Chadwick could feel the stones under his feet rumble as the peals of thunder rolled by the tower. It was the first real storm he had experienced since arriving and it was a big one.

  He was currently trying to find the office of Mage Hubertes. Who taught one of the more obscure branches of gaseous magic, fog. Chadwick wasn’t even sure what the man looked like, he had just come across a note on Elvera’s door stating that Mage Hubertes has a note to deliver.

  The man’s office was somewhere on the south side and Chadwick was struggling to locate it. At least until he encountered another student that might know. The same girl from his reshaping class that had approached him after.

  “What are you doing on this side of the tower?” asked the girl.

  Chadwick had never had much to do with her, only sharing the single class. But he was pretty sure she had some kind of gaseous-based magic. So she might be able to give him directions. “Looking for Mage Hubertes’ office. For my duties. Know where he is?”

  The girl smiled brightly. “Oh, you are in the wrong hallway, but there is a quick way around this balcony. I can show you.” She marched towards the end of the hall where it met the outside tower wall.

  “Sorry, you might get a bit soggy, but it saves you going to a whole other floor to get to the right office,” she said, still smiling. She pushed the heavy external door open and they both got blasted with a spray of cold rain. “Quickly now!” she said cheerfully and ushered him ahead of her.

  Chadwick barely got two steps into the blinding rain when he was grabbed by the arm and yanked sideways. He instinctively pulled back away from the sudden movement.

  “Help me with him!” said a male voice.

  A second reluctant sounding male voice responded, “let’s just make it quick. I don’t have the stomach for this.”

  “Better than dying,” said the girl behind Chadwick. Her voice no longer sounded cheerful.

  “Just hurry up,” said the first male voice that Chadwick still couldn’t see as he was facing the wrong way and could barely open his eyes in the heavy rain that was whipping onto the balcony.

  Another set of hands grabbed Chadwick’s other arm and he was picked up and dragged towards the edge of the balcony.

  Chadwick was panicking and just struggling. Kicking his legs and trying to move his arms. But the much larger boys had a solid hold on him. A pause in the rain let Chadwick see the railing the boys were beginning to send him towards. He mentally grabbed a hold of whatever particles he could feel around him and started blasting out with them.

  Noises of complaint came from Chadwick’s left. Followed by “shit that stings, you are meant to be stopping that Claricia.”

  “I didn’t expect you to take this long to throw a child over a balcony. I dread to think how poorly our escape will go if you can’t even manage this,” said the girl. At the end of her commentary, the rain suddenly stopped hitting Chadwick as fog hardened around him. The particles he had been firing out stopped hitting the boys holding him.

  “Better,” said the boy on the right, then “pause here.”

  The boy on Chadwick’s right stepped in front to face him and spoke directly to him for the first time, “make sure to scream on the way down. Or you will have died without even providing a useful distraction for us.”

  Chadwick was trying to get his crazed breathing under control. He just stared at the large boy in front of him and kept trying to fire miniscule particles of his clothing at the face in front of him. But the fog acted like a cushion and just absorbed the particles before they could reach him.

  “He seems scared enough, over you go,” said the large boy and then yanked Chadwick over the balcony.

  The boy on Chadwick’s left didn’t fully let go and Chadwick ended up crashing into the outside railing of the balcony. Long enough to shove a hand through a gap in the railings and not plummet down.

  “You idiot! That’s your fault. Kick his hand out,” said the large boy.

  The reluctant second boy approached Chawick, fog partially obscuring his face.

  “Sorry, but we don’t want to die,” said the boy and then got a runup to kick Chadwick’s hand.

  Chadwick, who didn't want to die either, finally got his panic under control and remembered that he could do more than just throw particles uselessly into the fog. He started by reshaping the railing where he was hanging on. To make it too small for his hand to go back through. Effectively making it impossible for him to fall.

  Then, on instinct, Chadwick focused on firing particles from inside the fog barrier around the approaching boy. Directly into his descending foot.

  The boy screamed as the bones in his foot crumbled, then slipped on the rain and he crashed headfirst into the railing. The scream was cut off suddenly as the boy’s eyes rolled back into his head.

  The larger boy cursed the ineptitude of his partner in crime and raised his hand towards Chadwick. “Fuck this, I’m just launching him out the of the damn tower with lava.”

  The girl looked panicked and pleaded, “no! If we leave the idiot here it will look like a perfect scene of a fight gone wrong. Don’t give them clues that point to us.”

  The larger boy considered this, “fine, but keep the barrier up while I get close. Those attacks sting.”

  The boy carefully checked his footing as he stopped over his unmoving companion and then placed his hand on top of the railing. Reaching down for Chadwick with his other hand to dislodge him.

  He tried to drag Chadwick’s hand loose and complained, “he’s got himself wedged in somehow. I’ll have to break his hand. It shouldn’t matter when all his other bones break at the bottom.”

  The boy braced himself against the railing and lined up a kick.

  Chadwick was frantically firing particles at sections of the railing. His previous plan with the first boy wouldn’t work here with how carefully the second boy had approached.

  Chadwick screamed as three of his fingers got broken by a kick from the boy.

  “He’s really jammed in there,” complained the boy.

  He lined up for a second kick, putting more power into it.

  Chadwick bit down onto his shirt and screamed again as his whole hand got mangled.

  A third kick would probably dislodge him at this point as there were not enough solid bones left to keep him wedged in the shrunken gap in the railing.

  The boy went for a third kick, more sure of his footing now and putting his full weight into it. As he swung, there was a cracking noise and the entire railing came loose a few inches above ground level. Just enough railing was left to keep Chadwick wedged in place. The rest of it broke outwards and the large boy pitched forward with it, straight off the side of the tower.

  He screamed with rage and fear as he sailed down towards the stone courtyard below. There was a crash of railing and a distinct splat heard even through the pouring rain.

  The girl stared at Chadwick with fear. Then bolted back through the door.

  Chadwick’s adrenaline started to die down and the pain in his shattered hand was starting to get extreme. He was still well wedged into the railing, but he saw no way he could get himself back up onto the balcony. The last thing he heard before passing out from the pain was a shout from below as people find the body of the fallen boy. And shouts of those seeing him up above. Thankfully the rain was dying down enough for them to see him.

  The next five months went by in a blur for Chadwick. His schedule was so full he always seemed to be busy and didn’t have time to get bored or spend too much time thinking about the constant ache in his wrapped up hand. With his new role decoding messages he got to pick up all sorts of interesting tidbits. Granted, he couldn’t really talk about them with anyone.

  The healing seemed to take forever, but Elvera assured him that how quickly all his bones had mended during that time was a privilege of youth.

  He made a point of writing to his family every week, using his one good hand. Elvera ended up being a lot of help there because she was still sending books out to his father. She just included his messages in those. Chadwick decided not to mention his injuries as he didn't want to worry his family. And he really wanted to see a message confirming that the escaped girl had been caught. Better to give his family the complete story before sending it. But somehow the months went bye and there was no messages about the girl.

  Chadwick would get to see the books come back in, freshly copied in his father’s hand. Something he would recognize anywhere. The messages were often tucked into the books that came back.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  He got to hear about the other children who were growing up in his village. The latest bit of forest they were cutting down. And who married who. Somehow, it all felt a bit… mundane.

  As much as he appreciated hearing from his father. He found he just didn’t much care what went on in his home village anymore. His mind was caught up in learning what he could do with his new abilities. Wanting to be able to defend himself better in the future.

  The only other thing he kept seeing messages about was the appearances of more wraiths. In some cases a mage would get dispatched to deal with it, but more often they were simply too far away and it was known that wraiths would move on, or disappear, on their own. So it wasn’t worth sending someone if the wraith likely wouldn’t be there by the time they arrived.

  Oddly, Chadwick couldn’t find much information about the wraiths and none of the teachers would talk about them. They just called them “mage’s business” and told him not to worry about it. He got similar responses when asking about why the trio had attacked him on the balcony. The teachers were obviously disturbed by the attempt on Chadwick. But refused to tell him anything about why they might have tried. And what they meant about escaping.

  His progress was coming along very nicely in all his various classes. His fake target dummy was still showing mid way through the second pipe during a one-hour class. Still a bit sub-par for where he should be at. Taverish assured him they would speed it up soon.

  His real target dummy was already past the fifth pipe and he was trying to make a dent in the sixth one during a one-hour session during his days off. His launched projectiles were basically invisible to the eye, but now he was firing fifty of them at once. With enough speed to make the armor start glowing red. He mostly just used scrap iron as his source of particles, since he tended to strip all the loose particles out of the air too quickly. Now that he was able to control more of them in one go.

  The use of magic still tired him, but the level of effect he got during the same period of time was increasing dramatically.

  Taverish was happy enough with his real progress that he allowed splitting the day with Sal.

  Sal just gave him ever-increasing difficulties of problems, often they were ones that came in as messages. The current one was about trying to charge an enchanted item. Something Chadwick didn’t know a lot about yet. But, the principles were the same. So he tackled as he would any other problem.

  “Sal, I know you said keep it at a maximum of 16 points, but I see a very elegant solution to this one at an 18-point. And, considering you have me working on a 22-point problem for the main class…” said Chadwick as he handed over his proposed written message.

  “The difficulty of going from 1 to 2 points is nothing. But the further up you go the degree of difficulty in adding just 1 more point increases. You experienced that on trying to break the barrier to 20-point magic,” said Sal, then took the message and read through it, “though in this case you are right, there’s no way around this but to do an 18-point. Tell them this is the only way and to ask if Thad can be spared. He’s the only one close enough to help.”

  Chadwick nodded, “I was wondering, could you teach me more about the actual enchanting side of things yet? I know you said you don’t teach that in the class until you have weeded out those who will give up…”

  Sal looked him up and down, “aye, if you haven’t given up yet, you aren’t likely to. But there is a certain element of trust implicit in teaching someone this. Though I gather the Chief Mage already decided you could handle our coded messages. Perhaps I could ask the Dean.”

  “I believe he was planning to try and steal… I mean, obtain one of those peach pies the kitchen made today, I could probably find him and ask him now,” suggested Chadwick eagerly.

  Sal laughed, “so eager to get started lad? Tell you what, I’ll ask the Dean myself tonight. But there is certainly no harm in getting you started on what you will need anyway.”

  Sal walked around behind his desk and pulled out a one-inch metal rod, “this is something all students get to learn if they make it in my class. Nothing secret about it. So, no need to wait. You will make this rod into a source of light.” He handed it over to Chadwick and then pulled out a bound up pack of paper, “these are the same instructions most students get. Come back to me when you are done.”

  Chadwick eagerly took bound up paper and began to open it before Sal chased him out of his workshop.

  He went back to his scribing desk and began devouring the pages. It was heavily based on conditional magic, but seemed to have some other aspects to it. It was lots of carving symbols that represented things. It took him a week to fully understand the pack of data and then another week to carve perfect symbols into the rod, removing hundreds of tiny particles at a time.

  The piece of conditional magic to activate it ended up being quite simple and only required a 10-point logic, one point per symbol. He could feel the drain on his magic pool as he filled each rune, but it seemed no worse than running up some stairs.

  He proudly presented it to Sal who immediately grimaced and said, “I don’t know who thought it would be a funny joke to try and let you pass of their work as you own. But they are not you friend. I have permanently ejected students for this exact thing before.” Sal looked furious by the end and was shaking the rod in Chadwick’s face.

  Chadwick deflated, “someone else's work? But, this took me a whole week to carve those symbols.” He was mumbling, somewhat shocked by the response.

  “A week! It takes most students six months to get them perfect even with the help of the blacksmiths, the slightest imperfection and the damn thing will explode! Give me the name of the idiot who thought,” Sal suddenly froze and stared at the rod, “I would recognize the work of any student to have come through my class…”

  Chadwick was looking slightly moist around the eyes after just being berated by the bushy man. He sniffed a slightly runny nose in the sudden silence.

  “These lines are perfect lad..,” Sal said. Still staring at them he continued, “a copy so perfect you might very well have taken them straight from the page.”

  Chadwick tentatively said, “your instructions said the carvings had to be a perfect match to the drawing. I don’t understand what I did wrong.”

  “Well, not so much wrong lad, just,” Sal paused and sort of vaguely waved his hand in the air. He suddenly deflated, “I’m sorry young one, I thought someone was playing a very cruel prank. Tell me how you carved the symbols.”

  Chadwick brightened up, “my affinity. It happens to work perfectly when you need to remove only the exact right amount of something. Though it is a little on a slow side for the deeper channels.”

  Sal shook his head with amazement, “and here we’ve been using these dunderheaded metal mages to carve channels this whole time. I’d have to send one of these back six times to even get it 80% efficient.”

  Chadwick just waited, not sure what that meant.

  Sal was still shaking his head and muttering, “two weeks, kid has no idea,” but then asked with a grin, “want to see how good of a job you did lad?”

  Chadwick nodded hesitantly and then followed Sal who was bounding towards a complicated brass structure that reminded Chadwick of the slider test.

  Sal carefully weighed the metal rod and gave a running commentary while he worked the scale, “so, any enchantment is only going to last as long as the material does. And the less efficient your runes are, the faster they will use up the material. As you can see this rod is two small weights and 4 grains. We need the exact weight of the material as that gives us exactly how much the material is effecting the output power, versus the precision of the runes.”

  Sal then moved then placed the rod into a receptacle and the small arrow on the front of the machine swung upwards. “As you can see, the dial swings downward based on the strength of the enchantment and then we add these weights to the plate there and see how many it takes to bring the dial back to the top point.”

  Chadwick watched with excitement as Sal added both small weights to the plate and the dial swung most of the way back up. He carefully added one grain at a time and the dial didn’t hit the top until the last grain. It bounced off with just a slight ‘cling’ noise from brass hitting brass.

  Sal stared at it all for a while before saying, “as damn near 100% efficiency as it wouldn’t make a difference to weigh more carefully.”

  “And that’s good?” Asked Chadwick.

  “Good enough that I’m going to speed up the plans the Dean and I have been cooking up,” Sal seemed to almost say to himself, then he turned fully to Chadwick and handed him the enchanted rod, “have you even tried this thing yet?”

  “I…err, the instructions didn’t actually say how to use one,” Chadwick said sheepishly.

  “I suppose they don’t, never had a student make one that had never actually used an enchanted item before,” said Sal, then pointed to a symbol at the bottom, “that is a common activation symbol for all enchants. Picture a positive, like we use in the conditionals. Just a basic 1-point trigger. And put it in there. The power you already loaded into the runes will take care of the rest.”

  Almost as soon as Sal finished explaining the process, the metal rod lit up bright enough to make them both look away.

  “That’ll do the trick. You can do the same process but in reverse, send a negative trigger,” said Sal, currently shielding his eyes.

  The rod winked out again and both of them blinked their eyes for a moment until they could see again in the slightly dim room.

  “Was it supposed to be that bright?” asked Chadwick. Shaking his head slightly to clear away the stars in his vision.

  “Not usually quite so bright, another side-effect of the level of efficiency you have managed here no doubt,” said Sal, then continued, “now, that is yours to keep. But don’t show it to any teachers. Since I’m technically not supposed to be teaching you that yet. Even if it wasn’t confidential.”

  Chadwick tucked the rod into his pocket, and looked up at Sal eagerly, “what can I make next?”

  “Ha. Since you can finish a six-month project in two weeks. Let me give you a two-year project this time. See if I can distract you for long enough to keep you out of my hair,” said Sal and then turned to rummage through one of the cupboards in his office.

  Chadwick leaned over eagerly and tried to look into the tub Sal was pulling out.

  Sal put the tub onto his desk with a thunk that caused several rattling metal noises inside and then said, “this, is something I’ve been working on for some time but have never managed to finish. A storage system of sorts.”

  Chadwick had fished out various pieces of brass tubes, buckles and pieces of beautifully stitched leather, he looked it over, “some sort of bag?”

  “Something like that. This is a fresh set of materials I never started on, after the first few failures,” said Sal, then reached into the box and fished out a large stack of paper, “these are my notes.” Then dumped the paper back into the box.

  Sal opened up a locked cabinet, reached in and fished out a very large leather-bound tome and put it into the box, “that book is for your eyes only. No teacher would dare open it if they knew what it was. Nevertheless, keep it out of sight and only read it here or in your office with Elvera. Her security is as good as mine. I should know, I made it.”

  Chadwick was eagerly peering at it, trying to read the cover, “what’s in it?”

  “Every rune symbol I know and how to use them. You will need that, because my notes operate on the basis that you know the ones I mention,” answered Sal.

  Chadwick stared in awe and then reached out to take the box, “I’ll take these up to Elvera’s office right now.”

  Sal nodded and then shooed him out. Calling out, “if you lose that book, I better never see you again lad!”

  He went to drop off the box and saw another message from the king on the Chief Mages personal stone. He glanced at it and immediately translated it in his head.

  It was somewhat confusing and said, “wraiths are appearing in my city now, you have one month to lower magical weight by 30%. All civil mages are excluded unless an adequate replacement is provided.”

  Chadwick wasn’t sure what that meant, but he ignored it as technically he was not meant to be seeing those messages.