Finally after months of training meditation my magic lessons were going to start, I was excited and after some of my lessons in the morning they finally changed my lesson in geography for my lessons in magic, both my mom and second mom were going to be my teachers.

- Well Carter, today we start your study of magic, both your mother and I will be your teachers – says my second mom with a very stern face – we are both going to give you magic lessons because each of us work with different elements, I do work with earth and fire, your mother does water and healing, we will get new teachers as is required for the rest of the elements – at this moment she sees me that I put my hand up, and she stops herself – do you have a question?

- Why are we having more teachers?

- Darling, your blessing of art, at least from the explanation we got will give you talent in every branch of magic, so you will need more teachers so you can base your spells on them, but way before we reach the spells you need some more basic knowledge so listen to Selene – says my mom.

- Yeah, magic our knowledge of it is expanding and there are many mages that are researching new and more powerful spells, but everything starts with mana – my second mom says and I can see a smile forming on her face, she is having fun – When you meditate you will see the field of magic, is our world through magical senses and you will see 7 colors, those are the colors of the types of mana that we can have access easily, normally I would say that is all of the mana, but due to your circumstances, I have been reading and refreshing some of my knowledge on the subjects and there is more types of spells but we do not know if there is mana associated to those spells or not, sadly the investigations and research notes taken of the spells of the Heroes are lacking in details.

My second mom takes a deep breath before continuing.

- Before I go into more details about the types of mana, so far we have discovered that our world has a connection to Elemental Planes, we do not know why these planes exist but we are connected to them one of those is the Plane of Fire, elementals of these element live in that plane and in our own, in our own world they tend to live in volcanos and other areas who are extremely hot and with deep connection to fire, the red motes that you see when you meditate are this type of mana, another is the Plane of Water, home to the water elementals even though they also move in our world in the oceans, rivers and lakes, the motes of blue color are of this element, another is the Plane of Wind, same deal as the previous ones but the elementals normally are found on places where wind tend to be very active, there are some canyons and mountains where they can be found more often but this ones can really be found anywhere, you could end up encountering a wind elemental on a farm, or in the main plaza of the capital, they are everywhere, the motes of color green are the ones that belong to these element, the Plane of Earth is as the name implies for the earth element, the elementals for the earth element can be found anywhere with practically no difference, obviously if you dig there is a higher chance of finding them, so mines and other such places are where is easier to find them, the gold colored motes are the ones that represent this element, the Plane of Light, same deal but the elementals of light are mostly found during the day, they tend to not be very active at night while you can see them playing often during the day, you can also find them in some volcanoes where the flames keep the places lit up all day and night, the white motes are the ones that you will see represent this element, last the Plane of Darkness, like all the previous ones, elementals of darkness live in this plane and in our own world but they follow the opposite active periods from the light elementals, they are more active at night and less so during the day, of course in some mines and other places like this you can find them active at all hours, the ebony motes represent this element – she finishes this long exposition of the Planes and the elements and looks at me and ask – did you understand?

- Yes I do understand – I say and I do use some parchment to take notes and keep the knowledge.

- Ok the last of the motes as far as we know does not have an Elemental Plane they belong to, but most mages agree that the silver motes should be the mana from our own world, some mages like to call it all-elemental mana, others call it non-elemental mana, and I like to call it myself as natural mana – at this point I see her falter a bit and my mom interrupts her.

- Darling there is one more type of motes and they are the completely black motes, they are demonic mana, and it is not normal and so far we have only see it in tainted lands or when the demons either cast magic or use rituals, it is a highly disturbing type mana, and one of the Heroes in the past say that the color that was closer to the ones you found on earth is Vantablack, personally I do not understand – says my mom.

- Oh I see, well mom the thing is Vantablack is sort of a product and a color at the same time, it was a paint coating I think on earth and the color was so black that it looked weird, very disturbing it looked like it would absorb all other colors, if you looked at it too long you ended up with a headache, or at least I did- I say to my mom, and I understand that she gave me this info because of my earth background, that this is not part of the normal lesson, so I move my face and focus again on my Second mom.

Taking the interruption of my mom as a signal my second mom moved and grabbed some other parchments she had and then moves towards me.

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- Most spells are formed from this a combination of natural mana and elemental mana, and what I mean is that when you build the spell you use both the silver motes and the motes of the color you need for the spell – my second mom says then stops for a second to give a demonstration.

- FIRE! – she exclaims and I feel some sort of magic reaction and almost at the same time I see a little flame only like 5 centimeters tall appear on her left hand is like the flame of a candle.

Then I feel another magic reaction and see another flame almost the same appear on her right hand , she had put the parchment she had before down in front of her to give me this demonstration.

- Nice – I exclaim.

- Well this is the most basic of all spells and I casted it twice – says my second mother, and then I see she waits for me.

There is a question on that statement, oh I see.

- You said you casted twice, but I only heard you say fire once, did you do silent casting with the second time?

- Correct Carter – says my second mom. – now spells are made by building an image with your imagination in your head and then using mana to bring that image into reality, the first step most people do when learning is that they have a chant, usually one or two words that they use as a mental shortcut for the image, obviously even if you said fire without the proper mental image it would do nothing, I showed you the activation word, because that’s how most kids learn, I am going to skip this step with you, I would prefer if you would do silent casting from the beginning, just like I showed you the second time, I’m sure you can do it, so please try.

I see my mom trying to say something but my second mom just puts a hand up and stop her and both look at me to see me casting for the first time.

The lack of instructions is a bit jarring, but if most of the casting is done by using your imagination then I need to do most of the work, now let me see she said that I need some natural mana that’s the silver one, and some elemental mana, since I’m casting with fire it has to be the red fireflies, I have a hard time thinking of them as motes.

Now I’m trying to build a candle fire, what is that I need for fire?, if I remember correctly is heat, fuel, oxygen and the reaction where you burn the fuel and the oxygen, oh with these I can bring some of the wind ones since oxygen is mostly found on the air, ok let me grab some silver fireflies, and some red ones and some green ones, now let me try and visualize the candle flame the shape in form of a tear going upwards with the fireflies entering the spell from below, I sort of imaging the silver fireflies as the fuel, while the red fireflies give a bit of heat and mostly work by burning the fuel, and the green fireflies help with the combustion of the fuel, then to finish the spell I order them with my mind to go and open my eyes and see a candle flame that is almost 20 cm tall, this startles me a lot, and I interrupt the spell before I burn the room where I study.

- I knew it – says my second mom with glee on her voice.

My mom looks proud but worried and she ends up asking.

- How was he able to do that? That not how the basic spell for fire works – says my mom

- Sorry Carter – says my second mom then turns towards my mom – Kat I was running my own experiment especially since Carter has more knowledge, I wanted to see how he would do.

- Could you explain? – I ask curious and fascinated about what she discovered and she turns towards me before answering.

- Well Carter meditate a bit and I will show you how a person new to magic cast this spell, also and to try and make you understand, most fail in their first try and it takes them a long time to succeed in their first casting, so far in our history the only ones that succeed in their first try are heroes, now enter meditation and focus on my hand I will slow down to show you how – says my second mom.

I enter meditation and I see the all the fireflies of magic going around, then I focus on my second mom hand and what I see startles me, she has some fireflies of natural mana but very few of them and the amount of red fireflies is easily 3 times or more the amount of silver fireflies, and the red ones look to be appearing from nowhere, its completely different from how I did it, then finally I see how the spell forms and activates and I feel something but I cannot grasp what it is.

- Something is wrong with your spell – I blurt out, and immediately feel dread, how do I say that what my mom did is wrong, I’m being stupid or what, but then I hear something that pulls me out of my thoughts and its my second mom laughing hard after a couple of minutes she stops and start talking to me.

- Maybe Carter, most of our teaching with spells is imitating our teachers we see what they do and then we do it ourselves, but you the same as the Heroes go on a different direction, why did you use wind mana?, I do not know, why did you use so little mana of fire? also do not know, that your spell was so effective is a testament that maybe you are right and we are doing it wrong, I needed to use several more motes of mana to get the small flame, but you used less motes of mana and got a way better result than mine, any questions? – ask my second mother.

- How can I know what you are doing? Also if the fireflies of mana get used up on the spell those that means there is less mana around? How did you make so many red fireflies appear? – I ask

- Well for your first question, there is a skill called mana sense that will let you see more details about what the mana is doing and the more you train it the more details you will get, about your third question I called more motes from the elemental plane of fire, and about your second question, the motes or as you call them fireflies are just agglomerations of mana that you can feel passively, there is a lot more mana around, some of it you are not feeling, like the mana that you yourself used to collect and order the motes of mana, you were using and moving mana around, even if you did not see it yourself and what happens to what get used in the spell?, a Hero said that it gets recycled, how I don’t know maybe you will discover it if you study it with mana sense.

This left me flabbergasted, there was more I could not see it, I definitely needed that skill.

- Now for a question of my own – says my second mother and I feel that this is a unique question especially with the intensity that she is looking at me - Can you explain how your spell works?

- Yes I can explain it. – I answer – do you want me to explain?

- Let me interrupt here, let’s drink something and then we can continue the lesson – says my mother.

So we stop at that moment and I see that my Second mom who has been talking a lot takes a big glass of juice, I also get a glass of juice, and my mom is thinking something, I’ll ask her later.