The group ran several blocks in a zigzag pattern, trying to put some distance between them and the warehouse.

“I don’t see or hear anyone chasing us, we can probably stop here for a minute”, said Harry.

The group stopped, leaned against a stone wall, and caught their breath for a minute.

Bertrand said “Ok, so what do we next? We can’t go back to Harry’s farmhouse.”

“Well, we can’t risk getting into another fight until we’ve had some time to break these mental spells. I think I could eventually, but it’s going to take some time. Are the rest of you still affected?” Richard asked.

“How can I tell if I am?” Harry responded.

“Harry, imagine someone comes running down this road right now trying to kill us. Would you be able to fire an arrow at them?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to risk that here! We’re in the middle of a city, I might hit someone!”

Richard pointed down the street. “We’re still in the docks district, this whole area is empty this time of night. I haven’t seen anyone on the streets since we left the warehouse, have you?”

Harry shook his head and looked confused. “You’re right, it’s strange. Is that from the spell she put on us?”

“One of them,” Richard replied.

“I could dispel the magic. But it’s going to take some time; hours maybe, to get all of you clear. Mind magic is dangerous, you have to remove every thread of it very carefully, and if you try to rush and only get rid of part of it can have some long lasting or even permanent effects.” said Jehan.

“I’m also not going to able to do much until I get some rest. I’m out of mana,” Evelyn looked embarrassed.

“We could just go right back out of the city over the wall, the same way we came in, and just keep going,” said Bertrand. “We came in here for one reason, to save Jehan, and it’s lucky we survived that. We’re in way over our heads, it might be time to cut our losses and get out.”

Richard shook his head, “We have to at least warn someone. They said they’re going to make a move in 24 hours, and if the town guard isn’t prepared for it, a lot of people are going to die.”

“The question is, who can we warn?” asked Jehan. “At least some of the guards were charmed and acting under that enchantress’ orders. And we don’t know who else might be.”

Richard sighed, “Ok. We’ll try to figure something out, but I guess we need at least few hours to rest and get ourselves back into fighting condition first, so we don’t walk into another trap unprepared. That means we need somewhere safe to bunker down for the night, ideally somewhere inside the city. Any ideas?”

“Yes. Follow me.” Jehan led them into the residential part of town, and to the Temple of Ikar that Richard had seen before.

You are on holy ground blessed by Ikar. +25% rate to recovery of HP, SP, and MP.

“Temple of Ikar? Why here? Isn’t this the first place anyone would look for you?” Kateryn asked.

“I think I get it,” Bertrand said, looking around the temple. “Corrupted magic like in those abominations might fail on holy ground.” He paused, “But I think Kateryn’s right; we should find somewhere to hide instead. As soon as they find us here they could just send a bunch of their soldiers in after us.”

Jehan smiled, “Do not worry.” He walked up to statue on the right, which was a statue of Ikar in his “Gambler” form and reached up and pulled on the mustache of the statue. The stone platform under the statue in the center of the room, The Vizier, slid off to the side, revealing a stone staircase going down underneath it. Jehan smiled and led them down into a hidden basement under the temple.

“Seriously? A hidden staircase under a statue?” Richard looked down. “Uh. Does every temple of Ikar have one of these?”

Jehan laughed. “No, it wouldn’t be much of use if everyone knew it was here, would it? Come.” He led them down the stairs. The stairway didn’t have any railing and there was a drop off on the right side, so Richard walked down carefully along the left side of the stairway, his fingers tracing along the cool stone wall. Halfway down, Jehan pulled a lever, and they heard a grinding sound above them as the stairway got a little darker. “This lever moves the statue back into place, pull it again if you need to leave.”

Quest completed – Save Jehan. +500 human exp earned, +10 reputation with Ikarians

The hidden basement under the temple was fairly small, with walls and a floor of cool, smooth stone. It was stocked with several of the glowing glass spheres that Richard had seen around the city, it had a cot and several bedrolls, a stash of dried food, and a stash of weapons.

Bertrand looked interested. “Did you have this made?”

Jehan shook his head, “No, this temple has been here for 200 years, and the hidden bolt hole was built when the temple was. At the time there was a lot of hostility against Ikarians, it wasn’t long after the War of Three Gods, and it was thought to be important to have a place to hide.”

Harry looked around, shaking his head, “I’ve been to this temple probably a thousand times in my life, and I never thought there’d be anything like this under it.”

Jehan smiled, “It’s a well-kept secret, and has been for a long time. And even people who don’t like Ikarians are usually too smart to start poking around at the statue of a god in his own temple. I keep it stocked, just in case, and a couple of times have hidden someone down here, but nobody but me has been down here in the past few years. Anyway, relax, lie down, take a rest. I’m going to start by trying to dispel the mind magic from Richard, since he presumably got it the worst.”

Bertrand nodded, took off his boots and socks, and lay down on one of the bedrolls on the floor, but kept his swords close to hand. The rest of the groups followed his lead and started to relax.

Jehan took a seat behind Richard, and gently put a hand on the back of his head. After a moment, Jehan pulled his hand back, a little surprised.

“How many spells did she put on you, Richard?”

Richard thought, “When she was charming me? Maybe five, I think? Something like that. And then we all got hit with the two suggestions in the warehouse.”

“So, how did you get free of all of that?” He looked more closely at Richard. “I can see…yes, I can see where you broke through the charm, it looks like you just wore through it, but it should have taken weeks for the spell to fail like that.”

“I knew something was wrong, so I just kept…picking at it, working at it, until it made sense,” Richard responded. “I got a skill afterwards, something that lets me use intelligence to fight through mental control and illusions.”

Jehan nodded slowly, “I haven’t heard of that being done before, but I think that makes sense. You’re just lucky you didn’t damage yourself. Hold on, let me dispel this…”

It took almost an hour, with Jehan carefully, precisely removing the charm and suggestion spells one thread of magic at a time, one line at a time, one inch at a time. Richard could feel the course of his thoughts shifting, could feel himself freer to think again, with every thread removed. He could almost feel what each thread did; this one touched the part of his mind that was attracted to women, this one touched his memory, this one touched his vision. As his brain got freer, thread by thread, he could get a better feel for how each part of his mind connected to each other part, for how his thoughts moved and how they could be diverted. It was honestly fascinating.

Skill earned: Rational Introspection (3)

“Ok, about finished,” Jehan leaned back and took a breath. “Ok, I can clear one more person tonight, then I’m out of divine magic for the day, and I’ll have to help everyone else after I sleep.”

“I suggest Harry. The suggestion about ranged weapons harms him the most,” Richard said, and Jehan nodded.

While Jehan started working on Harry, Richard looked around the room. Kateryn and Bertrand were both already asleep on different bedrolls. Evelyn was sitting in the corner, propped up near where one of the glowing lights was fixed to the wall reading a book. Richard walked over and sat down next to her.

She looked up at him and smiled, “Thanks. I think you saved my life earlier, when I screwed up.”

Richard shrugged uncomfortably, “Sure. And, you didn’t screw up.” He paused. “That enchantress back there. She shut all of us down, hard. If she hadn’t made a mistake with me she would have had us. You took a shot, at least. Just got unlucky with the wild magic?”

She shrugged, “I guess. When it comes to using the wild magic I’m mostly guessing. The old books I found were so vague.”

Richard nodded, “One person with magic can pretty much shut down someone without it, right?”

Evelyn shrugged again, “Not always. Someone with enough levels in something combat related is always a threat, no matter what you have, but they’re rare. And the kind of magic they were willing to teach me was just…they just wanted someone able to stand on the front lines and throw fire, just another cheap and quick warrior to stand guard on a wall somewhere or slug it out with monsters in the woods. Getting real power is a long climb from that, and not many people get there.”

“You said you had some books I could read, maybe to get started learning a little magic?”

She looked worried at the question. “You’re going to have to be careful. That backlash you did with the insight spell…you could have badly hurt yourself with that. Damaged your mana, or maybe even your mind of you were unlucky. Not many people have 140 mana and zero control, especially with your low wisdom, and that’s a really dangerous combination.”

“Ok.”

She hesitated, and then pulled a well-worn book out of her bag. “Here. This has an intro to magic, and five small, basic spells you can learn. None of those spells can take more than a few mana before falling apart, so hopefully you can learn some control without hurting yourself, but…please be careful. Put as little as you can into each spell, just enough to make it work, until you’re really sure you know what you’re doing.”

He nodded, and she handed him the book. He picked it up and started reading.

Skill level confirmed, Reading (10) (Max).

Prerequisites met: reading skill (2), writing skill (3). New minor crafting class available: scribe! Would you like to accept this class? (Y/N)

“The system is telling me I can become a scribe now. Is that…good?”

Evelyn nodded. “Yeah. It’s only a minor class, it only takes 2 skills to get it and you can only get it to level 5 before it maxes out, but most spellcasters who know how to read take it. I did. It usually gives you intelligence points and increases your mana, it helps make your writing more precise which helps a lot if you later want to do any work with runes, and it’s a crafting class so you can level it safely by just working as a scribe.” She smiled. “That’s one reason books are as affordable as they are, lots of people are more than willing to work as scribes just to earn a few silver and get some experience.”

Richard nodded, and accepted the class.

The following skills are now part of your Scribe class:

Writing (5)

Reading (10) (Max)

Human experience: 5844--------------> 4344

Scribe experience: 0 ---------------->1000

You have gained the Scribe trait: Faster writing

You have gained the Scribe trait: Precise handwriting

Level up, Scribe level 2: +1 Int, +1 max HP, +1 Max SP, +3 Max MP. HP, SP, and MP restored.

Richard started reading the book. He had always been a fast reader and someone who could pick up a concept by just reading a textbook once, but this seemed even easier and faster than before.

I guess that’s the reading skill. Or maybe the Int increase?

The beginning of the book gave him a little bit of background about “formal” magic. All the magic in this book was created in a specific ancient language called “Ionic” by the book.

Ionic? Wasn’t that an ancient Greek language? Or is that just what it’s being translated as to me? Strange.

Ionic in this book had both a written and a verbal language, with the written language being a set of written pictograph runes that each had a specific meaning. The book cautioned that runic magic worked very differently from spoken magic and that you couldn’t just write down a spoken magic spell and expect it to work. There was a brief discussion about other kinds of magic, including what the book dismissively referred to as “folk magic”, other small spells that had been passed down from generation to generation often in other languages, and mentioned that a person who learned a lot of different kinds of “folk magic” could become a class called a “hedge wizard”, but it strongly suggested that that should be avoided unless you wanted to add a second magical class later in your career.

This book was apparently mostly for people interested in becoming either “Mages” or “Wizards.” The main difference between the two seemed to be that a “Mage” was someone who managed to attune themselves to a specific type or element of magic, and mages could quickly cast spells one after another, while a “Wizard” was a class for people who didn’t or couldn’t attune themselves, and tended to cast spells much more slowly, although they tended to learn a much greater variety of spells. Wizards usually weren’t expected to fight on the front lines of battle, as it took them a minute or two to cast each spell, although the book pointed out that a wizard with some time and room to work could do amazing things, and Wizards seemed to get certain traits that made that long spell casting time a little easier to work around. But the book seemed to be strongly hinting that anyone who had the ability to become a Mage, who showed any affinity for any element, should.

Trying to recruit people to be Mages so they can be front line soldiers, like Evelyn said. Well, that’s fine, there’s still probably something in this book worth learning.

After the introduction chapter, the book had 5 chapters, one for each spell. The book explained that each spell was related to one of the five elements or types of spell that were the most common affinities and suggested that as the reader learned and practiced the five spells that they should keep an open mind to see if they felt any intuitive understanding, or connection to one.

The second chapter was devoted to the spell Gust of Wind, which was supposed to be occasionally useful on its own but mostly was designed to see if the reader had an affinity to air. The spell was written out, and a very careful pronunciation guide was included to make sure the reader was able to figure out the exact pronunciation of every syllable of every word. Richard hardly needed it, for as soon as he saw the words he knew how they were supposed to be pronounced, even the words he had never seen before.

“I call the breath of ages, the wind of the skies…Feel the air move, feel the air pass, feel the air…” Richard started to chant.

“No.” Evelyn interrupted him, and he stopped. “You’re putting too much into the spell, too much effort, too much mana. I can see it. You’ll get a backlash for sure that way. You have to be gentler.”

Richard tried again.

“…breath from my lungs, breath from the skies…wind blowing across the sea, wind blowing across the lake, wind blowing across the fields of grain…” This time he could feel the sensation of energy flowing out of him as he put his power into the spell, and he focused on that, tried to narrow the channel and relax the pressure so the power would flow out of him more slowly and in a more controlled way. He continued the chant for more than two minutes, it looped around and repeated itself three times, before he felt something give. The power he had built up in the spell burst, and he felt a stinging in the side of his head.

“You were closer that time.” Evelyn said. “You just have to be a little gentler, feed the spell a little more slowly, let it build more gradually. You can do this.”

Richard nodded, and started the spell again from the beginning.

“Breath from my lungs, breath from the skies…” He cut the sensation of power flowing from him even more, until it was just the faintest, barest trickle of power. This time he cut the power down so low he lost the thread and the spell just fell apart, although at least less painfully this time. He restarted again.

“Breath from my lungs…”

The slightest trickle of power, but keeping the flow steady this time…

“wind blowing across the fields of grain…”

He could feel the spell growing, building, and it was an exciting feeling, like an oncoming rainstorm, but he resisted the temptation to speed up and just kept feeding the spell slowly, gently…

“wind blowing across the sea…”

He could picture it in his head, the wind blowing across the tops of breakers on the beach he would go to as a child. He kept the power flowing into the spell.

“breath from my lungs…”

Finally, after several painstaking minutes, he could feel the spell click into place, complete, and he released it. A gust of wind blew across the basement, sudden and implausible in that place, and the pages fluttered under his hands.

You have learned the spell Gust of Wind (1)

Evelyn smiled. “Wonderful. You do learn quickly, don’t you?”

Richard smiled, and yawned. “Thank you.” He looked around, and he and Evelyn were the only two people still awake. Harry was snoring loudly. “We should try to get some rest as well.”

Evelyn nodded, and put away the book she was reading. “Ok. Hold onto that book, keep working on it when you have time. Just be careful.”

Richard nodded, and put the book away in his bag. He lay down on the bed roll and stared at the stone basement ceiling.

Magic. Magic is real, and I can…I can do magic.

He fell asleep, with a feeling of peace despite everything he’d been through during the day.

Spoiler: Character sheet

Name: Richard

Race: Human (5)

Class:Skirmisher(2)

Scribe (2)

Age: 26

Strength: 3 (2.4)

Dexterity: 7

Constitution: 11

Endurance: 8

Intelligence: 25 (30)

Wisdom: 4 (3.6)

Perception: 7

Charisma: 11 (13.2)

HP: 83 (Max: 83)

SP: 42 (Max 42)

MP: 138 (153)

MP regeneration: 3.6%/hour

Divine Class: Champion of Ikar (1)

Humor: 46

Cunning: 67

High Stakes: 55

Glory: -911

Divine favors:

Gift of Tongues: May speak, understand, read, or write in any mortal language (may only speak languages you have heard and only write in languages you have seen).

Special traits:

Offworld Education (Legendary): +20% to effective intelligence, -10% to effective wisdom. Learns skills 50% more quickly than someone with an equivalent intelligence, gains experience 25% more quickly. More likely to learn unusual skills.

Pampered: Compared to most humans, this person has spent his whole life eating the best food, doing minimal physical labor, and generally living what most would call a life of luxury. -20% to strength, -20% to stamina points, +20% to hit points, +20% to charisma.

Without Glory: This person is extremely lacking in Glory, one of the 3 virtues of Toran, and as such may be instinctively distrusted or even hated by followers of Toran. -10 to reaction from followers of Toran.

Explorer (Human racial trait): Humans are known for wanting to explore the world, and for wanting to discover what's over the next hill. Gains a small amount of experience gained for discovering and exploring new locations.

Curious (Human racial trait): Some humans have a high degree of curiosity, and a desire to learn many new things and try many different possible paths. Many consider this curiosity to be one of the great assets of the species, even if it frequently gets them into trouble. Learns skills and spells 10% more quickly (scales with human level). Experience bonus for more than 3 classes (currently 0% bonus). Can earn human experience for making discoveries.

Accuracy (Skirmisher class trait): +2 to hit with any thrown or ranged weapons. Scales with skirmisher level.

Running throw (Skirmisher class trait): +60% to damage and +30% to range when a weapon is thrown while charging at full speed. Scales with skirmisher level.

Rapid retreat (Skirmisher class trait): +30% speed when running away from an enemy or hazard, but at a cost of +10% SP consumption. Scales with skirmisher level.

Faster writing (Scribe class trait): +50% writing speed. Scales with scribe level.

Precise handwriting (Scribe class trait): Increased handwriting neatness and precision. Reduces risk of error in runic magic. Scales with scribe level.

Skills (General):

Pratfall (2): You have the ability to fall in a hilarious fashion. Likely to make people laugh if executed well. All falling damage reduced by 20%.

Mathematics (14): You are extremely skilled at mathematics. +140% to calculation speed and accuracy. +70% to learning speed of other skills with a mathematical component. Small bonus to other math related skills and spells.

Pathfinder (forest) (3): You have an intermediate level of skill at moving through a forest quickly. You have learned the basics of how to travel through a forest, can see where to step and where to avoid, and can identify good paths to take while traveling. +30% to movement speed through a forest. -30% to SP cost for moving through forest. Increased chance to see and avoid natural hazards.

Stealth (2): You have a basic level of skill at moving quietly and in a stealthy manner. Decreased chance of being detected while trying to move quietly and stealthily.

Climbing (1): You have a basic level of skill at climbing.

Taunt (1): You have a basic level of skill at taunting an enemy to cause them to attack you. Most effective on enemies with low wisdom scores.

Acrobatics (1): You have a basic level ability at acrobatics. Improves jumping, tumbling, rolling, and balance.

Melee weapon (sword) (general) (1): You have a basic level of skill at sword fighting. +1 to-hit bonus with any sword, +1 damage with any sword.

Rational Introspection (3): You have begun to develop the rare skill of being able to rationally inspect your own thoughts for errors and inconsistencies. Can be used to notice and break free of some types of mental magic and illusion spells. Allows you to use your intelligence to slightly increase your resistance to some types of spells.

Surprise attack (1): When attacking someone by surprise or from stealth, +1 to damage and +5% to Critical hit chance

Skills (Skirmisher):

Jogging (3): An unusual running practice, primarily designed to improve the health and endurance of the human or for recreation rather then for practical gain. -30% SP cost while running slowly on roads or even ground, -15% SP cost for other running. +15% endurance and constitution training gains while running.

Thrown weapon (rocks) (2): You have a basic level of skill at throwing rocks. +2 to-hit bonus with thrown rocks, +2 damage. 5% chance for a thrown rock to stun an opponent.

Thrown weapon (daggers and knives) (3): You have a basic level of skill at throwing daggers and knives. +3 to-hit bonus with thrown daggers and knives, +3 damage. 5% increased chance for a thrown dagger or knife to inflict the bleed status on an opponent.

Parting shot (3): You have a moderate level of skill at using thrown or ranged weapons while moving. -45% to ranged penalty for using ranged weapons while running or riding.

Skills (Scribe):

Writing (5): You know how to write clearly. Higher levels of this skill improve writing speed and accuracy.

Reading (10) (Max): You are highly skilled at reading and reading comprehension. Increased reading speed, -75% reduction to the penalty from learning a skill or spell from a book instead of from a teacher.

Spells:

Insight (1)

Gust of Wind (1)

Quest: Try Not To Die. To succeed at this quest, merely live through your first two weeks in the world without getting killed. Shouldn't be too hard...right?

Achievements: Bounty Hunter(intermediate):+2 DEX One Shot: +5% CRIT

Underdog:+1 Skill lvl when fighting higher level opponents