Eldritch Guidance

Outside somewhere on a university training grounds that doubled as a courtyard, Alan and his friends were gathered. All the male students were training while Mitra and Sere were watching from the side.

Jafar: “Huff, huff, huff. I-I-I’m gonna die at this rate…” he said, exasperated and with sweat running down the side of his face.

Alan: “I-I can do thi— gaah!” he said as energy exploded in his face.

A week had gone by since both Alan and Jafar agreed to be part of the enforcers and were admitted into the Arcane Eye College. As part of all that, the head enforcer Mitra was putting the two male students through intense training.

Sere who was also present and watching, thought it looked more like torture than training to her.

Jafar was wearing a harness attached to some weights that were dragging behind him as he ran around the field. The harness was enchanted in a way that if Jafar slowed down too much, it would shock him and cause pain.

The ember gear student who had never learned any combat magic before, was going through a super fast crash course on it. Jafar was learning the basics of how to use enhancement magic.

Part of Jafar's training was teaching him how to use enhancement magic to improve his physical ability. The amount of weight he was dragging was not humanly possible for someone like Jafar. The only way he was able to move at all was to use his own aether to increase his strength. He just learned how to do this three hours ago by Mitra, and has been running nonstop since then.

Sere felt that was too unreasonable, making someone who just learned enhancement magic a few hours ago use it nonstop. It was unlikely that Jafar had been applying that magic perfectly since then, which would generate discomfort to himself if he didn’t. This type of magic can cause pain and muscle cramps if not applied correctly. He also wasn't just using enhancement magic to improve his strength, but his speed as well. Jafar needed to do that, or the harness would shock him once he slowed his running.

Making someone who just learned enhancement magic use two different types at the same time nonstop for hours straight was beyond unreasonable. If he didn’t use the magic right he would suffer pain, and if he didn’t use the magic at all he still would suffer pain. It was torture.

Alan wasn't fairing much better.

The Lionheart student was already proficient in enhancement magic, so Mitra was teaching him a different advanced form of magic. She was trying to teach him how to use fusion magic. A technique that fuses up to two different types of elements to create a new type of pseudo-element for spell casting.

This kind of magic had a lot of practical applications beyond combat magic. It also wasn't particularly that physically demanding, but it was mentally. Fusing different elements together took a lot of concentration. You needed to gather the elemental powers within yourself and hold it there while forcing them to mix together in equal ratios. If you lose concentration or get the ratio of the elements wrong, you will lose control of the energies inside yourself and it will explode outwards.

Alan was attuned to wind, vito, and fire elements. Of the three elements he could use, vito and wind were his strongest and he had the most control over them. He was currently trying to combine those two elements together to create lightning.

He was attempting to form a small ball of lightning between his hands, but every time he gathered the elements within himself, he lost control. The energies would go wild within himself and Alan would rapidly release the energy outwards to avoid causing any serious damage to himself.

Doing this, caused a mini explosion of wind and fire right in front of Alan. Sometimes very slightly burning him, or pushing him away. While not dangerous or life-threatening, the explosions still hurt. It particularly hurt when Alan got close to creating lightning. He was able to sometimes create lightning, but wasn't able to hold or control it. So, when that happens he would create an explosion of electricity and zap himself.

Alan was standing with his arms out, trying to gather energy to form a ball of lightning.

Alan: “One more time! I will get this—” he was cut off mid-sentence as failed again to control the energy and caused an explosion of electricity that shocked him. “OW, OW, OWW,” he yelled out in pain.

Alan was knocked onto the ground. His hair was standing on ends while dozens of small arcs of electricity discharged into the ground from his body. Each small arc of electricity that jumped off him felt like a bee sting.

Alan lay on the ground breathing heavily. He felt sore all over and had countless little singe marks all over his clothes from the countless failed attempts at creating or controlling lightning. Feeling completely mentally drained, he wanted to take a break, but Mitra wouldn't let that happen.

Mitra: “Did I say you could stop? Do it again until you can create lightning without even thinking. We’ll worry about you controlling it later. Or, I can attach a harness with some extra heavy weights and you can start running with your friend while I shock you. I’m sure that getting zapped with electricity will help you better understand how to create it,” she said while looking down at Alan on the ground.

“Oh my god! Even if I can create lightning that effortlessly, it will still shock me if I can’t control it. I forgot how much of a demon she was!” Alan thought to himself.

Mitra was someone everyone at the Lionheart College knew. They nicknamed her “The Green-Haired Demon”. She was the head of the enforcer at the university, but also a teacher here who would train the first-year Lionheart students. The training she made Alan and Jafar go through was even more hellish than what she did with the first years, and Alan remembered fellow first-year Lionheart students vomiting from that training.

Alan was so mentally drained and was having such a hard time with this fusion magic, that he was honestly weighing in his mind if it would be better to go running with his friend.

Alan turned his head towards his friends and could only just stare at Jafar with sympathy, as he went through the exact same training before, like all first-year Lionheart students. Except, Alan imagined it was probably worse for Jafar. He at least already knew how to use enchantment magic when going through that hellish training, Jafar didn’t have that benefit and was not likely casting that magic correctly, causing an immense amount of pain.

Sere, who was standing nearby, walked up to Mitra and started talking to her

Sere: “Um, Ms Mayumi. Don’t you think it's time that Alan and Jafar get a break? They have been working quite hard already,” she said, trying to help her friends out.

Mitra: “Hmm,” she mumbled while considering what Sere just said. “Fine, we’ll take a quick break. HEY! EMBER GEAR! You can stop running!” she yelled out to Jafar.

The second Jafar heard that, he stopped running and collapsed. He was absolutely exhausted and everything hurt. The second he was allowed to stop running, he took it. Suddenly, from the harness Jafar was wearing, arcs of electricity jumped from it to the orange-haired student.

Jafar: “AHHHH!” he yelled out in pain as he was painfully zapped.

Mitra: “Whoops, forgot to turn off that enchantment,” she said, before muttering an incantation that deactivated the enchantment in the harness, stopping it from continuously shocking Jafar. “Hey, Alan. Go collect your friend,” she ordered.

Without question, Alan forced himself up and slowly walked while dragging his feet over towards Jafar, who was lying flat on the ground looking up at the sky. The orange-haired student breathing heavily from all the running he was doing, with a distant look in his eye as if he was disassociating.

Jafar was quickly pulled out of the enchanted harness and slung over Alan’s shoulder before being carried over toward where both Mitra and Sere were. He then laid his friend down on the grass before taking a seat beside him to rest.

Mitra looked down on the two tired boys and sighed while shaking her head like a disappointed parent.

Mitra: “You're up,” she said, directed at Sere.

Sere: “Huh?”

Mitra: “It’s why I asked you to be here. While I can use healing magic myself, It’s better if someone specifically trained in that craft uses it. Also, it will serve as your training quota for the Silverwing college.”

Sere: “Oh, you wanted me to use my healing magic. I’m still learning though, and not that great at removing fatigue yet.”

Mitra: “Well, now’s as good as any time to practice that.”

Sere: “But, if I don’t use it right, it will cause a bunch of pain.”

Mitra: “Ah, a little bit of pain builds character, so don’t worry about it. By the time I'm done with them, any pain you could cause with your magic will feel like a massage to those two.”

Sere: “Oh…um ok…” she said, feeling unable to refuse Mitra.

“I thought those rumors were being hyperbolic when they said she was a demon. But, there might be some actual truth to that.” Sere thought to herself as she walked over to Jafar, attempting to carefully remove his fatigue without causing any more discomfort to her friend.

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Sere placed her hands on Jafar’s shoulders and mumbled an incantation. A yellow light emitted from her palm as she began using healing magic. Jafar immediately felt a warm and soothing energy flow through him, slowly dulling the pain in his muscles. There was an occasional sharp pulse of pain from Sere’s inexperience at healing fatigue, but overall Jafar was very slowly starting to feel better.

As Sere was healing Jafar, she turned her head and started conversing with Alan.

Sere: “Ah, I’m sorry Alan. I don’t think I can heal fatigue caused by mental exertion with my magic.”

Alan: “That's OK.”

Sere: “If you want, I can show you how I use fusion magic. It might help you understand it better,” she said, offering to help.

Mitra: “Don’t bother. Fusion magic works completely differently for everyone depending on what element you're attempting to fuse. So, any advice would be pointless. He’s going to have to learn through trial and error.”

Sere: “But, wouldn’t it be good if he at least understood the basics.”

Mitra: “They already do. I explained everything earlier before you showed up. But, I suppose going over everything again and drilling it into their heads would still be good. So, listen up you two. We are going to go over the basics of basics. Now tell me Jafar, what is the fundamental of spellcasting.”

Jafar: “Um, gathering aether and elements together to weave into a spell,” he said, while still lying on the ground and being healed by Sere.

Mitra: “You’re getting ahead of yourself. It's just aether. You don’t need any elements to cast eighty percent of spells. Take this spell for example,” she said while holding up her hand.

Suddenly a white glowing ball of energy appalled just above the palm of her hand. It floated there with a dim light.

Mitra: “This is the most basic combat spell all combat mages first learn. It’s an aether bolt. As you can see, there is no element in this spell at all, but it is still perfectly functional. “

Mitra then flicked her wrist and sent the ball of energy flying. It flew toward some targets in the training area, hitting them with a loud slapping sound while leaving a small indent. She then held out her hand again and formed another ball. However, this time it wasn't a ball of energy. What formed just above her palm looked like a perfectly spherical floating rock.

Mitra: “Now as you can see, I’m using the exact same spell, but this time I have added some earth element into the mix. Giving the spell a bunch of properties that you would associate with earth. Making it solid and hard. We pretty much train all mages to use elements in their spellcrafting, but can you tell me why.”

Alan: “It makes the spell more powerful.”

Mitra: “Correct.”

To demonstrate her point, Mitra flicked her wrist again and sent the earth-infused aether bolt at the same target she hit before. Unlike last time, the attack went right through the target leaving a gaping hole in it.

Mitra: “Now can you tell me the other reason we use elements in our spells?”

Jafar and Alan looked at each other hoping the other knew the exact answer. They didn’t know what other reason there was. They were both taught that elements make spells more powerful and efficient. Neither could recall learning about another reason to use elements in their spellcrafting.

Both of them shook their heads, indicating they didn’t know.

Mitra: “Hmm. Even though I already gave you two a hint, you can’t figure it out,” she said, followed by a disappointed sigh. “It adds properties to your spells. Like with that aether bolt. The earth element made the spell hard and solid.”

Alan & Jafar: “Ohhhh,” they both said as they remembered an obvious fact about using elements in casting spells.

Mitra: “These properties are just often thought of as a byproduct of increasing your spell power, but can also serve as a feature. Each element has its uses and drawbacks when used to cast certain spells. Fire can increase the power of your spells the most of any other element, but does not sustain those spells for very long. Earth can increase hardness in spells, but make them also heavier. Wind makes spells quicker, but lacks power. Water is the most adaptable, but can make spells hard to direct. Necros is more deadly and debilitating, making it not very good for supportive magic. Vitos can add a lot of restorative properties to spells, but make your spells less harmful too in situations you may not want. There are many more properties to each element that I'm not going to go through. Otherwise, we’ll be here all day. Did that make sense to you two?"

Alan nodded.

Jafar: “Um, yeah. We’ve already learned about a lot of that stuff.”

Mitra: “Clearly you have more to learn.”

Jafar: “Huh?”

Mitra: “Jafar, you’re running around using enhancement magic with earth as the element of choice. Yes, that works, but it also makes you heavier. So with the increase in weight, It also makes it harder for you to run. You actually have to use four times the amount of enhancement magic to be able to run at a decent pace with earth. It is very inefficient when lots of movement is required, and earth is also the least forgiving and most rigid. It’s why the enhancement magic has been hurting you so much.”

“It hurts me so much because you’ve made me use enhancement magic nonstop for hours.” Jafar thought to himself.

Mitra: “You have an affinity to water, earth, and necros. Of those three, you should be using water. It's the most forgiving and less likely to cause muscle spasms like earth if you don’t apply the enhancement magic correctly. I was hoping you would figure this out yourself by now, but it doesn't look like you will anytime soon. So, I'm saving you some pain by telling you this.”

Jafar: “Geez thanks…” he said sarcastically, not really grateful for the tortuous training he was put through and a bit annoyed she didn’t tell him this earlier.

Mitra didn’t seem to notice the sarcasm in Jafar’s voice. Or, she possibly did but didn’t care. She was a hard woman to read. Maintaining a constant stoic expression in almost every situation, making it difficult to impossible for anyone to tell what she was thinking.

The green-haired woman then turned towards Alan with that same unchanged expression.

Mitra: “As for advice for you. Sadly, there is none. When it comes to fusion magic, it’s just practice. There’s no way around it.” she explained, directed at Alan.

Alan: “Is there really nothing that could help me? I really want to stop zapping myself.”

Mitra: “Look. When people learn to use magic for the first time, they're often taught to focus on using the element they're most comfortable with. It’s effective if you just want to teach someone the basics of magic, but it ends up making people lack the proficiency of the other elements. Since they don’t bother to try to use any other elements they’re attuned to. The best analogy I can use to explain this is writing with your left hand when you're right-handed. Most people can do it, but they're not very good at it. Using the nondominant hand to write would be slower and the writing would look more messy. It’s the same when using elements. When you’re trying to use elements you're not used to, it can be messy and hard to control. And for fusion magic, you need accurate control. The instability of your lightning magic is coming from the fact you lack adequate control over Vito”.

Jafar: “In that case, shouldn’t Alan just be practicing using just the Vito element?”

Alan: “What do you mean Jafar?”

Jafar: “Well, with how fusion magic is described, it sounds like you need perfect proficiency in two elements to properly fuse their properties together. And if Alan is lacking proficiency in Vito, it would make sense to just practice with that element first.”

Mitra: “Yeah, you're partly right. You don’t need perfect control. You just need a decent amount. Heh, if Alan could achieve perfect control while fusing Vito and Wind, he might be able to use plasma magic. Which is a much higher tier of lightning magic. But, yeah. You would normally train using just the element you're not as good with before trying to learn fusion magic.”

Sere: “Wait, what?! You didn’t train Alan to use Vito first before trying to get him to fuse wind with it,” she said surprised.

Sere was already capable of using two types of fusion magic and knew everything Mitra had just explained. So she was surprised that Mitra was skipping a crucial step in learning fusion magic.

Mitra: “We're on a tight schedule. In another week we’re going to be forming a new unit of enforcers that we’re calling the Sleuth-Hawks. So I’m cutting some corners. I need both of these sprouts to be battle-ready as soon as possible before that,” she said, referring to Alan and Jafar as sprouts.

Sere: “Are you expecting them to fight? I mean, Alan might be fine, but Jafar…” she said worried about the safety of her friends.

Mitra: “No. I’m not expecting these two to have to fling spells at black mages or anything. But, you never know. It’s better that these two are prepared for that scenario. We are still investigating some pretty shady people, afterall.”

Sere: “Who are you looking into, besides Jixi?”

Mitra: “Why don’t you join the Sleuth-Hawks and I’ll tell you.”

Sere: “Not happening.” she said, maintaining her convection to stay away from anything related to law enforcement.

Mitra just smiled at Sere’s response before turning back to both Alan and Jafar who were still laying on the ground.

Mitra: “Rest up for another ten minutes. Then it’s back to whipping you two into shape. By the end of the week, Jafar should be able to use enhancement magic and basic attack spells. And hopefully, Alan will at least be able to consistently produce lightning,” She said with a devilish smile.

Both the boys there groaned with dread.

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Overlooking the training field, watching Alan and Jafar train, was Cid. He was standing in a nearby building watching the entire training session from a window.

Cid: “I don’t get it. Why doesn't it work on them?”

Cid had been experimenting with the book of grand design. Trying to better understand how this power John gave him works. He was trying to calculate where Alan and his friends would be in the future.

He wasn't doing anything particularly overt with the book, or taking any specific action against Alan and his friends. He was just trying to calculate where they would be in the future and then observing it from a distance without being noticed.

Alan and his friends had ruined Cid's calculation three times now. Each time the chance of that happening was less than 0.1%. The fact his calculation was thrown off three times in a row is a statistical impossibility. Making them a subject of study for Cid, to understand how that was possible. As they were the only consistent factor to explain what could have happened.

His current calculation told him that Alan, Jafar, and Sere should just be arriving at this very moment to start training. But when Cid showed up, they had already been clearly training for some time before he arrived. The timing of the calculation was way off. Then there was the fact Mitra was here. Cid calculation didn’t mention she would be here today.

So far his calculation, while not completely inaccurate as he was right about them being here today, still left too many factors unaccounted for. Which was a problem.

Through chaos theory, he could set off a chain of events to produce just about any possible outcome Cid wanted. But, that only works if he knows exactly where and when something is going to be in the future. The unaccounted additional person and the time when the people arrived were enough to throw everything off. It made manipulating cause and effect impossible for Cid, at least when Alan and his friends were nearby.

It was a similar problem when he was setting up his trap in the library with Sorin. He would find random objects not part of his calculation laying about. With some of them clearly connected to the three he was observing. Those objects just being there at the time was enough to throw his calculation off if he didn’t notice and adjust for it.

There was just something about Alan and his group that the book of grand design was unable to calculate. A factor that Cid was missing.

Cid: “Hmm, maybe I’m lacking information. However, there was also that other student I couldn’t calculate as well. I wonder if he and those three are all connected somehow. I’ll have to run some more experiments on other people to try and figure this out. I wonder if John could give me some sort of hint?”

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