Chapter 17 : To Fill the lungs

Nikolaï woke up in a really sore body. During his trip to the gardens, he suffered from no injuries but still finished with pain. Once again the state of his body preoccupied Nikolaï and he was angry at being pressed by the situation.

His Ether was the priority and he needed to gather more power even if it hurt his health. Nikolaï started to laugh without joy, the empty laugh of a madman.

Nikolaï held his head in his hand as he realised how far he went on the Arcanist path. In the name of power, he had neglected his health and continued in this direction. Nikolaï’s anger rose to the point where it felt like pain. He was angry at himself because he felt that he had let others put this logic in this head during all this time in the Tower.

He wanted to break free from it but he was trapped. The threat of Orsana haunted him and he was so much more powerful than himself. Nikolaï needed to grab every crumble of power he could if he wanted a chance to survive. This fact was so deep inside him that it trumped any concern about how his body looked and felt.

Nikolaï eventually left his room and his dark thought behind. He had slept late and lunch early in the dining room. He ate with appetite and determination. He forced himself to drink water even if his thirst had been already satisfied in order to reduce his soreness.

After that, Nikolaï went to the Bourquet shop. Like planned, the eyes of the bird were waiting for him and Emile had done a great job to embalm them. Not only the air elementium inside had been well sealed, Nikolaï could confirm it with his Third Eye, but although allow a future use for talismans or other Forgerune whatnot.

Nikolaï went back to his room and after a bit of preparation started the Assimilation. He went all the way without care for poisoning. His fears for the future were stronger than those for his immediate state. It was not madness but also the fact that Nikolaï wasn’t helpless in front of the poisoning like he used to be. With the help of his Third Eye Nikolaï had a way to fight it. He could target the residual elementium in his vessel during meditation and even if it was incredibly time-consuming to do so he had a way to reduce the effects.

After successfully assimilate the content of the two eyes Nikolaï tried to assess his progress. Without the lingering effect of Aspirant Soreco potion, it was harder to be precise but Nikolaï sensitivity had been reluctantly trained. He wasn’t completely sure but he believed that he had gathered enough energy to cast 4 or 5 more level 1 spell a day.

Nikolaï couldn’t be completely sure of its estimation, it was a wild guess but he felt encouraged. At his level, it was the equivalent of almost 3 weeks of daily meditation. He used Minor Elevation on a feather to drain the lingering elementium but the spell was not powerful enough to get rid of everything. He still did it until he was almost out of energy.

Nikolaï uncrossed his legs, he had kept his meditation position all this time, and stood up. Violent vertigo hit him. It wasn’t because he had stood too quickly but because of the poisoning and he started to reach for the wall but it was too late. His right hand tried to grab something but it only met air as he was falling on his side. In a loud bang, Nikolaï’s head hit his bed as he crashed on the floor.

Nikolaï felt like if his skull had been cracked and his ears started to ring as pain scream loudly in his mind. He almost passed out, he felt drag at the bottom by vertigo but Nikolaï grabbed the pain as if it was a lifeline. A rope cover of burning thorns but his only way up.

Nikolaï stayed on the floor, inanimated on his right side. Only his chest was moving up and down as he was gathering his breath. He finally opened his eyes which were wet with tears. He hadn’t passed out and did his best to manage the pain.

His first move was his leg that he used to hit his bed with anger. The bed didn’t flinch but Nikolaï hurt his toe with his tantrum. He would have laughed if he didn’t feel so stupid and pathetic. He rolled on his back, the vertigo was still strong and Nikolaï put his hand where his head at been hit.

He felt the hump but no trace of blood which he felt relieved. Nikolaï straight up but the vertigo was still too strong to stand. He started to crawl closer to his bed and retrieved something from under it. It was the crutches he had used before and took one to help him get on his bed. Here, he rested and waited for the pain to go away. He felt stupid to haven’t paid enough attention to his physical state before getting up. If there was some kind of lesson here Nikolaï was still too upset to get it.

It was not just the bump on his head but also a throbbing pain in his neck that was hurting him.

In the next few days, Nikolaï moved very carefully and used at least one crutch every time. The poisoning effects were coming and going without a specific pattern but Nikolaï could feel the imminence of the wave before it hit him. He stayed away from any kind of stairs except for the one leading to the dining hall. It was in fact the only reason he left his room, to eat. He didn’t go to the library or the market, after all his state wouldn’t have permitted it to study or deliver Forgerune material.

The bump had started to resorb and the pain in his neck calm down but the vertigos weren’t, providing any work requiring constant focusing. Nikolaï wasn’t completely inactive either, he meditated to reduce the effect of the poisoning bit by bit and practised Minor Elevation and Air Hole.

Too much time had passed since the Assimilation for the spells to have significant draining effects but even a small benefit was welcome. The air elementium had gone deeper in his vessel so Nikolaï was trying to put it on the surface before spell practice.

Nikolaï had just finished practising Air Hole and wondered how many time he had cast it. He was still convinced that he should cast his spells a hundred times before pretending to know them but he had lost count.

Nikolaï walked carefully to his desk and laid down a large piece of paper. He drew some kind of board where he listed the spells he knew next to space to mark how much time he had cast it. He wrote carefully as if he was a child doing his best at something he wasn’t used to. Nikolaï wanted to have his best pen-ship to write the nine spells he knew : Spectral Hand, Runic Alteration, Palm Flame, Moist Mirror, Simple Identification, Minor Elevation, Impalpable Wall, Dissipation and Air Hole.

Nikolaï felt pretty prideful facing the number of spells he knew. Most of them were level 0 spell with very limited applications but most Aspirants of the 1st Circle knew 3 or 4 spells and none of them had this kind of diversity. Seeing this number, Nikolaï wanted to learn even more spells but first, he needed to master the one he already knew to a level where they became second nature to him. The worst that an Arcanist could do was mixing up the Sigil he knew and Nikolaï wanted to be able to use his spells in every condition not just for party trick when everything was going his way.

***

A few days later, Nikolaï’s condition had gone better and he decided to get ready for his future exam. During his recovery, he had trained Air Hole and felt good about it even if improvements could be made. The timing was too short for Nikolaï to create his 2nd Ether Rune in time so what he needed was to present a level 1 and level 2 spell.

Nikolaï had kind of wait for this for a long time and took a particular spellbook from his chest. He lit a runic candle on his desk and settle in with his book. He opened it slowly like if it was a precious volume even if he was the one who copied it 2 years ago. He read the instructions and recalled why this spell had attracted him immediately.

Nikolaï’s father, Duke Alexander Orwood was a Marked warrior. He had fought during the War of the Betrayal and was known in their land for his strength with a two-handed sword. As his son, Nikolaï had had to learn to fight and to yield a sword. It had been part of his education and his duty even if he wasn’t the heir. This part of his childhood became the most defining thing for Nikolaï as the way he felt about his family.

Before Nikolaï was old enough to receive instruction from a real teacher it was his two older brothers who had been in charge to “educate” him on the matter. Themselves had been taught by their father in a particularly severe and cold way.

Anyway, their father gave the mission to his sons to prepare Nikolaï for his future teaching and they had imitated their father in a twisted way. The oldest, 10 years older than Nikolaï, had a humiliating sense of discipline and the other one, 6 years older than Nikolaï, was cruel the way a child could be even if he had been in his teenage years at the time.

The bruises and bumps had healed but Nikolaï injuries weren’t at the surface of things. The repeated mistreatment to “toughen him up” made him terrified of swords. Nikolaï hadn’t inherited the build of his father as his brothers did and they constantly told him that he had a weak arm. Nikolaï was the product of a second wedding, like his sister (the one just 3 years older than him), and his brothers often told how it was the reason that why he was so pitiful. His mother side was weakening the strength of the Orwood as they pretend to know.

The so-called pre-training of his brothers had made Nikolaï ashamed of his weakness to the point that he had forgotten that he was, after all, just a child. His father didn’t help on the matter either, in Nikolaï memory his father constantly wore a look of disappointment on his face when looking at his last son.

When Nikolaï was twelve his father spare with him to test his skills to see where he had risen. He didn’t brutalize him or anything but after a few minutes he stopped and only declared that Nikolaï hadn’t what it need to learn the two-handed sword. At that time Nikolaï would have preferred a kick in the gut than the coldness of his father.

Even if he didn’t teach Nikolaï, as he had done for his other brother, his father hired a swordsman to tutor his last son. After all, Duke Alexander Orwood was still believing that it was part of Nikolaï’s duty even if he had judged him beneath his teachings.

Nikolaï’s instructor was a good man who had done everything to undo what his brothers had done. He gave back to Nikolaï a bit of confidence in himself and the will to cultivate it.

As Nikolaï became a teenager he had kept wanting to redeem himself to his father. He had applied himself in his studies and every aspect of his duties to be “worthy” of his name. He learned hunting and skinning with the hope that it was going to bring him closer to his father and made him recognize his value. It had been in vain on the matter and the Orwood men only kept treating him with indifference.

Nikolaï didn’t know exactly when but around his sixteen birthday he stopped caring about his father, brothers and bigger sister. He finally had decided to believe that there was nothing wrong with him and the only reason his father didn’t care for him was that he didn’t care for anyone.

Behind the disappointed look of his father, he had started to see a man who was bothered by everything and everyone. Not once Nikolaï believed that he had seen his father genuinely happy and for the first time he had been relieved to not look like him.

In a way, the rejection of his father way of seeing strength and value was one of Nikolaï’s early motivation to become an Arcanist. He knew before coming to the tower how hard it was going to be even if he didn’t know in what way, but had wanted it anyway. His father was a warrior, a swordsman who had trained his body more than anything so Nikolaï had wanted to become powerful with his mind. Powerful in a way that his father couldn’t look down on.

Nikolaï stopped his train of thought about the past and his teenage motivation to focus on the present. He read carefully the instructions from the book and studied the Sigil. Picturing the Sigil needed to be in a specific order and Nikolaï paid close attention to the pattern.

After half an hour, Nikolaï felt ready for his first try. He joined his hands and visualized the Sigil in his mind. Slowly he started to project it piece by piece between his two palms. If he was too slow the Sigil was going to disappear before being complete but Nikolaï hold on his Ether had improved during the last few months.

A wave of vertigo hit Nikolaï in the middle of his projection, breaking his focus. The poisoning effect had yet to completely disappeared and even if the vertigo was too weak to make him fall, Nikolaï breathed slowly to calm himself and find balance.

The vertigos quickly disappeared and Nikolaï started back the spell from the beginning. It took him a minute but the spell started to form. From his joined hands a shape emerged and a sword appeared from nowhere.

It was a long sword with a classic guard and grip. The blade was not larger than the height of Nikolaï thumbs but almost as long as his leg (around a meter). It didn’t seem to be made of metal. It was the right colour but his surface didn’t shine like if it was true metal, more like silvery ivory. The sword design wasn’t looking very sophisticated but it looked well made and properly sharpened.

The sword was the spell and it was floating in front of Nikolaï. He moved his left hand close to his chest like he was doing when controlling the Spectral Hand and moved the sword with his will. He made it move around him gracefully and turn on itself to inspect the materialize weapon.

Spectral Sword was the name of the spell and Nikolaï had been dreaming of being able to cast it. A sword that needed to be yielded by the power of the mind rather than the strength of the arms was like a victory against his family for Nikolaï.

Looking at the sword made Nikolaï a bit appeased in a way and he thought about his tutor. He felt recognition to the man who had helped him vanquished his fear of swords.

When Nikolaï started training with his personal tutor, the man had discovered quickly that the fear of being hit was preventing Nikolaï to think properly during sparring. When using wooden swords Nikolaï had showed correct swordsmanship for someone of his age but the moment they were switching with metal swords, even if they were dull, he was losing his composure.

The young Nikolaï didn’t fear the object itself but the moment someone shaded one from his sheath it was like he was melting on the spot.

Nikolaï’s tutor had understood that this fear had been the result of his brothers mistreatments and the first thing he truly taught to Nikolaï was to passed it. He hadn’t done it directly by making Nikolaï confronting his fear but first to distract him from it without his student realising it.

Nikolaï’s father had a collection of all kind of swords. Some were exposed in different parts of the castle and others in a trophy room of some sort. It was part of his one father legacy but also the one hobby he seemed to have after hunting. Not a year was passing without a neighbour lord offering something sword related to Nikolaï’s father. Sometimes it was one for his collection and sometimes a painting of some battle with swordsmen at the centre of it.

Anyway, Nikolaï’s tutor had used the collection to make his pupil learned the different style of swords. Nikolaï had to remember complicated names of handles and the origins of such and such styles. When sparring the tutor was questioning Nikolaï to describe the kind of sword they both used. He had forced him to focused on another aspect that the fear that blades inspired him. To distract him from his phobia.

When Nikolaï became familiar with the exercise his teacher made it harder, asking for similar types of sword or war where they had been used. Slowly the swords had become a subject of reflection for Nikolaï and even if he was still fearing them, they had been brought into the realm of logic rather than the deepness of phobia.

Nikolaï had started to see beauty in the object, grace into the way a sword could become an aesthetic object of decoration rather than just a weapon. Without realising it Nikolaï vanquished a fear that he had never truly verbalized and his teacher never bring the subject either.

Nikolaï only understood what his teacher had done for him when he realised that he had made out half of the term he had taught him. He had done so because he ignored them himself but couldn't give up on his student.

Nikolaï made a melancholic smile for his teacher. The man died a year ago at 68 years old and when Nikolaï learned it he felt deep regrets about not having the chance to thank him for what he had done for him.

Nikolaï cleared his throat and focused on his spell again. He looked at the classic design of the sword and wondered how it was going to change as his proficiency in the spell was going to improve. Spectral spells were not just materialisation spell, they had a spiritual component, a link between the spell and his caster.

For example, Spectral Hand didn’t materialize a random hand but was copying the one from his caster and Spectral Sword had similar properties. Once Nikolaï handled the Sigil properly the sword was going to shape like it had been specially made for him. It wasn’t going to change his power but refined Nikolaï control over it.

During the Splitting, an Arcanist was known for her mastery in spectral spells which had been a rather new branch. Nikolaï didn’t remember her true name but he didn’t forget how she was nicknamed : The Iron Hand Arcanist. It was an imposing title that she had inherited by using her personal variation of the Spectral Hand. It wasn’t a simple level 0 spell but a level 3 one with Metal elementium blended in it. With this spell, she could throw rocks as if she was a catapult and break castle walls like a hammer break glass. Nikolaï tried to remember a bit more about her but the only thing he was sure of was the fact that she was also a Transcendent Arcanist.

The path between Arcanist of the 5th Circle and the 6th Circle wasn’t easy to break through. He didn’t just require proper energy and enough mastery in Ether to pull it off. It was not just a cap to pass but a rebirth of some sort. When doing so, the Arcanist was deeply changing the nature of his body without being able to change it back. The way this metamorphosis was aborted although changed the kind of Arcanist the person could become.

Raising to 5th Circle required creating a new Ether Rune each time and the main difficulty was the fact that they became more and more complex at each step. It could sometimes take years for an Arcanist to be proficient enough between two advanced stages. From what Nikolaï knew, which was very little, raising to the 6th Circle didn’t require creating a new Rune but to “reorganize” the one already in place. He had no idea what it really meant and books or teaching about it was not available for an Aspirant of the 1st Circle, like him. Only Experts could access them in Dzürkül and it was pretty much the same outside.

Nikolaï could still speculate on the use of the term “reorganize” but the fact was : Ether Rune couldn’t be tempered. Once solidified they were inbound in the vessel and reorganized them made as much sense as someone telling that he was going to reorganized his bones.

Anyway, Nikolaï didn’t know how but the way Arcanist of the 6th Circle reorganized their runes defined the types of Arcanists they became and there were 4 kinds of them.

Transcendent Arcanist was the more common one or to be more accurate : to the minority of Arcanist who raised to that level a bit more than half became Transcendent Arcanist. Their longevity, physical strength and healing ability were beyond human limitation. In a way, their physical capacities were closing the ones from Arcanic beasts and were enhanced by their Ether.

In exchange for those benefits, Transcendent Arcanist limited some of their casting abilities. At each Rune created an Arcanist didn’t just gather more energy in his body but was densified it too, making spells less expensive. Transcendent Arcanist apparently had to give up on part of this density so commonly they limited themselves to spells 2 levels under their Circle.

If Transcendent Arcanist were the most numerous between the 6th Circle it wasn’t the case beyond. Very rare was the one to raise to Master Arcanist and even rarer to the 8th Circle. In human history, only one man rose to the 9th Circle : the Fair One. The creator of the human empire and his first Emperor.

Elemental Arcanist was the second more common kind of Arcanist of the 6th Circle, they represented around a third of them. Their particularity rested in the fact that they fused a specific elementium into their Ether. Only peoples with a strong and enhanced affinity were choosing this path and once done the power they could extract from this elementium was without comparison to their pair. By doing so they also cut themselves from the use of other kinds of elementium.

The metamorphosis of an Elemental Arcanist wasn’t limited to his Ether but to their body too. Little by little their physical aspect was going to change. He could start slowly by the colour of the eyes, skin and hair but eventually, deeper parts of their anatomy were going to be altered. Their blood, bones and organs would mutate with the elementium. This mutation didn’t put the Arcanist health in jeopardy but could be quite impressive.

Even with their limitation to one elementium Elemental Arcanists were powerful beings that couldn’t be neglected on the battlefield. They didn’t have the physical enhancement of the Transcendent Arcanist but they were still hard to kill. In a way, they were only half-human and their intimate bond with elementium was the source of their power and life.

Above the 6th Circle, Elemental Arcanists were the big majority. Their power grew and their metamorphosis deepened as they go to the point where some could walk in the bottom of the sea or into the heart of a volcano without suffering from it.

The rest of the Arcanist of the 6th Circle was made mostly of Harmonic Arcanist. Contrary to the others their metamorphosis was focused on their Ether. Their body would change slightly compared to an average human but next to the other type it looked like nothing. It was said that Harmonic Arcanists were the ones who showed the least impressive leap in power when becoming an Arcanist of the 6th Circle but their understanding of the nature of Ether more profound than the others.

Harmonic Arcanists were powerful spellcaster capable of the highest difficulty act of Arcane due to the enhancement of their vessel. If a Harmonic Arcanist could become a Master Arcanist his power didn’t just grow but multiply. Harmonic Arcanists weren’t the most powerful at the start but their progress were exponentials and less limited than the 2 most common type.

In history, Harmonic Arcanists had been responsible for many advances in Arcane but also the creation of hereditary gift.

The last kind of Arcanist was although the rarer : Ethereal Arcanist. They were the most mysterious ones and in the all world only 2 to 4 existed by generation. It was considered the most limitless path but the most dangerous to reach. Dozens of people had tried to become an Ethereal Arcanist and the one who had failed simply died. Rising to 6th Circle was always risky but not like that for the other one.

Nikolaï knew very little about this kind of Arcanist. He knew their reputation of being powerful but descriptions of how, were not often available. The closer he had found on the subject was a text comparing them to Elemental Arcanist who had fused with Time elementium, which was theoretically impossible for Nikolaï’s knowledge.

Ethereal Arcanists were considered half-spectral and they had the same level of understanding of Ether as Harmonic Arcanists with the immortal body of an Elemental Arcanist. It was although said that because of the nature of Ethereal Arcanist they were the only ones able to break beyond the 10th Circle. It was a legend more than a theory and even the 10th Circle was something that no human ever reached.

In this day and age, only 3 people were Ethereal Arcanist and 2 of them were under the direct order of the current Emperor.