Alchemical Magic

Chapter 4-1

4

When I came down for the training next morning, Grandpa was waiting for me.

"So, I see you went out yesterday?" he said, handing me a glass with some whitish liquid. I took it and swirled it with suspicion, taking a small sip. It was brine, the one used for cabbage. I gulped it, feeling my temples cool down, the dryness in my throat subsiding.

"Yes," I said. "I went to meet my classmates."

"That's good," he said, nodding. "You need to be one of them."

So Grandpa wasn't going to scold me. That's a relief.

The last thing I want to do while squinting due to the bright sunlight coming from the huge windows into the big training room we used for magic, while nursing a headache, was to listen to him berating me.

"Gramps," I then asked, thinking about what my classmates told me about their Masters. "Is the amount of attention you're paying me unusual?"

"Why do you ask?" he said, sitting down on the bench outside the magically isolated sphere that protected him from all magic inside the sphere.

"The rest of my classmates mentioned that they barely see their Masters once per month," I replied. "I wondered."

"I've always paid a lot of attention to my apprentices," Grandpa said, "but then, I don't take many. And I've never lived with any of my apprentices. You're getting special attention, but then, you're my granddaughter."

"And in the Major's case, it must be because of his special interest in me," I said.

The Major seemed to think I could have secret talents due to my uncontrolled Initiation. Talents that disappeared when the controlled Initiation was invented by the Inquisition (the guys bent on destroying most dark talents they considered dangerous).

"I guess so," Grandpa said. "Or maybe he doesn't want to be surpassed by me. Having to share an apprentice makes him very competitive."

"Tell me about it," I said, frowning, remembering all those times the Major trained me to exhaustion, trying to get me to improve faster.

"Now," Grandpa usually avoided talking about his co-teacher with me. He seemed to think it would decrease his credibility or something if he talked about the Major. "Do you need help with something for class?"

"Yes," I said, pulling out the artifact blank I had in my bag, together with the notes. I handed them to grandpa. "I'm supposed to introduce this magical pattern into the artifact."

Grandpa stared at it for a moment.

"Well, it seems like this is one of those cases of universal spells," he said, "since we have similar spells in light magic. You can go ahead. I'll observe and tell you if I see a mistake."

Universal spells are those that both dark and light mages can make and see. The rest of it is unavailable and invisible to mages of the opposite polarity. I and grandpa had been working on trying to produce a common language for universal magic, but we'd abandoned it since I've been very busy with all the magic learning.

And since I was the one driving the project, grandpa had let it slide. He was skeptical about it from the beginning.

There were so many things I'd allowed to slide since last year…

"Don't get distracted," Grandpa instructed me, "start. I'd like to see what the problem is so we can correct it."

I closed my eyes (it helped me visualize magic) and tried to form the shape. It was hard since I just couldn't get the strength for pulling on the loops right.