Chapter Fourteen: The Stars Were Just Like Little Fish
Marc was unable to keep a straight face; the penetrating stare of his new teacher was far too intimidating, and when she said the words “Dimensional Traveler”, he flinched, then looked away. He was busted.
“Don’t worry. I won’t do anything, but you were right to keep this a secret.” She tried to be reassuring, but the admission also threw her emotions into turmoil. This boy was indeed a Traveler. That was both spectacular and terrifying. At her last words, Marc turned his face back to hers with a questioning look.
“I will explain, although I do not know how much you understand about your… condition. In fact, what I know is the stuff of myths and legends and long-forgotten books at the back shelves of an ancient librarian hoard. First, let me explain what I know, but then it would be very helpful if you could tell me what you can. Only what you are comfortable sharing, but if you can trust me, the more I know, the more I can help keep you safe.” She slowly explained her words carefully chosen.
Marc looked at her and slowly nodded. “Alright. What can you tell me about Dimensional Travelers?” He asked.
“What I do know is all secondhand. I have never in my life seen one, or even know anyone who has personally seen one. As far as I know, there hasn’t been one seen in generations. Their existence is fairly well known, if only through folk tales and stories told to scare children. A Dimensional Traveler is a being from beyond this world. From a different physical reality. There are some records of incredibly powerful entities with powers and knowledge from other worlds who have appeared in the past, and these stories are full of war and chaos, and death. In this world, a Traveler is a monster, a taboo, and an enemy to all peace-loving people, and to those who do not love peace, they are a weapon, more valuable than any other.” She chose her words carefully, but the color quickly drained from Marc’s face.
“But I…” He quickly protested.
“I know, you appear to me to be an ordinary young man. But I can see you are far from ordinary. I told you what is commonly known about Travelers in this world, but I have had access to knowledge that is not commonly known as well. There is an organization that collects knowledge and techniques related to Magic. It is the school where all great mages are instructed and where all knowledge of what magic is and how it works is kept and studied. I once worked there, many years ago, and I had access to information not publicly shared, including Travelers. What I can tell you is almost nothing is known about where they come from, or how they get here, that once in a very long while, hundreds or thousands of years apart, a unique being appears from another place. They are not the all-powerful Demon Lords from the stories that parents use to scare their young ones. Some have been quite ordinary. There doesn’t seem to be much about them that is different from ordinary people, except for a few common traits that they display. The biggest one being that they wield a unique and very powerful form of magic.” Rynan stood up and walked over to the kitchen and came back with a large wooden bowl.
“As I am now your teacher, what do you know about magic?” She asked him just as a teacher would when talking to a student.
“Nothing really, I mean I’ve seen magic shows, but they are just make-believe. Just tricks. But the real magic is just from movies and books.” He said it wondering if his description would make any sense to a person from this world.
Indeed, she had a slightly confused look for a moment, then shrugged it off and continued. “Indeed, in some of the records, Travelers have mentioned that in their world Magic did not exist at all.”
Marc nodded again slowly.
“But here, magic is a part of our daily life. All people can use it to some extent, and the use, and misuse of it has changed the way we live and even scarred the planet permanently.” As she spoke she held her hands near the bowl and closed her eyes for a moment. The faint blue glow he had seen before appeared around her hands, then floated away and hung over the bowl. After a moment, the light darkened and then solidified a large bubble of water floated over the bowl, then gently lowered and filled the bowl. As the last of the glow dissipated, the water rested and filled the bowl to the brim, yet did not spill a single drop. Rynan dipped her fingers into the bowl and pulled them back out, only to flick a few drops into Marc’s face. “See? Perfectly normal.” She said with a giggle.
Marc blinked. Sure it wasn’t the first amazing thing he had seen in just the last day, but the casual way she had done something so impossible shook his whole belief system. “That world, it has Magic.” Mary’s words echoed in his ears. He had met God for that matter, but it turned out that God was a middle-aged HR manager in a dumpy no window office in a crappy New Mexico call center. He had to admit, the floating water trick was a bit more… impressive.
“The Magic we use relies on Mana, a form of energy that exists in the air we breathe. It’s present everywhere on the planet, but there are some requirements to use it. First, one must have a Mana Core. This is an organ in our bodies like the heart or the lungs. It looks like a small crystal and it forms in the bodies of all living things as a side effect of coming in contact with Mana.
She then went into the other room again and brought back another wooden box. This looked like a small jewelry box, and from it, she took out several small crystals. They were each about the size of a quarter but were not perfectly formed with small variations in size and shape. All but one of the crystals was clear, but the last one, the largest of the bunch had a red coloring, similar to a red Jolly Rancher candy. She picked up a clear crystal and handed it to him.
“This is a Mana Crystal. They vary in size, this one came from a large Dire Wolf I think. Or perhaps a Bear? As I said, they grow in all living beings, even plants, although it takes years to get this big.”
“This one is a Mana Core.” She gently handled the red crystal, but decidedly did not offer it to Marc to look at. “This one came from a person.” She explained with a slight look of sadness in her eyes.” A colored crystal only appears in a sentient being. The Mana Crystals are mostly benign. They store up Mana collected from the environment and regulate it, filtering out excess mana. This somehow provides the body with extra strength and vigor, but that’s about it. There were people on this world before Mana appeared, and in those days it seems that lifespans were shorter and disease more prevalent.” She put the red crystal back in the box and shut the lid.
“A Mana Core is formed when a child goes through an awakening.” She continued her lecture. “Around 11 to 13 years old, the Mana Crystal inside a person undergoes a change and connects more profoundly with the mind and soul of the host, or so we are taught. Not much is known about how or why this happens, and trust me, an enormous amount of time and energy has been dedicated to this exact question, but somehow, the Crystal takes on a new purpose. First, it filters out most of the energy in the Mana it absorbs and begins to store only Mana of a particular attribute. It’s this Mana and connection to the Mana core that allows a person to use Magic.” She stopped for a moment and asked if he understood what she had said so far.
“Yeah, I think so. A person can use some of the Mana in the air to control magic using these crystals as a catalyst?” He said, still staring into the crystal in his hands.
“Yes. Very good. Have you learned this before?” she asked curiously.
“Oh. No… No, it’s just that… well we do have stories about magic, and video games and things like that. It’s kinda similar to those stories, but of course, none of it is real… I mean it wasn’t real there…” Marc was tripping over his words, so he stopped before he said something shocking or embarrassing.
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“I see… There are different types of Magic based on the individual affinity one has, and the way a person uses magic is very personal. No two people have exactly the same level of power or affinity, much is determined by the natural ability and the understanding someone has, There are five of these affinities, and while it is not precise, they roughly determine the type of magic application a person will be able to control.”
She slowly took the red crystal out of the box again. “This is a Fire attribute crystal. Amongst humans, this is the most common. Mana of this element is best to use as an energy catalyst. It can strengthen the body and improve your stamina, and if you master its use you can project energy outside your own body.” She pointed at the water in the bowl again and a small amount of the water floated back up again, glowing faintly.
“I have a blue Mana Core, one with the water affinity as you might have surmised.” As she spoke the floating bubble slowly broke apart and reformed into a small cloud complete with rain that fell back into the bowl. The cloud slowly shrank as the water refilled the bowl, and by the time the cloud had dissipated, the bowl was once again full to the brim, not a drop spilled. “A blue Mana Core is in many ways the opposite of a Red one. Rather than projecting energy, a Water Mana Core can suppress or dispel it. Water mages can purify a body that had been poisoned or infected, and when mastered can conjure a bowl of water from the water vapor in the air, or even control the weather.” As she said that, the rain that had been beating down on the roof slowly tapered off, and within seconds the room became eerily silent.
“Just as Red and Blue Cores are opposed, Green and Yellow Cores share similarities while maintaining an opposite position. Green, or Earth Mana Cores share an affinity with living organisms, Earth Mages can heal themselves and once mastered can even heal others, and a very strong one could even regrow a limb. I’ve even known Earth mages who could control plants and animals. Yellow Air Cores users instead work with energy itself. An Air Mage can work and think faster, and with more precision than you would think possible. At higher levels, some can learn to speak over distances directly into their mind and can find something no matter how well hidden. Never try to trick an Air Mage. While Fire and Water are common amongst humans, Earth and Air mages are quite rare. Perhaps less than one in twenty will develop these affinities. But in the Elven community, it is the opposite. Earth and Air are very common while an Elven Fire Mage is frighteningly rare.” As she said the last part Marc’s eyebrows shot up.
Elves? There are Elves in this world? Actually, now that he thought about it, in the status windows he had looked at so far there had been a race section and it had simply noted “Human”. He hadn’t given it much thought, but in retrospect, he would have expected it to say something like Caucasian/Hispanic mix, or something along those lines. Humans implied other races besides the human race. So Elves were real here. Marc wondered what they looked like, and what other races there were. He was about to ask just that when another thought tugged at his attention.
“What’s the fifth color?” Now that he said it, it sounded like a stupid question and he wished he had gone with something about Elves.
“Ah, yes. Purple. Purple Mana Cores can use Space magic.” Rynan said this with a bit of tension in her voice. Her smile froze a bit and lent a wooden feel to her explanation. “Space Mages are terribly rare, not only because they rarely appear in any racial group, but because it is a difficult magic to learn and use. For the other types of Mana Cores, a young user can typically only apply very basic applications at first. Most people only use magic internally, to add strength or agility to give themselves a boost. Intermediate users can start to exert power beyond their bodies. The larger and further the effect is from the body, the harder it is to apply it. Masters can project their Magic, sometimes over a great distance, but can also affect a wide area.”
“With Space Magic, there are no low-level applications to practice with, however. It’s by far the most powerful of all the magic forms. It allows the user to manipulate the very fabric of the universe, both space and time can be controlled. The level required to do anything with Space magic however is so high and is so difficult to learn that very, very few have ever accomplished much with it. I knew a professor once who dedicated over fifty years of research and training to master a transportation spell that allowed him to move from one side of his classroom to the other in an instant. After all that time and effort, he still couldn’t even go through a wall, and it required nearly every particle of Mana in his core. He once attempted to do it twice in one day and managed to break his core leaving him a cripple for the rest of his life, unable to use mana in any way at all.” She recalled the story with a deep sense of bitterness but quickly moved on.
“So we finally get to the point of this first lesson. Marc, can you make that object appear and disappear from your hand again?”
Marc felt a bit self-conscious about it after hearing about a man who had crippled himself by using magic. He held his hand out a bit further than before and pulled the bottle from his inventory, then pushed it back.
After Marc had finished his magic trick, Rynan put her hand out and a blue glow again covered her hand, then moved up and formed into a floating orb of water hanging in mid-air. After letting it stay there for a few seconds, the ball then formed a pyramid shape, then the water began to glow brighter and he watched it quickly harden and freeze until it formed a perfect, clear statue of ice which slowly floated down to rest on the table. Finally, the glow disappeared and Marc leaned closer to admire the solid ice pyramid.
“Now what did you notice that was different about the way we used magic?” She asked in a perfect instructor’s voice.
Marc thought about it a bit. He had now seen the woman use a variety of different types of magic. He went over them a few times and came up with a couple of guesses.
“The glow. Every time you use magic I see a blue glowing light. I don’t think my… magic had any light?” It was far from decisive, but it was his best guess.
“Good! You are right. When we manipulate Mana, the energy releases a light, the same as the color of the Mana Core. Your magic however did not release any light at all. It was also instantaneous. Pulling Mana from your core and manipulating it, even for a Master, requires a bit of time to form and control. With much practice, the glow can be reduced and the time shortened, but what you displayed to me is far beyond any Master who has ever lived in this world. The idea that a novice could use Mana in such a way is beyond ridiculous.”
Marc again felt self-conscious. How was he supposed to know what it was supposed to look like? No one explained any of this to him. He pursed his lips in irritation.
Before he said anything, Rynan smiled and tried to reassure him. “Don’t be bothered. What you can do is amazing. Impossible, but very special. It almost took my breath away when I first saw you do that. But now that I know what you are, I can also explain how you can do it.” She explained.
Marc remembered. That’s right, he wasn’t a human anymore, he was a Dimensional Traveller.
“You see, you weren’t using Mana the same way we do for a simple and obvious reason.” As Marc tried to puzzle out what the obvious reason could be, but before he could even open his mouth, Rynan quickly gave him the answer, excitement shining in her eyes.
“One thing we know about Travelers is how they differ from us physically. We have seen Travelers of different races before, Not just Humans, but Elves, Juujin, and even some races we have never encountered, but they all shared one characteristic. Since they were not born here, they did not have Mana Cores. Still, they were able to use magic as soon as they appeared in this world. This is the key to their rumored power, and also the clue that exposes them for what they are.” Rynan took on a serious look. “The reason I asked you to become my student is because I want to protect you. Many in this world would use you or harm you just because of what you are. I admit, I would like to study you and discover your secrets as much as any one of them. But I also know what it is like to be unique, to be different. I don’t want your power to be abused by others or snuffed out by those who fear you. I promise to help you, I want to trust that you will not use your power to harm anyone.” With that, she reached out her hand and placed her palm on the ice pyramid at the center of the table.
“Once a Mana Crystal is formed in a body all Mana is absorbed by the crystal or the Mana Core. In the recorded history of this world, no one has ever had the ability or need to grow a second core, although there have been many experiments to accomplish it.” She smiled as she spoke, then stared directly at the pyramid, and in an instant, it disappeared with a brief flash of purple. After a moment or two, another flash and the pyramid was back exactly as it had been.
“No one has ever had two different Mana Cores in the history of this world. Except once. And it created a freak that no longer belonged to this world.” Rynan’s face was a mask, but her voice trembled as she spoke.
“I swear to you that as your teacher I will protect you and your secrets, I will teach you what you need to know to survive in the world, how to protect yourself and live the life you want. So please don’t destroy the world.” She said the last part with a smile and a laugh.