The Spell Forge was pretty much what the cartoony map had shown, a shooting range. There were a series of booths in a line and then a variety of target dummies of different sizes and at different ranges.

  Each booth had a player attempting to cast a spell at one of the targets, occasionally one would succeed to a cheer, from a couple of dozen more players who were watching from the queue while they awaited their turn.

  Most players, it seemed, had gotten a ranged spell, as to the side there were five melee dummies, with only two of them in use. In the area around the range there were various groups of players sitting around, some in the meditation pose.

  There was a player walking up and down the booths occasionally giving advice, occasionally, he would step in, take about eight seconds and fire off a at a target. The way they had it set up, when someone stepped into a booth, a timer started ticking down. When it got to zero, they stepped out and a person waiting behind them stepped in. The person at the front of the queue would then go and stand behind that person. That minimised the amount of downtime on the booth and maximised the speed of the queue.

  There was a long-bearded mage standing between the melee area and the range area, watching the practice.

  “Greetings, Explorator,” he said to me as I approached. “How can I be of assistance?”

  “Hi, how does this work?” I asked him politely, gesturing to the booths and the queue.

  “Welcome to the Spell Forge, practice your spell and then demonstrate it to me. Once you are able to cast it, you will gain access to additional classes to expand your knowledge.”

  “Ignore him!” called out someone in the nearby queue. “No one has been able to impress him yet.”

  “Simply not true, young mageling. Why not even three hours ago did one of you demonstrate a mastery of ice magic. Such that I referred him to the head of the Arctic school for further training immediately.”

  “So, I join the queue, demonstrate what I can do?” I asked. Seemed simple enough.

  “Certainly.”

  I figured I might as well start with the new spell, and joined the back of the queue. We slowly trickled forward and I noticed a familiar face ahead of me when it cut back across my path.

  “Hey again, was I correct in my identification?” I asked Selma. Her eyes shot wide when she saw me. She was maybe ten spots ahead of me in the queue.

  “Aenara! You totally were! Exactly as you said!”

  “That’s good to hear. I was worried it might have just been random spells. How is it going?”

  “Not good. So much to remember… and even if you remember it all it fails… I can see why so many people are giving up on it.”

  We unfortunately moved past each other as the queue moved forward again. It took maybe another fifteen minutes before I got to the front of the queue.

  I found myself standing behind Selma, as she carefully wiggled her fingers and muttered the words. Watching her made me want to step in and help, but I knew that wasn’t always the best approach.

  It was only yesterday, but it felt like a lifetime ago…had I been the same? Wendy from the start of my lessons had told me the instructions were for how to shape the spell, and once I knew it, I could skip the instructions and just go straight for the shape. I got the feeling she hadn’t been told this.

  Selma’s time ran out and she fired her last spell, successfully casting it and getting a cheer from the crowd.

  “I think you might be missing something.” I said to her as I stepped up.

  “Oh?” she asked, confusion replacing the joy she had felt.

  “The instructions are for learning how to shape the spell, once you have that, you don’t need them.” I took my place in the booth, raised my right hand at one of the targets.

  -- Selma --

  Selma turned to look at the Explorator player who had helped her and her friends in the Arcanum. She had just managed three of her five attempts, a personal best for her.

  ‘Missing something’ what did she mean?

  Her eyes went wide when, without any gestures or words, the unmistakable casting of shot from her outstretched hand. Then another barely five seconds after that, followed by one at three seconds…Selma’s mouth was wide open when she realised the latest spell wasn’t but . The crowd had gone completely silent, even the people in the neighbouring booths paused. Selma’s jaw dropped even further as the spells that followed shot out faster than she had thought possible.

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  The alternated with , came out one every other second for nearly half a minute before a final spell shot out and with a whumph expanded out into a basketball of lightning that was shocking a small group of dummies in its path before dissipating a few seconds later.

  “Once you have the spell shape in your head, it’s just a matter of charging it with mana…and well…” the Explorator mage said, as she waved her arm back at the range.

  -- Aenara --

  I turned away from the open mouthed player and smiled at my friends who had turned up just in time for me to finish my turn at the range. I felt a little light headed having just burnt through most of my mana, but satisfied. That had felt good.

  “So? What did you get?” I asked them excitedly as I walked over to join them, ignoring the stunned silence from the other players.

  “Shocking Grasp!” Peachy exclaimed. “Hubby got Ice Bolt! He slows, I stun!”

  “I got Cone of Fire,” Kenda said.

  “Burning Blade,” confirmed G.

  “I got Spark,” rounded off Darksider.

  “Ok, I can cast Shocking Grasp and Spark, and I can talk you through my process for learning a new spell if it will help you…”

  I led my friends over to a clear spot and we sat down. A few other people had drifted over to join us.

  “Err, yeah sure, it’s not like I consider this some big secret.” I said to the hopeful looks I was receiving. “Right, so the first thing you want to do is read through the spell's instructions. It will be broken down into the somatic and verbal components. At least so far on all the spells I’ve seen.”

  “All the spells you’ve seen?” A voice asked.

  “I have five now, three in Storm, two in Inferno, but only up to rank-three, so higher tier spells might be very different.”

  “They are.” the mage confirmed. “But continue your impromptu lesson, I’m curious of the take someone who doesn’t wear the titles she clearly has, to see if it will assist her fellow Voyagers in learning the arts.”

  “Right, erm,” I turned back to my friends, “so the components are intended to help you shape the spell mentally. Give you a feel of the shape of it. Once you have that shape, the next step is to link the power from your core into the shape. So you might build the shape in your hand to cast it there, or your staff. To recast it you just need to reproduce that shape. So the first few times you cast the spell, you might need to do the whole thing, but once you have it, you can skip most of the shaping and go straight to the charging.”

  “So we are building the spell mentally and then once we know what it should look like, we can reproduce the mental construct?” A voice asked as if having an epiphany and then the player quickly headed for the booths to try it out.

  “You’ve been studying those spells since we met up with you though, how much do you need to memorise them?” Jacob asked.

  “I was ready to try Fire Bolt about five minutes after reading it…it’s just I realised that it is very similar to Spark… so I’ve been comparing them to each other, and to my rank three spells, trying to see if I can decompose them…”

  “Nope!” Jacobs suddenly said crossing his arms into an X shape. “You can let me know if you figure it out. Don’t confuse me with your nerd speak!” Peachy and Kenda echoed his movements and Darksider gave me a look that said ‘let’s speak later.’

  “Fecking hell!” came a scream from the casting booths “She’s completely right! This changes everything!”

  I left my friends reading their spell books and walked over to the mage.

  “It seems we have been overlooking simple visualisation techniques in our basic training…” he said as I joined him watching the stream of players start casting spells at a much faster rate. The quickest had it down to five seconds a cast already. “I will make sure to remedy that…” he turned and passed me a golden merit token. “Good job. It also seems that no one has explained title etiquette to you. It is considered good form to wear the highest relevant title you hold for the location you are in. In the Explorator halls, that title is appropriate, here though you should be using one of your mage titles, the highest preferably.”

  “How do you know which is the highest title?” I asked.

  “How many mage titles do you hold?”

  I brought up the relevant page on my HUD, Inferno Mage had joined them, which made for five mage related titles. “Five.” I confirmed.

  “Five? Mage, Inferno and Storm I can understand, the other two?”

  “Dual Caster and Eye of the Storm.” I admitted. He sucked in a breath through his teeth.

  “Not many survive the attempt at dual casting at your experience level. I’ve seen many bright capable mages burn themselves out trying to learn the skill, risky, too too risk. Rarely worth the cost even when mastered.” His hand reaching up to scratch his chin through his beard.

  “Eye is respectable, but unless you expect to stay the strongest, I wouldn’t use it. To lose a unique title everyone knows you to hold can be quite embarrassing. T’would be hubris to think an early lead will lead you to winning that endurance race.” He nodded to himself. “Dual casting won’t benefit you either, senior mages will look down upon your recklessness to have earnt it. I’d choose between Inferno or Storm while on campus if I was you. Make sure you wear the matching title when you speak to the head of the schools if you attend their classes. You have earnt access to both Storm and Inferno’s lesson offerings.” He passed me two slips of paper, one for Introduction to Storm Magic in room 201 and the other for Introduction to Inferno Magic in room 206. “You also said five spells, I only saw three?”

  “Shocking Grasp and Fireball.” I confirmed. “I haven’t tried fireball yet. Need more mana.”

  “Ahh, well go meditate and get your mana back. If you can demonstrate capable casting of five spells, I can give you a token for a spell from the second floor of the Arcanum. It’ll be interesting to see what you can do with all three schools at your fingertips. As I am of no doubt you will take something from Arctic. First though, go rest. Leaving yourself without enough mana to cast another spell is usually a good way to get yourself killed. Too many of your peers met their end that way.”