Going back to the classroom with Vartol, Salia, and the rest was more enlightening that I expected. I really hadn't understood the degree to which I'd been using magic "seat of the pants" with just native ability and intent, rather than understanding. Here, magic and combat were taught like basic science and economics were treated back on Earth. The world of Atlan was a dangerous place and the human cities were under constant siege. The inner cities rarely actually saw combat, but that was only due to the depth of the outer defenses.

Today, for example, they were reviewing basic natural magical defense - with actual practical demonstrations. The first layer, the body itself, was what everyone in class was most familiar with, and what they had been taught to strengthen practically from birth - anything that penetrated the skin had to contend with that person's vitality and force of will in order to manifest any unwanted magical effect.

A fireball, for example, would be painful upon contact, but couldn't cause more than a second degree burn without overcoming a person's inner defense to a substantial degree - and only a first degree burn if that inner defense was prepared and powerful. The second layer, the outer "dead" skin, hair, and fingernails, was considered "advanced" and was very weakly defended by most young people.

The third layer, the inner aura, was what most of the students were now working on, making a reactive and versatile shield and sense organ to keep anything harmful from coming into contact with the body at all, and it was also used to manifest basic magic abilities. It surrounded a person out to a foot or two, though it could be expanded or contracted quite a lot with intent and practice. This was considered "personal space", and it was rude to stay within that range of another person without some form of friendship or personal relationship.

Next was the "auric sheath", that you could think of as an outer "cell wall" of the inner aura. Developing this was considered an intermediate-level skill and most in class were still struggling with the basics of being aware of it, but it was considered the best layer to use as primary defense for those qualified to go out into the wilds between cities. The teacher gave the class a couple minutes to try to penetrate hers - I let Liam try it without help and he failed just like the other students. I could, however, tell that the demonstration used up about half the teacher's available magic.

The final layer, magical awareness, was where all major magic senses and ranged effects came from, and was developed starting at level two and expected to grow more powerful in all respects with age and practice. My own senses expanded easily into that range, but creating and controlling effects there was rather disorienting for me at this point - things just moved too fast for me. All my Earth "experience" in such matters had been sitting or laying down, deep in meditation. Not the same at all as being alert, aware, moving around, and possibly even under attack.

This all brought up the question in my mind of how I had been able to handle Vartol so easily, since his inner defense should have at least caused some serious resistance. Part of it, certainly, was that I'd been it direct contact with him, and part was that he and Liam had some degree of friendship relationship, that weakened automatic defensive response, but something else was also going on that I'd have to investigate later.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

It was the inner aura region where my own ability seemed most overpowered, also my long-range senses were decades advanced from what they should have been - but both of these were only very slowly being transferred to Liam. I had to take an active role to do anything more than just keep Liam "fully energized".

The other thing school forcefully reminded me of was that this was NOT Earth, or even anything resembling Earth - even the words on the pages didn't resemble anything any culture on Earth would have called "writing". It was only my synchronization with Liam's brain that made any of it comprehensible, and I had been missing the fact that many of the concepts I was taking in that way didn't match the Earth ones I was trying to use to process things.

I literally COULD NOT write in English. At first, I thought it was just that Liam's brain didn't have the coordination pathways to make the words and letters. But when I tried to just DRAW the alphabet, I found that I didn't know it! My "concepts" of "ABCs" were still in my mind, but the exact forms were just that, vague concepts. Over time, I could probably reconstruct basic, elementary-school English letters and language from my memories of forms (knowing what A-frames are, for example), sounds, and structure, but I wasn't sure it was worth doing. I guess we depend more on those actual meat brains that I had realized - because I somehow simply hadn't noticed until I rubbed my nose in it.

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Liam:

School felt strange, even though most of it was simply review of subjects I already knew well. My spirit was trying to take it all in, and not doing so nearly as well as he expected, I could tell. Also, he was taking partial control of my hand and making odd shapes with my dual-quill on my note-parchment. I could feel a deep sense of loss from him as various shapes were shakily drawn.

I don't think he even knew the distinction between the direction-quill and the inflection-quill unless he fully synched with me while doing the scribing, let alone how to balance the flow between the two

That, I thought, was the key to his power - he simply thought in an entirely different manner, including the very basics of what magic was and could do. And, if the dreams were at all accurate, he came from a SAFE world - where only fellow humans were ever considered a serious threat. That was hard for me to imagine. Safe and no magic in daily life? What did they DO with themselves, and how did they impose their will on nature to make all those grand dream structures with only weak bodies as a starting point?

Somehow, he could find and process spirit energy directly into primal magic - from nothing, seemingly! And I was benefitting - he was giving me more energy each day, as he refined and grew the magic infrastructure within both my physical and astral forms. That premature work on the astral had me very concerned, though - now that I was becoming aware he DIDN'T really know what he was doing.

In our world, the astral was a place of monsters, and the more active we were there, the more likely we would draw attention - to play played with, toyed with, tormented, warped, or even killed. But we also needed it, because basic life-energy flowed in from the astral and we couldn't exist without it.

Standard doctrine was to just maintain the absolute minimum astral form to feed and strengthen ourselves until we could fully access our magic, and then to develop it slowly and "quietly" as we gained skill and power in our magical affinities - hoping to be ready for when we would eventually attract attention.

My spirit was going to get me noticed - I was sure of it. The question was - could he handle the attention when it arrived? And could I do anything about it?