1060 New Era.
151 years before the birth of Geralt of Rivia.
Aedirn.
Shaerrawedd.
Two years later.
Merinelteratsin, also known as Merlin.
Two years had flown by faster than anything.
After all, here I could immediately admire a spark or a bolt of lightning, so I had motivation in spades.
And with that, any task flies by quicker.
Plus, the fact that magic came to me very, very easily also kept me from getting bored or perceiving the study of sorcery as something particularly difficult.
It all came down to the innate draconic ability to absorb magic from the entire surrounding environment.
While almost all sorcerers and sorceresses have to use Places of Power, where this very magic concentrates on a large scale, to replenish their strength, dragons and cats can do it just lying around.
Which meant Nimue and I had almost no limits on the number of training sessions per day; we didn’t have to wait for the magic in our bodies to recover, like ordinary sorcerers.
Sorcerers who, even at Places of Power, are forced to wait for their power to restore.
Considering all this, dragons were practically ordained by God himself to become sorcerers.
True, there was immediately a nuance with dragon physiology, which is completely unsuitable for performing human or elven spells…
We have paws, yes-sir!
And also a roaring speech.
However, golden dragons who are metamorphmagi, like Nimue and me, were again ordained by God himself to level up as mages!
“The dragon’s abilities in sorcery, in controlling Chaos, are simply astonishing,” the Elder of the Aen Seidhe commented in a tone devoid of any expression, standing nearby, on my latest success.
Did it bother me that he considered my magical skills the result of my race’s innate abilities?..
No, not at all.
After all, I really did progress faster due to the monstrous reserves of magic in a dragon’s body, and the ability to replenish them from anywhere.
Besides, I don’t have a fetish for having my talents recognized by others — I look at the result.
What difference does it make what ultimately produced it — perseverance, talent, hard work, or race?
The result is there, and that’s what matters.
One could argue about honesty or dishonesty in this area for years and end up anywhere.
Even at this old-school one — proper hard work will beat any talent!
“I told you we wouldn’t cause you any trouble or problems, Elder,” I said with a satisfied smile, glancing at Nimue, who was sitting nearby.
“And my training won’t cause you any difficulties or take up too much time.”
“I have never taught anyone but elves before.
Neither my teachers, nor their teachers…
Therefore, my initial doubts were completely logical,” Simlas replied in a completely unchanged tone, folding his hands behind his back and looking us both over.
“Nevertheless, in magical matters, in two years dragons achieve what most elves learn in two decades.
An astonishing speed…”
“Nevertheless, that’s not all you know,” I said, tilting my head to the side, glancing at the golden dragoness in elven form who had approached us.
“Just a small part.
I only have access to spells from the Elementalism and Illusion schools…” I listed a couple of directions in elven magic.
“At least half of those schools, for sure.
But magic doesn’t end there.”
“I agree.
You sorcerers have turned out to have many interesting spells.
I think it would be good if we learned all of them.
Even if you are destroyed…” Nimue shrugged, and I didn’t catch even a shadow of doubt in her voice that it could be any different!..
“We will still preserve your knowledge.”
“I’m not in a hurry to die.
You, even less so…
There’s no point in rushing.
As for your words, Merlin…
Magic is an incredibly vast art, and even we have not fully mastered it,” the elf agreed with me; we generally had few differences on magical matters.
They know better what’s what.
“If all dragons possessed metamorphism, I suppose humans would not be our main problem.”
“Humans…
Yes, I’ve heard,” I nodded slowly, recalling the situation that had developed over two years.
The local Thranduil didn’t hide that he wanted to get the young, but still a dragon, under his command.
Well, I must say, he’s been managing it so far.
As for humans…
Well, I can’t say I particularly understand my former kin.
Because they are the ones encroaching on the elves, occupying their ancestral lands.
And the elves allow it, abandoning their palaces and cities and offering almost no resistance…
But as they say, appetite comes with eating, and humans occupied more and more elven territories.
Remembering the canon very well, I know perfectly well that specifically on the Continent, humans…
How should I put this more gently…
Were a bit out of line.*
* — truly canon.
The First War with the elves portrays humans in a very negative light.
There’s an article on Wikipedia.
I once delved into the deep lore of The Witcher and heard about the first conflicts between elves and humans.
Especially since — look — Simlas himself participated in that conflict about three hundred years ago.
And as I’ve understood over two years, this elf won’t lie when there’s no need.
The truth, in this case, painted humans as outright conquerors and, in part, religious fanatics, better than any lie.
The arriving humans carved out living space for themselves by simply driving out the previous inhabitants (and not just elves) further East.
Sometimes even massacring them — Lok Muinne is a perfect example.
As a resident of a certain country in my past life, this couldn’t help but evoke a number of unpleasant associations.
The elves, of course, weren’t kind and fluffy creatures either; that’s simply impossible for any race.
And their outright ignoring and avoiding the human problem didn’t do them credit, but…
The thing is, in the end, they never attacked the persistently encroaching humans, allowing them to live their own lives, while the humans took the bit between their teeth and kept pushing and pushing, and pushing and pushing…
And a couple of centuries later, they got a local version of the Irish Republican Army — the Scoia’tael, aka the Squirrels.
They oppressed the other races.
Of course, the Squirrels were also quite the characters, embittered to the extreme and also starting to go overboard, but their radicalism doesn’t change history — the humans who arrived on the Continent were outright audacious fellows, whose actions ultimately led to the radicalism of many non-humans.
After all, not only elves were in the Squirrels.
Supporters of anthropocentrism and the eternally guilty elves from my past life would find it unpleasant to hear, but history doesn’t tolerate the subjunctive mood.
And help my former kin under such conditions?
Yeah, right.
Right now, I’ll just up and fly over.
They’re doing fine on their own.
Though I’m not going to side with the elves either.
At least, not entirely.
They themselves don’t want to defend their territories by force, and if that’s the case, my help will be useless.
Maybe I’ll save some elf depending on the situation, for some profit, but otherwise…
I don’t want to directly interfere in a racial war.
And I doubt Nimue, who is always with me now, will have any different opinion.
She’s fine anyway — she perceives both humans and elves as two different species of monkeys, nothing more, nothing less.
* * *
A little later.
“…Nimue, ready?” I inquired, standing a hundred meters from the golden dragoness.
“Ready.
On the count of three, we start,” the sorceress replied with a noticeable smirk, standing in what seemed like a relaxed stance.
And while an ordinary human or elven sorcerer still needs to keep their hands ready for the correct gestures, which, combined with pronunciation in Elder Speech, create spells, we were faster and could manage to make the necessary gesture from almost any position of hands and body.
That’s exactly what happened now.
As soon as we synchronously said three, elemental spells burst from our palms, with fingers moving hastily.
“Rheoli Dŵr: Dosbarthu Dŵr,” her voice rang out in Elder Speech.
“Trydan: Her Mellt,” she continued in one breath.
“Rievi: Rhewi,” I replied a couple of seconds later, pronouncing an even simpler spell.
After her words, Nimue, with a smile, released a whole wave of water from her palm.
And then, in her other palm, came the crackle of lightning, invisible through the thickness of the water flying at me, but perfectly audible.
So my words meant the pronunciation of a counterspell, and changing the position of my middle and index fingers, touching their pads together, I froze all the water flying at me.
After that, instead of a combination of lightning and water, to spread the former through the latter, Nimue had to sharply circle the ice barrier that had appeared and fire the ready lightning spell directly at me.
And that gave me time to pronounce a new spell.
“Gwynt Troelli: Creu rhwystr gwynt,” I said almost in a tongue-twister, simultaneously making several gestures with my fingers.
The wind barrier, spinning clockwise before me, caught the yellow lightning in its grip, only to immediately whirl it around and send it off to the side, into the nearest tree.
One of those surrounding the impressive-sized artificial clearing in the center of one of the forests — we had to work on the sparring field in our dragon forms, uprooting trees and making the ground smooth again.
But the fight didn’t stop there.
We absorbed magic from everywhere in the surrounding world, and our reserves were replenished without any recourse to intersections, crossroads of magical energies, whose location almost completely coincides with the locations of Places of Power.
So we could continue the fight.
Elemental spells poured from our mouths like a cornucopia.
Fire was quenched by water, lightning dispersed by wind, water frozen by ice, earth neutralized by earth…
The world around us constantly turned into a branch of elemental hell, as two dragons in elven forms simply, with full dedication, hammered away with spells and held nothing back.
Even the unfortunate trees, located quite far away, suffered.
We’d have to uproot them again and increase the size of our sparring clearing, yeah…
“Ho?” Nimue exclaimed in amazement when a spear of pure flame flying at me was simply…
Absorbed by my outstretched palm, which had heated up slightly.
“The elf didn’t teach us this.”
“Naturally,” I nodded, wincing slightly from the heat that had covered my palm.
“This is my own development.
I tried to literally suck all the magic out of your spell.
True, the effect isn’t fast enough and only works when the body and the spell are in contact.” I showed my reddened, slightly burned palm.
Dragon accelerated regeneration would fix it, but it was still unpleasant.
“This way…
We can nullify the sorcerers’ advantage in magic when we are in our true form…” the golden-haired pseudo-elf drawled with anticipation, smiling quite broadly.
“That would be nice, but for now it requires serious concentration, and at the same time, immobility,” I grimaced, shaking my hand.
“Plus, the smaller the target area, the better.
In short, there are a ton of limitations, and it’s essentially only useful for us, the goldens.
Because it requires experience in using spells, which needs to be…
Turned upside down, and instead of expelling magic, absorb it.”
“Nevertheless,” my opponent grinned with satisfaction.
“This has great potential.
A spell, but in reverse, you say?” she continued with interest, immediately summoning a fireball with movements of the fingers of her right hand and sending it straight into her left palm.
A moment, and the fire began to be drawn into her palm, which afterward turned out to be only slightly reddened.
“Oh, come on…” I said, a little…
Let’s say…
Stunned.
Because she had simply repeated what I had been struggling with for several months…
Repeated it on the first try, having only seen it once.
No, I understand that I started from scratch, and she had already seen the finished effect on her own spell, but still…
What a talent.
Right.
I need to try harder.
Otherwise, this golden dragoness will manage to take away my title of the future best mage on the Continent.
And I want to get such a pompous title, since I have all the conditions for it, plus a suitable name under which I already introduce myself to everyone.
“Well, now let’s continue the sparring.
We haven’t even gotten halfway through the duration of the previous ones…”
My palms took different positions, and water began to spread around me, immediately evaporated by fire and creating a fog that concealed even from dragon sight…