Chapter 18: Understanding!

"Ah, well the light from the sun travels through space and….oh, okay, got it. But wait, how can they influence magic? Do they have some form of magic? Like is there some form of magic in Jupiter that is different then our brand of magic?"

"All good questions Percy, but unfortunately we will never know. We can't exactly travel there can we?"

"What about the moon? We can travel to the moon, plus it's the closest celestial body to us, doesn't that mean it also has the strongest effect on us?"

Hecate smiled, "that my young padawan, is why we undertake the study of Astronomy. To research and understand these question. Come, I want you to look at this."

Percy stepped up to the telescope and smiled at his teacher, "you called me your padawan, does that mean I can have a light saber?"

"No."

"That's okay, I'll settle for a wand instead."

"Hm...I'll see what I can do about that lightsaber."

Percy chuckled as turned to look through the telescope. He stared into the eyepiece and saw a small red dot in the end of the black tunnel. "Is that Mars?" Percy asked.

"Yes, and this is how it looks when you activate the zooming charm," Hecate snapped her fingers and suddenly the image grew big enough to fill Percy's vision.

"Wow!" Percy exclaimed, the image was similar to some of the high quality images Percy saw from the year 2009! "This is amazing!"

"Indeed," Hecate smiled as she looked up to the sky, "every other night we will take astronomy class for you in here. Don't worry it won't be that tasking, just a few hours of observation and theory. Think you can manage that?"

"Sure, I'll try," Percy said, distracted by the crystal clear image of mars. That night Hecate started teaching him the basics of Astronomy, luckley Percy's mortal education was more than enough to cover over two semesters of material.

The next morning he sat with Hecate with a fresh mind and a rejuvenated spirit ready to tackle the mysteries of magic.

"Alright Jackson, let's begin," Hecate quickly piled up books upon books on the subject of runes and arithmancy.

"Alright, as I explained, runes are magic spells and words given a written form. And arithmancy is the study of magic and spells using numbers to quantify everything from the amount of magic used to the spell movements needed. Now, do you know why I am asking you to study these subjects?"

Percy shrugged, "I don't know. You hate me and this is the only way you can make me suffer?"

Hecate rolled her eyes, "if I had a galleon for every time I heared that...no Jackson, think."

Percy sighed as he closed his eyes and let his mind start to wander. He felt the blood band activate as he slowly began to think about several theories on why Hecate chose the particular subjects. Finally he smiled.

"This is a way to introduce me to magical spells," Percy said, "runes deal with the words used in a spell while arithmancy deals with the amount of magic and wand motions used."

Hecate smiled, "close, but still correct. Tell me Percy, before I began letting you brew potions, what did I do?"

"You made me study the ingredients, what they did and how to properly use them."

"Correct, I wanted you to understand every aspect of the potion making process before you actually started making potions. This is very much the same, except it deals with you learning about the aspects of a spell rather than a potion."

"So wait...what you're saying is if I learn this stuff you will finally let me have my own wand?!" Percy jumped up and down with a bright grin on his face.

Hecate sighed as she palmed her face, "yes Percy, if you do this you can have a wand. Gods it's like taking care of a child of a sugar rush."

Percy grinned as he quickly wore his student's cloak and quick read glasses, "alright, so what's first?"

Hecate smiled at his enthusiasm, she took out a book labeled 'Basic rune charts', "memories these and their meanings."

Percy took the book and found that it contained nothing but lists upon lists of runes and their their descriptions. Percy groaned, "Gods help me."

"Oh we aren't done yet Percy, not by a long shot," the goddess chuckled evilly as she handed him another book labeled, 'arithmancy numbers and their correlation,' "I also want you to learn these designated formulas."

Percy opened the book and was once flooded with tons upon tons of raw data. Each wand movement had a corrected formula, the twist motion was prescribed with the formula (M x 4) +number of inches in wand length, and if the number was below 50 then it's toal would be counted as one point.

Percy blinked, "Hecate, I don't even understand what I don't understand. Why am I learning this, how am I going to learn this?"

"Let's see...okay, remember how when you were young you were forced to learn your number's table?"

Percy nodded, "yeah."

"Well this is the same. It's a basic arithmetic number sequence that you have to learn in order to do anything useful. You learn this, you can essentially create your own spells."

"What?" Percy asked in wonder as he looked at the books in his lap.

"Magic isn't all colourful lights and explosions Percy, it's really hard work. And if you are willing to put in the efforts, I promise you the effects will blow your mind."

"Literally?"

"Well not literally, but I mean if you wanted too I suppose you could create a spell to blow people's heads off."

"That's stupid, why would I want to blow my own head off?"

"I don't know? Maybe it could be useful for suicidal witches and wizards?"

"Why would I even invent such a spell?"

"I...look we are get off topic here," Hecate sighed, "get to studying sea boy. The faster you learn these the faster you get a wand."

Percy nodded and returned back to his books. He worked hard, usually he hated doing school work, but this wasn't just any old school work, this was magic! Real magic! He was doing magical homework! He really didn't have any right to complain.

And so, just like that, another month passed by.