^^ Serene Fontaine ^^

For humans, Magical Gifts manifested around the age of twelve, during the process of puberty, and their bodies maturing towards their fully-grown forms. It was a time of uncertainty and growth, which nevertheless shaped them into adulthood.

For Elves, (and especially Pure-Bred High Elves, such as myself, with two ArchMages for parents,) we were born with Magical Gifts, and thus we had more time to master them, giving people the mistaken belief that we were naturally more skilled in magic than others; the truth of the matter was it was just a case of a longer life and greater Mana Capacity giving the illusion of Easy Mastery, or that's how my father explained it.

Still, Elemental Affinity affected even us, and there was bound to be a Dud someday; that happened to be me. I had double the amount of Mana as my elder sister had as an adult, and she is an ArchMage of Illusory Magic, whereas my Affinity was Conjuration, also called 'Transportation', because it was primarily used by traveling merchants who visited the various City-States with their magic bags of goods, evading the Monsters along the way with their Alchemy to throw the monsters off their scents. It sounded cool, but it was also the only magic that didn't have any combat capabilities whatsoever; there was no War Magic or Defensive Magic for Conjuration, not even a simple Flash, the simplest defense magic of all. As such, I was pretty much useless, as a War Mage, and I didn't even know how to summon anything yet; without a teacher, I was shooting in the dark.

But all was not lost; for people whose Mana was too weak to have an Affinity, there existed the option to fight with weapons imbued with their weak magical abilities, and this made them stronger than the average human, at least on par with smaller monsters like dire-wolves.

I tucked my ears deeper into the bandanna I wore to cover them, straightening my simple leather armor and my sword belt, where there hung a long dagger made of silver, (the best metal for Magic Swordsmanship,) then took a deep breath and entered the courtyard where the militia trained their new recruits; I'd observed several people walking in to join, and I'd seen the parameters by which they were allowed entry. The ones who brought a Bribe of at least one chicken, rabbit, or a fat enough partridge were accepted if they could exhibit a little Mana. If they couldn't do either, the bribe or the Mana, or if they could only do one of those, they were sent away. I was aware of the unfair, corrupt sense of conscience that was clearly visible here, but I needed a teacher, and if this was where I'd find it...

"Hey, Brat! You lost?!?" One of the leaders spotted me as I walked in, shouting to get my attention without getting up from his position lounging under a shady tree nearby.

I turned and approached him swiftly, holding out the hare I'd captured for my toll. It wiggled mightily in my grip while being presented it to him, but it wasn't going to last much longer before its heart gave out. "I'd like to join, and train with you all. I've brought the Training Fee, as requested."

He sat up as I approached, examining my clothes and face with a sharp gaze, then looked at the hare; plump and juicy, enough for four men to eat for dinner, or a stew for at least twenty people, if it was shared properly. After a few seconds, he sighed, shaking his head. "I don't know who told you that our Training Fee could be covered by a rabbit, brat, but they lied; the Fee is 50 Silver, not a barely 4 Silver rabbit. Pay that, and we can begin your training."

I frowned, shaking my head. "I've watched the camp for two weeks, and you've accepted seven recruits, each who brought a rabbit, chicken, or partridge, and then passed a Mana Test. There has never been money exchanged, and rightfully so, because that would be illegal; considering Militias are Non-Profit, if you charged money the Hall would no longer Fund you, nor would you be allowed to use this City as your base."

His face twisted into a scowl as he stood up swiftly and towered over me. "Are you calling me a Liar, Brat?"

"Yes. And a Brigand." I nodded honestly, then flinched as his boot slammed into my armored stomach, sending me back a few steps; I'd been surprised, but I was still a little stronger than him, it would seem. "Was that supposed to prove something? Or do you just enjoy beating children?" I asked curiously, dusting the dirt from his boot off of my armor while he stared at me incredulously.

He growled at a few of the other members of the militia, drawing a shortsword from his belt as they surrounded us. "Child my ass, taking that hit like it was nothing... I've seen goblins die with their skulls caved in from that attack!"

"Goblins are not a good comparison, though? They're the weakest monsters in existence, aren't they?" I hummed, casually examining the surrounding people one by one. "Though, given that you don't have silver weapons, they might be more of a challenge than I thought..."

He snarled with rage, and his sword began to glow softly as he pumped it full of mana swiftly. "Cocky little Brat!!! Let's see how you act when I take a few chunks out of you!!!" With that he lunged, moving swifter than I'd expected; I barely dodged the first swing, before I copied him and let loose the Mana in my Mana Pool, aiming for my muscles and my Armor.

A softly glowing steam coated my body, and he made to jump away while looking alarmed, but he wasn't quick enough anymore, it seemed; my fist slammed into his chest with a muted thud, followed by a series of cracking noises from his ribs, before he seemed aware of my movement. With a strangled cry of pain, he crashed backwards into the others who'd surrounded us, coughing up blood and groaning in pain.

"Well! Did I Pass?" I asked, grinning at the others while my Mana retreated, but a blinding pain erupted from the back of my head, as some sort of blunt object slammed into my skull, and I collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. The others stepped closer with their weapons high, then backed off swiftly as they each saw something, likely the wound that the mace had done to my skull.

I moved my hands faintly, trying to sit myself up, but I found I didn't have the strength necessary, so I had to use my Mana again, slowly pushing myself up off the ground and turning towards the man who'd slugged my skull from behind. "That... was not very Sporting... at all." I chided him as sternly as I could while barely standing.

As I settled into a new fighting stance, however, they began to scatter in every direction, to my surprise; much like rats when you light a lantern, they went in every direction, before coming face to face, one by one, with an elven warrior in silver armor, each wielding a silver bow and longsword, while Mother appeared from the woods nearby and approached me and my two opponents with her signature elven grace. Her dark skin reflected the noon sun and became slightly shiny, even without the glowing silver tattoos that pulsed according to her heartbeat, or her Steel-Grey eyes that were fixed upon me with a frightening intensity.

After a few silent moments, she reached me and laid a glowing hand on my skull, and the biting pain of the cracked bones was replaced by an itch on my skin and a dull ache as my skull settled itself back into place. She patted my cheeks gently, then turned to my opponent, who was still holding the Mace in his hand, my blood caking the end of it. At her gaze, he flinched and dropped it, kneeling silently. I could tell he wanted to beg for his life, but the eerie silence of the clearing and her own mute attention kept him and the others silent. Seeming satisfied, she approached my other opponent, kicking him rudely with a glowing foot; his chest, visibly deformed from my strike, straightened out, and he passed out from the pain instantly.

"I didn't need help." I finally spoke, relaxing my fighting stance and dusting myself off.

She turned sharply, glaring at me with a kind of maternal fury that clearly couldn't be expressed in intelligent words, because she simply gripped my cheeks sternly with one hand, pointing mutely at the Tower we lived in with the other.

"I was doing fine on my own!" I protested, but Father approached from my right, placing a hand on my shoulder.

"Let's go, Eric." He murmured, guiding me out of the clearing swiftly before she erupted like a volcano. "I'm curious, though, why you have a Hare?" He asked, gesturing at the thick rabbit in my hands, struggling valiantly to free itself.

"It was supposed to be my Entry Fee, before they tried to extort me for 50 Silver Coins... I probably shouldn't have worn such nice clothes." I sighed, placing the hare into the bushes so it could swiftly bound away into the woods before following him further towards our Tower. One of Four such towers set in the cardinal directions and connected by tall walls, surrounding the Hall of Research and the various Groves, Parks, and Fields that we used for farming and hunting our food, they housed the ArchMages and their families, as well as their personal Libraries, though the Hall had a copy of every book in the city.

A small gated silver lift offered transportation up the tower and opened up onto the landing for the top floor, where my family lived, a few minutes of silent travel upwards later. Immediately, I stepped out onto the balcony and sat in my favorite chair; there I found myself overlooking the Wild Lands to the South, and the distant City-State of Hangar was just barely visible on the horizon, on clear days like today.

A deep breath filled my lungs with clean, crisp autumn air, and an injection of Mana, replacing almost instantly the Mana I'd spent during the fight earlier.

"You're wasting most of that Mana, you know." An unfamiliar voice spoke from the edge of the balcony, and I looked to my right, raising an eyebrow at the middle-aged human woman that was holding onto the feet of a massive owl, which disappeared as soon as she released it and dropped down to the balcony floor.

"And you are?" I asked, narrowing my eyes and drawing my dagger slowly.

"Kip Hiram, Master Conjuration Mage from Hightower... your Father said you were a suspicious boy; that's a good trait to have. Means you'll get tricked less often." She nodded casually, smoothing back her shock-white hair into a horse-tail and revealing the deep, vibrantly red scar bisecting the left side of her face from her scalp to her jaw.

"When my father introduces you in person, you may approach me." I shook my head as she took a few steps forward, opening my notebook and ignoring her as she slowly took a seat over on that side, writing notes about what I'd discovered about the method to imbue my body and weapons with Mana.

'Mana seems to gather according to my will, but what does that mean? How am I commanding it? Is it according to bioelectrical signals, like the movement of my muscles? Is it a Quantum Mechanic, a manifestation of the Soul acting outside the body? A combination thereof?' I set my charcoal pen down and grabbed my dagger, focusing my mana into it carefully; unlike when I'd pushed it into my muscles, it resisted a bit, and instead of forcing it, I moved around any obstacles, until the entire weapon was sheathed in colorful mana.

"Pretty good for a first try, but you should focus more acutely; the Mana should be thinner, like thread, not a blanket. You'll just waste it unnecessarily, caking it on there like plaster." The woman spoke again, standing right next to me after moving with absolutely no sound for the second time.

I eyed her distastefully, sheathing the dagger. "I thought I was clear that you should stay away from me; perhaps the language I used left doubt as to my meaning."

"No, it didn't, I just don't care much. You're going to hurt yourself, before long, if you keep trying to work your mana like a muscle you can flex as hard as you want with no repercussions, instead of a carefully-crafted science. It's fluid, yes, but it's made up of tiny particles that can be ordered into a variety of forms, from knives to armor to, say, thread. Using that thread in a specific pattern is also how you cast spells." She sat across from me at the small table, kicking her feet up on the other chair carelessly.

I narrowed my eyes at her irreverent attitude, but drew the knife again and focused deeper, more fine, like I was trying to see the edge of a very sharp needle. Once I had it as small as I could imagine it, I began lacing it through the knife, wrapping the obstacles in my way with the thread and slowly breaking them apart, reordering the interior of the knife to suit me.

The woman flinched when the knife emitted a high-pitched shrieking noise, and black dust fell out of the knife onto the table; it was now a lighter grey, almost white, like the pure silver in jewelry, and glowing visibly blue with the Mana that was entirely integrated into it, it seemed. "Well damn... that's the first time I've seen someone accidentally transmute Carbon out of Silver... you know your Chemistry, I hope?"

"Isn't Carbon supposed to be a crystal?" I frowned at the dust, poking it and scooping it into a powder carefully; it seemed to be granular in form, so perhaps it was a crystal after all, like Sand.

"Mm... do you understand what you just did, or should I explain?" She asked lazily, examining me as she leaned back in the chair.

"I... removed the Carbon and left only the Silver... and temporarily enchanted my dagger?" I answered slowly, narrowing my eyes at her suspiciously.

"Close, I suppose, only that's not an Enchantment; not even a Temporary one. It's an Impartation of Mana, and it'll end as soon as you stop feeding it Mana... which should be any moment now." She frowned, staring at the dagger in my hand intensely, then looked back up at me. "Wait, are you still absorbing Mana from the air?"

"Aren't you?" I asked, thoroughly confused by the question; it seemed so obvious, after all, to breath in the mana in the air. "But what happens if I increase the concentration of the Mana? Or if I can make it absorb latent Mana as well..." I refocused on the dagger, widening the pathways slightly and sharpening the blade like the edge of a razor, then creating a Loop in my mind to absorb and recharge the Mana in the dagger back to that level; hopefully with that it wouldn't need my input anymore.

As I did this, Spending almost all of my Mana on the idea of making it permanent, the dagger stopped glowing briefly, before gaining a dull pulse, like mother's tattoos, but there were no further changes. "Hmm... not exactly what I'd intended, but it's a good first try, I guess." I hummed curiously, poking the table with the dagger and slicing through it cleanly, with almost no resistance, before swiftly pulling it back out. "Whoops... hope mother doesn't notice that..."

"Well fuck me, alright; I was under the impression you knew nothing about magic?" The woman across from me grumbled incredulously, staring at the knife in my hand with a troubled expression.

"I'm self-taught, and I know almost nothing, to be honest." I shrugged, sheathing the knife carefully.

"Yes, that's clear, in the way you just casually spent all your mana enchanting a Knife, for no reason." She responded dryly, drawing the knife out of its sheath and examining it carefully. "A temporary Enchantment, as no Runes were used, but for a Temporary Enchantment, it's pretty robust... the oscillation technique you used to make it last longer is interesting, but rudimentary; I suggest our First Lesson be Mana Gathering, and the Second be Runes..."

"I suggest you speak to my father and verify your identity, before you try to teach me Anything." I responded dryly, taking the knife back and sheathing it on my hip once more.

She laughed softly, standing up and stretching her back. "Alright, alright, fine, if it will shut you up and make you listen properly..."

"Nothing in existence except my mother is capable of that, so good luck." I scoffed, opening my notebook and writing notes on everything I'd just learned while she walked away, chuckling to herself.

While I didn't know any Runes, and I couldn't continue the enchantment of my dagger without them, I could apply the effect I'd placed onto the dagger to myself without much issue, I imagined; carefully, one limb and organ at a time, without interfering in the workings of my body, the Threads of my Mana wove a grid and filled every nook and cranny of every cell, increasing the security of my body several times over, but the loop I had created for the dagger seemed... weak, for my body. Instead, I just used my heart and lungs as a collection-distribution System for more than just my Blood and Oxygen, feeding the various portions of my strengthening enchantment with every beat of my heart.

"Alright, kid, your dad is here again, despite his promise to leave us alone for our first lesson, which means your mother, whom he was keeping away through the use of some unknown magic of no-doubt eldritch proportion, is also here. You asked for it." The woman had returned, with mother and father in tow, and she slumped into the chair across from me again, sighing deeply.

"Wow... one Lesson, and he's already at the Fourth Gathering Stage? I knew he was smart, but that's quite amazing, isn't it, my love?" Father smiled and patted my head, looking pointedly at mother, who broke off from her glaring at the white-haired woman long enough to pet my hair into place.

"Yes... quite." She returned to her glaring, while the woman stared at me, massively confused.

"Wait, what? How did you-... I was only gone for five minutes!!!" She protested, grabbing my wrist and feeling my pulse carefully while skillfully ignoring mother's reflexive growl at her.

"You... didn't teach him that?" Father frowned slowly.

"I sure as hell did not teach a Novice the Fourth Stage of Mana Gathering when he hasn't even begun the First yet!!!" She snapped back, glaring at me. "How in every single hell did you do that so quickly?!?"

"I just enchanted my body like my dagger? It's pretty simple theory, you just absorb Mana through the lungs, transport it alongside oxygenated blood from the heart, and bring the unused excess back to the heart along the veins to recycle it and slowly amplify the effects of the grid I placed all around my body for strength and defense. Once you told me how to Imbue my Dagger and I made the Oscillation Loop, it wasn't that far of a leap." I shrugged carelessly, writing down my findings in my notebook once more while they all stared at me in shock.