[Test post] Returning to my old academy
I got an assignment from Fabius the Red to head back to my old stomping grounds at the Black Sword, an affiliate subsidiary of the Golden Eagle Mages Guild in Rhyhan. We had to review scrolls made by apprentices to make sure none of them would explode in the users’ hands. I have a few confidence issues with verifying someone else’s work, but Fabius said I was the best mage for the job. At first, I felt an immense sense of pride.
“You’re expendable and I’m not,” he told me. We went together through the wormhole to the proving grounds.
Returning to the Black Sword office after so many years was nostalgic. Everyone wore black circlets with tall spikes, black cloth manchettes alongside large black, white, and golden sashes around the waist. We wore a lot of rings back then, mostly alchemical gold, before we learned about substance over style. The Master Magician of Black Sword was still there, casting spells and catching slags. He gets a lot of brain for a disembodied soul inhabiting a centuries-old cursed armor made by a demon to lure men into suicidal battles.
Fabius and I sit down and start going through the scrolls. Let me tell you that these are some of the most… scrolls of all time. I told Fabius, “Damn, they aren’t the most impressive in ability, but the apprentices did good.”
“The instructors wrote these.”
I nearly shit his pants when he told me that. I started reading through the scrolls, finding error after error amid some of the most absolute bottom of the barrel imaginings. One basically read, ‘’ Another one read, ‘.’ I just couldn’t believe this is what the instructors were writing down! These are supposed to be the spells the guild sells! Enchanting services and scroll production is how we offset so many expenses!
I went over the spells with frightened revulsion, my stomach turning. Minor stamina restoration. Personality amplified by 1.10. Transmute water to wine. Mana bullet. These were worse than what apprentices could do because at least apprentices dared to dream up big spells. I looked over at Fabius’s desk and saw that he was looking at the apprentice scrolls.
One of them is a replication spells, which is really good for an apprentice, until I saw the replication was quadratic in nature. I looked at another spell and saw that the wiring for it was up to snuff, but the incantation was wrong. Good, because ‘immortality multiplied by –0’ is going to make THE GREEN reappear in this space once again and I’d really rather not have to go get my staff to use dimensional magic.
Another apprentice spell I saw was really heartbreaking—a young lad just wanted his mom back but because he wasn’t so good at alchemy, he wanted to try the arcane. The spell was never going to work because he was trying for restoration when you can’t fix what’s broken with magic. Not really. Then, I saw one of them was only titled ‘Cleaning the kitchen.’ Fabius told me to grab some stuff, and then I grabbed my mana resonance spectrometer and was understandably unsettled when I saw what it actually did.
I’m not sure what bothered me more: that the instructors were making spells most mages could make in their sleep (Fabius the Red is literally a dreamweaver mage, he literally writes spells in his sleep) or that the apprentices almost caused a cataclysm so severe that a secret order has been publicly forming (??) to preserve magic knowledge in the case something awful like THE GREEN ever comes back. If my psyche wasn’t still shattered into 7 unequal pieces who all experience their own torment separately as I never know the joys of love again, I’d be pretty miffed about all this. We manaburned the scrolls that didn’t make the cut (90%!) and went to have a conference with Black Sword Leader. Yes, that’s his legal name.
Sad to see the body language of the armor his tormented spirited possessed slump its shoulders when we told him the news. We had a brief powwow with the Archiereus of Time as well before we took our leave. Sometimes, when you go back to where you formed those most magical memories, the magic fades away when viewed from the outside after so many years of experience under your belt.
Chapter 1 - Introduction to Rhyhan
Chapter 2 - My new job + the Great Conflagration
Event - Have you seen Mulrock the Magnificent?
Chapter 5 - The Search for Mulrock
Posted Jun 6, 2026, 4:24 AM UTC