“I could at least take one day off, right?” she insisted. “I’m going to have to sleep all day tomorrow to recover from today.”
“If you’re going to complain, I’m going to drop you in the middle of the forest and leave you there,” Lia teased, stopping to turn off of the main path.
Marin’s eyebrows shot up, and she quickly scrunched her eyes closed and pressed her head against Lia’s chest. “Nope. No complaints here. Just sleeping.” Lia and I shared a laugh as we made our way through the darkening forest. “Should I bring my weapons tomorrow?” Marin asked a second later, cracking one eye open to peer over at me.
“Yeah. Bring everything,” I answered.
“Even the gauntlets?”
“Especially the gauntlets,” I nodded. “It’s time to teach you how to use them.”
---
“You can’t do this!” Marin protested loudly, pointing an accusing finger at my chest. “You can’t keep tricking me like this!”
I rolled my eyes. “Marin, sit down,” I instructed, pointing to the dirt floor of the arena. “If you want to learn how to use magic, you’re going to learn it the way I want to teach you.” We stared at each other quietly for a long moment. “You don’t even have to learn what each of the runes mean right now.”
She squinted at me. “You’re not just saying that, right? This isn’t going to end up being some ‘training’ session where I end up writing each of those symbols a hundred times each?”
“No, but it can, if you’d rather do that than listen to me,” I shot back.
She stuck her tongue out at me as she plopped down into the dirt. “Alright. Teach me about your symbols.”
“They’re runes,” I corrected as I sat down across from her, placing my sword across my lap.
“Same thing,” she muttered, waving me off.
I raised an eyebrow at her, and she sarcastically clapped a hand over her mouth. “So, these are Alderean runes,” I repeated, tilting the inscribed face of my blade towards her. “Each one of them represents a specific word.” My finger ran down the length of the sword along the column of large runes, pausing as I named each one. “These ones are the enhancements you’ve already learned how to use: Agility, Windstep, Sharpening, Combat Acceleration, and so on.” I shifted my finger to the shorter column of small runes. “These, on the other hand, are sort of...concepts. Lesser, Greater, Channeled, Self, Sustained.”
Marin’s brow furrowed. “Why do you need those? What do they do?”
“We don’t need them much anymore,” I admitted. “The system of magic I learned in Alderea was very static. If you wanted to increase your agility a small amount, you would use Lesser Agility. If you were fighting for your life, you’d want to use Greater Agility to boost it as much as possible. It’s a pretty easy system to understand, and it’s how I was originally taught to use magic. Naturally, when I started to experiment with new types of magic, I thought the same rules had to apply.”
“But wait,” Marin interrupted, “I’ve never used those extra words, and I still use magic just fine, right? Why would you even need—”
“Marin, I promise I’m almost there,” I said, holding up a hand. She sat back with a sigh and nodded for me to continue. “The first time I attempted to make fire with magic, I just wrote the rune for fire on my sword and activated it. It worked, but it set my entire sword on fire, which also partially set my hand on fire.” I paused to let the image sink in, which seemed effective; she sat up straighter and pursed her lips as she watched me with unblinking attention. “At the time, I thought the only solution was to add a modifying rune: Blade. When I tried it again, the magic did exactly what I wanted it to do; it created fire only on the blade of my sword.
“However, you know that’s not the only way to do magic,” I continued, nodding to Lia. “When she taught you how to use enhancements, she just taught you the spells without any modifying words. When you needed to increase your abilities further, you just focused harder, and the spell did what you wanted. You don’t need those modifying words at all.”
“So…” she trailed off, tapping her pointer fingers together hesitantly, “why are you teaching me about them?”
“I’m teaching you about them because I need you to understand why it’s so important to focus when you’re using magic,” I answered. “If you don’t know exactly what you’re trying to do, or you’re distracted in the middle of a fight, you should never try to use magic you aren’t comfortable with. You could hurt yourself, or someone else.”
“Okay, I understand,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry that I kept interrupting you.”
“That’s okay. I know magic seems exciting, but it’s also dangerous. We just want you to be safe,” I smiled.
Marin hopped to her feet with a sudden burst of energy. “So, now that I know that, can I try to use fire magic?”
I rolled my eyes as I dismissed my sword and stood up next to her. “There’s one more thing I need to show you.” Her excited bouncing stopped as she watched me pull the silver needle from my bandolier and hold it out towards her. “Those modifying words might not be useful for our combat magic, but they can still do amazing things.”
She plucked the needle from my outstretched hand and held it with cautious reverence. “I...don’t know what this is.”
“Look at the decoration on the metal,” I said, grinning. “Look closely.”
She closed one eye and held the implement up to the light for inspection. “What am I looking...wait…” she muttered, bringing the silver closer to her eye. “Are those...runes? Are those ALL runes?”
I nodded. “Hundreds of them. After a few decades of trial and error, I strung together enough runes to make it work without any concentration; you just stick it in one of
