The Archmage: Chapter Twenty-Eight (Patreon)

“Alright kids,” I said as I walked into the introductory witchcraft classroom. “Midterm time.” 

I was met with a series of groans, and smiled, then raised a hand. 

“No need to worry,” I said. “This class isn’t very well suited to it. We’ve only handled basic potions, burners, familiars, and languages so far. I’m not going to expect you to be able to combine those in some sort of new form. What we’re going to do instead is cast some basic divinations.” 

“Divinations?” someone asked from the back of the class. 

“There are two practical types of divination,” I said. “Information magic, which is learning information about an item, and scrying, which is searching the world’s indexes for information. It’s not crucial you master any of them, but divination is an excellent interdisciplinary field. For an alchemist, it can help you break down the purposes and ingredients of a potion that you don’t know. For a wardworker, it will help you know how to counter divination, as well as how to identify small failures and gaps. For a siege mage…” 

I worked down the list of students and their specialties, and how divination could be helpful for each of them, then wrote three spells out on the board – identify runes, search for link, and library divination. 

I tapped on the last one. 

“This spell will be your midterm. It uses information magic to look for matches to a keyphrase, then scrying magic to guide you to it. It was one of the tools that helped me navigate the maze of books that is Yesgol’s library, and should be useful, which is why it will be your midterm. Don’t worry, though. As long as I can tell you’ve put effort into it, you’ll pass.” 

There was a bit of murmuring through the class at that, and I smiled at them, then started delving into the rune identification array. 

When it came time for my enchanting class, though, things got a little more interesting, at least in my opinion. 

“Welcome in, everyone,” I said to the assembled people. “Alright. I’ve talked about how enchanting is, at its heart, an interdisciplinary field. And you all have constructed a few burners and even a foci now. But can any of you tell me what you haven’t done?” 

There was silence for a moment, then Willow slowly put her hand up. 

“Artifacts?” she asked. 

“Hm. I phrased my question poorly, that’s on me. True, you haven’t done artifacts, but that’s… not something you’ll do this semester.” 

“It’s not something we should be doing at all,” Isadora said with a haughty sniff, but I chose to ignore her and keep talking. 

“I was talking about innovating the spell you’re actually using,” I said. “Sure, it’s all well and good to be able to just stick a premade sorcerer spell with the right skill and get it slapped onto the universal anchor, but that’s not the only option, nor is it always the best. I’ll go into the older methods next semester, but that’s not really the point either, sorry.” 

I shook my head. 

“What you all need to do for your midterm is work on altering the standard spells, to suit the needs you have.” 

“Isn’t that more useful for a sorcerer?” someone asked. 

“Yes, but also no.” 

I slipped my old foci knife from my belt, and pointed it up into the air. I hadn’t used the blade in a while, but the foci still worked, and I flowed aura into it. A cone of light burst into the air, and a moment later, a flash of darkness in the same space.

“For example, I took a classical light spell and restructured it to release all of its light at once, then fill the same space with shadows. I could have looked up multiple spells to do this, and may have found them, and then adjusted them, but you’re not always going to be able to take that option.” 

I slipped my knife away and studied the class. 

“If you all need a design for something niche, that doesn’t have a spell you can look up. When you leave Yesgol and no longer have easy access to the library. If you’re on a time crunch and need a quick fix. If you’re on the cutting edge of new enchantment designs. Any of those and more require you to know how to assemble and rebuild spells on your own.” 

I held up both my hands as if I was a scale, tipping them one way and the other as I spoke.

“In some ways, you need to be better than a sorcerer. You need to be able to do it with a wide variety of magical types, at least passably, they only need one. Admittedly, they need to do it on the fly, and entirely in their head, so don’t go thinking badly about sorcerers. They’ve got some things far harder than you. But this is a vital skill.” 

I tapped the board with a bit of chalk and wrote out ‘new spell’. 

“This is your midterm. Take a spell, any spell, and modify it to do something new. It doesn’t have to be very good. But it should work. If you need help or get stuck, then my office hours are open as always.” 

The final couple of weeks of school passed by without too much issue, with my students turning in various assignments. To my disappointment, many of the nobles who’d genuinely tried before started to give up, though Donnovan started to redouble his efforts, which only made me further suspect that he was on the outs with his house. 

Several people’s midterm assignments turned out to be a modified version of the light spell, built to release all of the light at once, which was both frustrating and understandable. On the one hand, it was a solid goal and bar they could measure themselves against, but on the other hand, it did somewhat defeat the point of the exercise. 

Ah, well. I was sure that things would work out in the end. 

Guiding my class through the divination spells turned out to be harder than I thought. For each of them that ran into a wall, I had to work out a way they could arrange it in their head that made sense to them. My shelves and books solution worked for a lot, and Tara’s web of connections worked for even more, but there were a few who couldn’t use either. One girl who didn’t often speak in the class wound up needing to arrange them like notes in a song, which made absolutely no sense to me.

As long as it worked for her, though, that was what was most important. 

Once they moved onto their midterms, I did something very similar to what Wisteria had done in my own first year – a treasure hunt, using the library divination spell to look for a scroll with their name 

It was also somewhat risky, a test run of something that I wanted to do at the end of the year. I worked through the list, looking at each of their specialities, then diving into the books that I’d stolen from house Hawthorne, as well as my own banned books from the Ligature, and Tara’s collection. 

For each student, I found a spell, one that wasn’t easy to access through free sources. It had to be a delicate balancing act, since I didn’t want to get any of them in trouble, getting accused of theft or such, but I did want to provide them a unique advantage. For a few of them, Donnovan in particular, I actually needed to go to Clara and purchase a spell from a more obscure ward specialist who’d passed away a half century ago. 

Nothing too out there, but just out there enough… 

I was fairly confident that I’d managed to balance it, and it was best to try it with one spell, like how I’d tested my information spells with Liam, before revealing it to all of Paerús.

Before I knew it, the break for the winter solstice rolled around, and I was able to visit the depths of Yesgol. 

Travis led me through the roots, and towards where the deep root lab was, but slipped through a secret passage that I’d never noticed. I flicked open my third eye and examined it, but I could see nothing as the wall rumbled open. 

“It’s purely mechanical,” Travis said, smirking at me. “Nobody ever thinks of mechanical walls in a magical school.” 

I shrugged, saying nothing, because I knew for a fact that Tara did. Though admittedly, hers did use magic, so maybe he had a point. 

One of Travis’ necklaces lit up as we headed deeper, shedding a soft amber glow as we headed deeper into the passageway. It grew increasingly narrow until finally it opened into a massive cavern. 

The cavern was illuminated by the glow of the enchantments through the space, and I was glad to see that it wasn’t entirely human sacrifice rituals. 

Oh, the aura sparks were there, being used to keep the tree alive, and keep its aura active, but there was more than that. There were complex rituals that drew magic out of the Fae Sovereignties and processed it for the tree to use. A drain that brought aura from deep in the earth. The modulation spells that stopped people from just draining the power too quickly. 

“We’re underneath the center of the tree,” Travis said. “The exact nexus of all of the ley lines.” 

I nodded to him as I continued to study the rituals that should have taken a massive amount of power, but they weren’t. All of the power they provided was flowing up into the tree itself. 

Because they weren’t rituals. 

They were enchantments. 

Each and every spell that pulled in power was entirely self-sustaining. 

I was looking at dozens upon dozens of imbued items, and at least a hundred sacrificed lives. 

It was sickening, but also impressive. With how effective and efficient the imbued items that pulled in power from elsewhere were, the tree was only in a slight deficit. Its own aura needed to be subsidized with additional power, like the pillars of aura that noble estates, but the original designers had clearly known what they were doing, as I thought it probably only took about two or three in a year. 

It was enough to make me wonder if maybe, just maybe, there was a way to set up these enchantments in a better way. I’d need to create massive reserves of capacitors and inductors, and work together with multiple recharges that drew in power from other, more esoteric sources than local ambient aura, like my own, but… Maybe, just maybe, it could work. 

“I want you to look at this,” Travis said, striding over to the parts of the spell that drew in ambient aura from the Fae Sovereignties. 

I nodded to him and started studying it, then pulled out my journal to start sketching out some potential upgrades. 

“This is going to take me a while,” I warned. “I mean, this is a complex enchantment, so while I’m confident I could improve it – you’re not even using faerie power to start pulling in the aura, which… I mean, that feels like a massive oversight?” 

“It’s not so easy to get faerie magic,” Travis snapped at me, and I grinned at him. It was nice to finally have a leg up on my old mentor.

“Sure, of course not, which is why I’ve got three of them.” 

He rolled his eyes at me, but I saw the corner of his lip twitch in amusement. 

“Well, take all the time you need. The tree won’t need more aura sparks until the summer solstice. It’s clear you’re opposed to their use, but if you can improve the enchantments enough.” 

“Is that a challenge?” I asked. 

“Do you think you can do it?” he challenged back. 

I thought… maybe. I would have a better shot if I was starting from scratch, and built in growth spells alongside my printing spell to continually copy and let it keep up. 

As was, I didn’t know, but I could try. 

“Before I leave you alone, I need a compact to ensure the secrecy of this room, and that you’ll only use your magical skill to improve it.” 

I clasped his hand and swore the oath. The secrecy wasn’t too much of an issue, and improving it… Well, there was an argument to be made that destroying it was an improvement, so I thought I could wiggle out of the oath there. 

With the oath sworn, Travis left, and I summoned Oracle to my shoulder, adding his bracer onto him, then pulled out my pen, ready to start copying down the spells.