It was a curious thing, he pondered, sitting at a table with his Shadow, other warriors attending their meals as well in Iriel'en customary silence, the twists and turns he'd taken on this journey in a new world.
He'd been convinced that he would be living in his forest home forever, five months ago. He still did want that, in part. It was just that there were people out there determined to be sonsofbitches and they wanted him dead. The former engineer was not a naturally violent man, a bit inclined to be asocial, a devout enjoyer of peaceful solitude, but not a psychotic misanthrope bent on killing everyone around him. So, his determination to find and murder an indeterminate number of people to death was an unexpected trajectory for his life to follow. Events had their own momentum though. They carried him along with an inertia that was too great to ignore. He couldn't bury his head in the leaves of his forest home, simply because he was conflict averse. He couldn't indulge that part of himself any longer. Ulric was [Lord of the Ancient Glade]. He was a Person of Interest.
Inevitably, there would be those who believed him either an asset or an enemy. If they were decent people, as the Elves of Iriel had proven to be, they would recognize that Ulric, fundamentally, just wanted to get along and make with the peaceful coexistence. Some others would want his territory for their own. Those got the instinctive need to protect and dominate all under his purview all hot and bothered.
The Lord Instinct. A gift. A curse. A side effect of being recognized by the land itself as being a guardian of a certain domain. Ulric didn't know how or why it had happened, he'd done not much other than just try not to get killed, to survive, in a vast wilderness, but it had. Bald'rt had explained that there were conditions that he'd met, criteria that indicated to the land a degree of fitness. It sounded to Ulric like metaphysical, magical horseshit. But the Akashic Record, the two-way connection between beings who lived on Varda and Varda, the world itself, did not lie. If the mystical status said he was the [Lord of the Ancient Glade] then, by the Twins dancing above, he was.
Whether he wanted to be was irrelevant.
When some threat to his glade arose, some challenge to his rule over it, the instinct rose up with sweet whispers of savagery. It drove him to be more aggressive, to meet his enemies with a ferocity he doubted he could have managed with a psyche molded by the softer, gentler upbringing of his prior life.
Ulric had been Reforged, not reincarnated.
He kept his memories of that past world, the kind people who'd done their best to raise him, the loving sister he'd lost, the few precious friends he'd managed to alienate with his self-destructive isolation and depression, the work that had come to dominate his entire existence, consuming him to the point that he'd forgotten why he bothered doing that work to begin with. It was not the sort of life that prepared the mind to be immersed in a mystical land of mages, Greater beasts, and warriors of impossible ability.
There were other alterations in his disposition. Sitting in his status were traits like Warrior's Instinct, a manifestation of the changes in him caused by his kill or be killed life in the glade. Beasts up on the plateau had turned out to be larger, stronger, more lethal variants of their brethren in the forests below. Contending with them had spurred Ulric's perceptions and tendencies to adapt to that environment.
Humans were nothing if not adaptable.
Thanks to that trait, when things got rough, Ulric's brain went all liquid-cooled. He didn't panic, as he would have in the Before, he didn't lose focus. Instead, the world went all hard edges and sharp contrasts and he felt like the happenings around him were underwater, slow. His warrior class unlocking had indicated that it was a common class trait for the combat-oriented classes but, his already having it had unlocked a subsequent trait. Sort of a fast-forward in progression. He honestly didn't understand the classes, the status, or the Akashic nonsense. He didn't have to though. Keep it simple stupid. You don't need to know everything, so long as you could make it useful, the engineer's creed.
As Ulric stood, his Shadow rose to join his side. Together they strode purposefully through the fortress city of Irielhos, all clamor and bustle, to find the next catalyst of Ulric's metamorphosis: Instructor Gother.
With Bald'rt's wives unwilling to leave his side, Ulric needed a new teacher. The only wrinkled, white-haired, and most tellingly, bearded Elf Ulric had ever met, had volunteered himself. Gother was the Elven equivalent of a pacifist. He did not believe in bringing harm to any sentient being, the destruction of a thinking being and the knowledge it held was anathema to the Elf in these days.
The Bane had changed that.
When word had gotten out that their enemies had used the Forbidden weapon, the Akashic Soul Poison, many restraints had gone out with the dishwater. Gother's refusal to contribute to the death of another had transitioned smoothly to "Here is how you mold Caelum to expand the air inside of a warrior's lungs and shred those lungs" overnight. As Taipan was to the ways of infiltrating and hunting men in the dark, Gother was to the ways of shaping mana to destructive purpose. The Elf had, previously, used this knowledge to instruct his students in the defense against such things. Not any more kiddos, the gloves were off.
Ulric's lessons with the Dragons of Iriel were introductory primers, fundamentals of control, theory, and form for mana. Gother's lessons turned those fundamentals into weapons. Only the Elf's advanced age prevented him from being an absolutely unholy terror, as he had been for centuries in his youth. Gother was the Blood Moon of an era bygone. At a ripe nine hundred eighty-four, the near millennial Elf was unable to muster the stamina to wield his own power. Or, rather, he could do so exactly once more, before the energies consumed his body. Apparently, that was the fate of the Archmage, the wizardly version of "dying of old age".
Slowly, steadily, the ancient mage who had previously passed his twilight years teaching children the common truths of their sylvan world broke down Ulric’s casting approaches and rebuilt them into a more methodical, precise paradigm that drastically improved his efficiency. Each of those base spells that was not at their final rank reached it, their Akashic indication of (V) demonstrating that each spellform had been lifted to its greatest potential.
The wizened Elf frequently passed hours as he stroked his beard and watched as the far younger man struggled to adopt the cleaner, almost ritualistic mental routines of Elven casting. Like creating a vast tree, first the intent, the roots, beginning the spell with its end foremost. Next the trunk, the mechanics of the mana, its shapings and their connections to his core, the specific threads of purpose that bound it into a specific architecture, the spellform. Lastly, the branches reaching high, energizing the framework with his core, and casting it out according to his will. Slow going, but Ulric was a good student and the Elf a patient teacher.
With a bemused smile, Ulric recalled how his lessons in magic with the wizened elf had begun.
*******8 weeks earlier*******
Breath left Ulric's chest as his body drank in the heated water. Steam roiling in the room, as it so often did, made a cloak of imagined privacy, cutting him off from the rest of the world. There was only heat-soaked bliss. Eyes closed, he reclined to his usual posture, preparing to lose attachment to his worldly concerns.
A disturbance in the water next to him marked Taipan's entry into the baths. One eye gently opened to take in her soft curves and rippling musculature, flesh-made art.
His languishing smile vanished when his senses were assaulted by a bony ass, coated in dried, shriveled leather, once browned skin sundried into a pale parchment, dotted by liver spots. The drawn, wrinkled hide dropped into the water and Ulric suddenly found Instructor Gother, ribs standing proudly, shoulder bones jutting out from the water, beard floating, a scant half meter away from him.
"Yeagg!" Ulric's voice elevated as this insult to his expectations reclined.
On his other side, his Shadow lowered herself gracefully into the water chuckling.
"Glade Chief, you should sing higher notes more often, you have a lovely pitch!" She commented.
The aged Elf, appeared as a corpse in his contented sprawl, arms resting on the smooth stone edges of the bath. Water lapped gently at his withered flesh.
"I have considered events, Glade Chief." the dry, pinched lips uttered, eyes still closed. Like some sick necrophiliac puppeteer had taken over the time wasted corpse next to him.
"It would seem that the Crimes of our enemies are too great to ignore. I am too far gone to take matters into mine own hands." The Elf admitted regretfully.
"But you. You have a surfeit of talent and, as you have proven, the will to strive to manifest that ability. You also saved my Lord Bald'rt, my great, great, grand-nephew. In light of this, I have taken it upon myself to offer my wealth of knowledge, my considerable mastery of arcane workings, beyond those of any still living in Iriel, to train you in magecraft." Instructer Gother demanded.
Technically, it was an opportunity, a choice, but Ulric had watched enough Classical Hololives to recognize "an offer he couldn't refuse".
"I see." He replied without enthusiasm. "Um…thanks? No. My apologies." Ulric restarted, sincerely.
"Thank you for your generous offer, Instructor Gother. It would be a privilege to accept your tutelage. I will give my greatest attention to your wisdom." Ulric said, pushing past his reluctance.
His magic lessons with Shor, Bathe, and Vedyr had been curtailed. They were recovering from their own depletion alongside their husband, and would not leave him in any case. Too close had they come to the final separation to be willing to part from his company for any non-critical reason.
According to any Aes'r who spoke on the matter, it was universally agreed upon that Instructor Gother was an institution all to himself. He was ancient, even by Elven standards. Bald'rt had installed Ulric into the Elder Elf's lessons towards Iriel'en children partially as a joke, and partially because Ulric really was more akin to a child than to and adult, at least in terms of worldly knowledge of Varda, and Gother was the best, most knowledgeable teacher who could be found in Iriel.
That the time-worn Elf was dry as all the deserts combined was beside the point.
***************
He could laugh about it now. The ancient bearded scholar had cornered Ulric while he was in the baths. Ulric had barely sat down in the exquisite waters but before a scrawny, pale, liverspotted form slipped into the space next to him. Like somebody had dropped a bearded skeleton into the water at his side. Ulric had not screamed like a girl, no matter what Taipan had to say about it.
Ever since, he'd spent his afternoons in the Arcaneum attending lessons on crafting mana into weapons and on turning aside those craftings, rendering them inert.
Mage duels were a complex thing, every bit as fraught as a knife fight. A mage could interfere with another mage's casting but not the internal workings of their magic. Counter spelling had to be done after they had externalized whatever working they had prepared. That meant that the defensive mage was always reacting, and was always a step behind. In Idra's terms, you granted the opponent complete initiative, the first step, always, in dueling this way. Instructor Gother had insisted upon Ulric's mastery of this skill, nevertheless.
"You are never guaranteed to have the advantage Glade Chief. What opportunity had you to anticipate your assassination attempt not so long ago? It is better to learn to turn a losing position against an enemy than to attempt to always have the initiative, an impossibility on the battlefield." Gother scolded gently.
"By tearing apart your enemy's spellforms you steal from them their energy, you drain their reserves, at comparably far less loss from your own. Counterspelling, Ektyl'rt, is analogous to a magical parry of physical weapons. The point is not to hold initiative it is to turn aside a stroke that would slay you and, perhaps, create the opportunity to riposte. Now! Attend!"
At which point the elder wizard had tossed Ulric across the amphitheater stage with a burst of wind, with not a whisker of a change of appearance.
Instructor Gother didn't gesture, didn't speak, didn't so much as twitch when he cast. Ulric never actually knew when the Archmage was casting. It was extremely unsettling. Especially when it became clear to Ulric that he could weave multiple spells simultaneously while doing something else, like showing Ulric how to inscribe ritual runes, without apparent effort.
Ulric had, once, under extreme duress and without actually thinking about it, dual cast. He'd managed to absorb the heat, the Incendere of that dickhat pyromancer's spell, sending back to him as a set of enhanced [Cinderpearls] while creating the flow of his guided lightning bolt. Subsequent attempts caused both spells to fail. Taipan told him such things were not uncommon, a warrior could perform feats in combat that were outside of their ability in practice. Survival instincts were a potent force. She went on to explain that Instructor Gother had taught Shor and was an order of magnitude greater in mastery than any of her Mothers.
That statement did nothing to decrease his amazement when the wrinkled bag of bones in front of him conjured a globe of each basic elemental mana and then did something that wrapped them up together into a shield of pure magical force that shredded anything Ulric tried to do to penetrate it. Seriously, at the smug old bastard's insistence, Ulric tried everything. He couldn't even get the shield to ripple.
One of their first lessons together had seen Ulric demonstrating his small arsenal of offensive magics. The frowning bearded Elf looked at them and declared Ulric to be a gifted child, and had praised him like one, just before showing Ulric a version of those spells that compared as a field mouse to a wolverine.
Very good little Timmy! Now see how the grownups do it.
Gother'd actually been far more impressed when he learned about Ulric's [Stone Wall] track and the multi-layered air barrier. The first for its finesse, a degree of mana manipulation that was surprising for Ulric's comparative age. The second, for its subtlety. Many mages would have simply cast a single spell and poured more of their mana into it, achieving nothing when overpowered so greatly. Ulric had cast the same spell multiple times, taking advantage of the small amount of air between each barrier that would further soak up energy as he spread it out with each individual shield. Ulric's engineering background had come to the rescue there, he was familiar with how to disperse and spread energy, he'd been making egg drop devices, shock absorbers, and heat shock-proofed metallic glasses since he was in upper school.
Two months of dedicated struggle saw Instructor Gother telling him he had graduated from "talented incompetence" to "marginal". Ulric had grinned from ear to ear at this declaration, right until he had a heart attack.
One second, Ulric was on cloud nine, the next a twinge of something profoundly wrong cut him short. As of this last round of practice, five hours of grueling concentration, like enduring the engineering certification exams, in which he'd used every last iota of skill available to him, he'd earned Instructor Gother's begrudging acknowledgment. Just about the time he was ready to turn to Taipan and boast, the first ripple went across his chest.
He looked down at his shirt in surprise, looking for the switch that hit him just below the sternum, and saw nothing. Just then, another stab of pain radiated outward. As intense as a literal stab, his core felt like it was trying to punch its way out of him. His hand unconsciously went to grip a handful of his clothes, fabric twisting in his hand as he fought the tears out of his eyes.
"Fuck!" He yelled, surprising the two Iriel'en next to him. His face probably described the situation better than his words, he was screwed up in pain as the next wave of pain rocked him.
"Mega fuck! Something's wrong, my chest is exploding!" He grunted trying to stay calm.
Taipan got it first. Her eyes narrowed as she turned to Gother, explaining while Ulric focused on staying upright.
"It is his core. He has not awakened his core and it has reached the limit for condensing unaspected mana. He is beginning to suffer mana resonances." She explained.
Gother had never scanned him. For some reason, that whole pickle had completely slipped Ulric's mind. Shor had warned him. Vedyr and Bathe had warned him. Progressing in his talents for magic would naturally force his core toward critical mass. He'd taken himself right to the edge of what could, potentially, be a deadly transformation. The old man's crinkled eyes took on an unbelieving cast.
"You were not awakened?! How was I not told this?!" cried the wizened instructor before he took hold of himself.
Taipan looked shaken, it hadn't occurred to her that, at some point in the intervening months no one had ever thought to mention that Ulric's core might go boom.
"Shall I be [Scanning] each pupil to ensure that they aren't hiding necessary information now?" He muttered sarcastically before he got himself in order.
"Ulric, this is critical, you must begin circulating mana, immediately, cycling it through your core and throughout your body. Lady Bathe has taught you how to do this. Do it now or you will burn yourself from the inside." Instructor Gother ordered.
It was a curious thing, he pondered, sitting at a table with his Shadow, other warriors attending their meals as well in Iriel'en customary silence, the twists and turns he'd taken on this journey in a new world.
He'd been convinced that he would be living in his forest home forever, five months ago. He still did want that, in part. It was just that there were people out there determined to be sonsofbitches and they wanted him dead. The former engineer was not a naturally violent man, a bit inclined to be asocial, a devout enjoyer of peaceful solitude, but not a psychotic misanthrope bent on killing everyone around him. So, his determination to find and murder an indeterminate number of people to death was an unexpected trajectory for his life to follow. Events had their own momentum though. They carried him along with an inertia that was too great to ignore. He couldn't bury his head in the leaves of his forest home, simply because he was conflict averse. He couldn't indulge that part of himself any longer. Ulric was [Lord of the Ancient Glade]. He was a Person of Interest.
Inevitably, there would be those who believed him either an asset or an enemy. If they were decent people, as the Elves of Iriel had proven to be, they would recognize that Ulric, fundamentally, just wanted to get along and make with the peaceful coexistence. Some others would want his territory for their own. Those got the instinctive need to protect and dominate all under his purview all hot and bothered.
The Lord Instinct. A gift. A curse. A side effect of being recognized by the land itself as being a guardian of a certain domain. Ulric didn't know how or why it had happened, he'd done not much other than just try not to get killed, to survive, in a vast wilderness, but it had. Bald'rt had explained that there were conditions that he'd met, criteria that indicated to the land a degree of fitness. It sounded to Ulric like metaphysical, magical horseshit. But the Akashic Record, the two-way connection between beings who lived on Varda and Varda, the world itself, did not lie. If the mystical status said he was the [Lord of the Ancient Glade] then, by the Twins dancing above, he was.
Whether he wanted to be was irrelevant.
When some threat to his glade arose, some challenge to his rule over it, the instinct rose up with sweet whispers of savagery. It drove him to be more aggressive, to meet his enemies with a ferocity he doubted he could have managed with a psyche molded by the softer, gentler upbringing of his prior life.
Ulric had been Reforged, not reincarnated.
He kept his memories of that past world, the kind people who'd done their best to raise him, the loving sister he'd lost, the few precious friends he'd managed to alienate with his self-destructive isolation and depression, the work that had come to dominate his entire existence, consuming him to the point that he'd forgotten why he bothered doing that work to begin with. It was not the sort of life that prepared the mind to be immersed in a mystical land of mages, Greater beasts, and warriors of impossible ability.
There were other alterations in his disposition. Sitting in his status were traits like Warrior's Instinct, a manifestation of the changes in him caused by his kill or be killed life in the glade. Beasts up on the plateau had turned out to be larger, stronger, more lethal variants of their brethren in the forests below. Contending with them had spurred Ulric's perceptions and tendencies to adapt to that environment.
Humans were nothing if not adaptable.
Thanks to that trait, when things got rough, Ulric's brain went all liquid-cooled. He didn't panic, as he would have in the Before, he didn't lose focus. Instead, the world went all hard edges and sharp contrasts and he felt like the happenings around him were underwater, slow. His warrior class unlocking had indicated that it was a common class trait for the combat-oriented classes but, his already having it had unlocked a subsequent trait. Sort of a fast-forward in progression. He honestly didn't understand the classes, the status, or the Akashic nonsense. He didn't have to though. Keep it simple stupid. You don't need to know everything, so long as you could make it useful, the engineer's creed.
As Ulric stood, his Shadow rose to join his side. Together they strode purposefully through the fortress city of Irielhos, all clamor and bustle, to find the next catalyst of Ulric's metamorphosis: Instructor Gother.
With Bald'rt's wives unwilling to leave his side, Ulric needed a new teacher. The only wrinkled, white-haired, and most tellingly, bearded Elf Ulric had ever met, had volunteered himself. Gother was the Elven equivalent of a pacifist. He did not believe in bringing harm to any sentient being, the destruction of a thinking being and the knowledge it held was anathema to the Elf in these days.
The Bane had changed that.
When word had gotten out that their enemies had used the Forbidden weapon, the Akashic Soul Poison, many restraints had gone out with the dishwater. Gother's refusal to contribute to the death of another had transitioned smoothly to "Here is how you mold Caelum to expand the air inside of a warrior's lungs and shred those lungs" overnight. As Taipan was to the ways of infiltrating and hunting men in the dark, Gother was to the ways of shaping mana to destructive purpose. The Elf had, previously, used this knowledge to instruct his students in the defense against such things. Not any more kiddos, the gloves were off.
Ulric's lessons with the Dragons of Iriel were introductory primers, fundamentals of control, theory, and form for mana. Gother's lessons turned those fundamentals into weapons. Only the Elf's advanced age prevented him from being an absolutely unholy terror, as he had been for centuries in his youth. Gother was the Blood Moon of an era bygone. At a ripe nine hundred eighty-four, the near millennial Elf was unable to muster the stamina to wield his own power. Or, rather, he could do so exactly once more, before the energies consumed his body. Apparently, that was the fate of the Archmage, the wizardly version of "dying of old age".
Slowly, steadily, the ancient mage who had previously passed his twilight years teaching children the common truths of their sylvan world broke down Ulric’s casting approaches and rebuilt them into a more methodical, precise paradigm that drastically improved his efficiency. Each of those base spells that was not at their final rank reached it, their Akashic indication of (V) demonstrating that each spellform had been lifted to its greatest potential.
The wizened Elf frequently passed hours as he stroked his beard and watched as the far younger man struggled to adopt the cleaner, almost ritualistic mental routines of Elven casting. Like creating a vast tree, first the intent, the roots, beginning the spell with its end foremost. Next the trunk, the mechanics of the mana, its shapings and their connections to his core, the specific threads of purpose that bound it into a specific architecture, the spellform. Lastly, the branches reaching high, energizing the framework with his core, and casting it out according to his will. Slow going, but Ulric was a good student and the Elf a patient teacher.
With a bemused smile, Ulric recalled how his lessons in magic with the wizened elf had begun.
*******8 weeks earlier*******
Breath left Ulric's chest as his body drank in the heated water. Steam roiling in the room, as it so often did, made a cloak of imagined privacy, cutting him off from the rest of the world. There was only heat-soaked bliss. Eyes closed, he reclined to his usual posture, preparing to lose attachment to his worldly concerns.
A disturbance in the water next to him marked Taipan's entry into the baths. One eye gently opened to take in her soft curves and rippling musculature, flesh-made art.
His languishing smile vanished when his senses were assaulted by a bony ass, coated in dried, shriveled leather, once browned skin sundried into a pale parchment, dotted by liver spots. The drawn, wrinkled hide dropped into the water and Ulric suddenly found Instructor Gother, ribs standing proudly, shoulder bones jutting out from the water, beard floating, a scant half meter away from him.
"Yeagg!" Ulric's voice elevated as this insult to his expectations reclined.
On his other side, his Shadow lowered herself gracefully into the water chuckling.
"Glade Chief, you should sing higher notes more often, you have a lovely pitch!" She commented.
The aged Elf, appeared as a corpse in his contented sprawl, arms resting on the smooth stone edges of the bath. Water lapped gently at his withered flesh.
"I have considered events, Glade Chief." the dry, pinched lips uttered, eyes still closed. Like some sick necrophiliac puppeteer had taken over the time wasted corpse next to him.
"It would seem that the Crimes of our enemies are too great to ignore. I am too far gone to take matters into mine own hands." The Elf admitted regretfully.
"But you. You have a surfeit of talent and, as you have proven, the will to strive to manifest that ability. You also saved my Lord Bald'rt, my great, great, grand-nephew. In light of this, I have taken it upon myself to offer my wealth of knowledge, my considerable mastery of arcane workings, beyond those of any still living in Iriel, to train you in magecraft." Instructer Gother demanded.
Technically, it was an opportunity, a choice, but Ulric had watched enough Classical Hololives to recognize "an offer he couldn't refuse".
"I see." He replied without enthusiasm. "Um…thanks? No. My apologies." Ulric restarted, sincerely.
"Thank you for your generous offer, Instructor Gother. It would be a privilege to accept your tutelage. I will give my greatest attention to your wisdom." Ulric said, pushing past his reluctance.
His magic lessons with Shor, Bathe, and Vedyr had been curtailed. They were recovering from their own depletion alongside their husband, and would not leave him in any case. Too close had they come to the final separation to be willing to part from his company for any non-critical reason.
According to any Aes'r who spoke on the matter, it was universally agreed upon that Instructor Gother was an institution all to himself. He was ancient, even by Elven standards. Bald'rt had installed Ulric into the Elder Elf's lessons towards Iriel'en children partially as a joke, and partially because Ulric really was more akin to a child than to and adult, at least in terms of worldly knowledge of Varda, and Gother was the best, most knowledgeable teacher who could be found in Iriel.
That the time-worn Elf was dry as all the deserts combined was beside the point.
***************
He could laugh about it now. The ancient bearded scholar had cornered Ulric while he was in the baths. Ulric had barely sat down in the exquisite waters but before a scrawny, pale, liverspotted form slipped into the space next to him. Like somebody had dropped a bearded skeleton into the water at his side. Ulric had not screamed like a girl, no matter what Taipan had to say about it.
Ever since, he'd spent his afternoons in the Arcaneum attending lessons on crafting mana into weapons and on turning aside those craftings, rendering them inert.
Mage duels were a complex thing, every bit as fraught as a knife fight. A mage could interfere with another mage's casting but not the internal workings of their magic. Counter spelling had to be done after they had externalized whatever working they had prepared. That meant that the defensive mage was always reacting, and was always a step behind. In Idra's terms, you granted the opponent complete initiative, the first step, always, in dueling this way. Instructor Gother had insisted upon Ulric's mastery of this skill, nevertheless.
"You are never guaranteed to have the advantage Glade Chief. What opportunity had you to anticipate your assassination attempt not so long ago? It is better to learn to turn a losing position against an enemy than to attempt to always have the initiative, an impossibility on the battlefield." Gother scolded gently.
"By tearing apart your enemy's spellforms you steal from them their energy, you drain their reserves, at comparably far less loss from your own. Counterspelling, Ektyl'rt, is analogous to a magical parry of physical weapons. The point is not to hold initiative it is to turn aside a stroke that would slay you and, perhaps, create the opportunity to riposte. Now! Attend!"
At which point the elder wizard had tossed Ulric across the amphitheater stage with a burst of wind, with not a whisker of a change of appearance.
Instructor Gother didn't gesture, didn't speak, didn't so much as twitch when he cast. Ulric never actually knew when the Archmage was casting. It was extremely unsettling. Especially when it became clear to Ulric that he could weave multiple spells simultaneously while doing something else, like showing Ulric how to inscribe ritual runes, without apparent effort.
Ulric had, once, under extreme duress and without actually thinking about it, dual cast. He'd managed to absorb the heat, the Incendere of that dickhat pyromancer's spell, sending back to him as a set of enhanced [Cinderpearls] while creating the flow of his guided lightning bolt. Subsequent attempts caused both spells to fail. Taipan told him such things were not uncommon, a warrior could perform feats in combat that were outside of their ability in practice. Survival instincts were a potent force. She went on to explain that Instructor Gother had taught Shor and was an order of magnitude greater in mastery than any of her Mothers.
That statement did nothing to decrease his amazement when the wrinkled bag of bones in front of him conjured a globe of each basic elemental mana and then did something that wrapped them up together into a shield of pure magical force that shredded anything Ulric tried to do to penetrate it. Seriously, at the smug old bastard's insistence, Ulric tried everything. He couldn't even get the shield to ripple.
One of their first lessons together had seen Ulric demonstrating his small arsenal of offensive magics. The frowning bearded Elf looked at them and declared Ulric to be a gifted child, and had praised him like one, just before showing Ulric a version of those spells that compared as a field mouse to a wolverine.
Very good little Timmy! Now see how the grownups do it.
Gother'd actually been far more impressed when he learned about Ulric's [Stone Wall] track and the multi-layered air barrier. The first for its finesse, a degree of mana manipulation that was surprising for Ulric's comparative age. The second, for its subtlety. Many mages would have simply cast a single spell and poured more of their mana into it, achieving nothing when overpowered so greatly. Ulric had cast the same spell multiple times, taking advantage of the small amount of air between each barrier that would further soak up energy as he spread it out with each individual shield. Ulric's engineering background had come to the rescue there, he was familiar with how to disperse and spread energy, he'd been making egg drop devices, shock absorbers, and heat shock-proofed metallic glasses since he was in upper school.
Two months of dedicated struggle saw Instructor Gother telling him he had graduated from "talented incompetence" to "marginal". Ulric had grinned from ear to ear at this declaration, right until he had a heart attack.
One second, Ulric was on cloud nine, the next a twinge of something profoundly wrong cut him short. As of this last round of practice, five hours of grueling concentration, like enduring the engineering certification exams, in which he'd used every last iota of skill available to him, he'd earned Instructor Gother's begrudging acknowledgment. Just about the time he was ready to turn to Taipan and boast, the first ripple went across his chest.
He looked down at his shirt in surprise, looking for the switch that hit him just below the sternum, and saw nothing. Just then, another stab of pain radiated outward. As intense as a literal stab, his core felt like it was trying to punch its way out of him. His hand unconsciously went to grip a handful of his clothes, fabric twisting in his hand as he fought the tears out of his eyes.
"Fuck!" He yelled, surprising the two Iriel'en next to him. His face probably described the situation better than his words, he was screwed up in pain as the next wave of pain rocked him.
"Mega fuck! Something's wrong, my chest is exploding!" He grunted trying to stay calm.
Taipan got it first. Her eyes narrowed as she turned to Gother, explaining while Ulric focused on staying upright.
"It is his core. He has not awakened his core and it has reached the limit for condensing unaspected mana. He is beginning to suffer mana resonances." She explained.
Gother had never scanned him. For some reason, that whole pickle had completely slipped Ulric's mind. Shor had warned him. Vedyr and Bathe had warned him. Progressing in his talents for magic would naturally force his core toward critical mass. He'd taken himself right to the edge of what could, potentially, be a deadly transformation. The old man's crinkled eyes took on an unbelieving cast.
"You were not awakened?! How was I not told this?!" cried the wizened instructor before he took hold of himself.
Taipan looked shaken, it hadn't occurred to her that, at some point in the intervening months no one had ever thought to mention that Ulric's core might go boom.
"Shall I be [Scanning] each pupil to ensure that they aren't hiding necessary information now?" He muttered sarcastically before he got himself in order.
"Ulric, this is critical, you must begin circulating mana, immediately, cycling it through your core and throughout your body. Lady Bathe has taught you how to do this. Do it now or you will burn yourself from the inside." Instructor Gother ordered.
