It must have taken me a good fifteen minutes to finally drag myself out of bed and when I did I really wished that I hadn’t. My hair looked like a mess and I was wearing one of the new t-shirts and a light pair of jeans.
“The tag is still on,” Callum commented as he looked my outfit up and down.
“Yeah, and on the jeans,” I grumbled, “Didn’t have scissors.”
“They’re in the kitchen cabinet, along with a mug of coffee.”
I looked over in hope, lest this be some kind of horrible psyche out, but it turns out he was telling the truth. Sitting on the bench was a small cup of coffee that was gently steaming in the morning air. I rushed over to it, smelling the sweet aroma as I pulled it to my lips. It was good.
I’ve never exactly been a coffee connoisseur, but I know the taste of good coffee when I taste it and this was indeed good coffee. Far better than the stuff I used to drink at work.
“I could almost forgive you for getting me up so early,” I grumbled.
“Well, I’m not a monster,” Callum laughed, “Besides I think you’ll need the energy. We’re going for a walk around the lake.”
“I thought you said you weren’t a monster?” I complained, as I let my head fall backwards in protest.
“Come on,” Callum said, “it’ll be good for you.”
“I think we have two vastly different ideas of good.”
“Did you want to eat?”
I glanced at the time displayed on the microwave. Six thirty. I hung my head in despair.
“No, not yet,” I said, “I normally eat a little later in the morning.”
“Very well then. Did you buy trainers?” He inquired and I immediately stopped mid step as the ramifications of that question sunk in. I was almost tempted to say no, but the truth was that I had, “Yeah,” I grudgingly conceded.
“Well, go get em,” Callum chuckled.
“Aren’t you eating?”
“I’ve already eaten.”
“Good god! What time did you get up?”
“About five.”
I was pleasantly surprised by the walk. It wasn’t difficult at all, and although it looked cold outside, it was actually quite warm once we got going. There was a small walking trail that circumnavigated the lake and although Callum set a reasonable pace, he didn’t have us running, although I suspected that this would be his normal routine.
“Okay,” Callum smiled as we reached the half way point, “You might be wondering how this is all going to work. This whole student/teacher thing.”
“Well, yeah, kinda.”
“My usual routine is to get up early, go for a run, then study until dark.”
“Study? You still study?”
“Oh yes,” Callum sighed, “There’s so much to learn. My Master used to say that there was ‘always more to learn’.”
He finished his quote with a crotchety voice that I took to indicate an impression of his former master.
“I haven’t exactly planned on taking an apprentice,” Callum continued, “So I’m not really sure what to do with you.”
That would have been a little off putting under other circumstances, but he said it with such honesty that it was hard to be offended.
“So I’m pretty much going to leave you to your own devices.” Callum finished.
“You say this after waking me up at a god awful hour in the morning and making me run around a lake.” I murmured wryly.
“Yep,” Callum grinned, “although that was more about getting you out of the house for your first lesson.”
“Oh? There will be lessons?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.
“I wouldn’t be much of a teacher if I didn’t teach you anything, would I?”
I shrugged and didn’t answer him.
“Are you ready?”
“For what?”
“To summon a mana thread,” Callum said, “I suspect that with all the reading you’ve been doing, you’ve just about figured it out.”
I shook my head. It was strange, but I’d totally managed to disconnect myself from my reading and had forgotten that that had been the point of the whole exercise. I’d treated as entirely an academic pursuit and hadn’t really accepted that what I was reading about was stuff that I would be able to do.
“I guess I’m ready,” I shrugged.
“Well. You don’t sound too sure,” Callum teased.
“I don’t know what to expect.” I returned.
“Fair enough,” Callum smiled, “Okay, hold out your hand,”
I reached out my hand palm up.
“Okay, summon the mana into your palm,” he ordered.
I jumped a little as the mana surged down my body and into my waiting palm. It had happened much more quickly than I had expected. Unfortunately, my loss of focus led to an immediate loss of control and the mana returned to normal.
“Sorry,” I murmured sheepishly as I tried again.
Callum waved me off, “It will get quicker again, soon you’ll be able to summon it at a moment’s notice.”
Callum moved in and inspected the mana pooling in my hand, “Good, good, you’ve got a good grasp of control and it’s consistent. You should have no trouble with the thread.”
He leaned down and scooped a rock from the surface of the lake and held it over my hand. “Okay,” I instructed, “I’m going to drop this rock into your hand, “Now your fine motor controls won’t be present yet, so I don’t want you to catch it. I want you to knock it off course. If it hits your hand then you’ve failed.”
Seems simple enough.
“Are you ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.” I returned. Callum dropped the rock straight out into my outstretched hand. It happened so fast that I hadn’t had a chance to react.
“I wasn’t ready!” I said. Callum smiled and retrieved the rock from my palm, wisely not commenting on the fact that I’d previously said that I was ready.
“Okay, I’m going to drop it on three.”
“One.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
He dropped the rock and again it sailed straight through the air and into my waiting hand.
“That was after three!” I complained.
“Okay,” he sighed as he retrieved the rock yet again, “This time I’m going to drop it after three.”
I focused on the stone in his hand and felt the mana build in my palm in preparation. I waited until the word ‘three’ left his mouth and then immediately focused on trying to knock the rock out of my hand. Time seemed to slow down as the rock slowly began its descent and it was like I could see every millisecond as it traveled. I flexed my fingers as I attempted to form the mana thread and at first I thought I was going to fail, but then a burst of pleasure shot through my body as the endorphins kicked in. I sucked in my breath in shock and for a single second of time I saw the beginnings of a mana thread form from my palm. I hadn’t realized that it would feel so good. My whole body seemed to be buzzing as the sensation swept through me and for a second I thought that my knees would give away and I would collapse.
The stone still hit my palm, but I still counted it as a success and clearly from the beaming smile on Callum’s face he did too.
“You did it!” he said with a smile.
“I didn’t knock the rock away!” I corrected him.
“Well, no,” Callum admitted, “But it was never about the rock in the first place. Now that you’ve managed to form a thread the next time you try it will be easier.”
He wasn’t wrong. I’d already re-summoned the mana and caused a tiny thread to arc out from my palm. It was so beautiful, it was only about 30 centimetres long but that was a long as I needed it to be. It was amazing to be able to control it by the mere thought, getting it to sway backwards and forwards at command.
“You’re forming your threads too loosely,” Callum instructed as he leaned into to examine the thread, “The lifting capacity of what you’ve summoned would be negligible.”
“It’s okay,” Callum murmured encouragingly, “Every time you try, you’ll get better. Keep at it. For now though we should head back to the house, I’m sure you’re hungry.”
He was right, but I wasn’t going to let something as mundane as that stop me from summoning the mana again. I was hooked. I reformed the thread on the way home, wrapping the mana tendrils between my fingers and around my wrist. It felt amazing as the power flowed down my arms from my centre.
Callum didn’t comment, but he must have known what I was doing. It took a long while to walk back to the house, but I didn’t care.
* * * * * *
I spent the next few weeks in a fairly standard routine. Callum lightened up and didn’t bother waking me up for his morning jog, so I would sleep in late, but that was okay. I would often go to bed far later than Callum did. He seemed to keep his own schedule - rising early and going to bed early.
The only time we regularly saw each other was during dinners. We took turns cooking, which seemed only fair as I wasn’t exactly a guest here anymore. Most of the time however, we simply spent our times studying various principles or theories in our respective rooms. Callum’s master had had a large selection of books on Mana in the house which I was free to roam through. I was in heaven. The books were old leather bound editions that smelt like an old dusty library. What was odd about them though was that although they looked like they were from the 1500s they were talking about principles that you would expect to find in the most modern of science books. It was an odd mix between the old and the new. Every time I opened a new one, I couldn’t help but draw back a shiver of anticipation. What was this book going to teach me?
My studies had progressed well as far as I could tell. It was odd that there didn’t seem to be a learning guide or teaching syllabus. That might have just been the trainer in me talking, but it seemed horribly unstructured. I had no idea if I was advancing as quickly as I should have or if I was dragging behind. I had asked Callum about it and he simply said that I was progressing as I should have and that I shouldn’t worry. That was less than helpful, but he made some joke about me wanting a gold star or grading and I was forced to let it drop.
I wasn’t sure what Callum was studying, but I was sure that it was far in advance of what I was trying to grasp. He was a good source of knowledge as he seemed to have a way about him that could clear up confusion. He would often give real world examples that helped clarify the important points. He would have made a good software trainer were he not a Mage.
As I learned, I found that Callum was indeed right and that my skills on drawing the mana would improve. I could now summon a thread with only the briefest of thoughts and that the length of the thread could be lengthened or shortened as required at a whim.
It had gotten to the point that I’d taken my powers for granted. I would regularly use mana threads to recover small items from across the room without getting out of my seat. I wondered briefly if this was why Callum insisted that he run in the mornings. I could easily imagine how the lifestyle might get a little sedentary. I hadn’t moved from my chair in the past three hours. I hadn’t needed to. The only reason I needed to get up was to go to the bathroom, and even that wasn’t a great distance.
Callum had provided me with a large selection of texts from which to work from. I was glad that he had done so, because had he not I would have been lost on where to start.
I had been working my way through three main texts, all of which seemed to have been written by the same person - Victor Whittlesea. There were far more books in the library to choose from, but I liked the ones written by Victor the best.
I didn’t know who he was or if he was even alive, but his knowledge of mana seemed limitless. Even though this was a rudimentary text, he was by far my favorite author. He just seemed to have a way of explaining difficult concepts so that they made sense to me. I’d asked Callum about him, but he’d just shrugged and indicated that Master Whittlesea was one of the senior Mages and was very much alive. He’d only met him once and had apparently been too intimidated to talk to him. I doubted that I’d fare much better. The last thing this Master Mage wanted was for me to go fan girl all over him.
All in all, I was very settled into my new life and didn’t think that much of my old one. There was simply too much for me to learn. I went to bed each night with mana theories circling through my head as I attempted to make sense of them. The only issue that I really did have was the house itself. I don’t know if Callum intentionally kept it that way, but it was freezing. There appeared to be heating controls, but Callum never appeared to use them. The frustrating thing about it was that Callum never appeared to be cold. He seemed comfortable in a loose fitting t-shirt whenever we ran into each other, whilst I was rugged up in three layers and would often wrap a blanket around myself during the evening when the temperature dropped further. It wouldn’t have been such a big deal, if Callum didn’t look so comfortable all the time. How did he manage it? I’d be shivered into my morning coffee and he was wandering around as if he were on a beach resort. It wasn’t fair.
At first I didn’t approach him about it, after all what was I going to say? It was unfair that he was comfortable? But it kept gnawing at me until it was all I could think of whenever we met. Eventually I broke my silence on the subject with my usual degree of diplomacy.
“Why are you always wearing that damned t-shirt?” I blurted out, before I realized what I’d said.
“Uh, it’s comfortable,” Callum replied with a confused look on his face.
“No, uh, that’s not what I mean.” I retorted hastily, attempting to back peddle franticly, “I mean, it’s cold in here! You can see steam when I talk!”
I blew out a breath of air and as I had gestured as it immediately turned into a small column of mist.
“See?” I immediately turned on him, “Cold!”
“Oh?” I looked a little amused, “I just don’t seem to notice it anymore.”
“I’ve fiddled with the controls, but they don’t seem to do anything.”
“Yeah, they stopped working a couple of years back.” Callum explained.
“And you didn’t get them fixed?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Didn’t seem to be much point,” I continued, “I could make do without them.
“Well, I’m not sure I can,” I replied grudgingly.
Callum shrugged and smiled, “Well, you could always use an enthalpy spell.”
“What the hell is that?” I really wasn’t in the mood for this to become some kind of lesson. Callum was unfortunately very good at that. I wasn’t sure if it was done on purpose or not, but it was frustrating.
Callum just shrugged and smiled, “Look it up.”
He knew damned well that it wasn’t that easy. It wasn’t like there was a database or something that I could look up for spells theories. It’d mean that I’d have to guess which book the spell was covered in. I only had about twenty different books to choose from. The worst part was though, even if I did find the right book, it wasn’t like there were indexes of the various spells or anything in most of them. This was one of the reasons why I liked the books written by Master Whittlesea - His books were pristinely indexed and had appendices at the back for ease of use. Unfortunately, only about three of the books I had access to had been written by him.
I flounced back to my room and threw myself into my study. I had to assume that the spell in question would be a rudimentary one or Callum wouldn’t have mentioned it. I selected one of the first books that I’d read and then had to stop for the second.
What was the spell name again? Enthalpy? I’d never heard of that word before.
If nothing else, my studies into Mana were greatly increasing my vocabulary. I hopped onto the internet and looked it up.
‘Enthalpy – a thermodynamic quantity equivalent to the total heat content of a system. ‘
What the hell did that mean? It had the word heat in it - that at least put us into the right area. Was it supposed to generate heat? That would be handy. I was just pondering the definition of the word when I remembered something that I’d read. I hadn’t paid much attention to it as I’d been so focused on learning the telekinesis spell. I quickly put the book I’d originally selected down and chose another. I flicked through a few pages before I found what I was looking for. My heart sank. This was not an easy spell. For one. It utilized field based mana techniques. I’d never created a mana field before. They were a lot more difficult than a mana thread and I hadn’t really become proficient with those yet.
I read and re-read the spell with a lump in my throat. I was a little amazed to find that I understood every principle or theory that was discussed – in that at least the book was correct it was a very simple spell. The frequency and configuration of the mana was almost simplicity itself. If the damned spell was a mana thread it would have been well within my powers.
The issue was that a mana field required very delicate and detailed work. The field was made up of intersecting slivers of mana – no greater than half an inch in length weaved around each other to create a solid plane of mana. Any weakness in the slivers would result in the weave unraveling and the field failing. I had no idea how to even go about starting to create the field. It was true I could create mana slivers that small, but I doubted that I’d be able to summon enough to create a field much longer than ten inches.
This was looking very much like a dead end. Still, it wasn’t like I had anything better to do. I wrapped a blanket around myself and huddled up to read further. Maybe I could find a practical guide on Mana Fields that might help. It couldn’t possibly be as hard as I was picturing.
* * * * * *
Mana Dissociation Page 15