Stellana bade us fall in line beside where Sarge had placed the kid, who now sported a long bow, a quiver of arrows peeking out from behind one shoulder, facing the practice dummies, and instructed each of us, as a group, to open our SPELL books “to the first page.” I felt this was a bit redundant, since as near as I could tell, none of us had anything written on any other. Still, it was with no little excitement that I opened my book to see what SCHEMA had chosen as my first SPELL.

SPELL: MANA BOLT

TYPE: 20 Yards

COST: 2 MANA

CAST: Instant

TARGET: Single. Multiple at higher levels

DAMAGE: 1 – 3 (Scales with level)

COOL DOWN: N/A

SIMULCAST: Yes

DETAILS: The USER fires a compressed bolt of MANA at one target. Target cannot block, ignores mundane armor and shields. Magic armor and shields take half damage. Marks target(s). Leveling adds (?) damage/number up to 5 per casting limb or appliance

Huh. I didn’t know what, exactly every category meant, but at first look, I was underwhelmed. Just off the top of my head, I figured that DAMAGE referred to how many possible points by which the target’s LIFE pool each bolt could reduce. Looking at my own LIFE pool, I was a level 0, and it would take between 30 and 100 shots to take just me down. Still, once I learned it, I would be able to do magic! Who gets to say that?

Well, almost everybody, now. I thought, looking around at the rest.

Yeah, underwhelming.

Underneath the description of the SPELL were words in a flowing script that I couldn’t understand, but which reminded me of the engraving on my staff. I absently rubbed my fingers along its barely perceptible lines while I tried to puzzle out the writing in the book.

As I reached the last line of script, the top line seemed to grow brighter, each word developing a soft glow and then the next, like lines of dominoes, until the whole text glowed. The words seemed to grow in both size and brightness until the page was too bright, like staring at the sun. I closed my eyes against the glare, and when I peeked open one eye, the script was gone.

And just like that, I knew how to cast a MANA BOLT.

It took no effort or thought, no more than having to think about how to breathe, or how to walk, I just knew like I knew how to scratch my nose. Not even thinking about the staff in my hand, I looked at the nearest target and pulled MANA from my pool. I don’t know how to explain the feeling, other than it was like taking a breath, but in reverse. Not like breathing out, because it feels nothing like that, but like I was intentionally moving something from the inside out, like we intentionally move air from the outside in, and how a ‘good’ breath felt a certain way—even tasted a certain way—to you after being stuffed up or having difficulty breathing.

Instead of having it exit my mouth or nose, though, I pulled the MANA up from the center of my chest where it pooled, and it flowed like blood through veins, up and across my shoulder and down my right arm. I felt it tingle in the palm of my hand and start to pool there, meeting resistance when it met my staff. When that happened, it was like waking up, like I’d been dream walking, and I realized what I’d done, that I’d somehow pulled magic out from someplace inside of me and that it was in my hand, and that pause to think had somehow made me aware of it.

I heard a voice speaking, I had been hearing a voice speaking, but I hadn’t had any attention to spare for it. It was as if I had been in a dream, or a trance, and now I was waking up.

Stellana was saying something, she walked up to the elf girl, who was first in the line of MANA or SPIRIT users, and the elf handed Stellana her now empty book.

“Now seek out the place where your MANA and SPIRIT pools dwell,” and as she moved down the line taking up the SPELL books from each trainee, she moved her other hand in a circle over herself, indicating an area roughly from sternum to just below her rib cage. “Most USERS feel that their pools lie here, in their central place.”

As she came to me and I handed her the now useless book, she continued. “Once you find your pool, raise your hand and I will walk you through the process of pulling some out, and getting it to move in the direction you want.”

I didn’t think to raise my hand. Even though I was aware that other things were happening around me, I still felt like I was caught in that dream state, like one of those dreams where you wake up and you are too slow, your mouth won’t make the right sounds, or the words don’t have any voice, and before I could speak or indicate anything, she had moved to where the Blue Man had raised his hand.

I looked down to where my hand met my staff and I could see the MANA like a glove that covered only my palm, a softly glowing liquid glove. It was fascinating.

And that quickly, I was drawn back into the dream. I took hold of the staff with my other hand and I moved my right hand, the hand with the MANA slightly away from the staff. The MANA clung to where it touched the staff, and it pulled on my hand and up my arm and into my pool, it pulled more out. It looked like a thick, viscous liquid. There was a surprising amount of resistance when I moved my hand away. It felt a little like how I imagined it would feel to pull the taffy I’d seen being stretched and blended by machines at the county fair. Fascinated, I moved my hand along the staff and the MANA followed, coating the staff neatly in a thin, glowing layer, until all of the top third of the staff glowed faintly, causing the engraved script to take on its own glow, whether a resonance in concert or as a consequence of some defensive mechanism, I didn’t know.

When I saw the two glows, the MANA seemed to me a silver blue color, but the script on the staff glowed a yellow-red, I marveled at the beauty of them, and I wondered how much more beautiful it would be if they could combine and mix like the color of light on Rembrandt’s brush, and just the thinking about it made it happen. I felt the surface tension on my MANA break, a small pop! more felt than heard, and the script, now swirling madly on the staff, began to absorb it.

Somewhere that was not here, wherever here was, where I was, where my mind was, I heard a gasp and knew that it was Stellana, but I had no free thought to devote to that or to wondering why or how or anything but mixing my paints and painting my will upon this staff so that I could paint my will upon the world like the greatest master painter who had ever lived.

I felt my skin pebble and the hairs stand up as I reached with my MANA hand, as I had begun to think of it, and I circled it with as much of my hand as would fit around the shaft and pulled the MANA from my pool and through my veins and into the staff where the script began to glow not silver, not blue, not yellow, not red, and not softly but brightly and purple.

And strong.

And I knew then that she had put something in the staff. I had no name for it, but something not friendly to me or to whoever first picked it up, but it was a static thing, a dead thing, like she was a static thing, a dead thing, but I was a live thing, and my MANA was alive and it moved into the staff and it became the staff, and I knew that the soul bond that gave me the staff had been an artificial thing, a trap for some mouse, but this mouse was a lion, and without thinking, without even knowing what I was doing, I pointed the staff at the dummy and a bolt of shining purple light shot from the end like it was a roman candle. Quicker than that, quicker than a physical bolt shot from a crossbow, as quick as the tracer rounds fired from an M2, as quick as a thought, the bolt burst from the staff and blazed across the field and smashed into its center mass and the top half of the dummy exploded into flying shrapnel and smoking ruin, and I stood there equal parts dumbfounded and amazed.

Not so underwhelming, after all.

Then I woke up.

Sound flowed back in, and my mind sped up, my thoughts from that slow taffy flow that they’d become, and I heard Stellana scream a high, thin tea kettle scream and she collapsed into herself, like a puppet which strings have been cut. I looked at her and she lay there caught in some fit, and nobody moved to her aid. In fact, everyone moved away. I looked up and saw wide eyes and open mouths on every face. They were all staring at me with equal parts shock and not a little of fear.

All but one.

That one was Sarge, and his face burned with murderous anger, and I felt a surge of primal fear as my adrenaline spiked. But his look was not for me, but for her, where she lay limbs flailing about on the ground, no grace nor beauty about her, nor humanity, but like some insect caught in a web, like a spider which has caught itself in its own web, and I saw him smile, and I took a step back, because that smile was deadlier than rage.

[SCHEMA]: Stellana of House Clintogne has broken her vow of non-aggression. Please wait while a support ticket is sent, this may take some time. An Administrator will review the RECORDs of the affected parties and make a judgment on who is at fault and the appropriate penalties involved. Ticket #119-8800943

And Sarge’s smile became a fierce, wild thing and we all took another step back.