4. The Heart and Mind—
Many evenings were spent by Kiro and Cheria in the small study rooms at the library, reviewing magical potions, incantations, scrolls, and energy flows. Having spent so much time together, they became more used to each other's note-taking style and methods of explanation than they did to those of most other students. Cheria greatly enjoyed having a study partner who shared her perspective on the nature of White magic, who seemed to really speak her language, and knew how to review magical lessons in a way that really made sense to her. Kiro, in turn enjoyed having someone who listened so well to his sometimes repetitive speeches on how one teacher or another could have presented some material differently, how Kiro would have phrased it or demonstrated it.
Day after day, Kiro could always look forward to his study group sessions with Cheria. Sometimes, the classwork or or instruction could be dull, but somehow, going back over it with Cheria never quite seemed so boring.
They practiced their healing and protective magics on each other, each letting the beneficent energy of the other wash over them. They opened themselves up to each other to feel the life, mental, and magical energies that coursed through them through the different planes of reality. Kiro thought to himself how lucky he was to have a study partner who was so well attuned to his own energies, and how such a situation must naturally enhance both of their studies. Kiro hoped that Talum's new study group held the same sort of bond for Talum. It was truly a powerful thing, being linked to the heart and mind of another person in this way.
Thus, it naturally followed that the idea of the mind and heart being attacked was particularly abhorrent to Kiro, so he made it his calling to protect them to the best of his ability. All White acolytes were expected to learn healing magic, as well as be at least basically skilled in the other protective and restorative arts, but Kiro made his specialty one of healing the heart and soul. Kiro eagerly sought out such instruction for these courses, and after three years of basic training, he began his rigorous studies directly under Dromnir, the sagacious White wizard leading the academy.
"All manner of maladies may befall those whom a White magic practitioner is bound to protect," Dromnir began the first day of his advanced class. "But often, the most terrifying of these that a party may encounter are those that attack one's mind and soul. These may even outrank death itself as threats, as death is at least more commonly anticipated, and, in some cases, a fallen warrior may be easier to revive and be less of a threat than a bewitched warrior."
Over three more years, Kiro improved his healing magics and his alchemy, but continued to focus primarily on mental healing. From visiting Black mages, he learned the intricacies of the Black magic and various poisons that could be used to dizzy unprepared warriors, render them unable to distinguish friend from foe, or even induce the uprising of deeply hidden secret desires of betrayal within weak and strong minds alike. Kiro pored dedicatedly over many tomes, spent weeks in prayer to hone his powers, his mind, and his soul to first be protected from attack, to be pure, harboring no unclean thought which could be exploited by an enemy. Only then was he taught how to truly enter the mind of another, in a truly intimate form of magic, requiring the highest integrity and ethical standards, to see the darkness inside someone that may be exploited, to clear the clouds that fog the mind of a friend, and to expel the alien forces that would unnaturally empower a person's darker desires.
Now, Kiro spent hours in the library gathering scrolls. Each one focused on a specific spell or aspect of the mental state of a warrior. One in particular discussed blindness. While there were obvious physical methods of inducing it, there were also magical ways, magical fogs that could be summoned to separate a person's vision from their minds. Then, there was "berserk." This dark magic drew the poor target's consciousness deep down into a much lower level. The mental was sacrificed for the physical, boosting brute strength at the cost of one's very will. Kiro could barely understand how such a thing would be cast upon one's own allies, even in desperate moments.
In still deeper research, Kiro discovered tomes describing magics by which the mind could be tricked, confused, into striking out at everyone around, perceiving all as a threat, even one's own allies. Kiro dedicated his own mind to this study. Which lines of energy did this Black magic cross? Where did it make its attack? What was the poor lost piece of the victim's mind that had to be restored? In this, Kiro realized how fragile the mind is, relative to other parts of the body, when it came to magic. It was far easier to summon a fireball to roast a victim's flesh than it was to cross wires in a victim's brain, but as Dromnir put it, this careful, almost surgical modification could prove to be a greater threat. It would require similar care and precision to enter a person's mind and undo this damage without harming the victim's mind in the process.
"The heart is such a precious thing," Kiro wrote in his notes, "that it must be handled gently, even when it has been turned toward anger and passion. Often, only truly focused magic that is yet as gentle as a breeze may pass through the defenses of a tormented mind."
Cheria had decided to focus on potion making and alchemy. She explained that she had enjoyed her potions course the most from the very first day. Yet, even though Kiro and Cheria now had entered different major fields within the academy, and had no classes together, they still found it mutually beneficial to meet up from time to time to tell each other what they had learned. Kiro tasted Cheria's potions and herbs, always complimenting her on the way she was able to remove the bitterness and disturbing reactions that sometimes accompanied the more powerful consumable items. He also helped her in the laboratory, as they watched the effects of the more advanced potions work their magic on small test subjects. The Black magic school occasionally provided small batches of undead lab rats for experiments involving the rebuking and banishment of the undead. Kiro could not help but admit that dealing with such poor suffering creatures was not his most favorite part of the coursework, but understood its purpose, nonetheless. It was with great pleasure that Kiro beheld Cheria's first batch of holy water, distilled water imbued with a powerful sort of life magic that, rather than damaging the flesh of the undead, actually restored it to life. With compassion and precision, she administered this concoction to one undead rat's cage, causing it to screech violently for a brief moment, only to fill out, soften up, and heal back to a truly natural rat. It was actually rather cute in its living form, especially by comparison to its previous state.
Cheria also gladly assisted Kiro with his studies, graciously opening her mind and heart to him, allowing him to feel her memories and hopes, that he might learn how to better improve his ability to protect and heal damage done to those parts of a person. For every spell that Kiro studied, for every malady, he searched Cheria's mind and heart for those ties that needed to be protected, those energy lines that would be damaged in such an attack and, as such, the lines that would need to be restored. He examined her soul, remembering where everything was, in case he ever had to put it back together again.
Please review, letting me know how I can improve, or if you liked it. Below the following horizontal bar are some notes I made as a writer, indicating what I am thinking about the story at this stage. WARNING!!! The area below the next line contains vague indications of where I plan to go with the story. MINOR SPOILER ALERT! I only have it there in case you do not mind reading a bit ahead, and have some ideas you would like to share about my writing style, or my strategy for bringing things up in a certain pace.
So, I have jumped ahead a few years, and Talum really is not in the picture anymore. I wonder if I have a problem by making throw-away characters, but I guess it just seems more realistic that way; you do not usually run into the same people over and over again in life; you usually keep meeting new people, instead. As far as jumping ahead a few years goes, I am planning to do that again. I was not really planning to make this a "high-school" style fanfic. I mainly had an idea that came from a little daydream depicting something happening later in the White mage's life. These first few chapters are really for the purpose of giving context to Kiro's state of mind in that pivotal event. I hope I am not going either too slow or too fast in getting there. Originally, my chapters were only about 600 - 800 words or so each. One nice reviewer told me that those were rather short chapters, so I am now going through and fleshing out each one, rather than combining them, into longer chapters. I only hope that does not mean that I am adding boring fluff. However, I also hope that it does not bother readers when I jump ahead a few years at a time in order to progress Kiro's life a little bit. I guess I am only writing this much about his youth because I want it to "feel" more real when I finally put him into a very serious situation.