Path to Power: Book I: Training

Chapter 9: First Day of Classes: Part Three

03:30 P.M.
Runes and Warding Classroom, Udagamandalam Academy of Magic (உதகமண்டலம் அகாடமி ஆஃப் மேஜிக்), Tamil Nadu, India
25th May, 1985.

Hadrian entered the classroom, took a seat and looked around. Guru Sethupathi was seated in his chair with certain objects on his table. There was a table on the board written. As one of one the students filtered in, Guru Sethupathi spoke up:

"Welcome to Runes and Warding. I am Guru Meyappan Sethupathi and I will be your instructor of the class. First we shall start with what runes and warding means. Runes are alphabets. German in origin, although we have seen variations in it. These alphabets carry a specific meaning. There are proper writing sequences of alphabets to form words and finally the words give rise to a runic sentence. Warding is the next step of runes. Combining runic sentences for a desired effect is called warding. Now then since runes are alphabets, they must be written on something. And for that exactly, we use surfaces. These surfaces include wood, bone, stone and metal. Now runes are written using a number of media. These include chalk, magic, blood and some specific powdered and liquid magical substances."

"In today's class, we shall be learning about various types of runes and their respective alphabets. Runes have been distinguished into several types based on the time they were invented. These are: Elder Futhark, in the 2nd to 8th centuries, Anglo Saxon, in the 5th to 11th centuries, Macromannic, a mixture of Elder Futhark and Anglo Saxon runes, in the 8th to 9th centuries, Younger Futhark, in the 9th to 11th centuries, Medieval Runes, in the 12th to 15th centuries and finally the Dalecarlian Runes, in the 16th to 19th centuries. In our curriculum, we have Elder Futhark, Anglo Saxon and Medieval runes, in which Elder Futhark shall be our primary focus."

"Now we shall discuss the Elder Futhark runes. Elder Futhark is used for writing Proto-Norse and is a set of 24 runic alphabets, that are arranged in three groups of eight, each group referred to as an ætt. Now the runic alphabets in order are these." Saying that, he pointed at the board.

"I would request all of you to copy the table as shown. I will be giving you twenty minutes to do so. Then we shall start our discussion of the conjoining of alphabets to form words and finally conjoining of words to form sentences", saying that Guru Sethupathi retook his seat. The students scrambled to get their notebooks and started penning down the table. Quite the tedious task, Hadrian thought. After twenty minutes, Guru Sethupathi got back up.

"Let's start with my name. Meyappan Sethupathi. It would look like this ᛗᛖyᚨᛈᛈᚨᚾ ᛊᛖᛏᚢᛈᚨᚺᛏᛁ. Note that the letter 'y' is not translated because letter 'y' of the english alphabet has not been included in Elder Futhark. So leave it as it is. Those replacements will be included in Anglo Saxon and Medieval Runes. Now I would like all of you to write your name in Elder Furthak."

With this, the class started their work. Hadrian started writing his name. 'Hadrian...the required runic word would be uh..uh..yes..ᚺᚨᛞᚱᛁᚨᚾ', After two minutes, he got his complete name: "ᚺᚨᛞᚱᛁᚨᚾ ᛃᚨᛗᛖᛊ ᛈᛟᛏᛏᛖᚱ". After the whole class completed, Guru Sethupathi got up and said, "Well done all of you. Before we go into sentences, we shall learn how we represent numbers in Runes. Look at the board again, there is a table depicting the numbers and the reason behind each runic symbol." With that, the class again turned to the board and looked at the table.

"Please note this down quickly", said Guru Setupathi. The class diligently took this down. "Now about runic sentences or runic sequences. You need to know that there are two types of sequences. Magical and Non-magical. Our focus will only be magical sequences. Magical sequences have been theorised to work under two ways:"

"First would be battery theory. Developed in the early 18th century by French and German wizards, this theory surmised that runes are like enchantments. That is, runes are imbued with magic at the time of spellcasting and once that store of magic is gone, the rune must either be "recharged" by a wizard or become a non-magical rune."