150. Spheros Ahead (Patreon)

AN: Enjoy!

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Traveling through space was, without a shadow of a doubt, the quickest traveling method that Tercius – a Neophytos and, as of a few days ago, Mentor Kalina’s Mathethes – experienced.

Within moments of the spell’s completion, with a swirl of rainbow colors and a blink of an eye, the trip for the four of them was complete. Tercius could have flicked his fingers two or three times in the time it took for a steady mountainside of black and gray and a wild storm of thunder, wind, and rain to disappear.

They had appeared far above the ground, levitating inside a spacious sphere made up of magical force.

As Tercius looked at the new scenery, the clear skies of the encroaching night, and the inklings of twinkling stars that revealed themselves in the retreat of the last few lines of the fiery sun above what could only be the peaks of Izmittor Mountains, he reflected that a better way to put it was that he and the trio of Magi were the ones who were gone. The windswept and rainwashed monoliths of barren rock were down there, thousands of kilometers south, on the other end of the continent.

“We have arrived. The city is about twenty minutes of flight ahead,” Mistress Prime’era said as she steadied and reinforced the nearly transparent orb that surrounded them. The instant spacial travel had worn out the spell’s form somewhat and its protection was still necessary for them to fly through the air and do so at high speeds. Contrary to Tercius’ expectations, their means of travel stopped in the air, the dry savanna far below them. “Kalina, can you shield us from prying eyes? I need to scry for a few minutes and see if anyone noticed our arrival…” Mistress Prime’era asked as she looked at the woman who stood next to Tercius.

“Yes, Mistress,” Tercius’ Mentor replied with serious green eyes and immediately started her work on the spells that started shimmering with translucent power between her raised bronze-like hands. The long springs of curly dark hair, tied with a ribbon behind her head, fluttered with an invisible wind as the middle-aged woman wove her spells. Tercius briefly wondered when and if the colored hair would return to its previous bright orange, now that they had left the Everstorm Citadel behind. It was strange seeing her usually wild and sunny hair be so subdued in color and shape.

His Mentor — Kalina Zorya, Mistress of Alchemy and Wards, or in the plain speech of Magik language, She Who Learns Alchemy and Wards — completed the spells of obfuscation with speed and precision, and as she unleashed them Tercius shivered. The cold ethereal waves of spells touched his skin and passed over and around him and the spells covered their spherical means of transport. Though he could not see it with his eyes, he knew that they were gone from all mundane senses and most if not all magical ones. His Mentor was not at Mistress Prime'era's level of skill, but she was no slouch by any means.

His Mentor closed her eyes and with a satisfied smile on her red lips, she smelled the ethereal scents of mana, likely inspected her spells.

Tercius debated with himself whether to use his own skill, Mana Sight, and observe the spellwork that surrounded him, but he didn’t want to do so without asking first. Considering that Mistress Prime’era was focusing on scrying spells, asking now seemed like a poor choice. The core of her spellwork was likely obscured from magical senses, Tercius told himself, much like the spellwork of any decent Magos should be and Mistress Prime’era was nothing if not the best of the best. He knew that his focused Mentor, Mistress Kalina, would not mind if he looked at her spellwork a bit, nor would Mistress Helfira, his teacher from back at the Academy, but he was not sure about how Mistress Prime’era would react to such an attempt. His attempt could easily be seen as intrusive.

And Tercius did not want to even risk offending Mistress Prime’era, no matter how friendly the woman appeared to be in the few days that he knew her.

The miracle spell of spatial travel was done solely by Mistress Prime'era, who despite not looking the part of an old and wise Magos was by far the eldest and the most experienced of the three Magi with whom Tercius was traveling. The beautiful woman of pale skin, glacial blue eyes, and waves of chestnut hair looked like she was in her mid to late thirties, yet Tercius was quite sure that the Magos had been around when the Bellian Royal Family became the Bellian Imperial Dynasty. Blazing Hells, she had likely been alive well before Bellians had even forged their Kingdom, let alone became the conquering dynasty that ruled the continents-spanning Empire of today.

That placed the woman at nearly a millennia in age.

Mistress Prime’era had not only made the spell by herself, but she powered it too. That same spell would have likely needed to be done in a manner of a ritual, it would take hours to form and the power of at least a dozen senior Magi and even then the presence and knowledge of at least one capable Ritualist and one excellent Spatialist would be required. The immense scope of experience across who knew how many branches of magic and the breath of power hidden deep inside of her showed the true weight of Mistress Prime’era’s age and yet… the glacial blue eyes had such warmth and kindness to them that it practically radiated off of her. She looked at everyone with fond eyes of a pleased grandmother, him included.

He wanted to believe those eyes, he truly did, but he couldn’t help himself but think that it was all an act.

How did time not wash away the warmth and friendliness out of those eyes?

And yet a big part of him bizarrely wanted for it to be true.

While Mistress Prime'era scryed and his Mentor and Mistress Helfira waited, Tercius decided to follow the example of his Mentor and teacher and settle down in silence. Unaware that he had been doing it, Tercius realized that he had been patting his abdomen, where under the wide gray belt of his equally gray mage robe he felt the presence of a folded paper, that of a letter given to him by Master Perdinar. Becoming aware of it, he made his hands fall, the long outer sleeves of his robe immediately hiding his hands. He would be reading that letter later, with great care.

Mistress Prime'era suddenly nodded, the translucent spellwork fading away from between her hands. "As far as I can tell, there was no one around to see us, at least none that were Magi, Spirits, or mortals. We can proceed onwards."

The orb went from stationary to moving at high speeds in seconds, the ground of the savanna rapidly eaten up. Within a few minutes of moving north, the first signs of greenery appeared and a few minutes of high speed later it was as if they were approaching some more mediterranean climate. The more they moved north, the more their orb went down towards the ground until they were barely a meter above it.

The blue Hippotion, the longest river of the Sogean continent, was to their far-right but the invisible orb and its passengers steered clear of it. Little of the regular river traffic was present at this time of day, what with the cover of the night nearly upon the world, but there were still farms dotting the fertile brown and green lands on both banks of the wide river. Where there were farms, farmers would undoubtedly be there. Despite the powerful spells of sound suppression cast on their orb by his Mentor, their passing could still be heard, especially if they continued forward at the speeds that they were moving.

As if reading his thoughts, Mistress Prime’era slowed down considerably just as Tercius noticed their destination in the far distance ahead of them.

“Spheros,” Tercius whispered, as the stone walls of the city rapidly grew with each passing second.

The capital city of the Sogean continent was home to somewhere around half a million citizens of the Empire, be they poor, rich, or noble. Built between the gentle hills of Izmittor Mountains and the delta where the Hippotion delivered all of the freshwaters of the entire continent into the Central Ocean, Spheros was the continent's only port city and the foothold that firmly established the rule of the far away Emperor.

The last time Tercius had been to Spheros, just over a year ago, he had been with his paternal uncle, his father’s older brother, Lux. The two of them had stayed in the city only for a few days, to resolve some family issues, and then they left the port city by ship, first to Tripatis then to Lissea, the capital city of Empire on the northern continent, where Tercius had formally entered into training with The Society of Magi, to become a Magos himself.

Seeing the city took him back and he had to wonder what was going on with his uncle. The wanderer, despite his free-spirited and promiscuous ways, was quite reliable. What had happened after they parted in Lissea? Did Lux go back home to the Capital of the Empire, to Augusta Bellia, as he planned? The unanswered missives of the Army Commander of Nurium say that Lux didn't go back to the family estates in Augusta Bellia, but Tercius had a deeper fear that something had happened to his uncle. Tercius doubted that anything save grave infirmity or death could prevent that man from answering the call which had been sent in those missives.

In the last few days, Tercius might have uttered a few prayers, praying that his uncle wasn't experiencing what Tercius suspected he was, but if it was truly that, then he had another massive mistake to fix. He owed it to the man who taught him so much.

Glancing at his Mentor, Tercius considered how he could ask for another favor so soon after this one, only to realize that it wasn’t his Mentor who’d done him the favor but Mistress Prime’era. She was the one who got him to Spheros. She was the one who masked Tercius’ Well. Did this mean that he didn’t collect one of the two favors that his Mentor owed him, but instead he now owed a favor to Mistress Prime’era? Tercius’ breathing slowed as his heart started beating faster but outwardly he stayed calm and collected. That was not at all pleasant to think about.

He would have to talk about this with his Mentor in private.

***

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Tercius learned something new. When you can levitate in a flying invisible sphere, it doesn't take long to find a good-looking establishment to spend the night. Their flying orb came to land in a dead-end alleyway near the inn, between two nearby houses.

“Tercius,” Mistress Prime’era said as she offered a folded piece of paper. Another letter for him?

"It will help on your quest, although I don't recommend having it with you up there. You never know who might go through your things when you're not around them. Memorize as much of it as you can and then destroy it, would be my suggestion. There's an instruction on how to do so properly written at the back." she said, even her voice soothing and warm.

Tercius placed the open palm of his left hand over his heart, bowed slightly, and took the offered paper with the other hand. "Thank you, Mistress," he said with his still-developing voice.

“I too wish you success, Tercius, and I urge you to remember how soon the classes start. You wouldn’t want me searching for you, now would you?” Mistress Helfira said, giving him a smile on her thin lips and a promise that she would search for him if he was late for her classes.

Despite being the youngest in age, his teacher of mage’s skills was the oldest looking of the three Mistresses. Tercius gave another bow to Mistress Helfira, without whom he would not know nor have the spells he knew and had. Small in stature she might be but the woman had a strong presence whose height could not be measured.

“I wouldn’t dare, Mistress,”

Mistress Prime’era turned her gaze to his Mentor. “Kalina, I will see you in two weeks?”

His Mentor appeared to hesitate for a few moments, but she nodded. “I will be there, Mistress,”

Mistress Prime’era’s eyes evaluated Tercius’ Mentor and they found something lacking, yet instead of hardening like he expected, the eyes softened even further. “You can’t go with Tercius, Kalina. You know that. This path he chose, he has to walk alone from here until completion.”

His Mentor held her breath for a moment and then sighed. “I know that. Farewell, Mistress. Helfira, take care,”

The tall structures provided ample cover for Tercius and his Mentor to exit the sphere. Upon exiting both the Mentor and the Mathethes wrinkled their noses. The smell of waste of so many people was lingering in the air. It wasn’t bad exactly, at least not as some towns and cities that Tercius visited. Spheros had some manner of sewage canals as well as numerous night cleaners after all, but even a little bit of a smell could be too much when you were used to smelling none at all.

They turned to look back as they felt the invisible presence behind them ascend, the orb’s volume disturbing the winds.

His Mentor waved a hand and produced two brown cloaks. Tercius took one and covered up his mage robe as much as he could, remembering to tuck his Amulet below the robe.

"Shall we?" his Mentor asked, pointing at the exit out of the alleyway and he nodded.

The innkeeper of the inn they chose was friendly, they were paying guests after all, but the smile on his chubby cheeks didn't reach his eyes. He served them dinner on a candle-lit corner table and the duo ate under the suspicious gazes of the other guests of the establishment. There were questions in those sharp eyes, Tercius saw. Who are these people? What are they doing here? Their cloaks look like some mighty fine tailoring work and yet no coat of arms was visible. How much money do they have? But none present were willing to voice let alone act on any of these questions.

The innkeeper gave them two rooms and the man was evidently surprised that they wouldn’t share a single room, but the man would rather bite his tongue than ask why and risk losing money. A smart man, in other words.

As soon as Tercius saw the innkeeper’s mana outline go down the stairs, Tercius left his room and went to knock on the door where his Mentor was staying. She let him in and — under the cover of her obfuscation spells, which Tercius was still a while away from learning — he accessed the storage of his Amulet and deposited his mage robe. He had gotten used to that robe over the past days…

“What is your plan for tomorrow morning, Tercius?” Mistress Kalina asked.

Tercius looked at his Mentor and her green eyes. “I will go to the Artisan District at sunrise. I need to find a tailor there. If all goes well with him, I will have someone to introduce me to the clergy of the Temple of Balance here in Spheros. There, I should be able to find a way to get to this Monastery and finally locate my father and grandmother. I will see what needs to be done to get them back.”

His Mentor nodded. “You should look at that gift that Mistress Prime’era left for you. If it is what I think it is, you might have something to make your journey a little bit easier…”

Tercius reached for his shirt's pocket and took out the folded paper. He unfolded it and there, on the paper, done in ink was what looked like to be a map of the Izmittor Mountains. A small 'Monastery of Balance' was encircled by a thin pen trail, a small ink star below it. His heart sped up. He looked right and there it was, a slightly bigger star and above it was 'Spheros'. With this, even if he didn't get any information of the Monastery's location from the clergy of Balance, he could still find his relatives.

But he still needed to visit both the Temple and a certain tailor in the Artisans District, he realized. He needed some more information that this map couldn’t provide.

“This will help me immensely,” Tercius said, folding the map carefully for a more detailed inspection when he went back to his room.

His Mentor smiled. “I figured it would. Mistress Prime’era is like that.”

“And you, Mentor? What will you be doing?” he asked.

“I plan to go with you,” she said and when Tercius looked at her in shock, she smiled. “Only to the last town or village the Empire has in those mountains. I will wait there for you… and anyone else you might bring.”

“Oh,” Tercius sighed in relief. He had no desire to escalate a conflict between Magi and Spirits by making his Mentor step into the lands of Spirits.

“If that is all…”

“Oh… Actually…” Tercius found it incredibly uncomfortable, but he had to ask. He cleared his throat and did it. “Actually I was wondering about the favor.”

His Mentor seemed a bit confused for a few moments and then he saw by the ways her eyes widened by a tiny margin that she understood what he meant. Suddenly one sharp eyebrow rose.

“Are you saying that I still owe you two?” she asked, her voice laced with mirth.

Tercius cleared his throat. He had imagined that there was some kind of a lower limit to feeling uncomfortable. From the way he felt right now, he was quite sure the the pit would prove endless.

***

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The candle flickered as Tercius brought it closer to the letter. The page was blank, utterly so, but he knew what he was to do. His irises flared with a green light and as his surroundings faded,  he inserted a bit of mana into the wax seal. Vague letters appeared on the page, out of reach to anyone who didn’t have visual means of observing mana. The letters themselves were those of a language long dead, but the person who wrote the letter had been alive when the language was still and he had taught Tercius how to write and read it.

Destroy this letter as soon as you read it. Place two fingers on that circle in upper right corner and just inject some mana there.

The offer that I proposed to you is only one of the paths we saw as possible for someone in your position and it was a path that was suggested by me. Why did I suggest it, you might ask. I know you. I know that certain paths will not resonate well with the person that you are today. You might change in the future, of course, which might lead to a change in the offer but let me explain why I suggested what I did.

It will give you access to knowledge and resources in the least amount of time possible. It will give you training found nowhere else and it will expose you to all facets of this world of ours. It will open your eyes. You will need those things. I know that you might prefer to spend your time in peace and quiet in some secluded paradise of nature, or perhaps to travel the world on your own, but your current weakness and ignorance coupled with your potential will not allow others to leave you as you are. They will want you on their side or no side at all. The only thing keeping you safe now is that no one but a few of us knows of you and what you can do. One day, by intention or by accident of someone, that will change. I think you know this deep down and that is why you hold on so strongly against the current. You’re afraid of the change and where that change might bring to you and those around you.

Don’t be.

The real answer is not to hold on in fear and stubbornness, but to let go and learn to swim better than anyone else. You, more so than anyone else, have the potential to learn. Learn to fight the current and the other swimmers. Learn to get out of the river and if it doesn’t want to let you go, you learn how to make it let you go.

That’s my advice to you.

Things are not as bleak as you imagine them. In time I know that you will be able to spend your time however you wish.

I wish you success on your current quest.

P.S. Destroy the letter now. Do not try to burn the paper before you destroy this enchantment properly. The instruction on how to do so is at the top of the paper if you somehow missed it.

Tercius snorted, shaking his head. He took a few breaths to calm himself and a few good looks at the paper and its contents, making sure that each word was carved into his memory before he did as the instruction said. A small burst of mana and all the letters jumbled, the mana leaking out of the paper, and without a solid form to hold it, it dissipated into thin air.

He brought the edge of the paper to the candle and instead of burning his fingers, he briefly used Spring of Crystal Thoughts to telekinetically hold the burning paper while the flames swallowed it whole.

As the ashes and embers fell down, Tercius used his skill one more time to pick up the frail leftovers and toss them out of his open window and into the warm night.

He blew the candle out and went to get some proper rest. The days ahead of him demanded it.

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AN: This chapter is a day late because I took some time to reach a couple of decisions. This will be a long AN, but please take some time to read it.

If the chapter had a prologue-like vibe, then I succeeded in one of my decisions.  Starting with this chapter, I will be starting  a separate story on the RR. This is to be it's first chapter/prologue. The characters will all be the same, the story will go on as follows, but under a new name. 

Why are you Humas telling us, the Patrons, this?

A heads up seemed to be in order. I will still be continuing the story here with no interruptions, maybe though under a different numbering system.

I mainly do this because I had some free time to go over the statistics the RR offers me and I noticed something. My six first chapters have between 28k to 14k views. The drop between each is pretty sharp. The next drop is between 10k to 8k, where it stays almost consistently for most of the story. It only falls to between 4k to 5k with newest chapters, but I saw those rise fast at times, likely from a particularly vigorous binge-reading group. 

Now, the first twenty chapters are the worst of the worst of what I wrote. I can understand why people just close the page they are reading. The comments and the reviews more than paint a clear picture. When I wrote those I struggled writing in English. I struggled with writing in general. I knew nothing of either before I started this story.  

Now I know a little bit more and I feel as if those old chapters are holding me back. They were the sustenance that provided me growth and now I want them put behind. Go figure.

I had in mind to rewrite these chapters, as you all know, and I started but then my schedule got messy as spring and summer came and my time became sparse. Now, when I have some more time for rewrites, I don't want to start it because I am not sure of as many details as I could be. For me, like it is likely for you, this is a story of discovery. It took me nearly 150. chapters to get a power system that I liked. And I don't want for a new discovery on my part to clash with anything in the rewrite. So I want to postpone the rewrite until I have a version of the world, its locations and its characters, of which I think if close to final.

Since the rewrite is work better left for later, a new story page on RR, starting from here where a new arc begins, seems like a good compromise to me.

All I'm saying is that I would like to regain some of that lost audience and maybe gain some new one. Huh... I can actually make a long story short.

In December I will be making a Discord channel for AfS. I have no idea how other authors do it, so I will be a greenhorn for a while and I urge patience with me. I also can't promise I will be on it all the time, after all I need to write the story and deal with stuff IRL, but three or four brief weekly appearances from yours truly seem fine from my position. Are they fine thought?

For the third and last decision I made, I need your input on how to properly implement it. As you all know, all chapters here, except a few of those I posted of the rewrite, are available to all tiers for 1$. The rest of you who funded me with more when there was no need for it, all get a massive THANK YOU. 

The situation with the tiers has been that way ever since I created my Patreon account. I am currently in the process of stockpiling a small number of chapters and I want to change the way things have been, maybe sometime in December or in January — you will be duly notified beforehand —  but I cannot decide on the number of chapters per tier without asking what all of you think. After all, you are the ones with money in this relationship.

I merely, hopefully, provide pleasure. :D

So leave some numbers for the tiers in the comments below or if you prefer privacy send me a private message, here on Patreon.

I also would like your thoughts on the RR idea and the Discord.

But most of all, if I could ask for a few words about what this chapter/prologue feels like and seems from your perspective. What it lacks or what needs to be trimmed, that sort of thing.

I thank you all for reading this far and I salute you if you decide to respond on anything I asked about.

Sincerely and with high hopes for honest responses,

Humas