Fireball

[shaker_e]

Sunrise still glowed pink and yellow above the distant hilltops in the east. The air was dry and growing hotter by the minute even that early in the morning. A day touched by Fire. It was auspicious, the old man decided. And even in his heavy grey wool and soot stained asbestos apron, heat seldom bothered him the way it appeared to bother his companion.

“I don’t know why I have to learn a spell like this in the first place,” the sweating young man in clean, freshly pressed white robes complained, “It’s so pedestrian. I’m not interested in becoming some shoddy traveling spellminster, I want to learn proper wizardry!” He kicked a stone with an expensive shoe, fussing as some of the artillery range’s dust came up with it and stained his hem. “This isn’t what my father is paying you for!” His cry echoed off the distant canyon walls, little burnable vegetation in the area to muffle them.

Arcanist Waldbrand waited patiently as his student – Klaren Elderflower, third son of a rich family, definitely not an apprentice, this little scrap of kindling would never survive a proper apprenticeship - whined, seemingly endlessly, till he had exhausted his supply of complaints. After a sullen silence fell at last, the mage spoke, his voice quiet but hoarse from a lifetime of breathing smoke and ash. “In a lifetime of practicing the Art, one will sometimes find oneself in circumstances that were unplanned for, unaccounted for. Even a master Magus can be caught off guard. And in those moments, you will not have time to scribe a circle of warding, you will not have breath to incant the thirty verses of blessing, and you will not have the presence of mind to utilize seven unseen servants to rend your enemies limb from limb. But you will have this.” He turned partially away, and with a swiftness and economy of movement demonstrating decades of practice, traced a complex pattern and flung out his empty hand, speaking the rough syllables of the true name of flame. The ball of fire flickered into existence already in motion, traced a swift arc and detonated midair a hundred yards away, briefly forming a red-orange sphere before winking out of existence. The hot wind of its explosion and implosion blew the youth’s hair back and forth, the youth rubbing his dazzled eyes.

“Agh! But – but why would I ever find myself in those circumstances in the first place? I want to learn to transmute lead into gold, to live forever, to enrich my family – not go into battle! A cannon could do it just as well or better!” The boy was shouting over the ringing in his ears.

“If you have found something worth finding, a lesser one will think it worth stealing. They won’t come to your door and knock, asking to purchase it. They will study you, they will hunt you, they will find the weakness in your guard, and they will murder you. It is a reality of the world – even among Arcanists, among the high Magisters themselves, you will find thieves. You must be prepared to defend yourself. And to defend yourself, you need a powerful ally. And the oldest ally of all people is Fire. Now, enough discussion. Attend!”

To the boy’s credit, while he did grumble softly, he did indeed attend. Within an hour, he had gained a fair grasp of the gestures for a simple hand-ball sized sphere of modest flame, and by midday had learned to speak the true name of fire without it catching within his throat. The youth was breathing heavily as the Arcanist gently helped him apply a healing ointment to his burned fingers, showing him how to wrap them lightly in clean cotton bandages in a way that wouldn’t hinder their motion. The boy cleared his singed throat, and rasped a question. “I didn’t really mean to... to demean, Arcanist. But couldn’t it be done in more a more elegant way? Fire is simply the reaction of excited elements, full of energy, given something to eat and air to breath. One need not…” He made a vague impression of the throwing gesture, mindfully NOT making any motions with his stinging fingers.

Waldbrand nodded approvingly. “That’s a fair question. And I’ll acknowledge it – you’re right, it need not be so…” he mimicked the boy’s throwing motion. “It is known - it’s a coarse spell, a workman’s spell. The magician’s hammer. And some of my brethren have an artisan’s pride, and love to use and demonstrate their fifty different hammers without considering that they don’t look particularly different or interesting to one who isn’t versed in the intricacies.” He indicated a line of wooden effigies down the range, archery or javelin targets on days when conventional martial training was occurring here. “The third one from the left will be our subject – and the third one alone. Attend.”

Drawing a wooden stylus from his robes, he knelt and scribed a neat block of pictograms in the ashy soil. “Don’t concern yourself with memorizing the details of this example, but take note – like any other spell, we work in specifics, and we set hard limitations. Fire is our ally, but the hunger of Fire inspires it to find any weakness in the invocation, so it may eat more. Our distance….” He extends his arm and raises his thumb, gauging the effigy against it. “…85 yards. We only wish to affect a single man, so we restrict our spell to our target alone, not to a point in space or an area, so he may not simply leap out. We invoke the flame for only as long as we need to kill, and dismiss it after – mind that! If you fail to dismiss the flame it WILL persist as long as the fuel allows whether you will it or not. Are there any other factors I may wish to control?”

“…Something to encase the radiant heat, so that the other ones aren’t also set alight, Arcanist…?” the boy offered uncertainly, smiling despite himself at the rough man’s sharp nod of approval. “Absolutely correct. We add that in the same verse where we define the target. In this way our called Fire stays contained where we bid it, and nowhere else.”

Waldbrand’s knees creaked as he rose back to his feet, and he dusted himself off. He reviewed his work again, and then incanted, the unnatural syllables flowing fast and fierce, embers and sparks following each arcane word and spilling over his asbestos apron. They were accompanied by movements almost like a dance, each phrase having its companion motion, which made the ashen old man seem for a moment nonetheless like a living flame himself. And eighty five yards away, precisely as the final gesture concluded, the archery target was wrapped in hungry fire, fire that burned white with its intensity yet didn’t roar or radiate heat. It glowed for about one and a half minutes, before winking out with a peculiar gasp as air rushed in to fill the empty space where the target still stood, but now was only thin sticks of charcoal and ash that tumbled upward with the hot air that was finally free to escape.

The boy made a satisfied nod, as if he himself had cast the spell. “That’s more like it! It’s neat, it’s efficient, it’s a proper spell!” He coughed, his seared throat still rough, and took a careful sip from the waterskin Waldbrand offered him. “Yes, that it is, boy. Now setting aside the one we just burned, nine men still stand there, and ah – they each have a bow. They mean to kill you, I dare say. You have…. Ten seconds before they’ll be close enough to have a sure shot. Deal with them elegantly.”

“What? Deal with-“

“Nine. Eight.”

Klaren drew forth his own stylus and quickly knelt to the dusty ground, trying to scribe something similar to the Waldbrand’s spell as the magister counted down, but had hardly completed a line before the arcanist kicked dirt over it. “You’re dead. Rise. Again. Ten seconds, defend yourself from them.” This time the boy managed two lines before Waldbrand placed a booted foot on his shoulder and casually kicked him over. “You’re dead. Again.” The third time an arrow of hardened smoke buried itself in the middle of his scribing on the ten count, dangerously close to his hands. “Again, dead man! Defend yourself!” Each time the youth’s work grew more frantic, and each time the consequence for his failure was rougher, till the boy was clearly growing panicked, even genuinely frightened. “I can’t do it! There’s not enough time!”

“You’ll defend yourself or you’ll die here, boy! No gold, no immortality, just another dead fool in the dirt! I’ll burn you into ash myself if you don’t, mark my words! Now CAST, mage!” Waldbrand’s eyes were flame and the heat of his body was raising a whirlwind of smoke and ash. In the eyes of his young student, he had all the seeming of a fire-devil, and the boy fell backwards, scrabbling away. “No! No, please!” And in his panic, without even really thinking about it, he whipped his hand forth, a complex gesture clumsily spelled out in his blistered fingertips, and tumbled forth the true name of Fire, the rough syllables smoking as they escaped, and an angry red sphere burst into existence, wrapping itself around Arcanist Waldbrand and exploding with ferocity that rebounded off the distant walls of the canyon again and again. The boy cringed on the ground, trembling, fearful to look up in the silence that followed, broken only by soft footsteps approaching.

“Well cast, young mage,” the man said hoarsely, placing a hand lightly on his shoulder. “Well cast.” The boy trembled as he looked up at Waldbrand, unburnt, ashen, dusty and gaunt and yet still somehow wrapped with potential light and heat and flame all at once. Klaren finally saw him for the full fledged arcanist he was, instead of a self-important old firecaller. “Forgive my theatrical approach. Fire tends to call to artistic souls,” he chuckled like two scraping rocks, before coughing and spitting. He helped the youth back to his feet, lending him an arm to stay steady. “In your time as a practitioner of the Art, you’ll no doubt learn many different spells, of all sorts. Not all of us become so tightly wound up with one aspect, like my brethren and I. But if you learn any one spell from me, let it be that one.” They began to walk towards the gates of the range, where distant, heavily shielded barracks and stables awaited. “You can depend on it. There’s a time for elegance, and a time for precision, and a time for efficiency. But for simple problems like ‘that man intends to stab me with a sword, right now’ a simple solution is the best. Learn it to the bone.”

“It didn’t do much against you, Arcanist,” the boy said, glancing sidelong at his teacher.

“No, that it did not.” The old man grinned. “Fire may be your ally, but it’s my friend. It loves me better.” The lad scoffed. “And also, I wouldn’t be much of a teacher if I hadn’t been warding both of us to hellfire and back this entire time – I could never allow real harm to come to you in training.” He spoke a word of unbinding, and the exhausted boy stumbled as he felt the weightless weight of unseen protections suddenly lift, like his entire body somehow skipped a beat. He hadn’t been aware at all.

“What about other wizards? Would it work on them?”

“I said it’s for simple problems, and no wizard has ever been called ‘simple.’ Some much less than others. If I ever found myself confronted by that insane geomatriarch who did in Nabjak the Vile, for instance, I’d just run, or give her what she came for and call it good enough if I remained intact.”

“Geomatriarch…?” Klaren repeated slowly, rolling the unfamiliar term around in his mouth. “Is she so strong?”

“From 'geometry'. And Hell if I know. But that one, she’s definitely complicated, and I don’t feel like being lectured at about how stupid fireballs are by someone who also knows spells that can unravel you alive like a worn out piece of knitting while she lectures. Whatever she came for, she can have the damned thing, it isn’t worth the hassle. Now let’s get you home and cleaned up before your lordly parents discover what a mess I’ve made of you, young mage.”