Virgil took the Novice Book of Fire gently, like it was a delicate piece of art.
“Truly a magnificent working,” he said, his voice taking on the quality of a lecturer. “Nothing like this could be made today. Our magic relies far too heavily on the System and the shortcuts it provides.”
“What do you mean by that?” Desiree piped up. “The System has always been here.”
“No.” Darkness flashed across Virgil’s face. He quickly blinked it away and forced a smile. “Before the System, men had to earn their abilities. Only by truly understanding a spell could it be written out and taught to another. Only by reading and learning and practicing could a student then cast it.
“With the help of the System,” he added bitterly, “I will speak the name of my own skill to transfer the information of the Fireball spell to a man with no affinity for such magic. And it will work.”
“Hey, I’m not complaining,” James said lightly. “I could use another spell.”
Virgil pursed his lips and chose not to respond. He whispered instead a word of power. The book glowed with red light. The lock burned away like it was nothing, the cover flew open as if from a gust of wind, and the pages fluttered rapidly into a fan. The red glow continued to expand, too quickly for anyone to react, until it was all consuming.
James couldn’t close his eyes against it, nor could he raise a hand to shield his eyes. It was like the haze of combat but a hundred times worse.
And then it was over.
He pressed his hands against his temples and blinked watery eyes. “What the hell was that?”
“Greetings, student. Welcome to the school of fire.”
James blinked. Inara, Desiree, and Virgil were gone. The entire prison was gone. In place of torch lit halls and rusted iron bars, he stood on an open-air platform. It was about the size of a basketball court, if a basketball court was warped and stretched into a hexagon. White marble pillars rose at every corner. Each one was adorned with a black cloth, five of which were rolled up. The sixth hung like a banner, and it was embroidered with a silver symbol which could only represent the spell that James was here to learn: Fireball.
At the other end of the arena stood an old man. His hair was stark white and shoulder-length, neatly pulled back in a ponytail. There was something oddly familiar about the man. For a moment James was confused; he’d certainly never met him before.
And then he realized. The robe. It was the same one he’d seen on the skeleton in the secret room. He’d looted everything from that room. James tried to access his inventory, but it was gone.
“What is this place?” James asked. “I’m not dead again, am I?” He had a brief image of Virgil somehow activating the book to kill him, and Inara whispering “I told you so” over his corpse. How embarrassing that would be.
The old man spread his hands. “Welcome to the school of fire. I am Master Fiyero, here to guide you on your journey.”
James took a step forward. “Are you real?”
“What is reality?” the man replied. “Everything you know and feel is filtered through your senses. Your every thought only exists within your mind. Do you consider your thoughts to be real?”
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James tried to follow that for a second, then shook his head. “No man, that’s some metaphysical bullshit. Is this all in my head or isn’t it?”
The old man frowned, and James feared he’d made a terrible mistake. What if this guy — Fiyero, really? — would only teach him if he had an existential crisis first?
But then Fiyero sighed. “To some extent, this is happening inside your mind. For as long as you are here, time will pass very slowly in what you consider to be the ‘real world.’ But this realm is not something you’ve dreamed up on your own. It was developed by me — that is, my corporeal counterpart — and set into a book, that I might continue to teach even after my passing.”
This was blowing James’s mind. Virgil would have loved to be in this position! James would have to make sure the scholar got to use the book as soon as his cooldown finished.
“Wait,” James paused. “Is this some kind of horcrux immortality? Or are you a kind of artificial intelligence?”
Fiyero wrinkled his nose at the word “artificial.”
“The reality of this space is immaterial,” he said. “What matters is that you are here to learn Fireball, and I am equipped to teach it to you.”
James took the scolding for what it was and let the matter drop. Agitating his teacher wouldn’t accomplish anything useful, even if — or perhaps because — he was little more than an advanced construct.
He bowed. “I’m ready, master.”
The gesture mollified the older gentleman. “Bah!” he said. “The first thing we need to do is raise your affinity with fire. Without that, you would never be able to cast even the most basic fire spell. Are you ready?”
“Okay… how do we do that?” James’s anxiety supplied him with a vivid image of immolation, or of having to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together.
Instead, the old man clapped his hands, and the sun went dark. There were no stars in the sky, and James was plunged into total darkness. Fiyero clapped again, and the arena was lit up by hundreds of candles which had not been there a moment ago. Fingernail sized flames flickered amongst the pillars, casting and dispelling shadows as they danced.
When Fiyero next spoke, he no longer sounded like an old man. His voice strengthened and deepened with otherworldly power.
“What is candlelight?”
James considered the question. Candlelight, like any kind of light, was made up of photons. A photon was an electron, a negatively charged particle, with enough energy to not be tied to an atom. It traveled as a wave and as a particle.
Should he say all that, or was that kind of thing beyond a ren-faire wizard? It was the correct answer. James had spent so much of his life around electricity — testing breakers and high voltage cables and deenergized transformers — that the more he thought about it, the more he realized it was the only answer he could give.
“Candlelight,” he began, “like any other light, is made up of photons…”
“Wrong,” Fiyero said when he finished. “Try again.”
James furrowed his brow. He wasn’t wrong, it just wasn’t the answer Fiyero was looking for. That sort of thing got him into a lot of trouble back in college. He’d spent hours arguing with pedantic professors who refused to admit even the slightest mistake, no matter how thoroughly he proved his case.
Still, he’d known the photons might be too advanced. He gave it another shot.
“Candlelight is the light produced by a burning candle. It’s a soft, warm, flickering light that creates a romantic atmosphere.”
“Wrong. You have one attempt remaining before you will lose this opportunity and have to gain fire affinity another way.” Fiyero spoke so dispassionately that James suddenly had no difficulty thinking of him as a kind of advanced AI.
“Oh come on, man, you’re supposed to be teaching me! How are you going to fail me when I get one answer wrong! And you didn’t even teach me anything yet! It’s not like I haven’t been paying attention.”
“I gave you plenty of time to ask your questions,” Fiyero said. His voice resonated throughout the candlelit space. “You said you were ready.”
James panicked. How stupid! He’d spent all his questions on dumb things like whether or not Fiyero was really alive instead of asking the real question, like what the hell is candlelight, or how else can I get a fire affinity?
One by one, the candles began to snuff out, starting in the middle and inching their way outward toward James and Fiyero.
James didn’t have to ask what it would mean if all the candles went out.
“Think,” he said, pounding a fist against his palm. “What is candlelight?”
He watched the little flames flicker out one by one. Just before the darkness reached him, he realized: there was only one thing it could be.
“Stop!” he cried. “I’ve got it!”
The approaching darkness paused. James didn’t need any more invitation than that.
“The candlelight is fire!”
