The Archmage: Chapter Thirty-Seven

“Welcome, everyone,” I told them, smiling, even as I fed power to the foci Mellt and I had created for practice. “I’m afraid our final unit is going to be a bit of a boring one, but if you manage to ride through it, I’m confident you’ll find it useful. Now, something I’ve tried my best to give each of you through this class is the chance to do things yourself. I show you how to anchor a foci, you do it with a new spell.”

I gave them a grim smile. 

“But like I said when our unit on artifacts began… This school values combat skill, and there’s nothing I can do about it being thirty percent of your grade, no matter how much I wish that it wasn’t. So you’re going to learn to create artifacts using the method I used. The old fashioned method. Each and every one of you will be showing me every step you make along the way, and I’ll be doing everything I can to try and ensure that you’re as safe as possible. But we’ll be making a defensive artifact.” 

I turned to the board and started sketching out the standard force armor spell. 

“Who recognizes this?” I asked.

“Force armor,” came the rumbling of the class. 

I spent the rest of the class converting the force armor into an artifact that they could make, then did it with wind armor, water armor, and earth armor. 

“Each has their own uses,” I explained to the class. “Wind, for example, is excellent against smaller swarms of spells, since it works by rotating wind around you to divert the attacks of course. But it’s not as good at stopping a sword through the chest. It can knock it off course, sure, but it’s not as good at stopping it outright.” 

“What about water?” Willow asked. “Doesn’t it work the same way?” 

“Excellent question. Water is a standpoint between wind and earth – I’ll explain earth in a moment. More stopping power than wind, but still swirling to divert things off course. It also takes more power to maintain than wind, and since the spell condenses water out of the air around you, in an arid environment it will have a higher activation cost.” 

“Then earth would have amazing stopping power, but take a lot of power?” Willow asked. “It’s got to move around a bunch of heavy material?” 

“Exactly!” I said, beaming at the young woman. She’d come a long way from the timid girl who’d first stepped into my classroom. 

“What about force?” one of the students asked, and I hesitated for a moment. 

“Force is… strange,” I said. “I’m not sure anyone understands it completely. But suffice it to say that force can, in theory, works like earth armor, only much cheaper. In reality, though, it runs into a lot of niche cases. Any of the elemental armors will protect you far better from heat, for example. Force armor might stop the fire, but you’ll have to deal with the heat of the burn. Wind will whisk away some of the heat, water and earth insulate you. Force doesn’t.” 

I shrugged, running my faerie power through the carved wand at my hip, practicing the shaping. I was getting better, able to activate two layers while doing other things, and when I was able to get all three, I’d be ready to actually cast and test out the spell. 

“Each has advantages and disadvantages, and there’s a reason my defensive artifacts use force. It’s good. But there’s also a reason I have heat and flame repelling spells. Now, in an ideal world, each of you would also have mental defenses and charm-based defenses, but that’s a bit behind the scope of this class.” 

I waved my hand. 

“For now, you’ve seen four good armors. Pick one, and make it.” 

“How?!” asked Isadora, sounding incensed. 

“I did tell you all to start practicing a crafting skill of some sort – weaving, painting, sewing, carving, smithing, or something else, didn’t I?” I asked the class. People were silent, until… 

“You did, professor,” piped up Willow. I gave her an approving nod, and she smiled back at me. 

“That’s how,” I said, turning back to Isadora. “If you didn’t pick one up, then put it on a sheet of paper. Carrying folded sheets of paper into battle as the form of your artifact isn’t advisable, but it’s better to have a paper artifact than to have no defenses at all.” 

She grumbled, but nodded her agreement at that, and I set the class to work. 

“First, draw out the spell you want to use on paper, marking where you’ll put components and what components,” I told them. “Then write at the bottom what you’re putting it on, and how. Once you get that approved, start bringing your stuff to class to carve or paint or whatever it is you do.” 

“I’m a metalsmith,” one of the boys in the front said. 

“You’re welcome to skip my class and spend it… Wherever you do smithing,” I said. “But before you even think about casting the spell, bring the product here for me to examine it.” 

Even with the help of the sylphs and other Fae, it took me a little bit longer to get ready to do something similar with my last project for my Introductory Witchcraft course. 

Still, funding the small army on paper, ink, and a sympathetically linked set of enchantments meant that I was able to introduce their final task the following Monday, only a month out from the tournament.

“As I’m sure some of you already know, during my first year, I placed top ten in the tournament,” I told my class. “During my second and third year I placed in the top three, then graduated a year early with two journeyman and an adept certification. Today, I’m going to be teaching you the method I used to make all of those feats possible.

I surveyed them as several – especially the non-noble students – leaned forwards. 

“Do any of you have any ideas how?” I asked. 

“A powerful enchantment,” suggested Alyssa, the brawny potion-focused mage. 

“That’s the item I used,” I agreed, “but it’s not the method I used.” 

“Faerie deals?” Donovan suggested. 

“That was a tool I used to increase my power, sure,” I said, “but again, not the method.” 

A few people threw out additional guesses, and when they fell flat, I held up my hand. 

“Alright, I’m not going to make you sit and guess all day. Here’s the trick I used: I cast spells I didn’t understand.” 

There was silence in the room, and then Donovan spoke up. 

“Isn’t that dangerous?” he asked. 

“There are layers of danger,” I said. “For example, I don’t speak Elymph, but I do speak Old Bradlewyr. If I’m casting a spell I don’t understand in Elymph, the danger is much, much higher. I could mispronounce a word or mess up a rune.”

“But if you’re using Old Bradlewyr, even if you aren’t familiar with the exact methodology the spell is using, you’ve got enough understanding of the runes and the language that you can cast it far safer,” the young ousted noble said, light dawning in his eyes. 

“Exactly,” I said, pointing at him. “Why don’t you come down first?” 

Donovan frowned, but the young man trusted me enough to stand up and walk down to the front of the class. 

I waved my hand, and to the rest of the class, a bag appeared out of nowhere, floating in the air in front of Donovan.

In reality, there were sylphs buzzing around the room, each one invisible, carrying their cargo. 

“There are three papers in that bag, as well as components for the spells, and a book I’ll go into more detail about later,” I said. “The first one is a foci projected spherical ward around you. 

That particular design I’d actually pulled out of my cloak’s memory banks, from when I’d fought Jeremiah, and I’d pleasantly determined it was only on the lower side of adept. The original design had only really been useful because of the sheer amount of power he crammed into it, so by lowering the throughput some, I’d been able to get it within Donovan’s casting skill, even if he didn’t understand it. Better yet, he’d be able to 

“All of your final projects will be to make your first spells before the end of term. Do it in here as practice at least twice first, and don’t even think of doing it without the all clear from me, but if you get that, you’ll have reached past your limits. Now, Donovan, your second is a complex modular ward, based somewhat off of the grande ward that Zheren uses. Not an enchantment, but useful for you next year. Once you understand magic enough to figure out the first enchantment, try for that.” 

Giving away the design might get me into a little bit of trouble with the ligature, but I’d already handed the design to Jerimiah. Besides, they’d been completely unwilling to help me spread industrial enchantments, and I was still a little bitter about it, even if I understood why. 

“The last is a method of storing that modular ward in an enchantment.” 

I winked at him, and flared my ward around me.

“That one came from me personally. Once you understand the modular ward, I want you to cast this. I expect you should be doing that by the end of next year.” 

“Professor…” Donovan said. “I…” 

Then he shook his head and hugged the buzzing ward around me. I blinked, caught off guard, but let the ward fade and patted his back before I sent him back to his seat. 

“Alright, let’s go in alphabetical order now. Alyssa Breech!”

She stood, and a sylph conjured papers for her. 

“Your three spells are all potions that I’ve personally used in the creation of artifacts. Since you’re going to be using burners to bolster your spells, you should be able to reverse the effects. You’ll be starting with a conductivity potion I used to enhance a lightning enchantment. If you paint your burners in this, you’ll be able to bolster the effect of your lightning potions…” 

I worked my way through the class before I finally ended with Willow. 

“Willow Brown,” I said. “Enchanting! That’s one of my personal disciplines. I’ve given you access to a powerful version of force armor based on the designs in my husband’s tattoos.. There’s also a plate of ghost plate, which will help you defend against more, and the final spell is a mind armor that can be interwoven with the others and sympathetically linked to create a strong threefold defense.”

I lowered my voice to a softer tone as I told her the next bit. 

“I’ve attached a few extra things in there too,” I said. “But there’s no need to tell your classmates, aye?”

She nodded slightly, then in a louder voice that carried to the rest of the class, asked me a question. 

“Why are you doing this professor? This must have taken weeks of work, maybe months. You’re acting like… Like you might not be here to teach us.”

It would have taken weeks if measured objectively, but given I was paying off a small army of fae to do my work for me… still, the time part wasn’t what she’d really been asking about. 

“If you all study and work, these should serve as decent stepping stones to get yourselves to Journeyman,” I said to the class. “The book that I mentioned? It will present several options for your first and second arch-stars, as well as the exercises you can perform to start working on them.” An arch-mage has five, but this will give you a start.” 

I crossed my arms and put on a stern face.

“Don’t buy into the potions a noble house offers you. They let you advance easily, but they don’t let you advance any other way. If you check the records, you’ll see that I’ve already formed three, and none of those came from a potion.”

I relaxed and smiled at them.

“And I’m giving this all to you because I want you to have the opportunities I didn’t have. I had to lean on the fae, my boyfriend, and a good mentor to get this far. In other words? I got lucky. I’m now making sure each and every one of you can go further. I’m challenging every last person in this room – don’t just match me. Surpass me.” 

My nerves finally broke at that point, and I flexed my Assassin’s Cloak, vanishing from their sight. I was tempted to flee from the room, but instead I stayed and watched, making sure none of the students tried to steal someone else’s bag. 

Once the students had left, I collapsed into a seat and let myself just breathe for a long time, until I had finally calmed down.