Zenith of Sorcery

“Once you become rank one mages, you will be able to perform magic spells,” Marcus said, beginning his lecture, “but in order to do so, you will have to take control of the ambient mana around you and shape it. Each spell has a structure, a spell boundary made out of logos that defines what it is, and therefore what it does.”

To help them visualize this, Marcus waved his hand in front of him and cast a basic light spell. He deliberately held back his logos core and spirit, casting the spell in the crudest, most basic way possible. He was long past casting spells by drawing upon the thin ambient mana that currently surrounded him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t do it this way if he wanted to.

A complicated diagram made out of glowing sigils materialized in the air for a moment, visible streams of energy converging on it from every corner of the room, until it suddenly flashed and condensed into a fist-sized ball of light.

It bobbed up and down in the air for a moment and then, guided by Marcus’s mental command, zipped around the room a few times, startling his students.

“Your abilities to sense, gather and manipulate mana – commonly referred to as your shaping skills – are absolutely crucial at this level,” Marcus said. “You will have to learn basic gestures and chants, but that is honestly the easy part. It’s just a matter of memorization and repetition. The hard part will be developing said shaping skills. The better they are the more ambient mana you will be able to draw in. Better shaping skills also means you’ll be able to construct more complicated spell boundaries and therefore cast more powerful and versatile spells.”

“I heard that rank one mages are entirely dependent on their environment to cast spells,” Regulus commented. “And that they aren’t allowed to leave the academy without escort from a genuine mage.”

“It’s true. Rank one mages have no mana of their own, and must gather ambient mana from the land around them to cast anything,” Marcus said. Back in the Great Sea Academy, a student interrupting a lecture like Regulus had done would be met with harsh sanctions, but those lectures were given to many students at once and maintaining discipline was hard. Marcus was in charge of a much smaller group and didn’t mind if they interrupted him to ask questions. At least they were paying attention. “In most academies, they are called apprentices, and are not considered real mages. However, even when you move past this level, you shouldn’t look down on these ‘apprentices’ as defenseless. A spell cast by a rank one mage is just as good as the one cast by a rank two mage.”

His students seemed dubious at his statement.

“Teacher, everyone knows that mages of higher rank are better at everything than those beneath them,” Diocles told him.

“Well, then everyone is wrong,” Marcus told him. “If a rank one mage and a rank two mage both cast the same spell, and neither makes any mistakes, the result will be identical. Both spells will hit just as hard, and the two will be evenly matched.”

Most of them seemed mystified at his words, squirming, frowning, and giving each other weird looks. What he was saying went against everything they knew about the ranking system used by adepts. What were ranks of power is not an indication of when someone was utterly beyond your ability to defeat?

However, Marcus knew what he was talking about. He stayed silent, curious at what they would say next.

“So there is no difference between a rank one and rank two mage?” Cricket asked uncertainly.

“Of course there is a difference,” Marcus told her. He gave her a look like she’s stupid.

“I- I mean, if a rank two mage has no advantage against a rank one mage…” Cricket said, fumbling a little under the weight of his gaze.

“Of course he has an advantage over a rank one mage,” Marcus cut her off.

Cricket pressed her lips in disapproval, probably guessing he was messing with her in some way.

Marcus glanced at Regulus and Iris.

“You two surely know what I’m talking about,” he told them. “Why not share it with the rest of the group?”

“Err, I really don’t know too much,” Regulus said.

“Rank two mages have more mana,” Iris said blandly. This entire lecture was probably a waste of time for her, but since she hadn’t informed Marcus about her level of knowledge, he was going to make her listen to all this anyway. This was the price of secrecy. “Their spells aren’t necessarily better, but they can cast more of them, and faster. They can just overpower any rank one mage they encounter.”

“They have an internal pool of mana they can tap into,” Regulus added. “They don’t have to gather mana from the environment to cast spells.”

“But they can always just switch to using ambient mana when their internal mana pool runs out, right?” Volesus asked dubiously. Marcus nodded. “Sounds like rank two mages are just plain better than rank one mages, then.”

“Ranks do matter,” Marcus told him. “However, it’s very important that you always remember this: ranks aren’t everything. You must keep in mind what exactly makes a specific rank better. Each rank of power has some defining feature that gives mages who possess it a major advantage over everyone beneath them, but that advantage doesn’t apply to everything and isn’t insurmountable. An ambush. Environmental advantage. Better spells. More combat experience. A dirty trick or two. Any one of these could allow a mage of lower rank to defeat those higher than them. You must never underestimate your opponents, even if you outrank them.”

His students were quiet for a moment.

“I get that we should remain humble,” Volesus said. He sounded uncharacteristically hesitant, picking his words carefully. “But how often does this really happen? A rank of lower rank beating a higher rank mage, I mean.”

“At low ranks like this? All the time,” Marcus told him. “In great academies, students get a solid education in mana shaping, go through regular drills and tests to make sure their chants and gestures are quick and instinctive, and they have a wide array of spells to learn and practice with. However, out there in the world, there are many mages of far humbler means. Some of them are so starved for guidance that they never advance past rank one. They stay apprentices all their lives. As for the ones that do advance to rank two, many of them know only a handful of spells. Many are also practicing shoddy foundational techniques that leave their internal mana reserves small and unstable. When people like that get pitted in battle against apprentices from the great academies, they very often lose.”

“Between these two extremes,” Marcus continued, “there is a wide range of skill levels. People from smaller academies that have solid foundations but often lack a wide spell selection. Members of small clans and magical families with strange and powerful, but highly specialized skills. Adepts of other paths, whose power can be hard to judge. Outranking your opponent is a huge advantage, but you must underestimate anyone.”

Admittedly, surprise defeats were less common at higher ranks. But part of that was due to adepts being far more experienced at that level, and thus much less likely to misjudge and underestimate their opponent.

And he didn’t want to get into technicalities here. His goal was to make them think twice when facing people and not die due to sheer arrogance, something that has led to the deaths of many talented young mages over the centuries.

“Do we have to fight?” Claudia asked.

“No,” Marcus shook his head. “There is no requirement to fight and kill to progress through the ranks. Supposedly, some hermits managed to rise in ranks and ascend to the Outer Heavens while meditating alone in caves or painting their latest masterpiece and whatnot.” Though Marcus had never personally witnessed such a thing. “However, the more powerful you become, the harder it becomes to do this.”

“Why?” Claudia asked.

“In order to become powerful, you are probably standing on the shoulders of giants. You are an inheritor of an old and powerful legacy. Somebody invested a lot of time and effort to teach you the basics of the craft, and protected you while you were weak. You are probably a member of an organization, and have friends and family. When these things are threatened and people come knocking on your door, asking for help, it’s difficult to stay uninvolved. And as you involve yourself in things, you will likely start collecting enemies, whether you want it or not,” Marcus explained. He tapped his chin thoughtfully, trying to think of a specific example. “Let’s say that you come back from your training one day and see me being brutally attacked. What would you do?”

Claudia gave him a blank look.

“Imagine I’m not capable of defending myself,” Marcus clarified. “It’s all happening when you’re all grown and powerful, and I’ve grown feeble and weak. I’m lying on the ground and a hooded man in a blood red robe, his face obscured in darkness, is standing over me with a staff raised over his head, ready to finish me off. Surely you would come to the defense of your teacher, right?”

“I…” Claudia began, swallowing heavily. “I would scream for someone to help us, definitely!”

Marcus’s lip twitched slightly. This girl…

“Now he wants to silence you,” he told her. “He can’t risk you revealing his identity later. You have to fight, or be killed.”

“You said his face is obscured in darkness,” Volesus pointed out.

“Shut up,” Marcus told him. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

He shook his head. They were getting sidetracked.

“Never mind. We should go back to discussing mage ranks anyway,” he said. “As you’ve already heard from Iris and Regulus, the thing that makes rank two mages special is that they have formed a spiritual vessel gathered from the environment for later use. Tapping into these internal mana reserves allows rank two mages to skip the mana gathering step of casting a spell, and gives them a safe mana pool to draw from when the ambient mana has been exhausted or corrupted by some influence. Thus, they can cast spells faster and more often than a rank one mage.”

“Creating an internal pool of mana is not an easy feat,” Marcus continued. “The process of its creation is essentially a very complicated and demanding spell. You need extremely good shaping skills to pull it off, mental fortitude to maintain focus for long periods of time, and lots and lots of mana. More mana than there is available around our tower.”

“What? Then where do we get enough mana to do it?” Cricket asked.

“Either a potent mana potion, or a magical material that can release a massive burst of mana when destroyed,” Marcus said. “Various arcane crystals would suffice. Both options are pricy, but you don’t have to worry about that. When it is time for you to advance, I will provide you with whatever is necessary. For now, all you need to know is that you can’t just form your mana reserves on a whim – you will need expensive materials, and a quiet place where you won’t be attacked or distracted by anything for large stretches of time. When you think you are ready, come find me and I will help you make the necessary arrangements.”

Marcus knew that some of his students, particularly Volesus, felt that he wasn’t providing them with enough support, but that was only in regards to things Marcus regarded as luxuries. If he actually thought something would help them advance through the ranks faster without damaging their foundations, he wouldn’t be miserly about it.

Some adepts deliberately withheld advancement resources from their students in order to make them fight each other for things, believing that conflict and competition for between students fostered excellence. However, Marcus did not think much of that school of thought. He didn’t want to deal with his students scheming against one another and turning to dark magic to keep up with his top students. He had certain minimal expectations out of his students, and so long as those were met, he would not abandon any of them.

Admittedly those minimal expectations were quite high by Great Sea standards. But Marcus also felt that they were very much achievable.

They needed to live up to the name of Zenith Academy.

“If rank one mages are apprentices, what are rank two mages called?” Cassia asked.

“Just mages,” Marcus told her. “The vast majority of mages out there are rank two. In the great academies, only a fifth of rank two mages manages to advance into the third rank. In the smaller academies, the numbers are even worse. In comparison, almost every rank one mage eventually advanced to second rank, unless they come from seriously weak magical traditions. So most powers consider rank two mages to be standard from which everything else is judged.”

“So what makes rank three so difficult to achieve?” Regulus asked.

“You don’t know?” Marcus asked. He thought for sure a studious young man like him would have the entire mage ranking system memorized a hundred times over.

“I don’t,” Regulus said, shaking his head. “Adria’s library doesn’t allow books about mages beyond second rank to be distributed to non-mages.”

Hm. That was true, but Marcus expected the Uticensis family to ignore such things and inform Regulus about mage ranks and all kinds of secret things anyway.

Strange.

“Third rank mages are also known as logos mages,” Marcus told them. “Their defining trait is that they have managed to assimilate a fragment of the world’s logos into themselves. Some of you might remember my speech about how the world is made out of words, and how this language of creation is what everything is made of, you and I included. That may have seemed like pure nonsense, but logos, the language that defines creation, is very much real. In fact, you are already interacting with it when you perform the Soul Tree Technique, even if you cannot sense the underlying logos of the technique at this level of skill.”

“Is it possible for some of us to have already felt it?” Julia asked. “Sometimes while practicing the Soul Tree Technique I kind of think the trees are talking to me.”

Renatus and Cricket sniggered at her, causing her to give them a contemptuous look.

“That is likely just a consequence of your wood affinity,” Marcus told her. Or she just imagined it and it was all in her head. “I doubt any of you can sense the logos of the trees around us, but even if you did, it wouldn’t do you much good at the moment.”

“Oh! Because we don’t have our own mana reserves yet, right?” Claudia asked.

“That’s right,” Marcus confirmed. “Even if you could sense and isolate a fragment of logos, you don’t have anywhere to put it. You need a vessel that can hold it. For mages, that is our internal mana reservoir.”

“Storage space…” Renatus mumbled to himself, too low for the other students to hear him.

“Anyway, isolating a logos fragment is already not an easy task, but the trouble comes when it’s time to assimilate it into your mana reserves. Logos defines reality. Mana is fuel for magic, easily influenced. When you drop a logos fragment into a pool of mana, it will exert influence upon it and whip it into a frenzy. It’s like trying to swallow a storm seed. If your mana reserves are too shallow or unstable, or you try to force things before you are ready, you could render your mana reserves unusable or even tear them to pieces. You could drop straight back to rank one instead of advancing.”

They all looked horrified at the idea.

Well, except for Iris, who just kept staring at him with those disturbing blood red eyes.

And Helvran, who was listening to his lecture without saying anything. Everything that Marcus was saying was common knowledge among great powers, so Raven Temple as a whole definitely knew all this… but maybe Helvran didn’t? He’d have to ask him about it later. Maybe the priest would be willing to tell him the basics about how the priest ranking system worked in return? That probably wasn’t some deep secret either.

“Um, how common is it to fail like that?” Claudia asked.

“Not too common,” Marcus lied. “I’m sure you’ll do fine, with an amazing teacher like me guiding you. In any case, the benefits of having a logos fragment assimilated are great. Earlier I told you that spells cast by apprentices and those cast by standard mages are essentially identical. However logos-boosted spells are stronger and more flexible than regular spells. They hit harder, and can be modified in limited ways to better suit the caster. The thing to keep in mind is that there are many kinds of logos, and a logos fragment can only enhance spells related to it in some way.”

“Elemental magic,” Agron stated.

“Elemental logos is the most common type of logos that mages assimilate, because it’s by far the easiest typo of logos to handle,” Marcus said. “But it is not the only option. There are also logos of animals and magical creatures, logos of man-made items like swords and books, and logos of more nebulous things such as mirrors, strength, and gates. As a rule, the more abstract and nebulous something is, the harder it is to isolate its logos and assimilate it into yourself. Magical things are better sources of logos than mundane things. Things that have you have a personal connection or long history with are easier to assimilate.”

“Things that have a patron god are easier to assimilate,” Helvran added.

Really? Hm.

“Why is elemental logos so simple?” Agron asked. “Things like air and fire cannot be grasped by hand and are pretty nebulous. Why are they easier to assimilate than, say… the logos of sword and arrow?”

“Because air and fire have their own elemental plane,” Marcus explained. “Every ‘element’ is basically a heavenly ideal. The elemental planes are also called Inner Heavens, and are actually older than the Outer Heavens where the gods reside today. This gives elemental logos more weight, since they are something of an echo of an old order of the world.”

“Older than the six heavens?” Julia asked. “But didn’t the gods create the world?”

“I don’t know how that works, exactly. This is history that predates our entire civilization, told to us by the spirits of the other planes and world-walking travelers from other planets,” Marcus told her. “I can only assume the gods are older than the Outer Heavens themselves, because even the denizens of those realms agree that the elemental planes existed first. There was a great war sometime after creation, which pit the nascent Outer Planes against the elemental powers of the time. The elemental planes lost, and lost much of their power and prestige. Nonetheless, they remain highly influential, and their elemental logos is woven deep into the fabric of creation.”

“There are so many elemental logos,” Regulus noted. “Are there really so many elemental planes? They must outnumber the six heavens by a lot!”

Marcus shook his head.

“There are only six elemental planes at the moment,” he said. “The same as there are Outer Planes. However, it hasn’t always been that way. Elemental planes are much more chaotic and changeable than the Outer Heavens. At one point there were only four elemental planes, then as many as eighteen, and now there are six. However, just because the associated elemental plane is gone, doesn’t meant its logos is gone for good as well. The six common elements – air, earth, fire, water, ice, and lightning – have their own elemental heaven. The other elements - the exotic ones, are simply those whose elemental plane no longer exists.”

“If having every elemental plane has its own powerful and easy to learn logos, then surely the six heavens also have one too?” Renatus said.

“No, and I’ll come back as to why later,” Marcus said. “For now, let’s go back to mage ranks. Assimilating one logos fragment is not the end when it comes to logos mages. A mage can assimilate more than one logos fragment – as many as their spiritual vessel can hold. The deeper their mana reserves and the more stable it is, the more logos fragments they can accumulate. Dozens, even hundreds of logos fragments can be gathered by a single mage. The more they can acquire, the better… but they should ideally be compatible, not just with the mage itself, but also with each other, because in order to advance into a rank four mage, the mage must combine as many of them as they can into a single core. They must forge these isolated fragments into a true logos foundation.”

“This is difficult, and not just in terms of skill,” Marcus told them. “Any incompatible fragment that cannot fit into the foundation must be discarded, which can be… hard to accept. Imagine if you had spent years of your life comprehending and assimilating the logos of fire and logos of ice at the same time, only to realize you cannot figure out a way to fuse both of them into a single foundation.”

“Is that even possible?” Agron asked. “Fire and ice sound like complete opposites.”

“Of course it is. Everything is part of the same grand design, so everything around us is already compatible with each other in some way,” Marcus said. “But just because the way exists, doesn’t mean you will find it, and combining literal opposites like fire and ice is extremely difficult. In the example I used, the mage would have to either throw away the entire logos of fire or the entire logos of ice… or give up on the idea of ever advancing past third rank.”

“Can’t he just keep one part of the logos as fragments?” Renatus asked.

“No,” Marcus said. “Once they have a logos foundation, mages no longer need to worry about destabilizing their mana reserves and can freely assimilate as many logos fragments as they can find in the world around them… but these fragments must be compatible with their foundation. Anything they cannot fit into their personal ideal will be rejected. If the foundation was made by fusing a small number of logos fragments, it will be difficult to build upon it after its creation, and it will be very difficult to incorporate weakly-related logos into it. On the other hand, a comprehensive foundation made by fusing hundreds of logos fragments into it will be easy to expand upon and might even accommodate completely unrelated logos into its structure.”

“Then why doesn’t everyone just go for a bigger, more comprehensive foundation?” Renatus asked.

Regulus let out a frustrated sigh. “Do you even have to ask? It’s obviously impossibly difficult. From what I know, almost every mage specializes in just one element or type of magic. Teacher is highly unusual for being good at so many things.”

“That is true, but even among specialists there are good ones and bad ones,” Marcus warned him. "There is a big difference between a fire elementalist who has a really comprehensive foundation and can freely incorporate related elements like smoke and lava, perhaps even adding trace elements of something unusual like swords and flowers… and a fire elementalist that can only handle pure fire logos and nothing else. It’s fine to specialize, but even specialists want a wide, solid foundation.”

“So what do foundation mages get out of advancing anyway?” Volesus asked.

“First, having a foundation means you passively generate your own mana,” Marcus explained. “Lower rank mages have their own mana reserves, but they still have to gather mana from the environment to replenish them. And the quality of that mana is basically identical to the ambient mana around us, just more concentrated and convenient to use. Foundation mages, on the other hand, have their own source of mana, cut off from the land and attuned to their own soul and specialties. It replenishes fast, bends easily to their will, and it resists outside influences. It is harder to taint and corrupt, and enemies will find it harder to drain your mana reserves, disrupt your spells, and curse you.”

“And they can still use ambient mana if they must?” Volesus asked.

“Of course,” Marcus said. “In addition, having a foundation allows you to affect the world around you in simply ways with no need to use an actual spell. By simply shaping your personal mana and visualizing a desired effect, you can perform simple magical effects like lighting candles or producing a gust of wind. Of course, you can only produce effects related to your foundation. An ice elementalist cannot light a handle without a spell. I’m not particularly good at this kind of unstructured magic, but some specialists have turned it into a real art form and others claim the ability saved their lives more times than they can count.”

“Doing magic by just wishing for it. That’s amazing,” Volesus said appreciatively. “I definitely want to do that!”

“Work hard and anything is possible,” Marcus said. “As I said, I’m no good at that, but I can find you someone to teach you what I cannot.”

“So do foundation mages lose the ability to cast spells they have no foundation for?” Regulus asked.

“Not at all,” Marcus assured him. “Everything a lower rank mage can cast, a foundation mage can cast too. However, they obviously cannot enhance and modify spells if they lose logos fragments related to them. So at least in some aspects, they may actually get weaker than they were by advancing to fourth rank.”

Mages sometimes refused to advance to fourth rank for this very reason, determined to either find a way to incorporate all of their logos fragments into a foundation or die as a simple logos mage. For this reason, some academies really didn’t like it when mages practiced multiple elements like Marcus did. This was another reason why the Soul Tree Technique was disfavored by the Great Sea Academy. It encouraged students to experiment with many different spells and elements, which then led to an overly broad focus that was difficult to fuse into a usable foundation.

Marcus waited for a few seconds to see if anyone would ask more questions, but no one did. He decided to move on to the fifth and arguably the most mysterious rank of power.

“And at last, we come to the fifth rank, also known as spirit manifestation,” Marcus said. “I’m sure you heard of this one. Mages undergo a fundamental transformation when they achieve this rank. They consume their logos core in order to awaken an immortal spirit inside themselves. From that point on, their spells have a measure of life and consciousness of their own, and will proactively seek to do the mage’s bidding, even things they weren’t deliberately ordered to do. They will not harm their caster and their allies, they will seek out flaws in their opponent’s defenses, and will harmonize well with other spells made by the same mage. They are hard to dispel; they can absorb mana from the environment to power themselves and regenerate minor damage done to them like a living being. A spirit manifestation mage can also create completely novel spells by recording specific facets of their spirit, allowing mages of lower rank to duplicate some of their abilities. Oh, and becoming a spirit adept also prolongs your lifespan by 20 to 40 years, depending on the person.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“A spirit adept can also ascend to the Outer Heavens and live forever,” Helvran noted from the sidelines. “Well, potentially. No one lives forever, but spirit entities don’t age. If you can avoid getting killed, you could live for thousands of years.”

“Yeah, everyone knows about spirit adepts and how amazing they are,” Volesus confirmed. Whether they explicitly said so or not, everyone who became an adept secretly dreamed of reaching this level, and even regular people knew what becoming a spirit adept meant. “But how does one become a spirit mage? I heard it’s really, really difficult. As in, impossibly difficult! But surely our amazing teacher knows some secret technique-”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but no one knows the secret to becoming a spirit manifestation mage,” Marcus interrupted him. “Spirit manifestation requires a… mysterious something. A spark of enlightenment. An insight about the world around you, a breakthrough in your personal skills, perhaps an acknowledgment from the gods themselves. Nobody knows, but once you have it, you will know. Your logos foundation will determine what kind of spirit you manifest, and will serve as fuel for the transformation. You will be wreathed in ghostly flames and illusory emanations related to your logos, ascending to the rank of spirit adepts. You can suppress the transformation if the spark of inspiration comes at an inconvenient time, but it cannot be induced artificially. If it could, there would be a lot more spirit adepts walking around us.”

“So you advanced to fifth rank without actually knowing what to do?” Renatus asked. Marcus nodded. “That’s weird.”

“Spirit manifestation is arguably the most mysterious rank of power,” Marcus told them. “On the bright side, I don’t think the process can actually fail once it starts. I guess you could get killed during the process itself, but if you receive the sign, you definitely have everything you need.”

“In any case, there have been a lot of theories throughout history as to what makes one eligible to achieve a spirit rank so I will state some,” he continued. “Some people have claimed that it’s just a matter of having a good enough logos foundation – if you can’t advance, it means there is something wrong with your foundation. Others claim it’s just a matter of finding the right inspiration, and that if you’re stuck at fourth rank you should do things like travel the world, take up a hobby, and meet new people until you essentially roll the right dice and get a moment of enlightenment. Some posit that the universe is a giant story and that you should strive to emulate some kind of character archetype or otherwise make yourself more ‘interesting’. Some believe your renown and fame is a tangible force, and strive to be eye-catching and perform great deeds that will make the universe take notice of them. And finally, some think it’s the gods who make the decision, and that one needs to pick a god and dedicate themselves to their domain and teachings in order to receive their blessing.”

He glanced at Iris, curious if her mysterious origin gave her some knowledge that he didn’t have. She seemed to guess at his thoughts, because she lightly shook her head in response.

Make sense. Based on the hints she gave him, Fire Orchid Kingdom was probably from another planet, not the Outer Heavens. They were probably only a little more advanced than Tasloa.

And speaking of the Outer Heavens…

“That concludes my lecture on mage ranks. If you have any other questions about them, you can visit me in my office at any time and ask for guidance. For now, I will move on to another topic. Your other teacher has already mentioned that spirit adepts can ascend to the Outer Heavens and live there agelessly,” Marcus said, pointing at Helvran beside him, “so let’s talk about them.”

“Teacher, everyone knows about the six heavens,” Cricket protested. “That’s stuff for small children. There is the Underworld, where reapers herd the souls of the dead to the palace of judgment and assign them to one of the other five afterlives. Then there is the Red Prison ruled by the devils, where all the bad people go. If you’re good, you’re sent to the Elysian Hills where the angels welcome you, or if you’re less good you’re sent to Purgatory City where the archons make you toil endlessly until you redeem yourself. Finally there is the Strange Forest, where the fairies frolic endlessly, and the Heroic Realms, where ancient heroes battle dragons. They’re, um, kind of their own thing.”

Whenever Marcus heard the official story about the six heavens, he was reminded that the Illuminated Pantheon was strongly associated with the Celestial Mountain, and that their priests didn’t even try to hide their biases when educating people.

Should he tell her that Purgatory City was actually called Heliopolis, the Golden City, and that its inhabitants would be mighty offended at the idea they were being punished? Should he clarify that the Elysian Hills were just the foothills of the Celestial Mountain?

He decided to just start from scratch.

He picked up a large scroll that he brought into this meeting and threw it lightly into the air. It quickly unfurled itself, revealing a crudely painted diagram. It depicted a number of circles, some of them colored, connected together into a sort of wheel-like shape.

His students stared at the painting for some time, completely silent.

“I assume you’re the one who painted this?” Helvran guessed.

“So there is something teacher is not good at…” Cricket mumbled into her chin quietly.

What a cruel world.

“If you look closely at the diagram,” Marcus began, ignoring their complaints about his artistic ability, “you will notice that there are twelve circles there, not counting the central one which represents the material plane which we live on. This is because I included not only the Outer Planes themselves, but also the six Pillars of Creation – River of Souls, Tree of Life, Maelstrom of Dreams, Stone of Foundations, Beacon of Wisdom, and Flame of Strife.”

“River of Souls…” Renatus mused loudly. “That sounds familiar. I think Helvran mentioned it a few times.”

“I’m glad someone is paying attention to my lectures, at least,” Helvran said. “Pillars of Creation are spiritual landmarks that govern certain spheres of existence and shape the landscape of the outer heavens. They are poorly understood, even by the inhabitants of the Outer Heavens, but the River of Souls, Acheron, is responsible for the soul cycle of the universe, transporting the souls of the dead to their various afterlives and fresh souls into their new bodies. It is the Raven Temple’s most important duty to make sure this process continues uninterrupted.”

“The rest of the Pillars of Creation are like that too. They each govern an extremely important aspect of our entire existence, and are just as important as the Outer Planes themselves,” Marcus noted. “Earlier, Renatus asked me if the Outer Planes possess heavenly logos of their own, comparable to the elemental ones, and I said no. This is because the Outer Planes are not actually spiritual centers. You might have noticed on my diagram that the Pillars of Creation are all arranged into this wheel-like shape, with an Outer Plane situated between each of them.”

Marcus gestured at the scroll with his hands, animating the diagram with a simple illusion, making it spin slowly around the central axis.

“This is because every Outer Plane is a blend of energy and logos from two different Pillars. They are confluxes where two nearby Pillars of Creation blend and weaken each other, creating a plane with combined traits of both. Dreamwood, or Strange Forest as Cricket called it, is situated on the conflux of Maelstrom of Dreams and the Tree of Life. Celestial Mountain, which the Elysian Hills are just foothills of, is situated on the conflux of the Tree of Life and Beacon of Wisdom. And so on. The entire structure forms a sort of cosmic wheel, and so our universe is often called the Wheel of Existence.”

“Ah, so the heavens don’t have their own logos, but Pillars do!” Renatus said. “I understand. But then why does everyone always focus on the Outer Planes when the Pillars are clearly so much more important?”

“The Outer Planes are not as fundamental as the Pillars, but they can be inhabited,” Marcus said. “You can travel to Dreamwood, even live there, and draw power from it. In comparison, if you tried to approach the Tree of Life or the Maelstrom of Dreams, they would kill you.”

Renatus raised her eyebrow at him.

“But Tree of Life sounds nice,” Claudia protested.

“The energies of the Tree of Life are too wild and potent for mortals, or even powerful spirits to handle,” Marcus said. “If you got exposed to so much as a mote of its power, you would irreversibly mutate into a chimeric abomination and then explode due to excess of raw vitality.”

“That sounds familiar,” Regulus said.

“It should. It’s the same effect that the chaos storms have on life here on Tasloa,” Marcus told him. “Most scholars agree that our chaos storms are simply a watered down version of the primal energies coursing through the Tree of Life.”

“W-Watered down…” Regulus said, sounding incredulous.

“Well yes. I just told you that contact with Tree of Life causes one to mutate into a twisted beast and then die. The chaos storms are not nearly so dramatic or potent,” Marcus said. “Anyway, while energies of the Pillars of Creation are too much for anyone to handle, they each have a powerful heavenly logos associated with them. So powerful and comprehensive, in fact, that no one can possibly assimilate even a fraction of them. Flame of Strife, for instance, is associated with war, weapons, defiance, fire, destruction, and so much more. You could assimilate their logos easily enough, but you’re really just practicing a small sliver of their power. Most of the time when mages focus on very abstract logos, such as destruction, death, dreams, and so on, they’re actually tapping into subsets of heavenly logos, drawing upon one of the Pillars of Creation.”

“That said, you mustn’t look down the Outer Planes,” Marcus warned them. “Just because they’re not the fundamental aspects of existence themselves, doesn’t mean they aren’t tremendously powerful and important. Though it might not seem so, they affect every world on the material plane, fighting an eternal war for the hearts and minds of its inhabitants. They function as afterlives for our dead, and they house our gods. Pillars of Creation might be the spokes of the Wheel of Existence, but they are silent and distant. They will not answer your pleas and wreak havoc on anything that approaches them. The gods and spirits of the Outer Planes are willing to help and answer your questions, and may punish you severely if you disrespect them.”

“Some of these have different names than what I know,” Cricket complained. “I can guess some of them, like Red Hell being Red Prison, or the Elysian Hills being Celestial Mountain, but where are Heroic Domains and Purgatory City?”

“Denizens of the outer planes use different names for their home than most people on Tasloa, and can be very petty about them being called the ‘wrong’ names by mortal summoners,” Marcus explained. “It’s fine to use whatever with your fellow students and people around you, but if you ever interact with a spirit, make sure you refer to their home by the names I put on the diagram. Anyway, Purgatory City, as you call it, is simply one of the layers of the Great Machine. It’s actually called Heliopolis, City of the Sun, or the Golden City – definitely don’t tell any archons you summon that they’re from some kind of purgatory or that living there is a punishment. I have never summoned an archon, but I hear they’re quite humorless.”

“Err, okay,” Cricket quickly agreed. “So if the Great Machine has layers, is it like an onion or something?”

“Well… sort of,” Marcus said, grasping for an analogy to use. Nothing came to mind. “It’s complicated. Basically, the Outer Planes are not mind-bogglingly vast in size, but also have multiple layers of existence. Essentially, they are multiple worlds superimposed on one another, and you need special magic and conditions to move between them. For instance, Red Hell has nine layers, and you could wander any one of them for all eternity without crossing into any of the other eight.”

“You know, I never understood how something like Red Prison and the Underworld… sorry, Oblivion Maze… can be part of six heavens,” Renatus commented. “Especially now that I know that Red Prison’s real name is Red Hell. It even has ‘hell’ in its name.”

“It’s obviously because reapers and devils would get offended if you tried to exclude them,” Cassia told him matter-of-factly, rolling her eyes at him. “Seriously…”

“Cassia is on the right track, but there is more to it,” Marcus said, smiling slightly. “Would it shock you all to learn that most of the souls in Red Hell… do not regard their existence as punishment?”

They gave him incredulous looks.

“That’s right. You soul ends up in the Outer Plane that best matches your ideals and temperament. Souls inside Red Hell might bemoan how they eventually ended up, or the poor outcome of their war campaigns, but they don’t resent the way society is structured - the endless wars, the tyrannical governments that oppress their citizens, or the might-makes-right mentality. This is their vision of how life and society is and should be, enforced by the very rules of reality that surrounds them. Their vision of heaven.”

“That still sounds like kind of a punishment to me,” Julia commented.

“There are apparently some nice places in Red Hell,” Marcus said. Unless that was just Celer feeding him fanciful tales again. “The point is that the devils don’t go out of the way to torture people and ruin things. It just ends up being a terrible place because their ideals are terrible.”

“You said most of the souls don’t regard being there as punishment,” Cricket pointed out.

“Well yes, you could also be stupid and sign up for hell of your own free will,” Marcus told her. “If you make a contract with a devil and sign away your soul, you will end up there regardless of how compatible you are with the place. In that case you are being punished, but by your own stupidity rather than some cosmic judgment. I trust you’re all wise enough to never summon a devil, let alone make a deal with them.”

They all assured him they would never do that.

He turned to Cricket.

“As for the Heroic Realms, that would be the Sea of Chaos,” he told her. “The lands there constantly shift and change places, like a deck of cards constantly being shuffled, so things never settle down and it’s hard to form large empires or long-lasting alliances. Dragons are apparently not native to the plane, but at some point they invaded the plane and ousted its previous overlords and took over. As you said, they are kind of their own thing and I don’t know much about them.”

Dragons were not faring well on Tasloa, and had gotten extremely rare by the time Marcus rose to prominence, but apparently there was no shortage of them in the universe, and they were an incredibly potent force on the Outer Planes.

“So dragons are creatures of dream and strife,” Agron mused out loud. “Fitting.”

Now that Marcus thought about it, dragons were very important in the mythology of the White Dragon Clan. No doubt Agron was very curious about them.

Sadly, Marcus could not satisfy his curiosity in that regard, since he really did not know much about them.

“I’d like to hear more about the Pillars of Creation,” Iris suddenly said.

This caused a lot of whispering among the other students. Iris was easily the most mysterious out of all of them, since she mostly kept to herself, and was very quiet and contemplative. They obviously remembered Iris from his confrontation with Shamshir, and although Marcus had invented a whole elaborate backstory for her, they still seemed to think she was his illegitimate daughter. While annoying, this meant they were reluctant to push her too much for information or attack her, so it worked out well enough.

Marcus had informed them that Iris had two elemental affinities and a bloodline. It in his opinion, it would be very hard to hide that from her fellow students, since she would be advancing very fast. It didn’t cause nearly as much jealousy as Marcus thought it would. His students seemed to put her in the same category as Regulus, and focused more on whether or not Marcus was really her father.

It helped that Iris never tried to intimidate the rest of the students with her background.

“I actually don’t know what most of them do,” Marcus admitted.

“Pillars of Creation are notoriously enigmatic,” Helvran said, nodding.

“Other than River of Souls, I only know about Flame of Strife,” Marcus said.

“Does it govern all warfare or something?” Renatus mused.

“No, it fights back against hostile forces for outside creation,” Marcus said. “Think of it like the burning skin of reality that constantly rejects and pushes back against anything that isn’t a part of it. Without it, forces of the Abyss would have conquered and corrupted everything a long time ago.”

Iris said nothing, but immediately straightened up and started paying more attention to his words.

“The Abyss is an outside force?” Cricket asked.

“Yes. A rival reality trying to devour ours,” Marcus told them. “Adepts try not to speak much of the Abyss to regular people, but that thing is far more horrifying than most people realize, and they have been attacking us for a very long time.”

“The Lament Spire,” Agron said.

“Yes,” Marcus nodded. “The Lament Spire is an abyssal beachhead in our reality. If it weren’t for the Flame of Strife’s constant suppression, the tower would gradually corrupt our entire planet and the Abyss could bring its nigh-infinite armies to bear against us, able to roam freely across the lands. As it is, we have been in a stalemate with it for centuries now, neither side gaining any ground. Abyssals are severely weakened when they venture far from the spire, so they need to have many time more forces – or be vastly more powerful than us – in order to beat us. However, once the Abyss infects something, it is incredibly difficult to uproot.”

“So if one wants to fight the Abyss, the powers of the Flame of Strife are the way to go?” Iris asked.

“As far I know, yes,” Marcus nodded. “That is why the armies of Red Hell are at the forefront of the fight against the Abyss.”

“The devils fight against the demons of the Abyss?” Cricket asked, surprised.

“They are the most zealous opponents of the Abyss,” Marcus said. “The reason why they can make deals and contracts with mortals while the gods turn a blind eye to it is that everyone knows they need the armies of hell to hold back the abyss. When you need someone that badly, you’re way more willing to grit your teeth and look the other way.”

“Can’t the dragons help?” Agron asked. “They are also adjacent to the Flame of Strife.”

“Dragons are less organized,” Marcus said. “They’re very powerful, and they do help in their own way, but to fight against the Abyss, it’s not enough to have a handful of powerful being working independently. You need an army.”

“Sounds like the Abyss is a big problem,” Cricket commented lamely.

Marcus hesitated for a moment.

No, they deserved to know.

“We’re losing the war,” he told his students.

They gave him a confused look.

“I have not seen the battlefields myself, but powerful adepts have spoken to various gods and spirits and they all say the same: the entirety of the Wheel of Existance is locked in a war against the Abyss… and the Abyss is winning,” Marcus told them. “It’s a slow retreat, but a retreat all the same. Unless something changes, the Abyss will devour us all.”

His students continued looking at him in confusion for a few seconds after he was finished.

“W-What!?” Cricket was the first to recover her wits and protest. “But teacher, you said the Flame of Strife stops the Abyss from conquering everything!”

“No, I said that without it, the Abyss would have already won,” Marcus shook his head.

“So, uh… what can we do about that?” Renatus asked awkwardly.

“Nothing,” Marcus admitted. “That is something beyond even me, never mind you.”

“Then why even tell us?” Claudia whined.

“Because I wanted you to know,” Marcus told her, completely unrepentant.

Now that Sadyrit had fallen to the Abyssals, Marcus would not be surprised if the Lament Spire got more active and orcs started menacing the south again. As such, he felt it was pointless to try and shield his students from these unpleasant truths. They needed to learn how to live with the existential dread of knowing that all of reality would one day be devoured by marauding demonic invaders.

Who knows? It might motivate them to try harder in their studies.

* * * *

A few days later, Marcus decided to finally explore and cleanse the sealed-off cave system beneath the tower. He had been putting that off because he was busy fixing the tower and making sure his students were training diligently, but now he felt things had finally calmed down enough for him to tackle this issue. He didn’t think it would be particularly difficult, but it might take a while.

Since this was likely to be a fairly routine thing, he intended to take his students along for the expedition. However, once he tore down the artificial walls put up by the Amethyst Academy mages who had dwelt here before them, he realized that the tunnels weren’t really that spacious and wouldn’t be able to accommodate all of them safely. He agonized for a time how to explain to his students that he couldn’t possibly bring all of them along for this excursion, arguing internally with himself who to take, only to realize in the end that it wouldn’t be an issue at all.

When he asked for volunteers to explore a dark, foreboding cave system full of monstrous centipedes and other dangerous creatures, only three of his students raised their hand.

Agron, Diocles, and Renatus. Everyone except those three stayed silent. Marcus thought maybe Cricket and Cassia would be adventurous enough to go for it, but no.

Whatever. Maybe it was better this way. At least these three seemed honestly excited for this, so they were marginally less likely to start whining at him when things got tough. He equipped all three boys with staffs and told them to stick close to him at all times, and then they were off.

Things started off well. While the three boys weren’t mages yet, and didn’t have a single spell to their name, they all knew how to swing a staff by now, and the things they encountered weren’t very dangerous. Aside from the centipedes, they also encountered cave lizards, glowflies, and slimes.

Cave lizards were just very big lizards that inhabited caves like this – supernaturally tough, but only the size of a human forearm, so nothing a good whack with a staff couldn’t handle. They were smarter than giant centipedes and had better vision then them, so they mostly just ran away from the group, and Marcus didn’t feel like chasing them. They were scavengers, and unlikely to threaten anyone at the tower, even if they managed to get to the surface somehow. The worst that would happen is that they would find some of their food supplies missing.

Glowflies looked like big magical bumblebees that glowed in orange light. Unlike normal bumblebees, these were very aggressive, and had a nasty ability to spit glowing orange acid. They were unlikely to kill anyone, but things could get nasty if they hit someone in the face or eyes, so Marcus would lead the group away from their hives once he noticed them. He did mark the location of the hives on the map he was making, planning to eradicate them later – glowflies readily established their hives in human dwellings, after which they ‘defended’ said hives by driving out the inhabitants of said building. He didn’t want them anywhere near his tower.

Finally there were slimes. They were very weird – protean clumps of translucent green slime dragging themselves along the cavern floor in search of something that couldn’t run or fight back. They were unlike any other magical creature that Marcus knew of. They weren’t spirits, but also not flesh and blood creatures. There were all sort of different slimes out there, but these ones were very basic, very weak green slimes that even his students could handle.

The tunnels were also surprisingly well illuminated, with the walls of the tunnels covered in clumps of glowing moss and large colorful mushrooms. Truthfully, that was kind of weird. Most cave systems, even magical cave systems, weren’t this… lush.

They kept exploring the cave system, with Marcus occasionally stopping by to explain things they encountered.

“Don’t eat those,” Marcus warned them when they first encountered one of the mushroom patches.

They gave him strange looks.

“Who would eat a strange glowing mushroom they found in a magical cave?” Diocles asked, eyeing the patch dubiously.

“People are willing to eat all sort of strange things. Somebody had to make all those potions with really strange ingredients, no?” Marcus said. “Not that these mushrooms have any alchemical value.”

What Marcus didn’t tell them was that these types of glowing cave mushrooms were a well-known hallucinogen. They might not be used in any valuable magical potion, but plenty of people harvested them to make various drugs.

He was tempted to destroy every patch they encountered, but there were so many of them, there wouldn’t be a point. It would just end up looking suspicious.

After a while, Marcus started to become seriously concerned about these caves. For one thing, they had been exploring them for several hours, and they had yet to reach any kind of end. Even when Marcus used mapping spells to figure out the structure of the place, he just found more tunnels extending into the distance around him. He even summoned Chompy, his faithful earth elemental, to help him navigate this place. However, every time he sent Chompy to scout ahead of the group, the earth elemental came back to inform him that there were more tunnels ahead.

They were also starting to encounter more slimes. These were bigger, faster, and came in unusual colors that Marcus wasn’t sure how to interpret.

Finally, after some time, Marcus spotted another monster in front of them.

It was a beetle. A rather small one, no bigger than the cave lizards had been, with a shiny dark blue carapace. Tiny arcs of lightning danced between each mandibles, barely perceptible.

It was a very weak creature, unlikely to threaten his students. However, it sent a chill down Marcus’s spine, because he didn’t recognize it.

He had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of every magical creature native to Tasloa, and he had never heard or read about a beetle like this.

After staring at them for a few moment, mandibles twitching, the beetle realized it was outmatched by the group of humans in front of it and retreated back into the darkness of a nearby tunnel.

“We’re going back,” Marcus announced.

“We’re lost, aren’t we?” Renatus said.

“Don’t speak nonsense like that,” Marcus said, annoyed, giving Renatus a quick bonk on the head with his staff. “This caves are stranger than I thought they were, that’s all. I’ll drop you off back at the surface and then come back alone to see what’s going on here.”

But things didn’t work out like Marcus hoped. No matter how much they backtracked, they could not get back to the surface. Not even Chompy could help. The tunnels extended in all directions, foreboding and unfamiliar, and the slimes that roamed them were getting larger and more dangerous the longer they walked.

As embarrassing as it was to admit, they really were lost.

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