While not how I’d expected my day to go when I’d woken up, presently I was pressed on all sides by an oppressive mana density and under the equally intense gaze of an archmage. He hadn’t offered me a seat, nor did I take one, instead standing in the room’s center, surrounded by all his various magical knicknacks.

“So! First, basics. Tell me: What do you know about mana?” While not quite as immediately aggressive as some other instructors I’d had (Rock), his tone brooked no room for argument.

Okay, feeling a little bit of mental whiplash here. It had only been about a minute ago that he’d been arguing against teaching me, and yet now he’d teleported Suds away and was already starting with his instruction. I did my best to reign in the complex mixture of thoughts and emotions rolling around within me. I was being taught by an archmage, and I had no desire to waste this opportunity.

Although, what do I know about mana? Anything? Truthfully, not much, but I at least had some sort of idea, didn’t I?

“Um. I think it’s kind of like magic fuel, isn’t it? You use it up to charge spells. Spells with bigger effects need more fuel. It also has a bunch of different types, kind of like-” how jet fuel, diesel, and regular all fuel different types of things, I finished mentally. Probably not the best analogy on this planet. “... how different fuels have different uses,” I finished lamely.

The archmage raised a brow at my stumble, but otherwise didn’t comment. “Not entirely wrong, but I personally find the ‘fuel’ analogy a touch crude. While no analogy is perfect, I find it much more useful to think of mana like ink. You’re not charging something up. It’s more that you’re writing a set of instructions to be carried out. Mana is the ink used in that process, and magic is the study of how to write with it. Naturally, some ink gets used up in that process, but that’s more of a byproduct than it is the point.”

Huh. I wasn’t sure if that was actually useful to me, but if he was supposed to be some super mage, I might as well think on it.

As if hoping to lock in the point, the archmage flicked a hand over to one of his tables, and a thick vellum scroll floated up off of it. It stopped in front of us, unfurling itself.

“There are a large number of different inks you might choose to use, and while they don’t exactly change the language, they do change the effects.” He flicked his hand again — something I was fairly certain he didn’t actually need to do, but the showmanship was appreciated — and bold, blocky words appeared on the scroll in blue ink: FORM A SPHERE.

A small perfect sphere of water appeared above the archmage’s hand, possibly the exact same Conjure Water spell I had.

Abruptly, the ink on the scroll changed color, shifting from blue to brown. While the words didn’t change, the sphere in the archmage’s hand did, water turning to dense earth.

“Some types of ink, you may discover are not overly conducive to certain types of message. A dull brown, for instance, would likely be a poor choice for a love letter, yes? Just as a vibrant red is rarely seen on official government documents.” The ink shifted to red this time, and a mini-fireball appeared in his hand. Unlike its counterparts, however, it struggled to stay cleanly within its spherical confines, flickering with tongues of flames dancing outwards. I was sure he could force it to conform to a perfect sphere, but he was making a point.

“Indeed, when you move away from basic types of mana and into more advanced and esoteric varieties, you’ll find some things will fail completely.” The ink shifted to purple this time around, and I was startled to realize that this time, the words actually hummed with real mana.

That’s mental mana, isn’t it?

A bit of matching purple mana came from the archmage’s hand, but rather than forming neatly into a sphere, it sputtered out.

“Now: There is a point I’m trying to make with all this, but first I’d like to take a step back to the basics of basics. In case you were unaware, there are nine types of basic mana: Fire, Ice, Water, Air, and Earth make up the elemental five. Tacked onto those two are Light and Dark, as well as Life and Death. Arguably, pure mana may be classified as its own tenth type, though for academic reasons, we generally leave it out from the list.” As he named each magic class, mana flowed from his hand forming some small manifestation of it. It was actually the first time I’d come across death mana, and even the sight of it made me feel sick.

“From there, we have composite types — for instance Steam from fire and water — and even multi-composite types — like Swamp from water, earth, and life. In general, composite types can only be learned once a mage has mastered their requisite components to a sufficient degree. What’s important to note about these forms of mana, however, is that they are not new types. They are merely mixtures of the basic nine.”

Huh. Haven’t managed to learn any of those yet. Although, if it required a mastery of the mana types that went into it, it was no wonder. I was still pretty low-leveled in every magic class. It was hardly a revelation though — I’d seen plenty of mud magic from Kex.

The ink on the scroll got a bit harder to follow at this point — instead of red and blue mixing together to make purple ink, they stayed separate but intertwined for the form of steam. Swamp was similarly dappled.

“For the unaltered types, the last set we have would be Advanced. These are mana types that are a touch rarer and less standard. Mental. Soul. Time, Space, Order, Chaos, and many others besides.”

I wasn’t entirely sure how this lesson was supposed to work, but I opted to raise my hand. Thankfully, the archmage didn’t seem overly annoyed with my interruption, signaling for me to speak.

“I get that they’re rarer and all, but is there a reason they get their own special tier? Are they actually different in some way, or why not just call them all ‘mana types’ and acknowledge that some are more common than others?”

The archmage cracked a rare smile. “Ah! That’s an excellent question, and in fact, one that I doubt someone who grew up with the system would ask. Doubtless you see the world differently having been raised Yekkish.”

More like Earthen, but I’m certainly not going to correct him.

“The answer is largely: No. From a measurable perspective, light mana is just as different from fire mana as it is from space mana. The categorization is largely system-based: Certain mana types grant more experience when learned, yield stronger, rarer classes, and generally are treated better by the system in every way. Academia has merely adopted the demarcations given to us by the system. Now- I will ask you to hold off on further questions for this next part, as it’s rather important.”

I think I don’t hate him, I decided. He was a bit gruff the first time around, but it’s like he transforms during teaching. It was possible I was giving him too much credit for just not being Rock, but even if I hadn’t learned any super-ultra-mega-spells from him yet, I found myself pulled into the lecture.

“That covers all the unaltered types of mana. We’ll cover intent-altered mana — like your grandfather has — at a later date. For now, however, we have something much more immediate to do. Observe.” He focused our attention back on the scroll where the MAKE A SPHERE text was still present.

“When a novice first begins spellcraft, their spells are like this writing here: blocky, devoid of any style, and most of all wasteful.” Beneath the text, a copy of the words appeared, only this time in a much slimmer font. “Beginners — to keep with our analogy — waste an incredible amount of ink with each spell. A heightened Wisdom innately helps with this to some small extent, but the only true solution is to better learn how to manipulate your mana. That is what we will be focusing on today.”

He turned to me and chuckled. “If all goes well, hopefully you’ll no longer be the incredibly rare entity with 25 Wisdom, but not the Internal Mana Manipulation skill, hmm?”

I felt myself redden slightly as he laughed. It’s not my fault! He was right though — when the system message had given me an error on hitting 25 Wisdom, I had felt pretty silly.

“Now. Let us begin, shall we?”

You have learned a new skill: Internal Mana Manipulation

Decreases the cost of all spells and increases mana regen rates by 0.5%.

Internal Mana Manipulation has been upgraded into Advanced Internal Mana Manipulation

Decreases the cost of all spells and increases mana regen rates by 0.75%.

The practical portion of my lesson with the archmage was actually fairly brief. With my Mana Sense, discovering the mana within me had actually taken not much time at all.

It was still a surprise though — it turned out that spells weren’t just things I activated and then they suddenly happened. I had a core of sorts. Whenever I cast a spell, small threads of mana were siphoned from it, threading into one another in a complex weave. When the weave was complete, it dissolved, and the spell materialized.

Learning the Internal Mana Manipulation skill had involved manually trying to pull those threads off from my core without activating a spell. Non-trivial, but after watching and feeling the process a number of times from casting spells, it didn’t end up being all that hard, which was probably why just about all mages already had the skill.

Though my efforts weren’t quite enough to impress an archmage, he nonetheless seemed happy with my fast progress. I was half-imagining that the lessons for the day would end there, but instead of dismissing me, Xander’Callis waved his hand, and a black metal disk hovered over to him.

“Lovely. Now that we’ve corrected that deficiency, let us talk about your future progress, shall we?” He remained seated in his crystal chair, casually crossing his legs in a manner that didn’t particularly scream “archmage.” On the flip side, I guess when you reached that kind of level, you could sit how you pleased.

He idly tapped on the disk in his hands, not opting to explain its purpose. “First, please list off the classes of magic you’ve learned thus far, as well as all of your known spells and their levels.”

Seeing no reason to deny the man, I did so. I was slightly nervous talking about mental magic, but Suds had assured me that, considering how low level it was, I was allowed to have it.

“Hmm. If you wish to practice your mental cantrip, I can have someone fill out the requisite paperwork for you so that you’ll be permitted to level it up past 10. That’s besides the point, however. Out of the basic magic classes, currently it would appear that you are missing Death, Earth, Air, Ice, and Dark. Am I correct in assuming you have a mage-like class that would consider all of these class-aligned skills, at least at the lower levels?”

I nodded. At least, I was pretty sure I did. I hadn’t leveled any of my magic skills past ten yet, but learning different types of magic and leveling them up was pretty much the name of the game for my class.

“What do you mean by ‘at the lower levels’? Can a skill stop being class-aligned once you hit a certain point?” Probably a dumb question, but often the dumber the question, the more it needed to be asked.

“Hmm. Yekkish indeed. Yes. The standard Mage class, for instance, allows one to level up all the basic spell classes until level 30 and all the advanced spell classes until level 20. Past those points, the leveling speed of magical skills will be no different than it would be for any non-magic class. It’s one of the reasons many mages will opt for a more specialized track — a fire-mage, for instance, can learn fire magic up until level 50 before their leveling speed slows down. But I believe we’ve gotten side-tracked.”

Maybe it was a side-track for his lesson plan, but for me it was pretty valuable info. What were the limits on Arcane Arsenal? Would everything suddenly peter out at 20, leaving me a jack of all trades and a master of none? Or would its Epic quality let me go much higher?

Doubt I’ll know until I get that high in the first place. No sense worrying about it now.

“In any case, as to your spell classes. I will tell you, there are some instructors who heavily believe that the proper path to spellcraft is to learn a single class of magic and to train it up for a few years before moving onto any of the others. The idea is that you gain a better feel for mana, without having the confusion of ten different strains all pulling you in different directions.”

Well, too late for that. Cat’s kind of out of the bag.

The archmage seemed to agree with that sentiment. “That has less merit for you, considering you’ve already grabbed a number. Fortunately, I am of the opposite opinion: A proper mage should first get a taste of all the standard flavors of mana. Delving too far down any one path locks one into it, and in practice, I find that those who first heavily learn something like water magic tend to be far worse off for it when they try to master fire mana.”

Okay. Cat’s out of the bag, but in a good way? We’re happy the cat’s not in the bag?

“To that end, our first priority would be to rectify your imbalance and get you cantrips for the remaining spell classes.”

Yes! Okay! Finally I’d be getting some new spells! Only, while I didn’t want to get too greedy, why cantrips? “Is there a reason we don’t do something stronger than cantrips? I’ve used most of mine a lot by now, but I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t like something that packs a bit more punch.” To punctuate my point, I cast a flameploof, watching as the miniscule flame glowed for a moment before flickering out.

Xander’Callis tsked in an almost hissing-like fashion. “Any brute can learn an inefficient attack spell and dump their mana into it. If that is your desire, I would advise heading to the Adventurer District to find some grizzly battlemage to teach you instead. If you wish to be a true mage, on the other hand, then you will do it the right way: building up a solid foundation for yourself before hastily moving onwards.”

I made a strong mental note not to bring up attack spells again, and also not to question the archmage’s teaching methods. I briefly considered trying to learn from him and a “grizzly battlemage” — I did really want some stronger spells — but something told me that going behind the back of the city’s strongest spellcaster was probably a mistake.

“Now! As much as you should be familiar with using all the standard types of mana before getting too far with any of them, there is some merit in not stretching yourself too thin. You already have plenty on your plate. How about for each of your existing cantrips that you get to level ten, I’ll aid you in selecting a new one in a class you haven’t unlocked yet, yes? In this way, it will serve as an incentive to practice regularly.”

Damn, kind of thought I’d be going home with five new spells. Well, easy come, easy go. My cantrips were getting remarkably close to hitting ten already, so it was an agreement I’d hopefully be able to cash in soon.

“That will largely be all for today, with one notable exception.” He patted the mysterious disk in his hands before levitating it over to me. “Do you know what this is?”

Accepting the disk out of mid-air, I could immediately feel a connection to it, intrinsically sensing that I’d be able to channel mana into the device. Despite that, I knew that any guess I’d make would almost definitely be wrong. “I have no clue,” I admitted.

“That, is a horribly outdated device that a fair portion of instructors at the local colleges are trying to remove from mage curriculums. Any knowledge gained from it is dubious at best, and it gives no solid prescriptive aid with respect to learning magic.”

I grimaced, not sure what I was supposed to say to that. As much as I didn’t want to question the man too much, it seemed like he was expecting it in this case.

“Um. So, why am I holding it?”

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “Because much like that device, I too am outdated. And in truth, it makes me happy. If you’ll channel some mana into the disk, please…”

This better not be anything too weird. Still, wasn’t like I was going to say no. I channeled some mana into the device, and instantly it hummed to life.

For a while, nothing happened. Then, slowly, the disk changed. Its dull metal started to take on a blue hue, while the central portion of it almost seemed to melt. Waves and ripples formed from the newly-liquid section of the device, making it, if nothing else, a pleasing party trick.

The archmage made no attempt to hide his scowl.

“Did I do something wrong?” I hadn’t thought this was a test, but his reaction wasn’t as expected either.

“Not quite. The device you’re using happens to be an inclination disk. It tests to see in which direction your mana naturally lies. As I previously said, that tells us very little -- except for the rare individuals who are mana shifted -- but mages used to pick what type of magic to focus on based on the results. For you, it would appear that you align the most naturally with water.”

The admission came out with a sigh, as if the liquid had wronged the archmage somehow.

“And that’s… not good?” I didn’t know about him, but personally, I liked water. Nice to drink. Good to bathe in. Overall, pretty important substance.

Xander’Callis spent a moment “hmmm”ing to himself before imparting his wisdom. “Water-aligned individuals, as you might imagine, tend to exhibit the qualities of water. They go with the flow. They see an obstacle and gently trickle around it rather than confronting it head on. Most of all, they conform to the shape of whatever vessel they find themselves in.”

Okay, not entirely wrong. Not sure what this has to do with being a mage though.

“There’s nothing quite wrong with it per se. It may just be the bias of an old man, though, but I do find that water lacks a certain drive required for the art of magic. The sort of obsession that brings someone to push on well after the easy part stops.”

Wait, did he just- “Is this just astrology for mages?” I totally just got astrologized. Astrologied. Or however you say it.

My comment caused the mage to graduate from tsking to tutting at me. “I do not believe this has anything to do with the heavenly bodies, no. But enough rambling — whether you prove me wrong will be up to you, not your mana. I have little to teach you at your current stage. Return once you’ve leveled up one of your cantrips to the Initiate stage.”

“Oh, oka-”

Without warning, I suddenly found myself outside. There hadn’t even been the fog that appeared when I teleported to my class space, the static of going into a dungeon portal, or the transparency of teleporting to a new settlement. One moment, I’d been sitting down, the next I was outside… still in the seated position.

Promptly, I fell on my ass.

“Huh. Guess I touched a nerve with the astrology thing.” My bad.

I rubbed my bruised tailbone as I stood up, belatedly realizing I was also sporting a minor headache as well. Something about the archmage’s study seemed to have reacted poorly with me -- possibly just the abundance of mana, although for all I knew, he just used some sort of air freshener that rubbed me the wrong way.

Well, regardless. I’d survived my first magic lesson! I had a path forward, and someone who was willing to help.

Having appeared directly outside the archmage’s tower, I looked around at the Magic District.

One day, I might even fit in here. An actual mage.

I then looked around again, frowning.

Before that, though, how do I get home?