MAGNUS

After a quick meal I joined my companions in the lounge area near the dorms. I wasn’t familiar enough with keeps to know what the room was before, but now it was a large area with chairs and couches throughout it. There were bookshelves, stuffed with books and it looked like board games such as chess, and tables also scattered around.the room. I found my roommate moving a set of couches and coffee tables together to form a space for the eight of us to sit comfortably so I moved to help him.

“So what do you think of the first day,” he asked as we worked.

“Not horrible, I mean the material was about half review. There were a few bright spots and things that gave me some new ideas. I think this first part of the year is just to give the teachers a chance to observe us for the specialized programs and round out our knowledge,” I answered.

He grunted, and Tak’s voice came from behind me, “I would agree. I think the focus is on the programs, but I also think they are testing what works with our class.”

He came and set a bag with some supplies such as paper and pencils on the table before helping us move the rest of the furniture around it. When we had finished we all took seats and I said, “Yeah, all the planning in the world won’t stop some kind of issues from creeping up through the year. I noticed most of the students are open minded, with a few exceptions, to various types of bindings. I still wish I hadn’t ended up in my two worst subjects for my intro classes.”

Mai moved over to sit next to her brother and said, “I asked the professor about that, since it seemed pretty common amongst the students. Apparently the intro classes are to make sure everyone has the same grounding in the theory of each type before the specialized classes start. That test we took before we came here gave them a baseline to work with.”

I shrugged and said, “I didn’t take a test.”

Richard shook his head, “I did, your grandfather probably gave the Dean a report on your aptitudes when he was consulted on the school.”

Vara and Jessica soon joined us, Vara stating, “I know my mother gave them information on my studies. I think if you had a recognized instructor they would take their report for this year. Saves them from getting tests to everyone.”

Tak nodded, “Yes, that is reasonable. Mai and I were trained by our family, but while they are skilled they are not well known to others. I would assume that professional tutors would be judged differently.”

The last two joined us and overheard the statement, but Selena asked, “What are we talking about?”

Mai replied, “The assessment test.”

“Oh that, I took it, but I think Zeke here didn’t,” she replied.

Ezekiel sighed and shook his head, “Please don’t call me Zeke; and no I didn’t take the test. My uncle did an assessment and reported back to the school.

“Ezekiel is why that theory doesn’t make sense. He’s trained in spellbinding but was in the intro to spellcraft course,” I pointed out.

After we explained the theory he replied, “I have a good grasp of image binding as well, but I can never manage to get an equipment binding to hold, though I know the theory and applications. My father was a cavalry captain in Calburn and was skilled at that form of binding. I think it's a combination of knowledge and interest, but for now how about we work on the assignments we have. It will be good to get some outside opinions.”

He pulled a notebook out of his own bag and flipped it open to a page with various runes on it, then he pushed it to the center of the table where we could all see it before saying, “They have a few copies of this in the school library, it’s a runic compendium with the various known runes sorted by effect.”

I looked at the page, the upper right of the page stated it was on the divination runes. Ezekiel pointed at one and stated, “This is the portion of the rune that I think Richard was talking about earlier about identification of ores.”

Richard spoke up, “Yes, it doesn’t have the activation or method of course, but that's the rune. How does that help though?”

I scanned the other runes on the page. This particular page didn’t get into the specifics, but gave a brief overview of the effect runes and what they were used for. There were two parts that stood out to me as I looked through the page. I grabbed some paper and a pencil and quickly drew out the section of the rune without the other portions, then drew the two parts I could pick out.

“That spell detects and identifies the ore, correct?” I asked

“Yeah, they use it to find new veins in the mine,” Richard said.

Jessica leaned forward to look at the drawings I had made and said, “Which means one of these is the search and one of them is the identification.”

Selena pointed at one of the drawings and said, “I think that is the search segment. The Grand Library in Calburn has a system in place that uses image bindings to find where a book is stored. I think I saw that one on the rune script. They wouldn’t tell me how it worked though.”

Ezekiel flipped the pages until he reached some of the healing spells before grinning like a cat and said, “Hah, I think you’re right. Look at this one.”

Vara said, “For finding poisons, how does that help?”

I grinned as I studied the rune pattern. It had the same portion of the rune in it, but everything else was different. Selena must have noticed it too because she said, “It’s the same part.”

She took a piece of paper and with a few quick strokes of the pencil drew the entire rune out. She had Ezekiel flip back to the ore finding spell and drew that rune out too before placing them side by side.

“It’s in the same place on both runes, lower left of each rune pattern. Do you think it means something?” Vara said.

I let my eyes unfocus as my mind spun. Various shapes flitted across my own vision in a dizzying rush before one settled on top of the drawings and I saw the pattern. I drew it out on another piece of paper, a simple three by four grid.

Ezekiel said softly, “It can’t be that simple, can it?”

He took the book and drew a few other runes out onto papers and set them around the drawings we had on the table. Tak said, “Apparently it is. Look in each of these divination runes the search is in the lower left, and the identification is in the upper left. They connect a bit differently and there are empty sections, but all of them seem to follow this same pattern. Magnus how did you think of this?”

I shrugged and said, “I’m good at patterns, I don’t know why but that one looked right.”

I was a little shocked about what I had just experienced. Was that a Talent activating? It had the same feeling as when I was working on the pistol, but not quite the same.

“Well however you figured it out, now we know that if we are going to pull this off we need to put the right portions in the right space. How do we go about doing that?” Selena asked.

I glanced up and noticed Jessica giving me a speculative look before mouthing ‘later’ at me. What was that about? Eh, I would figure it out later or I wouldn’t. I looked over the drawings on the table and asked, “So what exactly are we trying to do?”

“Identify the Talents,” Vara said.

“That’s the end goal, I meant the steps we have to take to get there,” I said with a shake of my head.

I heard Jessica mutter, “Great it’s Java all over again.”

I would ask her what she meant later, for now I focused on the runes and let my mind drift while my friends started discussing. After a few minutes we had sorted it out to a few simple steps. Find the bindings within the ather flow, identify the talents, repeat until no new bindings are found, and share the information somehow.

“We also need to tell it out to determine the subject of the search, or it will give mixed readings,” Jessica pointed out.

We all looked at her and she said, “Look, when you are searching for ore you’re looking all around you to find it; the same with the poison search spell. For this though we want a singular target to get the information on or else it will pull all those within the range, right?”

Ezekiel closed his eyes for a few moments before opening them wide, “That’s what the method portion is for. Spellbinding is broken into activation, effect, and method. The professor said most people use a focus item to direct their spells, but what if we used a different method?”

I nodded, “Which means we need to look at methods also. I don’t think Professor Siodha would appreciate it if we tampered with the activation though.”

Richard shuddered a bit, “No, I don’t think she would. However I want to know if there is a pattern like this in the activation.”

I nodded to him and said, “We can look into it later, for now let’s split this up. Ezekiel you lead the effort on the effect. Who’s working with him?”

Richard said, “I’m assuming you’re working on the method? I’ll work with you on that since I worked out a different method with my weapons.”

I nodded to him, and shortly we had Mai, Tak, and Vara working with Ezekiel; while Selena, Richard, and Jessica joined me to go over the method patterns. Selena stepped away to go grab another copy of the compendium while Richard carefully drew the spells he had placed on his weapons.

“Okay, so we take away these two sections, that is the activation and that is the effect. That leaves us with this section as the method,” I said as I drew the runes for Firebolt and Barrier as well.

“Is it the same twelve block pattern?” Jessica asked.

I shook my head, my vision wasn’t clouded with shapes this time, but I saw the pattern, and said, “No, it’s a three by three this time.”

“And the activation?” she asked without giving me a moment to think.

“One block, then four by four, then one block,” I said and froze to look up at her.

She had a smile that would have made Fenris proud as she looked at me and said, “Your thoughts are getting in the way of what is probably a Talent related to patterns or binding in general.”

“How could you know?” I asked softly.

“I’ve known artists and craftsmen that can feel how something is supposed to fit together. For me it was music, the rhythm and melody just spoke to me in a way nothing else did. It’s just a hunch though. Let’s finish the project and we will know for sure,” she said.

Richard interjected, “Doesn’t that mean we need a way to define the Talents rather than just identify them?”

I groaned, it was going to be a long week.