Inheritor Of Magic: The Magi King

Wolfe focused on the first layer of the [Lightning Sprite] spell, setting the basic form of the creation, and its location near him. There were a wide variety of available options, you could tell it to appear nearly anywhere if you had the focus and knowledge, but for now, Wolfe started it out in the practice hallway in front of him.

These were modelled after the ones in the Morgana Academy, with the same spells set on them to defend the practitioners from mistakes, which gave Wolfe a feeling of comfortable familiarity. He had spent many evenings in one of these, watching the Witches practice.

He could feel as the location and form of the spell was set, down toward the target at the end of the hallway, which was his signal to start on the second layer.

This one would give shape and substance to the spell, making it an actual Sprite, or a ball of lightning, depending on the caster's mood. This one would be a ball of lightning, the most simple of shapes to form, and the least particular about deformities. 

That let him move on to the third layer, which was the first of the truly complicated ones. This would allow the spell to follow basic commands without the caster constantly focusing on it.

Wolfe didn't try to make anything fancy, or add new orders to the spell. Instead, he went with the basic handful of commands that the Inheritance suggested as the basics. Stay, follow, guard, attack, defend.

Getting them all to layer properly on top of each other was much more complex than Wolfe had imagined, and he realized that the third layer was not one layer at all. It was five, all merged into one layer when they were completed.

Three times he failed to get them to merge properly before he got the third layer to stabilize on top of the others, and then he moved on to the fourth. These next few layers were relatively easy, all he had to add was the spells that he wanted the sprite to know. They had to be lightning, as no other Element was compatible with the layers that he had already created, but that wasn't a problem at the moment. Wolfe only intended to teach the basic sprite three spells in total.

It needed to know how to create Lightning Armour, Lightning Barriers, and Lightning Bolts. If the sprite could do those three basic things, he could count it as a successful casting.

Those inscriptions layered on top with ease, and then came the integration layer. This one would let the sprite follow both verbal and mental directions so that it would use the trained skills properly on the targets you wanted without altering the casting of the spell.

Then finally came the variance layer. This was the worst one of the lot, as it needed to be able to interpret the intensity of both the desired actions, the strength of the spells, and the duration of orders. If this one was incorrect, you could end up with strange glitches like a sprite that would continuously cast lightning on the same target long after it was destroyed, only stopping when it ran out of mana or was ordered to perform another task.

The worst part of the whole process was that this was the last layer, and every time it collapsed, it took the whole spell with it, forcing Wolfe to start all over.

By the time that Cassie came to check on him in the afternoon, he had gotten so good at casting the earlier layers of the spell that he had even started adding to them. Occasionally, he even went as far as adding in new commands to the list, or different lightning spells. But when he did, he found that it changed the way that the final layer needed to be created to make everything work together properly.

What she arrived to see was a very proud Wolfe repeatedly shocking the training dummy with the equivalent of a taser, cast by the floating orb in the hallway.

"What exactly are you trying to do with that?" Cassie laughed as the orb bobbed happily and shocked the dummy again, leaving more burn marks that quickly faded from the magical dummy.

"Sprite, follow Cassie's orders." Wolfe instructed, and the orb bobbed in compliance.

"Go ahead and try it out. I've been working on a sentry sprite to follow basic commands so that you don't have to do everything all the time. It's simple at the moment, but I should be able to add more detail to it later." He explained.

"Sprite, come here." Cassie ordered, and the small orb flew over to hover in front of her.

"Cast a Rank One Lightning Bolt on the target." She ordered, and instantly a streak of power raced out from the orb and scorched the dummy.

"That's a bit high for Rank One, isn't it?" Cassie asked as she looked at the damage.

"It should still be within the limits of Rank One. Not by much, but if you told it Rank Two, it would probably destroy the dummy." Wolfe shrugged.

"Alright, I see your point. What would happen if I told it to go all out?" She asked, with mischief in her eyes.

"Then we would have to renovate the training room, and you would most likely make some people cry. And possibly pee."

"You didn't put limits on it?" Cassie asked, shocked at Wolfe's answer.

"Of course I did. It is limited by its stored mana. It would only get off a single Rank Five [Lightning Bolt] before it was out of energy and dissipated, which would force me to cast it all over again."

"How long will it last for?" 

Wolfe shrugged. "That depends on use. If it's just following you around, it should last for a week or so. But if it keeps shocking people or casting armour spells on you, then it would run out in a day or less without being recharged. This one is autonomous, I cast it in the air, so it's limited in energy, but if it was on a Talisman, it could be kept active."

"Interesting. Now let it rest and let's get something to eat, there is a lot to do today, and not all of it is studying new spells."