The Archmage: Chapter Fifteen

Throwing myself into teaching for a week after discovering my miracle cure might not have been quite as miraculous as it seemed felt incredibly strange. Still, I did the best I could, going through different languages with the kids, and helping people get their first burners done.

When the noble kids tried to pass off work that was obviously not theirs, but instead something from their families books about making force bolt burners, I was struck with a conundrum.

On one hand, I could let them pass it, get them started on the next assignment, and just let them zip through my course until they hit something that they couldn’t just copy out of a book.

Some people might argue that wasn’t teaching, but it was honestly how most of my own enchanting knowledge had come to pass. I just found other people’s solutions and reformatted them until I needed them.

But there was value in learning to do things the right way, as my numerous failures at creating my first foci had shown me. They’d need to eventually at least modify connections…

In the end, what I settled on was a middle ground. I pulled them aside and said that I knew they’d looked this up. That was fine, but we’d be spending two weeks on figuring out how to connect spells into enchantments, and I wanted to see them do it themselves once.

They didn’t need to do it every time, if they could look it up. But they needed to do it at least once, to sharpen their skills.

Most of the nobles seemed to accept the compromise and were actually quite reasonable about it, but there were a few who got quite angry. I let them lash out until they eventually resorted to pulling the card of telling their parents, or aunts, or uncles, or whoever they were descended from that had real power. I told them that was fine, and for them to go ahead and do it.

I might not have had a noble title to protect me, like Travis did, but I’d weathered assassins before. Besides, I suspected the worst I’d get was a few letters telling me off, and that was nothing, really.

I also spent a little bit of time in the library, studying mechanical magic. Most of it was urbane to the point of putting me to sleep, just variations of basic metal shaping spells that had simple activation words, so that workers could mindlessly shape raw metal into bullets or the like.

They also were, insofar as I could tell, nearly entirely for military use. Spells to make armor were some of the most expensive and complex, but it wasn’t the enchantment that was hard – it was the metal shaping. All the enchanting did was slap an aura crystal and a trigger onto it and call it a day.

That was incredibly infuriating, so I sent a message to Emilia, asking her for more mechanical spells. If I could spread those through Paerús, I could seriously improve the lives of workers.

The letter I got back was puzzling. It outlined how those sorts of spells, which were common in Zheren, especially in agriculture and food production, would happily be provided… After the current political structure was toppled.

“I don’t get it,” I complained to Osheen. “Spreading this magic could improve the lives of so many people. But it also still takes a long time for anyone to start creating those sorts of enchanted machines and tools – by the time they were able to be produced, our spell should, in theory, be done already.”

“I get it,” Osheen said. “You’ve done a lot of good for them, but you’re also a known risky agent. You’ve almost died in the line of duty several times. You might spread it, but if you do that before you topple the structure, then the result could be a stronger Paerús that’s even more firmly entrenched in the current system of power. Not only would they control the magic and the military, they’d expand to be the only viable way to produce crops – Byron may run the department of agriculture, but it’s not like she’s physically manipulating the fields with magic. Not most of the time, anyways.”

I grumbled at his logic, but didn’t argue with the ligature further.

Another small surprise was when I hosted my first official office hours. I’d never used them as a student, and in retrospect, I actually felt kind of bad about that. I’d always just barged in the moment I needed a particular professor.

Five students came to my office hours – Willow, the brown haired shy girl, was the first, already waiting there when I arrived and unlocked the office. I’d come an hour before my office hours technically started, just in case, and now I was glad I had.

“Hello there Willow,” I said, doing my best to give her a reassuring smile. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long.”

Willow shuffled and said something under her breath that I couldn’t catch, then we both stepped inside. I left the door open, though – the bounds of social propriety might be far weaker among mages, but they were still there. She was here early, and alone, and while I might not be intimidating…

Well, better safe than sorry.

My office was sadly sparse. Most of my magical items were kept on my person, so the main thing I kept stored in my office were the supplies I’d purchased from Mabel for my classes, which meant lots of jars of herbs and spices and salts and powdered metals, alongside many crystals, but little enough that was actually magical on its own.

Willow, however, looked around with a wide eyed look of awe, and I had to stop myself from smiling at her. I wondered if I’d looked the same way when I’d entered Travis’ office for the first time during my novice enchanting class.

“How can I help you?” I asked. “You’ve done quite well on your first burner spell.”

If I recalled correctly, she had finished her force bolt one by the middle of the week, and then moved on to the lamplighter spell.

“Well… Three things, really,” she said. “First… I don’t have any idea what kind of enchanter I even want to become. I don’t love combat, but at the same time, I feel like gaining combat power is the only way to progress. That’s how you did it, right?”

“That is how I did it,” I admitted. “What scholarship or loan did you take out?”

“The Golden Fox Scholarship,” she said, and I nodded. I’d been afraid of that.

I glanced at the door, trying to make sure nobody would hear what I was about to say.

“The Golden Fox Scholarship is a sham,” I said. “Driven by our military industrial complex’s need to constantly recruit more low level mages through failure. Those who don’t fail become exceptional… at the cost of destroying mages who fit comfortably in the middle of the road and could have done a lot of good. I recommend getting out of that as soon as you can. Look and see if Archmage Talik or Dormer are offering scholarships – those will be far better.”

Willow frowned, but nodded her acceptance, then tilted her head.

“How is that relevant to my uncertainty?”

“Well, if you want to push through at this school as a Golden Fox candidate as safely as possible,” I said, “you should be a battlemage, or at least sell weapons to them. We don’t offer high level courses in machine creation. There are spells in Zheren that are used to maintain terraces, but we don’t make those known. Combat is your best current path forward.”

I leaned forward.

“But times are changing. If you think you can do it, then go for it. Carve your own path forward. It’s just far riskier.”

Willow had a contemplative look at that before she asked her second question.

“Aren’t foci and artifacts supposed to be well beyond our grasp?” she asked. “We’re first year mages. Travis called you an idiot for claiming we’ll all be able to make them by the end of the first year.

I waved my hand dismissively.

“They’re not as intimidating as they seem. They’re just another way of containing spells. Once you’ve got a solid base on how to integrate spells, you’ll be able to make foci and artifacts without too much effort.”

I paused.

“At least simple ones. One moment.”

I pulled a pad of paper from my desk and wrote myself a note to tell the class that making one artifact didn’t mean you’d be able to make any of them, and if they were in the slightest bit uncertain about a spell, they could come to my office hours and I’d check it for them.

“What was your third question?” I asked when I finished.

“I wanted help with this array…”

She pushed a spell over to me, and I immediately felt a small smile spread over my face.

She’d tried to make an overpowered force bolt by combining together two different burners, each containing half the spell.

While I’d never used this technique myself, I had seen Victoria do almost the exact same thing during my first year, though she’d used lightning, rather than force.

“So the main thing you’re missing here is a way for the spells to interface…”

We worked on the spell for a while, and when my official office hours started, Alyssa, the muscular potions mage who was in my witchcraft class breezed in.

“Ah, welcome Alyssa,” I said with a smile. “I admit, I didn’t expect you.”

“Miss Wisteria said that you were really good,” Alyssa said. “And that you might be able to help me stretch my ideas further.”

I raised an eyebrow. I could brew several potions, that was true, but I used them as a supplement to enchanting.

“I had an idea,” she explained. “You know how to make enhancement spells, right?”

I made a so-so gesture.

“My cloak uses three of them – force, life, and temporal – but they’re far from my specialty.”

Willow gave me a strange look from where she was working on her array, but I ignored it. Alyssa slapped down a book on the table, and I pulled it towards me, then started laughing softly.

No wonder Wisteria had pointed her toward me. I’d point her right back to Wisteria soon, but I could definitely help with this part.

Alyssa’s idea was to take burners and release the magic into a potion, to act as a powerful potion component. Potions were already a one use item, so enforcing the one-use nature of them would add quite a punch, especially if their natures were linked.

“It’s a solid idea,” I said. “It’s a bit beyond what I’d recommend for you right now. Now, we do have a part of the witchcraft class on burners, but there’s no harm in giving you a bit of a preview…”

Willow left shortly after, but I got another surprise when Donovan, the cocky but eager to learn noble, sauntered in half an hour before my office hours were over.

“Donovan,” I greeted. “How can I help you?”

“Well, you probably know this, but our houses’ archmage is a master of wards,” Donovan said.

I nodded, but didn’t say anything.

“I’m going into wards as well,” Donovan continued. “But the problem with wards is that they’re slow and locked to a specific area. I wanted to know how people like you and my great-uncle are seemingly able to just throw wards around like they’re nothing.”

“There are several ways,” I said. “All of which are fairly complex. I’d bet that Chris Heenling uses the spell storage arch-star. I use my cloak, which is an artifact with a modular ward sewn in. There are also spell bottles.”

Donovan’s eyes narrowed.

“I can buy some spell bottles,” he said thoughtfully. “But why are you talking so freely about the spell-storage arch-star?”

“I have it,” I said calmly.

It was a lie that Tara had planted, to help divert the investigation from House Elide.

“Still, you shouldn’t be talking so… freely… What if someone killed themselves trying to form it as their first arch-star?”

I glanced at Alyssa, who was paying rapt attention… to her spell.

“I’ll risk it,” I said dryly.

“But how do you fit a ward in a spell bottle?” Donnovan asked. “The area locking should prevent it.”

“You’d need to ask your ward professor,” I said honestly. This wasn’t my area of expertise.

I was glad he hadn’t been too prideful to admit he needed help, at least.