Sympathy.

"Roughly an epoch ago- One thousand years after the end of the supernatural era. The nomadic folks that inhabited the foothills around the Maharaja Mountains where brought together under a ruler."

"What was his name?" Garren cut in, a frown tugging at the corner of his lips.

"Maero. He was..."

"Get to the point Dean," Garren sharply cut in, cutting Dean off.

Dean tried his best to not roll his eyes. After all he was only recounting the details just as Garren had explained it to him, but at the same time, Old Man Garren did ask for the historical contents alone.

With a smile spreading across his face, his low yet melodic voice sliced through the air.

"They controlled the only plentiful and easily accessible source of metal for a great distance and soon became the most skilled blacksmiths. They exploited this advantage and gained a great deal of power.

"Until this point, barter was the most common method of trade. Although some larger cities coined their own currency, but outside these cities, the money was only worth the weight of the metal. Bars of metals were better for bartering, but full bars of metals were inconvenient to carry."

Very inconvenient to carry. Dean smirked, a charismatic charm creeping onto his face as he made the "difficulty" gesture, eliciting a light laugh from Garren.

Dean smiled and with a light nod, he proceeded.

"The no-longer nomads, the Maharaja's were the first to establish a standardized currency after the end of the supernatural era. By cutting one of these smaller bars into pieces, we get a set of drabs."

"Good enough," Garren cut in, a smile creeping onto his face. "So. These two drabs," he brought the drabs closer to his face as though inspecting them. "Could have come from the same bar, right?"

"Actually, they probably cast them individually..." He trailed off under the subtle glare, forcing down a lump of saliva. "Sure," he mutters with a forced smile.

Garren nods his head in satisfaction, eyes beaming with playfulness. "So there's something connecting them, right?"

Although he didn't quite agree with Old Man Garren, but seeing the glare on Garren's face, he was more tempted to flow with Garren. Lest he taste the whip of the wind to his ass.

"Right." Dean nods his head consecutively, his eyes flashing with certainty that bordered beyond unreasonable.

Garren simply shook his head, laughing lightly. He retraced his gaze away from Dean, raising one of the drabs into the air.

"So when you move one, the other should move right?"

"Yeah absolutely." Dean said as a matter of fact, eliciting a light laugh from Garren.

Dean also bursts into a light laughter, a surge of warmth coursing through his body.

"Yeah. But you've got to remind them first, convince them even."

Garren looked from Dean to the coin. "The law of sympathy is one of the most basic parts of Arcana. It states that the more similar two objects are, the greater the sympathetic link. The greater the link, the more easily they influence each other."

He pulled out a piece of paper and jotted a couple of words written in Arcana language on it. "The trick is in holding the Arcana firm in your mind. You need to believe they are connected. You need to know they are." He handed me the paper. "It's called the Sympathetic Binding of Parallel Motion. Practice." Old Man Garren seemed to have aged older for a second there, but that odd feeling came just like it appeared.

Weird. Dean's brows narrowed, he thought a little about it but he felt it wasn't anything too serious. After all, Garren seems to have lived for a long time. As for how long... he had no idea and Garren doesn't seem to have any inclination to tell him.

Waving it off his mind, he fixed his mind the Arcana, the belief that the two drabs were connected. He said the words in the Arcana language, pulled the coins apart, spoke the last word, and waited.

Surprisingly, unlike when Garren calls on the wind. There was no rush of power. No flash of white or black. No radiant beam of light struck him. I-t was just... plain.

{1st POV}

I was rather disappointed. Nevertheless, I lifted the coin in my hand, and the coin on the table lifted itself in a similar fashion. It was magic, there was no doubt about that. But it felt rather underwhelmed. I didn't really know what I'd been expecting. But it definitely wasn't this.

Old Man Garren also summed up sympathy very quickly for me.

According to Garren. First thing i had to keep in mind was the fact that, just like the law of energy conservation in science. The same rule also applies to the use of the Arcana. The blur between the limits of science and Arcana had awed me, fascinated me even. Garren had said, exactly what i knew on the law of energy conservation.

Energy couldn't be destroyed nor created. And when one is lifting a drab, and the other rests on a platform or a table- though I don't know what this is. But based on the descriptions Old Man Garren gave. It seems to have four legs and is very flat, oh Garren also said they are used as a standing point for various researches and sort.

He had said the one in one's hand feels heavy. As heavy as if you're lifting both, because, in fact you're. But that's just in theory. In practice, it feels like you're not just lifting two drabs, but three! That brings us to a generally accepted hypothesis. No sympathetic link is perfect. And the more dissimilar the items are, the more energy is lost.

Let's say, you would find it easier to generate a sympathetic link with a necklace you have worn your whole life. Simply because it has years of your emotions, and shares an invisible link with you. But the same can't be said for a doll owned by someone unrelated to you. No doubt, the difficulty of generating a sympathetic link with such an object would shoot forth to ridiculous heights.

And then, the rest of the day was fun just as always. Within the safe zone, inside the depths of a cracked mountainous range. The rest of the days were spent experimenting. Not withstanding, time quickly flew by.

My time with Old Man Garren could be said to be the most blissful moments of my life. We hunted some supernatural creatures whom Garren deemed as being edible every once in a while- of course Garren did most of the work while I simply watched in awe from an angle.

Then, sometimes he made me go against feeble nightmarish supernatural creatures and watched me push myself beyond my limits. Laughs even while I tumble, get whopped and all that.

Still, I enjoyed every single moment spent with him. I doubted my days could get any better, as I delved into history, chemistry, biology and the study of the various supernatural creatures that lurk within the depths of this cursed land.

Time quickly flew by and before I knew it. I had spent a full month with Garren.

No death, no unending agony. No endless torture. Everything felt so peaceful, I can't really describe that strange feeling in words, just that I wanted it to last forever.