A Magical Revelation (Pt. 1)

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DISCLAIMER: The magic is very detailed in this book. It isn't absolutely necessary to understand it, but I suggest that you read it. I spent a long time on it, after all.

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The fire had long burned out by the time August awoke for the third time. He cried silently, lamenting both everything and nothing. He hated it all. He hated his life, his family, everything, but he still felt robbed of something. Was it something material and tangible? Was it modern convenience, the ease of living? Or was it more philosophical and emotional, like hope for a better life, or that he was missing from his home? He didn't know, and he suspected that he never would.

His ailments' torture simply built up more negative sentiments connected with this world. Damon could hear his breathing change and silently waited for the questions he knew August had, though they only came quite some time after August awoke.

Exhausted and languid, August asked, "How did you do that?"

"The fire?"

"The fire, your seeing, your hearing, everything. I can see when there is light because I have eyes, but you don't; a sword doesn't even have anything resembling normal sensing things."

"You're right, I don't have any physical sensory organs, as far as I'm aware, but I have the same capability that all souls seem to have. If you try, I'm sure you can see it, too. There's something here. It's everywhere."

"What, like magic? Qi? Spiritual force? Hehe." August laughed numbly and mirthlessly.

"I don't know. That's the closest thing to it that I can think of, but I truly don't know. Try it. You can feel it, can't you? It's in your body, in the ground next to you, everywhere."

"I can't. There's nothing here."

"Did you try?"

"No."

"Then, try. Don't lie to me. It'll only make it harder for you. I'm here for your benefit and your benefit alone, remember? I'm your tool. I'm not going to do anything to my benefit because there's nothing that can be done to my benefit. I can't even feel satisfaction in any of its forms."

"... Fine." He sat up, trying to feel it on his skin or in his body, as you normally would try and feel something, but he couldn't.

"It might be the sensory deprivation," Damon mused. "Not being able to sense anything has you grasping for anything. I would know. Try to block the rest out. Shut off parts of your mind connected to your senses."

"How?"

"We've done it before, shutting off certain methods of thought. Try something similar. Focusing on your thoughts alone might help you blur your senses. It isn't easy, but we know that it's possible."

This went on for between two and three hours before August gave up and Damon stopped pestering him to go further.

"We need another fire. I'm hungry again." He shuddered, dreading eating the filthy fish again. "Are you sure that there's no better food nearby? No pack of supplies or something?"

"There's nothing major that I can see elsewhere. I'll keep looking, but I don't think that there's anything here, and anything that may have been left here is likely spoiled by now."

"I'll go look myself," August asserted.

Damon immediately refuted him, reasoning, "No, I can look better than you can from here. You're literally effectively blind. You should be here, trying to get in contact with your soul. Besides, you're still sick. Do you really want to fumble around in the dark again?"

"I suppose you're right," August relented.

"Our best move is to sit and recover here until you're well enough to move on. We have a decent bit of food from that dead fish. It ought to last us at least a few weeks, depending on your appetite and if it'll spoil."

"Fine. Where's another corpse to incinerate?"

After starting another cooking fire, this time with something similar to an oxen beast-man, August cooked more fish on the same metallic surface.

"So, magic, or whatever this is, can help me light things on fire, see, hear, and speak when I can't normally do any of them? How?"

"You should be able to understand it more when you can see it. Almost everything is guesswork, but I'll tell you what I do know. First off, they appear to be in another dimension, existing as a near-perfect mirror of the rest of the world."

"What do you mean by 'in another dimension'?"

"They can be overlayed on top of anything physical. Where matter exists, it can also exist. This means that it's either an energy form that can pass through them, like photons can pass through transparent objects, it follows a different set of scientific laws, or it lies in the fourth dimension as a unique structure that is neither energy nor matter. My theory is that it is the antithesis to all energy."

"I don't think that they follow a completely different set of laws simply because I don't want to. Everything here does, so what are the chances of something like this being an exception?"

"The reason I don't believe that it's just an energy form that follows a new set of rules, like photons, is because of their special interactions with energy. You see, when there is energy here, it follows along in the fourth dimension."

"When there is energy of any form here, magic follows it; it overlays it, exactly as it is present here, in exactly equivalent energy values. So, another part of my theory is that magic is what dominates the fourth dimension."

"Magic is the antithesis of energy. Ironically, however, the magic doesn't practically matter to us. It is what we can do with it that matters. You see, magic doesn't just follow energy; the energy follows the magic. They do not exist separately."

"There is no lag in time, either. It's as if they are connected by something physical, like an iron bond. You can imagine what happens when we manipulate what's in the fourth dimension. And, this doesn't just apply to what you would normally think of energy to be, like light and heat."

"It also applies to the chemical, kinetic, and nuclear levels. As such, all matter has a form of presence in the fourth dimension. It is not directly represented, but the energy holding it together is. And, because I can 'see' the fourth dimension, I can see here, too. It's not nearly the same and takes an obscene amount of time to figure out exactly which patterns of energy correlate to which physical objects, but it is possible."

"Of course, not everything in the fourth dimension is the same. Different forms of energy correlate to different types of magic. Heat, light, chemical energy, kinetic energy, all of it is different, with each one correlating to a different kind of magic."

"Now, I said that it follows all energy, right? Well, when it comes to your soul, there is an exception. Because your soul is composed of a form of energy, then doesn't that mean that magic follows it inside the fourth dimension? No."

"You see, your soul does not exist within our three dimensions. Instead, it exists inside the fourth dimension, directly on top of the magic that is its antithesis."

"My theory is that souls are created at birth. However, because souls are created, they take a portion of the magic that should belong to the rest of the world's energy. Energy that should have associated magic no longer does, creating a vacuum of magic and energy."

"When magic is taken from the world and made into neutral magic, the energy that it was taken from no longer exists here, instead converting itself into magic and doubling the quantity of energy in the fourth dimension. I can convert it back into energy through the use of certain spells, but I haven't found an example of it happening naturally yet."

"I believe that it converts back at death, but I don't have any evidence for that yet. I hypothesize that, when a person dies, their soul returns the majority of the magic it was composed of while only retaining enough of it to remain intact."

"This is because of two reasons. The first reason is that we exist. We died before, but we didn't entirely disappear. Our body was rendered nonfunctional, however, so that means that our souls must have survived. However, if all souls are immortal, then the sum total of energy that a world possesses will decline with time because of the increase in the number of souls created. Considering how much energy a soul possesses, while it is extremely small, it would eventually be enough to drain a world of its energy."

"But, we never saw anything like that in our world, even with our impressive scientific achievement. So, that means that the drain must be so small as to be barely noticeable. But, that can't be the case if billions, potentially trillions, or even quadrillions of souls have been created. The numbers differ depending on if animals and bugs have souls, but even if we only include humans, we should have noticed, right?"

"The only possibility that I'm aware of is if the souls return most of the energy they possess to that world, only retaining enough to remain what they were before, which is likely hundreds, thousands of times smaller than what it possessed while it was alive."