Gilliam left for the reception through the door into the Air field, from his short time here he had found out that there were less people in the fields than in the hallways at this time of day. Entering to see the clear and cloudless sky his brief moment of calm was instantly interrupted by the sound of metal against metal, magic exploding, yelling and an all round spectacle.

The field had a lot of people, it wasn’t filled or anything but it had a lot of non-school people, there were even small tents set up. Some looked like adventurers, some looked like mercs. There was just a collection of all sorts of people and races. The latter point was very interesting to Gilliam as though he had seen groups of people before, not this varied as far as races went. There were plenty of non-humans at the school but this was different as they were collected. He did find the beast-races to be the most interesting, mainly because of their varied nature.

School uniformed servants went around tending to the people, some had boards they took notes on as they talked to them, others came with plates of food and... were they serving them?

He regretted letting Angela leave before him, he could have asked her about this, though that being said he was heading for the reception, so they should be able to answer this.

It was a very short walk from the mess hall door into one of the side doors of the main hall. There were a lot of people here as well. This felt more normal as the students were moving from breakfast to wherever they were going.

Walking over to the reception the middle aged man from earlier sat there and lifted his head when he came within talking range.

“Good morning. How may I help you today?” A polite and well practised sentence.

“I would like to speak to Ghaos, it’s about the girl that stabbed me.” Gilliam noticed that he didn’t return the greeting, added any pleasantries or anything of the sort; he just stated his request almost like an order.

This was not at all like he remembered himself as... Had he really changed that much?

The man checked a large leather bound tome behind the desk, flipping the pages back and forth for a few long seconds until he found what he was looking for. “Here we go, he is currently in his office. I’ll go check with him.”

The man politely nodded at Gilliam and started to leave for the central staircase.

“Oh, hold on!” Gilliam stopped him before he properly left the reception area. “I just wonder, what’s going on with all the people outside?”

The receptionist stopped in his tracks once he was asked to hold on and replied with the same calm and polite voice he had used so far. “The Circle recruiting day is coming up, some people always show up early to show off and make themselves more interesting, here-” he walked back to the desk and got a piece of paper which he handed to Gilliam. “-This should explain most of it. I’ll answer any questions I can when I get back.”

As the receptionist continued towards the stairs like before, Gilliam checked the paper. It had information written on both sides and was explaining the Circle Recruiting to complete newbies such as Gilliam, this was perfect!

The paper explained that a Circle is a name given to a mage’s group, clan, servants, people... and so on. People can sign contracts with mages to become their servants, colleagues or, well, any other kind of contract as long as both sides agree. Many merchants use this as advertising, often for a percentile cut of sales, this is basically fee income for the mage. Farmers or people who might have lost their homes can gain a tiny bit of fame and a job, even a new farm or the like depending on the mage. People good at fighting might become bodyguards and even starving homeless people might become slaves or servants if lycky. This was just a few examples but the short of it is that a mage, due to the social power they get in V’ida, often have a lot of people wanting to associate with them. A mage isn’t exactly automatically a noble, but depending on their reputation a strong or interesting mage might socially outrank certain nobles depending.

The only problem for the mage is that whatever their Circle does will reflect on them, so if something bad is done this might reflect bad on the mage, likewise in certain cases if a mage takes in servants or slaves, the mage might have to provide for them. It all really depends on the contract signed.

The reason this event is so interesting for people is that out in the wild, to use that term, a powerful mage can force people into certain scenarios through threats or otherwise. Here nobody can be forced to do anything, and if two mages want the same person in their circle, a bidding process might happen which might greatly increase the situation for the new recruit. Though more often the mages just duel or something.

Gilliam didn’t intend to take in servants or people like that, but it sounded like an interesting thing at least. He was considering taking a gander but since he didn’t have any money or income, that was not exactly something he could handle even if he wanted to.

Before he got the chance to think more about this, the receptionist had come back down the stairs and walked up to him.

“Ghaos can see you now, he’s waiting for you up the stairs.”

The man gave Gilliam a nod bow and returned to his work behind the desk.

Gilliam thanked him and walked up to find Ghaos at the top of the stairs. Ghaos nodded at Gilliam as he came into view and nodded in a ‘follow me’ motion before he started walking.

Gilliam returned the first nod and followed him through a little hallway of doors before entering the last one into a simple office. It had stone walls like everything else seemed to have, there was a wooden desk, a window, a bookcase on one side filled with old-looking books and a box of engraving tools on a small table under the window.

Ghaos sat down, seeming to expect that Gilliam handled the door and sitting down if he wanted.

Gilliam entered, closing the door behind him and sat down.

Ghaos didn’t wait for him to be done and just started speaking as soon as he had sat himself down. “I was told that you wondered about the girl who stabbed you.” This was toned like a statement more than a question, the receptionist had spoken with him, after all.

“There isn’t much I can say. Her name is Iathe Vatec, the only daughter and fourth child of the Vatec family, a smaller noble family here in V’ida. She said that she couldn’t remember it at all, the last few days were a blur to her and she just ‘came to’ after she had let go of the dagger.”

He changed the weight in his chair a little as he continued. “From what we got out of her we suspect that she’s either a very, very good liar, or she was affected by something. Her teachers did say that she had been acting a bit weird the last few days but we don’t really know. Nobody got a good look at the dagger used but based on the explanation you gave about your trip to the demon world-” the word ‘trip’ was emphasised a bit. “-makes it seem that this was some demonic influence thing.”

Gilliam pondered the information given, this all made sense and it was really clear that the demons were somewhat behind it. His own theory was that there were some mind affecting spells involved, one or more demons could have banded their powers together to get this working, it made probable sense.

“So, what happened to her after she was caught?” Gilliam wondered, asking a bit hesitant.

“Well, she was first interrogated as said, she’s been locked up since. People aren’t sure what to do about her. On one hand she attacked another student, the very one that has saved us twice now. Inside the Academy social rank doesn’t mean anything but mage law is sometimes hard to avoid, meaning that since she attacked a superior mage she should be executed-” Gilliam wanted to comment but Ghaos continued, cutting him off a good place to break in.

“-Though that said, she is an interesting case considering that she was under demonic influence, this means that though some think she should be executed just in case she is still affected, others think that we can use this to our benefit or learn about it... In any case she’s automatically expelled as a minimum step.”

The latter part hinted strongly to experimentation or similar things.

Gilliam didn’t really know what to say, all of this kind of made sense. The expulsion made perfect sense and sadly he couldn’t argue the other points. In the modern world it would be a strange grey zone if you are actively mind controlled to do something, you still did it so... And if someone were proven to be under demonic and magical influence, she would most likely become a test subject of sorts...

“So... What’s going to happen to her now, then?” Though it was sort of touched on already, he needed to ask specifically.

“I have no idea. Without the demonic influence it would be considered a student on student attack, so expulsion and most likely some compensation paid by her family. If you had a powerful family behind you there might be some other social things to it... I don’t really know, didn’t bother learning all this stuff. But you don’t need to worry, she is being taken good care of, especially now that you returned.”

He didn’t seem worried about this at all, Gilliam was not sure if this was just him protecting Gilliam or it was how it actually was.

Parts of Gilliam wanted to worry for the girl, but other parts didn’t care at all. The latter part was out of a kind of vengeance or spite thing. She did stab him and send him to the demon world to be eaten. However she did so while being mind controlled, it didn’t sound entirely fair. However given that she is being cared for and they are trying to find out what was going on he supposed that would have to be enough at the moment. Personally he didn’t hold it against her but at the same time he kind of did, slightly biassed after being stabbed and all the other stuff happening because of it.

They spoke about this a little more, not that anything changed but it gave Gilliam the answers he was after. He could get more involved later if he wanted once there was a chance of her not being under direct investigation. There was also the possibility that the control could reactivate somehow, so it made sense that they would have to keep her under observation for now.

After the further talks Gilliam ended up leaving Ghaos to his work. There were others waiting for him so the next step would be Nolis.

Wishing Ghaos a good day he exited the office and headed for the stairs, going downwards this time. Nolis mentioned Basement level four, shouldn’t be too hard to find as the spiral staircase only had one path, after all.

Having walked down the angled corkscrew that is the central staircase he realised that he forgot to ask Ghaos about the battlemage guard that was supposed to follow him around, it seemed so important but he just stopped and disappeared.

he found himself at basement level four, at least the fourth one from the ground level. There was only one heavy wooden door on this mini-level in the stairs. Entering it he came into a small room with a heavily armed young man, he was sitting on a chair in the corner reading a book, already expecting something like this Gilliam didn’t react much to it.

“I am here to meet with Nolis?” Gilliam asked with an uncertain tone, he was not entirely sure he was on the correct level, if Nolis had come here already or if there was some odd process to things.

The man looked up and down Gilliam wordlessly a few times before nodding towards the other door. “Third door to the left. Do not go in any other door.”

The latter part sounded like a threat, not that Gilliam intended to anger the academy; he was always a bit curious when told not to go anywhere.

Nodding he exited through the second wooden door he came into a hallway that branched off into several other hallways. The hallways themselves were seemingly perfectly square in shape as far as walls, ceiling and floor shape was concerned. And they were made of brick-like rocks stacked close.. It was illuminated by what looked like glowing orbs that were just stuck to the wall, there was no holder or string that kept them there, just looked like they were glued there.

The first branch to the left was after the door he was told to go in, so that was not a problem.

Knocking on the heavy and very worn wooden door he didn’t have to wait long until he heard Nolis’ voice call for him. “Come in.”

Opening the door he came into a room that was a bit different than the other classrooms he was in. The room was rectangular with the long side pointing into the room. It had several shelves of books, a recurring theme in this place, but it was very different from the other rooms as the end of the short hallway that was this room was covered in magic runes and circles, the quick glance there was a lot of control, protection and stabilisation aid.

Nolis himself sat at a desk filled with books, papers and writing utensils, along the other wall was another desk that seemed to be filled with weird drawings of monsters and creatures reserved for most horror stories.

It was only now that Gilliam got a proper good look at the young man, before in the mess hall he looked so vacant and his facial expression was so... not here, that it was oddly hard to get a proper look at him.

He has shoulder long white hair kept loose, and strange eyes that almost act like they have different colours depending on the angle you see them in. He wore his black robe making it somewhat hard to get a grasp on his physique but save the plethora of scars he has on his face and hands, he looked above average in looks.

“So!” he started without even greeting Gilliam. “You want to learn more about dark magic.”

This was a statement more than a question, but he seemed like he just wanted to start a conversation about it.

“Y.. yes..” Gilliam stuttered out as he entered the room properly and closed the door behind him. “I don’t know what Angela told you but... Darkness is the only element I don’t really know much about.” He was clearly unsure, though he had used a spell twice it was still in a weird situation.

“Oh, that’s fine. I have heard about you and I was given permission to share as much as I feel is proper. So we can with the fact that I can tell that you have used darkness magic before.” He sounded a bit full of himself with the permission to share, but there was probably a reason for it.

Gilliam was confused, he could tell that he had used darkness magic? Was there some weird signature on him after he had cast his first spell or something?

“How can you tell?” Gilliam finally asked after a few seconds of thinking.

“Let’s start with what Darkness magic is and how it works...”

Nolis started explaining how when speaking about the elements, Light and Dark is usually put to the side compared to the five other elements. The reason for this is how they are very different from the others, but similar to each other.

Light deals with healing, curing and improving life. Darkness lies in creating, bastardising and using life. The simplest of darkness magic is to steal vitality from someone and give it to yourself, the thing with this magic is that it doesn’t just take mana or stamina from your target, but you steal their very lifeforce, easily to the point of death. The concept of creating is more comparatively to summoning, as far as testing has shown you don’t call on a creature from elsewhere but you create life based on what your mind sees or thinks. Since this is a primal part of your mind it often deals with nightmares and monsters. There are very few forms of ‘direct attack spells’ in Darkness magic, there are draining and cursing concepts but not much in the sense of direct and immediate damage like a fireball would.

As he explained that part he gestured to the drawings of eldritch abominations on the drawing desk. There were a lot of claws, tentacles and spikes collected on the drawings on that desk.

Depending on how your darkness energy is aligned, most are able to animate corpses as well by instilling them with a tiny bit of their own life. The problem here is that where the other elements draw on your mana, darkness often draws on lifeforce. This comes from your own if you’re daring, or from sacrifices or other sources like the very enemy you want to cast the spell on. The perfect combination is actually any mage having both light and darkness, since you can heal the restored lifeforce with light magic. This is a weird form of converting mana into darkness magic through your own lifeforce as the middle step.

Nolis was envious of Gilliam having, amongst other things, those two elements.

The reason he could tell that Gilliam had used darkness magic before, is that he could sense more than one form of life energy in him, he had clearly absorbed energy from someone, and enough of it that it could easily register to Nolis.

The explanation was simple and made a lot of sense, the time the draining spell failed to be cast was that he didn’t use his own life force to fuel it, he tried giving it mana, and since there was no other life in range at that point it just ran out of fuel immediately.

“Can you show me the magic circle you used?” Nolis requested with great interest. “Just... don’t activate it.” He smiled at the end.

Gilliam set up the same circle that he used before, it came to his mind oddly fast and easy, though he still had to make the circle and enter the runes, he did so and entered the runes he used in the demon realm: Area, Drain, Absorb, revitalise, heal, energise. They were connected by a hexagon.

Nolis looked at it for a few seconds. “What do these three runes mean?” he asked as he pointed out the three latter ones.

Gilliam pointed at them and identified them in order. “In this context this one means Revitalise, this one means Heal and this one means Energise.”

The runes sometimes changed meaning depending on the context, which is why swapping runes was so dangerous for other mages, the Heal rune might change to something detrimental if used in another context.

Nolis took some notes as he drew down the circle, muttering to himself a bit before returning attention to Gilliam.

“Well, I guess I won’t be helping you a lot with the runes, then, based on what Jial said you could read and know them like any other language. I have to say I’m somewhat jealous at that.”

Gilliam would blush if he weren’t already somewhat used to this. He knew this was cheating but he couldn’t not love it. “I wouldn’t have been able to do all this if I didn’t.” He replied in comment to the statement about knowing them like any language. Deciding to ignore the compliment for now.

“Well, In that case I think I can help you with concepts, this is a demon summoning circle.” Nolis started drawing a circle in the air, it had a lot of runes, circles connected and sub circles. At a thorough check by Gilliam it seemed that this circle channelled the Darkness energy through a creation circle, that in turn was channelled through a command circle. The creation circle had a wildcard in it that was not defined, but seemed to connect to the casters mind.

“So... if I’m reading this right.. The circle channels darkness, so it eats your vitality, goes through a creation circle that is tied to your mind, I imagine your mental picture is important there. Then through a control circle, it seems to try and set up the caster as the control source?”

Gilliam didn’t sound confused, more like double checking with the circle’s creator if the analysis was actually correct. It was incredibly complex and detailed, odds were high that this circle had taken quite the time to put together, especially when considering that most mages research their runes.

Nolis looked at Gilliam with a mix of anger, envy and bafflement. “That... That is correct. You really are able to read the runes... Now I’m even more envious...”

He used a second to recompose himself. “Well.. Yes. You’re correct. However when I activate this circle I don’t channel mana into it, I give it access to my life force. As strange as it sounds this will actually open wounds on your body and consume the blood.” To illustrate he seemed to activate the circle somehow, this opened a cut-like wound on the top of his hand and started channelling some deep red mist into the circle. It started activating and after a second or so the mist stopped and the circle imploded with a weird electronic thump sound in a dim flash.

From the little flash of what looked like a dark red, almost black caterpillar with many string-like tentacles sticking out of its back manifested in the air, it was caught by Nolis before it fell.

“Small things like this are easy, though as you saw the circle is a bit more complex than your average fireball.”

“I have considered complicated circles before but it seems that the more runes I add the more mana it drains, that circle had a bunch of them, why didn’t it just... kill you?” Gilliam was referring to the fact that Darkness spells consumed vitality and not mana, if more runes ate more mana, should not more runes eat more vitality?

“Hmm, that’s correct for normal spells, but Darkness is a bit weird with that, it drains based on the effect and what runes you choose. If I use the same circle but summon something dog sized, it will hurt me more. If I use a circle with a hundred runes, if the result is just a candle flame it will drain based on that.”

Nolis placed the little caterpillar on his desk, the little creature slithered itself into a shaded area underneath a small shelf.

“In spells for other elements it’s a bit different, this is why darkness mages who are lucky enough to also be blessed with healing powers are so dangerous.”

Gilliam nodded as he listened, this made a lot of sense. If you were wounded when using darkness spells, but the cost is relatively low and static, it could be easy to just have healing magic going and avoid the wounds.

While pondering this he also considered healing Nolis’ wound, but it was so small it had already coagulated and stopped bleeding, it should heal fine even just today.

“Now, let’s have you give it a go. Use the same circle I used, but make sure to keep it small, you need to work your way up, doing something too much from the start can kill you.”

Nolis was still smiling but the weight of his words weren’t subtle. As he explained this he called on his magic circle again, the same he just used, and kept it stable so Gilliam could replicate it for himself.

“So, I activate the circle, have a clear image in my mind of what I want to call, let it wound me and hope for the best?” Gilliam wondered as he was creating the complicated circle.

“Pretty much, the clearer the picture the better, but if we keep it small we should be fine even if something goes weird.” It seemed that Nolis was also paying attention to the runes, making sure they were in the correct places.

Gilliam used a few solid minutes to make sure this was correct, he was not making this on his own he was cloning something, though it seemed that he got the copy correct on the first try he was still a bit unsure, as it would wound him more than needed if he overdid it.

“Ok, something small.” He pondered for a few seconds. “I think I have an idea.”

Nolis dismissed his own spell circle as Gilliam focused on the mental image of his creation, he needed to have a clear image but from all the media he had consumed and his time in the demon realm, it was not too hard to imagine something weird.

“Here goes nothing.” Gilliam started activating the circle.