Final Chapter

I am 6 years old now. Next year, in early Spring, I must start going to school in our village.

The teacher must be trained in strategies to identify signs of that Evil threat hidden among the students. My hope is that my condition being so rare this village teacher will have no direct, personal, experience. Having never met another like me, my teacher may not be sure about what look for.

I have to play my cards right. Fail the exercises by little, not by much. Show only a tiny little less interest for magic than what the average student manifests. Show the same level of attention and understanding of other things too, be shy and ordinary. If I do not speak more than the absolutely necessary, I may have a chance.

Perhaps, I may just survive those years of basic education between 7 and 12. End up as one of those who cannot be tested because they never learned their basic spell.

After that, should be much easier. All I have to do is find myself a profession that demands travel to distant places.

Keep my practice secret and develop my skills without being noticed by authorities should be easy that way.

Hopefully, I can find my way to a place beyond the reach of civilized authorities. Where no one will care too much about what I am. In such a place my mana pool would have time to grow naturally, by the constant practice of spells.

On Planet Earth power to get things done was enough to open many doors. Bend any laws of govern and society. Power applied with restrain and discretion, in the right moment and place. I never had power like that back them. Is reasonable to hope that this world works in the same way Earth does.

Because, if not, then people like me would never live long enough to cause any damage.

And here, I should have the necessary power to shape many things.

Those who make 15 spells a day and manage to learn at least 6 spells of level 2 are the turning element where the collective investment made by society in granting all children a chance to learn magic starts to pay for itself.

Those people justify the additional investment to train them into use magic items. The activation spell needed to use the simpler kind of magic tools and weapon is a basic spell. However, only those that reach at least mastery of 6 level 2 spells and have the mana pool for 15 basic spells a day get to learn it. Learn activation spell takes a special license from Royal Library.

Magic items are available in small number restrict access to the activation spell helps organize civilization and keep those tools in the hands that are able to make practical use of them.

Those who get the license before the age of 25 and are physically capable can apply to the Battle-Mage Ranks.

One battle-mage with proper training and standard equipment can be compared to a special forces group of 6 elite soldiers on Earth, fully equipped. Including drones and a very stealth helicopter to drop them in and out behind enemy lines. If the History Book I was reading deserves credit. Different specializations can make those individuals more like a war tank, or more like a missile launcher.

That in world where most battles are fought still with swords, of non-magical variety. Swords and shields, spears, battle axes and war hammers, morning-stars. Bows and arrows, the occasional siege weapon. Weapons of iron, bronze, the occasional steel sword. Barbarian nations have little to no access to magic, that is one of the main reasons why they are considered “barbarian”.

Even the main civilized powers cannot base their entire national security only in the use of magic. Due to how hard magic items are to make, and how few young people in each generation reach the level necessary to became recruits in battle-mage academies.

Imagine the advantage of having a couple dozen of battle-mages in your nation.

Of course, the magic tools are as important as the mage soldiers themselves! They are very durable items, but also very expensive to make. Besides, despite how strong those items are, the conditions in a battle field between mages here do not seem to be **** than those you expect to find in wars on Earth. Weapons, magic or not, are tested to the limit as they brake, sometimes.

Only with level 3 spells you can refuel magic items and repair minor damage suffered by them before it destroys the item and probably the battle-mage holding it. And to touch anything beyond the most trivial equipment you need specific training for that specific item. Maintenance is a time-consuming process that demands a lot of magic fuel. Takes more advanced comprehension of fine nuances of meta-magic to do that job than what is necessary to be a battle-mage.

And those are just those in Artifex-Assistant role.

Artifex Mages are at least able to use 30 basic spells a day with their personal mana. The need to master hermetic complexities beyond most masters. Create fragile short-term magic items and magic potions requires level 4 spells. The standard equipment used by battle-mages and anything supposed to endure multiple uses and last potentially for years, often for longer than a human life, needs a level 5.

Magic, Cosmology, Arcane Geometry, the Artifex-assistant needs to have deep understanding of those things. The Artifex needs to know even more, and on top of that needs to have finer magic skill, and strength of will.

Level 3 spells are more often than not performed by groups of mages, with the necessary magic instruments and training to perform ritual magic. Level 4 or higher are basically always performed as rituals, collectively, surrounded by all sorts of security measures.

Some spells of level 5 and 6 are used to create protective auras that keep magic calamities, taint, and monsters away from important cities and temples. Shirines , strategic military strongholds. Those protected grounds last for centuries at the time, unless something huge forces them beyond limit. They grant important advantage to the mages defending a nation. Against invading forces. Specially when those invading forces use magic.

Those protective auras are a geopolitical factor here. They make defensive strategies easier to civilized nations. Hold ground, once the defences are in place and as long as they remain active is far less expensive than advance on enemy territory to take it. Even with help of traitors sabotaging their side to help you, the cost of invasion is far superior than the cost to defend consolidate position.

National borders tend to last longer than they would otherwise, if I am understanding the situation correctly.

Many other things can be done with those level 5 and 6 spells. Money, for instance.

All civilized currency in this world is magically cooked ceramic. It projects a holographic image when hold in a certain way, and the mental certainty of legitimacy. Impossible to fake. That grants them a very stable economy. Because is too expensive to make pore coins in large quantities at once. No sovereign can “print” money when they feel like to cover for whimsical adventures.

Create a new capital, and therefore a new civilized nation, involves among other things the creation of a magic oven to cook money, and make the national currency. That is a level 7 spell. You need at least 2 of those to found a new country. One gets you your money-printing structure. Another, grants you the special protection to your Capital City. Linked to your Royal Lineage.

The scariest thing about people like me to the people from this world is that at the top of our power we can make level 7 spells all by ourselves. Normally they need an exceptional number of high-level expert mages, extremely powerful, hard to reunite and persuade to work for a same cause. More equipment, immense amounts of magic fuel accumulated over a long time, countless sacrifices. New civilized nations rarely came into existence, and they seem to like things that way.

Make sense their insistence in the need to kill us as babies, while we are still weak.

Against my best judgement I continued my practice and study of magic. Now with even more discretion. I knew now that I would have to hide my skills from my teacher years later. Also, from everyone else after that. Stil, I was not capable to give up magic.

The passages about theory and structure of magic, outside the spells themselves, gave me deeper understanding about how **** was the distance between this gift I had in my hands and what mages usually have. Even the most advanced and talented mages in this world need gestures and words to cast spells. I was doing mine without any external sign since I managed to master them, only used the words and gestures during the learning process of a new spell.

To do spells without words a mage needs magic instruments with this spell previously inscribed in them, and the energy previously invested in the spell, with some extra. Only advanced mages are able to use instruments. Even them, at very least a contracted hand gesture is necessary.

In addition to that, spells are fix constants. The balance has to be perfect and fluid, the result and the limitations cannot change. Any modification builds a new spell and to do that takes a lifetime of work, from a large number of mages sharing their effort and results. I was only able to find those magic books by taking a spell that was made to find objects the mage was familiar with, and changing the lines, to apply it to objects I could specify generically but had never seem. I did all that work without the most basic theoretic background in Metamagic, as a 3 years old baby.

Have the memories of a lifetime, adult emotions and experiences, as a newborn baby, should provide anyone advantage enough in life. Practically in any society I would be able to imagine. Have this level of advantage in live and this gift for magic on top of that, feels a bit like cheating.

Sometimes I still wonder if the alerts about how dangerous people like me are have solid ground or not. I hope not!

Because I still hope to grow and get old enough to form a family. Have children of my on.

Next time I lived alone up to 52 years, when I died alone from a disease. I don’t know if I had any other life before of my previous life on Earth, or if I may have any other after my present one in this Medieval Fantasy word. What I know is this.

I wish to raise children. So I can die this time knowing those children raised by me have grow up to be adults who will stay alive after me. Hopefully, experience the same joys I have experiences, and make some original mistakes of their own.

“The source of tragedy for the world”. Be that character would make me a very lazy father, would it not? Hard to imagine such a diabolic persona working in harmony with my domestic goal.

“Evil Tyrant Warlord and Dedicate Father of 6” is an epitaph I would not mind to have, myself. Unfortunately, it don’t look like a plausible goal to aim for.

( I am ending the story here. Would be possible to continue it, I admit. However, at least for the moment, I have not being able to start a third chapter. )