„Today we will go over the most common mistakes of the summoning process."
The instructor took his staff and started to prepare the summoning circle slowly - for demonstration purposes.
It's already been 3 weeks since Alaric has started his school life in Cael Varn.
The magic school life was absolutely addictive to Alaric. No boring and useless subjects that even the dumb ones could solve. Here excellence was the constant motivation. Be it from the teacher, independent scholars or even the simple peer pressure.
Every time someone advanced in their magical studies, it made everyone else feel the pressure, making it so that everyone was constantly giving it their best. After all – they already had a kid thrown out. A mix of laziness and arrogance, because he was the son of a rich merchant, thinking he could bribe his way trough the eams. He was made into an example.
That moment gave him the shivers, the fury in which the magicians around the boy screamed at him to humiliate his character and mercilessly threw him out of the school, and giving the whole class a reminder of possible consequences for useless people.
That was the last day that the slackers slacked.
Even to Alaric, someone who comprehended all of the basic knowledge surrounding him, it left a big impression. Someone that took to magic like a fish to water.
Suddenly he noticed a pile of rocks moving together like a single creature having appeared in the middle of the summoning circle.
"This, young acolytes is a stone elemental. There are 4 types of elementals, each one representing the basics elements of the world that surrounds us.
Earth – the element with the strongest defense. Strong Terramancers even have a strong attack power as they hurl giant boulders at their enemies.
Air – the fastest element. Aeromancers are very rare as the element of air is surrounding us all the time, it is hard to grasp but gives access to the powers of a storm in the later stages of magic.
Fire – the most destructive element. Pyromancers are among the most common mages, you will find plenty of materials on this. It is the easiest to learn but hard to master, since in the later stages one needs to suppress the destructivity in its base form.
Water – the most diverse element. Hydromancers are often the most diversely skilled mages in the world. Water can become hard as ice, fluid as water and even have healing properties." The instructor spoke aloud with great passion.
"Back to summoning, the element that you mainly will want to summon for the first time, is the one whose element you most identify with. Use the materials we discussed and have used last week to draw a summoning circle on your piece of paper. After a review from me or one of the assistant teachers, you will draw it on our little plaza here with chalk and fill it with magical energy. Remember the control of the first week where we went through mana control." He smiled, having a hopeful expectation that at least one student would manage an elemental on the first day of the week.
Alaric instantly started thinking about how he wanted to make the spell matrix inside the summoning circle. Which symbols to use and in what arrangement to sort them.
Suddenly he felt the Axiom Vault click in his mind. Strings of different symbols clicked in his mind, as if he suddenly understood the difference between single letters and complete words for the first time, since he started studying them over 2 years ago.
His mind ran as he combined a relatively simple divided spell matrix with complex symbols inside of it. Soon the summoning circle was finished drawing.
"Quite advanced, aren't we acolyte Vane?" he heard over his shoulder.
He slightly shook before turning around. A female teacher, in black and blue - an archmage, looked at his summoning circle drawing.
"I have been experimenting with some of these symbols myself, yet not been able to come to a conclusion. Yet it seems that you do – care to explain where you received this knowledge?" she asked in a measured tone.
"I have seen it as a small child, when my father told me about them and explained them to me. He died before he could teach me all of it, so I'm just trying some things from my little memory left of him." He lied as if he really missing his nonexistent father.
"Surely a person so advanced would be known, no?" she pressed on.
"No, he died as we were on our way back to the silver cities to share it. The few notes that I had left of him are everything that he had left me, but I had to trade them in to a merchant for food and water on my way here because I had none left."
The look on the female mages face turned into a disappointing scowl – begrudgingly coming to the acceptance that there was nothing significant left to gain from Alaric.
"Well, since you are finished – go on." She urged him, while accompanying him to the small summoning plaza.
Only 2 pairs of teacher and student being there before them.
Then he started to draw the circle.
"I really need to learn how to do this with magic from distance, this is absolutely unpractical for any form of real fighting." His mind drifted.
Alaric knelt and began drawing. He moved methodically, chalk in hand, he drew the lines with the precision of an architect and the awareness of an engineer. Circles, triangles, intersecting lines of power — and at the core, the nested symbols that the Vault had subtly etched into his awareness. Not direct communication, not speech — but intuition, shaped into geometry.
The teacher stood beside him with her arms crossed, saying nothing.
He finished.
A breath. A pulse.
The lines softly shimmered.
Alaric raised his hands, spreading them slightly as instructed near the outer chalk circle. Fingers loose, but focused. He didn't chant. His magic signature is the key — the arrangement, the math, the precision does the rest. All magic, he had begun to suspect, was just physics from a more flexible universe.
He pushed his magic in.
The air within the summoning circle wavered. The chalk lines lit with a cool blue. And then it responded.
A shape began to form. Not rough and churning like the stone elemental the teacher had shown. This one emerged gradually, like an artist drawing in reverse — from outline to depth to motion. Its limb was sleek, its body fluid, composed of something not quite water but clearly not solid - shaped like an upright snake with a bird's beak. It hovered above the ground on its own puddle of water, amorphous, constantly shifting — yet with clear eyes that shimmered like tiny stars.
A water elemental.
Not common. Not impossible. But certainly rare for a first summon.
Murmurs rose from the students still in line to be checked. One of the assistants moved closer, visibly intrigued.
The elemental swayed gently in place, regarding Alaric with a tilt of its head shaped like a beak – the focus of the nature's spirit given form.
"It's… stable," the female teacher murmured, barely concealing her surprise.
"I thought he'd lose control at the merging phase," another instructor muttered from the steps nearby. "Most students do the first time."
But Alaric heard none of it.
His focus was on the elemental.
Not just its presence, but the connection to it. The way it moved, responded, shimmered. There was something beneath the surface, a rhythm — a sequence.
Like the Vault's internal movements. His eyes widened just slightly. There was information inside the summon. Maybe not knowledge, not intelligence — but resonance.
It was like watching a clockwork machine of nature spin.
He let the energy drain slowly, just like the scrolls had instructed. The elemental gradually broke apart, dispersing into mist and light, until the circle dimmed and went quiet again.
Alaric stood. Calm. No sweat. No pride.
The teacher looked at him once, then nodded. "Well done, acolyte Vane."
He bowed slightly. "Thank you, instructor."
She paused. "You're a quiet one. But I'll be watching your progress."
She sounded impressed, possibly willing to take him as disciple in the future if he showed the same amount of potential in the future.
As he returned to the steps and resumed his seat, the Vault gave a single, delayed pulse.
A flicker of light behind his eyes.
And a whisper of a symbol — like water folding upon itself.
A new Axiom.
It hadn't come from theory this time. It had come from action.
Summoning is a key to information layering. That was what it had shown.
He jotted a note into the side of his notebook under the headline Summoning Frameworks:
Certain forms of summoned elementals contain repeatable energy patterns. Further study required. Test responsiveness. Pattern stability across summoning instances may offer a secondary pathway to comprehension-based magic.
He closed the book. Exhaled.
The other students were still struggling with their circles, but soon enough a second one achieved success – a stone elemental. The instructors were walking, checking for mistakes and potential disasters. The plaza was filled with the soft hum of failed summons and frustrated grunts.
Alaric leaned back, eyes closed for a moment.
Progress, even when subtle, always came with a whisper from the Vault.
And if it whispered, he listened.
Sooner or later, he'd understand it all.
And maybe — just maybe — master the art of rewriting the world and way of nature.