It only took one afternoon of discussion with Sidjin to convince Viv she had to make headways on arcane magic, starting now and then continuing at the academy.

“Colorless mana is used to bolster almost every spell at high level. For example, the artillery spell, the mainstay of battlemages everywhere when they do not have the time to do something more…”

“Take a deep breath,” Viv suggested.

“Sorry, yes, I tend to use longer sentences when lecturing. My apologies. The artillery spell uses transparent mana layers to prevent the colored mana from dispersing before impact.”

“So transparent mana makes the missile, and colored mana makes the payload?”

“An interesting turn of phrase. Something from your world?”

“Hmmm. Yes.”

“Weapons, I’d wager. But I digress. The answer is no. The colored spell is the missile and the payload. Colorless mana is used to reinforce and enhance it.”

“I see.”

“Arcane is not limited to reinforcements, it can also allow mages to achieve feats unique to specific hues, albeit at a higher cost. For example, flying.”

Viv’s mind went into overdrive, thinking of the possibilities.

“Hold on… there is a weight rune!”

“One often misunderstood or used for parlor tricks. And yes, very astute. Arcane magic lets a person reduce their weight until the smallest impetus propels them across the ether. You will never outdo a gray mana specialist, of course…”

“But I’d be airborne.”

“You can make light, which requires very little energy but is rather complex. Personally, I have never achieved the white color.”

“Hmm, my school days are behind me, but I think I might know why. You need to reproduce colors from all across the visible spectrum to achieve white light. You are probably creating light with a high temporal coherence, meaning it’s the same color all around, and huh…”

She wilted a bit under Sidjin’s intense gaze.

“And now I absolutely must ask you questions about your world,” he said. “And we are getting sidetracked again. Arcane magic has many applications. Someone like you will profit a lot from its flexibility. First, we are going to examine the most simple spell, as a proof of concept for you, so to speak…”

Sidjin coached Viv into making her own lamp. It took the light glyph and some measurements inscribed in circles, otherwise light would only occasionally flicker. The calculations made Viv’s head hurt and annoyed her on a fundamental level. Those were arbitrary numbers based on some nonsensical scale made by some old geezer who picked his favorite color as a base. Quickly understanding the problem, Viv ditched the pointless math and created her own spectrum, picking the ‘high’ and ‘low’ glyphs as anchors. It took her half an hour of effort, but she had a working light source she could dial between red and indigo. Sidjin glared at the spell for twenty minutes and asked her to change the color until the deck of the ship felt like a cheap rave. Eventually, the mage licked his lips and considered his next words.

“I believe I know how you ended up in Nyil. You mentioned your homeworld didn’t have magic?”

“Yes?”

“Then you would have been wasted there. I am not saying you could not have been successful. Successful people tend to be successful everywhere. I am saying that you are gifted, Viviane the Outlander. It would have been a shame not to have you here, converting mage spells into witch constructs.”

“Who’s being a flatterer now?”

“And by this, I mean that I expect your efforts to match your talent, because you have no excuses.”

“Alright, alright.”

At the end of the first session, it was done. Viv could cast light. She would not have to rely on her stone anymore. She decided that the teal/cyan wavelength was nice and strangely peaceful, and that it would be her standard choice from now on. After that, they discussed the theory of spell layering, adding colorless elements to other spells.

Sidjin coached Viv. He was amusingly intense and single-minded when it came to magic, which she found endearing. He also had a habit of storing questions for later, then asking them one by one and by chronological order. Viv was starting to think that under his guise as a scarred and kinda cute prince, the man was a little bit of a nerd when it came to magic.

Layering the artillery spell to make it go faster and farther proved to be excessively complicated, not because the principle was difficult, but because she needed to wield two different sorts of mana at the same time. It was the first time she was confronted with this difficulty while virtually every other caster experimented with mixes early on. The exercise was unfamiliar. Nevertheless, Viv did not give up, she would just need a bit more time. In the meanwhile, there was the issue of fire.

So far, the crew and Captain Leit had been willing to accomodate the two mages. However, mention of the fire experiments during dinner forced his hand. Sidjin had to promise he would keep Viv under control to assuage the man’s fears, and the crew gave them a wide berth the next day.

The colorless spell was based around a very rare rune, that of friction. For almost a day, Viv could only manage to create sparks while Sidjin had flames with the same structure. She quickly concluded that an adjustment had to be made so she could cast as a witch, but couldn’t exactly think of one until she realized the problem was fuel. Somehow, Sidjin used mana as fuel naturally, which she hadn’t considered. She added an energy rune to hers and now she had an uncontrolled explosion. Mercifully, Sidjin stopped them before they could even escape the spell structure. It did give her some ideas. If she could compress…

“Do not get distracted by another concept,” the mage interrupted.

“Yeah yeah.”

“You were being distracted.”

“I know!”

The witch expediently solved the issue by lowering the mana input. Now, she had tiny balls of flame at will, and could light a fire if she found herself without a lighter again. As Sidjin said, those were low-hanging fruits, but they displayed the sort of things she could accomplish.

And if anyone asked her to light a pipe or a cig, she could snap her fingers and make it happen. That was cool.

On the evening of the third day, the slow river tub stopped at its first destination. It was not a village, despite her first impression, but an extremely large estate overseeing the cultivation of the rich soil along the shore. The ‘River Flower’ unloaded bales of cloth, tools, and luxuries, then charged its stores with oil from a large fruit that reminded Viv of olives except for its color which was a vivid red. It smelled particularly fragrant.

“Ganar oil. Cooks swear by it from the cold south to Halluria’s hot deserts,” Leit declared.

He frowned.

“Those Mornyr merchants can turn it into scented soap and perfume. They won’t tell us how, the beasts.”

“Trade secrets are always bad when it’s the other guys doing it, huh?” Viv teased.

Captain Leit rolled his eyes.

“I would not be so sore if my wife didn’t like it so much. Seven silvers a jar. Highway robbery, is what it is.”

Viv cajoled the canny merchant into admitting the gift wouldn’t be so appreciated if it were cheap. There wasn’t much to do on the shore, but Viv wanted to walk a bit on firm ground, and so they moved to the inner courtyard of the estate’s central building. It was as large as a football field, and surrounded by thick brick walls. Soldiers and scouts trained in a corner they walked by. They eyed Sidjin with pity instead of focusing on their damn forms. She heard the words for ‘cripple’ and a few insinuations from sneering warriors watching an ongoing spar. Sidjin didn’t seem to mind, possibly used to it all, but that rubbed Viv the wrong way, so she requested the use of an archery target for a little ‘demonstration’ on colorless fireballs. He traced the glyph slowly and with perfect control, each symbol and each layer appearing carefully to give her plenty of time to observe them. One smoking crater later, the jeers stopped. Sometimes, it felt nice to be petty.

“Thank you for the demonstration,” Viv said.

“No,” Sidjin replied with a knowing smile, “it was my privilege.”

They walked a bit more at a slow pace. It soon became obvious that Sidjin tired quickly, so Viv offered her arm to him, which he accepted with muttered apologies. He was clearly in pain. Viv also noticed that he didn’t eat much. There would be a lot of work before he was mostly fine again.

They moved on shortly after.

Viv realized the cruise would have been deathly boring if it were not for Sidjin. Leit was nice. He was also a man of habits whose interests were limited to trade and its intricacies. Viv could not relate to a man who thought the storage requirement of various kinds of cereals deserved hours of discussions. She didn’t look down on him for it. It just didn’t interest her that much.

Or maybe it was just that Sidjin was different. He explained to her how a single earth mage had changed the food production industry in his hometown and made it feel like a saga. There was spying, treachery, one murder, and a properly bedded diplomat’s wife.

The next few days were spent training telekinesis, or as Sidjin called it, far control. It required only two runes in its most simple configuration. It was also the single most complex and tiring mental exercise there was, a single lapse of focus sending the selected bottle to the mercies of Newton.

Mana mastery: beginner 9