Mage of Shadows (32 page)

"I hate you."

"Good. Emotion and magic are linked closely. Descend into your emotion and there you will find your power. But remember, never let it control you. What are the three magic branches of magic?"

"Telekinesis, telepathy, and elemental manipulation." I responded immediately.

"Describe each specifically." Les prodded.

"Telekinetic abilities are the first to manifest in puberty, usually." I recited, "Learning how to push or grasp objects using only your minds. Telepathic abilities center on manipulation of the mind by reaching out with magic. Users can Push images, thoughts, and even illusions to Normals or other Users. It is more difficult to Push on a mage, especially if they sense that you are trying to do so. Then there are elemental abilities which are the hardest to master. They almost always center around earth, air, water, and fire. Usually it takes decades for any mage to master using the elements to any really useful combat effect in comparison to the first two branches. The exception is Aethers, who have an amazing grasp on one element, but are also always superbly weak at using any of the other elements."

"Good." I heard him say, sounding satisfied. He moved in closely and began to fix a pair of sound-blocking earmuffs on my ears, "Now shut up and focus on only getting closer to your magic." The muffs snapped down and shut out all noise, leaving me completely disconnected from everything but the cold and my magic.

I attempted to do as Les said and shut out even the cold and focus only on the intangible field of power, descend into its power fully, give myself up to it. But it was difficult, because I was here, and it was there, as it always had been. I had never considered magic to exist in the same space as me, not really. And I kept shivering, and that kept me from truly disconnecting. Not only that, even if I forgot everything else, my mind was still there- worrying and wondering. How can you disengage from your mind?

This was gonna take a while.

111

Les floated a dozen snowballs around me while I sniffled and sneezed, peeking at them through one half-closed eye.

"Close it." He demanded sternly, pelting me in the back my neck with one of the powdery globes, causing me to yelp and jump in sudden surprise.

My teacher laughed in amusement at my agony, "Larry was right, this is definitely more fun when you're on the other side. Remember if you don't get this quicker I'm gonna be forced to switch to rocks. Now, what are we doing here?"

"You already know wha-"

Another powdered projectile collided with me, this time hitting me in the temple and cutting off my impatient rant. Bits of ice and frozen water dribbled silently down the side of my forehead while I could only stand, feebly sniffling and feeling very much like a petulant child who was being punished when he hadn't done a thing wrong. Not only that, I was sick again, not that it mattered to Les. He actually seemed delighted by it, apparently being in a diseased state and training would only help my body and mind break barriers faster. At the moment I just thought he liked watching me suffer.

"Why?" Les pressed again.

"One of the basic abilities displayed with an autonomic connectivity to the magical field is precognition." I repeated Les's lesson miserably, my excitement for the idea completely gone after the hours upon hours that we had spent playing this sick game, "To help the student enhance their ability to maintain an unconscious connection at all times, the teacher can attempt several exercises of varying difficulty."

Les clapped, "Very good, Stratus. Now if only we were learning how to paraphrase and basically repeat everything I say. Then we could call it mastered and move on, but unfortunately, you're proving woefully inadequate in the real test. Now dodge!"

Like a swarm of invisible bees, the snowballs whizzed around me as I attempted to connect- to get some flashing warning of the direction before impact- but nothing came. They stung playfully against my skin, Les aiming for my bare arms and legs, or of course, my face. Over and over he pelleted me; I descended into frantic aimless dodging, and gave up completely on precognition.

It had sounded so much cooler when Les had first described it. The ability to see what was coming in the next few seconds by viewing it in your mind, translated by the brain directly from the resonating magical field that really existed not only in the present, but the past and future as well? Who wouldn't want that ability?

Unfortunately, wanting and obtaining were two distinct things.

A sudden impact crashed against my shoulder blade so painfully, I couldn't stifle a responsive gasp of surprise at it. That had been no snowball, my throbbing shoulder could attest to that.

"Pay attention and learn, Stratus!" Les shouted at me, "Nothing in life is free, everything must be taken. If you aren't good enough, you will die. Learn or die, that's the real motto of the world!"

Even after the impact of the first, I couldn't believe when the second rock struck me in the sternum, or the third, or fourth. My struggles to aimlessly dodge ceased, my eyes opened, and I curled up in a ball and attempted to hide from the constant bombardment. Pitifully, I attempted to reach through the pain to grasp at the magical field myself, to block Les's telekinetic ability. I failed miserably; his control was simply far better than mine and disallowed any attempt.

Finally after countlessly long seconds, the assault stopped.

"Get up, Stratus."

I didn't move, and I wondered if it would be best to just never move again. Just lay down here and die. It was too hard, far too hard for me, I couldn't do it. Aether or not, I just wasn't cut out for this.

But…

I crawled slowly to my feet and met Les's eyes.

"Why did you stand up again?" My teacher asked me quietly.

"Because I don't have a choice, anymore." I said heavily, wincing at the slowly bruising splotches of pain that riddled my body, "I made my choice, I chose to be a mage instead of having a Normal life. That means that as long as I'm not dead, I have to continue. Otherwise, I'll just be another asshole who breaks their word when it gets tough to keep it. I don't want to be that kind of person, not anymore, not while I can choose not to be."

I don't know if my words meant anything to Les, I couldn't read anything from the blank expression on his face, but he nodded slowly after another moment. The rocks rose again, encircling me slowly as if in orbit around my body.

"Okay." Les said, "Then let's begin again, close your eyes. Reach out, and wait for your power to reach back. Listen, not with your ears, but with your mind. Forget your five senses and hold on as tight as you can to your sixth."

I closed my eyes, attempted to open my mind, and the first rock flew again.

I wasn't ready for it, or for the next one, or the next.

On and on it continued.

I lost count of how many hit me, I forgot the hours, or even the days in which they hit me. But I also forgot the pain of it; it was there but not there at the same time. I became increasingly numb to pain of their touch… I forgot my ears, I forgot my eyes, and I forgot even the taste of my own breath. After days of pain out there in the woods, days of closed senses, all I could feel was magic.

All I remember now from those torturous weeks was the moment when I felt something reach back and grab back at me suddenly after all the time I spent trying to gain purchase of it. Finally, it was as if my power became sentient in a way, curiously wondering what was trying so hard to get its attention, and checking the connection for the first time to see what was on the other end. It was my magic coming alive. From then on, no longer was there a struggle to get magic to work for me, it became… a partnership of sorts.

I dodged the first, then the second, hit by the third, dodged the fourth, got hit by the fifth, the sixth, dodged…

The floodgates had opened, not all the way, but somewhat. It would takes time, months or even years for me to access it completely- or rather, for my power to completely access me. But I had gained a sliver of true magic, pried open the gate of divinity and stuck a defiant arm as far as I could inside to grab at what I did not yet have.

The Wise Gate.

For a moment, when I didn't sense anything coming at me anymore, I panicked. Then I realized that my tormentor had simply stopped sending rocks my way. I opened my eyes to see the Filipino mage grinning at me.

"Took you long enough." Les said.

I would like to say that I stood proud and tall, ready to face the world… but I just fainted.

111

I had once described magic to you as many tiny buzzing gnats that bumped and fizzled against my skin, constant and ever-present. This had changed somewhat- now they had penetrated to my mind and I felt the power in my bones. It was like electricity- crackling just beneath the surface, sparking within me and just waiting to be unleashed.

With the demanding presence came several new startling developments. First of all, precognition, the goal that Les had been pressing me so hard to achieve. It was a milestone in magical development that usually came after several months of constant meditation and training. Les's methods had been extreme, and I had done it in three weeks.

"You should have done it in two." Had been Les's way of commemorating my success and as a present, he paid for his own dinner that night.

"Aren't you going to pay for mine?" I asked.

He rolled his eyes, "It's not like you won the Nobel Prize, chill Stratus. Fact of life, don't ever expect anyone to praise you or shower you with gifts in the real world just because you do what you're supposed to do. Good work has to be its own reward."

"Well then why do I have to buy dinner every night for you then?" I protested, "You don't even do any work."

He sipped his coffee and eyed me mildly, "Because I'm missing vacation to train you, and I'll kick your ass if you don't at least do that. Life lesson number 2 Aether-boy, life is never fair. No one ever gets exactly what they want out of it."

I could never quite understand Leslie Domingo, and after a while, I just stopped trying. Plus, I was finding it extraordinarily hard to think properly that night; Les had to lead me home down Main Street like I was a child because the lights and sounds were dizzyingly hard for my mind to process. It was all thanks to my new precognizant ability.

Imagine being able to see half a second into the future all the time, that was essentially what precognition was. It was just noise on top of noise at first, because my brain was suddenly forced to process what was happening now along with what was happening half a second later. It meant nothing as long as the half-second didn't change much, but if someone spoke or walked by, it was two different scenarios playing at once.

It took a week for my mind to naturally separate the two, and it was a superbly disoriented week that I mostly spent at home with Les trying to talk me through it. More meditation, but this time of the very quiet, not so dangerously cold variety.

Les stayed with me the entire vacation, and never seemed to leave my side. For my protection, he explained gravely. Archanos and Lincoln apparently took their Aether's safety very seriously. As he promised, however, my parents never knew he was there. It helped that they left early every morning and returned late at night, workaholics that they were.

But once, my mother had walked in my room unexpectedly in the morning and saw me sleeping on the ground, "Nicholas? What are you doing on the floor?"

I shot straight up before she had actually begun at the first syllable of my name, precognition buzzing just a bit too late. I dizzily looked through the discombobulated imagery of what I saw that was, and what would be in seconds to look at the bed. Les wasn't there, somehow, future and presently.

"Uh… fell asleep on accident here?" I said. I wasn't sure how well that would really hold up to scrutiny since I had both a pillow and blanket.

My mother gave me a strange look but nodded slowly.

Don't let your fa-

"Don't let your father see you sleeping on the floor, okay? Get in bed." She ordered before walking out, shutting my door with a click that I had heard in my mind before it actually happened.

I saw Les reappear in my mind just before I turned to actually see him there. Stupid precognition. It would be several more days before my mind could naturally separate the two, filtering out the future until it became relevant to the present. At the moment, I was basically useless, and definitely needed Les's protection.

"Hey," I mumbled to him, "So that's what a Cloak looks like?"

Yes, go back-

"Yes, go back to sleep."

I yawned and curled back into a ball underneath the warm woolen blanket and did just that.

It would only be in the final few days of winter break that Les would attempt to broach telepathic abilities, the branch of magic that was completely locked down to a User who hadn't opened the Wise Gate and accessed a deeper understanding of their abilities. One couldn't attempt to deceive or control another when they couldn't even control themselves.

Telepathic abilities consisted of three sub-branches.

The first was Pushing, the ability to nudge another mind in a certain direction or way of thinking by imposing one's suggestive thoughts on that mind. It was delicate, any Push that was too weak wouldn't do anything, and one that was too strong would be automatically questioned. Any mage that recognized they were being Pushed could automatically block it, as well. It was difficult, however, for a mage to recognize that they were being Pushed.

Telepathic abilities were impossible to access before the Wise Gate because they required such a fine level of control, because only trickling rivulets of power could be used to any effect. Too much and any attempt to Push or Cloak would just fizzle out. Mages wouldn't sense it unless they were paying attention- even if they were masters at sensing magic. It was just too small to register on their radars when they were already so stooped in their own power.

That being said, very strong minds just couldn't be Pushed, whether they were a User or Normal. Those kinds of minds were very rare however, especially amongst Normals. It had nothing to do with IQ or anything like that, it was more about mental control. An older mind is almost always stronger than a younger mind, for instance, though that changes with truly advanced age as the mind begins to deteriorate.