11 Chapter 11

In the carriage, he saw the insides were as luxurious as the outside. Two long cushioned seats were arranged opposite to each other. It even had a lamp and he could harldy feel the bumps of the road. Maybe the carriage had something like shock absorbers attached to them.

"Alright Aaron. This carriage will be your home for the next two months. I will guide you about the basics of being a mage so that you wouldnt be totally without clue once you reach the institute. This will also help you widen your horizon in general. "

Ryan was direct as usual.

"Thank you Sir Ryan."

"You dont need to say Sir. Mage Ryan will do. Sir is for commoners when they call upon a mage. I personally dont care what people say. Because I would still be a mage no matter how people address me." Aaron liked what Ryan said. It made so much more sense. Some people were just too fussy about the way you addressed them. Thankfully Ryan wasn't one of them.

"Now, tell me. What is a mage?"

"Mage is someone who could influence the world around him with his powers." Aaron said. He tried to generalize his answer amd stick to what Anderson had told him. He had originally wanted to say mage was someone who did magic. But he knew that would be disastarous. It was still too early.

"Not the worst answer you could have given. But lets say I could burn a piece of wood with fire from a lamp. I brought the lamp towards the wood with my own hands. That is the power of my hands. And I made it burn. Is that magic?"

"No, its science. Fire burns wood."

"Then what makes magic different?"

"You dont have to touch the lamp with your hands? You could directly light fire on the wood?" Aaron questioned.

"To be honest, no one knows what magic truly is. So, I cant be too hard on you. Some people are just born with it. Its kind of a mental energy which can indeed make the lamp move by itself ot ignite the wood. But its not all powerful. It still follows the principal of science. Do you know it takes air to burn fire?"

"Yes." Oxygen. Not air exactly. But he didnt say it outloud.

"Good, you at least know some stuff. So I was saying, you need air for fire. So even with magic you cant burn wood in absence of Air. So thats the limitation of magic. It cant break the rules of the universe. You will learn about that in details. I am just giving you a overview."

It seemed even magic followed some scientific principles.

"Now, even though you feel magic seems to be based on science, but it isnt exactly. What kind of a mage you were tested as?"

"Space mage."

"Space mage? Thats one of the rarer branches. But as I was saying, you know there are different types of mage. Each mage is born with a single element they can control. Fire mages cant control water and a lightning mage cant control earth. If magic abolutely followed scientific principles , everyone should be able to do everything. But no one class of mage can control the element of other class directly. "

Now that did feel weird. It followed science in one step and went the other direction in other.

"Now that is the beauty of magic for mages. So much of it is unexplored. There have been hundreds, if not thousands of mages throughout the history who have spent their whole life just trying to find out the mysteries of magic. Even a whole lifetime is not enough to determine even a little of magic's nature. "

Aaron felt that Ryan was really passionate about all this.

But all these discussions really instigated the curiosity of his. He wanted to explore the world of magic.

"Sorry, I went a little off topic. But its true what I said. Keep that in mind. Although parts of magic cant be explained, one thing mages are sure of. The element of magic you control, it follows all the laws of that element. So the better you understand the element and better the understanding of its laws, the better mage you can be. Science and magic do go hand in hand."

"Now look here."

As Aaron looked, a flame floated in the palms of Ryan. It was magic. Real magic. No tricks of hands. This was the first real magic he had seen since he was a baby. He couldn't even see it properly that time.

But he could watch it cleanly this time. A flame like a bigger version of a candle flame. Orange and yellow on the outside. Blue in the middle. The sight left Aaron astonished. All the scientific advancement on earth couldnt achieve what Ryan did so casually. Infact as per the science on earth, this shouldnt be happening.

"You see this flame? How does it burn? Doesnt fire require fuel? Where is the fuel? "

Aaron was left fabregasted. Ryan was right. If magic did follow science, where was the fuel? How can there be flames if it didnt have stuff to burn. And if ryan combusted air, it would be plasma. Much more than the gentle heat he could feel from the flame.

Seeing Aaron speechless. Ryan had a little smirk.

"You know there is lot things that makes air. Also air contains water vapour and various other elements in a small amount."

Aaron already knew all that. Thats like primary education back on earth these days. But he acted like he didnt know.

"What I am doing is I am burning those particles in the air which are immflammble. Magic is igniting those particles, science is knowing air has them."

This opened Aaron's mind. Ofcourse he knew air has minute amount of a lot of gases. Some of which is combustible. But to think of that and ignite just those particles, it did need an out of the box thinking.

Leaving the little brash personality of his aside, Aaron really enjoyed listening to Ryan. He brought a new way of thinking to Aaron. Now Aaron was really looking forward to his two months of journey with Ryan.