Chapter 82 — Second Circle

Chapter 82: Chapter 82 — Second Circle

Chapter 82 — Second Circle

Edwin’s morning began with three apprentices, copper plates and a stack of clean paper.

The students had to warm the paper without scorching it. The first produced almost no heat. The second blackened one corner. The third plate began smoking before Edwin smothered it with a flick of wind.

"Use less Mana," Edwin said.

"I barely used any."

"Then use less than barely. The plate needs warmth, not a fire spell."

He showed them again, heat spreading evenly through the copper while the paper curled at the edge without changing color.

Magister Vey watched from the rear of the room while Edwin continued correcting hand positions and Mana flow until all three students completed the exercise. One remained behind with a blackened plate after the others left.

"Does failing the exercise mean I lack talent?"

"It means you used too much Mana."

"The others formed heat more quickly."

"Then they made a different mistake more quickly." Edwin took the plate and traced the damaged line. "You held the structure after this connection failed. That is why the corner burned. Stop when the formation stops answering correctly."

The student frowned. "But a real spell cannot always be stopped."

"That is why you learn with copper plates before someone asks you to cast beside another person."

The answer left the student unhappy, but he packed the plate instead of throwing it away.

Vey handed Edwin his marked notes on formation maintenance. "Your repair sequence is sound. Your explanation is not."

Edwin read the marked paragraph. "You crossed out half of it."

"Because the first half says the same thing twice."

"I wanted to make the danger clear."

"Then state the danger once."

Edwin rewrote the paragraph before leaving the academy. Vey read it again and returned the page without another mark.

He ate midday stew with his mother and sister in their apartment near the eastern wall. His sister complained about arithmetic while his mother watched him pack the storage pouch beside his chair.

"Will you be away tonight?" she asked.

"One night. I have survey work west of the city."

"Come back before your next class."

"I will."

Taron waited beyond the western district with two horses. They followed the maintained road until the traffic thinned, then turned off toward the abandoned provincial station, where the hidden passage answered once Edwin pressed Mana into three marks in order.

Beyond it, the secret realm smelled of wet stone and earth, and the war tower stood across the low hills, new grey repairs covering part of its black exterior.

The hidden road remained empty.

Inside the secret realm, the war tower showed another week of repairs: stone golems had closed the largest holes in the eastern wall, while iron golems cleared rubble from the lower halls and restored the channels carrying Mana from the mine.

Edwin and Taron walked around the tower before entering. New grey stone covered two damaged weapon ports, and the repairs looked plain beside the old black walls, exactly what Edwin wanted. From a distance, the eastern face could now pass for a provincial mage tower rebuilt after neglect.

The western face remained impossible to explain. Broken formation rings crossed three floors, and the upper platform still carried the base of an ancient siege array.

"Cover the ring first," Edwin said.

Taron tilted his head back. "That will take half the stone outside the mine road."

"Then it takes half the stone. A damaged modern tower is believable. That ring is not."

The mercenary accepted the decision and returned to the western station.

The exterior disguise came first.

Nessa appeared above the entrance.

"The third crystal channel is stable."

"How much power reaches the tower?" Edwin asked.

"Enough for maintenance, the library, the active golems and internal defense."

"The adamantite golem?"

"It remains available for defense. The current reserve can support it if the tower comes under attack."

"Keep it ready."

The mine no longer threatened to collapse around the workers. The adamantite golem had destroyed the creature nesting in the deepest passage, and iron golems now handled most extraction while crystals entered the tower’s reserves every day.

Edwin inspected the power chamber himself. Two trays held newly cut low-grade crystals, their edges still rough, and more waited in raw clusters for the golems to pick the damaged pieces free.

Months earlier, the tower could not keep the library and its defenses active at the same time. Continuous mining had changed that. The lights, barriers, maintenance golems, library and defensive golems now drew from a steady reserve.

That surplus let Edwin set a repair schedule: the exterior disguise, internal defenses and damaged flight formations came first. Realm travel and relocation could wait until the tower looked like an ordinary mage’s residence.

Before entering the library, Edwin went to the tower’s meditation room.

The room occupied the center of the third floor. Plain silver lines crossed its walls, and a circular stone platform stood beneath an opening in the ceiling.

Edwin closed the door and sat on the platform.

He had spent months circling the Second Circle in his notes and in his head, and by now the structure did not feel like a collection of separate lines anymore. He could hold the whole pattern in his mind at once and see exactly where each part would lock into the circle he already possessed.

Mana gathered around him.

He began with the first new line.

It formed inside his Mental Palace and settled against the First Circle as a steady pressure behind his sternum. Edwin held his pace and let the second line follow, then the third, each connection shifting the weight inside the existing structure a little further while the pattern held steady through every change.

Time passed without his attention leaving the work.

The final line closed.

The Second Circle turned once around the first, and Mana swept through both patterns together, coming back to him in a current that ran deeper than anything he had felt before.

Edwin stayed seated while the current settled. When he opened his eyes, the room felt quieter than it had any right to be.

Nessa waited beyond the edge of the platform.

"Second Circle authority recognized," she said.

Edwin looked down at his hands, which appeared unchanged.

He cast the smallest wind spell he knew, and air gathered above his palm, tighter and easier to hold than before; he released it before it could disturb the papers waiting outside.

"How long was I here?"

"Four hours and nineteen minutes."

Edwin stood and discovered that his legs objected to remaining folded for that long. He stretched them before walking to the door.

Taron waited in the next room with bread, cheese and a cup of water.

"You finished?"

"Yes."

"Good. Eat before you fall down the stairs."

Edwin ate while standing beside the table. Golems crossed the courtyard with stone, the mine continued beneath them, and wind whistled through a damaged upper window.

His work had changed.

Edwin returned to the meditation room after eating, where Nessa formed three pale targets above the far wall: simple testing formations used by the tower’s junior officers.

He began with a wind blade from his academy lessons. At First Circle, the spell had required several breaths to shape and lost force after crossing a room; the new circle gathered Mana faster, and Edwin formed the edge, compressed it, and released.

The blade crossed the chamber and cut through the first target. It marked the second before fading.

Taron peered through the doorway. "Is that stronger?"

"Faster and denser." Edwin checked the wall behind the targets. "I also used less Mana than before."

"Can you do it again?"

Edwin cast a second blade. It struck beside the first.

The spell remained stable, but the second cast exposed a slight pull along one connection in his new circle. Edwin stopped and returned to the platform.

"You cast twice and sit down?" Taron asked.

"I found a flaw in how I shaped the second spell."

"It struck the target."

"That does not make the flaw disappear."

Taron raised both hands and left the mage to his work.

Edwin circulated Mana through the two circles until the pull eased. The breakthrough had increased his reserve and control, but the new structure still needed practice, so he recorded the problem in his notebook before testing a light spell and a simple barrier. Both answered more quickly than they had the day before.

Nessa watched each cast. "Second Circle access permits command of the eastern observation array and the lower officer archive."

"Observation first."

The array showed a pale image of the land around the tower: Edwin could see the mine road, the western station, and the moving points that represented the golems, though the damaged outer formations left wide blank sections along the northern hills.

"Add those formations to the repair list," he said.

"Current list contains two hundred seventeen entries."

"Then make it two hundred eighteen."

Nessa opened two additional library sections when his authority updated: one contained formation manuals for lower tower officers, and the other held spell records intended for Second and Third Circle mages.

Edwin entered the library after eating.

The records on the ancient wars remained incomplete: some praised the mages who created the Dragon Knights, while others cursed those same Knights for turning against their creators. Edwin copied only what he could verify across more than one record.

He also selected three Second Circle spell manuals and one book on reinforcing a mage tower’s outer barriers; there were hundreds more, and he left them on the shelves.

He read the first pages of each manual before choosing one on wind compression. The ancient notation differed from the academy’s, but the underlying spell used familiar anchors, so he copied the opening exercise and returned the book to its shelf.

The tower offered more knowledge than he could absorb, so Edwin chose one spell, one repair text, and one observation system, enough for his first day at Second Circle.

He still had students the following morning.

When Edwin returned to Alvion, he told his mother and sister over breakfast.

His sister placed her spoon down. "Does that make you a proper mage twice?"

"It makes me a Second Circle mage."

"Can you fly?"

"No."

"Can you turn invisible?"

"Not yet."

Their mother set her spoon down across the table. "Will the academy change your position?"

"Probably. Master Deepwell will make sure they give me more work with it."

"Will they pay you more?" his sister asked.

Their mother gave her a look.

"What? Shoes cost money."

Edwin smiled. "The faculty allowance increases after my advancement is registered."

His mother reached across the table and pressed his hand once. Pride showed plainly on her face, and close behind it came the same worry she always carried when magic looked set to pull him further from home.

"Your father would have told the entire street," she said.

"He would have told the market first. The street would hear afterward."

His sister lifted her cup. "To the proper mage twice."

Edwin touched his cup to hers.

That earned a quiet laugh from the older mage when Edwin reported to him later.

Deepwell examined Edwin’s circles in a private room, asked him to circulate Mana twice and then signed the advancement record.

"You chose a good day," Deepwell said. "Your beginner class begins in half an hour."

Edwin took the signed record. "Do they receive a different lesson because I advanced?"

"No. They still burn paper."

The students were already waiting when he entered the practice room: one had placed a fresh sheet over the copper plate, while another was arguing that the previous scorch mark had come from faulty metal.

Edwin set his books on the desk.

"Begin again," he said.

The first plate started smoking before he reached the other side of the room.

Edwin extinguished it with a small movement of air and replaced the paper.

Second Circle had changed how Mana answered him. His students still needed the same lesson.