Bloodfallen: Curse of The All Knowing

It was like time itself had slowed for a moment as everyone who was still watching did nothing as Arthur stepped over the dying man towards the remaining wounded criminals. The first to react was the leader of the small group by running off in the opposite direction of Arthur at full speed bumping into several stalls and knocking stuff over as he did. He was quickly followed by the rest of his group as they ran in terror.

Once they were gone Arthur let out a sigh of relief, while he was basically in no danger from the axe wielding criminal due to literally being outside the reach of it the fight still was quite stressful as killing wasn’t really as cool as he first thought it was. He did have a bit of fun hunting down those bandits months ago, but if he were offered to do the very same thing now he wasn’t quite sure he would.

Soon the people slowly returned looking around for any signs of the criminals, shortly after them was a squad of guardsmen with their weapons drawn and ready for a fight. When Arthur saw the guardsmen he quickly walked up to them and explained the situation.

“Thank you sir mage for handling the situation for us, I think we will be able to handle the situation from here.” The corporal of the squad said to Arthur once he understood what had happened, he quickly waved a few of his subordinates who had medical experience towards the one criminal who was bleeding out on the ground. Arthur quickly reached into his bag and pulled out two basic healing potions and handed them to the guardsmen in question. While the potions wouldn’t be able to heal the wound on their own they would be able to help slow the bleeding and buy time to save the criminal's life.

Once Arthur stepped away from the guardsmen and off to the side Gaelin was right beside him like a little child. “Wow, that was incredible sir. You easily sent them running for the hills with just a few well placed strikes.” Gaelin’s eyes were lighting up like bonfires as he continued to speak of his actions in high regards.

Eventually Arthur got a little tired of this constant childish attitude and he acted to change the conversation. “So do you think you are going to stay here and sell off the rest of your potions today given what happened here today?”

“No, I don’t think so. Everyone here is looking rather spooked by the fight and I doubt many are going to stay here for the rest of the day. Things should clear up by tomorrow, so I'll just sell my potions from today along with what I will sell tomorrow.”

Before the the two left the market to return to Arthur’s home he took a moment to look around at the remaining people in the area to see if he could find Jofami, he had a sneaking suspicion that he either was in on the robberies by the criminals or was using Gaelin to avoid paying himself. Either way he wanted to try and get him alone for a few minutes to ‘talk’.

*******

Back at his home Arthur was sitting in the kitchen/living area while Gaelin worked on his hydromancy with a cup of water. So far Gaelin was only able to control a small amount of water, enough to fill the palm of his hand at most and only for around five minutes when doing so. Relatively he was a slow learner compared to himself, but given that on average wood elves have a well below aptitude for arcane magic that was partly expected.

Arthur had also learned quite a few things about magic when teaching Gaelin, specifically the average aptitude of each race. Surprisingly humans were considered the baseline with an equal aptitude in arcane divine and occult magic. Next were dwarves who on average have quite poor aptitude for all three types of magic, they instead have talent for more mechanical works. Elves were a bit more varied depending on the type, high elves for example have an above average aptitude for arcane and divine magic and below average for occult, wood elves have well above average aptitude for divine and below average for both arcane and occult, dark elves have an above average aptitude for both arcane and occult with below average aptitude for divine, and finally stone elves were around the same as humans likely because they were only born within human cities created with lots of stone.

The book that Arthur learned this from was titled Magic : Across the races. It was written by a human by the name of Stephan Lehrer roughly 100 years ago under a group called The Arcane Association, most likely a precursor group to the mages guild.

Regardless Arthur watched Gaelin as he practiced his magic and gave basic instructions when he needed help, overall Gaelin seemed to be happy with his progress in magic and had a few questions for Arthur as he lightly manipulated the water.

“What is the mages guild like sir? Is everything aside from the top of the building really in a pocket dimension held together with hundreds of powerful mana stones?”

Arthur looked at Gaelin with confusion clear on his face, he didn’t even know something like that was possible on such a large scale, but he never had any reason to think that the underground portion of the guild was anything but exactly that.

“No, I don’t think so. As far as I know everything is just underground with a lot of magic protections in place to prevent someone from collapsing the roof or breaking down the walls or any other sort of sabotage someone might employ for whatever reason.”

Gaelin paused for a moment looking a little disappointed by what Arthur said, he was likely thinking of some sort of wonder of magic below the surface that only mages would get the chance to see. This didn’t stop him from practicing his hydromancy, although there was a noticeable decline in speed of the rotating water.

This remained for another hour before Arthur had to leave for his lessons with Henry, he left Gaelin inside his home and told him not to leave until he returned and to either practice his magic or alchemy until he returned, which would be in a few hours.

*******

Arthur plopped down onto the floor as he panted heavily, Henry had once again changed the training that Arthur would undergo once again. Now instead of magic strength training it was a combination of both endurance and strength training for magic, both Arthur and Henry would conjure up their own walls of air that were a square foot in size. Once they were both ready they would slowly push them against each other like a sort of reverse tug of war and with magic instead of a rope. According to Henry this would be both a test of strength and endurance in his magical capabilities, it requires strength to keep up with Henry’s own wall and endurance to keep going for long periods of time. The way things went was Henry would push up against Arthur while he would try to keep going for as long as possible, he would need to use his skill to keep the wall from breaking under the strain. He could reinforce or repair the wall whenever he needed to, but if it broke they would start again.

After an hour of this Arthur was left on the ground panting like a dog, while Henry looked no different than before. Clearly this wasn’t all that hard for him to do, despite being only in his mid thirties he was quite skilled in several types of magic.

“So I heard about what happened in the southern market place earlier today. I assume you have a good reason for fighting common criminals in the city.” Henry said as he took a seat in his chair while looking at Arthur. He leaned back in said chair while waiting for a response.

“Yeah, my ‘apprentice’ asked me to come with him because they were stealing from people, he managed to slip away before they got the chance to take anything from him but he doubted that he would always be able to do that. I also went into that fight with the intent to disable them, not kill them, it's not my fault that he didn’t know when to quit.”

“That is quite a cold thing to say Arthur, I just want to be certain that you aren't going to use your skill in magic to cause problems for the kingdom or innocent people in general.” Henry frowned as he responded to Arthur, he definitely didn’t receive the answer he was expecting.

“Well so far I’ve been using my magic to kill criminals and bandits, so you don’t need to worry about me becoming some magical warlord that intends to kill everybody and create an army of undead. There wouldn’t even be any reason for having an army at that point with everything dead.” Arthur said while collecting the sweat from his forehead with hydromancy.

“Isn’t that the plot of Master of The Ring, have you been reading fictional books about evil wizards that don’t obey the laws of magic?” Henry chuckled as he realised that Arthur was referencing a book, it was a pretty good book but still he wasn’t expecting it from him.

“So what, it was well written and I found it in the guild library. There is a small section dedicated to fiction stories. I was a little bored so I picked one up.”

“You don’t need to explain yourself regarding your own taste in books Arthur, I just wanted to be sure you wouldn’t become a danger to others or yourself.”

*********

Another two months passed as Arthur continued on with his schedule with Gaelin as his apprentice of sorts and continuing with his lessons under Henry. Gaelin had shown great progress with both his magical and alchemical skills, not quite at the same speed as Arthur did but quite impressive for someone at a disadvantage like he was.

Arthur also had an opportunity to introduce Gaelin and Calavia to each other as she decided to suddenly drop by one afternoon as she had the day off and wanted to spend some time with her friend. It was on the first of Moonstone when she arrived along with the first blanket of snow for the year. It was a cold and white powdery substance that left an almost burning sensation when he tried to quickly warm his hands after touching it.

‘I should have bought something to wear on my hands as well as this winter overcoat, I don’t even need my hands to be touching the snow for them to slowly become cold like ice.’ Arthur thought annoyed with himself for not thinking ahead or looking onto what winter was, instead he was forced to keep his hands in his coat pockets for some semblance of protection from the elements. ‘To think a nice walk was ruined because of this.’

Arthur quickly returned inside and decided to wait for Gaelin inside, to pass the time he chose to read more of one of the fictional books he borrowed from the guild library.

Suddenly there were three loud knocks on the front door. ‘Strange, I wasn’t expecting Gaelin for another ten or so minutes. But given the abrupt change in weather he might have decided to leave sooner so he wouldn't be late.’ Arthur thought as he stood up from his chair and walked over to the door to open it, but to his surprise it wasn’t Gaelin on the other side, instead it was Calavia who he hadn't seen in quite some time.

“Hi Arthur!” Calavia practically shouted as he basically tackled Arthur and gave him a big hug pushing him back a few steps in the process. She stopped as quickly as she started and quickly closed the door behind her keeping the snow from getting in.

“Crazy weather out there, isn’t it. I can’t believe that we just got it so suddenly, it's like the goddess of snow herself arrived to give us the snow storm last night.”

“Yeah, it was quite surprising when I woke up to it this morning. I was going to go for a small walk around the neighborhood a few minutes ago, but it was too cold for that.”

Calavia chuckled at that statement and nodded. “I don’t think anyone was expecting this much snow, not unless they had some sort of weather prediction device.”

Arthur showed Calavia where to hand her coat and walked her over to the table and offered her a chair while the two spoke about how unexpected and terrible the weather was outside.

“Anyways, what have you been getting up to? I assume you spoke with Henry and have been taking some lessons under him, he might not be cheap but he is most definitely worth every silver you can pay him.”

“I have been for quite some time actually, I try to squeeze in some lessons everyday excluding weekends. I make more than enough daily that I can afford to, and the progress I have had has most definitely been worth it.” Arthur raised his hands to the height of his chest and conjured up a sphere of air and compressed it to a tenth of its original size like he would during lessons with Henry. Around a month and a week ago he had actually reached level 20 in aeromancy and since moved onto hydromancy reaching level eighteen.

/- - - - - -\

+ Aeromancy Level 20

+ Hydromancy Level 18

\- - - - - -/

“Quite impressive, I would say you are just about ready to learn tier three spells with your skill level.” Calavia commented while looking over Arthur’s air sphere. She even tested his control over it like Henry would always do, but he easily blocked her light attempt to wrestle control over his air sphere. Compared to what Henry would do she was easy mode.

“Excellent control over it as well, what about your other evocations?” At her request Arthur showed her his geomancy, hydromancy, and pyromancy in the same way by conjuring up a sphere and condensing it as small as he could and allowing Calavia to try and take control.