Liam:
The girls were laughing at me again, and each day there was more derision and less playfulness in their amusement. Easy for them to laugh, since well over 90% of girls got their magic along with their first period - "the magic of life-giving" they liked to call it. We boys had to do it the hard way, or "cheat" with a willing girl (likely getting both sent to exile). Adult relations were strictly forbidden until both parties had at least 2nd level magical competence certification.
The girls, of course, loved to taunt us with their tricks and talents - especially those of us who were slow to come into our own magic. Even Salia, my childhood playmate and co-troublemaker in youthful adventures, was starting to ignore me after trying for months to help guide me by showing off how her own magic worked. She was an air mage, and could already fly (very slowly) and control the winds for yards around her. She literally ran with the wind at her back, which was handy in all kinds of sports, and I missed the days of a year ago when she would run alongside me and share the winds.
According to my teachers, I simply didn't have the talent for magical energy. I would either have to find it within myself, or attempt to summon a spirit guide. Having failed at the first, I was now headed for the summoning ceremony.
Spirit guides were tricky things, at best they would be lifelong friends and companions, at worst they could steal your body and evict your soul - if you lost the battle of wills. All of that was the reason I'd had to request a formal summoning ceremony with talented magi to guard against possession by the forces of chaos or the demonic realms. Fortunately, I was told that I had a fairly "light" soul bias and would be unlikely to attract anything too evil, when I had my pre-summoning interview.
Arriving at the central cathedral, my parents and student guide were already waiting for me. Dad sent me a quick "victory salute" and Mom blew me a kiss. My guide, Merlo, introduced me to an impressive-looking couple who were to be my protection magi. Amber was a tiny, dark-haired women with a yellow complexion, while Neltor was a somewhat large, heavily built dark-skinned many with striking green eyes. Either one would have no trouble at all intimidating ME if they so chose - I hoped it was the same for any spirit with fel intentions.
Of course, there was only so much protection they could provide, since the whole point of the ritual was to throw my mind so wide open that a helpful and powerful spirit could form a connection with my soul. They did cast a screening shield that should at least tell them the power level of whatever entity came through, and another to monitor MY soul so that they could try to rescue me if I were to come under attack.
Everything in place, I drank the potion (a sedative/hallucinogen mixture to open and relax the mind) and tried to calm and open myself - trying to form a mental construct of what I sought - a powerful, helpful creature of magic that could connect me to the upper realms that I could not reach on my own.
As my mind floated in cozy darkness, I cast out my search, drawing the attention of various entities. I had a sense of being looked over, judged...and found wanting. Then something strange happened - I snapped back into my body, fully alert and aware, feeling warm and empowered far beyond anything I had experienced before. And then I passed out.
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Neltor: Did you feel that, Amber? Nothing registered on the shield, but his vitals spiked and his body had a momentary level 3 empowerment.
Amber: Is he OK? I was mostly focused on the shield and his internal outburst caught me by surprise. He could never survive a level 3 burst of any duration.
Neltor: It didn't seem like an attack. It was more like he just suddenly overflowed with energy and blew out all his stops. It ended almost instantly, but knocked him out cold. The strange part is that nothing from outside showed up at all - it was more like part of his own soul burst. And he registers as a mage now - just barely, but there is a steady connection to magic that wasn't there before.
Amber: I'm not seeing any signs of a soul besides his own, but I do think his ident changed slightly - double-check his ident crystal.
Neltor: It's still a match, but there is a slight set of background complexity that wasn't there before. I'm going to put it down as a soul-burst mana connection. Instead of summoning a spirit, he somehow blew away a small piece of his natural mana blockage - enough to let him use magic, hopefully. We'll have to see how it goes when he wakes up.
Amber: Either way, I don't see any sign of an ongoing threat, so we can release him to family care for now. Soul-burst is only dangerous to oneself, after all. I hope his friends and family warn him away from perusing it any further - most soul-bursters die of self-immolation. He can have good life as a level 1 mage from the bit he just opened.
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Well, THAT was certainly an interesting conversation, I thought. And a great cover story as well. It was too bad I'd knocked Liam for such a loop. When I got here and felt I was supposed to provide magical power, I just DID - all my years of trying the same thing in the VERY, VERY low magic environment on Earth seemed to translate to incredible power here.
Liam hadn't had any way to handle it, and I was still too disoriented to do anything but cut the flow ASAP. I could still feel the potential, right there "in the palm of my nonexistent hand", ready to use. Fortunately, I still had my astral senses, as well as a shadow of Liam's passive physical ones, which had let me follow the conversation.
All I could do for now was to tamp down the magic to a bare minimum so Liam could recover. It was going to be a pain to get him adapted to anything serious, I could already tell. And me too, for that matter, as I had the exact opposite problem - too much power to control...it would be SO easy to let more in....
But if I understood correctly, that would turn Liam's body to plasma and make me just a free-floating ghost again, probably with lots of local company.
Liam:
It felt like I had exploded, so I was very pleasantly surprised to wake pain-free - with surging vitality in every part of my body, in fact - including the embarrassing kind. Being hard as a rock as a patient in a recovery room just wasn't normal, but it was a bit magical in its own way, I admitted. And I could feel the magic infusing me, even though it was nothing compared to the tsunami that had knocked me out.
Still, I knew the drill. This would be the spirit's magic, not mine. Eventually I could learn to store and control it, but I would always depend on the spirit to generate it, according to the textbooks.
But why had they released me, if such a powerful spirit had attached itself to me? According to doctrine, they should have waited until I woke and helped me establish a relationship with the spirit, while identifying it's true nature and power level. As I thought this, very tiny pulses of mana pulsed through me, gently - somehow feeling like a mystical laugh. Then the magical feeling faded away, with only the tiniest trickle remaining. Feeling "normal" once again, I got up from my bed and went to tell my parents that I was OK.