Sebastian woke up with a terrible crick in his neck and a bone deep ache in his everywhere. Groaning as he tried to stand up, he realized he was also starving. Then he forgot about his aches and pains for a moment as he remembered the bow. Frantically looking around for it, he finally spotted it on the floor next to the chair, it must have slipped out of his grip after he passed out. He started inspecting it all over, tracing the patterns on it with his fingers.

Owdel interrupted his inspection, “I imagine sleeping up here would be rather uncomfortable, did you forget that you have a perfectly good bed downstairs?” He handed Sebastian a cup of tea, which took the sting out of his less than cordial greeting. When Sebastian didn’t answer right away he continued, “So you did another enchantment yesterday? What’s it supposed to do?” he said with a nod at the bow.

Sebastian turned his focus from the bow to take a sip of the tea, then sighed as he felt the warmth spread through him and soothe away some of the aches. “Just doubles the force it fires arrows with, wait, yesterday?”

Owdel chuckled, “It’s morning boy, you slept all night in that chair.”

Sebastian frowned, “And I take it nobody could be bothered to try and wake me up, or make me more comfortable.”

Owdel shrugged, “Not my job, you’re a grown man now and it’s your responsibility to take care of yourself. If I were to make a habit of taking care of you when you pass out in random places, it wouldn’t really offer an incentive to stop passing out in random places now would it? Not like you were in danger.”

Sebastian wasn’t sure if he was more annoyed at the seeming utter lack of concern, or the fact that he couldn’t refute Owdel’s reasoning behind it. He decided to change the subject, “Do you know what the patterns are for? I just can’t figure them out, and they’re on everything I make.”

Owdel shrugged again, “They’re on every enchanted item designed to hold mana as long as it isn’t active. They aren’t on things like the testing orb, because that is supposed to stay empty in order to draw the mana from people being tested and convert it to light as a way to measure their potential. So longstanding belief is that they somehow allow the item to slowly absorb ambient mana, as well as hold mana inside the item.” He changed the subject, “So I’m guessing that the bow is your way of protecting yourself if you have to fight? And you only gave it the ability to fire the arrows harder? Why not a wand or staff, something that shoots fireball or lightning would do far more damage than a silly bow and arrow.”

Sebastian smirked at the disdain Owdel had for his bow, “Well to begin with, I’m much more proficient with a bow than I am with a fireball that would take me ten to twenty minutes to cast, and second, I’m not done with it. I still have arrows to enchant. Fear not, oh wise and powerful wizard man, my ‘silly bow and arrow’ will be a worthy tool for any enchanter that may find himself in a dangerous situation.”

Not waiting for Owdel’s inevitable retort, Sebastian left to find something to eat, taking his bow with him. Figures that it’s just a way for the item to gather power, probably makes it easier for someone to channel mana into it too. Sebastian was slightly disappointed that it was something so simple. Oh well, if it turns out that there is more to it I’m sure I’ll figure it out eventually. Until then, I have food to devour, and arrows to enchant… tomorrow, arrows to enchant tomorrow. Maybe a couple days. He grimaced again at the ache that still persisted.

Sarah was in the kitchen when he entered, heating up some oatmeal. She stopped him as he started to rummage through the pantry, “Don’t worry about it, I made extra. Also, do you hate yourself? I mean, sometimes the stuff Owdel teaches me hurts a bit, but you seem to enjoy spending at least a half hour a day writhing in pain lately.” She scooped the oatmeal into a couple bowls and handed one to Sebastian.

He grumbled about the unfairness in the world before answering, “Not like my other options are that great, either become a healer and live with even more pain, or be someone’s battery for large spells.” He started eating, stopped, added some honey to it so it wouldn’t taste like chalk, then started eating again. He had never cared much for oatmeal, but he was so hungry right now that he didn’t really care, he was shoveling it down as fast as he could without choking, not particularly caring what Sarah thought of his table manners at the moment.

“Couldn’t you just not be a mage then? I mean if all you can do is put yourself through all kinds of pain, wouldn’t it be easiest to just do something else?” Sebastian sighed in annoyance, clearly, she wasn’t going to let him eat in peace.

“No, I can’t. If you must know, I didn’t have any apprenticeship waiting for me if I didn’t become a mage, and I refuse to go out into the great forest to die for the town like my father did. Besides, it’s too late for both of us. Once you are listed as a mage, you are stuck as a mage, trying to run will get you hunted down as a rogue mage, and I doubt you could get away with just refusing to use magic.”

She looked, Sebastian wasn’t sure exactly, conflicted? She was quiet for a minute as she seemed to think over his situation, “Oh, that’s, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

Sebastian snorted. Of course she didn’t know, why would Owdel’s prized apprentice need to know the dangers trying to get out of the guild brings? She has a nice cushy position in the guild as a powerful apprentice of a powerful master mage. Aloud all he said was, “I don’t want your pity, or sympathy, or whatever you are thinking that resulted in that.” He gestured at her expression, “I’m happy enough here. A little pain is worth access to that library.” He trailed off, visiting his books in his mind.

Sarah shrugged, “Okay, I understand, you’re a lunatic. But since you mentioned the library, and you are so super smart and everything, think you could help me with some of the things Owdel wants me to study? I just can’t seem to wrap my head around it.” She put on a sad face and stared at Sebastian imploringly.

Sebastian groaned. “Oh gods damn it, are you really pulling sad faces at me to get some free tutoring?”

“That depends, is it working?” Sarah said, a broad grin on her face and her eyes sparkling with mirth.

Sebastian scowled at her, “No it isn’t. But I can still help I suppose, since I shouldn’t enchant anything today anyways.”

Sarah laughed, “See! It did work, you just don’t want to admit it!”

Sebastian gave her a suspicious look. He was pretty sure this was more than just getting help with something, was she trying to distract him from what she saw as his misfortunes? Or was it something else?

Sarah sighed after a bit, “To be totally honest, I’m bored and want a friend to talk to. Ever since I got picked to be Owdel’s apprentice all my friends have vanished. They just say my status is too high to associate with ‘commoners’ now.”

Sebastian could see that, the girls would be jealous of the jump in social status, while the boys would be intimidated that she was a mage now and not only had, or would have eventually, the power to vaporize them combined with the societal status to get away with it. Still, he couldn’t resist teasing her about it. “So what you are saying is that I’m the only possible person you can hope will be your friend in the entire town? That’s gotta suck.”

She frowned at him, “Well I’m the only person that can be your friend too you know.”

Sebastian grinned at her, “You see, the assumption you are making there, is that I either need or want friends right now. Friends take time and energy I can use for my enchanting, and invite drama I prefer to avoid.” Her expression fell, “That being said, I suppose I can give you a chance.” He laughed at the incredulous look on her face.

She stared at him, “That has to be the most backhanded way of saying you’ll try to be friends with someone I have ever heard.”

Sebastian feigned a confused look, “I never said I would try anything, I said I would give you a chance to be my friend, not that I would try to be yours.”

Sarah finally seemed to catch on that he was teasing her now, “Oh whatever, jerk. Let’s go to the library so you can help me study.”

Sebastian stood up and stretched, the food had helped alleviate most of his lingering aches. He led the way to the library, Sarah practically bouncing up the stairs behind him. He hadn’t realized how hard the lifestyle change must have hit her. She went from being surrounded by friends to being ostracized by them practically overnight. For him it hadn’t been much of a change at all, for someone that was outgoing and used to being popular it was probably a brutal shock to find out how superficial her friends had been.

He had focused most of his attention on the Ancient’s books, so to help her with her studies meant he had to thumb through the books Owdel had assigned her. It was a bit annoying, but it allowed some insight into Owdel’s focus when it came to magic. It hadn’t taken Sebastian long to realize that mages would need to focus their attention on one or two specific things to achieve any real mastery. Owdel seemed to have assigned Sarah primarily fire, air, and earth related books, with the primary focus leaning towards fire and air.

After weeks of studying the Ancient’s Physics magic he couldn’t help but find most of the books rather disappointing, they spoke of how to manipulate the elements using mana, but they didn’t really go into much depth on what the elements were actually made of. It seemed conventional magic, at least at the novice level, consisted of mostly a loose understanding of how the elements interacted with each other, and observable features they presented, then taking that and using mana to get them to act how the mage wanted. This resulted in a considerable amount of wasted effort, which put Owdel’s initial demonstration with the fire in a different light.

He had thought it odd that most of the modern books felt closer to life stories than an effort to teach magic, but if most mages learned more advanced knowledge of the elements they had chosen to master through experimentation and experience, then it made sense that a record of their more advanced spells and how they work would read like a story. The main thing he couldn’t figure out is why it seemed like nobody else had taken the Ancient’s knowledge, and applied it to magic. Surely someone out there has done it, it has too much potential to have been completely disregarded.

As far as Sebastian could tell from these books, an enchanter would have achieved an effect similar to what his bow could do by having it create a focused gust of wind that pushed the arrow as it left the string. Which is fine for the most part, but the amount of power it would need to use per shot would be much higher if they wanted to achieve the same amount of increased speed.

Sarah cut into his thoughts, “Hello? Anybody home? I asked you to help me learn this stuff, not to thumb through them and look all superior.” She had her hands on her hips, and was tapping a foot irritably.

Sebastian shook his head and did his best to help her learn her assigned knowledge. It didn’t take long for him to realize that she really had just been lonely, and was perfectly capable of learning this stuff without him, she just wanted some company. He tried to be annoyed at her for wasting his time, but in truth, he didn’t actually have anything else to do that day, and he could think of worse ways to pass the time than spending it with a beautiful girl his age.