Don’t I have an honest to God mage to interrogate about all this stuff? Was the thought nagging at Mia as she watched the rowdy group of mages get herded into a smaller hall just outside hearing range of the beastkin.

  Silencing Wards went up, some Air mages throwing them up, and then Zeigler clapped to silence the murmurs.

  “You have questions,” the Colonel said. But Mia only had one question on her mind at the moment. Yeah, when can I go? “I have answers. Raise your hands like you’re back at grade school, and I’ll pick who speaks up to keep some semblance of order.”

  “What was the final agreement?” the first person asked, which caused a good number of hands to lower in response.

  “We will … promise to allow beastkin who’ve not committed any violent crimes to use the Obelisk once it forms,” Zeigler said with clear distaste, though Mia couldn’t be sure how much of it was a show for the audience. “In return, they will assist in clearing the way to the wolf rift and exterminating all remaining monsters in the city. Most importantly, they will destroy the rift they are holed up in around the moment the first delving teams step into the wolf rift.”

  “How do we know they won’t just go back on the agreement and attack whoever’s not delving into the rift the moment our strongest fighters are gone?” The next person asked, and Mia started paying attention. She might not have wanted to stay initially, only having done so because the others intended to stay.

  It had been a stupid idea to leave sooner just to play with magic sooner, she knew that, which was why she barely needed any convincing to stay.

  “We don’t,” Zeigler answered grimly. “And neither do they know whether we’ll honour our agreement after the fact. If everything goes as it should, both of our sides should lose the same amount of … strength in the push towards the wolf rift. I’m sure most of you worried they’d just betray us once we bled to cleanse the city, but I’ve made sure they’ll do their part too if they want to have access to the Obelisk. Next question?”

  Mia looked around the hall, it was an open-air restaurant once by the looks of it, but now had all its furniture turned to rubble. There were still some benches off to the side under a tree, and seeing them, Mia nudged Carmilla. “Wanna sit?”

  “Sure, why not?” The vampire answered, turning to Mia with a smile as she shrugged.

  Mia could deal with crowds. They didn’t bother her when they weren’t all looking at her, but she also had a social battery that was constantly draining away, wasting energy while surrounded by so many people. Sitting out on the side, under a shade, was much more relaxing and a nicer spot to wait out the rest of this meeting than in the centre. It wasn’t like Mia had any questions of her own she needed answered, the few she had thought of had been the initial two that’d been asked by others.

  “Think we should be worried?” Mia asked, more to strike up a conversation than anything.

  “About them pouncing on the army after they’re weakened?” Carmilla asked back absently, shaking her head a little. “No. I don’t think so. We just have to prepare a bit and make a run for it if the situation turns against us. There isn’t anything really vital for us in Graz. So … what have you been working on? I saw you fiddling with magic.”

  “Oh!” Mia perked up, sitting up a bit straighter. “I think I made my first functional spell, I mean, I have half a dozen prototypes, one of them has to be at least somewhat castable. On top of that, I started playing with kinetic energy a bit, and it’s kinda fun … I mean, I can control a fundamental force of physics. How cool is that? … Though it’s good for little more than making a stiff breeze, but it’s still kinda neat.”

  “Really?” Carmilla sounded intrigued. “Can you show me?”

  Mia did so with glee, and Carmilla made whispered sounds of fascination as she watched Mia bully a few pebbles around with streams of kinetic energy. In all honesty, magicians could have made moving a pebble around without touching it more interesting than what Mia was doing, and they only had smoke-and-mirror tricks to do so, no actual magic.

  “Huh.” Carmilla hummed, blinking at the dancing pebble Mia kept moving by pointing her finger at it. “And you can do that just with the mana manipulation skill?”

  “Pretty much.” Mia shrugged, glancing over at the redhead and finding a pair of twinkling ruby eyes looking back at her with intrigued fascination. “What? I mean, I just had to get a feel for kinetic energy from the Skill that converts it to mana, and this much was just reversing what that does. What does your mana do? I know arcane, somewhat, but not Blood.”

  “It gives me overall body enhancement and a hint of healing passively when I have it seep into my body,” Carmilla said. “Nowhere as good as if I burn lifeforce, but it’s nice. Plus, it should be able to keep me together and working even if ligaments and tendons snap in my body.”

  “What if you just … have a bit of it flow out of your fingertips?” Mia asked, doing her sparkling-fingers trick again as she waggled them before Carmilla’s face. “Arcane would eat through stuff like it's the world’s strongest acid.”

  “Nothing much,” Carmilla said, showing off how mana flowed out of her fingers and covered them in twenty-centimetre-long talons that looked wickedly sharp. “Only this for now. Though I guess it could be another use had been left out of my Bloodline memories but I doubt it.”

  “Can you make an armour out of it?” Mia asked, her fingers hovering millimetres above the talons, not quite brave enough to touch them lest she lose a finger.

  “Nope,” the vampiress said. “Not enough mana, plus it’d take too much effort to maintain it.”

  “I suppose you could at least make a cage around your heart with it if someone’s going to try and stab you in the chest,” Mia mused, looking up at Carmilla. “Right?”

  “I suppose I could,” Carmilla said, then shrugged with a smile. “I don’t plan on getting stabbed, though.”

  “I don’t think anyone who gets stabbed plans for it.” Mia rolled her eyes.

  “True.” Carmilla smiled, her lips twitching and threatening to stretch into a grin.

  “Soooo,” Mia said, the vampire’s almost adoring stare turning a bit embarrassing. “Do you know what the other elements do? I know the very basics, but that’s about it … and aspects, do other elements have aspects? No, I'm sure they do, but do you know what sorts?”

  “I don’t know much.” Carmilla tilted her head, tapping her chin with a finger as she thought. “But I know every element has aspects, and a lot of them. In practice, though, it usually doesn’t matter at our level. A Swiftness Aspected Air mana might lend itself better to body enhancement that makes you quicker and snappy attacks, but Air is already all about being quick.”

  “But my aspect is making my mana all weird,” Mia said. “And as far as I know, almost everyone had ‘Chaos’ or ‘Order’ aspected arcane mana and it can even be changed.”

  Carmilla shook her head, giving Mia an apologetic look. “Sorry, I have no idea. I know Aspects are like … distinct flavours of a specific element, with some bonuses to specific spells and such, but that’s about it.”

  “It’s fine,” Mia said, smiling as she patted the other girl’s knee and left her hand lingering there for a bit. “I’ll have to interrogate that Nikki girl later about this stuff. She’s supposed to be an actual mage with actual magical education.”

  “Right-“ Carmilla started, then looked over at the crowd where Helene asked a question of the Colonel.

  “What about food?” Helene asked. “There is only so much of it we can scrounge up from grocery shops, and last I heard, the same beastkin who we are supposedly allying with had raided your stocks too. We will starve, sooner or later. Do you have any solutions for that?”

  “We do,” Zeigler said, and Mia could see the lines on his ageing face pull taut as he clenched his fist. “We have an agreement with Mr Addler, who has a Nature mage in his employ. Soon, we will have crops planted and grown on cycles as short as possible.”

  “Wait a damned second!” Another man shouted. “Those bastards were the ones who raided the warehouse?”

  “Hard times create unlikely alliances,” Zeigler said, his jaw set. “I will assure you. I have not forgotten their transgressions. My men died protecting that warehouse, and their deaths will not be forgiven so easily.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  There was clear anger in his demeanour, and for a moment, Mia still found herself wondering how much of it was on purpose, to appease the rowdy crowd. Zeigler had shown himself to have a firm grasp of his emotions after all, but Mia also couldn’t see what he was showing now as insincere.

  Likely, he was just allowing himself to show the genuine anger he felt at the death of his men, or so Mia concluded.

  With most people suitably mollified by their leader apparently sharing their emotions, while the next few questions were still heated, the atmosphere calmed down.

  The meeting went on for a few more minutes, but soon people started leaving and heading back towards their homes. Mia’s group was the same, all their possible questions having been answered, and they found themselves heading back towards an army–protected safe-house in the back of a personnel carrier. It’d been cramped, with the carriers all carrying back as many of the mages as they could, but Mia didn’t particularly mind, mostly because it only gave her an ‘excuse’ to snuggle up to Carmilla through the ride.

  *****

  “A magical education?” The blue-haired woman raised an eyebrow in apparent confusion, and Mia nodded at her. “You mean about what? Everything has magic in it if you look hard enough. I have some basic education in mana theory, spellcrafting and did some artificing as a hobby during my days at the academy. What exactly do you need?”

  “Just … basic stuff,” Mia said, wincing as she didn’t even know whether what she wanted to know would be considered ‘basic stuff’ or ‘academic curiosity’. “About elements, spells, aspects and things like that. You have to understand, we only know about magic what we’d learned from the few kinds of books the System has given out as Quest rewards, nothing else.”

  “I … see.” Nikki said, trailing off with a strange look in her eyes as she watched Mia before shaking her head. “I can do that. I know little about higher elements and mana theory, which studies aspects, but I can tell you what I do know. You probably only want to know about the practical stuff anyway, right? Not the deeper hows and whys of elements.”

  “For now.” Mia shrugged. “I’d also like to learn about the System. Classes, Ranking Up and how to get Skills to upgrade Classes and such … ? If that’s something you can tell me anyway.”

  “Sure?” Nikki said. “Yeah. I can do that … that’s common knowledge in most places.”

  “Not here,” Mia said, shrugging. “I’ll take anything you can teach us.”

  “Alright,” Nikki said, then stopped to look at Mia with some hesitation. “ … I’ll do it for free, of course, but … could I perhaps get something out of teaching you? If it’s not too much of a bother. I don’t want anything too out there.”

  “Sure,” Mia said. “I don’t have any authority over what happens to you, technically, but I’m sure the Colonel will accommodate me if I ask nicely, or insistently enough. What were you thinking about?”

  “Do you have some actual food that doesn’t taste like I’m eating baked sand?” Nikki asked, the hint of a pathetic whine entering her voice, taking the edge out of the accusation. “And something to do in here. Books, hell, I’ll even do some artificing for you if you get me some materials and tools to work with. The boredom is killing me here, especially now that I’m all alone.”

  “Sure, I can do that,” Mia said, a bit taken aback by the heat in the woman’s voice. “Though I don't know what sorts of tools or materials you’d need for artificing, and we probably don't have any at hand.”

  “Oh,” Nikki said, deflating a little. “It’s fine. A few books to keep me company would be fine too … if there is anything written in Common that is. I can’t read the language used around here yet.”

  “Yet?” Mia asked back with a raised eyebrow, then nodded. “I think I’ve seen some adventure and romance books on the army’s registry. I can certainly get you some. But I think you won’t have to be bored for long with the push to reclaim the southern part of the city from the wolves starting soon.”

  “You think they’d trust me enough to fight beside them?” Nikki asked hopefully. “These ‘army’ soldiers didn’t strike me as the trusting type.”

  “They have to make do.” Mia shrugged. “I’m sure they won’t be happy; they were reluctant to ask even just the locals for help, but they’ll need every halfway decent fighter who's available and willing to lend a hand.”

  “That’s great,” Nikki said, now smiling in apparent relief. She looked around her room, which she’d invited Mia into when she came around to talk and motioned towards the couches. “Let’s get comfortable. I’m sure you have numerous questions about all things magic, so we might as well.”

  Mia just nodded and slunk into the nearest couch, keeping herself upright as she mimicked the prim and proper pose Nikki had taken as she seated herself.

  As opposed to the natural grace of Carmilla's movements, Nikki’s held the grace of a dancer's elegance, learned over countless tiring days of training. Mia had seen some ‘nobles’, well, royals from the few countries of earth that still had the institution, and Nikki would have fit right in with them.

  Aside from her choice of clothing, of course. The pair of stretchy leggings and the hoodie the woman took to wearing were in stark contrast with her noble bearing.

  “So, you’ve mentioned being interested in elements, aspects and basic mana theory,” Nikki started off, taking on a more businesslike tone. “Correct?”

  “Yep,” Mia said. “Primarily, I’d be interested in what you could tell me about my own element and its ‘states’, as the books called them. Is that what other books mean when they speak of aspects? If not, do other elements have them?”

  “You mean the three states of arcane mana, right?” Nikki raised an eyebrow, and Mia nodded after a moment. “Those are … well, those are a type of aspect usually born of some inherent quality of the element. For arcane, static, chaotic and flux are some basic states the mana type likes to take on even in nature, unaffected by the spiritual impression of a mage.

  “There is a very similar phenomenon with fire,” Nikki continued. “I think I’ve heard them refer to the two states as ‘smoulder’ and ‘inferno’. One is a simmering flame, calm and controlled, while the other is an all-consuming inferno. The mana is much harder to control while in the second state, but also increases the potency of all explosive fire spells.”

  “Just like the stable and chaotic states for arcane, right?” Mia asked. “And fire mages can also just switch back and forth between the two? And what decides which one they get initially?”

  “Well, ‘switching’ a mana state is an arduous spiritual exercise,” Nikki said. “Though it should always be easier to switch from the calmer state to the more offensive one than to do it the other way around.”

  “Makes sense.” Mia shrugged. “You said there were other aspects? What even are aspects anyway?”

  “Well, aspects are sort of … spiritual concepts melded together with mana?” Nikki said uncertainly. “Some people actually just call Elements ‘Greater Aspects’ and what we call aspects as ‘sub-aspects’. But that gets confusing really quickly, still, it also shows that elements are sort of like what every aspect dreams of being. Some Elements are just evolved aspects, too, like Ice is. Water Element combined with a ‘solid’, ‘cold’ or ‘static’ concept is how you make the Ice element. I think the same goes for Arcane and its two derivatives: Force and Illusion. Most Advanced Elements should be created like that.”

  “Can I have more aspects?” Mia asked. “Like … can I have a whole list of them I can switch between, or how does that work? And … this just came to me, but what if your mana goes from being one element to the next? Would I still be able to use arcane magic if my mana turned into Illusion mana?”

  “That depends on you,” Nikki said. “There is more than one way of going about it. For example, you could just go with aiming for creating an Illusion Affinity for yourself while leaving your mana as arcane. With Illusion being a derivative element of Arcane, you could use Arcane mana to power Illusion spells. Though the conversion would be worse than if you had illusion mana, of course.”

  “Would my runic model even allow me to add Illusion runes to it?” Mia wondered aloud.

  “If you take your Class in that direction?” Nikki shrugged. “Sure. I think there is a rather popular Class build that merges Abjuration and Illusions to create various illusions with more than usual physicality to them … as for your question about having multiple aspects, yes, you can have more than the few fundamental aspects of your element.”

  Mia perked up, a Multitasking partitioned biz of her mind already trying to come up with cool concepts that’d fit arcane mana.

  “But adding new ones requires some spiritual resonance with the concept and a deep understanding of said concept. I only have my ‘Frost’ aspect, I’d used to make my Ice affinity beyond the base Water aspects and the additional Ice aspects I’d gotten after turning all my mana into Ice elemental mana. Getting concept-based aspects is hard; it took me having grown up in a bone-chilling mountain range to get mine, it can take years or even decades, and that’s for those who get lucky. Most never get one.”

  “Wait,” Mia said, catching a bit of that explanation. “If you still have your Water aspects, can you also convert mana back to water from your current ice?”

  “I can give the ‘fluidity’ aspect to my ice mana, and it mostly acts like regular water mana that way,” Nikki said, making a so-so gesture with her hand. “It’s nowhere near as efficient as using water mana when it comes to water spells, but I don’t really care as I like Ice more anyway. Water is all about adaptability, fluidity and wearing down your opponents over time, while Ice, my Ice, is an avalanche that buries everything standing in my way under its overwhelming might … that’s the goal at least. If you want a concept-based aspect, you have to think about what arcane is to you. That’s what matters most, the resonance between you and the element, combined with the concept that acts as the bridge to facilitate that resonance.”

  “Huh.” Mia intoned, a dozen or more thoughts swirling in her mind. She felt like she was back in college and the professor was trying to shove the maximum amount of knowledge into her head over the least amount of time possible.

  Thanks to her increased Memory stat, assisted by her Cognity, she had a much easier time both memorising and processing all the new information she was getting.

  “And you said you only knew the basic stuff,” Mia mused, sending a squinted look Nikki’s way.

  “I’m surprised myself I remember so much,” Nikki said, disregarding Mia’s sass without batting an eye. “I only had a single course in the academy that had aspects and elemental theory on its syllabus.”

  “I have one more question about aspects,” Mia said, pulling the Ice mage’s attention back on herself. “Then we can get onto the next topic. You said I could have more than one aspect, but can I apply more than one at once? Can you use two or more concurrently?”

  “Some you can.” Nikki shrugged. “Some you cannot. Depends on your spiritual power and whether or not the two aspects are compatible. It’s like casting two spells at once; the spiritual weight of using two aspects at once is not additive but multiplicative and that is much worse when it comes to concept aspects. Those are jealous, greedy things. So more often than not, the answer is simply no. But you could use mana converters in your spell circles to utilise the base elemental aspects, though that makes their effect a third of what it would have been if you had the aspect active. Still, it’s a nice way of empowering your spells if you know how to do it.”

  Click Here to check it Out!