It still felt pretty weird to me to even be entertaining the thought about such a thing.
My friends were happy to see me, but Felris’s cheery welcome quickly turned into a disappointed pout. I looked to Felton, who shrugged.
“I take it Rikton said no?”
“Well… kind of,” Felton said, and Felris handed me a letter. I unsealed it and gave it a read.
Tovar,
We heard what happened between you, Felris, and the Count of Hyron’s heir. Gustar’s actions were out of line, and we have since learned about his other inappropriate actions. We have spoken with the Count of Hyron and agreed to terminate the engagement. Trisellia and I deeply appreciate your support of our family.
We have also heard about Felris’s plan to arrange an engagement with you. While you have already been a valuable ally to Obdorn, and while Trisellia and I both think you are a wonderful young man, we agree that an arranged engagement with you at this time would be premature, not just for Felris but for you, as well.
Neither Trisellia nor I have a problem with you joining our family, especially if you love our daughter. You have already done enough for Obdorn and our children to be welcomed with open arms. (I also have you to thank for Felton’s newfound interest in training with the sword, which I couldn’t be happier about.)
However, you are a young man with so much potential left unexplored. We worry that locking you into a single future now would limit your accomplishments, intentionally or unintentionally, if you set yourself on this course.
Felton has told us about how the term had affected Felris, and how her future plans for you helped her refocus on what’s in front of her. To counter this, we have told Felris that we will not approve of an engagement to you in the first place until after she graduates from the academy.
As for you, we’ve decided that, should you still want to marry our daughter after you’ve graduated and she still wishes for it as well, we will only allow it once you have accomplished something for yourself first, in your own name. We would like to see where your potential takes you without constraints before you are bound by an arranged marriage.
You are, of course, still welcome to visit us whenever you like. Fellius would love to see you again, especially any advancements you’ve made with your swordsmanship after your miraculous recovery.
We wish you the best, and good luck with the coming term.
Sincerely,
Rikton and Trisellia
I folded the letter up, tucking it into my pocket, and found myself grateful that Rikton had such a diplomatic mind. It was just about the perfect solution. Felris would need to work for her parents’ approval, which gave her time to consider other options if her childish crush didn’t stick, but still provided the basics of an agreement so that she didn’t have to worry herself about it while she focused on her education. As for me, it gave me room to walk away if I felt I was being strong-armed by Felris or her family, and also forced me to put myself in a more favorable position before an engagement would happen, so that I came to it as more of an equal, if I still wanted that. I would have more options at that point as well, if I didn’t.
It also protected Obdorn. Had I been angling to leech off the family and the territory, accomplishing nothing else with my life, this prevented me from doing so. I didn’t think that’s what Rikton or Trisellia actually thought of me, but it made sense to protect themselves somewhat, and to protect their daughter.
“This seems… fair,” I said, looking back up at the siblings.
“You’ll do it, right?” Felris asked, looking at me with pleading eyes. “You’ll find a way to make a name for yourself and satisfy my parents?”
I still wasn’t sure what my plans were moving forward, but if my goals continued taking me towards the peak of what was possible in a lifetime, I most likely would end up making a name for myself. And it was hard to ignore her puppy dog eyes. I nodded. “I’m not sure what, but yeah, I will.”
Felris’s smile was a bit blinding, and I cleared my throat awkwardly, trying not to get too embarrassed at how excited she was about a future with me. Felton sighed dramatically, but hid a smile as well.
“Anyway,” I said, changing the subject and looking at Felton. “Your dad also said something about sword training.”
Felton nodded, rubbing his shoulders. “He showed me the basics.”
I grinned. “Let’s see what you’ve learned.”
After an afternoon of training with Felton—and trying not to get too flustered as Felris watched—I told the siblings that I would see them tomorrow and headed back to the manor. I wanted to get a full night sleep before the start of the summer term.
* * *
“Wind magic,” Somnius began, standing in the academy training grounds. “Technically, [Create Wind] is as easy of a spell as [Create Water]. Maybe even easier. Can anyone tell me why we don’t start with [Create Wind]?”
I glanced around to see if anyone would answer, but no one volunteered.
“You,” Somnius said, pointing at one of my classmates. “Cast [Create Wind], with no intent.”
Everyone watched while the poor kid struggled to cast the spell through his nerves. When it finally clicked and the spell was cast, we all watched as absolutely nothing happened.
“Good. As everyone just saw, [Create Wind] is not difficult to cast, but it is difficult to observe. Novice mages begin with more material spells like [Create Water] because it clearly displays the success of the spell, as well as the strength of the spell given the volume created, without the spell being a risk factor to those around the trainee.
“From there, we add intention, and that allows us to begin using less material spells like [Create Fire]. As you all learned this past winter, [Create Fire] with intention allows us to add power, force, and accuracy. This allows us to turn a creation spell into an offensive spell. Colloquially, this is often called a fireball. That brings us back to [Create Wind]. Does anyone know a colloquial attack using wind magic?”
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This question led to some raised hands, and Somnius pointed to another classmate of mine. “Wind blade,” she said.
Somnius nodded. “Wind blade, also known as wind cutter, is one of the most well known attacks using [Create Wind]. Watch,” he said, then turned to begin his cast.
At the end of his invocation, a force ripped ahead of Somnius, barely visible but for a minor distortion of the air, and one of the five targets was sliced clean in half.
“Now. Who can tell me the problem with this attack?”
Felton raised his hand, and Somnius chose him to answer. “The force and intent requirement. To create a blade of wind with enough force to cut, while shaped with enough intent, you need a substantial Will.”
“Correct. Frankly, most of you probably lack the Will to successfully launch a wind blade. Almost any mage who can successfully cut with wind will be able to cut with water beforehand. What good is wind magic, then?”
No one had an answer, so Somnius continued on his own.
“While cutting with water is doable with a lower Will than cutting with wind, conjuring water requires more mana than conjuring air. Naturally, the amount of mana you can channel is directly related to your Will, but this means that you can cast more instances of [Create Wind] than you could of [Create Water] before fatiguing yourself.
“Any conjuration can be powerful. The trick is knowing when to use them. Since no one here should be able to cut with wind just yet, let’s talk about a more basic offensive tactic with wind magic: blunt blows. A blade requires a lot of intent, but if we cast an orb of air, like your fireballs, you can hit with quite a lot of power without it costing too much of your internal mana. It’s also cleaner. Sometimes, you don’t want to scorch your target, or you don’t want to soak the area. Wind magic disperses to nothing.”
The lesson continued, and I parsed what I was learning. If fireballs were like shooting, hitting someone with comparable wind attacks was like using rubber bullets. It was less destructive, less messy, and it was also cheaper. Once my Will was high enough, it became as powerful as the other elements while retaining many of those benefits. Throwing around really powerful strikes of wind was almost like using raw force, in a way.
What about in another life or two? If wind magic was slow to start but eventually became powerful on a budget, would it be my most destructive element when I had multiple lives of Will behind me? I would have to ask Somnial about it, since he was already leveraging comparable boosts thanks to his blessing of the [Sage].
In the dungeon, I had Felris cast [Create Wind] to propel the burning ant corpses as a distraction to escape. I found myself raising my hand, which I tried not to do often in Somnius’s classes to avoid attention. When he was done the explanation he was in the middle of, he pointed to me.
“What about using wind to propel other objects? Accelerating a projectile, maybe. Or what about creating a twister?”
“Propulsion in general is technically possible with [Create Wind], but it would be more effective to use [Control Wind], if you opt to learn that as a senior,” Somnius said, then went on to explain some of the nuance between creation and control with wind, which was practically always present to leverage. A sharp attack is generally easier with the creation spell, forming the attack outright and deploying it with intention, whereas applying forces is generally easier with control spells. “As for a twister, perhaps the sage could blow a battlefield away, but for us mere mortals, no.” Somnius barely suppressed a sneer at that, turning away to answer another question.
I ignored Somnius’s vitriol about his brother’s blessing, which was nothing new, and instead thought back to the dungeon. Felris had needed to cast a fairly massive [Create Wind] right after casting a fairly massive [Create Fire], and then we still had to run for our lives right after that. Even with the dungeon’s high ambient mana, she must have been exhausted. I couldn’t help but wonder what level her Will was at back then, and what it had grown to since.
As for the twister idea, I knew how destructive the wind could become at sufficient speeds, but the natural forces that caused those kind of weather events were practically global in scale. Creating that much wind sounded difficult, but controlling the existing wind and causing it to funnel seemed plausible, though from the sounds of what Somnius said, it would have to wait until I was a few lives in to have enough Will to make that happen.
Before I started learning control spells, I had found it kind of strange that we learned to conjure elements out of raw mana first, and only control them second. Creation allowed one to use any element in any circumstances, whereas control required the element nearby, which was one reason, and control spells had a slightly longer incantation, which was another. It still seemed backwards to me, at least until I started learning the control spell.
I would have thought elemental creation would be the more difficult of the two, since I had to make something from “nothing”, but mana already naturally did spontaneously generate matter, as dungeons and monsters. It wasn’t actually that difficult to push mana to take shape. When it did, it came into being with a mana circuit that was already primed for direct takeover through intention.
From what I understood about mana circuits, control spells seemed to require first seizing the external resource’s circuit and then reshaping it into a usable form, before indirectly connecting to it and infusing it with intention. That process of rapidly altering and reaching an outside mana circuit was, apparently, quite difficult, particularly when the caster didn’t understand what they were doing.
Mastering intention through creation was good practice for later mastering intention through domination, hence the teaching order. Perhaps it was different for demons, but I would never know.
I refocused on the lesson as Somnius finished answering another student’s question. “Now, break up into five lines, and take turns aiming blunt force wind strikes at the targets,” Somnius said.
A student raised her hand. “Uh, professor? There’s only four targets,” she said, pointing at the target Somnius sliced in half. The professor looked back at the row of targets, grunted, then turned back to us.
“Four lines, then,” he said.
* * *
One morning, as I stepped into the courtyard to train with Byron, I found him standing with a woman I didn’t recognize.
“Tovar, meet Torrel,” Byron said. “Torrel, this is my student Tovar.”
“Call me Tory,” the woman said, warm brown eyes looking down at me.
She was tall, like Byron, middle-aged but well-muscled. Black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she wore comfortable, loose-fitting clothing. Her tan skin, where I could see it, displayed several prominent scars, including one on her face across her nose and left cheek. She was clearly a warrior of sorts, all the more apparent given the pair of blades on her belt.
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
“Torrel has been hired to take over your training, specifically to help you learn [Dual Wielding].”
The warrior woman nodded. “I’ve worked as a mercenary for years, and I have a number of monster kills on record. I’m confident in my skills.”
Skilled at combat didn’t necessarily mean she was a skilled teacher, but I was interested in seeing what I could learn from her. I glanced at Byron. “Perhaps... a demonstration is in order, to see what I’d be learning?”
Byron raised an eyebrow at me, but nodded. Tory shifted slightly, looking uncomfortable. She clearly knew how skilled Byron was.
“It’s not a match, you don’t need to land a strike, I just want to get a sense of what I’ll be learning,” I said, and she relaxed slightly.
Stepping away, I watched the two claim their sparring swords and position themselves to face each other. With a nod from Byron, they began.
Tory immediately kicked off and whirled towards the aged butler, her twin blades an extension of her body as they slammed against Byron’s impenetrable guard. They clashed, parted, and clashed again, and as my eyes caught up with their speed I tried to suss out my future teacher’s movement patterns.
Byron, masterful as ever, blocked, parried, and countered the oncoming blows, but where he was an unmovable wall in our spars, I noticed him shift, dodge, and even duck from Tory’s endless barrage.
Most of her blows were two-handed, both blades striking at once, but the real strength of her attack was in her ability to follow one blow with another, in short enough order that Byron couldn’t block both with his own blade, forcing him to react in response. I noticed that Tory clearly had a dominant hand, as she often led with her right, then followed with her left, a weaker strike which Byron accounted for. When she sometimes jabbed forward with her off-hand, it was often a set-up or feint for her dominant hand to come in hard and heavy next.
So she probably doesn’t have [Ambidexterity], I thought. I’d be able to attack with either hand as my dominant hand, and my follow-up attacks will have the same potential as my initial ones.
Having twice as many weapons as her opponent meant Tory could keep up a relentless barrage, but it was clearly taxing, especially since Byron was a master of deflecting her attacks with minimal energy. She slowed, tiring, and opened herself up to a counter-strike, which Byron stopped short of contact.
I clapped my hands. “Very impressive!” I said, genuine in my praise and smiling. “I look forward to working with you, Tory.”