For the 15th day in a row the mage Kaete lamented at his luck. He was one of the few mages chosen to share their mana, which was so precious out here in the Deep Dark, with the Earthlings.

All for the chance that one of them might turn into a mage.

For days he had exhausted himself injecting mana into them and for days they had shown utterly zero progress. Some of them even seemed to like the discomfort.

One had grabbed hold of his arm just before and said “I can’t stand the pain anymore.” Kaete wanted to tell him that this wasn’t pain, this was just discomfort, but orders forbade him from revealing anything else.

There was one Human that the High Mage Leete had in his thoughts, but Kaete thought that maybe the High Mage had finally gone crazy. The Human was large sure, but that meant nothing when it came to magic.

There was no way these Earthlings would be able to use magic. They were an inferior species, suited more for the Order of the Falling Fist rather than the Winged Order.

***

Kohn sat on the bed once more, but this time he asked them to leave off the restraints. The soldiers looked at each other before moving on to the next person.

A few of his fellow humans from Earth asked him if he was crazy. The pain would be so great that more than a few would have clawed at themselves if their arms were free.

A weird guy in a robe came up to Kohn with a heavy scowl on his face. He had seen that face enough to know that this guy didn’t like the people from Earth, but he placed his hand on Kohn’s chest, left arm crossing over from his left side so that his hand rested on Kohn’s right shoulder.

Then there was the pain.

The burning sensation was back, but Kohn had a plan this time.

Within his own mind he imagined his own body. Every piece of skin, every muscle fiber, every vein and every bone. He imagined it overlaid with a blue energy and he willed the image, his body, to focus that energy to move through his body to rest within his stomach.

Before when Kohn had asked the mages how they felt when controlling magic in their bodies they had told him something about being able to control their own blood. For someone from Earth this idea was absurd, but Kohn had once willed himself to stay warm during a mountain climbing trip. He had lost his gear and he had nothing to warm himself up with so he kept walking.

At one point he thought he was done and would soon freeze to death, but then he had imagined a warm bowl of soup in his hands with a warm fire in front of him and heaters blowing on him from behind. And surprisingly he was able to keep walking, the cold not as cold as before. Then he was jogging and after a while he managed to run into the cabin at the base of the mountain. His entire body was blue, but he survived.

This time Kohn was trying to do the same thing. He gave an image to mana that had been infused into his entire body and with an image in his head he tried to circulate it into his core as he sat on his bed.

The pain disappeared pretty soon and he began to channel the mana in and out of his body, almost playing with it. Kohn was so happy that his image idea had worked that he experimented with it to see what he could do with the mana.

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He pushed it to his feet, but it started to make his itch feet.

He pushed it to his fingertips imagining it as a light source but when he opened his eyes there was nothing there and some of the mana had disappeared. He was left feeling a little emptier.

When he imagined pushing air molecules together a spark appeared! He wanted to do that again but a soldier came up from behind him and decked his head knocking Kohn out cold.

***

High Order Mage Leete wanted to oversee the Earthlings but unfortunately he was a very busy man. He was examining reports of the fleet’s expenditure and reviewing planned schedules when Prince StoneTooth called for him.

While sighing he left the unread reports on his Command Lectern and went to go see his Highness.

The Princes room looked very sparse and simple when you first looked at it. Little more than a few steps of walk space and then a high-backed chair on top of a raised pedestal. However, in front of that chair which the Prince sat upon was a series of displays that could show the Prince whatever was stored within the Fleet archives.

Leete had watched the Prince grow up from a little toddler, so despite the air of intimidation that the Prince always seemed to exude, Leete wasn’t nervous.

“Your Highness.”

“High Order Mage Leete,” To use his rank was the Princes way of telling Leete this would be an official visit “what is the status of the new recruits?”

A pinging sound echoed in his ears. To Leete it sounded like someone had rung a bell from his right and within his head at the same time. Someone was using a communication spell to contact him from across the ship.

“One moment your Highness.” Leete turned to the side before controlling his mana to receive the spell. The wispy image of a man wearing a robe with one shoulder pad armor appeared in front of Leete.

He saluted. “High Mage! You wanted to be informed about the progress of the Earthlings if anything changed.”

“What has happened?”

“High Mage, one of them was just now able to control the mana shared with him!”

Excitement filled both Leete and the Prince. This meant that the Earthlings could learn magic and would be valuable forces for them.

“That is good-“

“Pardon High Mage.”

“Carry on.”

“Yes High Mage. After being able to control the shared mana within his body he was immediately able to manipulate it to his extremities.”

“Oh! That is a lot of progress.”

“Yes, but after that he began to summon fire and one of the guards took it upon himself to render the man asleep.” The mage tried hard not to fidget but he had spent a few moments trying to come up with a better way to report this situation and had so far been unable to.

“If he was suddenly creating fire then he must not know the dangers of using such a spell while in a Dark Vessel. A spell was used to make him sleep?”

“Uh, no High Mage. One of the guards simply hit him over the head.”

Leete and the Prince took a moment to register that in their minds before they broke out into laughter. For the Prince it had been the first thing to break his mood in a while and he was so happy that tears actually fell down his face.

The mage in the image immediately became relieved that his superiors were laughing and not immediately calling for the guard to be punished.

Barely able to cull his laughter, Leete asked him which Human it was.

“The Earthling… Kohn, lesser-son”

“Lowson. It doesn’t mean the same thing to us.”

The mage stuttered a little when Leete corrected him on Earth names. “Uh, y-yes of course High Mage.”

“They have two names unlike us. The forename is like ours but their second names are their family name is used just as a last name.” Thinking about something he told the Prince of his conversation with Kohn back on his home planet. “When I spoke with him he told me the origin of his family name.”

“Oh? His family name has history? It must have been tied to something important.”

“Not at all!” Leete was already breaking into a smile. “His ancestor once had so many children that when it came to naming his son’s he refused to give them a name until they grew older and proved their worth. When the day finally passed where he would name Lowson’s ancestor, the son was taller than his father and so the father asked his son to crouch down. When the son came closer the father said ‘lower son’ but his followers heard ‘Lowson’!”

Leete grinned once more at the joke and the Prince chuckled at the story, but when they saw the mage in the spell desperately holding in his laughter they couldn’t hold it in. Their laughter echoed in the small room and when the mage couldn’t hold it in any more. When snot and tears started running down the man’s face the Prince laughed so hard that he rolled out of his chair.