The Archimage Wars: Wizard of Abal (18 page)

Hydan considered, “If I recall that
Earth mythology properly, the concept for The Force was based on
Derkaz, but like all myths, not exactly correct. That Annwn
Slytalker would never have murdered a bunch of kids five minutes
after embracing Derkaz, it’s not like that, it’s insidious but
subtle. That was pure fantasy, and frankly, the worst part of that
myth, in my opinion.”

“
So Derkaz isn’t pure
evil?” I prodded, ignoring his botched character name.

“
It isn’t evil at all,”
Myrka noted with a sniff.

Hydan shrugged, “There is very little
in the universe which is truly black and white, good and evil,
everything is generally some shade of gray. The Derkaz will affect
your personality, in time, but to what extent is up to the user,
and even that influence is affected by how much Derkaz you embrace.
But, it has an influence, a slight tilt in a direction, not an
overwhelming force which makes you suddenly wear shiny black
helmets like that Earth mythological bad guy, Derkaz Invader.
Still, I believe some of that myth was created as a message to
other mages on Earth.”

I shook my head at his miss naming of
the villain from the film, sometimes I think he did it on purpose.
Then I said, “Are you saying Lucas was a wizard?”

Hydan shrugged, “Possibly.”

Toji got us back onto the original
subject, “When we stop for the night, I will begin teaching you to
use your natural magic.”

Myrka sniffed but let it
go.

After a few mectors, Hydan suddenly
picked up the pace as he headed up a slight rise in the
road.

“
What’s up?” I
asked.

He turned to me and said, “I think I
recognize this place, there is an inn just ahead, with a brew
called craalm! It’s not as good as brandy, but better than
beer!”

But when he reached the top of the
rise, his face grew crestfallen. I got there a moment later and saw
why, what had been an Inn sometime in the recent past, was now a
ruin. Just the tall brick chimney still stood like a grave marker,
the rest was burned to ash.

Hydan was crestfallen.

“
Why the glum look? We can
get a craalm at the next Inn or town,” I said.

He shrugged, “This Inn was more than
just a place to get a drink, there was a saeran girl named Nelash,
with very pretty fins. We rubbed scales a few times, she was
nice.”

I sighed, but then we moved on. War is
never civil, not even a Civil War.

A few hours, and several mectors
later, Hydan suggested we stop for the night. I could see he was
kind of put out that we hadn’t reached another, and more
functional, Inn, and would have to sleep on the ground.

I wondered what we were going to do,
the temperature was dropping swiftly, and we didn’t have any kind
of camping gear with us. But Hydan just lay down, and as he did so
the blue grass beneath him shimmered into a kind of sleeping bag,
it even had a pillow.

Myrka went to an area in the middle of
our group and crouched down. Stones seemed to rearrange themselves
into a circle, and then wood sprouted out of the grass and caught
fire. A moment later there was a nice warm camp fire
burning.

It seemed camping with a group of
mages had its advantages, not that I had a bedroll or sleeping bag!
But at this moment, Toji came over and said, “I think now would be
a good time for you to learn a few things about using your
power.”

“
Yeah, like how to make a
sleeping bag,” I noted.

He nodded, “The most important thing
to remember is you are not making a sleeping bag.”

“
There is no spoon, hey?” I
said.

He looked puzzled, but let my odd
reference go.

“
You don’t make things,
they are. The more you understand the way it is, the more this is
the way it will be. Now, being a Third, you will have a good amount
of power, and can probably affect reality several yards away from
you, with practice. However, that will cost you more power, so you
are better off realizing things closer to you unless there is a
good reason to extend your reality.”

“
OOOKKKK” I said, drawing
it out because though the words made some kind of sense, it was
just a crazy idea.

He smiled, “Did you watch Hydan lay
down on his bedroll?”

“
Ah, yeah, it just appeared
as he lay down.”

“
No, it just became real as
he lay down. In his reality, the grass beneath him had a sleeping
bag on it. Prior to his effect on that reality, there was only
grass. He changed the grass to what he knew was beneath him as he
lay down. You’ll notice the change in reality did not take place
until he was near the ground, which conserved his
power.”

“
I understand what you are
saying, mostly, but I still have no idea how to make a sleeping
bag.”

“
Again, that’s because you
aren’t making anything, you know what is real, and therefore it is
real. The better you are at believing yourself, the more your power
can affect things near you, and bring them to your version of
reality,” he explained humbly.

“
I need to fool myself into
believing something is there, which isn’t?”

“
No, not at all; in fact,
that would be counterproductive,” Toji patiently corrected me. “You
need to know what is real, and not try to fool yourself. If you are
fooling yourself, then you aren’t making it real.”

“
Argh,” I noted.

He smiled. “OK, what is this made out
of?” he asked, picking up a small piece of wood.

“
Wood,” I said like he was
joking.

“
No, it isn’t,” he again
patiently corrected. “What you call wood is actually a very large
number of very small things, atoms you call them on Earth arranged
into a shape. Between those atoms is nothing. Most of what you see
here as a hard object is actually empty space, do you
agree?”

I looked at the wood, but I understood
atoms and molecules, so I said, “Sure, I get that.”

“
But you see it as solid
wood?” he asked.

I nodded again.

“
Which is it?” he inquired
patiently.

“
Both?” I
answered.

He nodded. “You agree this is made of
very small things, with lots of space between them, so why can’t
they be rearranged into something else?”

“
Well, they
can.”

“
And, can that be done in
more than one way?” Toji asked.

I shrugged, and said, “Sure, you could
burn it, or cut it, or carve it, or break it, for
starters.”

“
So there are many ways to
rearrange the reality of this object?” he asked.

I nodded slowly.

“
And why do these atoms
hold this shape, if you don’t try to change them?”

“
Well, there are
bonds.”

“
Right, so if another
energy acted upon these atoms, changing those bonds, they could
rearrange into new things, new shapes?”

“
Absolutely,” I
agreed.

“
When a mage knows
something is true they supply the energy to rearrange those atoms,
form new molecules, create different bonds,” he said. “The energy
to do this comes from the mage.”

“
OK, that makes sense, of
sorts,” I agreed. “But then you are changing something into
something else.”

“
Yes, sort of, but what
we’re talking about is the mechanism which allows you to do so, and
that mechanism is your belief in a different reality. You know
things can be another way, matter can be other matter, so, if you
believe this can happen, why not believe you, as a mage, can KNOW
something is a certain way, and find this is the way it is? Belief
supplies the energy for things to be a specific way.”

I considered what he’d said, and when
thought about that way, it wasn’t exactly magic, and for some
reason, this made it all more believable to me.

“
Close your eyes,” he
instructed, which I did. Then he said, “Put out your hand, and I
will place a small pebble on it.”

I felt him place the rock on my
palm.

“
Close your hand slowly,
and as you do, before you actually feel the stone, imagine what it
must look like, you’ve seen the rocks around here, so you know what
it must be.”

So, I imagined the stone and closed my
fist, when it finally touched the stone I felt the rounded cold
shape, just as I knew I would.

“
Open your eyes, and your
hand,” Toji humbly instructed.

I did so, and the stone was in my
palm, just as I’d pictured it.

“
So what, it’s a rock,” I
noted sourly.

“
When I placed it on your
hand, it was a clump of dirt which I broke off of this clod,” and
here he lifted his own hand, and showed me the original clump, and
where he had broken off some dirt.

“
You’re shitting me,” I
exclaimed.

“
It is a rock, not dung,”
he answered, “but it will be excrement if you believe it
is”

I looked at the rock and it was as
hard and real as any rock I’d ever seen.

Toji took the small rock from me, and
then said, “Close your eyes again.”

When I had done so, Toji said, “I’m
going to place another clump of dirt on your hand, I want you to
imagine it is a stone.”

“
OK,” I said.

I felt him place the dirt clod on my
palm, and after a moment, he said, “Open your eyes.”

I did and found a dirt clod on my
palm.

“
It didn’t work,” I said
with a wry smile.

“
On the contrary, you made
it what you wished. I didn’t place a dirt clod on your hand, this
time, see?” he said showing the clump of dirt he had in his other
hand, which was unchanged. “I put back the stone you had earlier,
and then told you to think of this ‘dirt clod’ as a stone. But, you
now knew you held a dirt clod, so you changed the stone to dirt
because that is what you truly believed it was.”

“
Crap, that can’t be true!”
I exclaimed.

“
I watched it turn from a
stone back to dirt,” Hydan said, from his reclined position.
“You’re a wizard all right, just one who doesn’t believe in what he
can do.”

I looked at the dirt clod in my
hand.

“
That isn’t dirt,” Toji
said softly. “It’s a bunch of atoms which are arranged to make
dirt. If you believe in a different arrangement, it could be a
stone.”

I stared at the dirt for five minutes
trying to make it into a stone, but it remained dirt.

Toji was patient, “You can’t make dirt
into a stone; you just have to know it is a stone.”

I looked up at him, and said, “Well, I
do know it was a stone.”

“
Really, it was?” he asked
with a small smile.

“
Yes, I remember what it
looked like exactly,” I noted.

“
Look down, Master
Justnick,” he said softly.

I did, and the stone was back on my
palm.

“
Believe what you wish
about what is around you, and it will be what you know is
there.”

I nodded and started
practicing.

The other two lay down on the grass,
which became bed rolls, and left me to contemplate my pet rock. I
was quite cold and getting a little frustrated, but two hours later
I finally got it, and as I lay down a bedroll was under me, just
like I knew it would be. I instantly fell asleep.

In the morning, I rolled over and
yawned. Toji was cooking something savory smelling over the camp
fire. “Hey, why do mages sleep, or eat, for that matter?” I
asked.

Toji humbly explained, “Because this
is a physical universe we live in, with rules and laws, and one of
those laws is everything comes from something else. You cannot
change something to nothing, or nothing to something.”

“
Conservation of energy,” I
said, “The first law of thermodynamics.”

Toji shrugged, “Whatever name or
description you put on the rule doesn’t change the universal truth
of the rule. You may call it what you wish, but it is always
true.”

I nodded.

He continued, “For example, the power
we use to bend reality to our belief requires a use of energy and
the expended power must be recovered if you would use it again. We
recover, or convert the energy, from somewhere else, and sometimes
this is by consuming food. Resting can also help.”

“
What are you converting
when you rest?” I asked.

“
Nothing, but rest can help
you speed up the return of your lost energy. You don’t have to
rest, but while you do so your body is using less energy, which
lets your reserves replenish faster from converting other energy
sources, like, food, sunlight, etc. One thing to note, different
races use different means of replenishing energy, in fact, these
saerans can gain a lot back by entering water. There are nutrients
they absorb through their skin,” Toji patiently
explained.