Agatha had enjoyed their weekend outing a lot and had bought a lot of cute attires to dress up her doll… Christe! To dress up Christie. Yes… Unfortunately, the next day, they didn’t spend much time together as her roommate wanted to capitalize on the lost time and train her stamina. As for her, she fulfilled her promise and toyed a bit with the bought attires. For the time being, Agatha only made simple changes to adapt the dresses to Christie’s generous build, but even that had taken all the rest of the weekend for her. Before she noticed, the second week of the academic year had started.

  The first class was obviously yet another tiresome session of military training camouflaged through physical education, but as always, the students were excited for the next class: Agatecraft.

  “I have seen that most of you have already become used to having your agates materialized,” René Dago started the class by saying so. “It is good that you are all eager to increase your agate’s Stratum, but I will repeat this again: this is a long-term endeavor. Not all of you will have a single Second Stratum agate by the end of the year; otherwise, most people would boast Second Stratum agates and beyond. Having said so, whilst materialization is important, mindfulness is too. I cannot check inside your minds, so for that aspect, you will need to be your own teachers. The more critical you are of yourself, the better you will do. Have that in mind.”

  The black-uniformed soldier sat behind the teacher’s desk and took out a book. Agatha was surprised by how much presence the man lost when he wasn’t standing up. It seemed like being straight was his default and offensive state – a mountain reaching up to the heavens – and anything else was worthless.

  “This was a long time coming, but it is time we talk about commands. As you might see in the textbook about Agatecraft, there are many commands listed. This information is, for all means and purposes, useless.”

  A slow murmur filled the classroom as the students shared hushed voices.

  “I was being superlative,” the teacher pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “I mean to say – for if something is not explicitly told, you apparently are incapable of comprehending it – that the list of commands will not bring you any power or comprehension of the commands. Only repeated usage and mastery will make them useful. Master Librar, read aloud the contents of the Range command, if you please.”

  The somewhat fat boy stood up and searched for that specific command in the textbook in a frantic manner before composing himself and reading aloud.

  “Range: This command increases the operational range of agates. This factor increases both with the quality and Stratum of the agate, making it one of the better scaling commands out there. Amplify addendum… Teacher Dago, what does this ‘Amplify’ make reference to?”

  “Finish reading, and then I will explain,” the boy nervously nodded before continuing to read.

  “Amplify addendum: When the Range command is amplified, it creates a buffer zone akin to a new command and recalling range, therefore massively increasing the effective range of agates when a chain of Range agates is created. It must be noted that this buffer zone does not include a new increased summoning range, and thus, any new agates are limited to the lithorist’s existing summoning range.”

  “That was a lot of words,” René Dago said the moment Librar stopped reading. “Who here can simply what Master Librar has read? Yes, Miss Belkadi?”

  A girl had raised her hand, Christie’s former roommate. “The Range command amplifies the operational range of an agate – which is to say command and recalling range – and this ‘amplification’ makes it so agates act as the lithorist, so new agates can be sent way further.”

  “Simple but correct, yes,” the soldier nodded. “As for your question, Master Librar, search now for the page containing the Amplify command.”

  Still a bit shaken but less nervous than before, the scholarite boy passed through the pages until he found what the teacher was asking for.

  “Amplify: This command increases the potency of the next command. This factor increases with the Stratum of the agate. Amplify is one subtype of command that only takes effect after the Second Stratum, for it can only affect commands that are simultaneously given to an agate and not given next in chronological order. Using the Amplify command with a First Stratum agate will render it inert and will be ineffective. The Amplify command can also dote specific commands with new – normally just enhanced existing ones – properties. These will be referred to as ‘Amplify addenda’ in this book.”

  Whispering filled the classroom yet again as the auburn-orange-haired boy stopped reading. And truth be told, Agatha was with them. A command that increases the power of others. Yes, it was useless to her right now, but that wouldn’t be the case forever. And it increases in power relatively to the Stratum of the agate… considering the high-quality and loneliness of my little sapphire, this means my Amplify command will be far more effective than the rest faster. If it weren’t because she was in class, she would be drooling right now.

  She was.

  Oops! Agatha quickly dried her lips with the sleeve of her uniform. No one has noticed, right? She looked around the classroom with a mixture of embarrassment and paranoia before she decided that her classmates were too focused on their own thoughts.

  “Before you get too excited,” René Dago’s voice cut through the classroom, “heed the warning in the description of the command. Yes, it is a powerful and versatile command, but even for those of you who reach Second Stratum this year, this means a single agate will be able to have a more powerful version of a command. That, at your current level, is borderline useless. The versatility of wielding two different commands trumps over having a very powerful command in ninety-nine percent of all cases. Have that in mind. And do not get me started with boosting two commands at the same time; you quickly go from a Fourth Stratum agate to a glorified Second Stratum one in a blink.”

  Even with all those warnings, Agatha couldn’t help but raise her hand as many scenarios popped up in her mind.

  “Yes, Miss Malachite?”

  “What does the Amplify command do to the Control command?”

  “Read that page aloud for the class.”

  Agatha almost made a grimace before she obediently complied, even if she had the page before her eyes. Without making a fuss, she stood up and started reading.

  “Control: This command allows the manipulation of an agate with one’s thoughts through telekinetic means. This factor increases with the quality of the agate. That is all,” she added after having finished reading. “There is no addendum with Amplify.”

  “Then what do you personally think the Amplify command does to Control?” The teacher asked with an amused look. “You are free to read the description on the Amplify command for yourself again.”

  The dirty-blond girl complied with a nod and got her hands on the right page. Increases the potency of the next command, she thought to herself. But what does potency mean for Control? People use Control to manipulate their agates, but is that potency? Hmm…

  If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “I would argue that due to the fact that the quality of an agate already increases the handling of the Control command, then the Amplify command should instead increase the speed and power of Control, as the command’s definition mentions potency,” Agatha responded.

  René Dago clapped, and the girl couldn’t help but puff her chest.

  “Perfect example of applying the wrong formula and getting the right result, Miss Malachite.” Agatha blushed a bit, but she still maintained her pride. Somewhat. “Yes, the Amplify command boosts the speed and power of the agate under the Control command. Normally, any increase brought by the Amplify command will reference the potency of the next command, but not all commands have a property that we could define as ‘potency’, so there are some exceptions here and there. A short addendum for the whole class, when referring to boosted commands, they are normally called by Amplify plus the command in question; otherwise, things get cumbersome rather fast. In Miss Malachite’s case, we would be dealing with Amplify Control. Though I allow calling it Amplified Control as some other languages do so, and it is technically syntactically correct.”

  Amplify Control, huh? Agatha thought to herself. My little sapphire has already relatively strong power with only Control, so if I were to amplify it, I might have an agate with omnidirectional movement and the velocity of a Speed agate of lesser quality… This is certainly an interesting command.

  “As you might have noticed,” Teacher Dago started, “this textbook will not teach you everything. During classes, we will only go over important commands for your education, so any command that does not enter the academic schedule will not be taught here. Those ones fall completely to you. You are free to experiment with commands as you please, but first, I want to state some very important foundational rules.”

  René Dago stood up from his chair and slapped the slate. If any student had fallen asleep, that bang would have certainly woken them up.

  “Agatecraft is dangerous,” he stated with a harsh tone. “You have lived long enough to know that. A single Speed command can be lethal already, but stacking commands upon commands can be even more so. Yet there is something more elemental that is dangerous: unknown commands. You will find commands in this textbook that you have not heard before in your life. Amongst them, there are a handful that, while they might not be as lethal as a simple Speed command, are far more dangerous. Let me show you one of the scariest commands that exists.”

  That statement got some whispers out of the students, mostly out of excitement. After all, who didn’t want to see a command that an elite soldier called scary? René Dago summoned two agates in each of his hands, and he levitated them atop his palms with Control. He then shaped those small – yet far larger than any student – agates into far larger ones. For a moment, Agatha rummaged the textbook to see if there was a command that allowed to do that, but then she realized that he was using just the Shape command as the agates were becoming more and more translucent.

  The teacher wielded two agates in his hand the size of the balls the boys in the village would use to play. Not that he hadn’t stopped using the Shape command, it was clear that the balls were hollow as they were almost crystal clear.

  Then he activated that scary command.

  ““Eh?”” A cacophony of confusion filled the classroom as the students looked at the two ball-agates, or rather, at the lack of them.

  No, they are there. Or wait, are they there? Agatha herself was dumbfounded, mostly because she didn’t know what she was looking at, and even if she knew, it was hard to describe. The agates had become completely transparent, but the change didn’t stop there as… light interacted wrongly on their surface.

  The spheres had turned from transparent crystals to something akin to a looking glass, only that the reflection of the mirror was wrong. It didn’t reflect the class back at her, but instead reflected the teacher. Not in the sense that it was transparent and she was seeing through the agate, but in the sense that the left ball was reflecting the right side of the teacher, while the right ball was reflecting the left side. Just looking at it hurt Agatha’s mind, but it also didn’t help how light bent around the edges of the spheres, creating concentric bands of distorted images.

  Her fellow students’ minds also seemed to be failing as more than one rubbed their eyes trying to make heads or tails of the situation.

  “What you are beholding now is the Gate command,” the teacher explained. “To summarize it in few – very few – words, it links up two regions of space together. This is one of the most complex commands out there, if not the most, and it will easily kill you if you do not use it correctly.”

  To demonstrate his claim – which Agatha still failed to comprehend – the teacher grabbed a chalk stick and dropped it on top of the left mirror-like sphere, only to drop from the bottom of the right sphere.

  That got a lot of not-so-silent whispers around the classroom.

  Agatha was amongst them, of course. That being said, though, her noises were more incohesive screeching at the fact of having witnessed black magic rather than anything barely classifiable as human speech.

  “Silence,” René Dago’s voice cut through the cacophony with ruthless efficiency. His tone was so loaded yet serene that the students just stopped at their place, having completely forgotten what they had been talking about. “The Gate command is certainly one of the most striking ones, both visually and logistically, but that is why I showed you in the first place.”

  It was unsettling how fast his tone could go from a cold-blooded soldier to a somewhat warm teacher. That contrast was further amplified as the man casually put his hand through one of the agates from the back and it came from the front.

  “My execution is flawless, but there are – and can there be – a lot of complications. For starters, the Gate command has limitations in its execution. First, you need two agates. It seems trivial, it is only two agates, after all,” it wasn’t trivial for Agatha, “but you need to take into account that you need two very high-quality ones. Second, to even perform the Gate command, your agates need to be a perfect sphere. This can be achieved through the Shape command, but you do not currently have – and will not for a very long time – the ability to create truly perfect spheres. When I say the word ‘perfect’, I truly mean it with the highest of meanings and connotations.”

  His tone and cadence were so brutal that Agatha couldn’t help but think that she was being personally lectured, even if the soldier was teaching the whole class and he wasn’t admonishing anyone. For someone so young, René Dago carried his voice like the most practiced of physicians did the scalpel.

  “These are already hard limitations, but even then, the logistics of the Gate command are even more complicated. There is, of course, the recalling range of the agate, and also its maximum size, but that pales in comparison to the laws of physics. What you are seeing here with the distorted light that comes through the gates is the result of having a convex surface that transforms into a concave one. This explanation and the sense of it will surely go over your heads, and that is exactly why I will not explain it. To perform certain commands, you need a lot of knowledge. Just not of Agatecraft, but also of how the world works. If you try to perform a command without knowing its underlying principle, you will hurt yourself. This is another type of discipline, one of self-control. The world might be big and you might be one to discover and see it as soon as possible, but discipline…”

  ““Is imperative.”” The class responded in unison.

  “Good job, you are getting better,” the teacher nodded in satisfaction. “As I was saying, we have not even scratched the surface of what the Gate command is, as it may be – if not outright is – the most complex command in lithorica. For yet another fact of its limitations, if you were to use the Gate command in battle and an enemy put an agate inside of the connected gates, both agates would now be inaccessible to you, as agates wielding the Gate command cannot be recalled.”

  The loud whispering returned, but this time someone raised his hand. It was Mateo Librar. Agatha sucked at retaining names, but the boy participated so much in class that his name became engraved in her mind, even if it was only the start of the second week of class.

  “Does this mean that you can take Gate-commanded agates out of the recalling range?” The chubby boy asked after the teacher acknowledged him with a nod.

  “Not at all,” the grey-eyed soldier let out a grim chuckle. “I am actually happy that you brought that point? Do you want to know what happens if you have an item in the threshold of Gate-commanded agates and you take those agates out of their recalling range? The agates disappear; the items split in half. Was it an agate? Sliced. Was it a finger? Cut. It was… a person? Deceased. Perfectly cut in half with the sharpest knife there is, space itself.”

  There had been a silence as the students listened to the teacher’s class, yet now that silence had turned oppressive, mortal. Agatha herself paled a bit, and she felt nauseous as she imagined those piles of hypothetical gore.

  “I apologize for the crass imagery, but this lesson will teach you about the dangers of Agatecraft and make you think twice about trying new commands without supervision. You have been seeing Agatecraft through rose-tinted lenses so far, but it is anything but that. Much like Agatecraft is a discipline, so is killing. And there is no better tool for causing death than Agatecraft.”

  Patreon to support me and read 20 chapters ahead of time!