Chapter 3, Yer a wizard, Jacob

As it turned out, Jacob's perception of learning magic wasn't entirely correct. He had thought that he could quickly learn a simple spell, use some magic item or maybe meditate. In truth Alerd had basically told him to invent what raw essence is.

"Raw essence exists, but ye can't see it, ye can't feel it, taste it, hear it or smell it. It isn't physically real, so ye have to make it real in yer mind. Ye will know ye did it right, if ye squeeze enough raw essence together and it gains whatever aspect ye concentrate on with yer mind," Alerd had said.

It was an odd thought for Jacob. It was hard to conceptualize something that can't be detected via any means. So he asked how Alerd did it.

"Ye know how ye feel where year arm is, even when yer eyes are closed? It's almost like that. A old friend of mine once lost his arm, and he told me how it still sometimes felt like his arm was still there. He knew where the arm was supposed to be in, he even could feel pain from the lost arm. It wasn't real, and yet it was real in his mind. Ye just got to imagine raw essence being like an arm ye lost. A third arm all around ye that ye can squeeze tighter and move around."

Hearing Alerd's advice had helped Jacob understand what he was supposed to achieve, but actually learning to control a limb that didn't exist was another matter entirely. Jacob had once learned to wiggle his ears by repeatedly smiling and frowning Infront of a mirror, untill he could move his ears without smiling. Now he was supposed to learn something similar, but without any kind of aid to help him learn.

After what felt like hours, he didn't even know if he had made progress or not. There was nothing he could do to know if he had made progress before he actually succeeded. It was just about the most frustrating thing he had ever tried. And if he wanted to go home, he just had to keep at it.

"Ye shouldn't spend yer entire day learning this, it's not healthy" Jacob heard Alerd say from behind him.

"I don't exactly know what else I could do. I'm gonna be stuck here for the foreseeable future, and this magic is the only way I can think of, that might get me back! ...Sorry." Jacob said, letting a bit too much of his frustration out.

"Magic ain't real, that's just a fairy tail. And I get that ye fell from the sky, and might be far from home, but why can't ye get on a carriage, and ride it home?"

"...Where I'm from, there's only one sun in the sky. It's not exactly a ridable distance."

"One sun? Ye sure bout that, what kind of land has only one sun in the sky, it's even weirder than ye are."

"And that's the problem. There's no such place in this world, and I have to figure out a way home. And right now, I have no idea how stuff works here. I don't know what is dangerous and what's not, I don't have any money to live on and i don't even know if you use money, and I have no place to stay. So I have to figure out a way home as fast as possible"

Alerd could see that Jacob was sincere, and tried to imagine what he would feel in a similar situation to Jacob's.

"Ye know, if ye want to, ye can stay here for as long as ye want. We've got enough food and room, and ye can help me with the animals. Ye would have something to do, and when we have free time, I could help ye learn essence manipulation."

"You'd actually do that?... You've already helped me more than you had to."

"Of course, it'd be dishonorable not to help someone in clear need. Now come along, I need to feed the abloids."

The next few days Jacob spent his time helping Alerd with the animals for a few hours a day, and learning everything he could learn about this new world of his. It turned out that there were small and large differences everywhere.

Most of the farm animals, like the abloids and the mosh, were similar to mammals, except that they laid soft leathery eggs and had feathers for fur. Abloids were similar to goats with one horn instead of two, and mosh were like a mixture of a cat and a hawk. Apparently they both kept the fields clean of pests and fertilized them.

The days were measured with the blue sun. It spun across the sky about once every 25 hours, while the red one took half that. It made the sky look like a sunset around it, so much so that the first night, Jacob thought it was morning at midnight, when the red sun rose over the horizon.

So far all of the food given to him was edible, and Jacob hadn't had any truly bad issues in the outhouse. Practically everything was a completely new taste, some delicious while others tasted like rotten eggs.

Jacob had even once gone to school with Heiran. Even though she was effectively six years younger than Jacob, he had hoped there might be more variety to what he'd learn. While the history lessons were interesting, Jacob was vastly ahead of the class in most subjects, like math, and pathetically behind in classes that had something to do with essence manipulation. After two days, Jacob decided to stay at the farm learning essence manipulation with Alerd, instead of going to school.

It took a week for Jacob to finally turn raw essence into light. He was doing his usual exercise, imagining feeling the raw essence moving around, gathering it all into one point, when it started to feel harder. It was as if something was resisting him. Jacob pulled the raw essence together with more force, focusing all of his will into gathering all of it into one bright spot. He was sure he was starting to get it right, when the resistance fell.

Jacob knew he succeeded, he could clearly see the light essence on the palm of his hand for a second, until it faded back to raw essence. But while it was clearly bright, it didn't burn his eyes, nor did it light up his room or cast shadows. The moment it was gone, it was as if the light had only ever existed in his mind, as a thought or a dream. Jacob finally conceptualized what Alerd had meant with essence being less or more real.

"Alerd, I did it!" Jacob shouted filled to the brim with joy. It might not have been much, but Jacob had just done magic, no matter what Alerd would say about magic not being real. A week of effort had finally shown merit.

"That's great, now ye just need more practice. Maybe try making fire, it's a good exercise." Alerd shouted back from outside.

Jacob decided to give it a try. Once again he imagined pulling raw essence together, but now that he knew he could do it, and remembered what it felt like, he did it faster. Within only a few minutes, Jacob could feel the resistance. This time however, he thought about the raw essence gathering together to form a small orange flame.

Jacob let out a surprised yelp of pain as he realized he had just created fire on, and slightly in his palm. Apparently his essence manipulation wasn't very accurate yet, and as a result Jacob had formed the flame slightly inside his right hand, rather than directly above it. It was painful, but the moment the fire aspect faded from the essence, the pain was gone. Jacobs hand wasn't burnt one bit.

After a few more tries of making different kind of essences, Jacob headed outside to ask a few questions from Alerd. He had seen multiple times as Alerd lit a fire using fire essence, so he probably had fire essence with more aspects than Jacob's had. What he was curious about was how many more. How could Alerd gather enough raw essence, and give it multiple aspects to light something on fire, in the blink of an eye.

Alerd was chopping firewood as Jacob asked his question.

"Well, before living here, on this farm, I served in the military. In battle, even a split second can be the difference between life and death, so they taught us a way to store specific essence for quick use. What I have is something called an essence core. Every day, I spend a few hours gathering raw essence, give it a few certain aspects, and squeeze it tight to form a small ball made of a lot of essence ready to use. I used fire as an attack, so I added aspects like heat and light to it, but haven't made it physical so that it doesn't burn me, and can stay be in my body. When I pull it out of my body, it already is squeezed enough to have 20 aspects, even though bit has only 10. I then make it physical with a thought, and let it unsqueeze to be bigger."

"That... That's actually kinda genius. I'm guessing this is how sages can have so much essence at use."

"Eh, some sages, but definitely not all of them. There are any amount of different ways to use more essence. Batteries, enchanted devices, or just having so much control that ye can gather all the raw essence from a mile across are a few. But ye still have a lot of practice before ye can do any of that. Yer a quick learner, took me four times as long to add my first aspect, so it might not take a decade, but it will take a while."

Jacob was flabbergasted at the news. Sure, it could take a long time for him to be at the level of Alerd, but that wasn't the only path open to him. What were the possibilities of this world, and could the few laws of physics there were, be exploited? Jacob needed a better plan than just learning magic, if he wanted to get home any time soon. He was already starting to miss his friends back home

Jacob's brain came to a halt. How could he be so stupid? The last thing that Jacob could remember before he had fallen to a forest, and waking up in his new room, was spending his 16th birthday with his friends. They had spent the day together on the beach. He couldn't remember exactly what had happened, just that there was a bright flash. Jacob had been in this weird new world for a week already, and only now did he realize that his two best friends might be stuck there with him. Jacob could ignore getting back home for now, he had to find his friends.

"Alerd... I might have just realized something really important."