Lessons In Chronomancy - Part 2

Alsian took out a small training mat, "Now take a seat, because the first part of learning chronomancy and controlling it properly means you haveto learn the magical aspect and feeling to it."

"Otherwise you might kill yourself!" Alsian grinned and Samuel stared at him but walked over and sat down. "There is a reason many do not try to learn it!" Alsian laughed.

Alsian had him sit there for with closed eyes and told him to think of it like a strand of time, moving forward constantly. Regular magic had a mixture of chaos and order to it, while time was almost always a constant flow.

It took Samuel a few minutes to visualize it. He could almost see it in front of his very eyes, a constant stream like a river, like water there could be a flux, a flux of time. Or a flux of water.

He could feel the energies of time moving forwards, but at times they moved backwards or even stopped. Perhaps the work of other incidents caused by chronomancy.

"Alright I think I got it!" Samuel exclaimed and opened his eyes. Alsian was still standing in front of him and looked at him with two unamused eyes, "Alright this isn't a joke young man. When I said time magic is dangerous I meant it!"

But Alsian saw the confused look Samuel gave him and opened his eyes a little bit better. "You're serious?"

Samuel nodded, "Yeah maybe I am a natural at it, it only took me a few minutes to figure out in my head." He smiled while Alsian's face dropped a little.

"Minutes? You literally just sat down!" Alsian couldn't help but furrow his brows. "Surely you jest? I have been sitting for minutes?" Samuel asked in confusion.

Alsian rubbed his eyes, "Have you had any encounters... inside the mindscape?" His question lay some pressure on Samuel because he couldn't tell anyone about it.

"Your silence tells me all I need to know, you don't need to tell me anything else!" Alsian quickly held up a hand and reaffirmed before walking away for a bit.

"The constant flux that is time, sometimes a river... sometimes a vortex." Alsian spoke to himself with his back turned to Samuel. He turned back and stared at Samuel while holding a hand pressed on his lower face.

"You can access time inside the mindscape, which means chronomancy flows naturally for you, because you are unaffected by the flux of time..." The realization dawned on Alsian as he realized what was going on.

"Your inherited ability, by all rights you have already died twice, coming back to life would regularly break so many rules. But our gods are not the same as the other mortal gods. Our given gifts are granted to us by forces more ancient than the pantheon of gods that exist now."

Alsian was monologuing all of this for himself and Samuel was sitting there trying to understand what he meant, he could only guess parts of it.

But it ended with Alsian raising both hands in the air and chuckling, fists clutched his chuckled grew into an almost maniacal laughter.

"Are you okay?" Samuel asked as soon as Alsian started calming down. Laughing a little at the comment Alsian replied, "Of course I am okay kiddo. I just didn't see it earlier, you should be a natural at commanding time magic. Thanks to your gift, 'Infinite Shadow' I think is a fitting name for it."

"Infinite Shadow?" Samuel repeated and stood up.

"We Children of Mana have a tendency to name our gifts, or rather our gifts are like our true names in a way. I think I figured out yours to be Infinite Shadow!" Alsian grinned from side to side.

"Mine is 'Little Star' by the way!" Alsian kept grinning. He seemed to have fully replenished all of his energy and seemed to be brimming with it.

Samuel tried to remember if Alsian had ever introduced himself as that and he seemed to recall Alsian mentioning something about it during his first year of training in the forest.

Alsian took a few steps forward, "Are you ready to try then?"

"Try what?" Samuel responded but realized what he probably meant. "Chronomancy of course? Right?" He quickly corrected himself and Alsian nodded.

There were just so many things happening at once that it had almost been easy to forget. He had never seen Alsian so happily crazy, it was weird and he didn't fully understand it.

"Well, the easiest way to train the spell I call 'Rewind' is to give yourself small cuts with a knife and trying to focus and rewind the damage." Alsian smiled proudly and showed Samuel a place on his arm with dozens of super small cuts.

"That looks painful!" Samuel remarked and Alsian gave him another nod, "Precisely, no better training and getting it right than doing it through pain. Those who are used to pain like you and me are more likely to mess it up though."

"Thats why I want you to do the spell at least two dozen times perfectly! Ain't no prize for it, but it will stop you from making mistakes in the future!"

Alsian took out a small dagger and gave himself a small cut, "Watch closely and feel the energy." He quickly held out his other hand and to Samuel it looked like a magical circle that appeared in Alsians hand he was holding over the wound.

Samuel quickly realized it was a sort of magic circle that looked almost like a big clock going backwards, and just like that the blood faded and the wound closed itself up.

"Easy right?" Alsian grinned, the blood had dried out and there was only a teeny tiny scar in its place. "Rewinding the damage, well most of it anyway!"

Samuel slowly took a dagger and a little sigh before giving himself a cut, he focused on the prior feeling of time magic and thought about how Alsian had combined the time energies and forced it to rewind the wound as if it had 'almost' never existed.

Going backwards in time, but only a specific part. He held out his hand and closed his eyes focusing fully on recreating that magic.

After a short while he opened his eyes and looked at his arm, there was no wound, only dried blood and a tiny scar. Alsian looked extremely pleased and proud.

He stood tall and nodded, "Alright now do it twenty three more times!" Alsian grinned and Samuel sighed - but did as instructed.

It took some time to finish all of them and when he was done Alsian gave him two thumbs up. "A hundred out of a hundred points! You truly are a natural at this!"

"But just in case I want you to do it two dozen more times, just to be sure that you have actually grasped it! After that we will move on to the 'Acceleration' spell!" Alsian snapped his finger with another smile.

After doing the extra measures of safety and really getting a feeling to the flow of time when you revert it and attaining the feeling of going backwards in time using magic, even if it was just a simpler small thing.

Samuel couldn't help but ponder on how strong the feeling would be if one tried to revert bigger things, he also figured that the longer ago something had happened it would be harder to fix.

He confirmed his theory when he cut his finger slightly and waited longer, instantly he had to focus harder to revert the damage.

If he wasn't able to heal his wounds or revert them like in this case he would just look like a fool to anyone who saw him making tiny cuts in his own body.

But the cuts were so minor that there was no real danger, "I suppose healing masters do not inflict self harm to themselves to get better at healing?"

Alsian rolled his eyes, "No they don't, but that is because their magic actually heals something. We revert time! Like I said, the best way to revert time is to do it on your own body when learning!"

"When you mess with another person or creatures timeline things instantly become a bit harder!"

Samuel looked up in confusion, "But isn't it really stupid to cut myself to rewind the damage? Why couldn't I just rewind something simpler? Like the beard I cut off this morning?"

Alsian stood there for a moment seemingly considering it. "It's true that we could have started with something like that! But I think it's more important to learn how to rewind damage to begin with!"

"It teaches you the importance of patience and the need to ignore pain in case you lose something like a major limb, because when we rewind the damage on other people we can feel a part of their pain on the timeline of magic."

"You are already good with blocking out pain, unfortunately!" Alsian sighed, he couldn't help but think about the times the young man must have been in great pain, both from mortal wounds but also from the challenges of the tower.

Alsian himself had also lived through plenty of pain when he braved the towers challenge. Especially the first time is the hardest.

"Anyway... Are you finished?"

"Yep, I am ready to move on!" Samuel replied.

"Then observe and feel the flow of time!" Alsian spoke as he seemed to grab invisible threads of time from above his head and then tossed them to the ground, Samuel could of course see it.

He grabbed threads that broke loose and when he tossed them to the ground they formed small magical time circles around Alsians feet, the threads spun all the way around and quickly travelled all the way up Alsians entire body.