Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Five - Great Balls of Fire

“This is a very interesting variation on the Fireball. There’s a simple spell called Magic Projectile that has a lot of variations. A Fire Mage, Victor Wargenheimer, decided to adapt some of those to his fireball, but he did all of the work manually,” Rosaline said.

“Manually?” I asked.

We’d moved outside and past the pretty gardens to a courtyard that had tall stone walls all around it. It was an exercise yard, with a few weights left out, and a stomped-on track ground around the edges. The walls were pitted with little craters and divots. We wouldn’t be the first ones learning magic here, I guessed.

Rosaline nodded to her two eager students, that was, myself and Awen. “Yes. See, if you were to get the Fireball skill, then all the variations of fireball and then some would come to you naturally. It’s why, while less versatile than skills like mana-manipulation, direct combat skills aren’t anything to scoff at.”

I thought about that for a moment.

“So if I had Fire Mana Manipulation, I could easily cast any fire spell, but I’d still need to know the spells. Whereas with the fireball skill, I would only be able to cast fireballs, but they could be all kinds of different fireballs?” I asked.

“That’s it!” Rosaline said. “There’s usually more potential in wider-ranging skills, but to get to that potential requires a lot of time and work, and in the end you might still not be able to hit as hard.”

I clapped my hands. “That sounds so cool.”

“The middle ground are skills that encapsulate a concept based around a kind of magic. The Pyromania skill is entirely non-magical at first, but at higher tiers it cansinge off a mage with Fire Magic Manipulation’s tail feathers.”

“So like my Cleaning skill,” I said.

She nodded. “So, since we want to teach you some offensive skills, we’ll start with a few variations of Fireball. This one is by Wargenheimer, like I said, he created dozens of variations of an otherwise common spell manually.”

I nodded. “So what do we start with?” I asked.

“Let’s see you cast a normal fireball,” she said before gesturing to a well-worn wooden figure at the far end of the courtyard. It was a bit smaller than a harpy, with a pair of wings made of what looked like coat hangers on its back. “Hit the wooden sylph with yours.”

“Uh,” I said. But it wasn’t the time to poke at the obvious specism, it was time for magic!

I clenched my fist while pouring magic out around my hand. Then, while stepping forwards, I spun the strands of hot magic into a ball with a trailing tail.

My fist shot out in the straight jab, the missile hovering behind it launching forwards with a whoosh.

It crossed the courtyard, no faster than a thrown ball, and with a bit of a wobble. It zipped right past the dummy and splashed off the wall behind it.

“Ah. Oops?”

Rosaline giggled. “We’ll have to work on your aim too.”

My face burned in the dummy’s stead. “I guess so. My cleaning magic is a lot easier to aim with.” I threw another punch and a ball of cleaning magic zipped out of my fist, shot across the courtyard faster than the eye could track, and smacked against the dummy with the strength of a spoon smacking someone’s hand when they were reaching for the cookie jar.

Rosaline tilted her head to one side. “Combat Cleaning magic. Not something you see every day. And... not that effective, it seems.”

“It works on some things,” I defended. “And it’s really handy. I can go entire weeks without showering.”

“B-Broccoli, you’re not supposed to tell people that.”

Rosaline blinked a few times. “Well. Okay. Right! Fireball variations.” We had stopped by the house’s huge library for a bit so that Rosaline could gather a few books. She pulled one of those out and used the tabs set into the pages to find the one she was looking for. “This is the one I want you to practice with.”

I eyed the open page before me.

Wargenheimer’s Multicast Fireball
A staple variation of the standard Fireball spell. Sacrificing power for the ability to cast the same spell up to three times with a single cast. Increased mana cost and standard casting time.

The rest of the page had a few illustrations that showed what the spell was meant to look like. It was, for the most part, a normal fireball. Or rather, three of them. Each was linked by a thin filament of mana that I recognized as the ‘trigger’ to the normal fireball only wrapped around to all three.

“Oh, that’s clever,” I said.

“It might help with your aim a little,” Rosaline said. “Next is this one.”

Wargenheimer’s Sticking Fireball
A staple variation of the standard Fireball spell. By combining the standard Fire-attuned magic with Sticking-attuned mana, the spell loses most of its damage on impact, but will spread across the impact area and burn until its mana runs out.

“Uh,” I said. That sounded a lot like firing a ball of flaming napalm. Awesome. “What’s Sticking attuned mana?”

Rosaline blinked. “Ah... darn.”

“W-what is it?” Awen asked.

“I forgot to explain metaphysical mana,” Rosaline said. She huffed. If she was Amaryllis, it would be a ‘I’m disappointed in myself but won’t admit it’ kind of huff, but I wasn’t sure if the sister’s huffs translated perfectly. “Well, whatever. There are kinds of mana for nearly everything. The most common, of course, are the physical ones. Dirt, fire, air, water, things that are part of nature, then we see less common but still physical things. Lightning, Glass, Metals, Ash. those are still tangible. But what about things like Cleaning? Can you fill a bucket with cleanliness?”

“Um, I guess not,” I said.

“Exactly. You can’t grab a fistfull of justice, or a pot full of love, but those are kinds of mana, they are legitimate fuels for spellwork. They’re just a lot harder to wrap your talons around.”

“So there is Friendship aspect mana!” I said.

“Of course there is,” Rosaline said. “It’s probably really hard to make and use, but it definitely exists.”

Could I combine Friendship magic with Fireballs?

I tightened my fists.

I would combine Friendship magic with Fireballs.

“Awa, Broccoli, you look scary.”

Rosaline snorted. “You look like Amaryllis when she’s discovered a particularly explosive spell. Anyway. Sticking attuned mana is mana that embodies the idea of... stickiness. I think you could replace that with Cleaning magic. They’re far apart, but functionally they’re similar enough.”

I nodded. “That sounds doable. What will the fireball do if I replace the sticky bits with clean bits?”

Rosaline shrugged. “I have no idea! It’ll be great, I’m sure. There’s this last one.”

She flipped over a few pages and tapped another spell with the tip of her tallon.

Wargenheimer’s Delayed-Cast Fireball
A staple variation of the standard Fireball spell. More of a technique than an actual unique spell, the Delayed-Cast Fireball allows the caster to launch a series of fireballs in rapid succession after preparing a set of components for each spell and assembling them in rapid succession. Overall cast time is usually the same as casting individual fireballs, but it allows the user to cast them all in quick succession.

The rest of the page had a lot more diagrams on it than the ones before.

“This one’s a bit unique. See, instead of making the spell and then casting it, you make all the parts for four or five, then assemble and fire them all quickly. In the time it takes to fire four fireballs, you’ll fire four. But all four will be fired with only seconds between them.”

I... kind of understood. “It’s more about rapid firing over sustained fire, then,” I said.

“Exactly,” she said with a dangerous grin. “You wouldn’t imagine the amount of trouble you can get in or out of when you can punch above your weight for just a few seconds.”

I grinned right back. There was an understanding between Rosaline and I in that moment.

“Awa, now you’re both scary,” Awen said.

I snorted, then broke out into giggles. “Will you be showing me how to cast this spell?” I asked.

“I don’t think so? I think you should figure it out for yourself. Start with the multicast Fireballs first, at least until you run out of mana. I’ll be with Awen for a bit. Glass magic is a lot trickier.”

I nodded and took the book so that I had something to reference. I’d be very careful with it and would do my best not to light it on fire.

“You know a lot about magic,” I said.

“Amy probably knows more, actually. She was always dreaming of being an archmagus when she grew up.” Rosealine’s smile turned wistful. “It’s... not exactly something she was encouraged to become. But now she’s gone and become a Thundere. Past her first tier even. I don’t doubt that in a few years she’ll be tearing apart landscapes with great blasts of thunder and lightning. She’ll make us proud, but in her own way.”

I pulled Rosaline into a quick hug. “You seem like a good big sister,” I said. “I wish I had a big sister, one that was just like you.” I pulled back to see Rosaline’s face all flushed. “Amaryllis is real lucky.”

“Ah, well... I wouldn't mind a little sister like you,” she said before rudely patting the top of my helmet right between my ears. “And you too, Awen!”

Rose pulled Awen into a hug, because she’d gone without for entire minutes.

“Unless you’d like to be something more?” Rosaline asked, her voice turning strange.

Awen’s entire body froze up and her face went very red. She looked like someone having a hard time breathing. I worried for a moment but she soon got her breath back. “Ah-awa.”

“So cute!” Rosaline said. “Come! I’m giving you your lesson one-on-one. Glass magic is real tricky, or so I’ve heard.”

I watched the girls move over a little ways away, I could still hear them talking, Rosaline jumping right into a practical demonstration with Awen. She was being very encouraging.

Maybe Amaryllis did know more about magic, but her sister was definitely the better teacher. And she was supposed to be a big business woman too. Maybe she had missed out on her true calling, on the thing that she was passionate about. I wondered if that was why she didn’t seem to begrudge Amaryllis running off to do her own thing?

I set that aside for the moment and looked at the instructions for the first new kind of fireball I was meant to learn. Though really, it was more like a normal fireball, but in triplicate.

I held a palm up before me and started to form one, then two, then three. It was slow going, slower than just making one entire fireball by far.

It had been a lot easier to cast a spell while I was moving. A side-effect of my Way of the Mystic Bun, maybe? It had merged with my Physical Manakinesis.

Trying cost nothing. I cupped a ball of hot almost-fire mana in my hand, then I rolled it in the air like a ball of dough. With a flick of my wrist and a bit of concentration I turned it into an unfired Fireball.

That had been a lot faster.

I let it fly across the yard where it hit the ground a meter ahead of the dummy with a dull ‘thwump.’

So, motion made crafting a spell easier. That... made sense. I’d always been a little bit of a tactile learner.

I made a couple more Fireballs and let them fly across the yard. One of them even came close to the dummy.

The multicast was the same as a single fireball, but three times at the same time. I scrunched my nose and took a gander at my mana.

Mana 85 / 125

Plenty left in the tank.

Nodding to myself, I imagined juggling with a trio of balls, the metallic sort that made cool noises when you rubbed them together. I’d played with something like that once, large marbles that could be spun by waving your palm around with a slithery motion.

I tried that with some plain old Cleaning mana. It took some doing, but I managed to create three spheres. Then all I had to do was shove my arm out while creating three tails onto the balls and they would launch ahead and across the yard. The three taps of the spells hitting the dummy head on were wonderful.

But that was Cleaning magic.

I started doing the same thing, but with Fire-aspect mana. The circular motion was just shy of being uncomfortable as heat washed over my palm.

The first try ended in complete failure. I ‘eeped’ as the triple fireball burped apart in my hand.

The next attempt exploded a meter ahead of me.

The third launched one deformed fireball, and one tiny fireball that flew off into the sky until it fizzled out way above me.

I cheered. I was getting so close!

***