26 Ch. 26 Magick

Myrddin is out in the woods alone.

Caval, that furry fucker, has ditched him yet again. Myrddin doesn't know why but Caval has been acting weirder lately. It's almost like Caval likes him some days but avoids him others.

Anyway. He's out in the Preserve after his lacrosse practice trying to practice his magic and waiting for something else to happen. He doesn't have anywhere else to practice, at least not that is private and secluded. There might be some abandoned buildings but who knows who can just pop up outta nowhere.

The Challenger is back at his house along with his brown leather jacket.

After he bought his cleats and went home to tell his mom the news about lacrosse he had a vision.

He saw the girl he gave his pen to driving an SUV, the same car that nearly hit Scott and himself the previous night. The girl ends up accidentally hitting a dog and freaking out. He watches as she somehow manages to get the hurt dog into her trunk and speeds away. The vision doesn't stop until she gets to the veterinary clinic and asks Scott for help.

The vision was much longer this time. And he was able to watch for longer because his point of view this time around was from the passenger seat.

At least he had a pretty good idea where this was going to happen because the vision lasted so long.

There was plenty of time until he had to save the dog and the girl from a traumatic experience.

Even if everything worked out, he couldn't just let a dog get hit when he could do something about it.

So for the meanwhile he planned on messing around with his magic.

What he found is that magic is technically everywhere. But he wouldn't call it magic, so he decided to call the mystical energy mana. Very creative.

Basically mana is everywhere. Specifically in the earth and even in himself. That euphoric feeling is his mana deep inside himself. But it's not physically there. It isn't tangible until he uses it to affect reality. That's how he uses magic. He controls the mana within himself to change reality.

He's still new to this whole thing but he's working on some things.

His mana can be used in various ways but it's tricky because it isn't a constant thing that he can control. It's very much so tied with his emotions.

Myrddin theorizes that this is because he can't us mana from outside his body… yet.

And so he has to drag his mana from deep inside himself and use it.

Now it's a little confusing because he can tell he has a lot of mana, but he can only reach the surface right now.

To visualize it: imagine he is trying to get water from the ground. It's very hard with your bare hands but it isn't impossible. But if he uses a shovel it becomes easier, like using his wand. Now he's just starting off, but as he practices and understands it more he's able to get better equipment. Like eventually he might be able to upgrade his hands to the shovel while the shovel progresses to the next stage. Basically he becomes proficient enough with using magic without his wand that when he uses the wand it's even better and easier.

And eventually that hole he is digging will get bigger and bigger until it becomes a well that he can easily get water from the depths of it. Like getting his mana from his depths.

A weird analogy but that's what he's working with for now until he thinks of a better one.

Myrddin also theorizes that his mana is coming from his soul and not his body since mana is intangible. And he's able to use his body as a conduit for his magic like his wand is a conduit. That's why he's able to do magic without the wand.

But then shouldn't everyone be able to use magic? What makes him so special? If the earth has mana then is it alive or does it have a soul? And how can he use and manipulate the mana outside his body?

He doesn't have the answer to most of those questions.

But he can try the last question. What he theorizes is that he will eventually be able to use the mana outside his body. Or at least use his mana to manipulate the mana outside his body.

Very complicated and confusing. But not impossibly so.

And what he's trying to do now is try and improve his current knowledge.

"Ignis" Myrddin whispers and in his right palm a small flame flickers to life.

He closes his hand around the flame and reopens his hand. "Ignis!" He commands.

*Fwooosh!*

A flame, the size of a volleyball, instantly bursts to life above his palm and burns brightly.

The flame slowly fades away as Myrddin studies it. He could have kept it there for a while but he wanted to see how it would fade away. He just wanted to satisfy his curiosity.

Anyway, what he had just demonstrated for himself is that he can control the strength of his spells. Right now it's a little hard but even with just changing how he says the incantation the results are this diverse. It's basically like lazily calling forth a fire, which is the little flicker of fire, by whispering. And by shouting he is forcing more mana out to create the bigger and more powerful fire. When you whisper something you aren't as emotional, but the louder you are the more emotional you are or get.

So since emotions correlate to strength you should get the picture. Shout incantation, get better results. Simple.

But he could also get the big flame by whispering too.

"Ignis~…"

*Fwoooosh!*

The big flame bursts into existence again.

Myrddin whispered the incantation and got the same result as if he had shouted it. But this required a lot more focus and mana to do.

The flame disappears the same as the others.

Now a theory Myrddin has is that if there was already a fire burning he might be able to take control of it.

Like how he can use water that is already in existence or manipulate the shape of the earth. Both are already in existence and he can shape them with his mana. But they're separate from the World's mana. If they were part of the World's mana then he wouldn't have been able to manipulate them… yet.

What is interesting is his wand. He can't manipulate it whatsoever. He hasn't tried burning it but he couldn't manipulate water inside it or the wood itself. This means that this guy was formed from the World's mana.

And this leads Myrddin to believe the reason his magic while using the wand incorporates some of the World's mana in conjunction with his own.

When he's eventually able to manipulate the mana outside his body he will be able to alter the wand, in theory. Or even make one of his own?

Myrddin faces his palm towards the ground. "Terra!"

Suddenly a spike of dirt shoots out from the ground pointing its sharp edge away from Myrddin.

This was his trick he was going to use against the beast.

From what Myrddin saw with his brief encounters, the beast is very fast. Probably even faster than he is right now with his new body. While he plans to change that in the future, for now he had planned to cause the beast to impale itself with its own momentum.

It may not work more than once but all he needs is for it to work once. If he can inflict enough damage with the initial attack he can finish the beast off with some other tricks.

Now as for some other attacks…

Besides his fire and earth he can't really attack with his water or wind. He can probably partially blind the best with his wind and lightly defend himself with the water.

In the future he can probably make blades out of water and air. It right now that isn't really an option.

Something else that isn't an option at the moment, but could be in the future, is him manipulating a persons man's within their body to heal them.

This is very complicated and he can't exactly try it right now even if he had a test subject. He might be able to inject some of his own mana to help guide a persons man's to heal themselves or straight out just use his own mana to heal someone else. He's not sure how his mana heals himself passively either. But healing others is far off into the future for right now. And he doesn't even know how he would heal epilepsy when he is able to…..

Myrddin holds out both hands with his palms facing up at the evening sky.

"Ignis!"

He's trying to form two fires at the same time. But there is nothing. Not even one.

This is because he is focusing on making two fireballs but he isn't capable of this yet so nothing happens.

His magic heavily relies on his focus and intent. And so if his intent is higher than his ability nothing happens.

Otherwise he would just instantly be able to summon forth a lake of fire and destroy the beast even in a monsoon.

This is also the reason why he has to get creative with what he has and work within his boundaries while trying to push those boundaries outwards to expand what he can do.

And if he can't even do two fires…he turns his right palm downwards

"Ignis! Terra!"

There isn't any response. No fire and no change in the earth beneath Myrddin.

Now his theory about this is more simple: Basically, it's like his mana has one exit. So when he tries to shove two different intentions for his mana out, the mana collides at the exit and neither come out.

With this same idea, you could say that when he tries to summon two fires or imagine something that is too big or complicated his mana required for the task is too big for the exit.

Either way, if he can make the exit larger then he can expand what he can do with his magic.

Jumping back to his healing for a lead to something else. His body is passively healing itself with his mana. Or that's what he currently believes to be the case. And if it is, then that means he's manipulating his body with mana already. And he could technically use his mana to affect his body differently besides healing it.

His senses are already cranked to 11. But if he uses his mana, magic, he can potentially crank them higher. And this also applies to his physical attributes, and even his mental attributes as well. Like increasing his speed, strength, reflexes, thinking capacity, perception of time, and the sorts. But he would have to be very careful, especially regarding the things manipulating his brain.

He's probably closer to manipulating his own body than anyone else's. But once he figures out his own body then he can be a step closer to figuring out how to affect someone else's body. And at that point he would just need to learn how to manipulate mana that isn't his own or how to inject his own mana into someone else.

He also found out that he doesn't need to use Venire when he uses certain magic. Like Ignis already has it 'built in' so to speak while Terra in some situations doesn't because he can't currently lift anything too heavy. So depending on how big, heavy, something is when he conjures or manipulates it he can move it around as he wishes.

There are other types of magic he is interested in but simply can't do for now. One example is illusion magic. Another would be the jinx family. The jinx, hex, and curse family line. Basically giving various degrees bad luck or misfortune to someone for increasing amounts of time when you go up the family line. And a few others.

"Aqua"

Myrddin summons forth a buckets worth of water and manipulates it through the air to take various shapes. Eventually he hopes to turn it to ice, or flat out summon manipulatable ice. But for now his best defense is this water. Increasing its surface tension is like making fire hotter, the process is different but it's like increasing the effectiveness and usefulness. The surface tension increasing basically means it will be able to take tougher blows the higher the tension is.

He isn't able to manipulate much earth, dirt, at this point so water is his best option. But Earth would have the best chance at being able to both defend and attack within the near future.

The water zips around in the air. Murddin doesn't need to move his hands around for the liquid to move but it makes it easier.

*Splash~*

He lets the water fall to the ground as he closes his eyes and points his palms out at his sides.

"Ventus!"

A breeze begins picking up around Myrddin. This is a weird one. Because he could just move his finger in a circle or he could keep his arms extended out as he t-poses to achieve the same result.

The wind gets stronger as it's range decreases. And when the wind swirls around Myrddin he drops his left arm to his side and points forward and snaps his eyes open. The wind that was surrounding him bursts forward and goes through the woods as it picks up dirt, leaves, sticks, pebbles, and other light objects.

Over 100 feet away from Myrddin the wind collided into a tree. The wind doesn't do anything to it, but everything that got swept into it pelts the tree and ends up doing a decent amount of damage. It took off some bark from the tree but nothing substantial to actually hurt someone. But if he throws it in someone's eyes it would blind them for a little while while he prepares a more devastating attack like throwing an earth spear or fireball.

While this is currently the extent of his abilities he plans on improving them. And in regards to defending himself he can always rely on his body.

His fighting instincts and intuition are very sharp. Even before he had his body change, he was able to dodge at least one attack of the beast. And when he was at lacrosse practice it became very apparent that he could perform well in a fight even when outnumbered. But if there are more than one of those beasts… hes fucked anyway so maybe taking one down would be good but he couldn't do that as he is right now since he can barely take on one.

He pulls out his phone and looks at the time. "Guess it's time to stop some trauma"

——————

Myrddin is standing on the side of a road with his hands in his pockets. Perfectly dry.

Yeah, it was down-pouring in his vision.

After about 30 minutes of waiting he realized that today wasn't the day. His visions have slightly changed when happening in reality before so he wanted to play it safe.

But the dark sky has kept back the water works and he's wasted some time. Well, he did end up getting some studying in at least. But nobody likes studying and standing. That's just an annoying combo.

Heading home he wonders what the future has in store for him. If there is a creature like the beast and he himself who has magic, there surely has to be more out there.