12 Reductor & training!
After Sebastian had walked to the empty corner, he took the paper and read the spell description:
'Reductor Curse:
Incantation: Reducto (re-DUCK-toh)
Type: Curse
Hand movement: V turned 95° to the left
Light: Blue
Effect: Destroys solid objects
Note: The human body doesn't count as a solid object. Tests have shown that a strong reductor can destroy a small area of bone around the point of impact, as the flesh and skin absorb most of the power. Therefore, it is not advisable to use the curse on someone's head.
'
'Good, at least it isn't an instant death curse as long it isn't used on the head. But it should work against all solid shields.', Sebastian thought and went on to try the spell on a few stone dummies.
"Reducto!", Sebastian said and imbued the spell with the will to shred anything solid into mist.
A blue light shot out of his wand and hit the dummy, but only destroyed a very small area.
'Hmm, it is good that I could cast it on my first try, so it has to have some resemblance of a charm or is every curse and jinx a kind of charm?'
'Let's try again. I should use a different intent this time. How about splitting the target very finely in all directions. I should also try to strengthen the intent and say the incantation with a bit more force.'
"REDUCTO."
The blue light hit the dummy, only this time, the complete upper body was obliterated and turned into fine mist.
'If I push this spell, could I even split atoms?', Sebastian asked himself, but pushed these thoughts away, as he felt that the second try had drained him a lot more than the first, probably because it had a stronger power and actually made everything into mist instead of small rocks.
Sebastian went on to try different intents and variations of force and after a few tries he had figured out a combination where he just said 'reducto' normally and it had the same destructive force as the second try. If he were to use more intent with this combination, the spell should become a lot more powerful.
All in all, he had taken fifty minutes to figure out the spell and cast it with its current proficiency (thinking and breaks included), so he wanted to talk to Professor Fischer and ask what to do now.
-HP-
"Professor, I finished learning.", Sebastian said.
"Oh, what took you so long?", Professor Fischer asked.
"I was able to cast it on my first try, but it wasn't very strong, therefore I wanted to increase the spells power fist.", he answered and asked, "Professor, how can I increase the power of a spell, aside from intent?"
"I can't tell you everything, at least for now.", she winked at him, "But intent doesn't increase the power of the spell, if the intent isn't the correct one, you aren't casting the correct spell. Therefore, casting the spell with the correct intent means that you have a better understanding of the spell. Meanwhile, how much intent you put into a spell doesn't influence the spell itself, but triggers something else, that you will get to know later."
"But I think I am allowed to reward you a bit; A charm is just different basic intents layered over each other and fused through a wand movement and incantation. If you understand all the underlying intents and can mix them on your own, you can cast the spell with less support, depending on your understanding."
"But that is enough for now, how about you go to the training hall with Marc, I think that would be able to help you a bit more. There won't be anything of importance in this class for you this week.", she ended and called Marc to them, leaving a stunned Sebastian.
'So, this is how spells work! A spell is just layered intents! And the better I understand the intent or even better the original intents, the stronger the spell gets. She also said that I can cast it with less support! Does she mean chantless and wandless casting? So that is how it works! I never heard of that in Harry Potter, but something is correct: When they practiced a spell a lot and for a long time, they were able to do it chantless, at least from what I remember about Harry and the DA. Damn, this is great. If I can figure out the intents or can do it freely, I don't even need a wand anymore!", Sebastian thought, fully concentrated on this new knowledge.
"Sebastian."
Someone tapped his shoulder.
"Sebastian. Come with me.", a voice pulled Sebastian out of his thoughts.
"What?", Sebastian asked confused.
"Come with me.", Marc said again and pulled Sebastian with him.
They walked out of the charms room and through the castle until the reached a short corridor with doors leading to the left and right. There were several symbols on the door, which Sebastian didn't recognize.
He was dragged into a room on the right and found himself in a small hall with a short running track and several equipment. Marc closed the door behind them and locked it with a key sticking in the keyhole.
"Welcome to one of our training rooms. Here you can exercise, practice spellcasting or dodging spells. To give you a bit of an edge and because you won't need todays charms class anymore, I am going to train you a bit on dodging because you don't know any shield spells yet.", Marc explained.
"Get over there.", he ordered Sebastian and pointed to a quare area with a uneven ground and a few dummies placed around it. "I will start by casting stinging hexes at you, and you will have to dodge. If you are hit, continue. Three hits means that you failed a round."
Sebastian nodded, as he seemingly didn't have any choice and walked to the centre of the quare platform, positioning himself with his face towards Marc, who abruptly started chantlessly casting white spells that flew towards Sebatian who only by reflex, threw himself and to the ground, only to be hit by another hex a second later.
"You have to move around, not throw yourself to the ground. That would make you an easy target. Now stand up and continue. The swelling will go away in no time.", Marc reprimanded him.
Sebastian stood up and as soon as he stood, new spells flew at him. He dodged left and right, barely turning his body out of the way, sometimes falling on one knee, and then rolling away or trying to slide across the ground.
After a few minutes, Sebastian felt like in a sports game they had played in school in his last life, called dodgeball. It was basically the same, just that the balls came from one, moving direction only and that they were a bit faster than the ones thrown by the strongest of the class.
Though not always, he sometimes 'survived' for a long time even if he was the last person and the trained predictions as where the ball would be thrown and how he could get out of range the easiest helped him immensely, and he felt like he was back at school, though the hits hurt a lot more right now and he certainly wasn't spared a hit.
After twenty minutes, Sebastian was sweating in his robes and his stamina ran dry. He just couldn't move fast enough anymore. Then, he was hit by a spell two times in a row and Marc stopped.
"See? Your moves were impressive, but you don't last long enough to survive on a battlefield. AND, on a battlefield every single spell can be deadly. Lastly, let's not forget, that I was alone. In most real battles, there will be more than one attacker and several battles going on at the same time.", Marc said. "Take a break, we will continue in a bit."
"But why do I have to practice? It isn't like I would be going to a battlefield or into a fight any time soon. So why?", Sebastian asked exhausted.
"Let's just say: Precaution.", Marc answered.
After a short break, they continued with a few breaks in which Marc had to heal Sebastian a bit each time, as the swellings began to stack.
This continued until they heard a loud gong resounding through the castle.
It finally was lunch break!
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Tell me wheter you want short training, like a short description and the results or if you'd rather want his learning to be like right now.
Not every spell would be learned like that. Some will just appear in his repertoire, but the important one or when he makes progress, e.g. his intent abilities, analysis or chant-/wandless would be like this along with some other skills (like dodging, assassiation, ...).
Tell me in the comments what you would prefer.
Warning, there will be a few more wand-/spell-/magic-lore info dumps in the near future. After that the track would be set on the next training + following action arc!
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Remember, it's my first fanfiction.
Feel free to comment and correct my grammar and writing, or to leave a review.
