Cantrip Mage B1 C2: Unattuned Mana

~Chapter Two: Unattuned Mana~

Both ink and chalk shared a unique property.

Runes drawn in either were inert. Completely devoid of magical potential. No matter the type of Mana the would-be caster tried to fill it with, it wouldn’t fill. Eola’s parents had gotten her a spellbook for her seventh birthday, and they’d explained that under no circumstances was she to use anything but Dad’s ink pen to write in it. She loved that pen—and she loved it even more when he gave it to her at nine years old. It was still on her desk back in the dorms right now. Together, the pen and spellbook replaced the sloppy chalk and slate sketches she’d been making.

Then, when she was ten, and her attunement manifested…the way it had…Eola had realized she’d never sketch a First Order spell in anything except ink or chalk. Most kids her age would have given up and found something else to love, but Eola wasn’t most kids her age. Even if she couldn’t be a Great Mage and cast the most powerful, beautiful spells, she could still learn them.

So, as Eola stood in line, third from the ring in the lecture hall’s stone floor that marked the casting demonstration space, a battle raged inside of her between the immutable reality that she couldn’t cast Call and Calm and the absolute theoretical understanding of it, from the shape of its Old Alemic letters right down to the size of the diamond she’d added. She knew Call and Calm. She’d known it for a long time. If anyone in this room should be able to cast it…

It was Instructor Tarik.

Obviously.

But Eola was a close second, except for that one small problem she hadn’t found a solution for. She fidgeted with her hands. They were hidden inside her robes’ sleeves so no one could see them, tracing the symbol on her wrist—while leaving out a single character of Forsooth Script to keep it safely inert. She couldn’t fix her attunement problem. That was a term-long project at best; Colin and Garreth would cast their Call and Calms in the next five minutes, and it’d be her turn.

But maybe Eola could force the issue. She had a lot of Mana, after all. And the symbol she’d drawn on her arm a few dozen times was perfect. If she applied her Mana in the right way, to the right spots on Call and Calm, it might work for her. And if not, she could blame it on a symbol error. Those happened frequently enough—an ugly solution, but a solution.

“Mr. Tremory, you’re up,” Instructor Tarik said.

Colin stepped into the ring, brushed his tangled brown hair from his eyes, and started to trace the First Order spell into the air with his finger. His robes were buttoned to the wrong holes, and his cloak hung from his slight shoulders at an angle that had to be uncomfortable. It was amazing how someone so sloppy could be so perfectly precise at magic.

He was a quick learner but a slow caster; it took him nearly fifteen seconds to finish the rune, but when it was done, it was correct, right down to the placement of his simple reversed P modifying mark. “Is it right?” he asked quietly—and unnecessarily, in Eola’s opinion. Colin’s runework was always impeccable. It was far better than hers. He was just painfully slow at it.

“Let’s see. Yes, that’s a textbook example for the class,” the professor said. “Go ahead and fill it.”

Colin didn’t say anything. Instead, he shut his eyes and physically tightened like a spring, every muscle in his body straining. Catrine snorted from somewhere in the desks, and Eola resisted the urge to throw another Bright Ball at her. The boy was putting his all into it, the rune shimmering as he slowly emptied his soul into the First Order spell. The rune grew brighter and brighter as he shook, teeth gritted and eyes closed.

Instructor Tarik cleared his throat. “Students, Mr. Tremory is demonstrating one of the surprising properties of First Order ideograms—the volume of attuned Mana required to fill them compared to Child’s Magic—a full bar as opposed to a fraction of one. For many of you, that’s more Mana than you’ve ever moved. A handful of you may be able to fill this symbol in under five seconds. Some of you will take longer. Others will fail to fill it. Luckily, there is a solution for that. Practice. If Mr. Tremory fails, it doesn’t mean he’s failed the lesson. It simply means he needs to expand his soul and—there it is. Well done.”

Eola stared. She couldn’t help herself. So did all the other girls—and most of the boys. The spell hadn’t done anything flashy, but an animal sat in the center of the demonstration circle.

It was long. The yellow of daffodils. Fur that looked softer than anything she’d ever touched. Two beady eyes that managed to look suspicious and innocent at the same time. Colin reached down and touched the oddly-colored weasel. It bared its teeth, and he pulled back quickly. Catrine laughed.

“Good instincts, Mr. Tremory.” The professor scooped up the animal in a leather-gloved hand, then plopped it into a delicate silver cage without any ceremony. “After a day or two, you’ll be able to keep it in your room without the cage. After two weeks, the ritual you’ve started will finish, and you two will be bonded. Then it’ll be able to go everywhere with you. But for now, keeping it caged most of the time is the best way to get it used to your presence.”

“Isn’t that inhumane?” a girl asked.

Instructor Tarik shook his head. “That weasel was a figment of the void until Mr. Tremory summoned it, and if the ritual fails, it’ll stop existing again. Additionally, Mr. Tremory will experience backlash from a failed ritual—Call and Calm’s lack of repercussions is only on the casting, not the ritual. The cage is a proactive measure to prevent its death and his injury until the ritual finishes. Now, Mr. Skaget, your turn.”

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Eola was happy for Colin. They shared a suite in the dorms with two other students, and even though she’d rarely said more than a handful of words to him at a time, she considered him one of her closest friends at Varin’s Academy.

That was kind of pathetic, now that she thought about it. Y’aer help her, she needed to find some friends—or at least be a little friendlier with the one she had.

Colin sat next to her and smiled as he set the cage on the long, curved desk. She stared at the bright yellow weasel. “Good job, Colin. That was a beautiful spell.”

“Thanks!”

“Have you decided on a name yet?”

Colin shrugged. “No, not yet. I figured I’d let him help choose once the ritual finishes. You’re going to do great, too, Eola.”

Eola dropped her gaze and stared at the desk, ears and cheeks warm. She was going to make a mess of things, that’s what she was going to do.

Then, as Garreth Skaget tried and failed to fill his Call and Calm rune, Eola got an idea. What if she failed to fill hers, too, but intentionally? That’d cause the ritual to misfire, and she wouldn’t summon an animal, which would have been disappointing except that she already knew it was going to fail and she wouldn’t get a familiar no matter what. But it’d give her a reason not to cast First Order spells—one that had nothing to do with being a toddler with a weird attunement who was stuck with Child’s Magic. It’d also ease Catrine’s suspicion if she knew why Eola couldn’t cast First Order spells, and if it was a reasonably common problem.

On the other hand, it’d probably force her into a remedial class for additional soul exercise…with Madame Reyanna. That wouldn’t be ideal—but that was a problem for tomorrow’s Eola!

The class laughed at Garreth when he failed to fill Calm and Call. It wasn’t just Catrine this time, either—it was her cronies, and a handful of others, too. But that risk was worth it.

“Miss Lemiene.”

Eola started at Instructor Tarik’s words. Then she shook her head to clear it and pulled a worn stick from her sleeve.

The class gasped. Eola smiled. Catrine glowered.

“Using a wand, Miss Lemiene?” Instructor Tarik asked, eyebrow raised.

“It was my father’s. He gave it to me.” Eola didn’t bother explaining more, and the professor nodded once, then motioned for her to get started.

Eola did. She drew the rune—the three rings of Old Alemic and Forsooth marks, and the diamond for the creature she’d summon and her own, fake modifying mark—quickly and efficiently. Five seconds. The symbol hung in the air. Catrine was staring, but Eola didn’t care. Let her be surprised. She let it sit for a moment, then glanced at Instructor Tarik. “May I finish it?”

“Yes.”

Colin shot her a wide grin and flashed an upraised thumb her way. She looked anywhere but at him.

This was the tricky part. Eola’s soul was full of Mana, and as soon as she gave it an opportunity, it’d come spurting out to fill the rune. She was good at that part of magic, but that was something any toddler could do. Slowing down, though…very few mages got any real benefit from slowing down their Mana. Pop the cork, let it out, put the cork back in. But, in theory, she could go slow by going really fast. If she flicked the cork back and forth, in and out of the bottle, her soul wouldn’t be able to flood the rune, and Call and Calm would fail.

Easy.

Eola carefully opened up her soul.

The cork flew from her grip, and the bottle exploded out of its opening. Mana spewed out like shaken champagne. The rune filled instantly—but it filled with Mana attuned to Eola’s attunement. Unattuned Mana.

Call and Calm tried to activate.

The room went black for a moment as the Bright Balls that lit it winked out. Someone screamed—probably one of the girls who’d oohed and aahed over the rabbit. Eola grappled with her soul and got the cork back in. “Mana overload. It’s rare, but it happens. Miss Lemiene, you need better control of your Mana,” Instructor Tarik said in the darkness. A rune appeared in the air—Bright Ball—and the room lit up as the professor finished his spell.

Eola tried to breathe. To calm herself down. Everyone had seen what’d just happened—she’d botched the spell, and not in the way she wanted to. She squeezed her eyes closed.

Then Instructor Tarik’s hand fell on her shoulder. “Miss Lemiene, it was a good attempt. Come see me after class, and we’ll get you lined up on some remedials to control that soul of yours.”

She nodded and hurried out of the circle, returning to her seat. Then she tucked her head into her arms and tried not to listen to Catrine as she whispered insults at her, and the professor called the next student up to try Call and Calm.

It had been the worst possible ending. And it wasn’t even over.

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In the end, over half the class got to try, and of those, about a dozen ended up with familiars.

Eola had to sit there, watching and stewing as Catrine’s cronies threw insults her way. Toddler, failure—all sorts of things. She ignored it all. They couldn’t do anything here, not with the instructor in the room. And she had a lot on her mind.

It took her almost ten minutes to admit that she’d seen something, just before the spell’s backfire destroyed the room’s Bright Ball scripts and threw it into darkness—two glowing yellow eyes, in the circle.

Her spell had failed. It couldn’t have succeeded. She didn’t have an animal to bond with.

But the eyes had been there.

So, what did that mean? Maybe she’d made a mistake, or her fake modifying mark had sent the entire spell haywire. There were a lot of possibilities for spells that could have done…something weird…and Eola was a problem-solver. She wasn’t very good at magic, but she was great at the theory. So, while Catrine mercilessly pecked away at her and the class slowly worked through the line, she flipped through her spellbook, looking for similar runes with Old Alemic lines in concentric rings.

There were no other spells she could have accidentally modified Call and Calm into with her symbol. That left the possibility that her spell had at least partially worked, which was even more horrifying.

As soon as Instructor Tarik dismissed the class, she pushed past Tobler and Garreth. The sooner she disappeared, the more she could put off talking to the professor. And she had other things on her mind. The Call and Calm rune, for one. The eyes, for another. And at a very distant but also more immediate third, Catrine.

Eola thought about it as she retreated to her dorm suite—the only place she could be reasonably sure Catrine couldn’t get in. Every room in her suite was warded, and no one in her suite liked Catrine or her friends. She took the long way around through the snow-covered hedges and paths outside, then arrived at the wooden door to her suite’s common room.

Not that it was much of a common room. Most of the walls were taken up by six doors—four for the separate bedrooms, one for the shared washroom, and the one Eola stood in now. There was just enough room for a couch and table, but it was a tight squeeze, and if all four suitemates were in the common room at the same time, it was pretty claustrophobic.

Of course, all her suitemates were there.

Evelyn and Bannoque were on the couch, heads buried in their spellbooks and hands meshed together as usual, while Colin was trying to touch his familiar’s fur through the silver-gilded cage. It wasn’t going well; one of his fingers had a nasty cut on it.

All three looked up when she opened the door.

 “Hello,” she said quietly, then pushed past to her private room before any of them could respond. Their eyes weighed on Eola until she clicked the door shut and let out a breath. Her stomach grumbled a little, but she ignored it.

Eola’s room was the furthest from the suite door, on the left. It was smaller than the others, but had two features she’d gladly sacrificed the extra space for.

The first was an access ladder to a tiny loft over the bed. She’d put a Teardrop ward on it, so if anyone tried to climb up, they’d get teary-eyed. Child’s Magic, but it was the best she could do. Eola stored her library-exploring gear there: a breastplate of silvered steel with pads in all the right places underneath, a bandolier for her spellbook and Dad’s wand, and a smallsword.

Her mother’s smallsword, in fact. She’d given it and the armor to Eola just before the last time she’d entered Greenarbor’s dungeon. It was maybe a yard long from pommel to tip, with a loop hilt in steel that bent gracefully into a simple knuckle guard. No gemstones, a simple leather grip, and workmanlike efficiency in the guard rather than a noble’s filigreed, ostentatious weapon. The blade, in accordance with Ordered Magic’s principles, was silvered and only sharp on one side. The other was squared off, forming three serviceable faces for the symbols covering it—an ensorcelled spell-sword.

Every student at Varin’s had an ensorcelled weapon. It was stupid to enter the library unarmed.

Eola didn’t climb the ladder. She didn’t look at the sword. Instead, she stared out of the other reason she’d accepted a room so small she could barely stretch out on the floor between her narrow bed and the desk—and even then, only if she stacked the chair on top of it.

A tall nook in the wall, with a shuttered window less than a foot wide and almost three tall. It was barred and glassed, so fresh air wasn’t a possibility, but the perk of natural light outweighed the lack of space. Besides, Eola hadn’t brought much to Varin’s anyway. Only one of her roommates even had a window. Colin and Evelyn had to make do with Bright Ball.

She stared out the window at the school’s snow-covered grounds. The trees, and the fence that separated Varin’s Academy from Varin’s Town—and from the solid granite wall that looped around both of them in a wide circle.

And a pair of yellow eyes stared back.

Eola watched the eyes until they blinked out after a few seconds. Then she reached for the lever that shut the shutters outside and pulled. The wood slats clacked shut over the window, and she stared at them for a few minutes, breathing in and out slowly as she got herself back together.

She had to have succeeded at Call and Calm. But that was impossible. First Order spells required attuned Mana, and her attunement couldn’t do that. If she couldn’t make attuned Mana, she couldn’t progress, and she’d never be an Archmage or a Great Mage. 

But something from the lesson stuck out to Eola. It kept tickling the back of her mind until she focused on it. It had been a throwaway comment from the instructor’s response to Catrine’s interruption, of all people, and she’d ignored it at the time. On further reflection, though, it was her best lead.

What if she’d been going about it the wrong way for the last six years? What if the answer to her problem wasn’t in changing her attunement at all? She’d seen it—just for a moment as the Call and Calm rune fell apart, but it had given her a spark of hope. What if the solution was to embrace her weird attunement and—Y’aer save her—focus on Child’s Magic?

She needed to get back to the library—and she needed to do it soon. Three more classes, then she’d have a few free hours. She’d make a trip to the library and see what she could dig up in the first-year stacks.

After all, if battle-mages used modifying marks to change their spells, why couldn’t she?

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