Elm sat there, his head in his hand groaning in frustration. I hadn’t expected him to be unhappy, especially to this degree.
“Kid, you’re really fucking with me as I’m trying to mentor you?” Elm elated, continuing to shake his head while his palm covered most of his disappointment. Both of us were sitting in the cart being pulled by Sera’s strig. I felt somewhat bad for not walking with the rest of the group but Elm had insisted that I sit down so he could thoroughly lecture me about how much of a dumbass I was.
“But, I made a connection to a new concept, right? And learning to modify mana and control pure mana means I’m one step closer to learning how to heal. Isn’t this just a good thing?” I was being genuine with the statement. I did expect him to scold me, but I didn’t know why he would do that. Something inside me just told me that learning to mess around with pure mana and modify my own attunement would piss him off.
“It’s not that simple though. Sure, you learning that completely off of intuition is nice and all, but it messes up the rest of the damn steps.”
The steps? I do remember him talking about me connecting concepts.
“I mean, can’t I just do the steps no matter what? As long as I already have the foundational concepts I’m pretty sure I can figure it out from there.”
Elm sighed and shook his head again.
“Let me use a metaphor, because you clearly don’t understand this. Imagine that you're trying to build a house. In order to make the process as easy as possible, you start from the bottom and slowly build your way up to the top. That way, once you put it on the roof, everything is already stable and prepared. Are you with me so far?” Elm spoke slowly, like he was talking down to a child after they had broken a plate. I nodded, and he continued.
“Before last night, you had built the foundations, the floor and the frame. Those are the essential starting points for the rest of everything. Last night, you built the windows. Issue is, you haven’t even made the walls of the house. Now, you have to be careful with the walls as to shape them around the object you have already created.”
Ok, that makes more sense.
“So I’m going to have to work backwards for a little bit?”
“Yes. I don’t expect it to take as long as it would for most people because mana apparently picks favorites, and your dumb ass is one of them.” Elm sighed in exasperation at the statement. My odd relationship with mana still seemed to frustrate him. “What I was planning to teach you was how to better control the mana that you transform. Every time that you’ve utilized it, you’re just blasting it off in bursts rather than focusing it in one point. You’re not able to really control it yet. If you want to learn how to heal people, you first need to learn how to connect those points and focus on them. If you tried that trick on someone and tried to heal them with it, you’d end up giving them mana poisoning and probably killing them.”
I nodded and took a deep breath while watching the tree branches pass me by. The steady pace of movement on the wagon was bumpy, but I was currently leaning back on a lot of our sleeping gear.
“Sir, have you been planning out my magic education?” I pondered, leaning my head up to look at him. He shrugged in response.
“You’re currently the one leading a bunch of people who I fucked over into battle against the empire, and I’d prefer to follow someone whose well trained and can fight for themselves than one who has to sit on the backline and hope nobody comes too close. You got tricks, but in a fight without a burner or your igniter, you’re fucked. Plus, I’m still trying to figure out how the hell your relationship with mana works. It ain’t normal, and I’m not going to just sit idly by while you fuck around and disprove years of research that I personally worked on.”
Yeah, I’m kind of sorry about that one.
“Maybe North’s some sort of prophecy person? I mean, you said the mana really likes him.” Sera unexpectedly chimed in, and Elm and I both turned to look at her. She turned away from the road to look at us and shrugged. “I mean, I’ve not heard any prophecies or anything that fit him, but maybe?”
Thinking about the possibility of me being some prophetic figure made me visibly cringe, and Sera apparently found my look of internal disgust amusing.
“I’d prefer that not to be the case.”
“Same here. I don’t need any extra pressure when it comes to training this idiot how to not die.” said Elm, smirking a bit.
I awkwardly laughed while trying to avoid thinking about that possibility. If there was any religious question, I’d probably just go to Elina and ask her whether her mythos has a story about a candlemaker running a rebellion.
I heard Elm mutter something under his breath for a second before stopping. Although it was small, it looked as though he was wincing from something painful.
“Well, may as well try and teach you something now that you’re here. How much have you been able to focus your light?” He strained himself leaning forward a bit, crossing his legs and letting his hands sit on his lap.
“Not much. I can focus it on specific parts of my hand really easily, but once it comes out of me it acts like a normal light source.” I let a soft glow exit from my palm. It was already light out which made it harder to see.
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Elm nodded, seemingly taking mental notes.
“The concepts you need to connect are two which we have already gone over- transforming your flow into light mana, and controlling external sources of it. When a person with a fire attunement forms fire, they need to control it after the fact. Otherwise, it’d just be an unruly flame with no energy in any focused direction. You got lucky, because you’ve been able to get away with just the first step in utilizing the mana you form and the natural mana around you has been easy for you to control. Because of this, you’ve only been able to use it as a tool to help you, not as an actual weapon.”
I mean, can light be used as a weapon?
“I’ve never really thought of it like that though. Light doesn’t really have the same force as water or fire.” I had generally treated it more like a supplement to myself rather than something which could damage other people. I watched as Elm shook his head in frustration.
“Have you ever played around with a magnifying glass? Focus light into a small enough area and you can start fires. Once you can start focusing it, you can start abusing the energy created by light. Do it enough, and you’ll start to get something like a blade of energy.”
That’s kind of scary.
“It ain’t as directly powerful as other attunements like stone, but combined with the other stuff you’ve been able to pull off so far it should be a pretty damn terrifying power.” Elm’s eyes wandered off into the woods as he seemed to ponder all of the horrifying possibilities I could pull off. As I sat there thinking about my own situation, another person came to mind.
“Sera, do you know what your attunement is?”
Sera paused for a second, holding her hand to her chin. Without looking back at us, she shrugged.
“Never got the chance to find out, unlike you.”
Maybe I can…
I turned back to Elm to find him shaking his head.
Dammit.
“May be surprising to you, but I don’t adore teaching. Ain’t what I did for the majority of my life and I didn’t plan on doing it until you dragged me into it. Alex is probably better for teaching normal forms of magic than me since he’s from Nacilia. They were probably the most well researched when it came to that shit, and he’s a pretty damn proficient battle mage. Only reason I’m not entrusting you to him is because your attunement works so damn weird. If Sera wants to learn, go to him.” Elm appeared to have some reverence for the magical knowledge of Nacilia in the way that he spoke of it. I only heard bits and pieces from my times in the camps, but it did feel more apparent that people from Nacilia who were slaves were often captured soldiers. Alex even mentioned that he was part of a mage battalion.
“I’ll make sure to ask him when I get the chance. North, you should focus on learning your attunement before you start worrying about mine.”
***
“You’re still not connecting the two. It’s important to split your focus in the same way that the energy is flowing out of you. You need to focus on maintaining it as a consistent line rather than two separate steps. Think of it as one long process.”
Yeah, I’m trying.
“I know, I know, but it’s not easy to both control the flow and ask it to maintain focus.”
I heard another deep sigh of disappointment come from Elm. According to the timekeeper, I’d been trying and failing to connect the two concepts for over an hour. I just couldn’t maintain the focus for long enough for the beam of light to maintain a strong focus. I was able to focus the light a little bit, but my awareness of it only went out so far as I tried to handle both controlling my inner self and the outer world.
“You see why I was so pissed when you did things out of order?” Elm said smugly.
“Yes sir…”
“Maybe you should take a break? You don’t seem to be getting anywhere any time soon.” suggested Sera who appeared to have gotten bored by my constant failures.
I sighed, leaning back and taking some more time to look at the tree branches. Being out so far from the camps without any visible landmarks made progress feel fluid. In order to sate my worries about our movement, I sat up to search around for Ruby. As I surveyed the area, I spotted her atop the shoulders of Mell, holding the map and mumbling under her breath.
Is he just ok with this? I knew he was a polite guy, but I didn’t know he was this polite.
“Hey Ruby! What’s our timeline looking like?” I yelled, hoping to overcome the hustle and bustle of conversation in the caravan. Ruby’s head cocked an almost full 180, the surprise of the action causing Mell to temporarily stumble.
“We’ve got one more day on the road after this before we hit the refinery depending on when we stop. There’s a snaking area which we should hit before nightfall. There should be a marker there and a cleared out space for us to set up at. Arlin’s done a fairly good job actually measuring travel distances and setting good rest stops.”
“Are you sure about our timing?”
As I spoke those words, Ruby’s happy face lost its joy. There was a deep rage broiling beneath her as she looked directly into my soul. For the first time during our journey away from the camps, I felt genuine fear for my life.
“Are you doubting my cartography skills?”
I shook my head from side to side rapidly, trying to stop her from committing an act of violence. Once I did, she immediately changed back to her more cheerful disposition and gave me a wide grin. Mell looked completely unphased by the entire incident and simply kept on walking.
Note to self- Do not question Ruby’s cartography.
“Hey, why are you riding Mell?”
It felt extremely weird saying those words out loud.
“I’m using him to get some perspective. Spot landmarks and better scan our surroundings with my attunement.”
Which is?
Ruby appeared to laugh at themselves a bit after noticing my confusion.
“Wind. I can scan my surroundings by sensing changes in the air.”
Oh, that’s interesting. Definitely have to use that later on.
“I’ll keep that one in mind. That power sounds really useful.”
Why didn’t she use a strig for that instead of Mell? Were they all taken?
Whether I wanted to or not, I couldn’t think about that subject. I had a road ahead of me and a fight waiting for me at the end.