by HDA Roberts
I sat there like that for a long time, just soaking in everything, letting myself get comfortable with it. The heat stopped bothering me almost as soon as I let my mind wander, like the heat knew it was being a bit much and went elsewhere. I took off my shoes and let feet sink into the sand. It should have been scorching hot... and yet was pleasantly cool.
I could feel the barest trickle of Magic flowing out of me through my link to the Elements. I let my mind drift down that link and found... something like eagerness there. Just like with my Shadows, my new Affinities were ready to be used.
With a deep breath, I reached for the heat in the air around me.
It came to me like an old friend, filling the air with flickering waves of energy that would have charred a human being down to the bone in a second; hot enough that the sand around me flashed into molten glass. I let the heat agitate and turn into fire, feeding it with my own power. Normally, I'd have needed a separate Spell to convert pure Magical energy into Heat (and a complicated one at that), but it happened so naturally now, just like conjuring a Shadow.
I'd been so scared of this, of fire and lightning, shifting gravity by accident and destroying a building, wrenching all the chemical energy from someone and leaving them dead... but I finally realised that I didn't need to be. These Elements were a part of me, now. My Shadows had never taken somebody’s head off because I was annoyed, why had I been so worried that these Elements would do that?
That was quite a liberating thought. After that, it became a matter of simply getting my instincts under control, and not forming links through emotional distress and panic. That was the biggest problem for developing Magicians, and was something I'd mastered a very long time ago (with one or two minor, slightly destructive, hiccoughs that I may or may not have blamed on my brother...), so it was just a matter of reinforcing those lessons.
With that in mind, I started to let myself go a little.
I made it rain in the Sahara at the height of summer. I reached down into the earth and made it shake as I summoned great shards of stone to burst through the sand. I spent an hour creating and directing a twister that swept the sand into swirls and eddies that then formed the shapes of dragons fighting one another. I let lightning crash down around me, swirling into coils and forks that scattered the mica glass into shards that the tornado took up and spread for a hundred miles.
As I let myself get deeper and deeper into the link with the world around me, I could feel the Elements begin to coalesce, and pulled back before I could give them form, as I'd been about to conjure Elementals. That was an escalation I wasn't ready for, yet.
With the notable exception of the Shadow Realm, Elementals couldn't become discreet entities unless someone with the power actually summoned them, and very few remained around after the Magic ran out. I had one example living at the Grotto, pretending to be a bird, but she stayed because she liked me, and Moria was the exception, not the rule.
I continued experimenting with different sorts of weather. The wind and the rain made it cool, and I made it cooler still, causing the rain to change into snow. I let my mind trail further into the atmosphere until I could feel where the air was creating a funnel, drawing in every greater quantities of water from over the seas.
I let more energy flow into the air, and the streams intensified until I was surrounded by a storm that lashed the sand and almost blasted the rock with its intensity, but left me cool and unharmed at the centre. It was astonishing how easy it all was, simple imagination given form.
But not especially useful for complex Spells.
I withdrew the energy and the tempest started to peter out. It wasn't like a switch being flipped. That much gathered air, heat and water would take a while to settle, but the sun came out again fairly quickly and eventually evaporated the water, leaving it humid for a little bit.
That was the easy part, brute manipulation of matter and energy, any Magician could do that, I could just do it more easily. Now came the tricky bit.
The scope of my abilities wasn't any different that day than it had been before I'd stabbed Myrddin in the bum. I hadn't suddenly discovered the secrets to surviving without a head; I hadn't learned how to push a mountain back into the Earth. The only real, practical, differences were in the speed with which I could cast the Spells I knew, the ease with which I could perform simple manipulations and the size of my Well.
At least, once I got used to how my Affinities affected the way I powered my Spells, anyway. There was no quick way to go about discovering that. I simply had to cast and cast until everything felt as natural as it had before.
So, once the last of the clouds had cleared from the sky, I started running through my entire repertoire of Spells. I cast them one by one, starting at the very simplest and working my way up, forcing myself to start again at even the slightest mistake.
It wasn’t quick work, but with every mistake, I learned something, and I slowly acclimatised myself to the new Affinities. I learned how they functioned, how they affected the way I cast, how they changed the way I drew in energy and assembled Spell constructs.
I understood that I’d never get through everything I knew in a single day, so I didn’t even try. I took the time to do everything slowly and properly.
I cast Magelights, summoned water, created a ball of floating heat and light before moving into ever more complex Spells. I couldn't do anything that required organic material, but that still left me with colossal scope. I cast Mapping Spells and Tracking Spells; I smashed a rock and cast Repair Spells, I gathered up a chunk of sand and transmuted it into lead by rearranging its protons and neutrons, and then into pure carbon (these were the Spells that explained why you'd never find a poor Sorcerer, by the way. You could just as easily transmute lead into gold, or even diamonds, as silicon into carbon).
When it started getting late, I took the opportunity to build a shelter from the sand, fusing it into glass, spending the extra time to remove the impurities until it sparkled in the starlight.
I went to sleep, and when I woke up, I started again.
I went through every form of Mage Sight I knew, Remote Sensory Spells, Matter Reorganisation Spells and even Rapid Construction Spells. I practiced energy manipulation and conversion for hours, and never once got bored.
Everything old and everyday was new again, and before long it all became so easy... far easier than it was before. Eventually, all I had to do was think of what I wanted, and my Affinities let me cast the necessary Spell almost on instinct. It was wonderful, almost euphoric. Ninety percent of the Spells I knew were Primal Magic, Low Magic. That meant that practically everything I'd once needed time and effort to cast now came to me as easily as my Shadows.
I couldn't understand how I'd gone so long without it. It was like waking up after sleepwalking through life. I didn't think I'd be able to go back after experiencing that kind of understanding, that bond with the world around me.
Damn, but I needed to find a deep, dark place to bury that knife...
I smiled at the thought and went back to work.
Cassandra found me on the evening of the fourth day of my refresher course.
"Boring," she said, dropping to the sand next to me, where I'd prepared a glass seat for her (I was getting good at that).
"Sorry," I said, opening my eyes. I’d been contemplating a Spell that might convert all this dead sand into something arable, providing I could get sufficient thermally stable bacteria to help aerate it and somehow repel that Death Magic residue.
"You haven't done anything impressive since that first day, what gives?"
"That was just getting used to the on-switch. This is the real work."
"Like I say, boring."
I rolled my eyes and stretched before reaching into my bag for the last of my energy bars; my stomach had started rumbling. With enough effort, it was quite possible to convert any matter into the basic raw materials my body would need for repair and maintenance, I could even just draw chemical en
ergy from the world directly into the very proteins of my cells. That was normally a fiendishly complex Spell that should take at least forty minutes to cast correctly, but which I could now do in three or four, but I was damned if I was giving up on food just because it would be Magically impressive.
"I kinda love it," I said. "The connection I feel to the world, Cassie... it's wonderful."
Cassandra rolled her eyes, "Hippie," she said, nudging my shoulder.
"Hey now, let's not say anything we can't take back!"
She snorted and leant against me as we watched the sun go down. There was something different about watching it there, so much closer to the equator than I was used to, and with so little to block the view. And at night... without a trace of man-made light, the stars were stunning. I'd spent hours just staring at them.
"I think you should come in,” Cassandra said once the sun was down. “Lady Time has had too long to think, and she seems to be spiralling. The other Archons are in there with her."
"I'd much rather watch the stars.”
"I know, right? I haven't slept these last few days, just staring at the damn things. I have bags under my eyes because of those bloody stars, and that is not a good look on me!"
"Any look is a good look on you," I said quickly, remembering the thump I received for missing a similar cue in the recent past.
"Good man, you're learning. Now go and reassure your sister before she starts palpitating, or something. I'll keep your seat warm."
I sighed and stood... and fell over. I'd been sitting for a very long time and my legs were asleep.
Cassandra laughed as I spat out a mouthful of sand and tried again, wobbling along to a crevice, where I opened a Gate into the Shadow Realm and fell in.
Within, I could easily see the extent of the Pyramid's rooms and its underground complex. I shifted myself into the heart of the structure and eased my senses into the Shadows, listening for familiar voices.
"I think you're failing to understand the implications of this!" Kron's voice boomed, leading me to the apex of the building. It was a pyramid-shaped room with a five-sided table in the centre and a set of stairs built into the floor. The walls up there were made of clear crystal so carefully crafted as to make it look seamless, like you were standing outside, the pyramid stretching away below you. It provided a rather spectacular view, day or night, though I preferred the latter, when the stars and moon made the white pyramid shimmer.
"Oh relax, Van, you're blowing this all out of proportion,” Killian replied. “This is Mathew we're talking about; he'd no more go conquering the place than Lucille would. He'd cry at the first siege!"
Comment on my manliness aside, he probably had a point.
"Oh really? Tell that to the Aurelias! He managed to obliterate an entire Vampire House, let's not forget that."
"Obliterate is over-stating it. They're all still alive... mostly," Hopkins said.
Yes, that had been a bit of a prickly ethical issue. But it wasn’t like I’d made them do a damn thing. They could have cooperated with each other, worked together, but instead they’d decided on murder. My hands were clean(-ish).
"But the House is gone. Shattered, ruined, cast to the four winds, gone. And he did it without them even knowing it was happening! That's the mind we're dealing with here, and now that mind is backed up by the power of seven Primals!"
I slipped through a Gate and crept up slowly behind Kron's seat.
The others spotted me and I put my finger to my lips. They settled; Palmyra looked down to conceal her grin.
"It's not who he is now that worries me. He's... he's a good kid, but what about in a hundred years? A thousand? Will he be the same then? And let's address the real elephant in the room, what happens if he uses the Black, now? With that Well behind it, could any of us stop him?"
Silence.
Though not out of reverence, or fear, but because the others were waiting to see what I'd do.
"You see? None of you have anything to say to that!"
"Maybe I might?" I whispered in her ear.
I swear, the sound that came out of her was the most magnificent combination of bellow, squeal and shriek I'd ever heard. I recorded it on my phone.
It was absolutely worth getting punched in the face.
"Ouch," I mumbled from where I’d landed, up against the wall.
Wow, could that woman throw a punch. On the plus side, a simple link with by body soon saw my broken nose back to normal. Simple cell regeneration was as easy for a Flesh Affinity as gathering heat was for a Pyro. All I had to do was direct Magic to the damaged area, and my body almost fixed itself. It was so much easier than assembling the necessary Spells to fuse bone, repair inflammation, numb pain...
"It's your own fault! What do you mean by sneaking up on people?! And you lot stop that!" Kron barked. That last was directed at the other three Archons, who were bent over, laughing their arses off. Palmyra was sliding towards off her chair, unable to breathe.
Kron came over and helped me up, dusting me off as she inspected my nose, looking apologetic.
"Sorry," she said grudgingly.
"No, no, I was wrong for head-butting your fist," I replied.
"Shut up," Kron grumbled. "And don't do that again!"
"Sorry."
"You had something to add to our discussion?" Hopkins said, still giggling a little. I flopped into the spare seat.
"I just wanted to say that I'm no different today than I was a week ago, not in any way that matters. I have no ambitions for anything other than a good education and a quiet life. That's it. I realise that with Myrddin around and growing problems in the Stonebridge Conclave that I'm not likely to get them, but that's what I'm after. Having said that," I left a pregnant pause, and everyone tensed; drama queens, every one of them...
"If you tell me, here and now, to hand over that dagger and let you stick some non-essential part of me to get these Affinities out, I'll do it."
More silence. This time it was more respectful.
"Really?" Kron asked. "You'd let us do that?"
"Of course. These aren't actually my powers."
I'd miss the sense of connection, of course, but not enough to turn these four against me. I’d get over a power drop, but losing them... that, I couldn't bear.
"No," Kron said after a moment's thought. "I don’t want that."
"Neither do I," Killian agreed.
Hopkins and Palmyra shook their heads, too, smiling at me.
"As much as I may hate the idea, that cursed Blade is a tool of the Divine, an agent of Fate. From what you told me, something very powerful made sure that you got these Affinities. I have to believe that it's for a good reason," Kron said.
There was also the possibility that whoever or whatever was controlling the dagger when I used it had no choice in the matter, either. Even things like Angels had to follow the rules, after all, even if that meant something bad happening.
I didn't say that, though, I didn't want to upset Kron again before my bones had finished fusing all the way.
I stayed for a late dinner, laughing with my adoptive family, but then I went back to my refresher. Cassandra stayed with me for a bit but got bored again and went back inside.
After another day or so, I was fairly confident in myself, and was itching for a little fun. I decided to see if I could use my new Affinities for flight.
It turned out that I could, but it took a long while before I managed to get fine enough control to fly without crashing. I worked with Air, as you might expect, though Fire could do just as good a job, and you could theoretically fly in a cocoon made of Water or Earth, though that seemed unnecessarily counter-intuitive.
There was something rather liberating about flying that way, at one with the Air. There was also something quite relaxing about it.
After some practice, I was able to get up to truly fantastic speeds with little effort, my cocoon of air merging with the airstreams high above the desert and propelling me along
like a jet, it was amazing.
I went flying for hours, not really caring where I went, just enjoying the exercise and the view.
I felt freer than I ever had, relaxed and joyous; I didn’t have a care in the world... right up until someone fired a Lightning Bolt at me.
Chapter 34
Of course, in my enhanced state, it didn't even scorch my clothes. Hell, it didn't even get through the Air Cocoon, but it was still very rude.
I was over the western Sahara by this point, and I’d been trying to get a feel for low altitude flying, which was how the fellow had spotted me. It would turn out that I was in Algeria of all places; not somewhere I'd ever felt the need to visit before, and after that sort of welcome, I doubted I would again.
I’d read the Home Office travel advisories before I came to the area, so I knew that Northern Africa wasn’t exactly a friendly part of the world, but this was just ridiculous. I mean, who sees a flying stranger and thinks that this is the guy to take a pot-shot at?
I looked for my attacker and saw what appeared to be a camp at the foot of the local mountain range, just grey rock poking above some golden sand, nothing really mesmerising, or even interesting, about any of it. The Magician who had made the mistake of drawing my attention was perched on the top of one of the foothills, glaring up at me as he gathered Electricity for another strike.
I brought up some shields and cast Mage Sight.
I was so shocked at how unhealthy he looked that I recast the Spell, thinking it had to be a mistake.
Skin which should have been nearly black was ash-grey. His cream robes were soiled with sweat, blood and what looked like pus, and that was the least of it. It was like his body was disintegrating before my eyes, leaking fluids at a horrific rate. A closer look revealed that he was practically riddled with some sort of... I didn’t even know how to describe it properly!
I’ve studied biology. As a Flesh Magician, I’ve had to study it extensively. I knew what to look for in a sick body, I could identify viruses, bacteria, prions, fungi and parasites at a glance under Mage or Flesh Sight, and I’m telling you that I’d never seen anything like this before.