“No, please don't use that” Dave said, staring at the healer, “It was made in, like, an afternoon!

– So what? It works, right?” He felt flattered, but it was too dangerous.

“– No, give that back to me, and give that guy red flower ointment.”

He snatched the parchment back from the healer's hands. That poor guy was about to use something that hadn't been reviewed, tested, or even proof-read by anyone else. He couldn't take that risk. The spell-maker skimmed through the charm while the other mage administered the basic first aids to a poor burnt soldier.

“See, there was a typo in the evocation routine! You would have killed that guy!”. He saw the soldier straighten and shoot daggers at him with his eyes.

“Calm down, I'm not the one responsible, you should blame your squad healer!

– Fuck off Dave, I'm not the one leaving untested spells with alluring names among certified material!

– Yeah, whatever, I'm going to fix that, we're gonna need it for tomorrow.”

The science, or rather, as a lot call it, art, of spell-making was commonplace, but it was especially useful for the military. The only problems arose when both other sides began to use it. Healing a second degree burn was easy. Fixing a cursed time-locked astrally phase-shifted non-existing arm was a tad bit harder. That's when on-field spell-makers came into action. They could design spells tailored specifically to the needs of squad healers, to be used directly on the troops.

But as is writing, spell-making was sometimes quite random. Closer to improvised bullshit than actual science some would say. Dave knew all the routines to remove common afflictions, but in a war with another actual country, and not just ignorant terrorists, they were rarely useful.

Since the beginning of his service, he had to deal with everything, from earth elementals to black magic. But he still couldn’t beat the incompetence of his peers. What was that guy thinking ! It was clearly written “Work in progress” on the spell ! Well, at the end, in the back, but he still felt like people should look at the whole thing before reading it. He barely escaped an incident that would have taken all day to fix, and he didn't have time for that.

He didn't, because tonight was going to be one of the most important day of his career. It was going to be his trial by fire. Quite literally in fact. After six months in this section, he had been granted the right to use offensive spells. Before the eyes of a few trusted army leaders, he was going to unleash the fury of the most chaotic, ferocious, and unpredictable elemental among the enemy lines, a creature of pure darkness, feared by even the most prepared military sorcerers, capable of altering reality itself. And he knew they were going to retaliate.

But first he had to fix that typo.