69 Low Winds
1495 Words
After a lengthy discussion of specifications and requirements over drinks, the alchemists packed up their things and went on their merry way.
Master Sandor was happy to find that there was nothing unusual in his field. The possibility that they had simply found a great combination of soil and plant by accident is just one of the many things that are so exciting about Wayward. Janus wanted nothing more than to taste the dish that everyone's been raving about for the past few days.
After they bid their farewells and pleasantries, Haruna asked something from the farmer.
"Master Sandor, forgive me but is there something about that tree that's out of the ordinary?"
She pointed to a large oak that was at the edge of the plot. It had a thick base that was around four meters wide and spread its branches to the sky. It was right in the middle of springtime but this tree didn't have much in the way leaves. Janus thought looked like a Halloween decoration that sprouted from the ground.
"Well it's funny you should say that, my lady. My daughter and the other kids swear they could hear voices from inside the trunk. I've checked it out myself and it's completely hollow, so we never bothered to cut the tree down. We just left it as a designated marker to distinguish my plot and Mr. Toole's over yonder."
"Just as I thought. Thank you kindly Mr. Sandor. Now Prince Janus, time to test your skill. Looks like we've found the perfect training ground."
"Are ye sure my lady?" asked the farmer. "My kid swears that the wind blows like crazy over there, I'd be careful if I were you."
"Oh, it's nothing I can't handle. But thank you for your concern." She winked.
The perfect training ground? Janus hesitated for a moment. Then followed.
It was nearing noon but the heat wasn't too strong, and the breeze was lovely. They walked through the corners of the fields where the grass was vibrant and rich, making way through the grazing cows and sheep.
Haruna walked lightly as if she was walking on a palace floor, but Janus struggled to find his footing across the thick porous soil while dodging the occasional cow and goat dung. He could swear this woman was using magic, but a quick glance with his arcane vision showed no sign of it. She was simply graceful in how she held herself, and Janus admired her for that.
Not only that, she had a way of finding scening pieces of land, usually underneath trees.
This particular one had little in the way of shade. But the branches were big enough that they could comfortably cover them from the sun.
"Is this a picnic?" Janus asked. "Are you bringing packed lunches in there somewhere that I couldn't see?"
"Very funny." she said. "I already told you, this is your first training ground. Look." She pointed above, to where the apex of the branches was. The wind swooped across them, hitting her hair and her skirt, which exposed a fair bit of her legs.
"Do you see it?" she asked.
"I only see branches."
"Use your magic, silly."
"Oh right."
He focused his vision towards the top of the tree. It was around ten meters high, but he found that he could do it even easier now. The arcane vision enhanced the contours of its shape. He immediately sensed that the tree was indeed hollow. The wind blew stronger again, that he had to move the hair from his face."
"Do you see it now?"
"No, what am I looking at?"
"Up there!"
He followed her finger, and there it was. A pulsing orb of blue and green light that swirled around the top of the tree. That was where the wind was coming from.
"Is that a will-o-wisp?"
"Not quite." Haruna inched closer to him.
"That's a wind geist. A manifestation of air and corrupt arcane energies that can form a being of primitive sentience. A mini wind elemental if you will. It can't do anything more than blow strong winds when threatened. It tends to live on trees that were once hit by lightning. That explains the condition of the tree. This is the perfect way for you to practice your arcane vision and blocking techniques."
"How am I supposed to-- ow!"
The orb pulsed violently and disappeared from his view. A gust of wind blew towards him from the opposite direction. Throwing him to the ground. Haruna, who was standing beside him was holding up a barrier only enough to cover herself. She stood there, smiling. Completely unmoved.
"Try to track it with arcane vision, and be careful not to be blown away. Let's do this for an hour, I'll coach you from that tree stump over there. Good luck."
"Wait, I need----" but before Janus could say a word, he was blown away again. This time from the other direction.
He tried to shield himself again and again, but he couldn't manage to build a hexagon barrier in time to defend the wind geist's next attack. He would occasionally flip the order of the two spells together, holding out the barrier before even seeing the creature, which would then attack him from a different angle.
"You're in the wind geists' territory, and it doesn't like the way you're looking at it with all that arcane energy pulsing inside of you. Try to use as little as possible, and deflect its attacks as you see them." Haruna called from the stump about ten meters behind him.
"Easy for you to say." Janus murmured.
"I heard that!"
That was the longest hour of Janus' day. By the end of it, he was aching, bruising and was sporting a massive headache. He had hit the gheist with the barrier a few times, but Haruna wouldn't count it as a win. "You were using too much energy, five hexagonal tiles are enough. Don't brute force your way out of this. You can't control large spells without mastering it's small components first." Was what he heard again and again.
At the end of the hour, she called it quits, and she showed him his score.
"You successfully defended 2 out of 58 attacks. That's around three percent. Now you're looking more like a novice. We'll come back tomorrow then. Don't worry, the geist should still be here to kick your butt." She winked.
Haruna wasn't joking when she said that his mind would be stretched. They had lectures in the afternoons and in the evenings she had him sketch a thousand repetitions of the hexagonal shape of the barrier. Saying that drawing the shapes by hand will make you better at forming them with your mind. That exercise took him until midnight to complete, cutting his reading time by half.
She wasn't lying. The next session they had managed to defend 20% of the geist's attacks. She yelled instructions to him like a hawk, while a mass of guards and children watched beside her to cheer him on as he fought an invisible ghost.
Teeko and Halbur's research yielded great results for his hypothesis. They tried different types of crops against other types of soil, and by far the sweet potato theory held true. Janus decided to take advantage of this and ordered the Elders and the council to plant more of the vegetable, not only to meet the demand on sweet potato noodles but also to leverage their trade. Something that grew as quickly and efficiently as this would give a good boost to their economy.
He had finally tasted Master Rufus' recipe after they apologized profusely. Apparently, they have been frantically trying to keep up with the citizens clamouring for the dish that they totally forgot serving him while he was in the infirmary.
Janus heard none of it. He was completely enamoured by the dry noodle dish. Which he ate with Haruna while she discussed her lessons and taught him better techniques in managing different spells.
She was the type of teacher that would check every angle and record every one of his performances. After five days of this training regiment and thousands of freehand sketches of hexagons during the night, he was able to achieve a 95% success.
They moved on to expelling the wind geist that lived in the tree. After weeks of scouring through data on flash storms with Preeni, they finally concluded that the storms were caused by these tiny creatures. They observed that when these creatures congregated, they would create a huge disturbance in the air strong enough to create a spontaneous storm.
To fight the wind geist's, Haruna taught Janus how to use small fireballs. She set up barriers on every corner just in case and had Janus sketch two lines in quick succession the night before for a thousand times. Fireballs are made by creating a spark of friction, which is formed by striking two lines of arcane as fast as possible before harnessing it through the air.
On his first session, he managed to create a small spark, on the third day he hurled his first fireball, and on the fourth, he destroyed his first geist.
- Writer
