Chapter 99: Magic training
Diana and Ciaran were in an open field, taking their stances. Diana had promised the boy she would whip him into shape, and she intended to deliver.
As the weaker fighter Ciaran took the initiative to attack first. He flew high in the sky using his Wind and launched a series of wind blades at the girl.
The razor-sharp wind had the speed and the power to cut through most Rank Two creatures, but sadly for the boy, the one in front of him was far more resilient. She didn't dodge, and she didn't even summon her armor, she just blocked with her palms.
"Is that it? Come on, show me that famous creativity of yours. Make this at least partially entertaining for me." She said taunting him.
He looked at her with sheer and utter apathy, as he conjured a dozen icicles from the moisture in the air. Then he shot them at her.
He made the icicles conical, with a pointy nose and a tapered tail. This design reduced air resistance and allowed it to maintain its speed over long distances. The boy made it dense, which helped it retain its momentum and kinetic energy as it travels through the air.
He used his Wind to rapidly expand and push it forward. The force of the expansion created a pressure wave that accelerated the icicle at high speeds. He also made sure the wind spun his projectiles, which gave them more stability, allowing them to maintain a straight trajectory.
The new attack was fast, strong, and vicious. Diana still blocked it the same way, using her palms, but she had to imbed some moonlight into them this time. She mused any ordinary Rank Three would suffer at the hands of her partner.
Just as she blocked yet another barrage, the boy saw his chance. Little by a little, projectile by projectile, he had left tiny minuscule amounts of enhanced moisture right next to Diana's belly button, and now it was his time to use it.
He had to do the same thing with his projectiles, only from a distance, and upside down, without letting her notice what he was attempting. And he had to do it fast, in one shot. He aimed for her ear, but he was off, and it went for her eye.
It was fast and unexpected. It flew right for its unintended target. Just before it hit, her helmet materialized and protected her. The force behind the icicle and the fact that she wasn't ready for it, made her tilt her head upwards. Then she stumbled a few steps backward.
"SHIT! Diana are you ok, that wasn't meant for your eyes." He flew next to her to see if the girl was ok.
She removed her helmet and there was a beaming smile on her face, as she hit him on the shoulder.
"Don't apologize that was a brilliant attack. If I didn't have my enchanted armor you would have taken an eye. You said you weren't aiming for it? Well, we will need to work on your accuracy, but otherwise, that was brilliant." She praised the boy.
Then her smile turned evil.
"Payback time though. Now we are going to practice your defenses. Get ready, because it will be quick and painful."
He flew back up.
The boy knew she held no grudges, but he also now understood that this barbarian believed in all-out training. She was going to come for him with more than he could handle so he would get used to fighting unfair battles.
'Tipicle, Master was the same. All Warriors only know how to think in extremes, no flexibility involved whatsoever.'
As she was waiting for him to get ready, with a smile on her face, the girl frowned.
"You just thought something extremely rude about me didn't you?" She asked.
The boy just shook his head, keeping a nonchalant smile on his face.
"You're a dead man Rony." She hissed, as she charged at him.
She didn't embed any light into her body, but she was still several times faster than him. He just flew higher in response.
She thought he would stop at an altitude she could reach if she jumped, but she underestimated him once again.
The higher he went the less control he had over his element, but that was hardly an issue. As long as he didn't need to attack or defend he could reach the stratosphere and even move comfortably in it.
Diana was a little surprised, but then she decided to give him a painful present. She blinked. The next moment she was right next to him, and she punched him right in the nose.
The boy had no time to react, and she held her punch, but it still held ruffly the force of a Rank Two Warrior. He was plummeting to the ground at a high speed. The boy called on Wind and Water to decelerate his fall, doing his best to take control of his descent.
The Wind pulled his body up, while the Water provided more resistance for his body, further decreasing the speed, and cooling him in the process.
In the end, he failed. He was about to hit the ground when Diana caught him in a princess carry.
"Doing alright there Rony?" She asked as if it wasn't her who broke his nose.
"Don't get too sad, most would have died from that fall, if no one was there to catch them. You would have just broken a few dozen bones."
He got on his feet, and adjusted what was broken, then applied Water to heal it. It would take a while, but it would heal.
Diana was astonished he even knew healing magic.
"Ok, you can't be telling me you have self-thought yourself all of that. Give it to me straight, which spells did you learn, and which did you invent?" She asked.
The boy was confused by her question.
"What's a spell." He asked.
She just deadpanned.
"No."
He looked at her, with even more confusion.
"I said no, I refuse."
He sat on the ground, she had the same expression as Verdania when he came home with a familiar.
After about fifteen minutes of looking blankly at the sky, she was back.
"You said you never attempted the Forth Year. That would mean that you have exactly zero knowledge of how magic works, is that correct?" She asked, dreading the answer.
He just looked at her and kept his guard up, he felt he was going to get beaten again.
"You tell your elements to do something and they do it. If they don't understand you, you elaborate. Sometimes you need to simplify your commands, and sometimes you just listen to their advice."
That was how he had been doing magic all this time.
"So, just to be clear, you use magic on pure instinct. Just like when you first became a Novice, you just listen and command. You don't use the runic language, no; you don't even know what that is do you?"
She confirmed her fears when the boy nodded.
Diana cursed out the Academy, his mentors, her teacher, and finally Ciaran himself.
"Listen, what we civilized people have found out, is that elements each have their own language. For us to use our spells proficiently we need to learn it, and use it."
Before she lost her cool even further, she used her moonlight to draw a couple of runes in the air.
"These are moonlight runes. This is 'Blink' the spell I used to teleport to you. This is 'Accelerate', and this is 'Decelerate' the thing you did back there has a similar function."
He looked at the runes. It was an interesting subject to be sure, but not all that useful for him.
"So they are a crutch, used until you learn magic for real." He concluded and got slapped for it.
She was fuming, mostly because he was right. Not one Archmage used runes to cast, and even most Great Mages stopped needing them. However, all Mages and bellow used them. Hearing and understanding an element at a low level was almost unheard of.
There were rare cases that it would happen to someone. An Apprentice would be able to cast without using runes, but those people were always prodigies, and as much as she admired her partner, a prodigy, he was not. Not in magic anyway.
Besides, even the prodigies knew runes, they simply didn't use them for long as they learned to cast without them. There was only one kind of people that never needed runes, the ones who were raving mad.
The mentally ill thought differently from the rest of the population, and as such, were able to communicate with the elements somehow. Not one of them could explain it, they just said:
"I don't see the point in these toys; the elements just tell you whatever you need to know." Said Ciaran and Diana could feel the pain coming to her head, express delivery.