Bloodfallen: Curse of The All Knowing

The hail of water projectiles shattered his protective wall leaving him defenseless against the next wave of projectiles which he desperately tried to defend against regardless, though it was of little help. He was pushed back by the hail of projectiles until he fell but first outside the circle on his but with an audible thump. Gaelin slowly stood up looking quite winded from the attack, Arthur also rushed by the now safe and unused test chamber to check on his apprentice's condition. From his perspective it looked like he might have hit his head.

“Gaelin! Are you alright!?” Arthur asked as he forced his apprentice to sit down while forcing a healing potion down his throat. Though a little surprised Gaelin still drank the potion.

“I'm alright sir, just a little winded and surprised from the attack. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be.” Arthur couldn’t help but nod at that observation. He thought the very same thing when he went to join the guild.

“I suspect that the instructors are far more powerful than even I am, so that isn’t exactly surprising. Though I would have expected them to be a little less aggressive with you given your build.” Arthur said as he gestured towards Gaelin’s thin figure that was almost feminine.

Gaelin, unhappy with that comment, turned away and slowly picked himself up off the ground as the instructor walked over to where they were standing. She was still writing something down in her notes as she walked, but by the time she reached their position she was done. “In case you don’t know how this works you will be given your test results at the very end of the test along with everyone else. Do you have any other questions?”

Gaelin shook his head no and the instructor quickly returned to her spot while the next examinee took their position in the circle. Arthur quickly brough Gaelin back to the waiting area where he was watching his fight take place and sat him down in one of the chairs.

“How do you think I did sir?” Gaelin asked nervously, he wasn’t all that confident in his chances. “She ended up beating me quite easily didn’t she.”

“Well I think you did well all things considered. You showed that you were able to conjure up at least one of the four evocations and then you showed you were skilled enough to quickly re-organise that conjured water into something else with minimal loss. The reason she ended up beating you so quickly was because she did something that I don’t think she was supposed to for this type of test.” Arthur eyed the high elf as she tested another examinee, it was the very same one that stood in the circle when they were leaving. He wondered what her rank was within the guild and by extension just how powerful she was.

‘What she did by forcing her control over Gaelin’s own conjured water was something I have never seen before. She is undoubtedly a very high ranking member of the guild, I would have thought that they would keep this job for those at the rank of evoker or maybe conjurerar most. And I have doubts that she is just a conjurer, but I could be wrong. I will ask Calavia about it just to be certain, she would know the capabilities of a conjurer.’ Arthur knew for a fact that since she was a high end evoker she would be quite close to that of a conjurer and could tell him if this high elven woman was in fact either.

After waiting for around twenty more minutes while everyone else finished up their tests, the people running the test finished up with the last few reports and soon handed them out to everyone. Each examinee hastily opened their report as quickly as possible like someone was going to take it from them, everyone except Gaelin who looked at his with worry.

“Do you think I passed sir?” Gaelin almost whispered, yet Arthur could hear him clearly despite all the noise surrounding them. “I think you did your best, the worst it can say is you need to improve your skills before trying again. You can only improve from here.”

Arthur’s words of encouragement helped Calm Gaelin down enough to make him open the report. The scroll shape that it was in was easily opened up with the removal of the thin piece of string, Gaelin allowed it to fall to the ground as he slowly opened up the report to look at what it said and ended up forgetting to breathe when he saw what it said.

He looked to Arthur who was still seated next to him with amazement in his eyes, he looked back at the report and smiled at the score he was given. 15/20 points, with a pass being 12/20. The instructor he went against even wrote down what she thought of his skills and how he might improve along with a few books that might help with his foundations in the novice section of the library.

“Well done Gaelin, you passed the test and are an official member of the mages guild. It says here that you have an orientation in the guild in room 3 at noon tomorrow, I recommend going to that, you will get to choose a few courses to take for free. That way you can expand the basics of your magic knowledge in the four evocations as those are the foundations for all your future knowledge.”

Gaelin wanted to speak up and thank Arthur for everything that he has done so far, but the words were caught in his throat and he couldn’t manage to speak them. Thankfully Arthur didn’t judge him and just brought him back to his homeware. They had dinner together and invited Calavia to celebrate his achievement.

The next day on the first of Opal at around 10:30 in the morning Gaelin left for the mages guild for his orientation leaving Arthur alone in his home. To pass the time he created more spark powder in his alchemy room, when he was eventually done with his allocated ingredients he filled up two of the newer bottles that could hold one pound of the powder and placed them into his dimensional bag. Inside he actually kept several bottles of the powder since he didn’t have the time to go to the guild in quite some time.

‘It's been a while since I have gone to the guild and seen Lydus, I wonder if he still has that huge pile of paperwork he was always slaving away at. But he always had time for anyone who had questions or wanted to sell something to the guild. I honestly doubt that I would be able to keep myself so kind if I was forced to do so much work everyday, heck I get annoyed when someone just stretches the truth a but, I have no doubt that people have done the same with Lydus to try and sell their potions off for more than they are worth.’

Deciding that it would be nice to see his friend Lydus again Arthur put on his winter clothing and locked up his home behind himself and left for the mages guild. Following what he knew was the more efficient route to the guild Arthur took around forty five minutes, around fifteen minutes longer than normal due to the snow and the cold. This path also cut through several old abandoned large buildings in the southern district which Arthur wouldn’t have done if he wasn’t trying to take the shortest trip possible and didn’t have full mana reserves.

When he arrived at the guild the weather had just started to pick with more snow falling and blowing around with stronger winds than had been in the recent month. It was a little worrying for the common folk who didn’t have the money or magic to keep themselves warm for very long periods of time outside their homes, but for those like Arthur the only problems they would face were the visual ones when the blowing snow blocks their vision.

Quickly rushing inside Arthur found that the inside of the guild was mostly empty aside from a few staff members that were helping the occasional person. Ignoring this Arthur quickly went down the staircase to the underground portion of the guild. Amazingly it was warm despite being underground, the first time Arthur was here during the winter he expected it would be as cold as the outside. But some sort of unseen magic behind the walls was keeping everything warm like there was a fireplace in every room.

Pushing his thanks to whoever invented such magics he sped up his pace towards the alchemy club to off load his several pounds of spark powder he was keeping.

*********

Inside the alchemy club room was basically empty of people aside from Lydus who surprisingly didn’t have a mountain of paperwork on his desk. Instead he had a cup containing the brown liquid he recalled as adrenaline mix, he also looked to be enjoying the drink as he was reading a book that Arthur couldn’t quite see the title of.

“Good afternoon Lydus.” Arthur called out as he entered the room and walked towards his friend. Lydus looked up and smiled before putting his book down and standing up to meet Arthur halfway across the room.

“Hello once again Arthur, I haven’t seen you in a while, I was a little worried about you to be honest. So what have you been getting up to since I last saw you?”

“I've been working for the city guard recently, I helped them deal with the werebeast attack that happened recently and then I brewed several batches of potions and took part in a few raids on criminal hideouts as support.”

“Well well, you have been very busy. I managed to finish up all the paperwork for most of the remaining year. Things tend to slow down to a crawl during the winter allowing me to finish everything up, then once spring hits it will pile up quite a bit and eventually slowly come down to something manageable before dropping down again in the winter.”

“Wow, that sounds really complicated. But then why do you spend your time here after you have nothing left to do? If I were in your position I would be spending all my free time doing something I loved or with family and family.”

“Oh I already spend quite a bit of time with my friends and family on the regular, I just like the atmosphere of the guild. Sometimes people will drop by and I have an opportunity to speak with them, like we are doing right now. And besides I still have duties to perform as leader of the alchemy club, I assume you have some portions of other alchemical creations you want to sell to the guild.”

Arthur could help but grin at that statement, Lydus really did understand him quite well and didn’t bother hiding it. Taking out the several days worth of spark powder from his bag Arthur placed it on the table for Lydus to look at and decide if he would buy it. Spending a minute or two on each pound of spark powder he agreed to pay the normal price for it and Arthur walked away with a full pouch full of silver coins.

Arthur stayed for a little longer with Lydus talking about just about everything that came to mind. “So how close are you to advancing to an evoker, you should be at around the halfway point by now or at least a quarter of the way given how long you have been a mage.”

“Actually I would say I am pretty close to becoming one. I haven’t looked at the requirements just yet, but I would say I am close to those requirements. I have already mastered both geomancy and aeromancy to the limits of an apprentice level mage with hydromancy almost there as well.”

“In that case you technically to qualify to take the exam to become an evoker, you need to master at least one of the four evocations to the level of an apprentice and have the other three at the peak of a novice, it is recommended however that you master at least two which you do. The tests happen every month or so with a little ceremony afterwards so the guild can gift you two evoker cloaks that they like to hand out.”

Arthur looked at Lydus with a bit of confusion at the mention of two cloaks, one he could understand, but why would they give someone two. “Why would I be given two cloaks, I assume they aren't cheap and I don’t see why I would need more than one.”

Lydus smiled and shook his head at Arthur’s ignorance. “There is a cloak for cold temperatures and one for warmer temperatures. They are both enchanted for their own type of weather thus drastically lowering the enchanting cost and requirements. That is the whole reason why they even hand them out as promotional gifts in the first place at the rank of evoker, otherwise they would just wait until they became a Warden.”

Arthur sat in his chair and thought about that, it made a lot of sense that adding more enchantments to one single thing would be harder the more you add. For something like a piece of clothing this was a very practical thing to do, something like a golem wasn’t quite the case. ‘To bad it doesn’t work that way for golems… or would it?’

Arthur remained thinking about the possibility regarding golems, so long in fact that Lydus began to worry and called out to him to make sure he was ok. “Arthur!? Are you alright?”

Arthur quickly looked towards Lydus wondering what was wrong. “Yeah, I'm alright. Why are you yelling at me?”

“You were just looking towards the wall for a while, I was worried you might be sick with how you didn’t even react to what I said regarding the cloaks.”

“Oh, no. I was thinking about what you said, and to be honest that does sound right. Adding more magic to an item would over time make it harder and harder to add more, sort of like filling up a box with stuff. Eventually you wouldn’t be able to put anything else inside it.”