“Invent magic?” repeated elder Sommi.

I nodded. “Noel and I learned the basics of magic from the Immortal of Desire. The Immortal of Desire is the third and final Immortal that I know about, alongside the Immortal of Madness, who rules the moon and the God or Immortal of Evil, who rules the red star.” I pointed at both celestial bodies while I was speaking. “The Immortal told us the basics that I taught you. That magic is governed by knowledge and wisdom. Noel and I then explored what knowledge and wisdom really mean, and went even further than the basics of magic, and into the roots of knowledge and wisdom.

“And after experimenting with a lot of different types of magic, we were able to invent the magic spells that I have been teaching you. However, most of those spells are based on an incomplete understanding of knowledge. Eventually, I decided to assert that knowledge required three things: truth, justification, and belief.

“Truth is a metaphysical notion. It governs the way things are, not how they should be or can shown to be. To work with the truth, in the limited understanding and interactions we can have with it, means that we have to ignore many questions about the nature of reality, but that is good enough for the purpose of creating magic.

“Belief is relatively straightforward. For me to use a claim or assertion in magic, I must believe in it. You may think this goes without saying, since if I am proposing something, I have to believe it, but it is a little more complicated than that. It is possible for me to believe that I do not know the answer to something or to give an answer that I believe is a total guess, and for it to still be correct. For knowledge to count as complete, at least for our magic, it needs to be based on things that the caster actually believes.

“Justification is the most complicated part, and the one that has been limiting my magic the most. It is not enough for me to know something and for that something to be true. I must also be justified in my belief! I can still use magic if a believe something and it is true, but the spells become so inefficient that they use a lot of magical energy. So much magical energy, in fact, that most spells become impossible to do.

“And so, in order to invent new spells, I need to justify my true beliefs and then use wisdom to turn that knowledge into a real spell. Wisdom is like experience, and you get more of it the more spells you use and especially the more spells of a similar type that you use. That is why I have been teaching you all very basic and fundamental spells first, so that you can use the wisdom you gather to work on better spells for yourselves.”

The elders were silent. I hadn’t even noticed that I had gone into lecture mode, but it looked like the elders didn’t mind. After I coughed, they started moving about, and thanked me for sharing such important information with them. I think most of them didn’t realize I had invented most of the spells myself. Perhaps they thought the spells had been passed down within the ancient elfin tribes. They were especially grateful that I had told them how they could invent their own spells, although elder Kezler chuckled and said there was no way anyone but me was going to be able to come up with their own spell.

I countered and said that I was sure Kelser would be making his own spells soon. In fact, I was going to teach him how to make his own spell once he had a hang of the light magic spells I had been teaching him. I wanted his help in inventing many spells in the future, so a little experience creating spells would come in handy, I reckoned.

Before we adjourned the meeting, I asked elders Konri and Mann if there were any big herds of monsters nearby. They said there were some on the plains to the North, so I told them to set up a hunting party for tomorrow. This hunting party, I told them, needed to follow the herd from a safe distance and try to figure out their patterns of movement.

“You don’t want them to hunt the monsters?” asked elder Mann.

“No,” I said. “At least, not right away. See, one way to tame monsters is to do what I went to do with Kelser in the morning: you can make them like you by feeding them. But the other way to control them, is to manipulate their behavior. I think we can ward off a large section of land, maybe with barriers or the scent of large predators, or even with aggressive actions or fire spells. By making the herd stay within a small area that we control, we can try to control the whole group.”

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“And then we can chip away at them whenever we need food!” said elder Konri. “It is amazing what we can do with magic. Thank you, once again, for this great gift, Teacher.”

I scratched my head. “I also think we can go through the forest and grab some eggs.”

“Do you want to eat them, Teacher?” asked elder Brol. “We have some at our camp, if you would like some tonight.”

“No, the plan isn’t to eat them. I want to hatch them,” I said.

“Hatch them?” said elder Brol.

“Yes, we can hatch them, and try to raise the birds ourselves. If there are any birds or birdlike monsters that can’t fly, those would be ideal. Do any come to mind?” I asked.

Elder Konri said there were some flightless bird monsters that lived in the forests to the South, but that they only came out at night. We decided to look for their nests during the day and to gather enough eggs to raise some of the monsters ourselves. Hopefully, taking care of them as soon as they hatched would help us domesticate them, reasonably quickly.

And so the rest of the meeting carried on late into the night. We shared ways of preserving food, extracting juices and nectar out of various plants, and even the benefits of bone marrow or other monster by-products. Soon, we had a decent plan for storing food for the winter, as well as for growing our own farms and domesticating monsters for food and as beasts of burden.

I also asked the tribes who didn’t have a lot of tasks, to prepare a party to return to the native copper mine near the Roja tribe’s territory, so they could bring back more copper. We also decided to make more wheels, shovels, and tools, now that we had access to a lot of clay, limestone, and wood. Honestly, this riverside area was an amazing place for prehistoric resources. If we could just get some tin, we could even start making bronze tools and weapons, which would make a lot of our tasks even easier than before.

With some more promises of toys and games, the meeting was adjourned. The elders returned to their camps, which were all deathly silent by now. Many humans were out and about on night-watch, stoking the smoldering campfires with long sticks or the ends of their spears. I decided to go for a walk to the river, exhausted from the events of the day.

Kelser, who had been with me throughout the meeting, silently followed behind me. I asked him how he was feeling, to which he shrugged and said he was tired. I chuckled and went down to the River Teg.

The river was massive and full of life. It was a far cry from the Charles, which had changed my life so drastically the night I’d fallen inside it. This river was so wide, I couldn’t even see the other side. It made me realize how strange it was that the Imm and Oko tribes were even able to cross it every year. It was probably gentler downriver and shallower upriver.

That was such a silly answer, I chastised myself in my head. Of course the river was gentler downriver and shallower upriver. Had the fatigue made me so dumb that I was confidently presenting obvious answers this way to myself? Man, I needed a break. A long, relaxing vacation. I sighed. I wasn’t about to get that anytime soon.

The homesickness hit me again, now that the day was over and the only sound in my ears was the roaring river. I also thought about Noel. Where was she? What was she doing? Was she alright? If I had to guess, she had gone East towards the plains where the human Jora lived. She’d already heard that was where they were from, and probably thought she could find some answers there. Based on what I knew of her, I felt confident she would survive, especially because it was only a matter of time until she began making her own spells. Honestly, being next to me had probably slowed her down a bit, since she could always rely on me for new spells. Now that she was on her own, she could grow much faster.

I looked over the river, thinking once again of the friend I had lost and the home that I was yearning to return to. A word surfaced in my head, the only clue I had that could lead me back to my world.

“Annihilation,” I whispered, standing on the banks of the roaring River Teg. I looked up at the crescent moon, its shape eerily like a dangling smile, plastered across the sky.