"If I'm quite honest, Pip, I feel a bit spoilt for choice. I have to ask, are there any sorts of spells for healing injuries, or maybe just making you stronger? Aethel's exercises are brutal, and I'm sure he's going to start beating me up soon."
"There is a spell to strengthen one, but it is a little complex for you to learn right now, and it can make one no stronger than the strongest man you have had time to observe. Healing I'm afraid is flat out. Not a magic we can do, at least not properly. That would be a grail if a wizard could do that, I must admit. We have a lot of control over our magic, so if a canny wizard could do that he could probably figure out a way to reverse age as well. Not perfect immortality, but good enough.""You say magic we can do. Can another magic heal people?"
"Miracles can. Trained priests with the knack can supposedly conduct them, but I don't know the details of how they do it, I've never seen one. Supposedly their magic is a gift from the gods, and is often cited as proof of their direct intervention. Frankly, I have my suspicions about that; if the gods interact with us, it is in more mysterious ways than that. In any case, miracles can do magic on a much more complicated scale than magicians can, but we can channel more magic as a whole, especially if we can tap into stored sources.""Yes, I've been meaning to ask about that. If you can store mana in stones, why doesn't the tower have huge stores of it? Surely that would come in use as a crisis, if you can stockpile it, especially if you could put it in the walls."
"Because you can't store mana in just any stone, at least not for long. Observe."Pip produces the
stone from your original collection, which has
almost no mana left in it. You can observe that fine cracks have appeared in its cage, through which the mana appears to have leaked out."I thought you said the Ebb didn't affect stones."
"I said that they don't affect them as strongly. A monthly-maintained spell in a good stone can last decades, and a self-maintaining one perpetually, if you have a reliable source of mana. Your lattice dissolved in half an hour in the air, and it took two months for cracks to show in your pebble, but the cracks appeared. In order to reliably store mana for long periods of time, you need the most stable of crystals; diamond.""Ah. Those aren't cheap, are they?"
"To put it mildly. Still, you can store mana in a diamond-borne net and it will keep for decades without repair. To answer your earlier question, then, the tower does indeed have long term stores for great works or defensive reasons, but they are hidden due to the sheer expense of acquiring the necessary gemstones, not to mention the appeal to thieves.""Is there no alternative to diamond, then?"
"Particularly pure quartz crystals will suffice for a month at a time. They are easier to obtain, and I can see about getting hold of one for you to practice with. So which spell would you care to learn?""Too many to choose from. I have a question, if you hear magic instead of seeing it, how would a message work for you? You couldn't see the letters."
"There is a form of language common amongst users of that spell which works in strokes and intervals, to me it sounds like a specific series of beats in a note, to you it might look like a series of dots. Is that what you wish to learn?""Nnnot yet. Can you teach me to conjure acid?"
"I can. We will begin your lesson at the start of the next month. For now, work on streamlining your casting of the mage hand spell..."As the month progresses, you feel confident enough to pick up a larger book and read through it on your own. You select a somewhat dry textbook about wizardry throughout history. Its length and complexity will take the whole of next month for you to read.
Towards the end of the month, you head out to periodically replace your stores hidden in the tower's hedge maze (so that you always have a knife, a skin of water and some rations there). As you head towards the entrance, you hear a clunking sound and notice an apple on the ground near you. There is a dull pain from your arm as another apple strikes you!
You turn around, but nobody is near the tower walls. What do you do?
Focus: 4/Day
Mana: 6/Day
Reading: A History of Magic by Waldbert Faflinga.
Spells
Witchsight: 1 Focus (no components, sharpens magical sense at the expense of slightly blunting physical senses)
Mage Hand: 5 lb telekinesis. 1 Focus, 1 Mana (Lattice, Anchor)
Components
Lattice: 1 Focus, 1 Mana
Anchor: 1 Focus, 1 Mana (depending upon number created)
Flavours
Mana.
Fire.
Air.
Aether.
Earth.
Water.
Life.
Destruction.
Preservation.
Skills
Novice Farrier
Novice Groom
Dabbling Chemist
Dabbling Metalworker
Dabbling Swordsman
Dabbling Manipulator
Stats
Fair Stamina