get a small boon for his hard work.
Earth Thaumaturgy Mastery + 1
His current Mastery Point accumulation was 4. He would need another 6 to upgrade another skill to Rank II, which, at this rate, would take another twelve days of hard work. However, it would still be a significant improvement compared to the astounding growth rate of zero over the past several years.
“Why do you keep staring at nothing?” Greg asked. He was still sitting in front of his desk, writing some sort of report.
“Uh . . . Assistant Hajin told me to, uh, meditate. This clears my mind,” Fabrisse lied.
Greg replied, “This kind of training is why Earth Thaumaturgy is so ineffective.” Then he just resumed writing.
Fabrisse just kept staring.
As he stared at his glyph, something popped up at him.
When is the last step of the tutorial going to come? And when will I get to see my Emotional Attunement attribute?
Not like he had a lot of hope about his Emotional Attunement being anything usable, of course.
In theory, it seemed like one of the most important attributes. But now he’d learned many spells didn’t require you to invoke emotions at all, and theoretically he could go his entire life just flinging stones without ever having to channel emotions.
Another screen pulsed into view.
[Tutorial: Final Phase – Phase 4: Concordance Synchronization]
✦ Objective: Achieve and maintain short-term resonance synchronization with another aetherically-active caster.
✦ Requirement: You must be within range of a caster currently channeling emotion-fueled spellwork.
✦ Instruction:
— Detect another’s emotional frequency (eg. shame).
— Channel your emotional resonance into a shared aether pool.
— Sustain a synchronized pulse long enough to draw upon their emotional input.
✦ Warning: Emotional resonance is inherently unstable.
— Synchronization will drain FP at an accelerated rate.
— Mnemonic incantation time is halved during shared casting.
— Emotional overload may cause backlash.
Rewards: Emotional Attunement (EMO) Unlocked
Skill to be Unlocked: [Harmonized Spellcasting (Rank I)]
✦ When harmonized with another spellcaster, you may draw on their emotional charge to supplement your own.
✦ The effectiveness of harmonization is boosted primarily by your EMO, secondarily by your SYN.
✦ Rank I Limitations:
— Duration: 3 seconds max (if you’re the caster; if you’re the contributor, the duration depends on their harmonization capabilities)
— Only applies to emotion-fueled spells
— Massive FP cost; backlash possible on failure
System Note: One cannot fake resonance. To access this power, you must feel what is real.
Harmonization? That’s an intermediate-level technique! I can’t even manifest my own emotions, much less borrow from others! I don’t even have a skill for it yet, and there’s no way I’m understanding any of these instructions.
Fabrisse stared at the tutorial, then opened the casting schematic to check the aetheric reaction involved.
[Aetheric Reaction Requirements: Harmonized Spellcasting – Rank I]
→ Input 1: External Emotional Resonance – 25% (if you’re the caster) / 50% (if you’re the contributor)
Foreign emotional frequency detected within 10m. Must be active and stable for at least 0.5s.
→ Input 2: Internal Emotional Resonance – 50% (if you’re the caster) / 25% (if you’re the contributor)
Self-generated pulse must be attuned within ±5Hz of external frequency.
→ Input 3: Synchronization Factor – 25%
Measures moment-to-moment alignment of emotional pulse, aetheric rhythm, and intent.
→ Output:
• Shared aether pool (temporary, unstable)
• Access to [Harmonized Spellcasting]
• Mnemonic incantation time reduced by 50%
• FP cost multiplier ×2.5
• On failure: Emotional backlash chance 40%
So it was a two-person spell.
You needed someone else’s emotional charge just to form the pool. Without that, you were just pushing emotion into a vacuum. No resonance, no pool. No pool, no harmonization.
He frowned.
He couldn’t learn this alone; no way. If he wanted to master this skill quickly, Lorvan would be the worst person to ask. His mentor would just force him to train Emotional Tuning for hours while insisting he would need to grasp the basics first before borrowing emotions from anyone else. Traditionally, for Harmonization to take effect, firstly, two spellcasters had to feel or conjure the same emotion at the same time.
Maybe I can ask Liene. I’m not sure if she’s learned that, but it’s not like I have any other option.
***
“I have no idea how to harmonize,” Liene replied. “Why don’t you ask Lorvan?” She rested her back on the wall of the pie shop as she watched Fabrisse munching on a slice of mulberry pie.
Fabrisse replied, “He’ll ask me to spend weeks honing my Emotional Tuning. That’s so boring.”
“Well then, maybe we should start with Emotional Tuning first. But you struggle at that too.”
“You don’t have to rub salt into the wound . . .”
She wasn’t wrong. A big part of why he failed so hard at hitting the demon with his Invocation of Grief during last week’s training was that his poor Synaptic Clarity didn’t allow him to align the emotional climax of his fake story with the release of the spell, but he wouldn’t have had to do that had he felt actual emotions to begin with. Many expressive students could still make do with poor control because they still had the needed emotions to cast spells, even if their handling of the spell was lacklustre.
This is the tutorial, glyph! Why are the conditions so hard? Who in their right mind makes an impossible tutorial?
[System Note: Control of one’s emotion is a basic spellcasting prerequisite.]
[Additional Note: If you lack both emotional access and control, please consider enrolling in a different field. Suggestions include Rune Copying, Ancient Bureaucratic Theory, or Decorative Divination.]
[Suggestion: You may initiate a Tutorial Path Recalibration.]
[Would you like to restart Tutorial Protocol with a more compatible discipline? Recommended paths:
– Procedural Glyph Rendering (Low-Emotion Track)
– Administrative Chantcraft (Audit-Focused)
– Bureaucratic Summoning (Form 12-C Required)]
Hey . . . that actually doesn’t sound that bad.
[Warning: This choice is permanent. You will become emotionally inert.]
He tapped the prompt away in horror.
Okay, maybe not.
[Confirmation needed: Are you paying attention?]
Yes?
[Reminder: This interface is referred to as the System, not “glyph.” Terminology adherence ensures proper documentation, accurate troubleshooting, and consistency across all interdepartmental communications. Continued misuse may result in flagged entries.]
Oh, okay. You could’ve told me sooner, System . . .
“I’m not sure anyone can teach Harmonization to you if you don’t have decent Emotional Tuning,” Liene continued. “Why don’t you attend your next Emotional Resonance workshop?”
“I’ve skipped too many of those to understand the methods now.”
Liene exhaled slowly. Fabrisse swore she was resisting the urge to throw the rest of her pie at him. “Then you need a tutor.”
“A what?”
“A tutor. You know, those terrifyingly competent people who get paid to fix your ignorance?”
Fabrisse stopped chewing. “Wait, that’s still allowed?” He thought they’d banned tutoring since a few years ago.
“Yes. We are in the Synod, Fabri. It’s basically half a school and half a talent bazaar.” She tapped her fork against the edge of her plate. “There’s a whole registry of magus-certified tutors—some of them are adjuncts, some are specialists on academic rotation. A few are even senior-year students who passed High Distinction and now make side coins helping lower tiers not explode. Also, they can gain credits that count toward their Mastery Ledger or apprenticeship bids.”
“So I can just . . . book one?”
“Through the Arcanum Registry, yes. If you can afford the fee or barter something useful. Some even offer first-time assessments for free.” She shrugged. “If you’re too scared to ask Lorvan, or if he doesn’t have time, this is literally your only option. Unless you want to keep failing grief spells until a ghost starts coaching you out of pity.”
Fabrisse groaned. “What if they laugh at me?”
“They won’t laugh at you.”
“How much does it cost?”
“I’m not sure. The last time Lorvan tried to get one for me, he forked out 85 copper coins per lesson. I was a first-year then.”
He looked at her, then peered inside his satchel. He only had stones. He then looked into his pocket, and saw one copper coin. One. That was to pay for the pie.
Liene studied him further, then reached over to fix a stray curl that had come loose near his temple. “Silly. What are you afraid of?”
“Huh?”
“If it gets you to study . . .” She grinned. “I’ll lend you money for a lesson. Cool?”
2025-07-15 16:25:50 +0000 UTC
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“This,” Lorvan said as he adjusted his stance. His coat fluttered in the breeze, lined with glowing wards that darkened at the seams.
“is Synaptic Threading, Rank I. Mastering this is the first step towards casting under pressure.”
He raised his right arm in a wide arc that narrowed as it looped until his fingers hovered just above his shoulder line. No spell ignited, but Fabrisse felt a ripple of tension that passed his skin.
Fabrisse stood a few paces away, rubbing the back of his neck, suddenly unsure where to put his hands.
“You should stop before you actually cast something. Stop at almost-casting. That’s the point.” Lorvan dropped his arm and turned to face Fabrisse. “Spellcraft isn’t just about knowing words or channeling energy. Your body betrays you before your mind does. Every misfire, every early release, every time your focus lapses in a duel—it starts here.”
Every month, Fabrisse could schedule up to five tutoring sessions with his mentor, with a minimum requirement of two, or he’d risk disciplinary action from the Department of Disciplinary Action.
This month was the first time he’d voluntarily requested a session in half a year.
And standing alone with Lorvan in a wind-bitten courtyard before the sun had fully risen, he was starting to regret it.
“Your turn,” Lorvan said. Fabrisse gulped.
His palms were clammy. His focus was jittery. He hadn’t even drawn a spellform yet.
[Synaptic Thread Recognition: +7% Progress]
[Reward: SYN +7 ~ +15; SYN attribute unlocked]
Lorvan watched him for a moment, then gave a faint sigh. “Well? Come on. Show me you’re really serious.”
Fabrisse nodded and stepped forward, planting his feet the way he'd been taught: shoulders squared, wrist raised at an exact angle.
Lorvan gave a slight tilt of the head. “Good.”
Fabrisse tried not to smile. He exhaled slowly, raised his right arm, and began the first arc.
He didn’t even make it halfway before Lorvan said, “Stop.”
Fabrisse stopped the moment his elbows bent at the most awkward angle.
“I didn’t flinch,” Fabrisse muttered.
“You did. Here.” Lorvan tapped the air just beside his shoulder. “You overcorrected the angle before your wrist could complete the path. Your motion stuttered. That means your focus stuttered.”
Fabrisse lowered his hand. “I thought I was supposed to sync it to the emotion.”
“We’re not practicing with emotions,” Lorvan said. “Right now, you just need to form a clean arc without letting your body fall out of alignment.”
Fabrisse lifted his arm again, slower this time. His shoulder was already aching. His wrist trembled just before he even reached midpoint.
His body wanted to give out.
And he understood, in that moment, exactly why his SYN rating had never risen past a six.
He had an innate inability to maintain composure under even the suggestion of scrutiny. His bones remembered failure before his thoughts had the chance to recover.
He tried again. Do it more slowly. No need to put too much stress on yourself.
He became . . . too slow. His elbow dipped before his shoulder adjusted, and the arc collapsed in on itself.
“Reset,” Lorvan said, already turning his back. “Do it again.”
Fabrisse reset.
Another attempt. Another misalignment. His wrist gave too early. His stance slipped.
“Again.”
His shoulder burned now. His arm shook, barely able to hold itself in the raised position, let alone complete a full arc.
Another failed motion.
This time, Lorvan didn’t say anything.
Fabrisse inhaled through clenched teeth and lifted his arm again. The same mistake. His body betrayed him before his thoughts could catch.
And still, no correction came.
He paused, panting.
Lorvan had stopped watching.
The realization hit like a gut punch. His mentor stood a few paces off now, arms crossed, gaze turned somewhere past the courtyard edge.
Fabrisse lowered his hand, fighting the wave of shame crawling up his spine. “You’ve already given up on this session.”
“No,” Lorvan said, voice cold. “You did.”
“Huh?”
Lorvan finally looked at him. “You told me at the start, ‘Mentor. No matter what, don’t let me take the easy way out.’ Did you mean that, or were you posturing to feel brave for five minutes?”
Fabrisse flinched harder at those words than any failed motion.
“Then get up.” Lorvan’s voice sharpened. “Raise your arm. Thread again. Fail again if you have to, but move.”
Fabrisse swallowed the breath that wanted to turn into an excuse. His legs trembled. They were about to give in now.
He got down to one knee and lifted his arm.
And tried again.
[Synaptic Thread Recognition: +8% Progress]
***
[Synaptic Thread Recognition: +15% Progress]
Two hours later, Fabrisse was sprawled on the ground, limbs splayed and breath coming in erratic bursts. The stone tiles of the courtyard pressed cold into his back. He couldn’t move his fingers anymore, and the only signals the muscles in his dominant arm gave now were dull aches.
For a total gain of 11%.
At this rate, it would take seven more sessions just to finish the basics of Synaptic Threading, and that was if he didn’t plateau again.
He didn’t have seven sessions.
He needed 45,000 Kohns to cover next semester’s tuition, and an apprentice’s monthly pay was only 8,000, before deductions. He had just five months left to make it work, including winter break.
The evaluation exam was in a month. He would pass the written components. But passing with theory alone wouldn’t cut it.
The top-tier paid apprenticeships didn’t want textbook scores. They wanted the kind of casting performance that made evaluators underline your name twice.
Maybe I should just drop out, he thought to himself as he stared up at the blue sky.
A shadow crossed over him, then Lorvan’s head entered his vision.
“You once said the practical portion of Synaptic Threading was impossible for you before. What changed?” He said.
“The glyph,” he muttered, then gasped for air before continuing, “If I can complete the full threading sequence, it’s projected to give me upwards of fifteen points in Synaptic Control.”
“How much is that?”
“For reference, right now I have like five.”
Even if it takes more than a month, he thought, forcing his eyes to stay open, the reward is more than worth it.
Lorvan sat down beside him, folding one knee and letting his long coat drape over the cold stone. “Fifteen points is a good reward then,” he said.
Fabrisse let his head roll to the side, just enough to catch the edges of Lorvan’s profile.
Lorvan went on, “But why now? Why start improving your spellcasting this late in the game, even if the reward’s tempting?” He glanced down at him, one brow lifted. “I don’t know Konan Kahn that well, but I’m sure she’d take in another apprentice if you showed heart and submitted clean theoreticals.”
Fabrisse let the sting of those words fold into his lungs. Then, he whispered, “Min Hajin.”
“Min?”
Fabrisse shut his eyes, still sprawled. “He’s not going to teach me Aetheric Grain Analysis unless I pass Synaptic Resonance I. It’s his condition.”
Lorvan gave a faint sound, not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. “You’re starting to regret not taking Practical more seriously, huh?”
Fabrisse didn’t answer. The answer sat heavy in his throat, and he couldn’t turn it into words.
Yes.
Yes, he was.
Fabrisse closed his eyes again, willing the world to stop spinning around his bones.
Then, hoarsely, “Mentor. Please.”
Lorvan gave him a sidelong glance but said nothing.
“I know you don’t approve of boosters,” Fabrisse continued. “But just for training. Just enough to push past the limit. I’ve seen the listings—glyphplates tuned to Synaptic acceleration, even ARC stabilizers. I can rent one for two days. If I could just hold the form long enough to stop plateauing—”
“They don’t allow aid in Practical,” Lorvan said. “You know that.”
“I wouldn’t use it for the test, I swear. Just for prep, so my body can feel what alignment’s supposed to be like.”
Lorvan’s silence was louder than before. When he finally spoke, his voice was tired and firm. “And what happens when your body learns to cheat? When it stops learning to hold tension and starts leaning on the device instead?”
Lorvan glanced at the time glyph woven into the band of his sleeve, a small rotation of geometric runes. Fabrisse followed the motion with bleary eyes.
I know he has another student after this, Fabrisse thought as his heart sank. Whoever that student was, they were probably more of a joy to teach.
The silence stretched, longer than the usual kind that Lorvan used to let a lesson sink in. It twisted just past the line of discomfort into the edge of dread.
Fabrisse pushed himself upright, wincing as his arm screamed against the motion. “If you have to go, Mentor, I understand. I can—”
“Do you have another hour to spare?”
He stopped pushing. “Pardon?”
Lorvan finally looked at him. A few strands of his hair, usually parted with precise care, had come loose, weighted down by sweat and the wind. They clung to his temple, one lock half-veiling his left eye.
“This is for both you and me,” Lorvan said quietly. “If you keep failing basic Synaptic Control, what does it say about me?”
Fabrisse couldn’t find anything to say to Lorvan. The man had never, never talked about anything other than studies.
Fabrisse’s throat closed around the instinctive denial. “No . . . No. You’re great.” He really wasn’t strict enough. He acted rigid, but he let Fabrisse off the hook way too often.
Lorvan kept his hand extended, steady and expectant. His tone gentled, but not soft. “If you won’t give up, I won’t give up.”
Fabrisse hesitated only a second more—then took it.
Lorvan’s grip was strong, unshaking, and the pull to his feet was smooth.
“One more try,” Lorvan said. “Let’s get that first arc right.”
2025-07-14 16:29:11 +0000 UTC
View Post
He still needed to practice his Stupenstone Fling, but with Liene gone, there were no more moving targets. He wasn’t about to start flinging rocks at the frogs loitering near the North Pond either. That would just be rude and karma-inducing. He didn’t believe in karma, but he believed in not harming amphibians.
Let’s return to the dorm room first and see if I can manufacture a moving target.
So, he trudged back toward his dormitory, fingers absently brushing the aggressive-looking Gravelkin in his satchel.
Somewhere along the way, he noticed a crow.
It was doing typical avian activities: waddling near a tree stump, pecking at the dirt, fluttering up to a low branch, preening. It even gave a noncommittal squawk when a breeze rattled the branches above it, the way normal crows sometimes commented on the weather like bitter old men.
Fabrisse slowed anyway. That particular shade of grey in its feathers and the fraying tip on one wing gave it away.
That was Ilya’s crow.
Tommaso hadn’t followed him today. Neither had Ilya, at least not in person. Which meant they had probably delegated.
The crow met his gaze briefly. It gave another lazy hop, tilted its head at nothing, and resumed being perfectly ordinary.
Fabrisse was just about to keep walking when the communication glyph stitched onto his sleeve flared black.
A classified reply.
No sender name displayed, but he knew that signature weave. Archmagus Rolen didn’t sign his messages, and no one else would bother sending a classified message anyway.
He was about to resume walking again, when another thing happened: shadows trailing from the windowsill of the building across the path. Inky streaks of darkness slipped out in slow ribbons, tendrils folding over one another like eel-slick cords being fed through invisible pulleys. Fabrisse squinted, instinctively lowering himself into a quieter step. He couldn’t see the caster—whoever was inside hadn’t stepped into view—but he could see the afterimage of practiced dark-element shaping. Judging by the dull gleam along the shadow’s edge, it wasn’t beginner level.
The crow gave a single flap and glided down from its branch, landing on a cobblestone uncomfortably close to his foot. Its claws clicked once.
Fabrisse jolted.
Do not be alone at any time. Lorvan’s warning resurfaced with perfect clarity.
And if he didn’t heed the warnings, the least that would happen was running into Cuman again.
He started walking, all the while muttering to himself, “I’m suddenly the Synod’s hottest prospect, for real, huh?” He just wanted to practice throwing rocks.
He advanced exactly three steps before someone stepped into his path—a figure in deep navy robes, hood pulled back just enough to show cropped silver-blond hair and the gleam of official academy trim along the collar.
The man gave a shallow nod. “Fabrisse Kestovar?”
Fabrisse froze.
The man continued, “I’m High Magus Kairon, in service to Archmagus Iveta Monasterie. She’s requested your presence.”
“The Moonbear Archmagus?”
“Yes, but please don’t refer to her that way.”
“I’m sorry.”
It was no longer in doubt: the universe had conspired for him to not fling another Stupenstone today.
“Why?”
“It concerns the offer she’d made to you the day before.”
“Ah.”
The crow cawed once.
Kairon knew about the offer Monasterie made to Fabrisse, which could be read as a sign he was trustworthy. However, his mentor Lorvan had introduced him to Rolen, which intuitively would make Rolen the safer option.
“I need to tell my roommate I’ll be late, if you’d permit me?” Fabrisse asked.
“That is permitted,” Kairon said.
“Okay. Just a moment.” Fabrisse gave an apologetic smile and stepped off the path, pretending to fiddle with a ward glyph sewn into his sleeve cuff.
The moment he had his back partially turned, he exhaled and tapped twice on the comm-thread just beneath the black-flared weave. He pressed a fingertip to the edge and started writing on the glyph that surfaced, “Archmagus Rolen. I’m currently en route with High Magus Kairon, under the name of Archmagus Iveta Monasterie. She says it’s about her previous offer. I’m just outside East Annex, taking the main path toward Central Hall. Will respond if able.”
The glyph faded as soon as he finished.
They moved.
High Magus Kairon didn’t lead him toward Central Hall as expected. Instead, he veered toward the side arcades, where the stone archways opened into quieter walkways, then up a slope where it got inexplicably foggy.
Fabrisse glanced around. Wards on the lamp-post sigils buzzed faintly, the enchantments aged and slightly out of tune. He looked down. The bricks underfoot grew older and more uneven. He could tell from the material of the bricks that they were not used to build the newer buildings after the Synod reconstructed their main divisions, which meant these bricks should be at least a few decades old.
His extensive knowledge of building material told him that something was amiss. This isn’t Synod grounds anymore, he thought. Or it is—but not a version I remember.
And the crow was gone.
He stared at Kairon’s back. The man walked briskly, confidently, but too quiet. His steps made no sound on the stone. He didn’t turn to check if Fabrisse followed, nor did he speak the entire time.
Panic rose fast, bubbling to his throat like a volcano waiting to burst.
No. He forced a slow exhale, steadying his pace. No. Think like a caster.
“A good spellcaster doesn’t panic,” he whispered under his breath. His mind ran the numbers.
There were three viable options: forward, toward wherever Kairon was taking him; left, down the sloped arcade that seemed to spill into a courtyard shrouded in fog; or back the way he came
If he could time a Liminal Presence Drift right, he might be able to get out of here in time.
Darkness lurched from below. Puddles of inky darkness surged from the bricks like grabbing hands.
But they didn’t go for him. They went for Kairon.
Kairon reacted instantly. His arm snapped out, and a barrier glyph flared across his sleeve—hexagonal and shuddering violet.
“H-how?” Kairon barked. “How did you get in my—” The magus had already been pulled halfway to the ground.
Now. Executing Scoot of Dire Retreat.
His skills activated at once.
[Active Spell Activated: Liminal Presence Drift (Rank III)]
[Passive Field Engaged: Auditory Dissipation Field (Rank II)]
[Active Spell Activated: Aetheric Veil — Echofold (Rank II)]
Fabrisse slipped into motion, back to the exact path he’d entered through. He walked with a steady, even pace, resisting the urge to sprint or look over his shoulder. Sudden movement draws attention.
The environment around him blurred slightly under Drift. His silhouette became the suggestion of a person rather than a fixed presence. Sound failed to cling to him. The old wards he passed flickered uncertainly, but their detection threads did not catch him.
Kairon was still on one knee, cloak tattered at the edge, but his barrier glyph had reformed—no longer violet, now etched with concentric circles of dull cobalt. Around him, the black tendrils thrashed, hissing as each one struck a shimmering wall and dissolved into ashes.
“Clever bastards,” Kairon spat, voice crackling with magical distortion. “Wrong apprentice.”
Fabrisse didn’t stay to watch the rest. The fog at the lower slope billowed, but he bypassed it.
He passed the crooked gutter rune. Then the lopsided lamppost. Then the crack in the bricks that looked vaguely like a yawning dog.
The fog had thinned behind him. The chill in the air retreated. Everything returned to normal.
Then someone stepped into view ahead.
High Magus Kairon.
From the opposite direction.
His pace was casual this time. Confident, but not hurrying. Gone were the signs of magical distress, and his robes no longer possessed the tears.
He looked like he’d just come from a faculty tea break.
Fabrisse halted. Cold sweat broke across his back. His mouth felt too dry.
“Fabrisse Kestovar,” Kairon greeted, tone steady and polite, “Archmagus Iveta Monasterie has requested your presence.”
Fabrisse stared at him.
Kairon’s voice was the same. His posture was the same. Except—this time, he was ahead of Fabrisse, not behind him.
His head whipped around.
The muted walkway, the one of brittle bricks and buzzing old sigils—it was gone.
The path behind him now showed nothing but standard paving stones and a view of the East Annex quad. Bright, structured, restored. The garden hedge he’d passed earlier swayed in the breeze like nothing strange had ever happened.
He turned back. Kairon still stood there, hands at his sides.
“I believe she’d like to speak to you regarding yesterday’s offer,” he repeated.
Fabrisse’s mind raced.
Was he in some kind of trance? Had the first Kairon been a fake? Or was this one the imposter?
[Combat Completed: + 29 EXP]
[Progress to Level 5: 1479/1500]
Wait. The skills I attempted earlier were counted as part of a ‘combat’ . . .
Before he could decide what to say or whether to bolt, another voice cut through the air behind him.
“Hello.”
He nearly jumped.
Ilya stepped into view from the East Annex hedge path, calm as ever, as if she hadn’t just materialized out of nowhere. Her crow,now perched on her shoulder, tilted its head and gave a quiet clack.
She gave Kairon a once-over. “High Magus Kairon.”
Kairon regarded her with faint surprise, or perhaps the faint mimicry of it. “You know me?”
“I’ve seen you accompany Archmagus Monasterie. North Zunga sector. Northern Pioneer Troop, Second Deployment Unit.”
“We are heading to the Central Wing,” Kairon said.
“Me too,” Ilya replied.
Neither invited nor dismissed, she fell into step behind Kairon, trailing just far enough that it was clear she wasn’t accompanying him.
Fabrisse stared at her back for half a second longer than he should have, then moved to follow.
He didn’t ask her why she was here.
He already knew.
She’s here to ensure I don’t disappear.
But that left another question tangled in the back of his mind, the one he’d been avoiding since he’d escaped that strange fog-bound path.
What about those dark hands?
The ones that had attacked Kairon. Or . . . whatever that version of Kairon was.
He turned the memory over carefully, cautiously, as they walked.
That version of the Synod hadn’t matched anything on official maps. The material of the bricks, the age of the wards, the smell of the air itself—all of it was off, as though it belonged to a place adjacent to their own. Parallel, but not aligned.
He remembered, too well, how it had felt the last time something had dragged him close to the Void.
So the earlier Kairon wasn’t Kairon. That thing had been luring him deeper.
Which meant—
The hands of darkness had saved him.
His feet moved of their own accord. The steady rhythm of the cobblestone walk kept him grounded as his mind reeled forward.
Who had cast those hands?
The caster must’ve been inside that windowed building earlier. But what kind of caster breaks a Void projection like that? Not with fire or light, not even with pure force, but with darkness?
At first, he’d thought it was coincidence. But the more he thought about it, the more the logic fell into place.
The fake Kairon had come prepared. The trap was deliberate. But so had the other caster. They were already stationed there, as if they had anticipated the snare.
But was the trap Void at all? From his last encounter, Void had either lacked a distinct color, or it had been pitch black. When he was in whatever that mirage was, the colors were only dulled. He couldn’t tell.
Looks like I need to borrow a few books on Dark Magic from the Synod library.
The comm glyph flared again, not black but blue. Unclassified.
Fabrisse pressed a finger to the rune and opened the thread.
A single line glowed on the glyph.
Information received. I have assigned help should I not arrive in time. — Rolen
It all makes sense now. That was Rolen’s aid.
He was sure of it. There was no other way to explain the timing, the precision, the fact that those hands hadn’t targeted him.
“Apprentice Kestovar,” Kairon said ahead, tone crisp. “You can stop walking now.”
Only when Kairon spoke again did he realize they’d arrived. His body had been walking on autopilot the entire time.
Fabrisse blinked, looking up at the looming façade of the Central Wing. Then he looked forward to spot Ilya walking away from him and Kairon, acting like she had somewhere else to be.
Right. He was still being summoned.
2025-07-14 01:06:09 +0000 UTC
View Post
The swirling gale around Cuman deepened to a furious howl. The magic condensed into a tight spiral behind him, sharp and glowing with a coral-tinted red. He was pissed off.
He chanted, a long and impractical mnemonic,
“By fracture of breath and spiral of storm, I carve the lawless path through calm. Rend, lash, unform!”
That didn’t even rhyme . . .
It probably wasn’t the brightest idea while his attacker was supercharging his spell, but Fabrisse felt a strange urge to peer into Cuman’s attributes.
[Active Spell Activated: Spectral Appraisal]
Cuman Golliver
Status: Uninjured (Irritated)
HP: 144 / 144
FP: 53 / 72
Attributes:
STR: 33
DEX: 26
ARC: 40
— All other attributes are currently restricted.
Then he checked Liene’s attributes again.
Target: Liene Lugano
Status: Fatigued (Depleted)
HP: ???
FP: 58 / 77
Attributes:
STR: 14
DEX: 25
ARC: 38
— All other attributes are currently restricted.
His raw observable stats were actually better than Liene’s. However, Fabrisse couldn’t know their spell library. Liene could use hybrid elements like Light, so she had probably learned more spells than Cuman.
Cuman’s arms jerked open. The wind behind him coalesced into a spiral lasso of air that crackled at the edges like it was shearing the atmosphere.
What’s that spell? That’s not a low-ranked spell we learned in class.
Two fingers curled.
The spell launched.
Compressed wind tore through the field, its edge honed to a screaming filament.
[Spell Identified: Razor Gale Whip (Wind—Rank III)]
Wait. That’s Razor Gale Whip?
Liene waved her hand in an arc and shouted her mnemonic,
“Bright bind, bend and shield!”
A burst of pale radiance flared into a crescent wall, etched with glowing sigils.
The gale hit. The impact rang like a struck bell.
Fabrisse flinched. The arc of Liene’s shield shuddered, cracks splintering. The edge of the wind whip didn’t stop—it screeched as it carved through the air, digging into the radiant barrier and peeling one of the outer glyphs with a spray of sparks.
The shield held.
Liene shouted. “Gollivur! That spell can hurt people!”
The whip hissed away in a spiral gust, the wind scattering embers from the broken glyphs.
Cuman’s fingers still hung in the air, and the spiral behind him slowly reformed.
“You flung a rock at my skull,” he said. “I’m just returning the favor.”
Fabrisse still couldn’t believe that was Razor Gale Whip. They had learned the Rank I version last semester. His version stuttered when he tried it. It wobbled in the air like an untied rope, more breeze than blade, and flopped to the ground when it hit a practiced target. Normally, mentors wouldn’t teach third-year students like Cuman Rank III spells, as more advanced spells should only be taught to those in year four or the final year, after they’d chosen their alignment elements. Fabrisse had no idea where Cuman had learned that from.
A sharp crack echoed across the field.
A second later, three glyphs embedded in the edge-stones of the training ring flared orange, pulsing like coals. The first warning was fired. The field’s ambient wards were still passive for now, but if another offensive spell landed, the Instructants would be summoned automatically.
“Gollivur, I am begging you to remember we’re still in a school,” Liene said.
The last trails of wind dispersed around Cuman’s fingers. His eyes settled on Fabrisse, “You can’t hide before a Light shield forever, Rock Witch. Next time you're alone, remember to look behind you.”
He stepped back from the field’s threshold. The coral glow gradually dimmed around his boots.
“See you around,” he said.
Fabrisse felt his spine lock.
[Status Effect Gained: Marked (Cuman Golliver) — Duration: Indefinite]
[Sidequest Completed: Peer Conflict Observation]
Objective: Witness an unfolding duel between fellow students.
Reward: +2 STR, +1 ARC
2 STR? Why is that an attribute? What does a Mage need strength for?
Maybe that attribute was only there to hoard all his progress when it mattered.
Still, he flexed his non-existent bicep to see if he could feel any tangible change. Nothing. Just the usual twig of an arm.
[Training Completed: + 20 EXP]
[Progress to Level 5: 1450/1500]
A grin curled at the edge of Liene’s lips. “Just to clarify, the warning glyphs saved the day, not you. Don’t need to show off like that.”
Fabrisse dropped his arm instantly, ears turning red. “I was checking for feedback.”
“From whom?”
He decided it was better to not answer that question.
Liene walked over to the Stupenstone on the ground and picked it up for him, “So, we go again?”
He nodded.
They were about to return to training—Fabrisse already digging through his satchel for another stone—when someone else entered the field.
“Been trying to find ya, Liene!” Celine Moose strolled into view, twirling a crystalline charm around her finger. Her academy coat was half-buttoned, and a scarf slung over one shoulder. Then she saw Fabrisse and immediately smiled in a deeply conspitorial way. “Oh! I knew you’d be with certain company, Liene.”
Why does everybody suddenly show up at a training field that’s literally empty at all other times?
Liene sighed. “You were supposed to meet me at the west gate.”
“I got distracted,” Celine said, grin growing. “Didn’t expect to stumble onto a special training session.” She snapped her fingers. A floating shard of lens-glass whirred into view over her shoulder, its embedded rune glinting.
“Say ‘We’re just academic partners!’” she sing-songed, already framing them in view. That spell could record people’s physical outline into aetheric sparks. People wouldn’t be one hundred percent sure who those outlines belonged too, but knowing Celine, they would know anyway.
“. . . I have somewhere to be,” Fabrisse turned and immediately began speed-walking toward the other edge of the field.
“Kestovar!” Celine called after him, one hand cupped around her mouth. “Don’t be shy! You’re the star of the scene! This is character development!”
He kept going.
“Hey! Don’t forget the Arc Pebble Game! Mpppphhhhh—!”
Fabrisse turned back just in time to see Liene forcibly clamping a hand over Celine’s mouth, dragging her backward by the scarf. Liene was saying something inaudible to her, but judging from both their facial expressions, it was probably menacing and equally ineffective.
“Mmhmmrph!” Celine replied through her hand, still grinning.
Fabrisse speed-walked away faster.
2025-07-13 10:55:13 +0000 UTC
View Post
“And then she said, ‘have him be under my tutelage’,” Fabrisse spread his palms, trying to physically recreate the scene and failing to do so.
Liene, dressed like a normal student, sprawled sideways on the bench across from him with one leg dangling off the armrest, raised an eyebrow. “Look at you. Hottest prospect in the Synod overnight. You realize you’ve become a full-blown headline, right?”
Fabrisse groaned. “I didn’t do anything.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t go for you earlier, to be honest. You’re the Chosen One of the Eidralith, after all. I’m curious, though. What did you say to them afterwards? Who did you pick? Tell me it’s Monasterie.”
“Nothing. They started arguing amongst each other, and Dir got so mad he turned into smokes again, so I didn’t say anything.”
Liene sat up, propping her head on one hand. “So you just stood there while four archmagi fought over you like some limited-edition summoning crystal?”
“Three. Draeth couldn’t care less.”
Liene gave a gasp that sounded entirely fake. “Only three?”
“Any more and I wouldn’t have been able to process what they said.” Fabrisse scratched the back of his head. “I almost tuned out when Monasterie said if I become her student, she could give me a breakthrough in my innate resonance. Something about untangling my inner bottleneck.”
She sprang up instantly like a fallen tree, but in reverse. “Wait. She said that? That’s huge. She knows exactly where your problem is! What did the others offer?”
“Dir said something about offering me a pathway to Smoke-based Thaumaturgy.”
Liene froze. “I’m sorry. Smoke? That’s real? I thought that was just what professors called a misfire when they didn’t want to admit it was one.”
“I saw him turn to smoke with my own eyes, Liene. And that if I trained under him, he’d let me in on the true blend.”
Liene let out a low whistle. “Okay. That’s insane. You know how rare that is? Smoke thaumaturgy is like the philosopher’s stone of hybrid casting. I don’t think anybody knows the base components. For light thaumaturgy, I need to blend flame and crystal. And I had to get crystal from ice, which I had to get from water! And I thought that was hard.” She paused before speaking again, “Okay, okay. What did Rolen say?”
“He told me he won’t make stupid promises, but I can get a pink aether ball as souvenir.”
“That’s it? A pink ball?”
“It was very pink.”
She squinted at him. “Right. So who are you going to pick?”
“I don’t know.” He ran a hand through his hair.
“Don’t pick anyone,” Liene said immediately, leaning forward. “Tell them you’re thinking. Drag it out. Make them compete a little longer. They’ll all try to show off, and soon they’ll all teach you their little secrets to sway you.”
Fabrisse stared at her like she was wearing clothing she normally wore. “I don’t think that’s . . . ethical.”
“Neither is using you as political leverage for Synod funding and personal prestige.”
He stayed silent for more than socially acceptable.
Liene leaned in closer and tilted her head to try and make eye contact with him. “Well, if you don’t like that idea . . . We can go with Rolen. He’ll put the least pressure on you. Is that okay?”
“Um . . .”
“What’s on your mind?”
He finally met her gaze. “I need to practice flinging stones.”
***
The wisp of light drifted faster than Fabrisse would’ve liked.
It darted sideways just as he let loose the spell. The stone veered off course and plunked into the grass with all the threat of a wet acorn.
[Mastery Training: Stupenstone Fling (Rank II)—Progress to Rank III: 88%]
→ Trajectory Curvature: Consistent but Lacking in Variety
→ Estimated Launch Velocity: 6.7 m/s (90% max)
→ Accuracy Deviation: ±10.8%
His accuracy was off, wildly. It was much harder to hit a moving (albeit slowly) target. And what does the system mean by ‘Lacking in Variety’?
Liene clapped, very unhelpfully. “That’s your fifth miss, but out of nine! You’re improving.”
They were out at the eastern training field (not to be confused with the eastern target field), where first-years usually practiced basic conjuration or panicked over botched elemental fusion. Fabrisse had chosen it because no one else would be around to witness his descent into mediocrity.
“It’s nine already?” He muttered, moreso to himself. “Has it been thirty minutes.”
“Twenty.”
“Don’t you have your own practice or assignments to do?”
“I already turned in my assignments, Fabri.” She had probably just lied, and would most likely whip up something on the final day like always. “But I’m heading to town with Celine later, so you better hit the target quick,” Liene said, conjuring another wisp. This one twinkled a warm orange and zipped in a corkscrew pattern around a dummy pole. “Try again.”
Fabrisse narrowed his eyes, placed a Stupenstone into his palm, and flung.
The rock ricocheted off the dummy pole and narrowly missed the wisp, which did a smug little spiral in response.
[Mastery Training: Stupenstone Fling (Rank II)—Progress to Rank III: 89%]
→ Trajectory Curvature: Consistent but Lacking in Variety
→ Estimated Launch Velocity: 6.7 m/s (90% max)
→ Accuracy Deviation: ±6.3%
“Your control is still stuck in beginner form,” Liene reminded. “You can’t brute force finesse.”
“I’m not trying to brute force finesse. I’m trying to hit a glowing ball.” He took out another stone from his satchel. He stared at it and realized it was his trusty old friend, Gravelkin. Its smooth, river-worn shape, a perfect oval with just enough heft, was ideal for cutting through the air. The balanced weight settled comfortably in his palm. A promise of a stable, true flight; a projectile purpose-built by nature.
He had an absolutely brilliant idea. “Alright, fine. Let’s brute force finesse.”
“That’s not how—”
Too late. He hurled the stone with a full-bodied windup, like he was trying to exorcise his frustration from his elbow.
[Full STR engaged]
The Stupenstone shot across the field with the speed of an injured dog. Right as it passed over a cracked glyph etched into the dueling mat stone.
The glyph flared.
A sudden surge of compressed wind exploded like a geyser of raw aether pressure, catching the stone mid-flight and slingshotting it forward with a banshee shriek.
It ricocheted off the dummy pole, then off a glyphlight, then rebounded from the edge of the summoning frame and—
Thunk.
Directly into someone’s head.
It had missed the wisp.
Both Fabrisse and Liene turned in slow motion.
Cuman Golliver stood at the edge of the field, eyes closed, hand pressed to his forehead. The stone rolled off his boot.
[Mastery Training: Stupenstone Fling (Rank II)—Progress to Rank III: 93%]
→ Trajectory Curvature: Consistent but Lacking in Variety
→ Estimated Launch Velocity: 7.0 m/s (94% max) → Dipped mid-way to: 5.3 m/s (72% max)
→ Accuracy Deviation: ±14.5%
[You have struck: Cuman Gollivur (Hostile)]
Cuman’s fingers jerked.
A second later, a current of air twisted around his free hand, gathering speed and shape until it roared into a coiled vortex, a wind spell that absolutely wasn’t beginner tier. The air snapped sharp, tugging at Fabrisse’s sleeves. The other hand was still rubbing the red mark blooming on his temple.
“You’ve met your maker now, punk,” he growled.
Fabrisse took a step back. “It was the glyph! The stone! Physics!”
“I am physics,” Cuman growled, wind howling louder with each syllable. “And you just violated natural law.”
Liene muttered, “Okay, that was kind of a sick line.”
But her hands were already weaving a defense glyph into the air. She formed a shield of light in front of herself, bending like warped glass. “Don’t be an idiot, Gollivur. If the Instructants catch you spellcasting on a student again, you’re going to be on probation again.”
The swirling wind kept gathering behind Cuman, looking more and more like a storm cloud now. It didn’t look like he was going to stop until he’d launched Fabrisse into the stratosphere.
Fabrisse took a cautious half-step forward. “We don’t have to do this, okay? I didn’t—”
The system violated his vision again.
[Sidequest Activated: Peer Conflict Observation]
Objective: Witness an unfolding duel between fellow students.
Note: Insight gained from live spell exchanges may improve battle instincts.
Reward: + 3 Random Attributes
You’ve got to be kidding me.
2025-07-11 22:12:08 +0000 UTC
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The entrance to Headmaster Draeth’s office wasn’t a door so much as a threshold in space that refused to be observed directly. One moment, Fabrisse was walking down a plain stone hallway lined with student achievement plaques and buzzing sconce-crystals, and the next, the temperature rose by five degrees and the air forgot how to carry sound.
The archway ahead shone with an angry crimson, Draeth’s favorite color. A plaque beside it read, in very tasteful serif runes: “Knock Only If You Know Why You’re Here.”
Neither Fabrisse or Liene knocked. They only looked at each other, and after Liene nudging him with his elbow, he decided to open the door.
They stepped into a space much too large to be a headmaster’s study. It reassembled into an antechamber lined with levitating glass tomes that slowly rotated, pages flipping against no wind. Their contents whispered in no language Fabrisse knew, but it still made his bones itch nonetheless.
Liene, beside him, muttered under her breath, “Creepy.”
That’s on-brand, then.
Past the whispering tomes, the antechamber narrowed into a long, sunken room with lights coming from the corners of the walls, despite there being no glyphlights. At the far end, three figures stood in partial silhouette near a floating projection of something schematic and spinning, overlapping leyline grids woven with glowing threads of spellform annotations. They were discussing something, but had deliberately kept their voice low even inside such a spacious room.
At the center of the floor stood a broad, shallow plinth, slate-colored and unmarked, resembling a decorative foundation for some long-removed statue or forgotten sculpture. It didn’t seem to serve a purpose, except perhaps as symmetry. Draeth seemed the kind of man to be into symmetry. For years, visiting students had sat around that central plinth, dismissing it as ornamental. Few had wondered why the podium grumbled on cold mornings. None had dared touch it.
Archmagus Terevin Sil was the first to turn to them, then whispered to the other two archmagi, “The students are here.”
Sil’s voice didn’t carry far, but it didn’t need to. The moment she spoke, the projection stilled, folding in on itself like origami retreating into a single glyph node before vanishing with a low chime.
Headmaster Draeth turned next. His silhouette resolved into something sharp and angular: an indigo robe layered over a carapace-like tunic, with half a dozen ceremonial clasps fastened asymmetrically down his left arm. He looked very extra.
Then there was Mikhael Rolen, who didn’t turn back, but didn’t need to turn back for Fabrisse to know it was him. He was juggling pink aether balls on his hands.
Draeth’s voice rang out the moment the projection vanished. “Do you know what you are here for?”
Fabrisse froze. He absolutely did not know.
Or rather, he knew too many possibilities. The Cuman incident. The voidtouched skitterwhit incident. The basin incident (there was NO hugging involved).
And he’d completely forgotten Lorvan’s advice.
Liene gave a polite nod and said, “We weren’t told, Headmaster. Only that it was urgent.”
“You would have known . . .” The Headmaster’s voice echoed even within the gigantic chamber. “Had you spent time observing the ritual and not each other!”
Ah. So the basin incident. He let out a small exhale, knowing Draeth probably hadn’t yet known about the skitterwhits.
Draeth stepped forward, hands clasped behind his back. “Mr. Kestovar. Describe what happened.”
“Yes, Headmaster.” Fabrisse stiffened. “We were trying to glide our petals to the finish line, as is the spirit of the ritual. We were trying to steer the petal, and we found it difficult to—”
“Stop,” Draeth said.
Fabrisse shut his mouth.
“I asked what happened. Not your justification of it. If you were trying to steer your petal, what spells did you cast?”
“I—Petal Draft.”
“Do you have the capabilities to cast Petal Draft?”
“N-no.”
“Then are you lying, Mr. Kestovar?”
Fabrisse cast his glance at the ground.
Draeth stared at him for a beat longer, then muttered, “Still wasting time with rocks, are we? You’ve had three years to abandon that nonsense.”
What? Why did he even bother to bring it up here? It has nothing to do with the petal ritual.
“Study Fire. Study Air. Even Water, if you must. Something with motion.” Draeth’s voice sharpened. “Stone is inert, Kestovar. It does not respond. That’s why the diligent leave it behind.”
Fabrisse’s throat closed up, but he said nothing. He didn’t want to argue. Fabrisse just wanted to understand why the Headmaster hated rocks so much.
“He was studying something else, Headmaster! He’s a diligent student.” Liene said, “He was channeling his emotion into my spell, Headmaster. We were harmonizing.”
Draeth let out a short, snappy, audible exhale. “The ritual calls for individual casting. Why did you harmonize?”
“I thought it would be more efficient—”
“It. Is. Not. Allowed.” Draeth bellowed. “So, your surname is Lugano, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Headmaster.”
“So you are Instructant Lugano’s sister. No wonder.”
Liene’s lips pressed together into a thin line.
Rolen let one of the pink aether balls bounce across his shoulders before finally speaking, his voice light as always. “The one chosen by the Eidralith was able to contribute to a harmonized spell, Headmaster. We should see it as progress.”
“And progress is what we would like to see,” Sil stepped forward before Draeth had a chance to respond. “The Order had received words about the . . . less than flattering academic prognostics of the newest Chosen One.”
Draeth’s hand curled into a ball. “Chosen or not, do you believe that rituals exist for show, Mr. Kestovar? That tradition is ornamental?”
Before Fabrisse could say a word, Sil raised a hand. “You should care less about the rituals, Headmaster,” she said plainly, her voice slicing across the room like a well-tempered blade. “I am not here on behalf of the Bureau or the Ritual Consulate. I am from the Order. And it would do you good to listen, Headmaster.”
Draeth’s molars ground together, but he said nothing.
Sil stepped forward fully now. Her boots made no sound as they crossed the glyph-etched floor. “I must remind you again. You have hailed the Eidralith as a cornerstone of the Order’s future. You wrote, in your own report, that it has shown signs of responsiveness unseen in a century. You claimed it would shape the next generation of thaumaturgy. We are still waiting for observable results, Headmaster. We cannot guarantee the grants to this branch of the Synod will be sustained.”
Wait. The Headmaster is banking on the success of the Eidralith?
But that doesn’t make sense. Okay, maybe I’m useless. Maybe the Eidralith binding to me is a waste of its talent. But even if I turn out to be a resounding success, I would just be a single case. How can it shape ‘the next generation’?
Unless . . . they’re trying to reproduce its properties en masse.
“We should not be discussing this in front of the student!” Draeth stared at Sil with bloodshot eyes.
“He is the Chosen One,” Sil didn’t glance his way. “How do you expect your little experiment to work without him knowing what he’s part of?”
“But the young lady—”
“Is she still here?” Sil interrupted, finally turning her gaze toward Liene. “Miss Lugano, you may be excused.”
Liene stared at nothing for a second. Fabrisse couldn’t quite tell her emotion; maybe she was offended, confused, hurt, or all three. She finally managed a stiff nod. “Of course, Archmagus.”
She turned on her heel and glanced at Fabrisse one last time before leaving.
Rolen finally stopped juggling. The pink aether spheres evaporated, leaving behind only a tiny whiff of aether.
Sil immediately continued, “The Bureau of Arcane Irregularities will arrive in ten days, possibly fewer. They are already displeased with the recent uptick in unsanctioned provocation of dormant artifacts. Another artifact awakening for the sake of optics, without measurable progress, will, and I repeat, will incur their wrath.”
Draeth’s fingers twitched. “The Eidralith is not for optics. It’s a cornerstone—”
“They are not interested in cornerstones,” Sil cut in. She raised a hand, then pointed it, without ceremony or softness, directly at Fabrisse. “Show us the study case.”
Oh no. At this rate, the Synod’s going to dissect my mind, the Order will dissect my soul, and the Bureau will dissect my spleen.
Draeth’s jaw clenched so hard it was audible. “The progress of a Chosen One is not measured in days. It is to be observed over a great span of time. You cannot rush the blooming of an arcane bond.”
Rolen finally stepped forward, his voice smooth and infuriatingly calm. “Then how about I accelerate that blooming?”
Sil arched a brow. Draeth looked like he’d just bitten into a lemon that cast judgment.
Rolen walked over to Fabrisse, hands now tucked behind his back with all the showmanship of a lecturer about to unveil a very flashy diagram. “Have him be under my tutelage,” he said lightly. “If the Order wants observable results, I’ll give them fireworks.”
Wait, what now.
Rolen turned his head slightly toward Draeth. “Unless, of course, you’d prefer another month of ‘let’s do nothing and see if the stars align.’”
Draeth opened his mouth, then shut it again, visibly weighing his options.
Sil, meanwhile, seemed very interested in the suggestion. “The Order would support that arrangement,” she said. “And we’d expect a full progress report before the Bureau arrives.”
Fabrisse, still reeling, barely managed to mutter, “I don’t suppose I get a say in any of this.”
At the far end of the room, wind surged.
A deep blue glow spilled, pulling along elongated shadows at its woke. Then came a trail of smoke, gathering low to the ground, then rose, twirled, and finally materialized into the shape of a man.
A second later, the smoke was gone.
And Archmagus Lellian Dir was standing there like he always had been.
Fabrisse’s jaws dropped. Did a trail of smoke just transform into him, or have my eyes been tricked?
Dir’s eyes, flat and grey like ash left in a hearth, swept across the room. Then he announced, “No. Have him be under my tutelage.”
Just as Dir’s words settled, the actual door—yes, the literal, physical door—clicked open.
Fabrisse turned around to see a woman stepping through. She wore robes the color of distant starlight, layered with stitched constellations that shimmered faintly in response to the shifting glyphlight. At her side padded an enormous creature that resembled a bear, if bears had horns, silvery fur, and eyes like polished opal moons.
That’s Archmagus Iveta Monasterie. And is that . . . a moonbear?
The moonbear huffed as it flopped into a seated position. The woman scanned the room, her head never moving an inch. Then she said, in a tone so casual it bordered on insulting, “No.”
She pointed at Fabrisse. “Have him be under my tutelage.”
2025-07-11 14:45:53 +0000 UTC
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Fabrisse had clicked on ‘Request More Information’ on his way home, and he had spent his entire journey thinking about what he’d read.
[Comparative Tuning Methodologies – Summary Overview]
Note: Some branches conflict with others. Accepting a Questline may foreclose alternatives.
• Leyline Tuning (Environmental Sync)
– Aligns personal aether rhythm with natural leyfield flow.
– Benefits: Passive regeneration, long-casting efficiency, planar sensing potential.
– Tradeoffs: Susceptible to leyfield disturbances. Limited personalization.
• Corestream Forging (Internal Purity)
– Refines aether signature into a singular, autonomous stream.
– Benefits: Greater internal power, unique signature crafting, resistance to disruption.
– Tradeoffs: No leyflow affinity. Cannot interface with environmental sources.
• Symbiont Channeling (Companion Bonding)
– Forms pact with external entity for parallel aether processing.
– Benefits: Dual casting threads, emergency aether reserves, instinctive triggers.
– Tradeoffs: Personal resonance becomes hybrid.
• Temporal Attunement (Causal Pathing)
– Binds spells to time signatures, allowing recall or pre-cast layering.
– Benefits: Predictive reflex casting, looped mastery, causal memory storage.
– Tradeoffs: Tuned to timeflow, not terrainflow.
[Warning: Some trees remain hidden until certain narrative states or concordance thresholds are reached. Path commitment may influence character fate.]
Okay . . . He wasn’t sure about binding with time or forming a pact with a demon or whatever, but he was pretty sure if he went with Leyline Tuning, he was essentially forgoing Corestream Forging.
He had to think long and hard about this. This wasn’t like a sidequest where simply waving it off meant denying the quest.
Now wasn’t the time for distractions. Now was the time for full commitment into levelling up his Stone Resonant Carry and expanding his existing capabilities.
“Hi, Fabri~” at that exact moment, his distraction arrived.
Liene was waving at him from across the path with the kind of cheery energy that should’ve been illegal in academic zones. One of her sleeves was a translucent mesh with stitched-on feathers (blue), the other a thick, velvet green bell sleeve that trailed dangerously close to the ground.
What is she wearing . . .
“Hey,” he replied.
She bounded up to him, clasping her hands behind her back “Sooo. . . want to come with me to meet the Headmaster? Just the two of us.”
Why does she word it like she’s inviting someone to a ball . . .
She continued, “My friends’ been asking about you. They want to invite you to a game of Arc Pebbles. We think you’ll like it!”
“Who?”
“Ah, you know. Just some friends. And Celine.”
Nope. Celine Moose ran the unofficial magical gossip network. She literally recorded and archived rumors in enchanted glyphscrolls. Yes, her last name was Moose.
There is no way in the Twelvefold Flamus am I going to play a game of Arc Pebbles with Celine.
Arc Pebbles precision throwing game played in ley-infused circles, meant to test subtle Stone-based resonance control. The fact they’d picked that specific game to invite him to could only mean one thing: it was a trap.
[System Notice — New Quest Available]
Quest: Impressively Not First
Objective:
Participate in the upcoming Arc Pebbles match.
Achieve second place. Not first. Not third. Second.
Optional Bonus:
Land a banked arc toss off a warded circle edge
Don’t let Celine record your resonance signature
Rewards:
✦ +2 Earth Thaumaturgy Mastery
✦ [Passive Unlocked] — Measured Hand: Slightly increases stability of fine aether manipulations when under observation.
✦ Reputation Shift: “Hmm, maybe he actually knows what he’s doing”
[Accept Quest?]
‣ Yes
‣ No
No. Why? I don’t want to go. But . . . I need those 2 Mastery Points. They’ll let me finally upgrade a Skill.
“When’s the game?” He asked.
“In three days! You better practice your stone throwing skills.”
Guess I better bump Stupenstone Fling to the top of the practice list . . .
Liene continued, “But you know what’s not in three days? The meeting with the Headmaster! It’s in two hours, actually.”
Fabrisse gulped.
“So, uh, lunch?” She asked sheepishly.
***
The pie shop smelled like pie. Fabrisse had been here with Liene dozens of times—maybe more—but today, the wooden benches in front of the shop felt weirdly close together, and he was suddenly hyperaware of the fact that they were sitting across from each other, sharing a slice of honeyed root pie and a jug of chilled elderfruit cider.
Like always.
Except not like always. Normally he would’ve ordered merryberry.
Every time the bell over the door jingled, Fabrisse instinctively sat straighter, like he was being measured for emotional vulnerability. Literally nobody was looking at them.
Liene, as usual, was oblivious to the internal crisis unfolding three feet away. She was currently poking at the pie crust with the back end of her fork and humming some off-key tavern song that she probably thought was subtle. It wasn’t. Especially not when she added in sound effects.
“Pew-pew!” she said, flicking a tiny piece of crust toward his plate.
“What was that?”
“Training! Arc Pebbles combat simulation. You need to be ready for ricochet crumbs.”
She struck a pose. “If you flinch during pie, you’ll flinch during play.”
“I’m not going to flinch—”
“There you two are,” came a smooth voice from a figure approaching them.
Fabrisse flinched harder than he’d ever flinched at a ricochet crust.
Lorvan stopped just past the pie shop’s threshold, arms crossed, dressed in his usual deep-grey robes trimmed with silver threading that made him look like he hadn’t just walked across campus but descended from a stern lecture cloud.
“Listen carefully,” Lorvan said, “if you wish to survive Headmaster Draeth.”
No greeting. No warm-up. Just straight into soul-wrenching advice.
Fabrisse sat up straighter. “Yes, mentor.”
He was bracing for it—that line. That one offhanded “So I heard you nearly proposed to my sister in a leyline basin yesterday.” Or “Interesting choice of public resonance imprinting.” Or even just a raised brow paired with a deeply judgmental sip of cider. What could be the twisted version of the event he’d heard? He prayed it didn’t involving Liene sniffing him.
But none came.
Lorvan moved to their table and casually reached over to tear off a sliver of their pie. “Good crust,” he said.
Liene gave her brother a cheery little salute with her fork. “You’re late. We’ve already done the emotionally fraught part of the conversation.”
“Have you?” Lorvan said.
She nodded. “Yup. He’s flustered, I’m radiant, and we’re both pretending no one’s watching.”
Lorvan said nothing for a moment, then responded, “Excellent. That should prepare you well for the Headmaster, who is flustered, radiant, and very much does assume everyone’s watching.”
Fabrisse made a quiet sound like a chair leg snapping in slow motion.
Lorvan finally turned his gaze on him. “Just answer what you’re asked and don’t elaborate. Answers with facts only and don’t ever say, ‘I think’. Do not give him a chance to tear your story apart.”
“What if he asks about—uh . . .” Fabrisse rubbed his palms together so hard they started producing friction.
“If he does,” Lorvan said coolly, “you’ll know. And if he doesn’t, don’t bring it up.”
There was a pause.
“No follow-up lecture?” Liene added.
“Do you want one?”
Fabrisse shut his mouth. Liene shook her head like a windchime during a storm.
Lorvan continued, “You’ve got one hour. Don’t be late. Don’t bring pie. And Miss Lugano.”
“Yes?” Liene titled her head.
“We’ll talk at home.”
And just like that, he walked off without another word.
It was Liene’s turn to gulp.
2025-07-11 08:53:51 +0000 UTC
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Fabrisse had once wished his fellow students would no longer call him The Chosen One or Wet Goblin behind his back. Today, his wish had been granted.
Unfortunately, they had simply come up with something worse.
“Oh look. It’s the petal hugger!” Someone stage-whispered from under the shade of the east archway as he walked past the campus courtyard.
“I heard he has problems with uncontrolled touching of other people,” another voice chimed in from a study table in a tone full of genuine concern. “One time he even tried to touch Archmagus Rolen’s nose!”
“That’s just a baseless rumor,” came the sage reply. “You can’t touch Archmagi’s noses without permission.”
It was almost like they’d made sure to make him hear it.
Fabrisse didn’t stop walking. He didn’t run, either. That would’ve been worse. He just marched stiffly, past the ivy-covered lecture hall, past the dew court, past the group of girls fanning themselves with spellwork notes as they tried—and failed—not to laugh too loudly.
“Did you see how he held her? Right in the middle of the sanctified basin spiral. I almost cried.”
One girl caught sight of him as he passed, and instead of whispering, actually jumped to her feet and whistled with both fingers in her mouth.
“You’re the best!” she called. “We ship you!”
Fabrisse’s face turned seven different shades of no-thank-you.
Great. Now I’m a walking romance subplot.
From somewhere behind him, another voice shouted, “Give her a spin next time, petal hugger!”
He broke into a jog.
Fabrisse didn’t stop until he’d put three courtyards, one spirit fountain, and a very judgmental statue of Archmagus Draeth (the father of the current Archmagus Draeth) between him and the last shout.
Only then did he duck behind the old glasshouse near the east arboretum—a place no one visited anymore because it smelled of overripe mingleberry and moldy incense. The vines had swallowed the bulk of the greenhouse wall, but there was still a small bench beneath one warped windowpane.
He collapsed onto it with a sigh, hands braced on his knees. His ears were still hot. His dignity was probably being held hostage in some group glyphchat.
“Okay,” he muttered, rubbing his face. “Fine. You know what? Let’s see what all that panic-hugging got me.”
[System Status — User: FABRISSE KESTOVAR_28]
✦ Tutorial Completion: ✔
✦ Aether Resonance: Active
✦ Latest Skills:
• [Harmonized Spellcasting (Rank I)]
• [Trajectory Insight (Passive)]
✦ Titles Applied:
• Rocksteady Novitiate
• Field-Friendly Exterminator
• Petal Hugger (unofficial; cannot be removed)
There was one burning question in his head: Is there any way I can brute force my way into mastering Stone Resonant Carry, Rank II, or are Mastery Points the only way?
Fabrisse squinted at the skill list, jabbing a finger at the newest passive.
[Skill: Trajectory Insight (Passive)]
– Allows you to view the growth path of any trainable skill and how to most efficiently rank it up.
– Also lets you see if your current training method is terrible. Probably is.
He focused on Stone Resonant Carry (Rank I).
Skill: Stone Resonant Carry (Rank I) – Passive]
✦ While holding an Aetherically-Active Common mineral, gain temporary attribute bonuses based on mineral type.
✦ Path Synergy: Celestial Hoarding – Bonuses also apply to minerals stored in inventory satchels or pockets.
✦ Current Carry Limit: 3 Stones Active
Trajectory Insight – Rank-Up Trajectory Analysis
Skill Progress: 11% toward Rank II
Efficiency Rating: 3.4 / 10
✧ Recommendations for Rank-Up:
• Practice individual stone resonance – one stone at a time for 10–15 minutes. Pay attention to how each one alters your baseline state.
• Cycle through stones deliberately. Switch every hour to build versatility and internal recognition patterns.
• Meditate while carrying to deepen baseline sync. Do not eat scones during meditation.
• Carry during stress training (dueling, running, climbing). Active use accelerates mastery.
• If possible, carry Unrefined or Raw-Cut stones. Processed minerals yield slower affinity gains.
[System note: The stones can’t do the work for you if you treat them like jewelry. Carry with purpose.]
Meditate? That’s not what Thaumaturges do. We aren’t Monks. But for the rest? I probably can work with that.
“I heard you hugged Liene and she sniffed your neck in front of everyone,” came a sudden voice.
He recognized the voice. That was Ilya. She was standing a few paces away, aetheric ink glowing along her fingertips as she traced a complicated lattice spell midair.
Fabrisse’s soul left his body. “That is categorically untrue. Also . . . why are you here?”
“I’m your assigned guardian,” she said, adjusting one floating sigil. “I go where you go. Are you ready to reconcile with Ardefiamme?”
Fabrisse found it kind of weird how she’d always refer to her literal boyfriend by his last name, but maybe Tommaso found it endearing.
Fabrisse slouched further down the bench like gravity had increased just for him. “No. I am not ready to reconcile with Ardefia—Tommaso. Especially not today.”
“He has an idea, and he told me to tell you about it. It can help with your innate resonance, he said.”
“But . . . resonance is innate.” The whole point of ‘innate’ was that it couldn’t be changed.
“Have you ever aetherically interacted with a leyfield?”
“Yes.” His petal had, when he was busy hugging Liene yesterday.
“Do you know there’s one right above your head right now?”
“Huh?”
Ilya reached into the air and flicked her fingers twice before murmuring a chant that sounded more like a children’s skipping rhyme than an incantation,
“Thread and shimmer, fold and line,
Veins of sky and roots combine.”
The aetheric ink flaring blue-gold for a half-second before she snapped her fingers and launched a thread-thin spark straight ahead.
A long, twisting filament of faint, golden light appeared overhead. It looked like someone had drawn a river through the sky with a glowing thread. Faint flickers of magenta and frost-white shimmered along its edges, barely perceptible unless you stared directly at it.
Fabrisse’s jaw dropped. “That’s—”
“That’s a minor leyline,” Ilya said calmly. “Not a deep vein, but clean enough. It's been here for decades. They built the arboretum around it.”
Fabrisse stared upward, the glow dancing faintly in his eyes. “I’ve walked through here a hundred times. I never saw—”
“Because your resonance isn't tuned to it. Yet.” She tilted her head, spellwork still orbiting her wrist like lazy moons. “But maybe we can change that.”
A mental ping came from the system.
[System Notice — Questline Opportunity Unlocked]
✦ New Questline Available: Leyline Tuning: Foundations of Field Resonance
Description: You have glimpsed the unseen currents that flow beneath the world’s skin. Most pass by untouched. You have noticed.
Begin your journey toward aligning personal aether with environmental leyflow. A successful synchronization may allow passive resonance absorption—though you’re a long way from that.
Caution: This is a Questline, not a standalone quest.
• Multiple challenges will follow.
• No immediate skill or item rewards are granted between stages.
• Success may require practical, academic, and intuitive breakthroughs.
• Accepting this Questline may lock you out of conflicting aetheric tuning pathways.
System note: Some Questlines may conflict with hidden development trees. Explore with caution. Not all paths are visible from the start.
[Accept Questline?]
‣ Yes
‣ No
‣ Request More Information
Wait, what do you mean lock me out? What other tuning pathways?
The system remained blissfully silent.
“So?” Ilya folded her arms, and her spellwork disappeared. “Do you fancy the idea?”
2025-07-10 20:10:20 +0000 UTC
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Fabrisse’s heartbeat surged. He didn’t know if they were ahead. He didn’t care.
He just wanted to reach it.
Liene gasped. Fabrisse immediately felt a hitch in the current. A stumble in the spell’s momentum. The petal wobbled on its final arc, as though the slipstream had faltered beneath it.
She was reaching her limit.
This kind of harmonic casting drained from the steady stream of FP, if he remembered the description of the spell from the System correctly.
And someone else’s petal had already made it.
He didn’t know whose. Severa had called a name he didn’t recognize—someone from the outer rings, maybe a fourth-year Invocation adept. The final relic was spoken for.
Liene choked on her breath, and her hands jerked. She had to let go of Fabrisse to try and maintain her control.
Maybe she thought that was it. That without a win, there was no point.
Fabrisse grabbed her by the arms and pulled her closer to him. “Liene,” he murmured. “Keep going. We’re almost there.”
No reply.
“I believe in you.”
“O-okay.”
Her grip steadied. She leaned further forward, almost using his back as her support.
The petal shook, then surged forward with one last push of spiraled air.
Ahead, the bowl-bearers were already moving. One hand extended toward the pedestal—Langley, in purple, solemn-faced. It was the same ceremonial gesture they used to retrieve the bowl before sealing the prize.
“No no no no no,” Fabrisse breathed.
The bowlbearer’s hand was now fully on the base. The shimmer of a withdrawal glyph activated, the lines pulsing beneath his palm.
Liene swung her arms. One arm slapped Fabrisse in the face.
Ouch!
[New Emotional Harmony Registered]
[Current Attunement: Panic]
[Spell Harmony Rating: 43%]
The petal flew. It drifted upward, caught in the lift of the final slipstream.
The Magus lifted the bowl—
And the petal brushed the rim.
[Sidequest Complete: ‘Calibrate That Which Is Broken’]
✦ Objective: Touch the Third Bowl During Verse Three – ✔
✦ Status: Timing Verified. Vessel Contact Verified. Aether Recognition Verified.
✦ Reward Granted:
→ Passive Skill Unlocked: [Trajectory Insight]
✦ Bonus Reward Granted: EMO + 2
Fabrisse stared at the bowl as it was lifted into the bearer’s arms.
He’d done it.
They’d done it.
Then Liene collapsed onto his back.
He twisted, catching her as she sagged against him, her legs threatening to give out. His arms wrapped around her, steadying her until she could find her footing.
She looked up at him. Her eyes were already half-closing as she gave him a silly grin. “You idiot. We lost. Why did you want me to keep going?”
“I—I dunno. Felt like you’d hit me if I gave up first.”
She broke into a soundless laugh. “If I had any strength right now I’d—” Then she looked around. And he looked around.
They were still tangled together, with her half-draped over him, his arms awkwardly around her waist like he wasn’t sure if he was catching her or holding her hostage.
Everyone around them was staring.
Even Greg had stopped eating his scone.
“Oh stars,” Liene whispered. “Are we hugging? In public?”
Fabrisse’s brain tripped over itself. “Technically—uh. You fell. I was—this is medical.”
Liene looked up at him, still faintly flushed. “Okay. Let go. People are seeing things.”
He immediately released her like she’d turned into a molten spellcore. She nearly stumbled again and smacked him lightly on the chest for it.
“I said let go, not drop me, you disaster.”
“S-sorry,” he muttered. His hands hovered awkwardly at his sides, unsure if he should offer support again or just dive straight into the water. “Uhhh. It’s fine as long as Headmaster Draeth doesn’t find out, right?”
“Mr. Kestovar!” A voice like cracked lightning shot across the courtyard. “What in the Flamus are you doing in this sanctioned evaluation ring entangled in a classmate?” His brows were already halfway into his hairline, and his hand was pointing directly at them like a divine accusation.
Fabrisse spun around so fast he nearly yanked Liene down with him.
Liene was too drained to speak loudly. She whispered in his ear, “Say I fell. I collapsed. It was an emergency.”
“I—uh—she’s not my classmate,” Fabrisse stammered.
Then came the softest of murmurs from Liene, “You absolute idiot . . .”
Everyone broke into a laugh.
“Silence!” Draeth bellowed. A crimson gust blew past, sweeping all the remaining petals still on the stream to the sky.
Everyone ceased laughing.
“Do you understand the seriousness of compromising the integrity of a tri-phase spellring, Mr. Kestovar?” Draeth thundered, already storming down the steps of the observation dais like judgment in robes. “This is not a playground for dramatic entanglements! This is a ritual space dedicated to—”
[Sparring Completed: + 55 EXP]
[Progress to Level 5: 1430/1500]
Oh look! I got so much experience from the activity earlier.
Rolen appeared at his side like a shadow. He leaned in and whispered something too low to hear.
Draeth’s expression didn’t change at first. His brow just twitched slightly. Then he stared at Fabrisse like he was ready to bore a hole into his skull.
Draeth straightened, clearing his throat with all the grace of someone professionally swallowing his outrage. “We will resume the ceremony.” His voice rang out again, controlled now, but still as sharp as flint. “Mr. Kestovar.”
“Yes, Headmaster?” Fabrisse said, already bracing.
“You, and the young lady next to you, are to report to my office immediately after this ritual. Do not attempt to detour.”
Fabrisse nodded stiffly. “Understood, sir.”
Draeth turned on his heel, robes snapping behind him like a judgmental banner.
Liene leaned slightly toward Fabrisse again, barely keeping upright. “What did Rolen say?”
Fabrisse swallowed. “I don’t know. But I’m either in more trouble . . . or way, way less.”
The ceremony resumed in awkward silence as the final petal was collected from the stream and placed into the crystal basin. The last student, a third-year named Ellisan, stepped forward with the stiff posture of someone trying not to gloat. Severa handed him the relic with great care.
But it wasn’t an artifact. Not even close.
Inside the basin, caught between the crystal seams and barely visible in the shifting light, was a single strand of ley-thread—a glimmering golden ribbon of ambient aether, so thin it could’ve been mistaken for a hair suspended in oil.
Gasps fluttered through the crowd.
Draeth stepped forward again, drawing himself to full ceremonial height.
“Behold,” he intoned, “a most rare and ancient manifestation of natural aetheric potential. This ley-thread is not conjured. It is not manufactured. It is found, witnessed, and honored. The Eidralith has deemed this current sacred.”
He paused, dramatically.
No one interrupted.
“And yet,” he said, voice lowering just slightly, “let us not mistake rarity for possession. The ley-thread cannot be owned. It cannot be taken. It exists in a space between belonging and observation. A fleeting note in a song older than the Flaring Age.”
Ellisan’s jaw didn’t move as he spoke, like it was locked in place. “So . . . what do I do with it?”
“You do nothing,” Draeth said, sharply. “You witness it. You reflect upon it. You learn from it. Perhaps, if you are diligent enough in your studies, you may even remember it.”
Ellisan’s face dropped.
Rolen, standing behind the headmaster, cleared his throat quietly. “Perhaps . . . let the student bask in the presence of it for a moment before we seal the bowl.”
Draeth nodded. “Of course. Bask.”
Fabrisse, still standing with Liene half-slumped at his side, squinted at the vessel.
This was just a strand of magic so fragile and untouched that even touching it would ruin it.
He muttered under his breath, “This bowl is the most useless. Why did the Eidralith want me to touch it?”
[System Note: The leylines are the most precious source of aether for those lacking in innate resonance, as it can be drawn directly from the environment. If one could not call upon aether from the Concord, one could manipulate the leylines.]
“What?” he said aloud.
Liene, barely upright, glanced at him. “You okay?”
That’s it? That’s the lesson? And you wanted me to touch an ancient holy bowl hundreds of others are fighting for, during a sanctioned ritual, while actively compromising a tri-phase casting ring, nearly getting myself expelled, and possibly initiating an international relic-handling incident for this?
[System Note: User’s resonance profile is below required baseline. Calibrators lacking direct internal channels must learn to interface with the ambient leylines.]
[Additional Note: It is of utmost importance for every calibrator to understand the concept of drawing natural aether from the leylines.]
[Additional Note: Also, you received a useful skill.]
Fabrisse buried his face in his palm.
2025-07-10 18:16:04 +0000 UTC
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As the second vessel was sealed and cleared away, the final bowl was brought forward on a raised stone pedestal etched in newer, less-worn runes. The third vessel had no visible latch or lining. Its crystal was pale, almost translucent, with an odd sheen that refracted like a bubble’s skin. It looked unused. Or maybe untouched.
Severa stepped into the ring again. Her tone dropped half a key. “Third verse will begin in ten counts. Prepare your petals.”
The students moved more urgently now. No one was slouching anymore, not after those relics. Even the students who had treated the first round like a lark were now drawing their names with razor precision. The only ones who didn’t seem to care were those who felt like they wouldn’t have a shot, and Greg, who was eating his second scone.
Fabriss’s fingers lingered over the silver basin, hesitating just a second before reaching for the smallest petal left, a threadfern edge, pale-pink with speckled violet veining. It was light, delicate, and almost definitely cursed with a bad float profile.
He barely got his name inked before Liene was behind him again.
“Fabri,” she said, voice lower now. “What’s your most embarrassing memory?”
“That’s not a normal question.”
“We need to synchronize,” she said, not even slightly apologetic. “The emotion has to match.”
He gave her a side-glance. “How do I know you’re not just harvesting my trauma for sport?”
“You don’t,” she said. “But it might win you a relic.”
Fair point.
The third stream began to stir. This time, Langley didn’t even have to move. The basin responded to a whispered gesture, a more subtle spell that curved the water forward in a long, spiraled arc. The pace was now rapid, like the current had picked up the nervous tension of everyone watching.
Liene stepped in behind him, already adjusting her fingers into the mnemonic positioning.
“Petal Draft again?” he asked.
“Yes, but this time, don’t force anything. Let me set the rhythm.” She tilted her chin up. “You’re bad at rhythm.”
“Thanks.”
Fabrisse let his hands move into position, guided by hers. At least the joint movements felt smoother than last time. He tried not to overthink it. He tried not to notice how close she was, or how natural she seemed at something so wildly unnatural.
“Breathe in,” Liene murmured. “Works best at exactly two seconds.”
He did.
Then she began to move.
The chant was quiet again. Fabrisse’s sparks stuttered as he tried to match her cadence, and he didn’t know where to place his fingers since she hadn’t told him. Her current was already gliding, subtle, precise, feathered with restraint.
[Emotional Contribution: 9%]
He wasn’t catching up. His SYN was not good enough to act on the spot. Every time she changed the direction of her pressure on the petal, he reacted a beat too late.
So he let go.
Don’t guide. Just contribute your emotion. That’s what Harmonize is supposed to be.
Not of the spell. Not of the petal.
Just of the constant need to catch up.
His breath slowed, shallow but steady, and for once he didn’t try to force his spark into aligning with Liene’s. Then he felt pressure.
[Emotional Contribution: 18%]
It wasn’t dramatic. He didn’t see it with his eyes. But he felt its edges in the way the air thrummed against his skin. The way his spark no longer pushed outward but leaned—naturally, instinctively—toward the space above the petal where he’d thought there was nothing there.
The aether pool.
It was there. Right there. Like it had always been. He just hadn’t been still enough to notice it.
[Emotional Contribution: 27%]
[Emotional Contribution Received by the Aether Pool]
[Emotional Harmonizing Established]
[Tutorial: Final Phase – Phase 4: Concordance Synchronization—Achieved]
✦ Objective: Achieve and maintain short-term resonance synchronization with another aetherically-active caster.
Rewards: Emotional Attunement (EMO) Unlocked
Skill Unlocked: [Harmonized Spellcasting (Rank I)]
System Note: Warning: May experience sudden urges to finish each other’s spell incantations. You're welcome.
[EMO (Emotional Attunement): 9]
[Tutorial Completed: User FABRISSE KESTOVAR_28 now have the basic handling of interface, interaction with Aether, the five elements, and the devices for Resonance]
[Event Triggered: Understanding of the Aether deepened: SYN +1]
What? Oh.
He’d been forgetting the final phase of the tutorial all along.
Liene’s spell was soaring now. Their petal slipped through the current with the smooth, rhythmic glide of a bird catching thermal lift. Her aether was on point: neither too forceful nor too delicate.
With Fabrisse contributing nothing but emotion—raw, steady humiliation—her casting had found a groove. The petal curved wide to bypass a clump of jittering flameblossoms, then zipped cleanly through the tight second loop, darting past one, two, three petals that faltered in the turbulence.
They weren’t first.
But they were among the leaders now.
Liene leaned forward with the spell, controlling it from afar like a marionette master with invisible strings. The distance should’ve made things harder, and it was. The farther the petal moved along the current, the more stretched her influence became, the finer her tuning had to be. But with the synchronized flow of emotion flowing between them, the spell held.
Until Fabrisse felt joy.
I did it. I finished the tutorial. After all this time.
That was all it took.
The momentary swell of achievement was warm and bright and deeply wrong. Wrong for the spell, wrong for the harmony. The braid of resonance that had been holding their channel in sync shuddered like a frayed rope catching on splinters.
[Emotional Interference Detected]
[Current Attunement: Joy – Conflicts with partner signature: Shame]
[Spell Harmony Rating: - 23%]
Liene’s hand faltered.
The petal staggered in the stream. Its gliding arc broke as if it had missed a step. It wobbled mid-air, not enough to crash, but enough to lose traction in the slipstream.
Three petals overtook it.
Four.
Fabrisse’s breath hitched. “Wait—wait, I didn’t—”
“Keep feeling joy,” Liene stopped chanting and whispered, then resumed chanting in a completely new cadence, lilting and bright.
What? Oh!
The sparks of aether behind their petal now glowed sky-blue. She had changed her casting emotion on the fly.
Brilliant. You’re great, Liene. You’re so awesome. I’m so happy to be your partner.
[Emotional Harmony Resumed]
[Current Attunement: Joy]
[Spell Harmony Rating: + 21%]
Their hands moved in sync now, not because he was copying her, but because something else had clicked. A strange concord that hummed at the edges of his nerves like a shared thought.
Their petal wove through the trailing pack. Two petals bumped and clipped each other on the second ring and spun out. Another glowed too bright and veered off into a side current, drifting aimlessly.
But their petal held.
Third loop.
The finish basin was now visible.
2025-07-10 18:12:56 +0000 UTC
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Severa’s staff struck once more, signaling the closing of the first round and the beginning of the next.
“All recipients clear the sanctum,” she called, her voice echoing with trained ritual precision. “Second verse initiates in ten counts. Participants—ready your petals.”
Around the circle, students bent over the silver basin once more, collecting a new round of starpetals and microglow quills. The ritual ink shimmered faintly violet this time, and the petals were smaller and more delicate than the last batch. Fabrisse was afraid they’d be harder to control.
Fabrisse picked up a petal of his own, and for some reason, Liene had to be right behind him for this part of the ritual as well, as if he’d run away if she strayed too far. His hands weren’t shaking, but they weren’t exactly calm either.
The tri-looped ribbon of water still curled and shimmered like glass thread, but now its pace had increased. Not dramatically, but enough that it required sharper coordination. Less luck. More clarity.
Fabrisse bit the inside of his cheek. His eyes hadn’t left the second stream since Lyessa Halden walked off with her fancy SYN-boosting relic like she hadn’t just won the arcane lottery.
The competition was too steep. There was no way he could win.
He didn’t have a single spell that could help. He had no targeted current guides nor any specialized petal-buoyancy techniques. There was nothing in his current loadout that could substitute for an actual channeling ability.
He wracked his memory. Water-based Thaumaturgy would work best, but he sucked at it. Wind Thaumaturgy might work in theory. Specifically, Basic-level skills like Gust Nudge, which could nudge petals in the direction he wants But the last time he tried, he’d knocked over someone’s notes and got hexed with hiccuping sparks for an hour.
That’s when Liene’s voice brushed over his shoulder.
“Fabri?”
“Hmm?”
“You look like you want to win.”
He hesitated. “Well . . .” He sighed. There was no shame in admitting the truth. “I can’t win with what I have.”
Liene didn’t answer right away. A second later, she said, “Would you like some help?”
“What do you mean?”
She smiled. “I mean, do you want to see if we can win with what we have?”
Before he could process that, she moved behind him.
Oh no. Nope. Absolutely not prepared for this.
He went still as her arms came around him. Her hands lightly overlapped his, guiding his fingers into a specific shape. He recognized this particular stance. It wasn’t something as simple as Gust Nudge. It looked like they were attempting Petal Draft, a finesse variant of Wind Thaumaturgy—one that used microcurrents, not bursts. It was usually taught to Invocation majors who specialized in mid-air sigilcraft, and it got its name because students had to specifically practice on petals. Definitely not beginner level. Definitely not something he should be doing right now.
Langley tilted the crystal basin anew. The other two High Magi followed, setting the flow in motion.
The streams arced with a more aggressive lean, and the petals would have to contend with tighter turns and sharper convergence angles.
The ritual circle dimmed, and a shimmer passed through the air as Severa lifted her staff again.
“Release your petals,” she intoned.
Liene’s breath tickled the edge of Fabrisse’s ear as she leaned close. “You’re not pushing the air,” she murmured. “You’re inviting it. You’re shaping its attention.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” he whispered back.
“Just follow my lead.”
He nearly choked on a reply but shut up when her hand nudged his thumb into alignment. A warmth stirred in his wrist: faint aether movement.
Liene began to chant.
It was soft, almost melodic. Not a standard incantation, but the barebones mnemonic structure for wind-channeling. He recognized the cadence from his first-year theory texts, the ones he’d skimmed and abandoned because his execution was always half a beat late.
But now his hands weren’t moving on their own.
They were moving with hers.
And she wasn’t rushing.
“Breathe in,” she said gently. “Don’t think about the spell. Just think about happy memories, okay? Can you invoke joy?”
“Uh, yes, but only when I’m sprinting.” He had a skill literally named Joy-Sprint.
“Uh . . . okay. Don’t sprint. Just think of a happy moment that’s happened recently.”
“Well . . .”
“You must have one happy moment in your life, right?”
“Yes.” He thought about mingleberry pies. For a moment, it seemed like the emotion was surfacing.
Fabrisse watched his petal hover for a brief second on the surface of the Grace Stream, wobbling like a coin caught between flip and fall. His hands were still guided in Liene’s shape—fingers open but curved, elbows gently bent inward.
The spell responded, kind of. He could feel just an iota of aether now, or at least what he thought was aether. It wasn’t that the petal didn’t move—it did—but not in the direction he wanted. It veered left when he meant right, spun like a dizzy leaf instead of gliding. Every time he nudged it forward, Liene’s control pushed back, and the two flows cancelled each other out.
The petal twirled in place.
Some other petals began to overtake it.
“I’m trying,” Fabrisse hissed. “You’re oversteering.”
“I’m not,” Liene whispered through gritted teeth. “You’re underthinking. Or overthinking. Or—just—hold the wind, not choke it. Think about your happy memory and push your aether exactly onto the back of the petal, okay?”
He could feel her trying to adjust for his lag. Her current shifted downward, trying to stabilize the petal’s wobble. But it was too late. The swirl unbalanced, and their blossom started to slow.
This was harder than throwing rocks at Cuman. At least Cuman didn’t spin out of control when you hesitated.
Liene’s sky-blue sparks flared suddenly into a sharp orange. She was annoyed now.
Fabrisse couldn’t blame her. He was annoyed with himself. He couldn’t even follow a shared mnemonic without smothering it.
“You’re still not syncing,” Liene said. “Try again. Breathe in. Actually, don’t even think about trying to push the back anymore. Let the current remember where it wants to go. I’ll push wherever you push.”
“I don’t think currents remember things—”
“Fabrisse.”
“Right, right.”
She leaned in closer. Too close now. He was pretty sure they were full-on back-to-chest, arms aligned, one of her knees braced gently beside his for stability. This would’ve been a deeply formative moment for someone less confused by aether pathways.
“What are you two doing?”
They both jumped. Liene released her hold on him faster than a goblin spotting a forgotten coin.
Fabrisse twisted around, startled, and saw . . . Greg, standing casually just behind the ritual circle. His hair was a mess, and he was holding a scone.
“What,” Fabrisse sputtered, “since when are you even here?”
“I’m on kitchen supply duty for Ritual Support.” He bit the scone. “Also, I’ve been watching for five minutes.”
Liene looked half a second from strangling someone with grace.
But the moment—that exact emotional spike—registered inside Fabrisse’s system like a new input.
[Emotion Identified: Embarrassed Panic]
Amber-colored sparks exploded from his fingertips like flares. His hands moved instinctively, without rhythm, but with sheer force. The petal obeyed.
For two glorious seconds, it surged forward across the Grace Stream like a comet with somewhere to be. It passed one, two, three, four petals.
Then it dove headfirst into the water.
The force he’d pumped into it was too uneven, too blunt. The petal’s edge caught the wrong microcurrent, dipped once, and vanished under the stream’s surface.
It drowned.
“Oh,” said Greg.
“Sorry, ” Fabrisse turned to Liene. She was glancing up at the sky, looking at nothing in particular. Her ears were all red.
[Emotion Identified: Embarrassed Panic x2]
Oh, so she’s embarrassed now also . . . I’m not the one coming up with the idea of clinging on to myself . . .
[Second Attempt — Disqualified]
[Remaining Chances: One]
The stream didn’t stop just because Fabrisse’s petal drowned.
All around the circle, petals still rode the arcing spiral of aether-charged water, gliding and jostling for position. Some were steady, others jittered from misaligned currents or overcompensated nudges. Many were fighting too hard, pushing with too much aether and not enough grace.
One petal, though, stood out. Not because it was flashy or fast, but because it was composed.
It hovered a full arm’s length from the main spiral, yet kept pace with the leaders like it was gliding on rails. Where the others oversteered, bobbed, or wobbled, this one moved in near silence. No sparks trailed behind it, nor any visible incantation. It almost looked passive. But the water around it had circular ripples that weren’t present around the others.
And then came the quake.
Just as the leading cluster of petals entered the final arc, the path wobbled. The petals closest to the lead—some of them already tilted forward in preparation to break toward the bowls—tilted too far. They clipped the edge of the current or veered into side eddies. They spiraled, staggered, sank. One petal was even launched clean off the stream like a leaf flung from a window.
All except one.
That same quietly composed petal, the one Fabrisse had been watching, sailed through the disruption. It didn’t even accelerate. It simply advanced like it had never been subject to resistance at all.
The crowd gasped. A couple of students even clapped—unsanctioned, spontaneous applause that earned them a glare from Severa. But the awe was real.
“Second recipient selected,” Severa intoned, voice still steady, but her brow noticeably furrowed in thought.
She lifted her staff again and summoned the petal’s inscription to air.
✦ Veliane Veist ✦
A second round of gasps resounded, Fabrisse’s included.
“She’s a second-year,” someone whispered from the left ring.
“No way she made that petal move from that far,” someone else murmured.
But she had.
Veist stood near the back of the ritual field, hands folded behind her back, motionless. And somehow, she hadn’t just guided the petal. She had commanded it, even from across the field.
Fabrisse’s stomach twisted in on itself.
Veliane Veist.
Of course it was her. Of all the students here, she was the one person he’d personally ensured would never forget him, for all the wrong reasons.
The memory surged without mercy. After his drunken confession, he’d excused himself from the courtyard by walking straight into a broom closet.
Look how great she is. And I don’t even know if I belong here.
He could see her now approaching the second vessel, just as Lyessa had before. The lid of the bowl bloomed open under her touch, this time with a low harmonic chime that resonated in his chest.
[Emotion Detected: Humiliation (Persistent)]
[Classification: Shame / Recalled]
[Sparks Manifested: Amber]
Actual amber sparks hovered in front of his eyes now, static-sharp and slow-turning.
Fabrisse blinked rapidly to try and scatter them, but they lingered like they wanted to start a support group.
Great. His shame now had visual aids.
Another relic floated, this one shaped like a crescent moon with a faintly glowing line of silver across its spine.
[System Notice: Synod Blessing Vessel #2 Opened]
[Reward Analyzed – Trinket: ‘Arcline Fragment’]
[Grade: Epic]
[Type: Passive Accessory – Soulbound]
[Effect: +12% ARC | +4% FOR]
[Bound to: Veliane Veist]
[Cannot be traded]
“Fabri,” Liene said suddenly beside him. She’d been quiet during the applause, but now her voice was soft and oddly clinical. “Your emotion . . .” She tilted her head, studying the residual spark flickers around his fingers.
He braced for teasing, or sympathy, or both.
But she just watched the aether ripple off his shoulder and then nodded slowly, thoughtfully, like she was watching a lab flame turn blue.
Then she said, “For our next round,”—and here, her tone changed, lifting into something that was both amused and oddly sincere—“let’s harmonize shame.”
“What?”
[Remaining Chances: One]
[Target Bowl: Third Vessel]
[Quest Objective: Touch the Third Bowl During Verse Three]
Wait. He read the objective again.
It doesn’t say ‘touch it first’. It only says ‘touch it’.
2025-07-10 15:56:38 +0000 UTC
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The first verse ended. The petal throwers bowed in solemn unison like synchronized swans. Fabrisse, off-beat by half a second, nearly tripped on his own robe.
Severa raised her staff. “As is tradition,” she intoned, “we begin the rite of Benedictional Grace.”
Before anyone could move, a voice boomed from the edge of the dais like thunder wrapped in ceremonial parchment.
“The Rite of Benedictional Grace,” announced Headmaster Draeth, “is a sacred embodiment of inner resonance and outward discipline.”
Fabrisse flinched. Of course Draeth would cut in. The man had never missed a chance to deliver a overly-rehearsed lecture on even the most mundane of occasions, and a sacred rite was practically a holiday for him.
“In the course of the Benediction,” Draeth continued, “three vessels—each etched with Synodic purity and harmonically sealed—shall be presented. And three among you shall be judged most attuned in motion, spirit, and will. One by one, through grace and intention, the worthy shall approach the bowls and be granted the chance to receive what the Synod deems fit.”
He paused for effect. Half the students clapped. He paused ever longer. All the students clapped.
“The bowls are not equal,” he added, voice dropping into a sonorous hush. “Some hold power. Some do not. The Will of the Flamus does not assign gifts at random. It watches. And only those whose offering aligns with the unseen threads shall be granted passage.”
Fabrisse’s eyes narrowed.
Wait a minute.
Three bowls. Three verses. Three selections.
Ah. So you can fight other students for a chance to touch the bowls. That’s how the System knows which bowl matters. It’s keyed to the selection order.
It makes a bit more sense now. Doesn’t make it any more achievable, though.
That meant…
I have exactly two rounds to practice not looking like I’m sneezing petals into the void.
Wait. But what are we supposed to do?
“Have you come to the ritual rehearsal session?” Liene eyed him.
“There’s a rehearsal session?” He replied.
Liene nodded. “Yeah, on Tuesday morning. You know, right after the first Light Invocation drills?”
He wouldn’t know. He didn’t study Light Invocation.
Severa stepped forward again, staff lifted to her shoulder like a battle standard. “As dictated by the Foundational Rites of Clarity,” she said, “participants shall now offer a Petal of Self upon the Stream of Grace.”
A few murmurs rose from the outer circle as students retrieved delicate blossoms—starpetals, flameblossoms, even a few threadfern plumes—from a silver-carved basin set at the edge of the ritual ring, and began carefully inscribing them with their names using microglow quills. The petals shimmered faintly as the ink dried, and their edges curled in response to the spellwork.
“We should do as they do?” Liene said before walking over to the basin. Fabrisse followed.
Severa turned to the bowl-bearers. “Release the current.”
The bowl-bearers stepped forward in perfect unison—two figures robed in the charcoal of High Magi standing alongside a Magus Exemplar wearing purple in the middle, each lifting a small crystal basin etched with spiral glyphs. At first glance, the bowls looked mundane: no larger than a soup dish, balanced easily in both hands.
Then Severa gave the signal.
All three magi tilted their bowls slightly, and the water began to pour.
But it didn’t stop.
The liquid flowed not as a stream, but as a ribbon, clear and impossibly smooth, spilling onto the ritual circle with a grace that defied gravity. It hovered above the ground, winding into a tri-looped path that never touched soil. The water curved with golden aetherlight of reverence, forming a slow-moving ring that encircled the inner dais like a polished glass serpent.
Fabrisse stared. No one had cast a chant, no one had shaped glyphs in the air. It was all control. All practice. All pressureless perfection.
The Magus Exemplar repositioned his stance, and Fabrisse caught a glimpse of his face.
Professor Langley.
Langley, the no-nonsense, dry-humored Professor in hydro-aetherics, was one of the bowl-bearers?
He looked . . . mildly resigned. Like even senior instructants weren’t above being drafted into ceremonial duties that involved gracefully pouring magic water for the glorified purpose of petal choreography.
Langley’s eyes met Fabrisse’s across the stream. He gave the faintest of shrugs.
The other two magi held their poses with perfect composure. Their streams flowed uninterrupted, each forming a separate channel that spiraled as they traced the shape of an aetheric mandala beneath the floating petals.
The leftmost basin glinted colder. The right seemed to pull at the stream a bit faster, like it wanted something. The middle was utterly still.
Then the magi on the right and Langley closed the lid to their basins, leaving only the first bowl opened. Whichever petal drifted inside the bowl first would be declared the winner, to Fabrisse’s understanding.
“The Grace Stream,” Liene whispered. “Take your petal if you’re worthy. Pass over if you’re not.”
“That’s the actual rule?”
Liene grinned. “No. But it’s what people say. Real answer’s somewhere between leyline sensitivity and resonance drift. Still kind of beautiful, though.”
And just like that, the current was set.
“So let me get this straight,” he said. “You throw a petal with your name on it into a floating stream of ritual smoke juice, and if the stream likes you, it delivers your petal to one of the bowls?”
“Pretty much.”
“And only one petal makes it each round?”
“Yep.”
“That’s . . . absurdly difficult.” And for seemingly zero reward, too.
“That’s the Synod.”
As Severa struck the head of her tri-tiered staff once against the stone dais, the first round began.
“Release your petals,” she intoned.
And the petals—hundreds of them, delicate and glowing with faint aether—floated.
Fabrisse had expected a gentle, ceremonial drift. Instead, the moment the petals were placed on the stream, they took off like they had somewhere to be. The Grace Stream caught them and swept them along its spiraled arc, bobbing gently but never once dipping out of pattern. Some petals floated with calm, elegant grace. Others fluttered madly, caught in unseen crosscurrents, or sputtered before regaining motion like startled birds.
But it didn’t look random.
Fabrisse narrowed his eyes. On a few of the more responsive petals, he saw threads of luster trailing in their wake. Thaumaturgic sparks of gold, indigo, soft green, and all the colors across the spectrum he could see, sparkled like miniature suns, vying for attention.
The students were steering the petals.
When one moved a hair to the right, it bumped Fabrisse’s petal of the way. Two petals tangled for a moment before one surged forward, carrying sparks of purple behind it like a tail.
Fabrisse watched the way some petals began to lose momentum, gradually veering out of the spiral’s current. Most of those dulled, drifted, their light thinned. Someone in the crowd grumbled in frustration when (presumably) their blossom spun out like a kicked leaf.
Probably low ARC, Fabrisse guessed. Not enough control to sustain even a minor aetheric tether. Or maybe they were trying to brute-force it. That never worked well with finesse rites.
He had been following his petal from the start. It didn’t lead, but it didn’t trail neither. It just unspectacularly sailed along at the middle of the pack.
Many students were actually trying. There were a few upperclassmen who looked like they’d trained specifically for this moment. A tall Invocation student with a perfectly shined sash had two fingers pressed to his temple in some sort of trance-casting gesture. A duo of students, possibly harmonizing, whispered identical incantations.
Among his own classmates, one stood out immediately. Aldren Ranan. Fabrisse had never once seen Aldren drop a glyph or miss an incantation tempo. Right now, he stood absolutely still, his eyes fixed on the current like he was willing the stream to obey. A distance behind him was Veliane Veist. She was staring at a specific spot along the stream, muttering something and sweeping her hands around like a conductor. Assumedly, she was trying too.
Petals began to converge near the bowls, curling toward the inner ring. The Grace Stream narrowed like a funnel, pulling them closer, closer—
—and one petal, violet-edged and glowing from within, soared ahead of the rest.
“First recipient selected,” Severa called. “Step forward.”
Severa lifted her staff again, its glyph rings humming softly in response to the stream’s shift.
She pointed toward the basin where the leading petal had landed, and a thin ribbon of aetheric light rose from the bowl, wrapping delicately around the blossom like silk.
“Voco Revelare, Voco Sematere,” her voice dropped to a whisper.
She can chant mnemonics in other languages too?
The petal shimmered, and the inscription on it shimmered along with it.
Above the ritual circle, its inscription flared to life, and the script written in microglow ink now magnified and suspended in the air like a celestial signature.
✦ Lyessa Halden ✦
A gentle patter of applause circulated among those present.
“Louder,” boomed Draeth, “One must not skimp on the reverence.”
The applause swelled into a roaring ovation.
Lyessa, a tiny final-year student who could be easily mistaken for a first-year, bowed once, retrieved the token from the basin, and backed away with a serene smile that made Fabrisse irrationally annoyed.
The magi holding the bowl covered it with a lid, presumably for dramatic effect, and put it on a low pedestal. Lyessa sauntered over to the bowl. Its lid was a domed cap of translucent crystal, etched with runes so fine they looked painted by starlight.
She reached out and touched the lid.
Nothing happened.
Then, with a chime no louder than the striking of a tuning fork, the lid glistened. The rune-lines retracted, spiraling inward like petals folding in reverse, then the lid gently lifted itself off the bowl and hovered beside it.
Inside was a trinket no larger than a brooch, silver-threaded and teardrop-shaped, with a pale blue gem at its center. A strand of golden leylight circled the gem like a planetary ring.
There’s an actual reward?
Lyessa reached down and lifted it with both hands.
Headmaster Draeth immediately stepped forward. “Behold,” he intoned, “the blessing of the First Vessel. Shielded beneath a reverent seal, crafted by the Synod’s finest relicwrights, and awakened only by rightful touch. This lid, I remind you, is impermeable to both time and theft. To even gaze upon its true contents requires the consent of purpose.”
Fabrisse squinted. “Did he just say the lid has consent?”
Liene whispered, “He says that every year.”
Still—when Fabrisse blinked, the System flared to life beside his vision.
[System Notice: Synod Blessing Vessel #1 Opened]
[Reward Analyzed – Trinket: ‘Echo of the Leycaller’]
[Grade: Epic]
[Type: Passive Accessory – Soulbound]
[Effect: Increases wearer’s SYN (Synaptic Clarity) by 18%]
[Secondary Effect: Grants Minor Trace Recall – allows retention of up to 10 seconds of environmental resonance]
[Bound to: Lyessa Halden]
[Cannot be traded]
An Epic-grade trinket? For winning a flower toss?
18% SYN would let someone thread complex spell matrices faster, read resonance flows more efficiently, and actually able to make the spell work the way the caster wanted, in Fabrisse’s case. So these weren’t meaningless tokens. They were real.
The remaining petals that didn’t make the finish line were scooped into their bowls by the bowl-bearers. His petal stalled near the curve, then drifted off like it forgot why it was there. The stream didn’t fight for it. Neither did he.
It petal was still stuck on the edge of the stream, a fair distance away from the finish line when it got unceremoniously sucked into one bowl.
He had two chances left. One more to practice.
And one to win.
2025-07-10 13:50:56 +0000 UTC
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Fabrisse spotted the scullery maid just as she emerged from the east gatehouse kitchen, balancing a cloth-covered tray in one hand and muttering under her breath about ‘those noodle-limbed faculty boys and their fire rites.’ The smell hit him before the sight did—fresh-baked bread, still warm enough to leave heat ghosts in the air. His feet moved without permission.
“Afternoon, Marla,” he said, putting on what he hoped was a harmless grin.
Marla squinted up at him. “Well if it isn’t the stone-toting noodle boy himself. Shouldn’t you be . . . oh, I don’t know, learning to levitate something without spraining your fingers?”
Marla was one of those people who seemed to exist outside the formal structure of the Synod, and yet knew everything that happened within it. She had never worn a robe in her life, but could recite the list of instructors most likely to pass out during a fire rite and the students who snuck snacks into Transmutation Theory. She was brisk, sharp, always smelled faintly of flour and rose ash, and had the rare gift of being able to scold and spoil someone at the same time.
“Working on it,” he said. “You, uh . . . delivering that somewhere urgent?”
Marla huffed and tilted the tray so he could glimpse the edge of a golden-brown crust. “Urgent as in ‘don’t let the head lecterns eat my eyebrows if it’s late,’ sure. But urgent as in ‘couldn't spare a heel to a growing boy with a bruised academic record’? Maybe not.”
Fabrisse perked up. “I’d consider it a charitable donation to the undernourished.” He paused. A brief thought surfaced, telling him that he could always ask if they needed help in the scullery. A few hours of dish-duty might earn him meals without dipping into his savings.
He extinguished the idea immediately. No. That’s not why I’m here.
He had to earn the grant. Or, at the very least, a position on merit—through his magical prowess, not pot-scrubbing. He was a student at the Synod, not a kitchenhand with glyph-scuffed sleeves. His mother hadn’t sent him here to munch on bread during break time and come back smelling of soaproot.
Marla rolled her eyes but didn’t pull the tray away. "You know, my husband used to say things like that. 'Oh, Petey, love, just a spoonful of honey for the nerves, your body runs on magic, mine runs on jam.' And now look at him, sitting at home in bed all day with Laika curled across his stomach like he’s the emperor of breadland.”
Ohoho. Maria babbling can only mean one thing: she’s in good mood today. And if she’s in good mood? Somebody’s bound to get some free bread if they try hard enough.
“I’d be happier if you handle little Laika for me, to be honest.”
Fabrisse smiled politely. “Laika’s the pup that chased that philter hawk off the roof last spring, right?”
“She’s a terror,” Marla said, proud. “Little legs like fury. But loyal. Unlike some students who forget their manners and try to charm free loaves without even asking about my week.”
“I was going to ask,” he said. “How was your week?”
Marla drew herself up, shifting the tray to one hip like she was preparing for a long march. “Oh, a whirlwind, darling. First the ovens shorted out while we were baking, because someone in Alchemy decided to reroute our aether grid. Don’t ask me why, probably trying to boil their laundry or something. Then the junior scullery girls mixed the basil glaze with the chili oil again, which would’ve been fine if the basil hadn’t already been laced with shimmerroot for Professor Yoren’s ‘digestive lecture banquet,’ whatever that means.”
Fabrisse kept nodding along, but soon, the sounds no longer reached his ears.
The tray. The aroma. It was stronger now: rich and buttery, with the unmistakable scent of warm creamy tart, laced with sugar-glazed crust and a whisper of steaming mingleberry jam. It drifted past his nose, bypassing thought and heading straight for his soul.
Hohoho. This is it. I’m so close. The moment is ripe. All I have to do is reach out—say something gentle, clever, grateful—
“Mr. Kestovar.”
The voice dropped like a cold stone into a bowl of soup.
Fabrisse froze. The sugar-honey fog vanished in an instant. Marla’s voice cut off as both their heads turned.
Lorvan stood three paces behind him, arms folded, expression very much Not In A Tart-Eating Mood.
Fabrisse felt himself wilt. “. . . Mentor.”
Lorvan glanced at the tray, then back to Fabrisse. “Why are you not assisting with the ritual preparations? This is your assigned contribution, is it not?”
Ah, the dreaded rituals.
Technically, they were part of an ‘Introductory Ritual Mechanics’ practicum that was mandatory for students at every level, non-introductory included. In practice, it meant spending two hours barefoot in the east courtyard, throwing starpetal blossoms into a runic basin while chanting about ‘inner clarity and harmonic grounding’ until someone passed out from incense exposure.
But it was a required participatory credit, and some students—like Severa, blessed be her smug enthusiasm—actually loved it. She claimed the petals responded to her ‘innate cadence.’ Liene would usually enjoy the rituals too, but only because she had an infatuation with petals.
“I was just—”
Lorvan raised an eyebrow. “You do realize credit participation is mandatory?”
“That ritual’s ridiculous. They’re just throwing petals into a runic basin and chanting in a circle until someone faints from incense.”
“Yes,” Lorvan said. “A perfect academic tradition.”
“I was going to go,” Fabrisse muttered. “Eventually.”
“And yet here you are, loitering by bread.” Lorvan glanced pointedly at the uncovered tray, then back at him. “Tell me, Kestovar. I thought you were taking your academic standing seriously now. Or are you planning to fail a fifth unit just to prove you’re artistically misunderstood?”
That stung more than Fabrisse wanted to admit.
“I’m not planning to fail,” he said, quieter.
“Then prove it. Go help. Credit is credit. Unless you’d rather throw away this term’s progress.”
Fabrisse sighed, then gave Marla an apologetic look. “Rain check on the loaf?”
Marla gave a pitying smile and whispered, “Check under the linen flap on the far right. Corner piece. I won’t tell if you won’t.”
Fabrisse slid the corner into his sleeve like it was a relic, then trudged toward the central green where the students were already gathering in a petal-laden spiral.
He hated everything about petals.
***
“Hi, Fabri. You’re late,” came the chipper voice of Liene Lugano as he approached the green field.
She stood near the outer ring of the ritual circle, waving a hand over her head like she was hailing a ship rather than greeting a fellow student. Fabrisse’s reply died in his throat when he saw what was on her head.
A wreath. Or . . . it had started life as a wreath. It was now an uneven crown of crushed starpetals, trailing vine, and something that resembled at kitchen twine. A single charmed blossom rotated slowly above her brow like it had aspirations of being a halo, but was far too tired for the job. Somehow, the entire ensemble hovered between sacred and unhinged.
She had always had a talent for taking perfectly elegant elements and turning them into the utterly bizarre, devoid of any grace.
She grinned. “Do you like it? I was aiming for celestial priestess, but I think I landed closer to forest hermit.”
“You look like a very floral comet crash survivor.”
“Thank you,” she said with twinkled eyes, as if that had been a compliment. “It’s my ritual hat.”
“There are no ritual hats.”
“There are now,” she said, and spun on one foot, nearly clocking a first-year with the trailing end of her vine sash. “Anyway, you can throw petals clockwise with the rest of us or pretend to rearrange the salt bowls for the next twenty minutes. Personally, I find the clockwise motion deeply healing.”
He stared at the circle. A few upper-years were singing a hymn. Someone had started burning the incense again—oh joy, today was neroli and fireleaf. His sinuses already felt insulted.
Standing near the stone dais, crotchety as always, was Headmaster Draeth.
Fabrisse had only ever seen him during rituals. Not in lessons. Not in staff meetings. Not even during the Eidralith incident. Only here, looming like a statue that someone occasionally dressed in new ceremonial robes. Sometimes Fabrisse wondered if Draeth was actually bound by contract to appear only when petals were involved.
But what really caught his attention were the three other figures in the distance.
Sil. Dir. And Rolen.
They were here.
Again.
Fabrisse felt his shoulders tense.
The last time he’d seen all three archmagi in one room, he’d accidentally revealed that the Eidralith had gone completely dark the moment it slammed into his forehead, and that the Stupenstone he was holding at the time might’ve reacted to it. Sil, the one who looked like she’d been stitched together from old starlight and surgical precision, had asked whether he’d felt any ‘irregularities in his essence.’ Dir had nearly launched a memory extraction ritual on the spot. And Rolen . . . well, Rolen had scratched his eyebrow and said the stone hit him with a ‘BAM.’
Sil and Dir weren’t even Synod staff. They were Order, Bureau, or both—so their presence now, at a school ritual that involved flower-petal tossing and poorly tuned hymns, felt like a deeply suspicious coincidence.
Fabrisse glanced at Liene’s ridiculous crown again and muttered, “What are the odds the archmagi are here for the petal choreography?”
Liene shrugged. “Maybe they just like incense.”
A breeze stirred the petal circle, and a hush moved through the students like a shiver along the edge of a blade. The singing faltered. Even the incense smoke changed course, curling toward the stone dais.
That’s when Severa appeared.
She emerged from the far side of the green, flanked by two second-years carrying crystal chalices, polished silver orbs, a brass censer engraved with swirling glyphs, and something Fabrisse was almost certain was a petrified owl skull.
Severa herself looked like she’d been carved out of ritual doctrine. Her robes were white and crimson, dyed in the formal gradient of Invocation majors. Her hair had been twisted into a crown braid so flawless it looked enforced by contract, and her expression was something calculating; it always was. In her hands, she held a tri-tiered staff, its head inscribed with rotating glyph rings that spun with slow deliberation.
“Oh no,” Fabrisse muttered. “She’s the officiate.”
“Of course she is,” Liene said. “She wrote a thesis on the metaphysical efficacy of group intonation and star-aligned rituals. She probably thinks this is foreplay.”
Fabrisse glanced sideways. “You’re not wrong, but I’m choosing not to unpack that.”
Severa stepped up to the inner ring of the ritual circle, planted her staff with solemn gravity, and raised one hand. “Prepare yourselves,” she intoned. “The resonance tide begins on my mark.”
Fabrisse braced himself to fake-chant for the next hour.
And then, as if summoned by tradition alone, Draeth stepped forward to deliver the Invocation Address.
His voice carried through the hush like thunder wrapped in velvet.
“As we enter this moment of harmonic convergence,” Draeth began, “let us give thanks to the steady flame of the Twelvefold Path. To the luminous shepherd who guides us still—Thaumarch Muradius, whose wisdom illuminated the Rite of the Accordant Core, whose vision unites the sanctums of learning, whose very breath shields our fledgling souls from dissonance.”
The same old praises of the Thaumarch. They always felt like they’d been carved from the same tablet. Draeth delivered them with just enough gravity to pass as sincere, but Fabrisse had begun to hear the fatigue beneath the words, or at least not as much reverence as all the other sections of his pompous speech.
Muradius. That name again. I’ve never met this Muradius, outside of his 500 public murals.
All he knew of the man came filtered through the mouths of Synod officials—through speeches like this, where his name was offered up like divine insulation against doubt.
For someone who supposedly cared so deeply about “the academic flourishing of the next generation,” the Thaumarch never once set foot in the Synod. Never wrote a letter. Never even offered a public blessing to the school that chanted his praises every equinox and solstice like clockwork.
And then the world paused.
A white glyph, like a line etched into the back of his skull, appeared. He blinked, and the System flared in the corner of his vision.
[Sidequest Received: ‘Calibrate That Which Is Broken’]
Objective: Touch the third bowl of salt when Severa begins the third verse. That third bowl holds a secret.
Secondary Objective: Don’t let Severa see. She’ll ruin it.
Reward: [Skill Unlock – Trajectory Insight (Passive)]
– Allows you to view the growth path of any trainable skill and how to most efficiently rank it up.
– Also lets you see if your current training method is terrible. Probably is.
[Accept Sidequest?]
Yes
No
Fabrisse stared at the prompt. Then glanced at Severa, who had now lifted her arms and was beginning to recite the first verse.
Touch the bowl? During a ceremony overseen by literal archmagi and the best star-student in possibly decades?
What’s the Eidralith quest philosophy? Does it just throw darts at a ritual chart and hope for the best? Or is this its idea of guided learning?
“Are you kidding me?” he hissed, just loud enough for Liene to hear.
She raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”
“Nothing.” Why is the reward so good? Why are every good rewards tuck behind the most ridiculous quests?
He accepted.
2025-07-10 06:04:32 +0000 UTC
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The curtains of Fabrisse’s dorm room was drawn tight. The desk had been cleared, and the scrolls had been stacked into a neat tower beside a jar of glyph quills. In the center lay three smooth pebbles, washed, dried, roughly uniform. He’d spent fifteen minutes choosing them from the Southern Edge path this morning, all the while muttering to himself. He’d even sent a message to Rolen regarding the skitterwhit incident, just so he could stop thinking about it. Rolen hadn’t replied.
Across the room, Greg Johnson hadn’t looked up once from his cot. He was lying sideways with a blanket over his head, holding a pamphlet titled ‘Mimetic Binding Theory for People Who Hate Mimetic Binding Theory.’
“Starting a religion?” Greg asked. Greg had never been out of the room without institutional duress.
“It’s called methodical testing,” Fabrisse muttered.
Greg didn’t answer.
Fabrisse reached for his multiple robe pockets. From it, he withdrew the Silvial Quartz and set it gently out of range, on the windowsill. Then came everything else—his stone satchel, the basic balm, his scratch notes, even the backup teacup (chipped)—cleared and stuffed into a drawer. He couldn’t afford any distractions or rogue resonances.
Only the three Trinav Quartz remained.
[Inventory Equipped: 3 / 10]
[Active: Trinav Quartz (x3)]
[ARC: 2 (+3)]
[Stone Resonant Carry (Rank I) — Active]
He took a breath. Then, with deliberate care, he unequipped the quartz.
[Active Quartz Removed]
[ARC: 2]
He extended a hand, palm-up.
[Spell Activated: Stonesway — Rank I]
[Target: 3 Objects]
[ARC Control Threshold: 2]
The pebbles jerked, shivering in the air like moths that have caught a cold. Their hover was wobbly, unstable. He tried to nudge one left. It tilted, quivered, and knocked into the edge of the desk before tumbling back to the floor.
[Duration Limit: 6 seconds]
“Six seconds,” Fabrisse said quietly.
He wrote in his margin:
ARC 2 — 6s hover. ~5cm control radius. Stability: low.
Then, he picked up the Trinav Quartz again and reactivated them.
[Inventory Equipped: 3 / 10]
[ARC: 5]
This time, when he cast Stonesway, the effect was instant.
The pebbles rose with only a bit of drag. They hovered like obedient satellites, still wobbling but had responded to his finger twitches.
He pushed one forward. It glided. Another, he coaxed into a slow spin. Not perfect—still a few skips in the flow—but it felt possible. Like movement wasn’t such a fight anymore.
“Fourteen seconds,” Greg said, still not looking.
Fabrisse smiled faintly, jotting notes.
ARC 5 — 14s hover. ~15cm radius. Stability: moderate. Response: direct.
He stared at the middle pebble. Just for fun, he whispered, “Go higher.”
It did, for half a second.
“I think I can actually tell them what to do,” he murmured.
Greg shifted under his blanket. “Imagine what you could do with actual talent.”
“Thanks, Greg.”
“No problem.”
He ran the sequence again. Then again.
The results were consistent.
ARC 2 — 6s hover. ~5cm radius. Stability: low.
ARC 5 — 14s hover. ~15cm radius. Stability: moderate.
ARC 5 (repeat) — 14.5s hover. ~16cm radius. Stability: moderate.
He tapped the final margin note twice, drawing a thin double underline beneath the third line.
Confirmed.
[Training Completed: + 10 EXP]
[Progress to Level 5: 1375/1500]
Fabrisse leaned back against the wall, heart thumping, not from the spell, but from the quiet realization that he could see the difference now. He had quantifiable proof that ARC mattered. That the quartz helped. That his Path was doing something.
It still sucked, though. Even with terrible ARC, he should’ve been able to lift simple pebbles for much longer and move them around with more force. The main problem was his innate resonance, which he didn’t seem to have any way to improve. Even if he had a 1000 in Aether Resonance Control, but he couldn’t resonate with aether in the first place, his result would still be severely limited.
Greg shifted on the cot again, this time folding the pamphlet over his chest like a funeral offering. “So, is this where you ascend or just submit a very enthusiastic lab report?”
“It’s ironic you’re the one making fun of me over this.”
“A man has to have self-awareness,” Greg replied. That line from him also sounded ironic.
***
The sun sat low over the north pond, slanting gold across the water. Frogs had claimed the left bank with a vengeance, and their croaking warbled like a badly tuned xylophone. Fabrisse stood a few meters back from the shallows, his satchel slung low, a half-eaten rye bread in one hand.
He tore off the last corner and tossed it toward the reeds behind him. It disappeared immediately inside Mercy’s beak.
[You are now more attuned to Familiar-Grade Creatures | Perfect Resonance Progress: 99%]
The creature had now felt comfortable enough to play around with him. These days, he would emerge with a triumphant cluckle-honk from the shadows, wings flared like he was announcing the return of royalty. Sometimes he even did a celebratory hop—if you could call it that—launching his entire round body into the air with startling force and a sound like a boulder sneezing. If he ignored him, he’d stalk him in slow, exaggerated circles, dragging one talon dramatically in the dirt, as if to say, You’ve betrayed me. I hope your shoes fall off.
He took out a roughed Stupenstone named Marahat, aimed for a nearby plant, and hit it.
[Mastery Training: Stupenstone Fling (Rank II)—Progress to Rank III: 86%]
→ Trajectory Curvature: Consistent
→ Estimated Launch Velocity: 6.9 m/s (93% max)
→ Accuracy Deviation: ±3.7%
Stupenstone Fling training had become rather repetitive. No matter how many new angles he invented, or how many new targets he found, it was just the same thing. He’d only gained 1 STR, but his velocity was already close to the max velocity for Rank II, so it there was not much room for improvement. Throwing at an unmoving target until he mastered the trajectory.
[Mastery Training Note: Stupenstone Fling unable to progress further without targeting a moving target]
Oh. The System is urging me to up my game and calculate the moving speed of my targets. But where can I find a moving target to throw rocks at? I can’t smash Cuman’s head in multiple times without getting into trouble.
[Training Completed: + 12 EXP]
[Progress to Level 5: 1387/1500]
“Not every aetheric creatures are worth bonding with,” came a voice from behind.
Fabrisse startled so hard he nearly tossed his entire satchel into the pond as Ilya Snezhnaya stepped into view. Her coat was even longer than that of Lorvan’s, trailing behind her like melting frost. Perched on her shoulder was her ever-unnerving raven familiar.
“Why,” Fabrisse muttered, placing a hand over his chest, “do you sneak up on people like that?”
“I wasn’t sneaking,” Ilya replied, perfectly composed. “You weren’t paying attention.”
Things hadn’t been smooth sailing between Fabrisse and Tommaso the past few days. Tommaso, to his credit, had learned from their last near-argument that it was probably better to give Fabrisse space. And Fabrisse . . . hadn’t exactly earned that grace. He’d been avoiding eye contact and refused to talk altogether. He didn’t know how to talk to Tommaso without hearing that old voice in his head say: You were assigned to watch me like I’m a problem someone needs to solve.
Fabrisse was embarrassed. Which meant Ilya was his designated ‘guardian’ for the day. Other than enjoying sneaking up on people, Ilya wasn’t much of a nuisance because she didn’t talk.
After another minute of silence, Fabrisse asked, “Does your familiar help you with anything?”
“Intelligence,” she replied.
“You mean spying?”
“Possibly,” she said. “Also, actual intelligence.” The raven let out a smug puff of feathers and began grooming one wing with exaggerated dignity.
“Do they boost your magic?” Fabrisse asked, genuinely curious now. “Like, increase your aether capacity or resonance or something?”
Ilya considered. “Not that I know of. Some species supposedly reinforce your aether pool passively, but it’s rare.” She strolled past him without a word, sat at the edge of the pond with practiced elegance, folding her robes beneath her.
She casually pointed a finger, and a light ripple passed through the air. Dozens of silvery, angular patterns suddenly spread across the water like frost flowers, forming runic tessellations that floated for just a few seconds before dissolving.
She didn’t explain how or why she did it.
A moment later, she spoke. “Do you want to see a magic trick?”
“I—”
“Good.”
She didn’t wait for the rest of the reply.
Ilya dipped into her coat, withdrew a small coin-sized mirror disk and tossed it lightly into the air. As it spun, she whispered something beneath her breath, too soft for Fabrisse to catch.
The disc froze mid-spin.
Then, with a gentle sweep of her fingers, the disc shattered into dozens of glowing motes, which hovered in place for a moment before blinking into perfect formation: an array of miniature birds made of ice-glass and starlight. They flapped twice and then wheeled around her in a perfect spiral before flying outward across the lake. The motes broke apart as they passed the pond’s surface, vanishing in ripples.
“That was cool,” she said to herself. Fabrisse just stared at her.
What she had just done was a form of advanced magic called mimicry, a rare and difficult technique where a caster replicates the properties or behaviors of existing magical phenomena using nothing but raw aether and will. Fabrisse had no idea how to do that, of course.
“Tommaso said you’re stubborn,” Ilya said. She seemed to possess this unique talent of starting conversations randomly without ever finishing them.
“He did?”
“Would you still bond with the clucklebeak if I’d told you it would not be worthwhile?” She started another conversation.
[Perfect Resonance Progress: 100% | You have achieved Resonance with your Familiar]
[Familiar Name: Mercy]
FP: 8/8
Attributes:
STR (Strength): 3
DEX (Dexterity): 7
FOR (Fortitude): 40
INT (Intuition): 8
ARC (Aetheric Resonance Control): 1
EMO (Emotional Attunement): 12
SYN (Synaptic Clarity): 1
Perfect Resonance Bonus: You and your familiar receive a 4% bonus on ALL attributes if you are within a one-meter radius of each other.
System note: May peck enemies. May also peck you.
[Familiar Bonding Completed: + 4 EXP]
[Progress to Level 5: 1391/1500]
A bonus? There’s actually an attribute bonus?
Fabrisse stood as the cluckblebeak waddled out of the pond, clambered onto the grass, paused dramatically, then broke into a lopsided sprint straight toward him. He extended his arms and pulled the little bird into a hug, then said, “You are wrong, Ilya. It is worthwhile.”
Ilya, having no access to the system notification, stared at him for a good five seconds before saying, “You are stubborn.”
2025-07-09 21:09:31 +0000 UTC
View Post
Langley guided him off the field, to a slope beneath the old silverthorn tree at the eastern edge. The grass was cooler here, away from the scorch, and the breeze still held some evening light.
Fabrisse had braced himself for a lecture. Something about responsibility, safety protocols, what to report and what to omit. But Langley said none of that.
“I spoke to Lorvan earlier this week,” the professor said, settling onto a stump with a graceful flick of his coat. “He asked if I’d be willing to help you find a placement. He thought it might be good for your focus.”
“Placement?”
Langley nodded. “A junior lore clerk post. Rank II, under the Subcurate of Lore Management. You’d be assisting with record transcriptions, incantation indexing, probably a few artifact logs here and there. It would get you access to restricted stacks and keep your stipend active.”
Fabrisse’s mouth opened, then closed again.
“You’d need to pass a short interview and demonstrate some basic book-handling knowledge,” Langley continued, adjusting the lenses on his nose. “But Lorvan seemed to think that wouldn’t be a problem for you.”
“Lorvan said that?”
“He did.” Langley looked at him over the rim of his glasses. “He said your recall is sharper than your scores suggest. That you have a habit of absorbing things you pretend not to care about.”
Fabrisse glanced down at his hands. He wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a compliment.
Professor Langley let the breeze speak for a while. The wind rustled the branches above, a scattering of silverthorn leaves spinning down between them. Then the professor said, “I failed my fire mastery exams three times, Mr. Kestovar.”
“Huh?”
Langley’s smile was faint and dry. “I couldn’t sustain even a basic combustion weave without it sputtering out. I still can’t, some days.”
“You’re a professor.”
Langley shrugged. “Of hydro-aetherics and ritual cartography. Not because I’m brilliant, but because I had a very patient mentor who once told me to stop trying to be good at the wrong thing. I couldn’t control fire to save my life, but it turned out I was very good at water-borne navigation. Specifically flood channeling.”
He leaned back, letting his hands rest on his knees. “That skill kept half a province from drought during the Serefield collapse. A spell that never got published in any of the big flashy journals. And I am proud of it, Mr. Kestovar.”
Fabrisse didn’t answer, so Langley continued. “Did you know that Instructant Lugano once tried to quit teaching?”
That got Fabrisse’s attention. “No.”
“Oh yes. Right after his first assigned cohort. They burned through three mentors, nearly unraveled an experimental discipline project, and managed to set a chair on fire with a truth-binding spell. He thought he wasn’t cut out for it.”
“I can’t picture Lorvan doing anything else.”
“Neither could I,” Langley said mildly. “But it took him time. Took all of us time.”
Fabrisse stared down at the grass. For once, the thrum of frustration in his chest had softened to something smaller, quieter.
Langley stood, brushing off his coat. “Take the job if you want. It won’t fix everything, but it might give you enough space to remember that you’re not a mistake just because you haven’t found the right kind of useful yet.”
Fabrisse didn’t answer, but his throat tightened in a way that felt dangerously close to choking on himself, and he was glad Langley had already turned back toward the field.
“The interview’s in four days,” the professor said. “I’ll let the Subcurate know to expect you. Wear something with pockets.”
He wouldn’t have much problem fulfilling that request.
***
The light dusting of micapowder and powdered felspar smudged Fabrisse’s fingers as he lined up the last of the mineral shards along the grading strip. One by one, he slid each sample beneath the viewing scope, checked the elemental weave integrity, and logged the structural readings in his field sheet.
Common quartz, variant 5B. Weak auric cling. Minor trace of thaum-salt. No spectral bloom.
He noted the line, initialed the box, and brushed the sample into the return tray with practiced care.
This was his fourth afternoon in a row classifying substratal earthbound fragments for the Lower Leyflow Archive. Most students found this kind of work dry—even Konan only nodded in acknowledgment when she passed him in the archive chamber stairs, heading down to her own geomantic thesis vault. But Fabrisse didn’t mind the quiet.
Assistant Instructor Min Hajin glanced up from his inkboard, dark eyes narrowing just enough to suggest he’d finished reading the latest flaw reports and was waiting for Fabrisse to either break something or speak.
He took the chance.
He set the stylus down and cleared his throat. “Assistant Min?”
Min Hajin glanced up from his slate. “Hm.”
Fabrisse gestured lightly to the tray beside him. “Would it be permissible to take one or two of the overflow quartz samples home? For study.”
He didn’t immediately answer. Instead, he tilted her head and tapped her stylus against the side of her board. “Home use?”
“Just to practice field tagging and matrix calibration,” Fabrisse said. “A few of these still have aether residual charge, and I wanted to see if I’d try mapping how much they hold over time.”
Min Hajin folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. The chair made no noise—how it never creaked was one of life’s small mysteries. He watched Fabrisse a moment more, then nodded toward the tray. “Which ones?”
Silvial quartz, like the one Ganvar Ciemnosc let him borrow, would probably be best, but there wasn’t one in here. Fabrisse had a good guess about which other ones would give him a bonus in ARC.
The pale, ice-veined fragments at the edge of the tray—Trinav Quartz, variant 2A. A type of high-clarity common quartz known for its unusually stable aether resonance structure, so it was sometimes used in academy training tools, like aether flow stabilizers, signal pips, and other low-stakes utilities meant to release a controlled discharge of light or sound. The glyphlights hovering all over the campus, on the other hand, didn’t even use quartz at all, but light-based aether. Rocks were typically pretty ineffective for light discharge.
“This set,” he said quickly, brushing his fingers across the edge of the tray where the Trinav pieces lay. “They’re all pretty low-output, but still clean. Good for mapping low-resonance drift over a few days.”
Min raised one eyebrow. “Are you planning to chart that by hand?”
“I mean . . . maybe.” He tried a sheepish smile. “Eventually.”
The assistant instructor exhaled through his nose, then waved a hand. “You can take four. Leave the rest for the others.”
Fabrisse blinked. “There are other students?”
“There’s one,” Min had already returned to his slate. “She’s on field excursion. She’ll be back next week.”
Fabrisse gathered the quartz like he was pocketing seeds. Four only. Four was enough.
I will be better. And if hoarding rocks is the way to go, so be it.
As he put the quartz in his pocket, the System flared.
[4 Trinav Quartz added to Inventory]
[Stone Resonance Carry (Rank I) Activated]
[Path Synergy: Celestial Hoarding—ARC +3]
He was right. These quartzes would boost his ARC. But only plus 3 instead of 4?
[Reminder: Current Carry Limit: 3 Stones Active]
[Further Reminder: Inventory: 10/10—Taking in any more inventory means you will not receive its effect if used]
Ah. I see. Then, his next task would be to upgrade his Stone Resonance Carry so he could maximize the potential of his path. This was the edge the Eidralith had given him, and he must take advantage of it.
If hoarding rocks makes me useful, then so be it.
2025-07-09 17:37:08 +0000 UTC
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Fabrisse was relieved the first person of authority to reach the scene was Professor Langley.
Of all the professors at the Synod, Langley was the one most students actually liked. Calm, clever, dry-witted when he wanted to be. More importantly, he was close to Lorvan, and knew how to handle weird things without calling half the academy down on you.
Langley approached at a brisk pace, his Purple Synod coat reserved for Professors flaring behind him in weathered folds. A pair of slender scrying lenses glinted on the bridge of his nose, the glass etched faintly with tracking runes that gradually lit up as he scanned the surroundings. He looked mildly harried, as though he’d jogged the last stretch from his office, but his posture was still composed, hands folded behind his back like he was inspecting a sculpture and not a minor magical disaster.
“Good evening,” he said, voice perfectly civil. “I see we’re having . . . an educational moment.”
“Well.” Tommaso patted Fabrisse on the back. “You’ve seen the most. Talk to the Professor.”
Fabrisse walked forward, not knowing where to begin. If anyone could be trusted not to overreact to the Voidtouched Skitterwhit incident, it would be Professor Langley.
And yet . . .
Fabrisse felt his shoulders tighten as Langley stopped in front of the char-marked clearing, gaze flicking first to Liene—still bandaged and half-lounging in the grass—then to Tommaso, then to Ilya finishing the last of the containment sigils. His eyes landed on him last.
“Kestovar, would you mind detail me on what happened?” Langley asked.
He opened his mouth, but let the words hovered. Voidtouched. This has to be related to the kidnapping incident. Rolen has told me to not talk to anyone else.
Langley trusted Lorvan. They have probably worked with one another countless times. But still, orders were orders.
“We encountered a variant Skitterwhit,” he said carefully. “Larger than standard. Aggressive. It absorbed most of Liene’s spells and didn’t match any field taxonomy I’ve seen. We managed to subdue it with coordinated effort. Tommaso delivered the finishing blow.” Don’t mention Void. Don’t mention Void at all cost.
Langley nodded slowly. “You didn’t record a specimen?”
“It . . . exploded.”
“I see.” Langley glanced at the blackened ground. “And the ley disturbance?”
“It was triggered by chain detonations from the surrounding population after Tommaso’s flare. Ilya stabilized it.”
Langley studied him for a moment longer than Fabrisse liked. Then he turned to inspect the charred remains.
“Then it’s a good thing we arrived when we did,” the professor said, tone still mild. “I’ll file a provisional containment note and have the arcane ecology department sweep the field at dusk. No need to make noise if this was just an anomaly.”
Good; good, Fabrisse told himself. This incident can pass quietly and no one gets into trouble.
“Ardefiamme!” A voice cracked across the field. “What in the Flamus were you thinking bringing Kestovar off campus?”
Fabrisse turned around to see Lorvan practically loping over with a hexagonal containment spell still forming on his hand.
Tommaso lifted his hand in instinctive defense. “He volunteered. The spell requirements were low-risk—”
“Who gave you the right to decide what is low-risk?” Lorvan barked. “You were given explicit instructions. That is not what a guardian should do.”
A guardian? What does he mean by that?
Tommaso’s brows furrowed. “I’m not his—” He stopped, glanced once at Fabrisse, then away.
That look told Fabrisse everything he needed to know.
Lorvan assigned him? So him being on vacation is a lie.
“I thought you just came back to visit,” Fabrisse said quietly.
Tommaso scratched the back of his neck. “I mean, I did. Just that I was also kind of . . . got asked to keep an eye on you. Temporarily. Y’know. For fun.” He winced at his own words.
Fabrisse looked at Tommaso. Then he looked down, crossed his arms over his chest, and stayed quiet.
Turns out I’m the useless one needing everyone to keep watch.
“Okay,” Liene pushed up on her elbows. “Let’s all just take a breath, yeah? Nobody died. The void creature is ash, the leyfield is stable, and Fabrisse doesn’t need two people fighting over who gets to smother him first.”
Lorvan’s jaw clenched at Liene’s voice, but it wasn’t irritation this time. “You . . . Are you hurt? Lie back down.”
She was pale. There was a tremble in her shoulders she hadn’t meant to show, and the hand bracing her side was stained with something darker than dirt. The bravado had been masking pain.
Lorvan dropped to one knee, the containment glyph on his hand vanishing as he reached toward her with both hands. “How hurt are you?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” Liene muttered, which of course meant she wasn’t. “Just cracked something a little.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” He was already scanning her with his offhand, drawing in a thin field of diagnostic light. A pale coil of aether swept across her ribs and pulsed back once in warning.
Light bloomed.
A single glyph formed beneath his palm and tightened like a buckle pulling tension out of fabric. The bruising dulled in color, and Liene’s breath stopped hitching.
Fabrisse watched as the light threaded across Liene’s side, shocked by how quiet Lorvan had become.
Liene looked up at him with a tired, crooked smile. “You’re doing the dad-voice again.”
“I’m not your father,” Lorvan replied.
“Good. You’d be bad at it.”
Tommaso lingered nearby, still crouched in the ash-swept grass. He shifted once, then again, finally glancing toward Fabrisse with something like guilt simmering beneath the soot on his face.
He cleared his throat. “Hey, uh, dude.”
Fabrisse didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on the space where the creature had disintegrated. There was barely a mark left now, only a few frayed sparks of memory and the echo of something that had almost killed Liene.
Tommaso tried again. “You okay? You’re usually, like, making rock puns by now.”
Still no answer.
Fabrisse’s thoughts weren’t in the field anymore. They were looping inside his own skull.
If I’d had even one iota of better innate resonance—
He could’ve passed his second-year casting evaluations. With a decent enough score, he wouldn’t have needed the excuse of field remediation. He wouldn’t have started skipping lessons because what was the point of learning spells that never anchored, that fizzled on his fingertips like wet chalk?
He wouldn’t have needed to turn to Earth Thaumaturgy. To Stupenstone.
And if he hadn’t brought the Stupenstone, maybe the buried artifact wouldn’t have reacted. Maybe he wouldn’t have been stuck with a system he was in no capacity to master.
If I’d had just a sliver more talent, none of this would’ve happened.
“I . . . excuse me,” he said.
Fabrisse didn’t wait for anyone to answer. He turned and began walking somewhere. Anywhere else.
He just needed a minute. One single, quiet minute away from Liene’s shallow breathing and Lorvan’s stern silence and Tommaso’s half-guilty glances.
He took five steps.
“Mr. Kestovar,” Langley’s voice came lightly from behind him, calm and unhurried.
Fabrisse froze.
Langley had moved without a sound. One of his hands rested gently on Fabrisse’s shoulder, not restraining, exactly, but undeniably present. His fingers were warm.
“Do you have time,” Langley asked, “for a conversation?”
Fabrisse didn’t nod. He just stood there, breathing in the post-combat hush of the field, his pulse still loud in his ears.
“I suppose,” he said eventually, “I’ve got time.”
2025-07-09 14:34:10 +0000 UTC
View Post
Fabrisse dove.
He hurled himself sideways into the thick of the whispergrass, hit the earth with a jolt of impact, and rolled beneath the moss curtain in one scrambling breath.
[Skill Activated: Liminal Presence Drift (Rank III)]
[Auditory Dissipation Field — Passive Stealth Engaged]
The air around him dulled. His breathing seemed to vanish from his own ears.
Somewhere above the grass line, the rattling sound of the Voidtouched Skitterwhit hissing resounded.
Fabrisse pressed his body flat, heart hammering so hard he was sure it would betray him. But his stealth spells held.
He couldn’t see the creature—but he could feel the drop in temperature as it passed overhead. The aether pressure rippled against the hairs on his arms. Its void aura was so thick it warped the air.
It didn’t see him.
Not yet.
[Aetheric Veil: Echofold (Rank II) — Ready to Cast]
He kept the spell balanced on a pin of intent, not casting it unless he had to. It would make his presence ‘echo’ behind him if he needed to sprint.
He needed to think. He needed a plan.
But if it found her again . . .
He clenched the stupid stone in his palm. Come on, think. You're Stratal Studies. You're the geology guy. There’s got to be something around here you can use.
He saw a big rock. He wanted to reach for it, but stopped himself in time.
No time to be a brave idiot. If it’s going after me, I need to bait it into looking for me. I’ll buy time until help arrives.
The Skitterwhit let out a low, grinding screech. Then it dropped straight down towards him.
Fabrisse’s instincts surged.
[Aetheric Veil: Echofold — Cast]
His presence unhooked from where he was and echoed a few steps behind. The creature slammed down into nothing, biting into air where he would have been.
Chopped grass flew all over the sky.
Fabrisse bolted.
He sprinted low, ducking between ridges of wildroot and scattered boulders, using every curve of terrain to vanish again. If he could make it to the ditch near the thistle trees, he might have line-of-sight cover long enough to—
A burst of blue-white aether cracked the sky.
He skidded to a stop and turned.
Liene was upright again, one hand raised like a conductor—and from her palm, a bolt of chained lightning cracked across the field. It slammed into the Skitterwhit’s side, illuminating its void-flesh in stark relief.
[Spell Detected: Arclend Discharge (Rank II)]
The creature shrieked and flared outward, rippling in strange, distorted geometry.
Target: Voidtouched Skitterwhit
[Status: Aetherically Shocked, Momentarily Stunned, Unreasonably Angered]
She can do that? Lightning-based was not far from Light-based mechanic-wise, but in practice, it was a much different offensive branch of Thaumaturgy.
Fabrisse didn’t have time to marvel.
Liene dropped.
She hit one knee, chest heaving, her arm trembling as blue-white sparks fizzled off her palm. Her glow vanished like a snuffed torch.
She must’ve had next to no FP left.
She was out in the open.
The Skitterwhit’s wings curled, shadows folding inward like it was preparing to dive not just at her, but through her.
Fabrisse was too far. Too slow. Too empty-handed.
Liene was still kneeling, trying to raise a shield. Her hands wouldn’t obey.
The creature surged—
And fire fell from the sky.
A torrent of gold-orange blaze erupted from above, searing down in a massive funnel of focused combustion. The entire space between the Skitterwhit and Liene ignited with a sound like a hundred scrolls being incinerated all at once.
The creature screamed—actually screamed this time—as flames coiled around its void-flesh, pushing it back mid-air in a spiral of burning distortion. Aether bent. Shadows ripped away from its form like cloth being torn from a nail.
Target: Voidtouched Skitterwhit
[Status: Externally Burned, Unreasonably Angered]
[Status: Internally Scorched, Momentarily Stunned, Afraid]
[Status: Critical Burn Damage Taken, Petrified]
The flames kept coming.
Line after line of golden fire swept the field in arcing streaks, chasing the shadow-stitched thing like a predator herding prey. Fabrisse shielded his face with one arm as the heat pressed close, crackling against the grass. The Skitterwhit screeched and twisted, its wings unraveling as its form flickered from something solid to a vibrating smear of colorless void.
Then it stopped moving.
The void convulsed, then split.
The creature tore open from the inside out, split by fire, and disintegrated midair. Black ash and warped aether fell like scorched confetti.
Target: Voidtouched Skitterwhit
[Status: Deceased]
[Combat Completed]
[Progress to Level 5: 1290/1500]
Partial XP distributed. Attribution pending review.
The wind dropped.
Fabrisse didn’t move.
The flames had stopped, but the heat still clung to his skin like memory. His fingers, still curled around the now-useless stupenstone, were trembling, and he hadn’t realized how tightly he’d been gripping it until his knuckles began to ache.
Ash drifted through the air, settling on the whispergrass in slow, weightless spirals.
The sky overhead was still scorched gold where the flare had climbed. Bits of aether-scorched cloud lingered like bruises across the horizon. The kind of sky that didn’t look like it belonged to students anymore.
He exhaled. It came out shaky.
They should’ve been dead.
Then Tommaso landed.
He wasn’t smirking.
He stepped off the scorched hover-disc with a controlled motion and crossed the field in three wide strides—eyes locked not on the ashes, but on Liene, who was still on one knee, blinking blearily with her arm clutched against her ribs.
“Linny,” he said tightly, crouching beside her. “Where are you hit?” Then he looked at Fabrisse. “You okay, dude?”
She opened her mouth to joke, probably, but nothing came out. She just shook her head and pointed at her own chest, meaning: no major punctures, no bleedout.
Tommaso exhaled slowly, then nodded. “Okay. I’ve got you. Just breathe.”
Fabrisse finally reached them. “She used Arclend Discharge. She lit up that thing like a streetlamp on a festival night, and then—”
“I know,” Tommaso said. “I saw the flare.”
The field was eerily quiet for a beat, until the silence broke.
A snap. Then a pop. Then another. A chain of bright explosions blazed across the far edge of the field as dozens of ordinary Skitterwhits, startled by the firestorm, began flaring in panic.
Their aether fuzz overcharged.
One by one, they burst midair like overripe aether bubbles. Each burst released erratic pulses of ambient aether.
Then the ground answered.
The artifact lines—faintly buried, ancient, and semi-dormant—began to shimmer under the topsoil. Faint runes blinked into visibility like something waking from a long, spiteful sleep.
Fabrisse’s stomach dropped.
“Tom,” he breathed. “The lines. The resonance—”
“I see it.”
Runoff aether + shallow wards + burst mana discharge. It was the exact combination the professors always cited in horror stories during field safety lectures. Uncontained resonance discharge could fry the whole region’s ley harmonics, maybe even collapse part of the campus barrier lattice. Ley was the most annoying form of aether from an ecological standpoint, since it was (apart from inside Rolen’s chamber) the naturally occuring channels of concentrated aether, which meant it was much more sensitive to manipulation from the environment.
Then a voice rang out like a blade drawn through frost, “Still the air, seal the breath, frost to bone. Halt.”
A gleam of silver and blue swept over the scorched field in a wave.
Dozens of radiant sigils spun overhead. The heat in the air vanished, and the pulsing ground lines stopped glowing.
Fabrisse looked up just as Ilya Snezhnaya descended.
Her robes—swan-white, hemmed with mirror thread—barely rippled as she hovered on a gleaming runic circle, one hand raised, the other cradling a relic staff crowned with a crystal node.
She landed with a sound like snowfall. Her eyes scanned the chaos.
“Situation,” she demanded.
Tommaso stood. “I’ve got no clue what got into that giant skitterwhit thing, but I’ve detonated it.”
“Ardefiamme. Be serious.”
“Okay, okay. Liene dropped a flare. I lit the rest.”
Ilya’s gaze didn’t leave the sky above the field, where residual aether trails still curled like lightning scars. “That combustion pattern was from a maximum output Rank V spell. The local ley was stirring. That’s reckless.”
Tommaso threw up his hands, “Well, I didn’t know how strong that little thing was!”
“You didn’t have to rupture the leybed in the process.”
“Guys,” Fabrisse said sharply, louder than either of them. “Liene is still hurt.”
That silenced them both.
Tommaso’s gaze directed toward the field where Liene was still half-slouched in the grass, one arm wrapped weakly around her ribs. She was watching the argument with half-lidded eyes, her expression equal parts pained and amused.
Ilya exhaled as she picked up her staff. “The leyfield still needs containment. If this runoff spreads, it could trigger deeper artifact lines. You—” she pointed to Tommaso, “—stay here. Reinforce the outer arc. And do not, under any circumstances, cast above Rank III.”
Tommaso gave a short nod, chastened for once.
“I’ll handle the core.” She turned, robes whispering across the scorched ground as she left.
“Who was that?” Liene asked as Fabrisse knelt beside her.
“That’s Ilya.”
“She looks amazing. Is she Tom’s girlfriend?”
“Yes.” He scanned her. She’d gotten a few cuts along the legs, and her arms are bruised to nether. “How are you feeling?”
He peeled back the edge of her sleeve, gingerly, so as not to worsen the already angry swelling, and winced. The bruise along her forearm was a vivid plum-purple with faint aether burn at the edges. “I’ve got basic wrap balm,” he said, reaching into the side pocket of his satchel. Dubbie had shoved the balm into one of his pockets, and he for once appreciated his sister’s thoroughness. He fumbled for a cloth square, then a small tin etched with a faintly glowing green leaf sigil. “It’s not for combat wounds, but it’ll stabilize until Ilya’s done wrangling the sky.”
Liene leaned her head back and sighed dramatically. “I love it when a boy dabs moss paste on my flesh wounds.” Then she craned her neck over to Tommaso, who was kneeling in a scorched patch of grass, angrily sketching containment runes into the dirt with the end of a half-charred wand. “Is your girlfriend always that serious?”
“She was a lot more chill the last time I saw her,” Fabrisse whispered.
“I can joke around when ley energy is threatening to rupture the local vicinity. She can’t,” Tommaso replied before resuming muttering under his breath every time the glow from one sigil failed to stabilize.
A glowing snowflake-shaped sigil floated gently down from above and pinned itself neatly into place beside him.
Liene gave a weak laugh. “Wow. At least there’s one adult here to babysit the three of us.”
Then Fabrisse received a nudge from the System.
[EXP Rewarded for Partial Participation: 75]
[Progress to Level 5: 1365/1500]
A whole 75? But I got like one hit in.
That got him wondering how much EXP Tommaso got, if EXP meant anything for anyone else at all.
2025-07-09 03:49:18 +0000 UTC
View Post
The first skill Fabrisse activated was Spectral Appraisal.
[Spectral Appraisal — Active]
Target: Voidtouched Skitterwhit
— Status: Completely Healthy, Reasonably Angered
‣ STR (Strength): 38
‣ DEX (Dexterity): 27
‣ FOR (Fortitude): 12
‣ INT (Intuition): 9
‣ ARC (Aetheric Resonance Control): 5
‣ EMO (Emotional Attunement): ???
‣ SYN (Synaptic Clarity): 5
[Failed to retrieve additional information. Upgrade your skill or engage with the adversary to learn more about their combat style.]
38 STR, Fabrisse thought. This flying fluffball can slam me to the ground and choke me dead. Liene’s STR is 14. My STR is . . . okay, let’s not think about that.
“It’s . . . angry, Liene,” he whispered.
The air went thick like syrup. Liene took a step back, and Fabrisse did too. The Skitterwhit simply hovered, impossibly still, as though it was glued in the air.
Liene raised both hands very slowly, palms open.
“There’s no need for anything rash,” she said with the same tone she used with wayward cats. “Most aetheric creatures aren’t aggressive toward humans. Especially not the wild-born ones. They don’t see us as food or threat.” Then she took half a step forward, towards the beast. “Hi, hi . . . I noticed you’re a bit . . . voidtouched. I bet you were just minding your own magical business when some nasty rift anomaly drifted by and now everyone’s afraid of you. But not me, no Sir. I see you. You’re just a big floaty trauma puff, aren’t you?”
The Skitterwhit twitched.
Fabrisse tensed. “It’s twitching.” He placed one hand over his satchel just in case.
“It’s responding!” Liene smiled. “Aren’t you? You’re probably just confused. Your tummy hurts from all the residual mana toxicity and your aura's a little aggressive, but that’s okay. You don’t want to hurt anyone, do you?”
The Skitterwhit drifted forward an inch. Its body pulsed like a heartbeat of pure shadow, and the wind around it dropped to silence.
Liene tilted her head, her voice dropping to a purr. “You’re not mad, you’re just misunderstood. I bet your name is something soft. Like Morrowfluff. Or Zuzu. Can I call you Zuzu? You’re a good boy, aren’t you Sir? Yes you are—”
The creature let out a ripple of soundless magic and surged forward like a launched arrow.
Fabrisse yelped, but Liene was faster.
She whipped her hand. “No, Zuzu! Bad!”
A disc of light flashed into existence between them—Warding Gleam. The Skitterwhit slammed into it with a muffled thud, bounced back, and hissed like a kettle being throttled.
Target: Voidtouched Skitterwhit
[Status: Completely Healthy, Reasonably Angered]
Liene’s hair was blown back from the impact. “Okay!” she said through gritted teeth. “So! Zuzu is a liar!”
The Skitterwhit slammed against the Gleam again, and once more. It flew back, then launched forward again. Its shape seemed to blur as though it were being smeared through the air.
“I said don’t move!” Liene snapped. Still maintaining her Warding Gleam, sharp flick of her wrist summoned a bright pinwheel of radiant energy. Fabrisse didn’t remember the name of this spell, but it was meant to paralyze low-level threats.
It struck the Skitterwhit. Then vanished. Absorbed, like a sugar cube dropped in hot tea.
“Huh?” Liene said.
The Skitterwhit let out another hiss and veered sideways, circling them now. Liene threw up another sigil—Luxhold, a containment thread that looped like golden wire.
The loop never formed. The spell hit the creature and collapsed in on itself.
[Spell Effect: Nullified]
[Aetheric Signature Unstable]
Yes, I can see that . . .
The Skitterwhit bulldozed forward again. This time, it smashed Liene’s gleam into pieces upon impact, like glass. She staggered back.
Fabrisse pulled at her sleeve. “Liene. You have to hit it.”
“I don’t want to!” she snapped, casting another Gleam to intercept the creature’s fourth lunge. This Gleam was twice as big. “We don’t know if it’s sentient! Maybe it just needs help—”
“It’s trying to end us!”
The Skitterwhit slammed into the light disc again, harder this time. The shield cracked with a hairline shimmer.
“I don’t know what to do!” Liene squeaked. “I . . . I don’t fight!”
What can I do to help? He frantically scrolled through the list of spells he had. There was nothing he could do.
At least, not by himself.
The Voidtouched Skitterwhit wheeled around again, gliding through the air, but just beneath the shoulder joint of its forward wings—if the creature even had proper anatomy—was a subtle ripple in the dark. It darkened differently when it turned, like a smudge over glass, slightly concave.
Fabrisse’s brain snapped to something he’d read once during a dry geomancy seminar—about anatomical parallels between magical insects and crystal-bonded carapaces.
That spot. Right there. Near the thorax, above the ventral segment.
He grabbed a stone from his satchel.
Liene said, “What are you doing?”
“You block. I’ll try hitting it,” he replied.
“Wait—no. Don’t. It’ll mark you as a target.”
The Voidtouched Skitterwhit made a sound akin to a violent wrench in the air. The pressure around them dropped. Then it launched again.
“Fabri—!” Liene's voice cracked.
She flung her arms wide, and the Warding Gleam expanded instantly, doubling in diameter and flashing blinding gold, with a charcoal glow at the edge. Light burst from the edges like she’d slammed open a vault of dawn.
The Skitterwhit hit the shield dead-on with an impact like glass fracturing inside a drum.
This time, it didn’t just bounce off. It was thrown backward in a spiraling tumble of smoke and sparks.
Target: Voidtouched Skitterwhit
[Status: Mostly Unscathed, Reasonably Angered]
“Fabri, tell me where to hit,” Liene said, her voice low and taut like a bowstring.
She anchored one foot into the earth. Her hands pulled outward through the air. Light obeyed.
A spear began to form between her palms. Its haft solidified first, flickering with heatless fire, followed by a tapered head that glowed like a mirrored thorn.
The color kept shifting.
It flared pine green.
Then burned charcoal black.
Then pulsed gold.
The hues cycled like flames caught in an unstable wind, unable to decide whether they meant anxiety, fear, or devotion.
Liene’s arms trembled slightly as she steadied the unstable spear. “Ah . . . I shouldn’t have skipped class.”
Fabrisse’s eyes darted between her grip and the Voidtouched Skitterwhit as it gathered itself again. “See that darkened ripple?
“Uh . . . yeah.”
“Throw it when I say,” he said.
The Voidtouched Skitterwhit surged forward again. Liene’s fingers flexed around the quivering haft of the spear.
Fabrisse stepped wide to judge the creature’s path. Closer . . . Closer . . .
“Now!” he shouted.
Liene launched the spear.
The light split the air like a blazing comet.
It struck, right at the unstable ripple above the thorax.
For a moment, the spear sank into the creature. It was like watching something get swallowed. The void stretched and tried to devour the light whole. Threads of the glowing shaft unraveled into the dark.
But the absorption wasn’t complete.
Midway through, the spear refused to vanish.
A flare of resistance pulsed from within—gold overcoming black—and the entire tip detonated like a flash bomb inside the Skitterwhit’s body.
The creature screamed like a gale howling through hollow bones.
Target: Voidtouched Skitterwhit
[Status: Mild External Damage Suffered, Reasonably Angered]
It reeled and spasmed, and its voidtouched edges flickering in and out of focus like a corrupted mirage.
Fabrisse stared. “You got it.”
The creature recovered in an instant.
It blitzed forward like an arrow from a siege bow, screaming through the grass.
Liene tried to summon another Gleam, but the motion was half a second too slow. The creature crashed into her side like a battering ram.
She went flying, slammed backwards into the brush with a choked gasp. As she was thrown, a thread of white-gold light spiraled into the sky and burst.
[Distress Flare — Activated]
A beacon of radiant magic snapped into the clouds like a rising sun in miniature, casting down whorls of illumination over the field. It was a spell meant for emergencies—visible to any trained mage within a set radius.
The flare's glow cascaded down like liquid dawn. Every blade of grass glistened. As the flare’s light touched their fuzz, it refracted off of the hundreds of Skitterwhit scattering across the field, bent and split into dancing hues. Their aether fur caught the illumination and morphed the light into a prism-thread.
For a heartbeat, the Eastern Target Fields became a living constellation. It would’ve been so beautiful if they weren’t about to die.
“I’m . . . I’m fine!” She said as she coughed, clutching her ribs and trying to prop herself up with one elbow.
Fabrisse wanted to sprint to her. To check how much damage she’d taken, to cast Spectral Appraisal, something—
But the creature turned on him.
It drifted forward with its wings jittering slightly, lightless eyes locked on his chest.
Fabrisse’s breath caught. His hand darted into his satchel.
Stone. Stone. Where stone—
He grabbed one of the heavier stupenstones, flared it with an amber thread, and threw with every bit of STR he had, aiming at the weak spot by the thorax.
The stone struck, too high.
→ Trajectory Curvature: Stable ~ Consistent
→ Estimated Launch Velocity: 5.6 m/s (69% max)
→ Accuracy Deviation: ±11.8%
It bounced off with a hollow thunk, just barely grazing the intended point.
[Damage Dealt: Slight Itch]
Target: Voidtouched Skitterwhit
[Status: Mostly Unscathed, Unreasonably Angered]
“Oh no,” Fabrisse whispered.
2025-07-09 02:52:19 +0000 UTC
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The puffball didn’t even squeak as the Stupenstone hit it. It simply sparked, stiffened, and dropped like a feather.
[Skitterwhit Slain — Clean Kill]
[Sidequest Progress: “Whittle the Whits!”]
✦ Skitterwhits Slain: 10 / 10
✦ Bonus Objective (Single Spell): 10 / 10
[Sidequest Complete — “Whittle the Whits!”]
+1 STR
+1 FP
Bonus Reward: + 2 Earth Thaumaturgy Mastery
✦ Optional Title Earned: “Field-Friendly Exterminator”
[Mastery Training: Stupenstone Fling (Rank II)—Progress to Rank III: 65%]
[Combat Completed: +55 EXP]
[Progress to Level 5: 1290/1500]
Fabrisse stood slowly, stretching out one sore shoulder and letting out a long exhale. His fingers were covered in dirt. His legs ached again. But he’d done it.
He looked out across the Eastern Field.
There were still Skitterwhits everywhere. Dozens, maybe hundreds of them were still hovering, flitting, sparking, zipping between grass stalks like someone had shaken up a bottle of magical static and dumped it over a lawn.
“Wait. How are there still this many?”
A familiar barefoot presence strolled up beside him. “Do you know where Tom is?” It was Liene.
“No idea.”
“Did he say when he’ll be back?”
“It’s Tom. Of course not.”
“There’s no way we’re clearing all of them without Tom,” Fabrisse said.
“Nope.”
“So we’re sitting here now?”
“It’s better than go look for him. We might get lost and he might get lost trying to find us.”
They sat under the settling sun, where patches of darker green and brown suggested dips and rises, all cloaked in the fading light. For a moment, the only sounds were the faint buzzing of distant Skitterwhits and the sleepy creak of a wind-chime swaying from the aetheric post that stood like a crooked shepherd’s staff planted in the earth. That post gave the faculty a way to track magical disturbances, and they made good hangers for wind-chimes and bird-lanterns.
Fabrisse rubbed a dirt smear off his cheek and waited for the inevitable: the moment when Liene would start babbling about nothing in particular.
Usually, when they sat like this, she talked about things like what animal would win in a mud-wrestling tournament (her money was still on badgers), or whether socks were a form of emotional protection, or how the entire moon-cycle calendar was actually a government scam to keep thaumaturges from napping during proper aether tides.
But today, she pulled a book from her satchel. Not a notebook. Not a comic scroll. A book.
Fabrisse stared at the cover, then stared at Liene like she was a gargoyle.
Advanced Principles of Structured Lumen Theory and Applied Restoration Weaving: An Academic Companion to Light Thaumaturgy Across the Nine Affinities.
“You study now?” He asked.
She cracked the spine and flipped to a chapter titled Spectral Diffusion and Emotional Harmonics in Tertiary Healing Zones and summoned a tiny light-wisp between her fingertips. “My study light,” she murmured.
The orb hovered obediently above the page, glowing a pale gold, perfectly steady and shockingly bright despite is miniscule size.
“I’m a final-year student now, Fabri,” she said, dead serious. “The earlier I graduate, the earlier I can go back to bumbling around. My parents already said I can’t go see the regional bison fighting if I don’t pass my finals.”
Fabrisse stared harder. “So you’re doing advanced restoration theory . . . to go watch bison fights?”
“They wear armor and charge each other with aetheric power. It’s cultural.”
Sometimes Fabrisse forgot Liene was still an enrolling student of the Synod due to how much unauthorized arcane tomfoolery she was up to. Sometimes, he forgot how austere of a family she was from. He couldn’t name a single Lugano who wasn’t a pillar of arcane discipline. Her father had been a High Magus Instructant. Her mother too. Her cousins all held posts in different Synod branches.
The path was obvious.
“So that was why you went on an excursion for half a year?” Fabrisse asked.
“Kinda,” Liene said. “Lorvan sent me to a clinic.”
“A what?”
“A real clinic!” She confirmed. “Healing spells, support work, aether triage. He said my affinity profile made me a good candidate.” She conjured a tiny spiral of golden light above her palm, then popped it like a soap bubble. “I’ve got a knack for light-aligned restoration, you know.”
Why a clinic, Fabrisse asked himself. If Lorvan wanted her groomed for an institutional post, he could’ve made her an assistant mentor or researcher within a heartbeat.
But then again . . . it was Liene.
“Did you do well?”
Liene shrugged, pulling up one knee and resting her chin on it. “Technically. I mean, I healed people and oversaw no death.”
“Well, that’s good—”
“But emotionally,” she added, “I don’t think I’d be a great nurse.”
“Why?”
She looked up at the canopy of clouds. “Because patients don’t like it when you sing while doing wound closure. Or ask them if they’ve considered becoming slightly less frail.”
Fabrisse gave her a look.
Liene grinned without looking back. “Apparently ‘Whispermint' is not a substitute for ‘Staunchroot.’ Who knew?”
He shook his head. “So what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “Maybe I’ll be a nurse anyway. A field nurse, though. I don’t want myself stationed at any major academy. Just . . . far from the structured stuff.”
“Really?”
“Why not?” she said, shrugging with both shoulders. “It’s quiet out there. I’d get to sleep in trees and catch fireflies. Maybe my mother can’t ground me if I move far enough East. I’m twenty and still gets grounded, Fabri. Can you believe it?” She broke into a quiet giggle.
“I thought Lorvan does the grounding.”
“Lorvan hands me punishment so mum doesn’t hand me a worse one.” She grinned. “Sometimes, he even lets me sneak out, as long as I don’t cause trouble.”
“Well, I think you’d be a good nurse, Liene.”
It was her turn to stare at him like he was a gargoyle. “Huh?”
“You’re good with people. You’re not afraid of weird situations. You remember which spells make people feel better. And . . .” He paused. “You brought me a fake energy drink and spent your own reserves just so I wouldn’t collapse on fuzz duty.”
Liene blinked rapidly. “Aww. That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me in a while.” She folded her hands in her lap, and for a split second, her usual grin softened into something quieter.
“Wait. Actually, no. You’re also a bit of an airhead.”
Her face instantly scrunched up. “Excuse me?”
“You wandered into the middle of a pest control mission barefoot and started scooping up magical vermin in a mason jar. Not nurse material.”
Liene clutched her chest. “You monster. I mourned Moxley! You saw that!”
“You named him after knowing him for five minutes.”
She threw her arms up. “Okay, fine, maybe I am an airhead sometimes. But look who’s talking, Mr. Stone-Thrower Extraordinaire! Have you figured out what to do with your life yet?”
“Uh . . .” He scratched the back of his head. “I got admitted into the Wing of Stratal Studies. They do lots of theoretical work there. I kinda . . . want to become an aetheric geologist.”
Liene tilted her head. “Oh, okay. Fair. Are you doing well?”
“Kind of. The Assistant there is giving me tasks I can actually do. I think if I keep it up for another semester, he can even write me a referral letter for sanctioned field trips.”
Liene gave a small smile. “That’s actually really good. Like, real progress-good. I'm proud of you.”
Fabrisse scratched his head harder. “Thanks.”
She gave him a nudge with her elbow. “I think you’re going to be one of those cool field researchers who taps a rock with a tuning rod and instantly tells what decade it formed in.”
He laughed under his breath. “That’s not how it works.”
“It will be once you invent the spell for it.” Liene grinned and tucked her knees up to her chest.
Fabrisse rolled a pebble between his fingers. “If I ever do, I’m naming it after myself. ‘Fabrisse’s Stratopulse’ or something equally ridiculous.”
“Ooooh. Or maybe ‘Geochirp.’ That sounds cuter.” She scooted a little closer, her bare feet brushing his boot. “You’ve got to market it, Fabri. If you’re going to be one of those research types, you need dramatic names. They won’t fund your grant if your spell sounds boring.”
“Geochirp is not dramatic. It sounds like something a rock would say while napping.”
She giggled, and nudged his side with her elbow again. “Exactly! That’s the charm.”
Fabrisse glanced over, but she was already digging back into her bag, retrieving the Advanced Light Thaumaturgy textbook and flipping it open to her marked page. She summoned the same pale gold wisp as earlier, and this time she adjusted it by wiggling two fingers so the glow angled toward the page, and coincidentally cast a mellow glow across both of their laps.
She settled in with a little sigh, and then . . . leaned her back against him. The ends of her blond hair grazed over his shoulder, tickling him.
Huh? Since when is she this close?
“Fabri. Hold still for a moment, will you?” She whispered. “I want to concentrate.”
“I am still.”
“Good.” Her whisper became even softer. “It’s so comfy. As long as you don’t move, there’s not a single thing in this world that can move me from this place—”
[PRAXIS-NODE Auto-Defense Activated]
[Proximity Alert: Hostile Pattern Detected]
What?
The grass convulsed. A ripple tore through the field like a silent shockwave, and from the darkest patch of moss near the aetheric post, something surged.
A Skitterwhit.
A Skitterwhit a size of a boar, pitch black, a void in the shape of fuzz, absorbing every ray of light the setting sun tried to cast on it. Even the ambient wisp Liene had summoned shrunk in its presence.
Liene sprang up from where she sat, nearly tripping over her own book. “AETHER’S TOES!” she yelped, leaping away from Fabrisse. “WHAT IS THAT?!”
The monstrosity hovered just inches off the ground, and the grass beneath it curled inward, crisping like it had been pulled into a shadow furnace.
Fabrisse stood, his hands shaking.
That was the color of the void.
This creature meant violence.
2025-07-08 15:50:35 +0000 UTC
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[Skitterwhit Slain — Clean Kill]
[Sidequest Progress: “Whittle the Whits!”]
✦ Skitterwhits Slain: 4 / 10
✦ Bonus Objective (Single Spell): 4 / 10
Fabrisse crept along a patch of whispergrass still warm from the sun. He kept his breathing shallow and steady. Four down. Six to go.
His wrist ached a little from channeling the same spell in repetition. His knees were sore from crouching. And the sweat beading at the back of his neck was making his collar itch. The thrill of his first few clean kills had given way to a slow, creeping burn of fatigue.
Is this what hunters do all day? he wondered. Sneak, squat, and sweat while praying a flying puffball doesn’t explode in your face?
He repositioned himself low behind a clump of sagegrass and spotted his next target: a lone Skitterwhit bobbing in the air not five meters ahead. It hovered erratically, more like a jellyfish than a bird, but stayed within a tight radius.
Fabrisse sucked in a breath, took aim, and flicked the empowered stone forward.
The stone veered slightly to the left. It clipped the edge of a stem and dropped to the ground.
Fabrisse blinked. That was less than a meter. He shouldn’t have missed from this range.
The Skitterwhit twitched but didn’t flee. It gave a squeaky, curious warble and spun in a lazy figure-eight.
Fabrisse retrieved the stone as quietly as he could, brushing off the dirt. His fingers had already reached for another stupenstone.
Breathe. Breathe.
Another Skitterwhit had drifted into view like a dandelion seed, slightly higher in altitude. It was a little farther, but still within range.
He narrowed his eyes, let the stone charge again with a curl of amber light, then flicked it clean and sharp.
Thunk.
The stone smacked directly into a low-hanging iron wind-chime strung between two posts near the edge of the field—likely some sort of old ley-harmonics marker. The impact rang out like a broken bell dropped from a height.
Oh no.
Half a dozen Skitterwhits jolted at once. Sparks flared. One let out a squeaky wheeze of panic and zipped straight up. The others scattered wide.
Fabrisse lurched forward by instinct but stopped himself just in time.
He clenched his fists and dropped back into the grass.
No. Don’t run after them. You chase one, and the others think you’re a predator.
He took a slow breath.
He exhaled again, deeper this time, and let the moment pass.
Above him, a single Skitterwhit peeked out from the curve of a tall reed, watching from a cautious distance, still flaring with nervous sparks.
He eased backward into a new crouch, patience pressed tight behind his teeth.
Reset. Wait. Stay low. Boring.
I won’t miss this time.
The Skitterwhit was calm now, orbiting a seed pod like it had forgotten the wind-chime incident entirely. He raised his arm slowly, focused on the arc—
“Hey Fabri, do you need—”
“Wha—?!”
He spun toward the voice. The stone flew from his hand by reflex.
It struck glass. Specifically, mason jar glass.
A sharp ping rang out followed by the wet crunch of aether-fuzz meeting impact.
The jar shattered.
The spark-happy Skitterwhit inside gave the tiniest, most dramatic squeal, then flopped belly-up onto the ground like an overcooked marshmallow.
Fabrisse froze. His mouth hung open.
[Skitterwhit Slain — Unintentional Critical Hit]
[Sidequest Progress: “Whittle the Whits!”]
✦ Skitterwhits Slain: 5 / 10
✦ Bonus Objective (Single Spell): 5 / 10
The other Skitterwhits nearby shrieked in outrage, or possibly horror, and scattered again. A fresh wave of tiny sparks fled into the brush.
Liene stared at the remains of her once-proud mason jar. Her jaw dropped.
She knelt beside the scene like a mourning widow at a hero’s grave. “No! He was just trying to nibble his way to a better future.”
“I—Liene, I didn’t—”
“His name was Moxley.” She cradled the broken base of the jar like a fallen relic. “He was fluffy, Fabri. He was going to glow mint green when he got older.”
Fabrisse looked down at the still-smoking jar remains. “You named it?”
“It’s a him! Of course I named him! You don’t let a spark creature chew on your robe and not name him.”
He winced. “I panicked. You startled me. I’m sorry!”
“Oh, I startled you?” She clasped her head in agony. “I came here to provide emotional support and instead you obliterated my spark-child.” Then she reached into a pouch she’d carried with herself and took out a bottle amidst the empty mason jars inside. “Also, I brought Logan Primes. Want one?”
“W-what? Weren’t you devastated just now?”
“Oh. Right!” She went back to clasping her head. “Why did you murder my child? He was going to open a moss café.”
“Liene.” Fabrisse sighed exasperatedly.
Liene sighed as if she wanted to out-exasperate Fabrisse’s sigh. “Meh. He was kind of annoying anyway. So, you want a Logan Prime?”
Fabrisse stared at the bottle Liene had produced like it was a cursed relic from a con artist’s vault. The label pulsed with aether-laced ink, and the tagline beneath the logo read, ‘Rejuvenate your core. Realign your vibe.’
“I don’t drink that,” Fabrisse said.
“Why not? It’s good. This one’s Prismberry.”
“You know it’s made by Logan Thaumwright, right?”
“The alchemy influencer?”
“The scammy one who got kicked from the Synod’s apprentice track for selling fake runestones. Now he sponsors tier-1 duelists and says things like ‘drink Prime, get sublime.’”
Liene looked at the bottle. “Huh. That explains the aggressive branding.” Liene looked at the bottle again, then casually chucked it over her shoulder. It bounced off a rock with a hollow fzzzt.
She then flicked her fingers in a lazy sideways spiral. “Hold still.”
“Why?” Fabrisse asked, not moving.
A shimmer of pale mint spiraled into the air, catching the sunlight. The breeze around him suddenly felt cooler and drier. Liene moved her hand in slow, concentric loops, and it felt like the currents around Fabrisse were braided into a calm, directional stream.
His skin felt cooler. The ache in his fingers eased slightly.
“What is that?” he asked.
“Driftcurrent Spiral,” she said, as if naming a sandwich. “It’s one of the air-based restoratives I learned last year. You can think of it as a breeze hug that helps clear aether buildup and stabilize breath intake.”
“Doesn’t that drain your aether reserves?”
She made a dismissive noise. “Naaaaah.”
Fabrisse didn’t question it. Not out loud, anyway. The restorative air curled around him like a second skin, lifting the weight from his shoulders and easing the cramp in his knees. He could think again. His hands stopped shaking. His next breath came easier.
Then Liene yawned.
She let the mint shimmer spiral once more before it waned. “Okay. That’s enough. I’m—uh—gonna take a nap now. No particular reason.” She dropped backward into the grass with a muffled thump, arms spread out in full dramatic sprawl. “I just feel like napping. Don’t mind me.”
Fabrisse glanced over. “You’re not even pretending to sit upright.”
She didn’t answer. She was already sprawled.
Fabrisse tilted his head and activated a spell.
[Spectral Appraisal — Active]
Target: Liene Lugano
Status: Fatigued (Depleted)
FP: 2 / 77
Attributes:
STR: 14
DEX: 25
ARC: 38
— All other attributes are currently restricted.
It definitely drained her reserves.
Fabrisse looked at her again. She was breathing fine, just . . . horizontally, in the middle of the field.
He shook his head and stood. He could get one more while she fake-napped her way back to 3 FP.
He moved to a clearer patch of wildgrass and crouched low. A Skitterwhit hovered nearby, nose twitching toward a sprig of sweetroot.
Fabrisse waited, and timed his shot with newfound focus.
[Skitterwhit Slain — Clean Kill]
[Sidequest Progress: “Whittle the Whits!”]
✦ Skitterwhits Slain: 6 / 10
✦ Bonus Objective (Single Spell): 6 / 10
Yes. Six.
He was about to look for a seventh when he heard a soft rustle. Just beyond the thicket to his right. It wasn’t the zip-zap hover of a Skitterwhit nor the wind brushing whispergrass.
It was more like a slow crunch of leaf litter.
An animal?
He activated Auditory Dissipation Field and Liminal Presence Drift. He moved low, slow, hugging the bend of a half-fallen log as he slid toward the source of the rustling.
A branch dipped. He brushed the grass aside, and found . . . nothing.
There was a flattened patch of grass, and that was it. No footprints were visible. The flattened grass wasn’t quite in the direction the rustle had come from, but at this point, Fabrisse wasn’t even sure if he’d heard the sound right anymore.
He paused behind a low hedge and waited.
Nothing more came.
His internal ping for threats remained blank.
He slowly canceled his stealth spells and exhaled.
Probably just a foraging badger or one of those bark-splitter deer.
He kept a stone in hand, this time fully charged before he looked for target number seven.
2025-07-07 21:48:22 +0000 UTC
View Post
The Eastern Target Fields were technically outside the bounds of campus, which meant no faculty supervision, no spell range limiters, and plenty of dried leaves that looked extremely flammable. Tommaso had assured Liene and Fabrisse that this was ‘absolutely fine’ and ‘sanctioned in spirit if not in detail.’
Skitterwhits were winged, jittery creatures, no bigger than a butterfly. Fabrisse had imagined something vaguely mouse-shaped, maybe with glowy eyes. Instead, they looked like a cross between a flying ferret and a puffball, covered in iridescent aether fuzz that sparked charcoal whenever they hovered over the grass.
“Okay,” Tommaso said, crouching behind a slightly smoldering log. “You’ve got to slay them just enough to make them jitter, but not enough to make them combust.”
“Why would they combust?” Fabrisse asked.
“They’re called Skitterwhits, not Stablewhits,” Tommaso replied. “They’re not born to hold that much aether in them. You want a clean takedown, not an aether burst that takes out half the local moss growth. So even if I want to burn them all with a single spell, I shouldn’t. How far can you aim with your fling?”
“A couple meters.”
“Good enough. But you need to be precise. Skitterwhits are dumb, but one running amok might lead to them all running amok. Now . . .” Tommaso whipped his head around, eyes narrowing. “Hold on. Where’s Liene?”
Fabrisse straightened up from behind the log. “Wasn’t she right next to—”
They heard muffled footsteps, and both turned.
Liene was twenty paces away, entirely unsupervised, barefoot for some reason, and strolling through the field like it was a late-summer meadow picnic.
In her hands, she held a wide-mouthed mason jar. Inside: one thoroughly noncombusted Skitterwhit, floating in like a spark-happy dust bunny.
She grinned over her shoulder. “Hi!”
“. . . What are you doing?” Tommaso asked.
“I was collecting them,” she said simply, lifting the jar. “Look at this one! It tried to chew on my robe and then curled into a ball when I clamped the jar over its head. Isn’t that the cutest threat display you’ve ever seen?”
The Skitterwhit sparked nervously inside the jar, then sneezed a tiny puff of aether that briefly turned pine green.
The System pinged in Fabrisse’s vision.
[Sidequest Progress: “Whittle the Whits!”]
✦ Skitterwhits Slain: 0 / 10
✦ Skitterwhits Befriended and Illegally Contained in a Mason Jar: 1 (not counted)
Tommaso said, “Sure, Linny. Now go put the remaining five thousand Skitterwhits into your jar.”
Tommaso dusted off his palms, suddenly all business. “Okay, no more playing around. These little fuzz-torpedoes will scatter if they sense danger. If you want a clean strike, you’ve got to get close without agitating them.” He gave him a look. “Watch me, okay?”
He crouched low. His shoulders dropped, hands loose at his sides as he dropped below the tallest-standing grass. He looked less like a thaumaturge and more like a panther stalking magical prey.
“Skitterwhits don’t see in the normal spectrum,” he murmured. “They feel heat and mana spikes. So we stay low and boring. Got it?”
“Low, boring,” Fabrisse repeated.
He slid between two tufts of moss, stopped behind a patch of whispergrass, and slowly pointed two fingers toward a lone Skitterwhit hovering above a clump of yellow clover. The creature flew in a circle but didn’t flee.
His fingers flared with a tight red-orange spark with a hazy mint tail. The spell was barely bigger than a thumb, but when he released it, the dart zipped through the air and struck the Skitterwhit dead-center in the back.
The puffball let out a squeaky wheeze and dropped onto the moss, its sparks extinguished instantly.
[Skitterwhit Slain — Clean Kill]
Fabrisse opened his mouth slightly. “You actually made that look . . . professional.”
Tommaso turned, face smug. “That’s because it was. We don’t go full pyro on things the size of an apricot.”
The System pinged again.
[Sidequest Progress: “Whittle the Whits!”]
✦ Skitterwhits Slain: 0 / 10
Note: You did not slay the Skitterwhit.
Tommaso slid back to Fabrisse and patted him on the calf. “Your turn, Master Fling.”
Fabrisse took a slow breath and reached into his satchel. His fingers closed around the same small, smooth stupenstone he’d used last time. He crouched lower and crept between the whispergrass tufts, mimicking Tommaso’s movements as best he could. He was not, in any world, as fluid or feline, but so far no Skitterwhit had scattered yet.
One such creature flitted lazily above a patch of wild myrtle, fuzz sparking faintly with sky-blue static.
Fabrisse narrowed his eyes and activated a spell.
[Spectral Appraisal — Active]
Scanning target: Lesser Aetheric Skitterwhit (juvenile, non-variant)
— Status: Mildly Anxious. Not yet threatened. Has noticed something mildly uninteresting in the air.
‣ STR (Strength): 1
‣ DEX (Dexterity): 2
‣ FOR (Fortitude): 1
‣ INT (Intuition): 3
‣ ARC (Aetheric Resonance Control): 0
‣ EMO (Emotional Attunement): 7
‣ SYN (Synaptic Clarity): 0
It’s basically a flying plushie.
“Do it clean,” Tommaso whispered from behind the log. “One shot.”
He slowly exhaled and let the stone hover in his palm, channeling a spark into it just in case.
A thin flare of amber coiled around his wrist as the spell charged.
He locked on the Skitterwhit’s circular pattern, then lobbed the empowered stone with a quick spiral flick.
The stone struck the Skitterwhit right at its fuzz.
The creature gave an chirp then dropped like a feather. It landed, completely inert.
[Skitterwhit Slain — Clean Kill]
[Sidequest Progress: “Whittle the Whits!”]
✦ Skitterwhits Slain: 1 / 10
✦ Bonus Objective (Single Spell): 1 / 10
Fabrisse let out a breath. “I did it. I actually did it.”
Tommaso nodded, pleased. “Nice throw, Master Fling. That’s one fuzzball down.”
Fabrisse exhaled and flexed his fingers. The tension in his wrist was still fading, but the thrill of watching the puffball drop clean was oddly satisfying.
Tommaso brushed some soot off his sleeve and gestured across the field. “Alright. Can I trust you to be on your own while I sweep the north edge? There’s a cluster near the stone terrace, and I’d rather not have them setting the moss on fire before I do.”
Fabrisse hesitated.
Tommaso pointed at him. “Don’t go all dramatic if you miss. No flailing, no yelping, and definitely no weird emotional monologuing. Just quietly pick up your stone and try again. Dignity, Fabri.”
Fabrisse opened his mouth to agree, but then remembered Lorvan’s warning. ‘If you’re not in class, be with someone. At all times.’
“Actually,” Fabrisse said, glancing back across the field, “can you call Liene over here first? Just to stick close while I do my throws.”
Tommaso raised an eyebrow. “Are you scared of the Skitterwhits, dude?”
“No, I just—Lorvan said someone should always be with me.”
“Ah.” Tommaso gave a knowing nod. “Sure. I’ll grab her on my way across. But don’t let her do your job for you.”
Fabrisse held up a hand solemnly. He saw a silhouette in the air, and looked up to find a hooded raven that looked exactly like Ilya’s familiar. Then he saw a mini-snowman flying across the sky.
Yeah . . . That’s definitely Ilya’s raven.
“Well, that’s my cue,” Tommaso craned his neck at the raven also. “Have fun with Linny.”
Then he jogged toward the edge of the field, already conjuring a small containment ring in one palm.
Okay . . . It seems like he wants to spend some time with another partner.
Fabrisse shifted in place, crouched again, and began scanning for his next quarry. Further to his left, Liene was herding another Skitterwhit with a stick.
2025-07-07 20:25:15 +0000 UTC
View Post
“This is nowhere near one meter,” Fabrisse muttered to himself as he closed his palm, extinguishing the fire inside. He’d been able to sustain the spell for more than three seconds now after some practice, and he was no longer burned by his own spells anymore. Apparently, after a while, you got used to your own fire. Professor Markenth once said, ‘A caster’s flame recognizes the intent of its source. Your mana wraps the fire like a leash, tempering it until you choose to unleash it.’ It did make a lot of sense.
[Mastery Training: Basic Combustion Funnel (Rank I)—Progress to Rank II: 4%]
He’d been sitting inside his dorm room, making a fire helix again and again for the past two hours, making little progress. It seemed like brute forcing his way to mastery would be an arduous and painful journey.
He stared at the description of the spell, wondering if relying on the Silvian quartz Ganvar had given him was the cause of the slow progress.
Spell: Basic Combustion Funnel (Rank I)
Type: Active
Sub-Affinity: Fire (Flame)
Tag: [Utility] [Combat]
Description: The caster channels a narrow stream of volatile flame through a focused conduit, creating a pressurized burst of fire that extends up to 1 meter.
The spell’s destructive potential is inherently limited by its Rank I tier. It will not scale with ARC or SYN.
Aetheric Reaction: 44% Emotion: Resolve + 24% Flame Sub-Affinity Core + 17% Gesture Arc (Spiral-Inward) + 15% Mnemonic: “Draw breath, coax warmth, speak bright” → Volatile Flame Helix Projection (≤1m)
Why are there so many components? He thought. His Fire affinity was Suppressed. That alone meant he could only fulfill maybe 10% of the 24% needed for flame attunement—an obvious bottleneck. But even with that limitation, he should still be able to push the other components harder to compensate.
And he had been.
He’d spent days drilling arc-forming mechanics. His spiral-ins were clean, no wasted motion. The mnemonic, too—he’d timed it to his breathing, kept the cadence exact, and recited it with enough dramatic emphasis to impress a stage troupe. So if it wasn’t those two . . .
Resolve. He had resolve, but it seemed as though his EMO was still too low to resonate properly to the aether.
Ah, I hate spells that have emotion as the main component.
When he tried casting without the quartz, though, the results were even worse. Half the time, he couldn’t get the fire to start at all. And when it did spark, it fizzled out as quickly as it appeared—no helix, no funnel, just a hiccup of heat and an embarrassing puff of smoke.
It was like trying to light a torch in the rain with a flintstone.
One more time. If I fail, I’ll just skip this spell and focus on ones where emotions are unimportant.
He took another breath, repositioned his hands, and only managed to conjure a weak flame when the door clacked open behind him.
Greg stepped in with a canvas bag over one shoulder and a lopsided container of soup in the other hand. He looked at Fabrisse, then the flame, then said, “Fabrisse. You cannot practice Fire Thaumaturgy in our room.”
Fabrisse froze, and the flame vanished. “It’s a very small flame.”
Greg set the bag down, then the soup. “Do you know what happened to the last person who said that?”
“They leveled a dorm?” It was always some absurd consequence with Greg.
“No. But they melted their desk and shorted out three glyph conduits. The rest of us had to use chalkboards for two weeks.” Greg sat down in front of his desk. “You cannot practice Fire Thaumaturgy in our room. Fire is a fire hazard.”
“I’m sure it’s not that bad, Greg.”
“When’s the last time you see a Fire Thaumaturge use fire anywhere near a building, apart from Synod-sanctioned ones?”
Fabrisse opened his mouth to argue, and that was when something blazed past the window.
A streak of scarlet light flared across the frame, followed by the very loud whoosh of combustion followed by the even louder “YOOOO DUDE!”
Both of them turned.
Outside the third-floor dorm window, a figure coasted past—shirt half open, flame jets bursting from his palms, and one foot propped heroically on a green-tinted, surfing-board-shaped gale like he was trying to surf his way into legend.
“Guess who’s back!” Tommaso Ardefiamme hollered, still rising in altitude. “Linny told me you’d be here, Fabri. In fact, she’s jogging on the ground like some pleb toward you right now!”
The gale immediately dipped too far forward. Tommaso flailed, spun a perfect quarter-turn in the sky, and slammed directly into the upper boughs of a massive campus tree just outside their dorm window.
Startled birds erupted from the canopy. Leaves rained onto the balcony rail below.
Greg closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Three seconds ago, Greg,” Fabrisse muttered. “Three seconds ago.”
There was a long rustling pause. Then a thump. Then a grunt. Then a tap on the window.
Tommaso’s face appeared in the third-story window, upside down and leaf-dappled, grinning like he'd just gotten off a wyvern’s back and wanted to go again.
He was dangling from one of the tree branches by his ankles, having clearly used a combustion burst to vault himself up to the sill.
He knocked harder. “Open up, roomie! I brought vibes!”
“Why do your friends all like to climb in from the windows?” Greg asked.
“Because my friends are the type to be denied entries at the gate,” Fabrisse replied. He got up, and unlatched the window. Tommaso immediately swung one leg over and clambered into the room like a very confident raccoon breaking into a bakery.
He stood, brushed pine needles off his shirt, and flashed a thumbs-up. “No damage to the tree. You’re welcome.”
Greg had already returned to his seat. “No fire inside the room.”
Tommaso raised both hands. A few stubborn embers clung to his wrist and boots, so he clapped once and swept them out with a sharp downward motion. The remaining warmth blinked out.
“There. Fire-free room. For now.” He spun toward Fabrisse. “Anyway, I have a fantastic opportunity for you to hone your stupenstone-flinging skills.”
“Huh?” Fabrisse replied.
Tommaso grinned wider. “There’s a sanctioned target field just outside the east quadrant. Infested with Skitterwhits.”
“Skitterwhits?”
“Magical pests. Harmless to humans, but absolutely wreck low-yield leyfields. Their aether discharge triggers runoff resonance in shallow-buried artifact lines. So they’re ecological nuisance; bad for the gardens, blah blah. They spark wildly if you scare them, and that’s why we must do that.”
Greg turned slowly in his chair. “Students cannot go on pest control excursions without a signed slip from the Department of Familiar Conservation and Unnatural Fauna.”
“I have one!” Tommaso whipped a half-folded parchment from his belt and waved it. “As of this morning. You know, punishment detail for the incident.”
Greg arched an eyebrow. “Ah. So you’re the co-conspirator of the dummy detonation fiasco.”
“Wait. You know about that?” Fabrisse’s voice raised.
“Everyone knows about that,” Greg said.
Tommaso gestured broadly. “I’ve told you, Fabri, detonating dummies brings nothing but opportunities!” He had not told Fabrisse that. “Which is exactly why I now have official clearance to go Skitterwhit-thumping on the edge of campus, and guess what? I need a partner! They only allow one partner and you’re the only one I can count on.”
Fabrisse sighed.
“It’s a violation if you cast anything unauthorized,” Greg muttered, already pulling out his dorm infraction log.
Fabrisse hesitated. He looked at Greg. Then at Tommaso’s absurdly hopeful grin.
“I’ll bring goggles,” he said at last.
Tommaso punched the air. “Yes! We ride at dusk!”
Then came a knock on the door. “I’ll get it,” Fabrisse said as he walked over. On the other side was yet another silly grin, this time from Liene.
She chirped, “Hi, Fabri. Do you want to squash some Skitterwhits—” then she saw Tommaso. “Tom’s already here! So you’ve heard? We can go together as a team. You can join too, Greg, if you like.”
“No, thank you,” Greg said.
“Wait.” Fabrisse turned to Tommaso. “I thought they only allow one partner?”
Tommaso didn’t miss a beat. “They do, unless the second partner is technically your emotional support summoner. They can’t cast spells; they can only, well, provide emotional support. It’s in the fine print. Liene qualifies. Look at that grin.”
Liene’s grin grew wider.
The System pinged.
[Sidequest Received: “Whittle the Whits!”]
✦ Objective: Slay 10 Skitterwhits near the Eastern Target Fields.
✦ Bonus Objective: Slay all 10 using the same Stone Thaumaturgy spell.
✦ Rewards:
+1 STR
+1 FP
✦ Optional Title: “Field-Friendly Exterminator”
Fabrisse stared at the quest screen. Why is that the name of the quest?
2025-07-07 15:50:37 +0000 UTC
View Post
“We’re learning emotional sustainment today,” Ganvar Ciemnosc folded her sleeves like she was about to perform a dissection. “Today, you’ll ignite and sustain your spark for more than a minute.”
Fabrisse sat on the grass and held the quartz Ganvar had given him between his palms like a consecrated scroll. “For more than how much time?”
Ganvar gave him a look that could have curdled warm milk. “A minute. You are supposed to be capable of feeling emotions for more than one minute, aren’t you?”
He cleared his throat. “Right.”
Ganvar gave him a glance like she was already exhausted. “You are to select one valid emotional state, preferably something you're actually capable of feeling, and hold that resonance through the quartz for at least fifteen seconds first.” She glanced to the left. “You’re late.”
“I’m not!” Liene appeared from behind one of the courtyard trellises, stuffing the last of a toasted rye roll into her mouth. “I was here. Just . . . in the shadow of that suspiciously large hedge.” She pointed to the hedge. It was not suspiciously large.
Ganvar sighed.
Liene plopped onto the grass beside Fabrisse, leaning back on her palms like she was at a picnic rather than a training session. “Okay, okay, okay, teach. What are we learning today?”
“You would’ve known had you been here a minute earlier,” Ganvar said.
Fabrisse didn’t dare teasing her. He knew he wouldn’t win the ‘punctual’ argument with someone who had physically dragged him out of bed for a morning lecture.
“We’re learning emotional sustainment,” he whispered instead, eyes still on the Silvian quartz in his hands.
Liene leaned closer and peeked at his quartz. “Do resolve. You’re good at being annoyingly stubborn when you want to be.”
Ganvar gave her a look. “Do not suggest emotions to other students. That is not encouragement. That is psychic interference.”
“I’m helping!”
“You are not.”
Fabrisse took a deep breath. “Okay. Resolve. I’ll try.”
He closed his eyes, curled both hands around the quartz, and thought about every single thing he had failed at. Which was, unfortunately, a very effective list. Then he added Liene’s voice saying ‘I paid for the both of us’ to it for good measure.
The quartz warmed.
Atop the quartz appeared sparks, first pale, then richer, until it curled into a steady, muted amber.
Liene, peering at the quartz beside him, tilted her head. “Fabri. That’s shame, not resolve.”
Fabrisse didn’t answer. He kept his eyes on the quartz, letting the shame hum against his skin.
Ganvar stepped closer, watching the resonance curl up toward his wrist like pale smoke. “Let it run for fifteen seconds.”
The shame held, faint but sustained.
[Resonance Sync: 9% → 14% → 18%]
[Emotion Category: Shame (Stable)]
[Elapsed Time: 0:07… 0:12… 0:15]
[Threshold Reached — Emotional Sustainment Achieved]
Ganvar nodded. “Good.”
Fabrisse let out a breath. “I perform best with this emotion.”
“Now double it.”
“Double it?”
“Thirty seconds,” she said. “Sustained shame. If that’s the emotion you can conjure best, then you’ll learn to master it first.”
Liene made a small noise of protest. “You know shame is a destabilizing emotion, right? The sparks typically don’t keep well; that’s why we don’t learn to conjure it in practice. He’s gonna start unraveling.”
Ganvar didn’t look at her. “Thirty seconds shouldn’t be hard.”
Fabrisse inhaled shakily, turned his focus inward again, and cupped the rock tighter. The amber glow sparked back to life, dim but consistent.
He gathered the same list of failures from earlier. The shame curved low in his gut and bloomed again through his fingertips.
[Resonance Sync: 9% → 18% → 22%]
[Elapsed Time: 0:07… 0:12… 0:15… 0:19… 0:21…]
Then the amber flared like light from a lighthouse. His wrists started to tingle. This was the numbing sting that came from holding too much emotion in your hands without bracing.
The physical sting proved to be too much of a distraction. He felt the corner of one intrusive thought slip in. What if this is all I’m ever good at? What if I’m not even doing shame right? And with it, the structure of the emotion buckled.
The amber dimmed. A fine crackle ran through the resonance thread like glass under stress.
[Resonance Sync: 27% → 21% → 14%]
[Elapsed Time: 0:24... (UNSTABLE)]
Ganvar’s voice cut in. “Don’t let it dip.”
But it was already slipping.
The light vanished like a pulled curtain.
[Resonance Lost.]
[Sync Reset.]
[Resonance Fatigue Detected: Emotional Overload — Recommend Stabilizing Emotion: Joy / Anticipation / Gratitude]
The quartz cooled in his hands, and for a second, he didn’t say anything. His chest ached. His wrists tingled with cold where the resonance had withdrawn.
Ganvar stepped forward, calm but sharp. “You overfed the emotion and let it collapse under its own weight.”
Liene peered sideways at him. “What were you thinking about?”
He didn’t answer.
Ganvar sighed. “Try again. And this time, keep it simple. Feel it, don’t wrestle with it. If you feel a physical sting, you’re trying to hold too much.”
“Right.”
He tried, and tried again. But after three attempts, he still failed. Both Ganvar and Liene demonstrated to him once more, but he couldn’t replicate.
Ganvar exhaled, then straightened. “All right. Fifteen seconds is a pass. For now.”
Fabrisse widened his eyes. “Really?”
“You’re not built for endurance yet, clearly. But that should be enough to at least attempt Harmonization.”
Liene perked up. “Oh, already?”
“Well, you only pay me for two lessons, so we have to take shortcuts,” Ganvar shrugged. “Harmonization requires two participants. You’ll share an emotional state and channel it into a mutual aether pool. From there, either party can redirect the pooled aether to cast a spell. It’s an intermediate-level two-person circuit, but it’s actually not that difficult.”
“That’s allowed?”
“It’s encouraged. Cooperative channeling is more efficient in high-load rituals. And more importantly—” She flexed her fingers, and clean, bright ivory thaumaturgic sparks kindled at her knuckles, small and sharp. “—it trains precision and co-regulation.” She stepped closer and tapped the grass beside her. “Sit up. Face me. We’ll use Resolve as the anchor emotion.”
“I can try,” he said, uneasily.
“Good. You already feel it. That’s step one.”
Fabrisse straightened his spine, legs crossed, shoulders squared. He watched her summon a faint ring of glowing lines around them—like a glyph traced in dew—anchored to a center point between their hands.
“This is the pool,” Ganvar said. “Feel your own spark, isolate it as Resolve, and feed it here.” She pointed to the center of the ring. “I’ll maintain it until you find the current.”
He tried. He really tried. He called up the same mental scaffolding: the quiet, gnawing refusal to quit, the weight of every failure, the will to not repeat them. Resolve flickered inside him like a thread pulled taut. The emotion was there. The quartz even warmed in his lap.
But when he tried to send it—when he tried to reach across that invisible gap into the shared pool—it all turned vague and muddy.
“Where is the pool exactly?” he asked, squinting at the space between them.
“I’ve given you the approximate location,” Ganvar’s eyes didn’t waver. “You’re not looking for a place. You’re looking for pressure. You feel where your emotion would land if it left you. Aim it there.”
“I’m trying,” he said through his teeth. “It’s just . . . it’s like I’m throwing fog at fog.”
Liene, lounging nearby with a berry in her mouth, offered unhelpfully, “Imagine it like a faucet. Not a hose.”
Ganvar took a step forward. “Watch me.” She closed her eyes. The spark of Resolve around her pulsed, steady and brilliant. Then, like liquid into a bowl, the sparks slid into the central glyph, where it shimmered gold-white.
“You see that?” she asked.
“Yes,” Fabrisse whispered, watching the center glow. “But how did you—”
“Because I’ve practiced. You haven’t.” She opened her eyes again. “Now don’t try to replicate the glow. That’s just a byproduct. Contribute your emotion to where mine went. Think of it like—”
He was already trying, but her instructions just didn’t make any sense. The emotion sparked inside him again, and ivory sparks formed inside his palm. He directed it toward the space she indicated. He even swung his arms toward that direction.
Ganvar gave a short, dry breath. “You’re treating this like a math problem. It’s not. It’s more like singing in tune with someone else’s note.”
Liene hummed off-key just to prove a point.
Then, his sparks fizzled. He’d hit his limit.
“Well, we’ll get it right next time.” Liene tapped him on the shoulder before turning toward the space where Ganvar’s pool was supposed to be. She stared at it in awe. “Teach, how are you able to sustain your aether pool for so long. I can only sustain a Harmonization pool for 30 seconds max. You must have really good emotional control and resonance!”
“To understand your own emotions, you need to know how others feel. Same goes with resonance. I train in different affinities and emotion ranges to understand the best practices. Some affinities, like Energy, have very efficient aetheric output which allows them to maintain the spells for over long duration. I picked up a few tricks from their casting process.”
“But wouldn’t that mean breaking from the Synod-approved methods?”
“Oftentimes, yes. But they’ve already allowed us to change the mnemonics how we see fit. I don’t see why we couldn’t borrow techniques from different elements if it means optimizing our spells. Acing tests is one thing. Efficient casting is another.”
“Then you must know techniques from so many different elements! Can you teach me some?” Liene clasped her hands.
“If you compensate me for my time.” Ganvar finally checked the time dial clipped to her sleeve.
Liene’s eyes lit up. “Oh, oh! Can you show me an Energy spell you’ve adapted?”
Ganvar smiled faintly. “Okay.”
She raised a hand and traced a sharp arc in the air. Light fractured in a lattice pattern, condensing into a needle-thin bolt of energy that crackled with bright yellow filaments. With a jab, she loosed it into the empty space—it danced in a zigzag before vanishing in a pop of ozone.
Fabrisse winced even before the flash. His hand was already halfway up, fingers splaying instinctively to shield his eyes. The bright light left threads behind his vision, too sharp, too sudden. He turned to the side, blinking rapidly.
Liene clapped. “That was so cool! It looked like a lightning sketch! Can we see something harder? Show me another element—any element!”
Liene is really like a child when she gets to see something new and shiny, Fabrisse thought.
Ganvar didn’t answer. Instead, she brought her hands together and turned her wrists in a slow, spiraling gesture. Fire shimmered to life across her palms, tightly wound into a flickering helix. Water rose to meet it, not dousing the flame, but weaving through it like molten glass. Air folded in next, curling around the core in steady, rhythmic pulses. Finally, threads of dust and mineral lifting drew themselves to the motion like filings to a magnet.
The swirling core twisted into a smooth, translucent form—neither fire nor ice, neither wind nor stone.
“This makes a great bomb when you detonate it,” she said.
“T-that’s so cool! Is that . . . flux?” Liene couldn’t peel her eyes away from the core.
Flux was the only quadbryd element in recorded Thaumaturgy, only accessible through complete resonance with the primaries, which meant it was never worth it to train with unlocking Flux in mind. And she even mastered Earth deeply enough to reach that? How much time did she spend on affinities?
In nine years, he couldn’t reach an acceptable affinity familiarity with a second basic element, let alone four. Most of his peers could also only specialize in one or two elements.
So that must be the difference between a normal student and a High Distinction one. Or maybe she just has unlimited time.
She checked the time dial again, then stood with the finality of a dismissal. “That’s enough for today,” she said, brushing nonexistent dust from her layered robes. “Kestovar. You’re hitting a ceiling. Sustained shame is possible, but not sustainable. You’ll make better progress if your nervous system doesn’t give out during resonance.”
Fabrisse exhaled. His hands were still trembling, though he tried to hide it as he tucked the rock carefully back into its pouch.
Ganvar sighed one last time. She stayed quiet for a second, then said, “Maybe the wording I’ve used was wrong. Don’t guide. Just contribute your emotion. That’s what Harmonize is supposed to be.”
That still didn’t make a lot of sense to him.
“Oh well. We’ll nail it next time,” Liene stretched her arms overhead like she’d just wrapped up a leisurely nap. “Dinner?” she asked, already turning toward the courtyard stairs. “I’m in a toasted mood today. Maybe that sandwich stall near the Gate Square?”
“I’ll catch up,” Fabrisse said quickly, not quite meeting her eyes. “Go ahead first?”
Liene raised an eyebrow. “Don’t make me regret letting you order second again.”
He waved her off with a tight smile. Once she was out of earshot, he turned back to Ganvar, who was re-tying the flap of her long sleeve.
[Training Completed: +26 EXP]
[Progress to Level 5: 1235/1500]
He’d had a question in his head since the beginning of the session. A few questions about Rimmar, who was possibly related to her. If he was subtle enough, he could just pass it off as casual conversation.
He hesitated for a full two seconds longer than necessary, then very casually asked, “Surely you have seen forbidden magic in your life! Have you ever worked with, uh . . . Darkness spells?”
Ganvar squinted at him like the sun was shining directly at her face. “Is that because of the way I look, or because of my brother?”
Fabrisse nearly choked. “What—no—I just—”
She glanced at him sidelong. “Don’t panic. I’m used to it.”
“I wasn’t—I mean, I wasn’t trying to stereotype or anything—”
Ganvar folded the final strap of her cloth pouch and turned to face him fully. Her voice, when it came, was cool but without malice. “I don’t practice that element. It doesn’t pair well with emotional alignment spells, and it makes artifact tuning volatile.” She paused. “Also, I’m not close to my brother. So I don’t know where he learned it. Or why.”
Fabrisse nodded too fast. “Okay. That’s—that makes sense.”
She narrowed her eyes even more, just enough to make him squirm. “Why are you asking?”
“No reason. Just curious.”
Ganvar stared at him one second longer, then slung the pouch over her shoulder. “If it’s curiosity, ask the Professors. If it’s concern, talk to your mentor. If it’s gossip—ask your girlfriend.”
“Who’s my girlfriend?”
“Aren’t you guys dating?”
“I’m dating who . . .”
Ganvar sighed. Then she turned and left.
Fabrisse stood there a beat longer, chewing on the silence.
He didn’t realize until he looked down that his fingers were still twitching against the outline of the quartz pouch in his hand.
2025-07-07 10:47:27 +0000 UTC
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