The room was a simple office. The temperature inside was much cooler and Castus started to catch his breath. He was conjuring and sucking down water as fast as he could. Dimas entered after and sat down at the head of the desk. He pulled out a sheet of paper and started to scrawl something down on it.
Dimas slide the piece of paper over to Castus and he recognized the sigils as magic. Dimas spoke. "Learn this spell and use it on yourself. It will alleviate the effects of the heat on you until you're not so pathetic that little flames cause you to pass out." Dimas seemed offended at the fact that the heat alone had nearly taken Castus. Castus sat down still breathing heavily. "Dimas, can I just work somewhere without heat? I can forge and shape materials without the heat due to my blessing?"
Dimas squinted at Castus. "First off, address me as forge master. Secondly, yes you can, but what happens when you run dry of mana? Darius gave me a basic run down of your abilities and yes you can make some things with mana, but when you run dry do you seriously expect me to just let you sit around and wait for your mana to come back? This is where we work and work we will. You will be making what you can with mana, then you're going to work the forge with your hands while your mana returns." His gaze narrowed. "You think because you're from somewhere else you get special treatment? I'm going to work you just as hard as anyone else in here." Dimas scoffed and continued. "Now learn that spell. You have one hour." He stood about to exit the office.
Castus quickly moved to block him though. "But I've never casted magic before!" Dimas stopped in the door frame pushing Castus out of the way. "Thats why you get an hour." His displeasure was now fully apparent. With that he left, leaving Castus with nothing but a piece of paper and the minuscule lesson on magic Reid had given him before he was taken.
Castus quickly looked down at the paper and remembered the lesson he had. 'Ok, I just need to visualize the magic and put mana into it. He breathed heavily and began attempting to perform the magic. He realized quickly that it was far more difficult than Reid had first explained. Every time his focus would slip for just a second, he would lose sight of the sigil. The mana would run rampant then be wasted. After forty minutes Castus had still seen no progress, he was starting to panic.
'What if I can't do it due to my blessing? What is Dimas going to say? Come on, get yourself together, you can do it.' Castus thought to himself as he looked at the sigil once again. He visualized it in his mind and held the image firmly. Then he let the mana within him creep into the sigil. It slowly started to fill with mana. Halfway through it snapped though and Castus felt pain in his mind. 'Fuck, this is goddamn impossible.' Looking at the time Castus only had five minutes left and he could hear the clanging from the other chamber coming to a close. He only had one more attempt.
Castus threw the paper on the ground and gripped onto his wrist. Imagining the sigil, he started to fill it was mana again. It was nearly full, and he pushed forward, filling up the remaining sigil it glowed then flashed in his mind. His body felt cool, and he sighed. He did it. Just as he was reveling in the wake of the torturous hour the door flung open and Dimas strode inside. He looked at Castus and nodded. "Recast that every hour or when you feel yourself getting hot. Now come, you are so very far behind." Castus nodded and gulped. Being in the forge was nothing short of hellish training.
Dimas started with the standard equipment of the sword. Most foot soldiers of the church were equipped with a sword and a scepter. The swords were the ones that had to be replaced most often as they were cheaply made. Dimas showed Castus every step to forge one, from heating the stock of metal, to beating it with a hammer flat, to quenching and sharpening it by hand. Dimas completed the process in a few minutes and handed the sword to Castus. "Now you try." He took a step back and left a stock of metal on the forge for Castus to try. He tried to follow the steps, but it was difficult. Even with the spell on him he felt fatigue and exhaustion settle in far faster than when he was running with Grant. Every misstep was met with a yell and an earful from Dimas.
It took three hours, but Castus managed to finally forge something decent. It was far duller and lacked the mark of a master forge master, but it was viable. Recasting the spell in the heat had caused Castus to nearly pass out. The heat creeping on him made focus far more difficult, but unlike the first time it was easier. When he finished Dimas looked at the blade with disapproval. Handing it back to Castus he spoke. "Put it in the scrap. I wouldn't give this to a baby as a toy. Grab another stock and go again." This cycle continued for the rest of the day. When Dimas finally put out the forge Castus didn't even notice. He was so tired he just wanted to sleep. Every limb felt too tired to move. He barely registered the walk back to his bed and eating. He didn't even realize it was the next morning until Shi woke him up, holding his breakfast on a plate.
"Castus I know you want to keep sleeping, but you gotta get going." She helped him into a seated position and handed the plate of food to him. Castus was still groggy and sore all over. "That damn Dimas works me harder than I can handle. Thank you Shi." Shi'a face morphed into a feminine face as she smiled and nodded. Castus scarfed the food down and began the long walk to the forge.
Today was just as bad as before with Dimas hounding Castus and forcing him to painstaking forge the same sword over and over. Every time he would hold the blade up, scoff, tell Castus it was worthless and make him forge another.
Meanwhile on the frontlines of the war.
Cerone sat in the corner of a tent panting. She had exhausted her mana for the ninth time today trying to support a push to break up the defensive line of the Mordens. In front of her were three generals and sacred flame Augustus. They were in the middle of todays screaming match over the failure to break through the Mordens.
"The Ryden soldiers are weak! That's why we can't penetrate the line!" Augustus roared at the three generals.
The one on the left countered. "If your faithless recruits could heal and support better we would have made progress today! You pulled back too early Augustus!"
"Well if your soldiers could actually take out a Morden soldier they might be worth healing!"
The ranting continued as Cerone sat in silence. 'All this war and bloodshed for that small peice of land. What could possibly be so important there?' She sighed looking out of the opening in the tent to see barrages of fire magic rain down on both sides. While there wouldn't be another attempt to push through the Mordens today the mages would continue to try to whittle down the opposing sides with spare mana in the mean time. The originally lush plains that Cerone had seen when they first arrived were scorched and compacted into hard earth at this point.
Cerone leaned back finally catching her breath as mana began to refill her body. 'I hope the others are ok.' She hadn't seen any of them out here, but she hoped they wouldn't be deployed out here with her. Due to her blessing, she had been in a number of the church's conflicts and had grown numb to it, but she didn't want all the others to have to deal with what she did.