Skyhaven

Chapter 3

As the morning fog burnt off from the sun rising higher in the sky, Lumi finished her tea, went inside and gave a second helping of herbal tea to the patients and cut slices of crusty bread her mother had made last night. She then topped the slices with a thick thyme bloom and cranberry jam, Lumi licked the sticky savory and sweet jelly from her fingers and was proud of herself for making something that tasted so delightful. Lumi's stomach quietly grumbled in agreement. 

She handed out a slice to all of the patients and then made one for herself before walking upstairs to her bedroom. By the time she opened the rough pine door she was shoving the last jam slathered bite of bread into her mouth. Walking towards her small dresser she grabbed the towel that was resting on the nob of the dresser and pulled out a pale blue linen dress from the drawer. She sighed at it, noticing how ratty her clothes were beginning to look before placing it on her bed and walking over to the basin filled with clean water. Lumi rinsed her face and body quickly with the dampened rag before slipping her dress on and packing up her bag with her mineral identification notes and lastly strapping a small dagger to her waist. 

She wasn't going far today by any means, however she knew that the forest was not a safe place these days. The only reason her father became so adamant about joining the war was when her eldest sister Alyssia was on a walk looking for wild onions in the spring and encountered an undead wolf. Had it not been so weak from its intensely decayed body and the fact that she was carrying a dagger on her, things would not have ended so well. Even though Alyssia made it home safe, it image seemed to poison her father's mind.

When he was young was he was in the army, but after he met and fell passionately in love with Lumi's mother and inevitably got her pregnant, they got married, and he settled down to raise his family. Her father never seemed to have minded leaving the army. He enjoyed being a blacksmith, it was hard work, but making things seemed to be a very rewarding experience for him. He shared old stories with the passing mercenaries and knights about the old days, and when they asked his name their face changed to a look of awe. 

Lumi only saw this from a distance, when she was a child she used to make her way to her fathers forge in secret, but now that she was older, she suspected he had known she was there more times than not. Her parents never really had to be concerned about Lumi's safety though. Her ice magic had always been strong enough to be able to protect her. 

She glanced down at the dagger her father had made for her when she turned 15, the same gift Alyssia had received when she came to that age as well. As she walked along the stream towards the forest she looked at the dagger that was so light, it felt like it might bend if she tried to attack something with it. However, she knew that was not the case. the moment she was given the weapon, the entire year after he took her out at sunset, after he tirelessly worked the forge all day, and made her train. Alyssia had to do the same thing we she turned 15 as well, and occasionally would join them when she could tear herself away from working on alchemy. Lumi didn't like it much when she joined, although she never complained, because whenever Lumi wanted to practice on cool afternoons when work was slow, Alyssia would always relent to her younger sister and go out and help her practice.

It was one of those secret training sessions that Lumi discovered she could channel her magic through the cold steel weapon. She was elated when she found out and spent the rest of the week practicing channeling her ice through the weapon. Typically knights would need an enchanted stone fitted into the their sword to be able to do any kind of magic damage, but because Lumi was already a mage, enchantments of that sort were unnecessary. However, this could only be done with her ice magic, hard as she try she would not channel her meager flames into the dagger. 

She suspected that she would need to use an enchantment for that to work, but knew that to efficiently be able to wield a weapon and channel mana into the stone to activate its power it took years of practice and intense concentration. You didn't have to be a mage to be able to channel mana, this was something any human could do with enough meditation and practice. However, not every human can take that mana and manipulate it into magic. Each kind of magic moved differently as well. Lumi could unconsciously use ice magic since before she could even remember, but using flames, or trying to emit sparks of electricity took so much effort and concentration she was quickly left breathless and sweating. 

Her mother used to reassure her that one kind of elemental magic was usually enough for most mages, and mages, at most, could only be considered great at two kinds. Lumi did not believe her mother at first, but after shyly approaching a wizard for hire that wandered into her small town, those words were quickly confirmed. After Lumi drenched the man in a pile of snow to show him what she could do when quizzed, he asked to meet her family, to which Lumi embarrassedly walked him to their meager house that was on top of a their medicine shop. He excitedly talked to her family, and for the rest of his two day stay in the town he tried to show Lumi some tricks, where she learned she responded best to earth elemental magic, because it was only slightly more stubborn than ice. 

Her parents offered to pay him as he left, but he was enchanted with Lumi and said that it was for free, because he truly enjoyed himself. He left her his name on a piece of parchment and the name of the mages college he studied at. Most colleges were found in Croistead and the most prestigious and well known college was found in Draibury, an island west of the main continent of Saoir, where magic was thought to originate. This college was located somewhere unexpected though, it was located in Skyhaven. When her father saw this he laughed quietly, and when she looked up at him curiously he just said, "That's in the town where I grew up and helped my father run his forge. I used to always dream about sneaking into there and seeing what they were up to when I was a boy. They used to be adamant about keeping out people who couldn't use magic though."  

Lumi frown at the name of the college name scribbled on the parchment in distaste, but now that she looked at it as she got older, a insatiable curiosity devoured her each time the paper caught her eye in her desk.

Lumi quickly snapped back to the present when she saw the forest and foothills rise to meet her, and her body disappeared into the trees. She wasn't quite certain if she was ready to identify minerals, however, as she approached an outcrop that was cut out from a small waterfall. The site was beautiful as the late summer sun shown through the deciduous leaves and small broken rays of light hit the falling water. That was not what Lumi was supposed to be looking at and, with conviction, she trained her gaze on the outcrop. 

It was well known that the foothills just inside the forest where rich in metals and semiprecious stones, it was half the reason her father had set up the forge in the neighboring town, but when Lumi looked at the rocks the only thing she could really see was... rock. She shook herself out of her stupor and got closer the the rocky outcrop, when she got closer she could see little flecks of individual minerals within it. She looked at the tiny crystals and said exasperated "Well there is clearly quartz here, but it is far too small to be useful!" 

Lumi looked around a while longer making sure to stick by the creek so she didn't get lost, but she couldn't find any bigger pieces of quartz. As she saw the sun slowly creep past mid day, she gave up and began to head back to help her mother in the medicine shop. It was clear Lumi didn't even know where to begin her search by herself and she was going to need help. She pondered this as she walked back, deciding to reach out to some local miners later that night at the inn in the village.