Magic lessons

I sat down with my mum by the stream and started recalling what I've learned about magic. Magic is interchangable with matter in this world, there wouldn't be one without the other. Unless you have at least a blue core, the magic you produce will not really be 'real'. It'll still have an effect, but it won't work well enough. Like the water will be too thin, fire too cold, earth too light, air more ethereal than real. I can drink the water I produce with magic, but you can't unless you have higher than a blue core. However, not all matter is interchangable obviously.

People can change mana to water because water is well known, but you cant change mana into metal unless A, you have a high enough density and pruity of magic, and B, you have enough understanding of the particular metal. Now the next thing is 'understanding'. It's a vague concept, completely different from what you would think like atomic theory, chemistry, physics etc. Magic exists here, and so the laws of existence are different.

To gain understanding in something, you basically have to meditate with it, thinking about it when meditating etc, and soon, this 'understanding' will happen. It's an odd sensation. The best way to describe it would be that I can feel it more clearly. Like before, the piece of earth used to just be earth around me, but I've become a lot more familiar with earth. I'll know if there's a mountain ahead of me before I can see it if I feel a mass of earth, or I'll know when a stream or body of water is nearby because of my comprehension of water.

The next thing turned out to be a problem for a little while until I found a great solution. The thing with the old man where he was able to pinpoint my location from my consciousness sweeps, yeh, I had to fix that. Which I did! Hah! It was rather simple actually. Once I learned some basic runes, I was able to create a ball of mana, and delay the sweep of my mana/consciousness until it'sfarawayfrom me. I just throw it in the air in a random direction and then let it sweep. I still get the information after it's over, but now it's no longer anywhere near me.

Silvia: Focus Asia, you do this all the time I swear.

Me: Sorry mum, just updating the readers.

Silvia: Again with that? Anyway, have you been practicing your runes lately?

Me: Uh-huh, of course I did! They're so awesome. I even made a bunch of scripts to reinforce my clothes, enlargen my pockets and keep clean all the time!

Mum: Really? That's quite something. Then again, I wouldn't expect anything less. So what have you learned so far about magic runes from the book I gave you.

Me: Right, you said that I had to learn for myself. Well, what I've learned... it's very simple really. Magical runes are just the language formed by magic. All magic runes are formed by nature/the world/magic istelf, so learning the meaning of each rune is essential. The levels of runes are the same as comprehension, 1-9, with level 1 being the most simple. Runes are both very simple and complex at the same time. The dashes, lines and dots are very simple and easy to draw for anyone (like viiking runes), but the specific meaning and level of comprehension embedded within can very greatly depending on who wrote them.

Ummm.... you can string them together to form sentences that have different effects, umm...... oh yeh, the higher level runes have much better effects, with being able to hold much more mana and of better quality, but you can replicate the effects with lower level runes, you will just need a lot of them and considerably more time and effort, and even then it may not be the same.

Mum: Well it seems that you've learned most things on your own then. Honestly, most people think that runes are independant of eachother until they're told its a complete language. Okay, you're pretty much correct, but there's a few things left out. All levels of runes can be connected to eachother, but if a higher level rune is connected to a lower level rune, then magic is lost and the overall power of the array will weaken significantly. Well now that I've mentioned it, tell me what you've learned about arrays.

Me: Again, arrays are pretty simple. first you start with a circle, as circles encompass everything. The first circle is the core, the part that actually has an effect. The more complicated the core, the harder the array is to make, so simply arrays are easier to learn. Then there's the outer circle, or circles. What these do is to power and/or augment the effect to make it stronger or slightly alter it. It's not very difficult unless you do something ludicrously complicated, and even then it's better to just make a massive array with smaller inter-linked arrays. The fine tuning of it would be hard, but getting all the arrays to work with eachother would be a lot easier than 1 giant complicated array.

Mum: I have to say, you're nailing it on the head every time, it makes me happy.

She beamed a smile at me that I returned, and we continued on with our magic lesson.

Mum: So Asia, what's happening with your magic core? I remember you telling me something ridiculous, but I want to know if there's been any changes okay?

Me: Right! Well, I told you before that I had a purple magic core, but then it exploded into multicoloured gas! Well, lately, it's started to return to being a magic core, at least a little. I just keep on feeding it mana and gradually the gas has become a ball again, but it's not solid, it has a fuzzy outline. So I think it first needs to become liquid first then solid again and i'll have a proper magic core.

Mum: That's excellent news sweetie! Okay, now tell me about that pocket space you made, I'm curious about it.

Me: Ah, I've basically given up on it at this point, although I might try at a later time to fix it. I found out shortly after birth that I can't store anything besides mana into it. It seems to hold seemingly infinite mana which means I will never run out.... but I was never going to run out anyway, so it's a little pointless. My space comprehension has remained at 1, the same with time too.

Mum looked at me, her stifled laughter only adding to her beauty.

Me: What's so funny?

She finally held back her laughter to talk properly, whilst wiping the tears away: Not to worry dear, that's the same with everyone. People only start comprehending space between level 5 and 7, depending on the person, and no one has ever gotten comprehension of space past level 6, as far as we know anyway. And time... there's no shortcut to comprehend time dear, the longer you've lived, the greater your comprehension of it. I've heard that the Elven Empress has comprehended up to the 4th level of time, the highest in history. Of course, she's been Empress since long before the creation of the human empire, so it's no wonder.

Me: Hmph, I'm going to comprehend space as soon as possible! I want to be able to do real teleportation.

Mum: You know dear, the kind of short distance flash teleportation that you can do is already considered very acomplished.

Me: Yes I know, I know, you've told me this before. But all it is is the application of my current comprehension, WHICH IS THE SAME FOR EVERYONE. I get that other people can't do it, but it still annoys me!

Mum: Hahahahahahaha, well then, it would seem you have work to do then if you want that to happen.

Me: Yeah I know, I should get to meditating some then.

These days, meditation has proven to be quite useless for me. Generally, magicians will meditate in 2 ways. The first being when they focus on something to comprehend it, and this is the meditation I've been doing for my affinities. However the second type focuses on mana manipulation and acculumulation. Controlling mana is very easy for me, practically instinctual at this point, and I have such fine control that it's basically impossible to improve further, so we came up with an ingenious solution together.

It's very simple, all we did was dug a very deephole. The earth become harder and denser the further you go down as well as the mana. The ground supports the world, so it stands to reason that there must be an incredible foundation for the world underground. The deeper you go, the purer and more dense the mana becomes. Dig deep enough, and a regular person would explode from the sheer influx of mana. There's different distributions of mana throughout the world in different regions, but underground always gets denser and denser and purer and purer to a ridiculous level.

Well, that makes it very convienient for me, as meditation underground is much more difficult. So increasing my control of abnormal purity and density mana, as well as absorbing it into my body allows my progress speed to remain constant, I simply dig deeper with magic when it's too easy.

Jumping down the self-made hole next to a tree beside the stream, I allow myself to freefall, feeling the earth around me, attuning my senses to the world around me. This is another way of becoming aware of the surroundings that all mages utilize, but my spell is easier and much more accurate, almost like a map in my head.

Falling for a good 30 seconds, I gesture to the wind to slow my descent. The wind picks up, swirling underneath me to create a cushion of air, slowing me down before my bare feet touch the cool earth. There's very little light down here, but that doesn't bother me, I rely on the mana around me to see. The thick, rolling mana down here is a sight to behold. You can't really see it, but you can feel it. It's thick like mud and heavy, very heavy. The purity is startling and it contains a very rich life force, almost like it can create life all by itself. It shouldn't be surprising, this is the ground after all, it supports all life, but it's shocking nonetheless.

I sit down with legs crossed, and allow myself to merge with the mana around me. Directing the thick rivers of mana through the earth, compressing it, expanding it, thinning it, simply feeling it in all its majesty. This is the force of nature in this world, not something absract or esoteric, simply mana. I allow it to seep into my body, my flesh, muscles, bones, organs, blood, brain, everything. It's invigorating, like the feeling of the morning sun in spring, the mana seems to contain everything, the elements, their derivatives, light, darkness, space, time, everything seemed to be born from this energy, including the world. It'san ethereal feeling, but deep inmy meditative state, it's so vivid and absolutely extraordinary.

The mana, pure mana, there's nothing like this feeling, and I will never get tired of it. Images flash past my eyelids, slow enough to catch a glimpse, but fast enough to not be completely understood. I sink deeper into meditation, deeper and deeper, the wind, the earth, the ocean, the sun, the moon, the stars, the sky and even the boundary of this world, I can feel it all, and taking their power as my own. Deeper and deeper into this state, my thoughts wander. How did this world come to be? Where did this much pure energy come from? A light flashed in my mind, as if answering me, and continued to hover there. I can't see it, or even feel it, but I can 'see' it through my consciousness. The most beautiful light in this world. I let myself follow it, it seems to want to take me somewhere.