Life moved quickly into a new norm. In the morning Grandpa would torment me and Callia with different survival skills, and I would spend the rest of the day with Master Yoren. During my time with Master Yoren, the first skills I picked up were organization and cleaning.

  I was regularly tasked with organizing Master's library and then reorganizing it whenever Master was unsatisfied. In my first lesson in Rune Craft, everything must be organized meticulously. Whenever I wasn’t doing chores for Master, he would have me practicing my handwriting. Every time I wrote, he would make rules I would have to strictly obey or restart.

  For example, every first word in a sentence must be twice the size of all following letters, or every sentence must be ten words. The writing itself was frustrating, but at least he made me copy rune manuals. Thinking back on it, the ten-word sentence task was an absolute pain because I needed to reformat whatever was being said into the strict requirement.

  My initial education earned me the skills of cleaning, organization, calligraphy, and spot inconsistency. When Master deemed the progress sufficient, he moved onto the next stage. I expected something like copying runes or correcting incorrect rune work; however, his instruction was to start his brother's forge with runes.

  I spent a week trying all sorts of different strategies to light the forge, but nothing seemed to get it hot enough. Eventually Master took pity on me and handed me a book on the fundamentals of runecraft. It turns out my attempts at copying runes or arranging new formulas were acts of futility.

  The most fundamental key to runecraft is to use willpower to imbue power into a symbol. That changed everything; it seemed the existing set of runes was just a standardized language, and in fact anything written could be empowered with magic. After asking Master how hot the forge needed to be to start, I tried writing a simple message: ‘Ignite in fire and burn at 1100 degrees.’ I tried to imbue it with power but felt blocked by some kind of resistance.

  Master just laughed at me and threw another book at me. Yes, he threw it, and it did hurt, but it did explain why my idea didn’t work. Magic is fundamentally using willpower to alter reality. My attempt to use a recognized language pitted my will against the consciousness of everyone. Since the foundational language was recognized as nonmagical, their will enforced its inability to hold power.

  So I changed gears and tried using a language not recognized by the population and tried writing on a log. This time I felt my magic take hold, and moments later the log ignited, rapidly rising in temperature. I used control mana to push most of my mana into the log, and it quickly ignited the adjacent logs. Soon a blazing fire was set inside the furnace.

  “Master, I did it; the forge is lit!” I dragged myself over to Master, exhausted from the expenditure of mana. He didn't respond at first, looking at my disheveled state.

  “Lad, what tha heck have ye been doing? Why do ye look like ye have been dipping in tha coals yourself?" He set down his book and slid over to peek into the forge.

  “Well, I needed to get close to activate my runes?” At this point I was confused because it wasn’t like he taught me to activate runes from a distance.

  “Yer runes?” This statement seemed to alarm him, and he rushed into the forge. Following him, I rushed in to see the forge glowing with heat as the magical logs began to overheat the forge itself. It glowed with heat, and the room filled with scorching heat. Yoren sprinted into the room and placed his hand on a rune on the outside of the forge. In the next moment the blistering heat began to recede and cooled until it was extinguished.

  Yoren’s brother Gam burst into the forge.

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  “Yoren, what in Kor’run’s name be ye doing in here!”

  He sees his forge, and even though it’s cooled now, it is now misshapen by the heat. His distress visible, he runs over to the forge. “Cinder! What have they done ta ye!”

  Yoren quietly moves next to me and whispers, “Boy, what tha heck did ye do?”

  I start to fumble through my explanation.

  “Ah, well, master, you told me to light the forge with runes? So I made some runes, and well, ya?” I vaguely gesture towards the sobbing Gam. “I really didn’t mean to melt the forge? I thought it was made to withstand heat?” Yoren rubbed his head, clearly in distress.

  “I told ye ta use runes. Nae ta make runes! I wanted ye ta learn ta activate, nae write! tha first book should’ve told ye nae ta start with your own runes an' tha second was aboot how ta make them!”

  Yoren began to regret as he began to figure out how things came to this. He quietly pushes me outside the forge to leave his brother to his mourning.

  “Um, I didn’t realize that the first book was meant to warn me against making runes? I thought it was a guide on fundamentals? As for the second book, I thought it was meant to teach me why my attempt at using a normal language didn’t work? Now that I think about it, maybe my original rune designs would’ve worked if written in runic instead of common.” I tried to explain to Master as I began to realize I had escalated the complexity of the task from using runes to redefining English as a new runic language.

  Master shakes his head ruefully and simply responds with, "Lad, it may be best if ye went home for today; I'll be calming me brother for tha rest o' tha day."

  With that, I was released to return home. On the way I took a brief look over how my status had changed in the past weeks.