On the Day of The Tree Filcarel didn’t go to the local Shrine. Mages did not take part in those kind of rituals. He wasn’t sure exactly why that was true, but it was something he’d heard growing up from his tutor many times. Well, once a week probably. Filcarel was skeptical that her rule had any practical reason behind it, it was probably just professional bias.

  The spiritual energy gathered by The Tree was not related to the fulgar that mages used to power their spells. Mages just tended to put their faith in their own power, rather than seeking protection from the divine. ‘Because his tutor told him’ had always been a convenient excuse though, and so Filcarel was known to be somewhat un-pious.

  Another popular place on this day of rest was the bridge. The open air market, panhandling, busking, and general chaos there was at its weekly high. Filcarel of course didn’t like crowding in with the common folk and usually did his best to avoid the area anytime it was busy and not just on the second day of the week.

  Another place Filcarel could go would be the parlor. They apparently had tournaments once a week there and it would be the day to really immerse himself into the local playing community. But, that didn’t sound like much fun. Filcarel had played a few games after showing off his dragon, and lost them all soundly. He wasn’t good. He might have potential, that’s what Mireenel said, but having potential was different than having fun. It was almost the opposite actually, and Filcarel had no intention of putting effort into learning how to play the game competitively.

  So on this late summer day he went to practice his magic outside, mostly just to enjoy some fresh air. There was a spot not far out of town that Filcarel liked to visit. If you followed Silver Creek for a mile downstream from the bridge you would come to the place where Goblin Creek joined it. The confluence of the two small creeks itself wasn’t that awesome, but there was a great view up at the Keep, and a ridge of sandstone rocks that sprang up dramatically from the valley floor offered nice scenery in another direction.

  It wasn’t necessarily prudent to wander away from the safety of town, but this scrap of nature was close by and Filcarel wasn’t the only one who frequented it. Fishermen and other nature lovers were around. Children playing at being prospectors would scour the shallow creek bottom here for precious stones, jade, agates, and unlikely gold nuggets.

  Filcarel found himself a nice spot near a tree, somewhere in the sun, but in an hour or so when he was tired of the heat the branches would be positioned for shade. He pulled out his book of ‘Seven useful Spells’ and reviewed them all. He didn’t really need to, they were all practically memorized. He took a moment to close his eyes and bask in the morning sun.

  Relaxing felt good. He decided he wouldn’t do any serious practicing today. Normally he might go through each spell individually and methodically work on shifting the mana harmonies or aligning the orbit vectors. Working on fundamentals was necessary to become a better orbcaster, but it wasn’t very much fun. It could be satisfying, but it was work.

  Filcarel’s favorite ‘useful spell’ was {Sustained Wind}. It was useful for cooling you off, or like, airing out a smelly room, but wind was also fun to play with. As an element it was capricious. If you sort of set up the spell in certain way, particularly in its outer orbit, you could encourage the wind to be even more playful.

  You could make a little whirlwind if you knew what you were doing and had enough control of the spell. And if you released the spell at the right time and direction so it could merge with an ambient light breeze it could be a little larger and last a little longer. Filcarel smiled as his creation made ripples in the stream as it spun it’s way to the other side and dissipated into a gust that rustled the leaves on a tree.

  It was such a nice peaceful day and the weather was just about perfect. He could just sit there for hours enjoying the scenery and watching the clouds go by. He could make whirlwinds to pass the time if he got bored. But maybe he shouldn’t satisfy himself with just a little whirlwind, surely Filcarel thought, he could make something more elaborate and fun.

  He spent the next half an hour thinking how he might design a crazy multi-whirlwind spell that would shoot out little bundles of wind in every direction. He was familiar enough with the basics that he thought he might be able to improvise something on the spot. Orb casting was more intuitive than rune casting, so he didn’t need to do long and messy calculations on paper. The kind of interconnected spell web he was imagining though would still be very difficult to pull off, there was a good chance he wouldn’t be able to maintain a large enough pattern.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  If the spell unraveled, that was fine. He expected that it would actually, since he’d never done anything like it before. Filcarel looked at it as a practice exercise. It would be a good way to push or test his limits.

  After forty-five minutes of intense concentration the gifted adept spell caster was ready to activate his creation. He had underestimated himself he realized, probably because today he was actually well rested and not sleep deprived. He was happier than he’d been in a long time, not completely stress free, but he felt optimistic about life, and somehow that optimism was infecting his spellcasting ability too.

  Threads of mana stretched out from Filcarel, seven separate rings of spellcraft arrayed themselves around him, all part of a greater whole, which was something like thirty feet across in total. He rechecked his pattern for obvious errors, and surprisingly he didn’t really see any.

  Then he noticed there were some kids behind him. He had an audience.

  “Don’t interrupt him.” A brown haired girl whispered.

  “…how long do you think?” The pink haired girl asked.

  In his mind, Filcarel hadn’t really thought about completing the spell. He wanted too, of course, but there were a few reasons that he shouldn’t. One was that it would cost him valuable fulgar. His stone was cold like an icecube resting on his chest, meaning that it was mostly full. That was why he hadn’t minded casually making the first little whirlwind. This pattern though was something else, comparably huge, and it wouldn’t be an efficient use of power, he had just designed it for fun.

  But now, with people watching him, and clearly waiting for him to finish the spell, Filcarel felt like he couldn’t disappoint them. It was silly, but so was hoarding his fulgar, it would only take a week or so for it to regenerate on it’s own.

  He could feel the fulgar stone grow dramatically warmer as he released it’s power into the spell, but he didn’t try to limit it’s consumption. He let the spell grow as the wind all around him slowly began to stir and then swirl and then even snatch at his hair and clothes. That was enough. Visually, Filcarel wasn’t sure what was happening. The spell had certainly worked, but wind wasn’t easy to corral. It seemed like it wasn’t doing exactly what he had planned.

  Quickly it became apparent that instead of seven small whirlwinds spinning off in each direction, he had made just one whirlwind centered around himself. It was correspondingly large. This was of course the other reason he shouldn’t just fire off an experimental spell with most of his fulgar. It had grown out of control.

  At first Filcarel wasn’t actually worried, just embarrassed that his spell had been set up backwards and that his hair and clothing were all a mess. Usually these whirlwinds dissipated almost immediately. It took effort and planning to make them persist even for a few seconds. Sometimes though, you just got lucky. This particular whirlwind was actually gaining in strength.

  The tornado began wandering down stream. Tree branches overhead were whipping back and forth. There was a man fishing in the middle of the stream about fifty yards away, and he had turned to look at the commotion. Filcarel was suddenly very concerned. This runaway vortex probably wasn’t violent enough to directly injure someone, but it could still be interpreted as some kind of attack. And of course, what if kept growing in strength?

  The tornado began actually picking up water from the stream, carrying it high in the air so that it rained down on Filcarel and the two girls watching. It was heading slowly for the fisherman, leaving a rainbow in it’s wake. He had to stop it. But how could he? He only knew one wind magic spell, and it didn’t seem like it would be up to the task.

  Filcarel didn’t have time to think it through. He ran downstream into the stream, splashing and getting himself all wet, trying to catch up to the overgrown whirlwind. He would have to disrupt it with his body, make it tire itself out on trying to pick him up, or something. Instead of catching up to the vortex though Filcarel tripped and fell, splashing into the water, suddenly aware of how cold the mountain fed stream really was.

  At that point, completely drenched, Filcarel realized that all he could do was watch. Alarmingly, the wind continued maintaining it’s strength, but thankfully it did change course again by itself as well. The rogue spell left the middle of the stream and turned it’s energy onto a poor little sapling tree. It held there on the bank, destructively spinning itself to death, tearing at the leaves and branches of a baby tree that had rooted in some loose and sandy soil.

  Filcarel sighed in relief. He had sort of ruined the peaceful afternoon, and he felt bad about that, but at least no one had been hurt. Nothing but a plant, anyway. Hilariously, to Filcarel at least, the two girls that had been watching the whole thing decided to finish the job, and uprooted the sapling completely, throwing it in the stream, laughing while they did. People could be capricious too.