CHAPTER 87: THE RITUAL (1)

When Calen woke up on the day of the ritual he felt rather nervous - according to Sylara there was no possibility of the ritual actually harming him, but the fact that in theory something could happen scared him a little.

Since Sylara was preparing the place where he would inherit the flame by herself, the ritual was scheduled to take place in the afternoon, and as it was early morning now, he had plenty of time to kill.

He finished purifying all the animals yesterday, so he could focus on things he wanted to do - like checking how much his strength increased from all those herbs he ate.

Calen didn’t have time to test his new capabilities, but he did notice that as of yesterday evening all the scorched skin on his left wrist has fallen off, leaving the symbol pure gold.

When he looked at it the mark was nowhere near as bright as it initially seemed - perhaps because of the contrast with the blackend surface of the symbol it looked like it glowed more. Now it was just pure gold, with barely any glow noticeable - he knew it would change as the flame grows in strength, but for the moment it was scarcely different from a regular golden tattoo.

If he was being honest, he didn’t particularly like how the mark worked - sure, it sounded cool on paper, but I’m practice there was a lot of inconvenience involved with a perpetually glowing spot on your body.

Calen was lucky enough that his mark was on his wrist, so he could cover it fairly easily, but there where Flamebearers who had the mark on their cheek, or side of the neck - any stealth missions were completely out of question for them.

And even if he tried to hide it, he had no idea how bright the mark could become - for all he knew it could glow so much that there would be no way of hiding it, short of putting his entire forearm in a metal cast.

As far as the ideas of the Sun God went, this one was pretty shitty.

His deliberations were cut short by Isara who has just woken up and entered the common room.

"Why are you standing there like that?" She narrowed her eyes. "It’s weird."

"I was planning to leave but got lost in thought." He explained. "Decided that it would be good to see how effective were those herbs from Sylara."

That seemed to spark Isara’s interest.

"Ooooh, you’re going to check your progress? Wait for me then, I’ll get dressed and come with you." She said, and disappeared back into her room.

She didn’t ask whether he wanted her company, but that didn’t particularly matter since she would tag along no matter what he said.

Few minutes later she emerged once more, now fully dressed and ready for the day.

"Alright, where are we going - the public arena or the one reserved for Verdant Watch?"

"Neither, actually." Calen answered. "Alison told me yesterday that there was a fully functional training room here, in the fortress."

"Really?" Isara raised and eyebrow. "How come Sylara drags Ellie to the farms for training then? They use potted plants anyway, they might as well do it here."

"You’d have to ask her I’m afraid - now come on, we have to actually find the place, as I know only the general area of where it is."

***

It didn’t take them too long to locate the room, they needed a bit of help from a guard, but ultimately they’ve found it.

Calling this place a ’training room’ was doing it a disservice - it was an enormous fully equipped gymnasium with a lot of space in the middle.

"Who the hell even uses this thing?" Isara’s eyes widened.

"I don’t know who, but someone certainly does." Calen inspected the equipment and various weights. "They are clear signs of repeated usage, but everything is in fantastic condition - it doesn’t matter for us though, since we’re not going to use it anyway.

"We’re not? I thought you were going to check your strength, what better way to do it that with weights?"

"I wanted to check how much stronger I’ve become." He corrected her. "Since I have absolutely no idea how much I could lift before, lifting things now would be pointless."

"What do you want to do then?"

"Punch stuff, obviously - it’s a fast and efficient method, we’ll see which materials I can punch through, and which are too much for me currently."

"Uh-huh, and where are you going to find those materials? I assume you’re not going to just trash this place under the guise of training."

"Well, it just so happens than a mage very skilled at conjuring is here with me..."

Isara crossed her arms.

"Conjure them yourself."

"You know that wouldn’t work - if I swung at my own spells with intent to destroy them, they would just become undone." Caleb pointed out. "And it’s not like I want you to summon a construct I can go ham on or something, just one and done wall of some material - you don’t even have to change the spell, just the material."

"Ugh, fine." Israra touched the ground. "The walls are going to be short but thick - is that okay?"

"Sure, let’s start with wood."

"I don’t see the point, but sure." She murmured a spell and sure enough, a fairly thick wall made of wood the same height as Calen appeared right in front of him.

He winded back his fist, and then struck out.

Just like he predicted, the wall shattered into thousands of splinters, offering no resistance whatsoever.

Thankfully as it was a magical structure they didn’t need to clean up, because the wood disappeared as soon as the wall lost it’s shape.

"I think this would have been the result even before you got stronger." Isara commented.

"I mean, I don’t know if it would’ve exploded like that, but yeah." He nodded. "What’s next?"

"Stone - I don’t think there’s a point in going through all of the softer materials."

A second later another nigh identical wall appeared, this time made of smooth gray stone.

Calen inhaled deeply, and then hit the wall.

Rock shards flew everywhere, but the wall retained its original shape, so he took out his fist from the hole he made to assess the damage.

"It didn’t go through." He clicked his tongue.

"You’re saying that as if making a fist-sized hole in stone wall wasn’t impressive - I think it’s fair to say you’re firmly in the superhuman territory." Isara paused. "Do you want to check metal? You obviously won’t punch through, but you also won’t hurt yourself so we might as well check how much damage you will do."

"Sure - but what metal?"

"Iron, steel might be too much."

Again, as the previous wall disappeared, a new one took its place - this time it was darker and had a slight metallic sheen to it.

"No reason to stall." He said, and punched again.

The metal creaked and bent, but held.

"Looks almost like an art piece..." Isara observed.

The wall was misshapen and dented, starting at the impact point - a nearly perfect impression of Calen’s fist.

"You have a weird taste in art."

"Maybe." She shrugged and dispelled the wall. "Anything else you want to do?"

"Speed and endurance - this one won’t be particularly interesting, you can leave if you want."

"Nah, I’ll stay - if I get bored I have this with me." The book she got from Antonio poofed into existence in her palm.

"How did you go that?"

"One of the tricks I found in there, the writing is still terrible, but the further in I go the more ingenious his ideas are - I’m starting to understand why he was considered to be one of the greatest geniuses of his time."

"That’s one hell of a trick - can you do that with other things?"

"Yes, most of the items I own actually, as long as they’re not enchanted - the only issue is that the number of items I can hold this way is quite limited, but it will increase with practice."

"Calling this a trick is almost insulting, it’s a rather impressive feat of magic."

"I know, and this is just a tip of the iceberg - I found a few really mindbogglingly techniques in here, but I haven’t mastered them yet. I also noticed that a lot of them focuses on alternate methods of casting, almost as if to broaden my horizons."

"You think he wants you to cross the boundary." Calen more stated than asked.

"Well it certainly looks that way, but if a single book could make someone into an archmage there wouldn’t be so few of them in the world."

"Mahar the Bright crossed the border by writing a poem." He pointed out. "There’s no right or wrong way to become an archmage, maybe that book will be just what you need to understand everything."

"Maybe..." Isara grinned. "It would be nice to leave you in the dust for once."

"Yeah, yeah dream on." He smiled back. "Now if you excuse me I have to run - literally."