Aurora-Watcher

Finding out

On a misty and cold day of the second last month of the year, in a small town in the north of France, a young student is casually sitting on Discord, chatting to their writing buddies, wondering what is going to happen with the start of this month. There have been so many negative things in the world recently that the only real break anyone could take from all of this is a breather called 'holidays'. Between a world-wide pandemic, a war that many are calling the Third World War, a huge amount of political struggles and a winter that is already proving to be colder than usual. The month of November is going off to a rather difficult start. The only thing people are hoping for at this point is some good news, something to hang on to and use to guide them forward into a more positive mindset.
This positive news falls at exactly midnight on the 1st of November 2022, Greenwich Time. It's news that will change the world, our protagonist just knows this. They are chatting when everyone says 'check your socials' or 'check the news'. It's all over the medias, all over the TV channels and even on the radio. The worlds biggest breakthrough has just happened.
Hi there, I'm the protagonist and my name is Alice. Here's what the transmission said and I'll be telling you the rest of the story too. Hope you enjoy.
'Dear citizens of the world, today we are revealing to the world the existence of something you have all been dreaming of as kids. Something many of you believed in as adults and a few of you actually knew was real the whole time. Ladies, gentlemen and people of all genders, magic is real. There is no simple way for us to announce this but it's time you know. It's time you stop your conflicts and start learning to live in harmony with each other and nature. Most of you will completely forget this broadcast within twenty-four hours but those of you who don't, you'll need the following information. On a website we have set up, which you can access by typing in the following hash code, 535a:7196:f318:2f43:0328:ae37:8f98:9265, you will find the needed knowledge sharing space for you to learn the magical arts and especially gramarye, the most important part of it all. Those of you who succeed in learning the first three levels of magical arts will be given a way to retain your knowledge of magic, the others will totally forget all of this within seven days. Good luck.'
From there on out, the chat went completely crazy. We all made sure to visit the website and found a series of pages that were full of schematics, numbers and words in hundreds of languages and different alphabets. In the very centre, covering this all, there is a simple text field asking for a name. I go with the name Aurora-Watcher as it clearly says that we need a double part name and that it must not be our real names. My friends and I decide not to share our names for now as it may make things difficult; this is all very confusing as it is, no need to to make it any more difficult.
Once the name is entered and the website tells me that it's available, I am given access to a very official looking university-like webpage. The 'courses' button is the only one that is clickable. Behind that click I find a course called 'gramarye for beginners', a course on 'elemental magic for noobs' and a course called 'magical assimilation'. The message said to do gramarye first so that's my primary focus. My friends are all busy looking at the same page and we propose to share our thoughts on this course once we have completed it. My German friend does comment that, for them, the website is in German and then everyone says that their version is in their mother tongue by some kind of magic. My version is in English and I'm rather glad for that.
Reading the first lines of the document proposing to educate me in the art of magical gramarye, I immediately take a fresh notebook and start writing down the items I believe are key. Not only is the document on a sort of un-stoppable scroll, it is not allowing me to go back. It's as though, if I'm not able to master this information after seeing it once, I'm not allowed to learn it at all. They made it clear that everyone who doesn't manage to learn it will forget it and I'm not surprised, it's ridiculously difficult keep up with. There are so many different concepts and specifications that I feel I'm missing a huge chunk of it until is abruptly stops and switches to a quizz.
There is only one question: 'introduce yourself using the adequate gramarye and make sure to use your chosen name and not your given name.' Thus, I start carefully writing out : 'Aurora-watcher by the name chosen am I. Of twenty six orbital rotations have I trodden the lands of the living. The land where the oceans meet, to the south of the great desert, saw my life begin. The earth which now holds my existence is that of the ancien Celts and Vikings.' The order of words feels strange and I'm not sure that is sufficient information but, before I can add anything else, the page blanks. Failure is all that can mean unless, oh, I suppose not. In the middle of the page is a glowing silver star with a score : 9564/9871. It shows me this and then flashes back to the course selection page again. The course for gramarye is gone and the next one is open.
After quickly asking my buddies what they are going to do, we all conclude that the best solution is to just keep going and make sure we learn as much as possible as fast as possible. There is too high a risk of forgetting everything if we don't successfully complete the courses in due time. It may be nearly one in the morning, we still push through. The course on elemental magic is the next one to be unlocked and it seems to be a far more complex course as, contrary to the other one, it doesn't move as fast on its scrolling. Starting off directly in the specific gramarye that was taught in the previous lesson, it states that one must not practice any of the course content until finishing.
The first lesson is to gather the water in the air to form a ball of water in one's hand. It's all very technical but mainly required a complex hand movement, a command spoken in a very old version of English – something I would expect to see in Beowulf – and then to open one's palm. The scroll stops, the quiz page opens and simply says 'cast'. I guess this means I need to do the magical casting they just explained. Don't think for a second that I believe it's going to work but then again, considering how this as all presented, I doubt it's a huge hoax. My hand has a hard time doing the right gesture but, with two attempts to make the movement, on the third one I speak the command – as I wrote it down – and a small bead of water starts to form in my palm. Holding my hand open, I let the water gather a few seconds longer then close my hand dripping the water onto the floor.
The quiz flashes another silver star with the score of 401/453 which I suppose is a pass as it goes on to the next part of the lesson. This time it's scrolling faster and is also teaching a whole different kind of method for the casting, this one requires both hands and a language I think is ancient Celtic. Writing it all down on my diary again, I quickly get to the quiz part and – struggling a lot less with the hand movements this time – I cast the spell. A small ball of fire forms between my hands and, letting it grow a little more, I clap and smother it.
This process and my scores that are usually less than 10% from the maximum keeps going for a few more tests. One is earth, one is wood and one is wind. This seems to be everything until, after the last quizz, a question opens asking if I wish to proceed to the next lesson or attempt an eliminatory bonus question. It's a risk but maybe it's actually worth the effort. Considering everything worked so far, there is a good risk to reward ratio and I'm willing to test it out a little further. It's quickly time to click 'yes' and find out how difficult the bonus is going to be.
'Attempt to cast any of the following elemental spells that you feel will complete the elemental cycle and join the five primordial elements.' It states at the top of the page before scrolling and stopping with three diagrams on the page and the incantations associated to them. These are the elements of light, darkness and Æther. That last one seems rather interesting although I have a hard time deciding if it is the most likely to be a sixth element. Considering the meaning of Æther – the reference to the element that is not an element which it is – I'll go with that one regardless.
The casting is a very tortuous one and hurts my hands a little before I get it right, speak the words that are in a language I have no knowledge of, and wait for the spell to complete its course. A small glow appears around my hands before sinking into my skin and the webpage showing a 32105/32107 score. I managed a near perfect score, that can only be a good thing. Even the star was a golden colour this time.
The last course unlocks and it contains a sort of end-user-license that I read through and take a few notes of. Long story short, it's only asking that one doesn't use magic to hurt others and that one is willing to learn all the relevant arts and languages that go with such a complex topic. I tick the 'agree' box on all but one of the rules, one I think is a trick question. It states 'I will use my magic for personal gain and nothing else'. That's not something I aspire to do in my life in general, let alone in regards to the magic I am busy learning.
With a little more waiting, the website flashes a score card that shows I have a S+ under 'potential' and an E in 'current abilities'. It then asks me to accept a further contact from them within a day for the following instructions.
Reporting this to my friends, I find out that three of them have no idea what the rest of us are taking about. This immediately prompts those of us who remember to move to a different server where we can discuss things safely. Although it feels like a betrayal towards our friends, we agree that, if the magic wanted them to forget about it, we should probably not interfere. From here on out it's a free for all discussion on re-attempting the various spells or trying to find out more about the ones we learnt. Everyone had the same spells to learn but, somehow, there are variants on the casting language and there are also slight variations on the hand movement.
We go on to each share our notes and find that we can talk about it easily but when we write anything down it does't allow us to send and, even if we manage to send, nothing can be read. I'm not sure this is because of some magical spell or if I somehow downloaded a virus but, after the third attempt I made to send a bit of my notes, there was a notification saying 'magic must be written in gramarye'. Following this, we all try our best to write using the strange formulations and the old languages that were taught during the courses we just took – it somehow seems to work as the notes don't turn to gibberish – and we manage to share our thoughts too.
Mysteriously – or magically –, from the twelve people we were originally on the call, only three remain and, between the four of us, we are having to speak in very strange formulation so that we can even hear what is being said to us, it gets jumbled into noise. To call this a challenge for the mind is an understatement – not only the mind but even the hands as some of us have to write in runic – we are all struggling.

— 'I would not have expected it to be easy to learn magic but still, they could really make an effort to not melt our brains.' Says Kaori, switching back to normal English.
— 'I have to say, they really didn't want anyone to just learn this. It's almost as though the first step is a way of vetting people into their very special world.' I respond.
— 'You two have a point, maybe this is a sort of protection method – some way for them to only allow a specific kind of person to learn the arts – a way for them to defend themselves against something.' Concludes Luana. Fun enough, she is the one person on this Discord chat that I only know the nickname of, we've never met in person and I've never really asked as she wants to keep it private.
— 'Before we extrapolate too much, I think we should be proud of the fact that we completed the lessons and get some sleep. Let's pick this up again tomorrow?' Posits Kaori before wishing us good night.