Mage journeyman ordained.., p.1
Mage Journeyman: Ordained Magic: Book Two, page 1
Mage Journeyman
Ordained Magic: Book Two
Author: D. L. Harrison
Copyright 2024. This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, Places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Afterword:
About the Author
Other books by D. L. Harrison:
Book Description
Chapter One
The false dawn’s eastern horizon was a burnt orange with light pinks, the rest of the sky a dark blue. It was a bit cool in the sixties as the day started that early May morning. Just six weeks away from a full year since the world so drastically changed.
It’d become a habit to go out and watch the dawn, as I’d taken on the same schedule as my husband who worked a four to two shift four days a week. The dawn came after my private daily magical practice and workout, though that second was very light now since I was seven months pregnant, and happily married for two weeks before that. Deliriously happy. Carlos drove me crazy at times of course, but that was the nature of things.
The world had calmed down to the normal crazy levels of things, as opposed to anarchy and random destruction being constant and widespread. Some of the large mage groups in other cities around the world that had restored order weren’t nearly the same as ours, but they kept the peace and put down the crazies on a violent tear. It still happened of course, but not consistently or so widespread. Maybe a few times a month, worldwide.
I was out. Sort of. For a few days now. I called it my coming out without coming out plan. I mean, no announcements, I’d just stopped hiding and the Mia illusion had been retired. So far no one had said anything about it on social media or in the press. No one had publicly connected Mia with Maya Castro. Not even on social media.
Most of the mages in the San Antonio Mage Society had stopped hiding as well, which had also improved communication greatly. I had them all on my phone as contacts with their old fake pictures and new pictures to get used to the change. We could also use the communion spell in emergencies now. It was admittedly a little odd, trying to transfer the feelings and knowledge of someone to an entirely different appearance and voice.
Regardless, my company owned the small estate we’d just moved into, which was the main reason I’d stopped actively hiding. The connection was there, so there really was no point. It was a modest six-bedroom mansion just under five thousand square feet, on three acres which was walled and of course warded and protected by magic.
My company had also bought a small office. No more healing events, I had a shingle, mage healer. I was open two days a week, Thursday and Friday during the morning hours. No appointments, no assistants, just walk in with two hundred bucks or a credit card, and then walk out healed. I took care of about five hundred people per morning on average, a thousand a week, after donating half I walked away with about a hundred grand.
I also went to the homeless areas once a week to do some volunteer healing for free.
There were healers all over the U.S. The health and drug industries were collapsing as a result, and they were fighting hard. They were freaking out about it, and trying to push the government to do something, but they weren’t. Normally, they would of course, the corrupt cronyism and being outright bought would have them doing things for their buddies in the industry.
But not this time.
The government workers from bottom to top were far too terrified of us, to do anything stupid like that. There weren’t that many magic-less run human governments left after a year, and they were doing their best to avoid being toppled. Right or wrong, that’s how it was. In this case, I’d have to think it was right, not to put some rich dudes’ pockets before the health of the nation.
The industry wouldn’t completely go away, if nothing else the mental health portions of medical care and pharma would still be around once the rest shut their doors for good. Emergency care would also be a thing at times, but far reduced.
The mage society also had our own building on ten acres of land outside the city, where we met for training classes and meetings. Brett owned it. Saturday was the day for that, my classes were consecutive, though the initiate class was empty, so there were only two now. That would stay true until the next person to join the society, and that would happen eventually, if only when the next generation of mages grew up and some few of them qualified to join. Then after lunch on Saturday we had our weekly society meeting. Not everyone went to every one of them, but the core of the society did. Me, Jessica, Rosa, and Brett ran it and did most of the busy work to keep it going, I did the training and leading, the other three helped with the rest and all the details.
At the moment I was watching the sunrise, but also on occasion looking down at the table in shock and amusement. Wondering how stupid I was to have taken a full year to figure it out. To be fair, we were in a digital age, maybe I’d have figured it out sooner if I’d had to make a physical spell book.
It was so painfully obvious, in hindsight I mean, but I’d never once considered it before.
I mean, I had a lot of spells to maintain out there, linked to wards, all needing to be constantly recast at least once every three days. Two wards in each place, one to notify me, and one to activate the inactive spells. So three spells in each spot, two wards and the response spell.
Between protecting my husband Carlos, the house, the place of business, and the mage society building that was four locations and twelve spells. Not a huge deal, but also kind of a pain in the butt to keep up with. No one like a time-consuming repetitive task, but I’d done so out of vigilance to watch over and protect what was mine. I’d often thought of doing even more, but those four things were the minimum in my mind.
Like putting a ward at my parents’ house despite two mages living there already to defend it, they were family, and one at Bobby’s to keep an eye on our tech, advertising, and support guy. I was out now, but I had no intention in severing that relationship, true friends you could count on were too rare in this life, so I’d continue using him for ads and web support. He was definitely a help bury the body kind of friend.
Then there were ideas of a less serious priority but that would be nice. Such as wards to activate a cleanse spell when it detected the need, or a ward on the oven that told me when the food was perfectly done. With a kid coming a ward to tell me if he or she woke up in the night, or… a million other things. Maybe not that many, but I could see the wards and spells I used going up significantly if I pursued those kinds of ideas.
Lastly there was constantly recasting my own protection spells for instance or summoning my standard air elemental or earth elemental setups depending on the current need. Or ensuring my conceal magic spell doesn’t run out on anything including my own aura. All of that was even more constant, every three to six hours depending on the spell, but at least I didn’t have to travel anywhere for those.
And I was staring at the answer for it all. I laughed. It had to be a big step toward that mastery the gods had mentioned to me, and I felt a little silly in hindsight that I hadn’t figured it out long ago…
It was a warm mid-morning that same day, when I started my intermediate class. The one where they could cast one spell consistently, teaching them spell combinations that could be cast separately.
“Good morning, I have a surprise today.”
Rosa replied, “A good one I hope.”
My sister had just turned seventeen and would be finishing up her junior year this month. She was more mature than I’d been at that age, likely because of being a mage. Mages just couldn’t afford not to be in control of themselves, or to act without forethought. Learning not to do that with magic had translated into the rest of her life, I was extremely proud of my little sister.
“Have any of you considered the glyph handles the purpose of the spell? We further define it with our intent. The fire glyph stands for fire. Our intent narrows that purpose, to generating a candle flame or lighting a bonfire, even the heat and light can be adjusted with our intent and target. But fire is the constant. This morning I figured out we don’t need to hold that glyph in our minds, it just needs to exist. So, welcome to my first class in enchanting.”
“Enchanting?”
I grinned, “First I’ll go over how, then I’ll go over the various advantages and disadvantages that I’ve discovered or thought of.”
I cast an earth spell and a smooth flat stone rose up out of the ground, then I cast a second earth spell and carved the light spell glyph onto the stone.
“Okay, so all I’m going to do is feed it magic, and my intent. I don’t need to hol
Carl asked, “That’s cool, but how does it help?”
“Give it a minute. I didn’t put hardly any magic into it.”
We all waited, and the spell faded as did the light. I took a step toward it and put my foot against it.
“Now, watch this. It’s already glowing a little, and it’s going to get stronger. The glyph and intent that I fed it is permanent. It won’t work forever, it will consume its magic, but to keep it going all you have to do is charge it. And it will automatically charge off your aura if you’re holding it or it’s on your person.
“Enchantments you hold are super easy, since it will just keep working forever. For instance, this morning I etched the protection spell I cast on myself all the time, in my wedding ring band. I never need to worry about it running out again, nor the hidden magic that I use to hide it and the other one I use to hide my aura. It’s just… always on, my aura constantly feeding it the magic it needs. Even if I took it off, and it drained, all I’d have to do is put it back on, and then feed it a surge of magic to power it up. No glyph in my mind, and no intent, which is the key to the second part of this awesomesauce.
“Enchantments away from us are almost as easy to maintain. You know all those spells and wards to trigger them you have all over the place. Well, you can set them up as enchantments that are easier to recharge, without recasting the spell each time, no need for glyphs or intents, just add more magic. Just like you can recharge a ward, you can recharge any spell if it’s physically represented, enchanted.
“So you could carve in the conceal magic, two wards, and the protection spell into your house’s foundation. Then charge it.
“I’ve already covered some of the advantages, merely in the explanation of how it works. Now for the really cool advantage. Elementals don’t think like we do, they can’t cast spells at all, intents or glyphs, but they can and do use their magic, and they are able to channel their magic. Which means, anyone?”
Rosa’s eyes widened, “They can charge enchantments,” she said in breathy disbelief.
I nodded, “Bingo. You can summon an elemental once a day, and then send it to charge all your enchantments around your house, your office, the people you’ve given protections to, and as many other things as you want. That’s the largest advantage, no more running around. Just takes a second to summon an elemental and send it off on its charging errand.
Jessica asked, “You mentioned downsides?”
“Yes. The first I’ll mention is wards shouldn’t be overused. Personal protections, and the wards and magic you have elsewhere, it’s best to stop there. You could make an enchant for almost everything, but I’d urge you to only do so for repetitive tasks and not to greatly add to those unless you wouldn’t be doing it anyway.
“Reason being if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. Casting daily is important, focusing on multiple glyphs and intents, improving to the point you can double cast, is critical. I’d considered the idea of making two elemental enchantments, to make it easier to summon my air and earth elementals with the associated intents and spell buffs. I decided not to, in the end.
“If you build a life where you’re doing nothing but charging via elemental or merely wearing the enchantment, you will lose your mental clarity and edge over time. Otherwise, you’ll likely just die if you run into a deadly challenge that requires creativity and a new spell configuration to solve. Quick thinking and spellcasting will still be much faster than finding and triggering a physical glyph among many you might think to carry.
“My plan is to only replace those defensive spells and ward combination spells that I’m constantly casting and travelling for, and is a pain to keep up with. Everything else I do, I’m going to just use spellcasting for. I may add other things, like a ward to notify me when the food’s done in the oven. Things I never used magic for before, because it just seemed not truly needed and would just add one more stop to my charging tasks, but that would be convenient now that I can use an elemental for the task.
“So try to keep that in mind, don’t try to fully replace casting with enchanting, save where truly needed for time management, and keep up your daily practice to keep your minds sharp and decrease your reaction time and hone your instincts. On the other hand, I’m sure we all have things we’d have liked to be doing, but weren’t doing because of time constraints, well we can add those things with enchantments. Help protect a wider circle of friends and family, and the like.
“The second disadvantage is anyone can use your enchantment or reset the intents behind it if they get access to it. So, I’d really advise not making weapons enchantments at all. Enchantments can also be changed by anyone, so include that as a trigger in your notification glyphs, so you’ll know if anyone is messing with your stuff. Imagine coming home and your own defenses turn against you kind of thing, so it’s something to keep in mind. It’s safe enough, as long as you remember to compensate for it.”
Rosa said, “That’s amazing. You used your rings?”
I nodded, “The physical glyph is the spell, so if it’s damaged it will stop working. So I’d suggest metal as the best medium, something hard to damage. It would work with a pencil and paper, or on fabric, but it wouldn’t last very long. Using metals or stone also allows you to use the earth spell to carve it in from memory, without worrying about making a mistake.
“Also, on the advantage side we no longer have to depend on a ward to keep our protection active through the night, by activating an inactive spell if it senses a threat. The spell will simply run forever, as long as we don’t lose the enchantment and another mage doesn’t knock it down.
“On the downside again, we’re still limited to one elemental, so I wouldn’t advise enchanting an elemental summoning. I also learned this morning that an elemental can’t charge the enchantment that binds it to this plane.”
Rosa tilted her head, “But mine could charge yours, and yours could charge mine.”
I frowned, then laughed, “That would probably work, but so would keeping the elemental enchantment on our bodies. It’s still a bad idea. If in a duel, casting an elemental of a certain kind with a certain buffing spell is critical by situation and in accordance with what the other mage is doing with magic. It’s too integral to fighting tactics to risk losing our edge in casting it, which is one of the reasons I decided not to automate that, even if it would be convenient to always have an air elemental on standby without casting it five or six times a day. It’s good practice to do so.
“As always, that’s just advice, you can all do what you want to with enchantments, but I’d advise against it strongly. My point though with that, is if you thought of using an elemental enchantment as a guard for your home or a loved one. That enchantment could be triggered and then you wouldn’t be able to cast a second elemental while it was active, which would be bad if you got into a duel.
“You could always dismiss the enchanted one first, but chances are the ward would trigger again before you could cast one with your mind. Granted, it’s not a very likely scenario, but at the same time it is possible and extremely critical. Best not to chance it.”
Elementals were extremely important in battle, since it effectively doubled the power potential and damage a mage could cause. If I was caught without being able to use an elemental, it was likely I’d lose that fight, even with the advanced spell combinations I knew.
Jessica said, “You could also use them for a safety net. Say a ward and heal enchantment, that would heal you if it detects you’re wounded and unconscious or unable to think straight.”
I grinned, “Awesome idea, now you’re seeing it, and I hadn’t thought of that. I’ll be doing that myself. Enchantments will be a huge leap forward in mastering the possibilities.”
So much so, that I was tempted to cast communion and see if the gods would teach me more now, but I decided to master the use of enchantments first. I was fairly sure I’d mastered casting, and I’d found most if not all of the spell synergies in doing so over the last year. Enchantments just might be the last step in mastery, but then it might not. I supposed I’d find out one way or another, after I felt I’d reached a place of surety with enchantment possibilities.
