Penitent-Chapter 9: Routine
The next several weeks followed the same formula. They would wake up, dress, be inspected, get punished if they messed up, walk to the alchemist to receive the next injection, breakfast, magic, language, then lunch, Stent Military norms, bushcraft, and finally combat. As their bodies grew, the combat and physical training began to gain more intensity, though the focus remained on form rather than force. After almost a month of that, he was nearing, he guessed, a physical age of five or six. His uniform was starting to get a bit snug, but he didn’t have it as bad as Davi who seemed to be near bursting out of his every time he put it on. Michael’s clique stayed the same, as did the other groups. They didn’t antagonize one another, or give anyone trouble, but in such an unfamiliar place they all wanted to cling to what was familiar.
Spellcraft was difficult for Michael, but he enjoyed it. Feeling the cool channels of magicka in his body, and focusing them to do even simple spellwork had a thrill to it.
“Spells are, on the surface, a very simple thing. Almost everyone can produce a small flame to light a fire, or cleanse a bit of water. More powerful spells can be done with a focus, usually something physical that allows someone to better channel their magicka. With minor spells like what you’ll learn from me, you will be using words as your focus. Stent recruits are taught specific phrases for each spell, but we’ve found that takers have a lot of difficulty with that, so instead you will be using words or phrases that you personally associate with the basest component of each spell. A language from your world known as Latin is popular for this.”
He reached into his coat and pulled a small candle from his pocket that he placed gently on the table in front of himself. He held a single finger to the wick, and whispered something. A small flame appeared at his fingertip and the wick was lit with ease. He raised his finger to his lips and blew, ceasing the spell.
“This is the first spell you’ll learn. A simple flame. You will, in some ways, be developing it yourself, but it’s important to keep yourself limited. The first thing you’ll do is reach for those channels of magicka within you. Then you’ll picture a small flame, no bigger than the one on this candle. When it feels clear in your mind, push your magicka a little past your fingertips, and say whatever word it is you want to be your focus.” He gestured to the young soldiers watching the doors. Each of them went to small crates and began pulling out candles, placing one in front of each of them.
Michael looked at his candle, thinking first about what his focus word should be. He knew a bit of Latin, but he had taken more Spanish classes than Latin ones. He supposed he could use English for it, but that felt… lame, for lack of a better word. What was a word that he innately associated with flame, that was also fun to say?
He felt for the magicka channels inside himself, and pushed the coldness within them toward his fingertip, picturing a small, perfect flame at the tip of his finger.
“Fuego,” he muttered to himself. He felt the magicka surge a bit, and a single spark burned his pointer fingertip.
“Ow,” he muttered, placing his finger in his mouth for a moment.
Teft, who’d been walking through the rows inspecting everyone, nodded. “A good first attempt, but remember to push the magicka out past our fingertip. Otherwise you’ll get burned.” He turned to look at Ollie who was sitting next to him.
Ollie was sleeping with his head on the desk, his candle lit and burning.
Teft looked at the flame with an eyebrow raised. He reached forward and snuffed it between his thumb and forefinger, then slapped Ollie on the back of his head.
Ollie shot up, “Cunt,” he said quietly, rubbing the back of his head.
“Light it again,” said Teft.
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Ollie shook his head and waved his hand vaguely in the general direction of the candle. “Barbi,” he said through a yawn. The wick was immediately lit.
“You pushed the magicka all the way out of your body to the wick so you wouldn’t need to use your fingertips?”
Ollie shrugged. “I mean, my channels seem to push it out an inch from my hands all the time anyway. It wasn’t hard.”
Teft pointed at one of the young soldiers. “Get me this one’s file.”
The soldier nodded, and walked out of the classroom.
Ollie had already put his head back down on the desk. Teft took a deep breath and shook his head, moving on to the next person. It took almost the entire class time for anyone else to manage to properly cast the spell. Pyotr, despite being one of the last to find his magicka channels, was the third to manage a proper cast of the spell with a muttering of “plamya”, as he pointed his finger at the wick. Michael had managed to create the flame by the end of the class, but not long enough to actually light the candle.
Marcus did not attend the mage class with everyone, instead going to learn about firearms. He was cagey about it at first, but the fact that he smelled like gunpowder the first time he rejoined them let them guess most of what he was learning anyway. He was getting training as a dragoon, one of the magicka-less gun users that Stent used.
One of the takers, Xiu, who was always crying, actually collapsed when attempting to cast the flame spell.
Teft went to check on him, gesturing to a soldier to come and grab him. “This is what happens when you try to cast beyond your ability. He probably tried to create a roaring fire rather than a small flame. Only those with naturally strong and lengthy mana channels will be able to do more than a minor cast of flame, it’s a hungry piece of spellwork.”
The whiner was taken to the infirmary, and the rest of the class moved to language class. It was in this class and Stent military norms that Michael thrived. He lacked the embarrassment of getting things wrong in another language that many of the others seemed to experience, and because he’d spent more than thirty years doing office work, learning military codes, forms, and terms came naturally to him. He’d been circling back per people’s last emails regarding the tracking sheets that needed to be converted into 3Fs for management, this wasn’t much different.
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In bushcraft the focus stayed primarily on learning useful local flora and fauna, but as they grew larger they were slowly introduced to new parts of their standard kit. They learned how to pitch the tents, how to dig latrines, how to store food in the wilderness, and other useful skills. They were told that the main force only learned some of these skills, but irregulars frequently had to camp or live off the land, so there was more of an emphasis on it. Michael was middling at all of it, but he at least didn’t have any bad habits to unlearn. Marcus and Davi showed a strong talent for it, but Ollie was completely hopeless, receiving regular smacks on his knuckles.
Combat training stayed simple and was usually only a little over an hour at the end of the day. Sword strokes, spear thrusts, shield raises, they were all taught with steady deliberation and all issues with form were critiqued by Kline personally. Pyotr had a surprising talent for perfect form, but Marcus was incredibly fast, and Davi’s size quickly made his blows the most powerful. Michael was good all around, and Ollie was okay all around.
Meals were all hearty and simple. Michael grew to favor a particular dish that reminded him a bit of salisbury steak, but made with, what tasted like, pork. He and the others would shit talk, and tell more about who they were before they arrived there. Davi told stories about kidnappings, drug busts, and murders like most people talked about the weather. Pyotr had been a ballet dancer and then a teacher and always tried to move the conversations into a more philosophical or artistic direction. Marcus said nothing about his past, but it quickly became clear that he’d been involved in shady dealings, and Ollie just joked and shit-talked almost constantly.
The other takers all seemed to do much the same. The whiner started getting extra helpings from one of the women that served the food in the cafeteria, and while he kept up his crying and complaining and pretending in public, when he was in the barracks he started to give up the act and talk to everyone normally, even forming a bit of a clique of his own.
Michael found that he was enjoying it. The instructors could be harsh, and the training difficult, but it was clearly designed with their size and abilities in mind. Stent seemed eager to use resources effectively, not waste them, and that was to their benefit. It felt a bit like college to him. Days full of classes, meals with friends, a set schedule. The others had numerous complaints, but even with the hatred and fear he’d occasionally see in the normal recruits eyes, there were worse ways to start a new life. He particularly enjoyed the combat training, he’d never been in any kind of fight in his old life, but the repetition of swinging a sword and trying to make it work perfectly, it was fun.
