Chapter 4: Chapter 4 – Grandmaster

Thenio really wasn't looking forward to scribing class.

His teacher had been cold to him ever since his last in-class explosion. She hadn't liked him that much to begin with, and now it was clear that she had completely given up on him, despite there still being some time left until he officially failed the class. And the other students were more or less ignoring his existence, not wanting to get caught up in the problem. Thenio couldn't really blame them for that. He hadn't exactly put a lot of effort into making social connections since coming to the academy. His classmates treated him a bit better than the ones in general school had, but Thenio wasn't used to having friends. And he hadn't thought he could afford to take time away from training and studying for having fun.

He was regretting it a bit now.

He arrived in the classroom early and sat quietly, reviewing his notes. He had already studied them well, so this wasn't really necessary, but it allowed him to look busy and avoid making eye contact with anyone.

"We're having a guest lecture today. I saw Professor Erish in the library earlier, and she told me."

"Really? This close to the exam?"

Thenio half listened to his classmates chatting as they entered the room and settled into their workstations. A guest lecture? Maybe today's class wouldn't be so bad, then. The academy regularly invited respected wizards from around the country to come speak to classes so that the students could learn about real-life magic work and make connections with potential mentors. Most of these guest teachers were really interesting. He just hoped the lesson wouldn't involve any in-class practice work. Blowing things up in front of a visiting wizard made it even more embarrassing than usual.

He knew that from first-hand experience….

"Well, we're basically just reviewing at this point, aren't we? I guess they decided we could skip a day of that. And it's a grandmaster enchanter, you know? A grandmaster! If somebody like that is willing to come lecture, who cares about the exam schedule?"

"What?"

"Are you serious?"

Everyone in the room suddenly became interested in the conversation.

"That's a joke, right? A grandmaster coming to lecture to a first-year class?"

"Well, that's what Professor Erish said. She seemed excited about it too."

"I've never met a real grandmaster before…."

"Sure you have. The department head is one. We met him at the beginning of the term, remember?"

"That was just him talking to the whole auditorium at once. It doesn't count."

"Did Professor Erish say who it was?"

"Ariom Denifor. She said he's the youngest grandmaster in Kafron right now. And he's won a couple of Silver Golem Awards. So he's pretty famous."

"Ah, I've read about him."

Thenio frowned a little. Ariom Denifor? He felt like he'd heard that name somewhere recently. Where had that been…?

"Hey, the professor's coming!" One of the students near the door had apparently been keeping watch on the hallway outside.

At the warning, everyone moved quickly to their assigned workstations and settled down, pulling out books and scribing tool kits. A low murmur of conversation continued briefly, but it ceased when the professor entered the room. She was accompanied by a tall, dark-haired man.

But Thenio's gaze was immediately drawn, not to the wizard himself, but to what was perched on his left shoulder.

A tiny black dragon with bright orange eyes.

Ah. That was where he'd heard the name 'Ariom' recently. Ariom is just Ariom, huh? Talk about leaving out important details….

Iggy was looking all around the room as they came in, apparently fascinated by anything and everything. His head turned briefly in Thenio's direction, but from across the room, Thenio couldn't tell if the dragon had recognized him or not. Iggy's attention span did seem to be a bit…lacking. Maybe he'd already forgotten about their meeting the other day. Thenio wasn't sure whether he'd feel disappointed or relieved if that were really the case.

He turned his attention to the man who was presumably Ariom Denifor. He was oddly colorless. His hair was charcoal grey, even though he looked fairly young, and his eyes were a bright silver. Even his skin had a greyish tint, as though some of the color had been leached out of it. Was that his sorcerer's stigma? He should have one, since you had to be at least a third-rank sorcerer to get a grandmaster level enchanter's certification. But Thenio had never heard of a stigma that turned someone grey like that. Of course, even stigmas from the same magic affinity manifested differently for different people, so strange ones did turn up now and then. Or he could have a rare affinity. Quite a few high-ranking wizards did.

Come to think of it, what about Iggy? A grandmaster wizard wouldn't have an ordinary, run-of-the-mill familiar, would he? Could that weird, chicken-loving little dragon actually be some kind of rare and amazing creature?

 

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Over there. That must be him.

Upsetting an unstable magic user was dangerous, since strong emotions made their magic more likely to go out of control. So Ariom had warned Iggy ahead of time not to make a fuss when he saw Thenio, and he himself glanced casually over the students as they entered the classroom, trying not to single the boy out.

Even so, he wasn't hard to spot. A student sitting on the far side of the room, a bit separate from the rest. He looked normal enough on the surface, albeit rather pale and fragile-looking. But like Iggy, Ariom's magic sensitivity was much higher than average, which meant he was able to see just how unusual Thenio Iterune really was.

Everyone else in the class had a smooth, relatively steady flow of magic power circulating through their bodies. But Thenio's magic was continually shifting and trembling, like tree branches blowing in the wind. That wasn't how human magic power was supposed to move, even if it was unstable. Ariom had seen people suffering from magic instability before, but he'd never seen anything quite like this.

'Sparkly magic,' Iggy had called it. Ariom's eyes narrowed slightly. Right. 'Sparkly and pretty.'

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Like a whirlwind of broken glass. Pretty. But not exactly safe.

Since this was a practical skills class, they were in a large room that had rows of individual workstations and a long table at the front for demonstration purposes. When they reached it, Iggy hopped down onto the table and trotted over to inspect the image projection equipment and the rack of scribing tools that were sitting there, his tail waving around enthusiastically. Ariom set down the leather satchel he was carrying and started to unpack the materials they would be using during the lecture, while keeping one eye on his dragon. As an enchanter's familiar, Iggy knew perfectly well that he shouldn't touch any of the tools without permission. But he had a bad habit of forgetting things like that when he got too excited.

The bell for the start of class chimed while Ariom was setting up, and the professor addressed the class while he finished. "It looks like everyone's here. Good. We'll get started. It's on short notice, but we have a very special guest lecturer with us today. I'm pleased to introduce Ariom Denifor, a grandmaster enchanter who lives here in the capital. Grandmaster Denifor is a very accomplished wizard who has won multiple awards for his work. We're incredibly lucky to have such an amazing wizard come visit our class. I want everyone to be on their very best behavior today, all right?" Ariom saw her direct a meaningful look at Thenio. "Pay close attention so that you don't waste this valuable opportunity." She turned and gave Ariom a pleasant smile. "If you're ready, I'll turn the class over to you."

 

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Did she really have to glare at him like that? Thenio shifted uncomfortably in his seat as the teacher finished up her introduction and went to sit on the side of the room.

It wasn't like he meant to cause trouble in class....

He glanced nervously at the box that the 'amazing, accomplished wizard' Ariom had set on the end of the demonstration table. It was clearly too big to have fit in that satchel, but it wasn't unexpected for someone like him to have a space compression bag. Most people could never hope to afford one, but a grandmaster enchanter would definitely have either the money to buy one or the skills to make his own. Rather than the bag, Thenio was much more concerned about what was in the box. It looked suspiciously like it was full of items for scribing practice.

That wasn't good.

He could tell Professor Erish was going to straight up murder him if he caused an explosion in front of the grandmaster and made her look bad.

"Thank you, Professor." Ariom came around the table and stood in front of the class. It must not have been his first time doing a guest lecture because he looked relaxed in spite of having a roomful of eager students watching his every move. "As your teacher said, my name is Ariom. And this little fellow is my familiar, Iggy."

Iggy had finished sniffing all the items on the demonstration table and was sitting off to one side watching the class. When Ariom introduced him, he sat up on his haunches like a squirrel and waved his front paws at them, resulting in admiring coos from the girls.

Well, he was pretty cute. Weird, but cute.

"I'm an independent wizard, so I mostly contract with clients directly," Ariom went on. "But I also do consulting for workshops and other organizations." His expression became a bit tired. "And because people always ask this when they find out I'm a grandmaster: Yes, I've worked for the royal family before. But I'm afraid it wasn't anything exciting. It was just doing maintenance on some enchanted items stored in the national archive. And yes, I’ve met the king…for all of about thirty seconds during my rank promotion ceremony. He doesn't generally hire or work with magic consultants directly. The palace has a small army of secretaries who deal with things like that."

Several of the students exchanged glances. From their expressions, some of them had probably been planning to ask those very questions. It was a well-known fact that the Kafron royal family preferred to hire grandmaster wizards whenever possible. They claimed it was in order to build connections with the leading members of various magic fields, though the real motivation was probably just to flaunt how many grandmaster wizards Kafron had compared to most other countries.

"My specialty is enchantment analysis and tailoring. That second part is a concept you probably haven't talked about in your classes yet. Tailoring an enchantment means adapting it for a specific use case. Like optimizing an enchanted item for an individual person to use. It's a different approach than the general-use enchantments you've been studying so far." Ariom gave an apologetic smile as he looked around the classroom. "And it's too advanced a topic for first-years, to be honest. I normally give that lecture to the senior enchanting students. So some of you might get to hear it in a few years. For today, we're mostly going to stick to enchantment analysis, which is a useful skill for enchanters of all levels, including beginners like you."

Ariom picked up a sheet of paper and placed it on the projection device. He turned the device on, and a large enchantment diagram was displayed on the wall behind him. Based on the drawings, it looked like it was intended to be inscribed on something like a pendant or brooch.

"A good portion of my work involves analyzing and restoring the enchantments on old or damaged items. In particular, I do a lot of work with artifacts from the Pre-War Era. Since you've all had a term's worth of magic history class by now, you should have an idea of just how much magic knowledge was lost during the Great War and the Demon Rift Crisis."

Many of the students nodded. This was a topic that came up frequently, even in general school classes.

"We've been able to regain some of that knowledge by studying enchanted items that were made prior to those events. Unfortunately, not a lot of them survived intact, so most of these items–especially the ones still being found in recent times–need extensive repair and restoration work. This diagram is from an item that I worked on a few years ago. You see how there are parts missing?"

Looking at the diagram, Thenio could see that there were several portions that seemed to be broken off or scratched out.

"We'll go through this one together, and I'll explain how to analyze the remaining portions in order to figure out how to fill in the gaps. This enchantment is probably more complex than the ones you're used to seeing, but it's all based on principles that you should already know. If we just take it a step at a time, it's not as difficult as it looks." Ariom tapped a stack of papers that was sitting on the demonstration table. "And after you understand the general process, I have some others for you to try out on your own. These are all copies of actual enchantment matrices found on Pre-War items. I picked out some simpler ones that you should be able to handle at your current skill level. I also brought some replicas of one of the original items, so you'll be able to inscribe your reconstructed design onto it and see the result. I'll pass them out in a bit."

Thenio grimaced. Of course it made sense to include some actual scribing in a lesson meant for a scribing class, but....

"All right, going back to our example here." Ariom picked up a long pointer stick and tapped the tip of it on the projected image. "You should generally start a reconstruction analysis by figuring out what the purpose of the original enchantment was. Sometimes you'll be able to get this information directly from the client. Sometimes you'll have to look at what's left of the item and the inscription and work it out yourself. This particular enchantment was on a necklace that the Wizard Association kept stored in one of their vaults for many years before anyone got around to examining it, so the only available information was a note that was packed away with it, saying that it was found in a ruined house in the upper-class district of the city of Brieso in Eskya. Brieso was the site of one of the earliest demon rifts and was pretty much destroyed as a result." Ariom made a bitter expression. "Ironically enough, the cities worst hit by early rifts are where a lot of the best artifacts have been recovered, since it was too dangerous for looters to go into those areas. Demons only care about eating people, not stealing their jewelry afterwards."

There was a rather gloomy pause.

"So, all we really know about this item is that it belonged to an aristocrat. But knowing that is still helpful, to some extent. Members of the upper class in the Pre-War Era were almost exclusively wizards. Or magicians, really, since the wizard certification system didn't exist at that time. Trained magic users, in any case. Because of that, their enchanted jewelry was usually powered directly by the wearer rather than incorporating an energy source like a magic crystal. Which means we should start our analysis by looking for a power input point, not a crystal socket. And on a small item like this, the input point will usually be in the center of the enchantment matrix because that's the most stable area. So if we look at the center of the diagram, you can see...."

As the lecture continued, Thenio set aside his worries about the upcoming scribing practice and focused on taking notes. Ariom was a good teacher. Unlike their usual professor, who usually restricted her lectures to whatever principles they were supposed to be learning, he threw in a lot of interesting background information about why the enchantment was constructed the way it was or about various aspects of Pre-War magic practices or culture that helped him know how to analyze the enchantment and what choices to make when he was reconstructing the missing parts. It was scribing, enchantment design, and magic history all rolled into one, and it was much more interesting than any one of those classes normally was by itself. Thenio wished that all his teachers had enough information stuffed into their heads to be able to provide this much context for the subjects they taught. Being able to do an apprenticeship with somebody like Ariom was probably an amazing experience.

Though Thenio doubted that any grandmaster would ever look twice at him, considering how pathetic his practical scores were. He was going to be lucky just to graduate from the academy and do an apprenticeship at all.

He thought back to his conversation with Iggy the other day. If the dragon could recognize that something was strange with Thenio's magic, shouldn't his contract partner have something to say about it, too? A lot of guest lecturers would stay after the class period had ended in order to answer questions from the students. Would he have a chance to ask then? And would somebody who was prestigious enough to work for the royal family actually be willing to help him?

He did his best to push these distracting thoughts aside and focus on the lecture, but he couldn't stop a small, nervous feeling of hope from rising in his chest.

"All right, that should give you the basic idea," Ariom said when he had finished walking them through the entire reconstruction. It had turned out to be an emergency protective enchantment that combined a magic shield with some basic healing magic. "Professor Erish, will you help me pass out these packets?"

The professor happily jumped up from her seat and took the stack of papers from him. Thenio had seen her taking notes during the lecture, too. He wasn’t sure if she’d really learned something new or if she was just trying to brown-nose.

"We'll be spending the rest of the class time on the first diagram in the packet. You can look at the others on your own time if you want to do more. Since this type of reconstruction and the study of Pre-War artifacts are a bit outside the standard enchanting curriculum, there's also contact information for a couple of academy professors who specialize in these subjects. They told me they'd be happy to help anyone who's interested in learning more. And after we've finished passing these things out, I'll come around the room to see if anyone needs help on the assignment or has other questions."

There was a soft buzz of excitement throughout the classroom at these words. It was a rare chance to get one-on-one help from a high-ranking enchanter, and the students were all looking forward to it.

All but one, who was too busy worrying about how to get through the rest of the class period without his magic exploding on him.

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