Basic Thaumaturgy for the Emotional Incompetent [A Magical Academy LitRPG]

The first verse ended. The petal throwers bowed in solemn unison like synchronized swans. Fabrisse, off-beat by half a second, nearly tripped on his own robe.

Severa raised her staff. "As is tradition," she intoned, "we begin the rite of Benedictional Grace."

Before anyone could move, a voice boomed from the edge of the dais like thunder wrapped in ceremonial parchment.

"The Rite of Benedictional Grace," announced Headmaster Draeth, "is a sacred embodiment of inner resonance and outward discipline."

Fabrisse flinched. Of course Draeth would cut in. The man had never missed a chance to deliver an overly-rehearsed lecture on even the most mundane of occasions, and a sacred rite was practically a holiday for him.

"In the course of the Benediction," Draeth continued, "three vessels—each etched with Synodic purity and harmonically sealed—shall be presented. And three among you shall be judged most attuned in motion, spirit, and will. One by one, through grace and intention, the worthy shall approach the bowls and be granted the chance to receive what the Synod deems fit."

He paused for effect. Half the students clapped. He paused ever longer. All the students clapped.

"The bowls are not equal," he added, voice dropping into a sonorous hush. "Some hold power. Some do not. The Will of the Flamus does not assign gifts at random. It watches. And only those whose offering aligns with the unseen threads shall be granted passage."

Fabrisse's eyes narrowed.

Wait a minute.

Three bowls. Three verses. Three selections.

Ah. So you can fight other students for a chance to touch the bowls. That's how the System knows which bowl matters. It's keyed to the selection order.

It makes a bit more sense now. Doesn't make it any more achievable, though.

That meant . . .

I have exactly two rounds to practice not looking like I'm sneezing petals into the void.

Wait. But what are we supposed to do?

"Have you come to the ritual rehearsal session?" Liene eyed him.

"There's a rehearsal session?" He replied.

Liene nodded. "Yeah, on Tuesday morning. You know, right after the first Light Invocation drills?"

He wouldn't know. He didn't study Light Invocation.

Severa stepped forward again, staff lifted to her shoulder like a battle standard. "As dictated by the Foundational Rites of Clarity," she said, "participants shall now offer a Petal of Self upon the Stream of Grace."

A few murmurs rose from the outer circle as students retrieved delicate blossoms—starpetals, flameblossoms, even a few threadfern plumes—from a silver-carved basin set at the edge of the ritual ring, and began carefully inscribing them with their names using microglow quills. The petals shimmered faintly as the ink dried, and their edges curled in response to the spellwork.

"We should do as they do," Liene said before walking over to the basin. Fabrisse followed.

Severa turned to the bowl-bearers. "Release the current."

The bowl-bearers stepped forward in perfect unison—two figures robed in the charcoal of High Magi standing alongside a Magus Exemplar wearing purple in the middle, each lifting a small crystal basin etched with spiral glyphs. At first glance, the bowls looked mundane: no larger than a soup dish, balanced easily in both hands.

Then Severa gave the signal.

All three magi tilted their bowls slightly, and the water began to pour.

But it didn't stop.

The liquid flowed not as a stream, but as a ribbon, clear and impossibly smooth, spilling onto the ritual circle with a grace that defied gravity. It hovered above the ground, winding into a tri-looped path that never touched soil. The water curved with golden aetherlight of reverence, forming a slow-moving ring that encircled the inner dais like a polished glass serpent.

Fabrisse stared. No one had cast a chant, no one had shaped glyphs in the air. It was all control. All practice. All pressureless perfection.

The Magus Exemplar repositioned his stance, and Fabrisse caught a glimpse of his face.

Professor Langley.

Langley, the no-nonsense, dry-humored Professor in hydro-aetherics, was one of the bowl-bearers?

He looked . . . mildly resigned. Like even senior instructants weren't above being drafted into ceremonial duties that involved gracefully pouring magic water for the glorified purpose of petal choreography.

Langley's eyes met Fabrisse's across the stream. He gave the faintest of shrugs.

The other two magi held their poses with perfect composure. Their streams flowed uninterrupted, each forming a separate channel that spiraled as they traced the shape of an aetheric mandala beneath the floating petals.

The leftmost basin glinted colder. The right seemed to pull at the stream a bit faster, like it wanted something. The middle was utterly still.

Then the magi on the right and Langley closed the lid to their basins, leaving only the first bowl opened. Whichever petal drifted inside the bowl first would be declared the winner, to Fabrisse's understanding.

"The Grace Stream," Liene whispered. "Take your petal if you're worthy. Pass over if you're not."

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"That's the actual rule?"

Liene grinned. "No. But it's what people say. Real answer's somewhere between leyline sensitivity and resonance drift. Still kind of beautiful, though."

And just like that, the current was set.

"So let me get this straight," he said. "You throw a petal with your name on it into a floating stream of ritual smoke juice, and if the stream likes you, it delivers your petal to one of the bowls?"

"Pretty much."

"And only one petal makes it each round?"

"Yep."

"That's . . . absurdly difficult." And for seemingly zero reward, too.

"That's the Synod."

As Severa struck the head of her tri-tiered staff once against the stone dais, the first round began.

"Release your petals," she intoned.

And the petals—hundreds of them, delicate and glowing with faint aether—floated.

Fabrisse had expected a gentle, ceremonial drift. Instead, the moment the petals were placed on the stream, they took off like they had somewhere to be. The Grace Stream caught them and swept them along its spiraled arc, bobbing gently but never once dipping out of pattern. Some petals floated with calm, elegant grace. Others fluttered madly, caught in unseen crosscurrents, or sputtered before regaining motion like startled birds.

But it didn't look random.

Fabrisse narrowed his eyes. On a few of the more responsive petals, he saw threads of luster trailing in their wake. Thaumaturgic sparks of gold, indigo, soft green, and all the colors across the spectrum he could see, sparkled like miniature suns, vying for attention.

The students were steering the petals.

When one moved a hair to the right, it bumped Fabrisse's petal out of the way. Two petals tangled for a moment before one surged forward, carrying sparks of purple behind it like a tail.

Fabrisse watched the way some petals began to lose momentum, gradually veering out of the spiral's current. Most of those dulled, drifted, their light thinned. Someone in the crowd grumbled in frustration when (presumably) their blossom spun out like a kicked leaf.

Probably low RES, Fabrisse guessed. Not enough control to sustain even a minor aetheric tether. Or maybe they were trying to brute-force it. That never worked well with finesse rites.

He had been following his petal from the start. It didn't lead, but it didn't trail either. It just unspectacularly sailed along at the middle of the pack.

Many students were actually trying. There were a few upperclassmen who looked like they'd trained specifically for this moment. A tall Invocation student with a perfectly shined sash had two fingers pressed to his temple in some sort of trance-casting gesture. A duo of students, possibly harmonizing, whispered identical incantations.

Among his own classmates, one stood out immediately. Aldren Ranan. Fabrisse had never once seen Aldren drop a glyph or miss an incantation tempo. Right now, he stood absolutely still, his eyes fixed on the current like he was willing the stream to obey. A distance behind him was Veliane Veist, or at least that was what Fabrisse guessed based on where she was looking. She was staring at a specific spot along the stream, muttering something and sweeping her hands around like a conductor. Assumedly, she was trying too.

Petals began to converge near the bowls, curling toward the inner ring. The Grace Stream narrowed like a funnel, pulling them closer, closer—

—and one petal, violet-edged and glowing from within, soared ahead of the rest.

"First recipient selected," Severa called. "Step forward."

Severa lifted her staff again, its glyph rings humming softly in response to the stream's shift.

She pointed toward the basin where the leading petal had landed, and a thin ribbon of aetheric light rose from the bowl, wrapping delicately around the blossom like silk.

"Voco Revelare, Voco Sematere," her voice dropped to a whisper.

She can chant mnemonics in other languages too?

The petal shimmered, and the inscription on it shimmered along with it.

Above the ritual circle, its inscription flared to life, and the script written in microglow ink now magnified and suspended in the air like a celestial signature.

✦ Lyessa Halden ✦

A gentle patter of applause circulated among those present.

"Louder," boomed Draeth, "One must not skimp on the reverence."

The applause swelled into a roaring ovation.

Lyessa, a tiny final-year student who could be easily mistaken for a first-year, bowed once, retrieved the token from the basin, and backed away with a serene smile that made Fabrisse irrationally annoyed.

The magi holding the bowl covered it with a lid, presumably for dramatic effect, and put it on a low pedestal. Lyessa sauntered over to the bowl. Its lid was a domed cap of translucent crystal, etched with runes so fine they looked painted by starlight.

She reached out and touched the lid.

Nothing happened.

Then, with a chime no louder than the striking of a tuning fork, the lid glistened. The rune-lines retracted, spiraling inward like petals folding in reverse, then the lid gently lifted itself off the bowl and hovered beside it.

Inside was a trinket no larger than a brooch, silver-threaded and teardrop-shaped, with a pale blue gem at its center. A strand of golden leylight circled the gem like a planetary ring.

There's an actual reward?

Lyessa reached down and lifted it with both hands.

Headmaster Draeth immediately stepped forward. "Behold," he intoned, "the blessing of the First Vessel. Shielded beneath a reverent seal, crafted by the Synod's finest relicwrights, and awakened only by rightful touch. This lid, I remind you, is impermeable to both time and theft. To even gaze upon its true contents requires the consent of purpose."

Fabrisse squinted. "Did he just say the lid has consent?"

Liene whispered, "He says that every year."

Still—when Fabrisse blinked, the System flared to life beside his vision.

An Epic-grade trinket? For winning a flower toss?

He'd thought the Synod hated artifacts. In truth, they probably only hated the artifacts they didn't sanction.

18% SYN would let someone thread complex spell matrices faster, read resonance flows more efficiently, and actually be able to make the spell work the way the caster wanted, in Fabrisse's case. So these weren't meaningless tokens. They were real.

The remaining petals that didn't make the finish line were scooped into their bowls by the bowl-bearers. His petal stalled near the curve, then drifted off like it forgot why it was there. The stream didn't fight for it. Neither did he.

His petal was still stuck on the edge of the stream, a fair distance away from the finish line when it got unceremoniously sucked into one bowl.

He had two chances left. One more to practice.

And one to win.