Chapter 6: Ch.4:Fledgling Steps

“ Fexocotl, Faelystoma Salamandridae - A relatively new species; is it a fish is it an amphibian? Or is it both? Don’t let its appearance deceive you, this species belongs to the family of salamanders alongside its cousins the fire salamanders. This shy creature can be found in cave ecosystems more so those on aerlands or any habitat with an abundance of both Aer and Aqer mana. Its abilities have yet to be documented but it is alleged that it has some form of lightning attack and can glide through the air like fish in water…”-from Philiarz Oonswarner's Bestiary for Adventurers

---

Arthur was excitedly, restless that night. It was understandable; the revelation about ships sailing through the sky was something that tickled at his inner child. He fantasized soaring through the clouds, and the wind beating in his face and chasing the blush of a dusky sun as it shying away from the night.

And while he was rather skeptical about ingredients obtained from overgrown lizards, they were somewhat a novel taste for him as he had dinner for the first time.

‘Yep, they taste like gator and beef,’ were his thoughts on the matter.

It finally hit him that he'd slept and eaten in a world far away from home. Perhaps, an entirely different universe. It felt like moving to another town, after living all two decades of your life in one place but it had to be done.

Nevertheless, his homesickness was so palpable that for no apparent reason he occasionally found it hard to breathe. That the gaps in his memory prevented a full blown case of melancholia left him torn. He didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.

In the following days, Arthur was caught up in a storm of scholarly activities. Aeskyre outlined the literature that Arthur would read to bolster his magic capability and acquire bearings about his new world. He was taken through a comprehensive lesson plan of not only magic, but geography, history and politics of Eryth.

It felt like sitting in a freshman class all over again. The draconic woman was such a stickler for perfection, something about her prerogative to impart only the best and nothing less. He learned soon enough.

Aeskyre especially stressed the importance of cultivating political awareness in a world where might be made right. There was no use becoming an outstanding talent if one was just going to get killed from offending some Titled mage.

Powerful magic users, like some who ascribed to military doctrines were members of Titled houses. Outside of non-human polities, the continent of Alkerd did not care for nobility. Rather, the use of meritocracy gave rise to another form of prestige and governance that was the Titled houses.

In some polities entire families were built upon the purity of their member’s bloodlines. It was also common to find political marriages between families whose heirs had complementing affinities for certain magics.

The more Arthur used the monocle for his studies, the more he acclimated to Erythean languages. Besides Continental Common, he studied Aesylvani script for the Sylvani and the Dwarven trade pidgin for dwarven aership sailors which would no doubt come in handy.

Trade pidgin was the mainstay of dwarves who controlled much of the aership traffic through their outposts and it was a cross between trying to speak German with a Cockney accent.

A derivation of Continental Common, Dwar trade pidgin helped those not acquainted with the language attune to their own languages to the World which Inadvertently translated for them as they learnt more words.

He also completely tripped over his Aesylvani. The pronunciation of its words was akin to auditioning for all the voice roles in a choir and then some. To the Illvari and their kin, the rest of the races might have as well been tone deaf. Yet Aeskyre, also his self professed language tutor, was having a laugh at his expense. The woman could speak any of the languages as if she was born into it.

Actually, she was cheating by using her air magic; an altogether different level of magical talent that Arthur could not hope to ape. Perhaps a little leeway for non-Illvarian races was in order; they didn't have an extra pair of secondary lungs to spare did they?

It was tenable if he ever met their descendants in the wider world, he was better off knowing a smidgen of the language than none at all. Also, as long as he could pick up a few words, whatever auto translation feature the World used would kick in.

That was dependent on whether he made an effort to at least learn a bit of the language. Honestly, how much of a language could be considered significant for magical translation to pick up? What parameters did the all-knowing World use to gauge whether an individual met a certain threshold? Those were questions that Arthur didn’t find answers to. Even his tutor had no idea.

Erythean history was rather lore heavy. Ultimately he only confined his studies to the history of magic and magitech which was relevant to him at the time. As long as whatever content he had at hand was enough to get by, it was enough.

There was no way he was going to read too deep to the point of prompting a [Historian] or [Anthropologist] class from the World. From the history of Eryth, he learnt about the many wars that birthed and ended kingdoms and empires and rewrote the maps, both figuratively and literally.

Whatever little he was able to glean from the little context he had about Eryth, unsettled him to no end. Sure a little culture shock was a long time in coming but the history of Eryth was like something out of a grim dark novel. The most powerful beings, at the top of the known hierarchy, not counting Elder races like dragons and fey-folk of course, were the archmages.

[Archmages] were like if a person walked around with a thermonuclear warhead in their backpack. They might have well been natural disasters if they could reorder the terrain with their spells.

Fortunately, Arthur didn't have to worry about finding himself caught up in a pissing contest between such entities. There were accords that were put in place to prevent such incidents. How they were enforced, Aeskyre snorted and told him to go find himself.

‘Great…she gives homework too?’

Archmages were also, pretty much the old Gandalf the White types of characters with a predisposition to holing up in their labs and whichever academic institution of magecraft they were affiliated with. Chances of Arthur stumbling upon a magical tiff that could pretty much decimate an entire city were few and far between.

After deciding that he had enough context to at least play the rest by ear without committing a faux pas in Erythean common sense, he left the history to the history buffs.

---

“How big is Eryth exactly? Has anyone ever seen the entirety of it?” Arthur asked on one of those days he was studying geography. He was getting well on with his studies and had enough content to engage in intellectual conversations from time to time—with a dragon.

“I have no inkling of how big it is,” the draconic woman shrugged indifferently. “I can only say there are more lands that have yet to see civilization and conquest than there are sapient known races to populate them. Mayhap the fey-folk have better luck grasping the number of leagues from one end to the other.”

‘ No magical satellites then. What a bummer. Hells, how do they even navigate?’ he mulled. The answer he got to his question involved was that before the coming of aerships, charted lands were limited to areas where [Cartographers] dared to tread. Distances had also been arbitrary even though there was an established method of measurement.

‘I hope it's a metric system.’

According to Aeskyre, polities closely guarded their maps as it exposed important tactical information. Anything within the public domain was stripped of its distinctive features, leaving only known landmarks that people could navigate by.

Arthur would have thought that with the amount of land left unexplored, it would have just been sensible to cut a swathe for themselves. But no, someone had to covet another's. So yes, he could expect war over territory somewhere.

So, geographically, the known lands included Alkerd, the central continent; it was an accepted fact that it was the melting pot of many races among the known continents. Then there was Oriendal, the Eastern continent, Occidania, the western one. The Sterlian Archipelago was a smattering of self-governing southern island nations, easily as big as some kingdoms such that the main Islands are essentially sub-continents.

Last, was the cold and tundra-like northern continent, Boreus whose information on its lands was barely there, just a past-time of [Bards] and fish wives’ tales. Arthur imagined a magical ecosystem like Antarctica just waiting to be discovered.

“[Gossip], is a class?” Arthur deadpanned.

“Hmm? Indeed, there is a class called [Gossip]. It is as much an essential class as a [Bard] or a [Town Crier]. That is how communication and news gets around in some towns and villages.

“The connotation that the class [Gossip] carries is just a stereotype because most of them are women. Though I don’t get why you are so worked up about the geography of Eryth. Nonetheless, I can see the allure of determining exactly where each place is.”

“But how do you pass urgent messages, magical smoke and magical drums?” Arthur chuckled.

“ You really think our realm is behind yours [Lost Worlder]?” Aeskyre snorted, narrowing her slit pupiled eyes. She eyed him with the contempt of a cat. “ Tell me, what does a world that smells of smoke and burning and other types of unnatural stench have to offer? You barely had magic before you arrived.” She sounded incensed.

Arthur opened his mouth, finger raised in retort ready to expound about the glory of technology. He was ready to whip out his phone and speak of the wonders of talking to someone on the other side of a planet or seeing events as they happened while you were in another timezone, but the glint in Aeskyre’s eyes looked like a storm was ready to break over his head. He kept mum.

Aeskyre’s countenance softened somewhat. She gazed at the human who was dumbfounded and sighed inwardly. Perhaps she was too hard on him. Half a century of isolation and her social graces had regressed so much. She came down and stifled the sense of draconic pride that roared in her simulacrum, she cleared her throat and answered him. She did not, however, provide him with an apology, it was beneath her bearing as a dragon.

“I haven't much to tell you about how Eryth stays abreast of events, vast as its lands are. [Message], [Farspeak], [Far Scry]; such are the magics that have been used. Some have been lost to time, but these three have endured. The latter two are common enough.” she said. Arthur leaned in to listen.

“ Magic, like a tool, advances and regresses as the eons wax and wane. I would say, in my time such and such a thing happened via a correspondence of mine. Thus, I can tell you for a fact that a mageborn today might struggle to learn [Message] because of the complexity of its spell matrices. “

Aeskyre managed to turn a potentially awkward situation into a lecture on communication magic. She started by saying how the range of [Message] spells was abysmal, that mages had to find a workaround by building an entity geared towards connecting people by bouncing messages from output to outpost.

Thus that was how the resourceful Mages Guild came to be. For those who couldn't bring themselves to learn the annoying art of compressing words into a few motes of mana and giving them an orientation to someone’s mana signature, the Mages Guild could get rid of the headache for a price.

They virtually had a monopoly over long distance communication. Outside of the Adventurers and Mages Guilds and the personages who employ some of their own [Relay Mage], individuals who could send their own [Message] that spanned more than a handful of towns were uncommon.

Living in a world without communication, despite the presence of magic, seemed like a contradiction. It just turned out, like technology, magic had some limits too. Or a wall civilization had to cross to advance to the next level.

“ Last time I heard, they billed [Message] spells per character. Mmh, I have to get in touch with my contact at the Mages Guild to see if things have changed over the half a century.”

‘Did you care to think perhaps they might be dead?’ Arthur left unspoken. ‘Last time you heard? How long was the last time? You're feeding me outdated information’ Arthur felt like going bald there and then.

 

---

“I tire of wyvern steak.”

“Hmm, what was that?”

“Nothing…”

“I can sense some frustration roiling off you from the way your mana is agitated. Tell me, how far are you into your aership construction Oh human of steel and smoke?”

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‘You just derive satisfaction from deliberately annoying the hell out of me’

“Yea, you got me,” Arthur said, rubbing his nape. His neck had a kink from poring over books all day. “I made notes on the most important things that make an aership tick but it is simply too much to go through.” he groaned.

The information in the books had glaring holes in them and compounded with the difficulty of learning dwarven script, he could not make heads or tails of where uncommon metals and magitech were used. Also, there was the fact that he was just one person. Despite his enthusiasm, he could only do so much with two hands and one head.

It also seemed that, the language that was used to make sense of the universe, mathematics was everywhere. For instance, there was no magicking away calculations about the efficiency of mana sails and ratios of surface area to mana conversion. Matrices were in spellcraft and it followed that they would be there in enhancing an magitech as well.

Designing a ship might have seemed like throwing some curves and squares. After all, a ship was just one big boat, how hard could it be? Arthur couldn’t have been more wrong.

While the dwarven aerships did look like carracks, galleys and caravels from his medieval Earth, they were far from being crude wooden tubs made from 14th century technology. Dwarven magic engineering did not do things by halves as Arthur would later come to find out.

“I think you’re biting off more than you can chew,” a lounging Aeskyre replied. “You have been cooped up in here for a while and I can’t bear to have you ramble my ears off. What do you say we get started on the practical side of your magic studies?”

Having said that, Aeskyre took Arthur to another section of the caverns that housed training grounds. The grounds were as large as the main hall where Aeskyre kept her hoard of precious metals and other artifacts. It had an open view of the sky, warded against the weather and wyvern attacks by ancient magic left over from its previous residents.

Arrayed along its bleachers were an arsenal of wooden weapons on racks t and training dummies made of some type of wood that was oddly enduring despite the scuffs and wear from whoever had occupied the place last. Even the sand spread underfoot looked pristine, devoid from signs of disturbance.

Standing in the middle of the training field, Aeskyre walked Arthur through the process of casting his first spell.

“It’s been five days since you were bequeathed your spells. That has to be enough time to have picked up more and a handful of levels, no?”

“Yea, I’ve become a level 5 [Mage]. Also I have added a couple of spells to my repertoire, for each of the affinity I possess. How do levels and skills work anyway?”

“ The World rewards effort.” was Aeskyre’s preamble. “ After every 5 levels the World bestows one a skill or more depending on the sweat of one’s brow. However, that only lasts the first 20 levels.

Beyond that, it becomes exponentially difficult to level and acquire new skills.At this point, the only way to break into the next level will have to be borne of creativity and novel use of the skills that the class has already provided to you—”

Aeskyre defined the boundaries styming one’s advance in the class as bottlenecks. One encountered them at the end of every tier. There were as many as 9 known tiers in existence but she insisted that he only concern himself with the first 6. When entering the next tier, there was the possibility that an existing class might evolve into a more powerful class barring the person’s preferences.

It was therefore common to find people who had two or at most, three classes leveling concurrently so that during tiering up, the World might deem them worthy of synergizing their classes via a class consolidation.

The resulting class was relatively powerful compared to the classes that formed it but not without its limitations. Timing the classes right, since tiering up seemed to occur after every five levels for common classes and ten for those specialized in certain areas was an uphill task.

“Heh, I could see that coming”

“You need not worry about it, the higher you level and tier up the more the World might just reveal itself to you. Let’s get started on these spells of yours then. Can you tell what spells you have?”

“[Spark Bolt ] and [ Gale].”

“Hmm, passable,” she harrumphed. “ You have acquired both defensive and offensive spells. That Locus affinity should complement your arsenal nicely however—

So then, begin with casting your spells without calling out aid from the World. I want you to break down the spell into its constituent parts. For example, when you think of a bolt of lightning in nature, it is easy to think recall its effects as loud sound and a flash of lightning—”

“However, unless you comprehend how it forms naturally, you will not be able to envision how you are supposed to form the spell matrix. Then again a derivative affinity, Fulgur affinity spells like your [Spark Bolt] require a lot of finesse to use. Unlike Aer and Aqer based spells, they can injure first time casters who use the spell willy nilly and those around them—”

Arthur imagined a million volts of the stuff frying him to cinders. Expecting that, Aeskyre reveals the upside of such spells.

“Once you get past that, lightning magic provides some powerful spells for the amount of mana it consumes. So tell me, how do we go about casting [Spark Bolt]? Assume I am a mageborn who has yet to awaken to their affinity and explain the process.”

‘Way to put me on the spot,’ Arthur gulped. He clenched his fists to stop them from shaking as he thought about what he knew about lightning. Once he’d calmed down and formulated his response to his magic tutor, he exhaled, resolute that he had the right idea.

“Mmh, alright,” Arthur said as he tapped his bottom lip, “In nature, a lightning bolt forms when there is an imbalance between storm clouds and the ground or between storm clouds. This imbalance is caused when the water droplets contained in warm air in the middle of a storm cloud bump into and move away from ice crystals that form in cold air. This causes rubbing motions that cause an imbalance of opposing charges between the hot air and the cold air therefore causing an electrical discharge that is lightning—”

Clearing her throat, she prompted Arthur, “Away with it then, let’s see you apply yourself. Your targets are those dummies, ” she pointed at the wooden mannequins that were about a couple dozen paces away from where they stood.

So Arthur stood, facing the training dummies and pointed a finger gun in their direction. He closed his eyes, cut out his awareness from everything around him and pictured the process that formed an imbalance of charges between his index finger and his target.

Then he felt for the incorporeal power that suffused the air and himself and reached for his mana well just like the primer on magic showed him to, then he willed it to take the shape. Opening his eyes, he muttered, “[Spark Bolt]!"

Aeskyre’s draconic eyes traced the flow of energy, from Eryth into Arthur’s mana well and then through his thaumvasculi to this index finger where the spell formed. Though Arthur could not see it, Aeskyre saw the formation of the spell matrix in the shape of a mandala of interlocking fractals through her draconic sight.

The formation only existed only as long as Arthur’s blink before a bolt of lightning crackled into existence in front of him, zig zagging through the distance and striking the training dummy dead centre.

A crackle of thunder roared through the training field shortly after. Looking at the target of his assault, one of the training dummies had been clipped at the shoulder, smoke still wafted off the cinder scorched mark as the dummy rocked. An ear splitting grin adorned Arthur’s face.

“That was quick,” Aeskyre commented, Arthur’s grin fell.

‘Here it comes.’

“I want you to keep casting that spell until it becomes muscle memory. Those should be easy seeing how you cast [ Spark Bolt] on your first try. Use both hands to cast your spells while at it too; you should be nothing less than a dual caster.”

‘And there it is. Easy she says…does she even know how hard it was to give imbue will between two streams of mana? Forming an anti-electroshock layer was no joke.’ he sighed.

On said day, Arthur knew Aeskyre’s other side. She was a taskmistress when it came to practical training.

---

From his readings, he had some grasp on the nomenclature of tiering spells. The fundamental manifestations for attuned spells were one worded , like [Spark] for Fulgur, [Aqua] for Aqer, [Gale] for Aer and [Ignition] for Pyr or words with similar semantics.

Such looked like something a magically empowered homemaker would use and therefore fell between tier 0 and tier 1. When the spells started acquiring a second appellation however, they became tier 2 and they might or might not keep their fundamental property depending on which property they acquired. They could gain either directionality or magnitude or both.

From its wording, [Spark Bolt] was a tier 2 and sounded lackluster but it was no less lethal. Casting it once could paralyze and potentially knock someone unconscious , three to five casts could stop someone’s heart, set things on fire, give second degree burns, and outright kill. It was as lethal as handling a loaded gun.

Nonetheless, what he was going to be wielding against was monsters and therefore, Aeskyre’s suggestion held merit. But casting concurrently was easier said than done, he wasn't sure if ambidextrous people could do the same. It was like trying to write with both hands, at the same time—splitting his focus almost gave him a migraine.

However, every consecutive single cast seemed smoother than the last, a tiny improvement but improvement nonetheless. When he compared his unassisted spells to the way the actual spell matrix functioned , he learnt where he was shunting too much mana. It was an instinctive feeling that something was just slightly off with his method and that feeling was proven when he measured the actual range of his own constructs versus the matrix assisted spell.

To do that, he used his Uk size 9.5 sneakers which were 28.5 centimetres from heel to toe; of course with a degree of error given that it was on the inside of the shoe.

‘Which is inconsequential, but thank the manufacturers for the conversions eh?’

Putting one foot ahead of the other, he eschewed measuring using the range using paces. Arthur had no idea how long a pace was supposed to be, and more so whose idea it was to use their foot as the measurement basis but he couldn't use 30cm as the yardstick if he wanted results. So for then, he threw away that convention and counted on his own feet.

Slightly south of 129 feet later, he found where his spells petered out on the glazed sand of the training yard.

‘Hmm, 35 metres or am a monkey’s uncle’ he murmured to himself as he did the calculations on the dirt. 29 of his feet away was the lower limit of where the spells using the matrices started losing cohesion.

‘Which gives me around 826.5 cm, calculating on percentage of efficiency we get almost 23 percent improvement,” Arthur observed. “ But damn, close to a meter can mean a lot on a battlefield.’

Despite the peculiarities of the spell disintegrating around the 45 metres mark, he was unable to discern whether there were external variables he was missing. And however determined Arthur was to tweak his spell to match that 23 percent deviation from [Spark Bolt]’s spell matrix, he was stonewalled by every mage’s bane― His mana ran out. An attempt to cast another had him hit by the mother of all migraines and sudden brain fog that he immediately dispelled the spell constructs.

“ I should have known that even magic has a cost,” Arthur said as he slumped down near the bleachers. ‘Why didn’t she tell me spending my magic would give me a hangover?! Arthur left unsaid. And When Arthur went to sleep that night, he was sore and exhausted in places he’d never thought possible.

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