I was really happy with how I’d done, and Sandy was just blown away. She said getting good at magic was a matter of learning how to work with your affinities, and clearly I had some good ones to work with.
I’d come into this hoping I would learn how to throw some fireballs around. That just sounded neat and it would certainly be useful in battle. My results, though, showed I wouldn’t be doing that. If anything, I was the opposite of that. My magic was small, precise, and dense. I guess that made sense because my little cartoon guys were small and dense.
“We have done a bunch of tests, so now let’s use what we have learned about your affinities and see how it relates to a real-world example,” Sandy said. “Let’s start with the most basic of skills, making light.
“This is something mages have been doing since we discovered magic. It’s something that has been well researched and it is a great place to begin. The first thing I want you to do is make a tiny point of light. It doesn’t need to be bright. It just needs to be something we can see and measure. We’ll build from there.”
She looked at me expectantly. “Can I use one of my little guys?” I asked. I’d made light before but I’d done it using a cartoon light bulb. I wasn’t sure if I could just make light on its own.
“For now, let’s stick with using pure magic,” Sandy said. “Your characters are an unknown we can experiment with later.” She gave me the teacher look again.
I took a deep breath and let it out. Where to begin? How do I make light? When I make my cartoon characters, they do all the work and it feels believable to me. Making the light directly seemed strange.
I guess maybe I could make light just like I make a cartoon. I’ll just imagine the light and put some magic in it.
I picked my normal spot in front of me where I make my little creations and imagined a tiny sphere that was glowing. Finally, I added a bit of magic, and it worked!
Or I think it was. I could see a magic glow. I didn’t have my normal sight to see how bright it was. Sandy was smiling so I guess I was doing it right. “You got that pretty quickly. Sometimes it takes hours for a new mage to find a method that works.”
“I just imagined a ball of light, and then put magic into it,” I said. “That’s how I usually make my characters so I hope that is in line with what you are thinking.”
“Everyone casts magic a bit differently,” Sandy said. “That’s why it’s hard to teach sometimes. I can tell you how to do something, but it might be the wrong way for you do it. I’ve found the best way is to let you know what I want and then you figure out how to make it happen. It makes sense that you would cast light the same way you cast a character, so I think we are good to continue.
“Let’s take a look at how much magic this uses.” It was 16. That seemed rather high for something so small.
“Now, using your affinities, how do you bring your magic usage down?” Sandy asked.
What were my affinities again? I need to write them down so I can go through a list. I was paying attention, but I’d done so many tests they were starting to blur together.
Let’s see. There was gas. Other than lighting a fart I didn’t see how that would help. It was a funny image, though. I’d be a big hit if I ever joined a magical fraternity.
Magic resistance and magic capacity wouldn’t help here. Capacity would help me keep the light going for a while, but it wouldn’t make it more efficient.
Distance! That’s the one I’d been missing. I’d made the light in front of me like I normally did on casting. Closer was better. Time to get close.
I put my hand a few inches under the light, just like I was trying to levitate it. The magic cost dropped to ten. Wow! That had knocked off a third of the power needed. I really needed to start casting much closer.
“Excellent!” Sandy said with a satisfied smile. “I was wondering if you would remember what we had said about casting. Let’s test this even more. Since there isn’t any heat coming from the light, let’s get as close as we can to it and see if that makes a difference.”
It felt a bit strange to get this close to a casting, but I moved my hand right up to the light until I was touching it. The magic cost dropped to six!
“Look at that.,” Sandy said. “Even a couple inches make a difference.”
She said it with such a straight face too. My mind went straight to the gutter. As a gay man I was well aware of the difference a couple inches could make.
I bit my lip to keep from laughing. Sandy was in her teacher mode and I didn’t want to ruin it. I was learning a lot. This was not the time for that sort of humor.
Being an adult can be so hard sometimes.
Seriously, though, I’d dropped the magic cost from sixteen to six. That was a massive difference. Was there anything else I could do? I thought through what we had tested but couldn’t come up with anything.
“I think distance is the main thing,” I said. “I can’t see how any of my other affinities would help, or how to make this more efficient using physics.”
“Are you sure?” Sandy said.
I thought about it but nothing came to mind.
“Yes. I’m sure,” I replied. “Got any ideas?”
“Well, what are you burning to actually make the light?”
“I guess that would be magic?” I said.
“So, you are putting magic into this space and telling it to transform into light,” Sandy said. “Does that sound right?”
I could tell she was leading me somewhere but I didn’t know where she was going with this. I hadn’t thought of the light source as transformative magic, but that did seem to fit what was happening. I’d just told my power I needed light and it did it.
“Yes. That sounds right.”
“How about using your magic to transform something else into light?” Sandy asked. “It would still take magic, but it might not take as much as using it as the power source.”
That was a whole new way of thinking. Clearly, I had a lot to learn.
I looked around to see what I could turn into light. The table was littered with cubes but I think Sandy would be really upset if I ruined her testing kit. I tried to find something else. There was cat hair on me. Would that work?
“I know someone who has an affinity to gas,” Sandy stated. I looked at her blankly. “And the ball of light is floating in the air.”
Was she suggesting I convert air to light? That sounded crazy. It also sounded like genius.
I turned off the current ball of light. It seemed easier to start over rather than convert an existing process. This time I imagined a tiny sphere filled with air. The air would fill with magic and start glowing. As it was transformed the air would be used up, so fresh air would flow into the sphere and be transformed into light also.
I set it up in my mind, and added a touch of magic. A little round ball of light appeared on my palm. It felt slightly different than before, but not by much. I checked my magic usage. It was a five.
“Five is good,” Sandy said. “Although, to be honest, I was expecting a bit more. Using a real-world element and transforming it is usually much more effective than just using magic alone.”
She thought about it for a minute. “I guess it does make sense in a way. Your soul is so dense you are already very efficient with magic. It’s hard to improve when you are already doing so well. Let’s try a few more things with the light. First, change the color to something other than white. Let’s go for red.”
I shifted my imagery slightly and Sandy confirmed it was now red. Magic output stayed at five. We tried different colors but it didn’t make any difference.
“Keeping the same brightness, lets increase the size of the light. See how big of a sphere you can make it.”
That was also simple to do, but I could feel the draw of magic increasing. I found I could increase the globe of light up to about three inches in diameter. Then it just started falling apart. At three inches, the magic draw went up to 12.
“I thought
this might happen,” Sandy said. “This is another side of your distance handicap. It seems like there is also a size limitation to your magic as well. Your magic is effective, but only in a small radius”
Well that’s a bummer. I really am the opposite style of magic to a fireball. I could probably make a very hot flame right on my palm, but that wasn’t any good in battle. Besides, it would burn my hand.
“I do have one more thing to show you before we get into your first charm,” Sandy said. She pulled a metal figure out of her chest with a flourish.
“This,” she said dramatically, “is a light rune.”
It kinda looked like the number four with a few extra squiggles and dots.
“Runes are the secret sauce to magic. Right now you are working with basic personal magic. Runes take you to the next level. Within a narrow scope, they give you a boost to your magic. Almost like you had a natural affinity for whatever the rune is for.
“They announce to the world what effect you are going to use your magic for. When you add magic inside the design, it’s not just you trying to make something happen. The rune helps you bring your intention to life.
“So, this light rune will let you cast light with a lot less effort. It will also allow you to go much brighter than you could on your own. You are already magically effective so I can’t wait to see what this rune will do for you.”
The rune didn’t look like much, but Sandy was clearly excited. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was getting excited too.
“This is probably going to be easier if you go back to just burning magic. Remember, that was a magic output of six. This time, instead of making a sphere of magic, I want you to incorporate this design into your light. It really doesn’t matter how you do it. Just go with something obvious for starters.”
I let the magic I had go and started over again. This time I thought of the rune like the filament in a light bulb. I didn’t even bother with the sphere. I wasn’t used to the rune yet, so I had to keep checking out the metal figure to make sure I was getting it right. All the details in the rune made it hard to duplicate so it took a while. Finally I was ready. I took a breath, and added magic.
The magic glow from my hand was powerful! Sandy said the whole workroom had lit up. The light seemed clear and bright too. I’d planned on a low range glow like before. Sandy said this was so bright it was a bit hard to look at. I checked out my magic usage. Two!!
She did a happy twirl. “I thought that would be something to see! I haven’t ever seen anyone get their magic down to a two before. And the light is so brilliant. This is just amazing. Good job!”
Sandy really loved talking about magic. It was so neat that she was this happy for me.
“Now let me show you something about runes. Take the light and make it red like you did before.”
I did and the effect was obvious. The light was much dimmer and the cost shot up to five. It wasn’t six like before, but it was close.
“Runes can be picky things. In this case, the rune is for a white light only. Since you are making red light its effectiveness is reduced. Its potency doesn’t go down by just a little bit either, it goes down by a lot.”
I tried other colors but it was the same with all of them. This rune wanted white light only.
“Knowing your runes and how to use them is very important. You don’t want a rune to fail on you when you’re in a tough situation. Well, it won’t fail you. Runes work the same way every time. It’s more like you would fail it by trying to get it to do something it wasn’t designed to do.”
“This is so cool!” I was still playing with the light rune. It was pretty picky on its shape too. I changed the rune slightly and it stopped working. I put a sphere around it and it didn’t seem to mind that at all. I made it bigger and smaller and it was still bright as heck. I still ran up against the three-inch size limit. Even a rune couldn’t help me with that.
“So where do runes come from?” I asked. I could already think of lots of runes I wanted to learn. There must be a defensive one that powered those shields. I wanted that for sure.
“Apparently runes are everywhere. They make up just about everything we see, touch, and feel. There are abstract runes for things like force and heat. There are runes in everything solid, like this table. If you could see the wood rune it would tell you the color, texture, and all the properties of wood. Some supers have a special affinity to runes and can see them. They have shared some of what they see and that makes up what we use today.
“This is a very rare skill. As far as I know there isn’t anyone alive today that can see runes. You can also modify a rune with experimentation. If you knew what you were doing, you could figure out what part of this light rune is for white light. You could then change it to be blue or red. Finding new runes and what they can do is a big deal. Covens hoard the runes they have found and will do just about anything to acquire new ones.
“That’s why I was so excited to see the golem core. It has to have new runes for movement, a rune to gather rocks, a rune to hold everything together in a human shape. That’s in addition to the runes that give it intention. It needed a way to detect you and know that you were an enemy. Then it needed intelligence to know to run after you and attack you. I don’t know any runes like that. The whole core is levels above what I thought was even possible. Someone who is a rune master put that thing together.
“In my experience, though, it’s better to have a few runes and know them very well. As you found out, having a rune is only half the puzzle. You also need to know exactly what it does. Using a rune differently than it was intended only gives you a small bonus.”
“Now, let’s have some fun with this. Crank that thing up and let’s see how bright you can make it.”
I’d been wondering that myself. I made the rune sit flat on my palm. That way every part of the rune was close to me. Then I doubled the power.
With my magic sight, it was already a reasonable glow in my hand. When I doubled the power, I expected it to double the light. Instead it quadrupled it.
Sandy was my best test of how I was doing since she was using regular sight. She started squinting and she wouldn’t look at it directly. I doubled the power again. Now it looked like a small sun sat in my hand.
I wish I could see this with my eyes. It must have been something because Sandy turned completely around and looked at the wall. Then I took off all restraint and gave it everything I had. Even facing the other way, it was too much for Sandy. She closed her eyes and threw up her hands to cover her face.
“Ok! Stop!” She yelled. I let the light go and everything went back to normal. It took her a moment to turn back around again. Her eyes were tearing up and she was holding onto the workbench.
“That was insane!” she said. “I could see the bones in my hand. Even turned around like I was and my eyes covered, I could still see the light.”
“Wow.” She looked a bit unsteady.
“Are you alright?” I asked. I pulled up a stool for her.
“I will be,” she said. “Just give me a sec.” She took a deep breath. “I didn’t think light could be that powerful. I should have looked away sooner. I’m still seeing spots.”
I’d seen the light in my hand get really bright to my magic sight, but it didn’t cause me any problems. I needed to keep this in mind. There had to be a way to use this in battle. Of course, I’d end up blinding my own allies too.
Sandy took a few more deep breaths, then she pulled out something I’d been waiting on; a charm bracelet.
“I think you have certainly earned this,” Sandy said solemnly. “I had John make it for you. I do hope you like it.”
I could see the bracelet was a lot more than just silver links chained together. He had gone with a vine theme, and they wound around each other forming a complex pattern. I’m sure there was actual links in the chain, but the artistry was so good I couldn’t see where one link stopped and the next one started. I could see berries—actually I
think those were grapes. Maybe it was grape vines. I’d have to ask John later. Either way, it was a beautiful piece of workmanship.
It had one charm on it; a light bulb.
“It is tradition for a teacher to give her student his first charm bracelet. In this way it shows that he has passed through his assessment and is ready to start down the path of becoming a mage. It shows the teacher has confidence in her student. Both in the realm of magic and the use to which it will be applied.
“I hope you will wear this charm proudly, as I am proud of you. I hope you will use this one and all future charms as well, in service to yourself, your House, and the world at large. May we all be better for having you as part of our lives.
“I believe in you, Jason. I believe in your goodness as a person. I believe in your ability to grow and learn the magic arts. I believe in your ability to overcome and be a force for good in this world. There will be times in your life where you lose sight of hope, when you wonder if you can do the right thing. In those times I hope you will feel this charm, and my faith in you.”
She fastened the bracelet around my left wrist. “Wear it well.”
The sincerity of the moment caught me by surprise. This felt like so much more than just a simple gift. This was a statement of faith and belief in me. That I was a good person and worthy of being a supernatural.
I hadn’t had a statement like that in a very long time. It touched me and I got a bit misty eyed. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I settled for giving her a big hug instead.
“Thank you,” I offered sincerely. “I’m glad you found me and I’m glad you are my teacher. I can’t imagine learning from anyone else.” I squeezed her hand and wiped my eyes. “I’m not sentimental, so we’ll just leave it at that.”
“Now, how do I use this charm?” I asked.
“I think the light bulb shape gives it away, but that is a light charm,” Sandy replied. “It’s based on the same rune you just learned. It’s one of the charms we charged the other night, so it is full of power and ready to go.
Misfit Mage Page 30