Chương 36: Chapter 35: The Imperial Bloodline (11)

The next spark failed. The one after that kept the candle lit for less than a second before dying. On his tenth attempt, Teren finally managed to light the wick properly. The small yellow-orange flame swayed once before settling. He stared at it. There was nothing purple or legendary about the flame, and it certainly was not enough to make anyone fear him. But it was ordinary magic, produced deliberately and without revealing his bloodline. It would be very useful if he could make it stronger.

Edras gave him a moment before pinching the wick out between two fingers, apparently immune to the heat.

"Again." By the time most of the hour had passed, Teren could produce the orange spark on roughly three attempts out of five. Lighting the candle still took him a few seconds of concentration, steady hands, and no distractions. Whenever he tried to rush, his control slipped and the mana either faded or surged too quickly. Sweat had dampened his tunic beneath his arms by the time Edras moved the candle aside.

"That's enough ordinary fire for today," Edras said.

"You'll improve with practice, but pushing yourself too hard on your first day is a bad idea, even for a Corvadryn."

"Fine by me." The mage picked up the strip of iron from the table and placed it on the stone block. Teren looked at it.

"Are we going to try purple fire now?"

"Yes. The iron gives us something safe to test it against if you manage to produce more than a spark. Fire from ordinary mana at your level will not affect it."

"Begin with a small flame," Edras continued.

"Nothing more. What you produced in the duke's chamber was already tiny, and even that took some guidance. This time I want you to find the sensation deliberately and hold it without letting more mana flow than you intend." Teren flexed his fingers.

"And if I mess that up?"

"You could burn your hand, or release more magic than you intended." Edras gestured toward the rune-lined walls.

"This chamber was built for magical training, so its wards can contain minor accidents. But if your bloodline causes something more serious, I'm standing beside you." Teren still felt uneasy, but Edras had already said that he could deal with any unexpected reaction. If there was anywhere in the palace where Teren could safely attempt this, it was here. Edras moved to stand beside him rather than across the room.

"Begin the same way you did with the crystal. Let your mana move normally first, then consciously reach for your bloodline instead of shaping it into ordinary fire. You already felt the difference when you made the crystal turn purple." Teren raised his hand. Finding his mana came more easily now. He let it move toward his hand, remembering the pale yellow glow inside the crystal. Then he thought about the purple light that had replaced it when he reached for his bloodline. The sensation changed.

The mana felt different as it moved toward his fingertip, denser somehow, followed by the same unfamiliar heat he remembered from the duke's chamber. A tiny purple point appeared above his index finger. Teren almost lost it from surprise.

"Keep going," Edras said.

"Push more mana into it, but do it slowly." Terem followed the instructions. The point stretched into a thin flame, barely longer than his fingernail. Deep purple gathered near the base while the tip burned brighter. It gave off surprisingly little heat against his skin.

"Hold it there." Teren concentrated on keeping the flow steady. Almost immediately, his hand began to ache from the effort. The flame wavered but remained above his finger.

"Now touch the iron strip with the flame." Teren focused on the iron and tried to direct the flame toward it. The purple fire bent sideways instead of rising above his finger, following his intention until its tip touched the metal. The surface glowed red almost immediately. Then, instead of merely heating up, the iron began to give way beneath the flame. The purple fire sank into it, leaving a narrow hole that slowly deepened until it broke through the other side of the strip. Teren stared.

It was only a thin strip of iron, probably chosen for exactly this kind of test, but that hardly made the result unimpressive. The ordinary flame he had been producing a few minutes ago probably could not have heated the iron enough to even make it glow red. This tiny purple flame had burned straight through it.

"Amazing..." Edras leaned closer to watch.

"That's enough. Cut it off now." Teren stopped the flow of mana. The flame disappeared, and the tension running through his hand and forearm faded to a dull ache. Edras picked up the strip with a pair of tongs and examined the damaged metal. The edges of the jagged hole still glowed dull red from the heat.

"It's astounding... An ordinary flame that small would barely mark iron if used for such a short duration. Yours began eating into it almost immediately."

"So purple fire burns hotter?" Teren asked.

"Possibly, but I cannot be sure without performing some tests." Edras set the strip down again.

"The old records describe Corvadryn fire damaging materials and magical constructs in ways ordinary flame simply cannot. I have never been able to test those claims before now, but this result appears to be consistent with them." This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Teren looked at his hand.

A magical fire capable of damaging iron so easily sounded impressive until he thought about how difficult it would be to hold such a small flame in one place, or how close he would need to go to an enemy to use it. Brakka would have crushed him with the wooden post before the flame did anything useful. Rulven could have crossed the distance and stabbed him before Teren managed to hold it against that sword.

Even the first-tier ashback boar in Gate Seventeen would have reached him long before he burned anything enough to stop the monster. He had finally started learning magic, but he was nowhere near being able to depend on it in a fight. At his current strength, it would still be a poor weapon against a real opponent. Edras looked at Teren.

"That is enough for today. Do not draw on your mana again until we meet again." Teren wanted to argue, but his arm still felt strained from holding the purple flame. Edras did not look much better. The lines around the old mage's eyes seemed deeper than they had when the lesson began.

"As you say. You look tired too..." Teren commented.

"I spent most of the morning rechecking the palace wards and dealing with the investigation into that runic array in the basement. There are also people who seem convinced that putting more guards around everything will somehow solve a magical trap buried inside a wall." The old mage rubbed at one temple.

"And I still have other work waiting for me when I leave here." Teren remembered their conversation from the previous evening.

"So when you said you might not be able to teach me every day…" Edras exhaled.

"I'll give you what instruction I can, but there may be days when I simply cannot get away even for an hour." Teren sighed. He had known that already, but hearing it after finally getting his first real lesson was still disappointing. He stepped out of the sand square. His legs felt steady, but the strange empty ache remained in his arm where he had used the purple flame. Teren looked down at his hand again.

"But I really need to learn more about magic." Edras did not answer.

"If you can't spare enough time to teach me…" Teren hesitated.

"Could I join the academy too?" The old mage's attention returned to him.

"I know I'm starting late," Teren continued.

"Cassian is the same age as me, and he's already a third-circle mage, while I can barely light a candle. But I have to start somewhere, right?" Edras remained quiet for a while. He set the tongs beside the damaged strip of iron, then slowly walked over to the table.

"I have already been considering sending you there," he finally said, "even before you asked me." Teren straightened.

"You have?" Edras pulled one of the chairs away from the wall and sat down. Teren lowered himself onto the floor beside the sand square, glad to take the weight off his legs after the lesson.

"Yes." The mage nodded.

"Though whether you can learn enough at Othmir is not what concerns me. You certainly can—you have already shown enough talent in this single hour, that it makes me wonder whether you might also be a prodigy. The question is whether sending you there is worth the danger."

"Because I'm a Corvadryn..."

"Yes. Because there is no longer a Corvadryn emperor sitting on a throne with an empire behind him to keep the enemies of his dynasty in line." Edras turned toward him.

"Your bloodline has been considered extinct for more than a century. Between the trap beneath my research hall and what you have told me about people trying to kill you, we already have more than enough reason to assume that revealing who you are would be extremely dangerous." Teren thought immediately of the white fire. There was still someone in Karthane who had burned him alive more than once, and he did not even know who they were.

"But keeping you here creates its own problems," Edras continued.

"As much as I would like to teach you myself, I simply cannot give you what a beginner requires." Teren frowned.

"Even though you're an archmage?"

"Being capable of teaching you and having the time to devote years of my life doing it are two very different things." Edras gestured around the training room.

"For decades, my interest in the Corvadryns was purely scholarly. Now I have an opportunity to study your bloodline directly, and believe me, I would very much like to do so. But I still have responsibilities to the duke, the city, and now this investigation." That reminded Teren of something he had wondered about since leaving the intake compound.

"Then why were you working at the gate compound? You seem too busy to spend your time checking newly arrived slaves."

"I wasn't there to check slaves," Edras said.

"The assistants you saw with me handle the ordinary magical screening there. I spend a few days each month at one of the entrance compounds, usually going there without much warning. I inspect their work, check that the safeguards for the city's mana barrier are functioning properly, and look into anything unusual the guards may have noticed."

"That makes sense, but I don't get why that needs an archmage."

"It doesn't. Recently, Marshal Yaros has heard reports suggesting that people connected to our enemies may already be operating inside Karthane. Sabotage, spies, people entering under false identities—we don't know how much of it is real yet. But with the situation along the borders getting worse with every passing month, Ordaan has ordered us to be more thorough about identifying any enemy agents coming into the city.

He decided to have someone he trusts making irregular checks rather than relying entirely on reports passed up through half a dozen officers." Teren nodded slowly.

"So you just happened to be at the western gate when I arrived?"

"Mostly." Edras paused.

"I had already been there longer than usual because Lady Elaryn was expected to enter Karthane through that gate sometime during the week. Her father had sent Duke Ordaan a letter before she left and we knew roughly when she would arrive and that she would have retainers with her. Although we were not told that she intended to travel to Karthane disguised among a slave caravan." That explained why Edras had looked genuinely surprised when he saw her in the yard.

Elaryn's father had deliberately left the disguise out of the letter so that an enemy agent intercepting it would not compromise her safety.

"So meeting you that day really was luck." The old mage nodded.

"Had you arrived a week earlier or later, one of my assistants would most likely have examined you instead." Teren knew what that probably meant. Without Edras there, the purple result at the intake assay would have brought the white fire down on him every single time before anyone even understood what was happening. Maybe he should be grateful that his arrival in this world had started with at least one piece of good luck. Edras paused for a few moments before continuing.

"Coming back to your earlier question, I do not have an entire academic program prepared for someone beginning from nothing. But Othmir does. At the Academy, you would have instructors teaching you every day, supervised practice, and other students to learn alongside and eventually delve into dungeons with." Teren hesitated, thinking about his last experience there.

"Does that mean I'd have to go into dungeons too?" Edras gave a short laugh.

"What else did you expect to do with your magic once you learned to use it?" Teren almost told him that, for now, surviving longer than a few days would be more than enough. But there was no way he could explain that to Edras. The question also made him think about what he had already seen in Karthane. The entire city depended heavily on its dungeon. In fact, he had heard that that was the very reason the city was founded here long ago.

Mana crystals, monster materials, alchemical ingredients, and even valuable meat came out of it. And judging by the equipment he had seen on the delvers outside Gate Seventeen, experienced delvers seemed to earn far more than ordinary laborers or city guards. Since arriving in this world, Teren had been far too busy just trying to stay alive to think much about how he would eventually earn a living. But if there really was no way back to Earth, he would have to build some kind of life here.

With no family, trade, or connections to fall back on, and with magic being the one valuable skill he might actually develop, dungeon delving seemed like the best option for now.

"I had been thinking I could join the military," Teren said.

"Would that make more sense than becoming an adventurer?"