There wasn’t too much of note in the rest of the pages I read. I did learn the author was named Edmund and that he'd been a king of a small but prosperous kingdom. After teaching the Cribeans about runic magic, he'd taught them the principles of magic that were far removed from what I’d been taught. In one passage he claimed:
The denizens of this world trust the gods blindly, and that has created doubt in their minds, ensuring they are unable to practice magic without some faith in the gods.
On Morus, magic is approached scientifically. It had an element of cause and effect. Granted, it requires more effort than maybe the denizens of this world are used to, however, the results are the same. Teaching the Cribeans to logically approach magic is proving to be the most difficult of tasks.
First I must explain to them the principles of deus. Deus like everything else follows its own laws, understanding those laws is key. The cribeans have learned channeling well, they excel at image creation and manipulation, but they fail at ignition because without their faith they lack the conviction to command mana. On Morus only children face this issue, that is why they are encouraged to use incantations with keywords, as they speak the incantation their conviction grows firmer, and then the last phrase containing the igniting words can be spoken with enough conviction to move deus.
It was at this point I started to suspect the author of this book wrote the book my sister spoke of. I made nothing of the authors having the same name, for even though Edmund was an uncommon name, it wasn’t impossible for two people to exist that had that name. However, the approach to magic was too similar for it to be a coincidence. Now it made more sense, indeed, a blasphemous fool would find ways to practice magic without relying on his faith in the gods, after all, he had none.
As I read further I understood how he could approach magic the way he did. In his original world, there was no magic. The inhabitants of that world learned to live without relying on magic, and even though earlier on in their history they had believed in the gods, their faith reduced with time, until it became commonplace to deny the existence of the gods entirely. The gods didn’t interfere too much in their affairs and they managed to grow, though their society faced many catastrophes, they managed to live on. That gave birth to pride and ego, that pride and ego was very evident in the way Edmund wrote.
What a foolish thing, even if the gods do not directly interfere, by virtue of existence alone they owe their everything to the gods; to think they managed fine without the gods—so foolish I thought.
By the time I finished reading Edmund's book the sun had set already. I was unaware, but the lamps on the walls had been lighted to provide some illumination to the patrons in the library. I'd been engrossed in the book and my own thoughts that I hadn’t noticed the change. I got up to put the book back on the shelf, and I took the time to check to see if the other book was available. I didn’t see my father anywhere, and the mages that were with him earlier were also gone; in fact, the library was largely empty, safe for a few stragglers seated sparsely around the open area.
“Silas, why are you still here?” I heard Bor's voice from behind me.
I turned to see him yawning as he walked towards me. I felt pity for him, at his old age he should be going to sleep early, but I had no intention of leaving the library at all tonight, and as the custodian, he couldn’t leave while there were patrons still left in the library.
“Oh, I was determined to finish the book today,” I said to him, doing my best to sound nonplussed. I could feel my cheeks warm up as I thought about the way I'd acted earlier; clearly, Bor was wiser than I, no surprise, he'd lived more than thrice as long as I had.
He looked at me with knowing eyes, a mocking smile causing his aged eyes to wrinkle and his face to contort into a frighteningly ugly mess, “So did you learn anything?” he asked, his words causing my cheeks to burn hotter.
I didn’t answer, I couldn’t, I was unwilling to give him the satisfaction. He very clearly wanted to gloat and wanted me to admit defeat. So childish I thought, the irony completely lost on me as I turned around to look for a book I knew wasn’t there.
“Do you know the book father was reading earlier? My sister had read it before and told me about it, she said it shed new light on runes and how they work—I’m very interested in that book,” I said instead of answering Bor's question.
Bor chuckled in response, “Follow me,” he said as he began to walk away. My gaze never left the floor as I walked behind Bor.
“Your father just returned this book not too long ago, I’d tried to convince him to read the book you just finished reading, but he gave me an earful after reading the first few pages,” Bor said as he handed a particularly hefty book to me.
Of course, I thought to myself, no sane person would finish reading that book once they realized the tendencies of the author; what does that make me I wondered.
My sister had called the book in my hand a grimoire, and I thought that description was accurate. The book started out describing the components of runes individually, it even went as far as describing the sounds each component would make and how one would pronounce full sets—much like how spelling and pronunciation were taught to me as a child.
Knowing what I knew now about the author, I couldn’t help but be impressed, it was quite impressive that a mad man was this knowledgeable about magic; it was even more impressive because from what he'd written in the other book it sounded like he'd spent little time studying runes, but his knowledge of runes ran quite deep.
“Ah! Did he not say in that other world they used runes too?” I wondered out loud. Perhaps on Morus runes aren’t much of a mystery, perhaps they have more advanced knowledge of magic than we do, it makes sense then that Edmund would possess greater knowledge about runic magic I thought.
The book was very detailed, maybe too detailed; it had a lot of redundancies, but I couldn’t complain, it was after all a book only a mad man like Edmund could've written.
He described in great detail how each symbol in the rune moved mana, why they moved mana the way they did. With runic magic the effects of visualization aren’t present, so the runes had to guide mana precisely, adding various elements and effects to the mana as it flowed along the path designed for it by the runes until reaching the igniting phrase. The benefits of knowing precisely how runes moved mana and what effects they added couldn’t be overstated.
Just like that, I spent the whole night seated in the library studying runes. I wasn’t even halfway through when the first group of patrons walked into the library, their presence dragging my focus away from the book and forcing me to take notice of my surroundings.
Bright sunlight was streaking into the library through the windows, giving how bright it was clear the sun had been up for a while now. By the gods! I'm late for training I thought as I got up and dashed towards the exit, not even bothering to put the book back on the shelf—I left it on the table—not even bothering to say my goodbyes to Bor.
By the time I got to the training ground, the recruits had already finished with mana channeling and were sparring. Aurel and my sister looked miffed when they saw me, their displeasure plastered very blatantly on their faces.
“Where were you? Don’t tell me you overslept,” my sister asked, sounding irritated.
“I finally got my hands on the grimoire you mentioned—I spent the whole night studying, before I knew it the sun had risen. I didn’t even have time to change my clothes,” I answered.
“Yeah, I can tell, you reek brother,” Aurel said, pinching his nose and looking at me with mock disgust.
“You're one to talk, at least there is a reason for my stench, what's yours?” I shot back at him.
“Wha—”
“So, did you learn anything?” my sister asked, cutting off Aurel who looked at her like she'd just stabbed him in the heart.
“Hmm. I'll tell you after training is over if you have the time,” I said to her. My sister nodded her head and turned away to face the recruits.
Since I’d been absent during the mana channeling training, I wondered if any of the recruits had succeeded in channeling mana, given that there would be a full moon soon I wanted to somehow speed up the training of the recruits in time for when the Lycans would attack. The enchanted weapons weren’t yet completed, and just as well, for even if we had the weapons now most of the recruits wouldn’t be able to use them.
“Did any of the newbies succeed in channeling mana?” I asked my sister.
She smiled and nodded, “It was a very fruitful day. I think we can move on to the next step of training now,” she said.
I was surprised, I didn’t think there would be much progress. “Really? How many were successful?” I asked.
“There are only five recruits left who haven’t succeeded,” Aurel answered, looking at the recruits the way a proud father would look at their child.
“Did something happen?” I wondered out loud.
“Well, the ones who had successfully channeled mana before organized a meet-up with the other recruits and gave them pointers. As you know Silas, learning from someone close to your level of knowledge is a lot more productive than learning from someone many levels above,” my sister said.
I understood what she was saying—not to say learning from people that had knowledge several degrees more profound was futile, but at a certain level, we tend to just know by instinct what is correct and what is wrong, because no amount of thought goes into deriving that answer, explaining it could be a challenge. With mana channeling, neither I nor my sister was able to explain to the recruits how to do it well enough that they understood, it was as difficult to us as teaching a baby how to breathe, because mana channeling was as easy to us as breathing.
Thinking about it, that Edmund is really impressive. To be able to teach a whole settlement magic the way he did, hmm. I admit it's impressive I thought to myself.
“So, what will the next step of training be?” I asked my sister.
“Well, I will bring some mediums with simple runes inscribed on them with me tomorrow, their task will be to activate the magic,” she answered, turning to look at me as she said those words, her eyes shining with excitement.
“Aren’t you enjoying yourself too much?” I asked. I was happy to see her enjoying herself, but the original purpose of dragging her into this whole thing was to punish her, seeing her enjoying herself made me feel a little defeated.
“Am I? Well, I'll admit teaching them is proving to be more fun than I anticipated,” she said, beaming from ear to ear. I clicked my tongue and turned away, only to see Aurel making his way to the weapons rack.
He picked up a sword, did some practice swings then turned to face me, “Brother, how about a rematch,” he said, looking very confident.
“Aurel, is one embarrassing defeat not enough for you?” I asked in jest, laughing as I made my way to the weapons rack.
“Is a warrior too afraid of defeat to fight even still a warrior?” Aurel replied.
As I stood in front of the weapons rack an idea popped into my head and I decided spontaneously to try it. So instead of a sword, I chose a spear this time. As I was getting some practice swing in before the spar began, Aurel said, “Are you mocking me? You'd better choose a weapon you’re comfortable with.”
“As warriors did we not train to be able to use a variety of weapons? I wouldn’t even dare pick up the spear if I wasn’t confident in my skills with the spear,” I said to Aurel as I stood in front of him, “shall we begin?” I asked.
