Ok, I saw this coming - but how could I resist the temptation: FLYING!!
Not that impressing Salia was a bad thing either, with her sleek form and wind-sculpted hair causing Liam's pulse to race.
Salia led Liam over to the sandbox, since windblown sand made it easy to see the air movements, and she created a kind of dust-devil around them - then told Liam to try to disrupt it. For the next 20 minutes, Salia kept getting itchy sand all over Liam's sensitive spots as he tried (and failed) to return the favor. But by the half hour mark, Salia was feeling a bit drained and Liam wasn't - AND he had been making progress in his control. i.e. he finally got sand in her ear!
Salia: Okay Liam, break time! Was that all just you, or did your spirit start helping you there at the end?
Liam: Just me, but my spirit likes to always keep my energy topped off, so I can keep practicing until I get it right.
Salia: What would happen if he took an active part?
It was at THAT point I gave in to temptation, dipped into Gravity magic, and made Liam weightless - which disoriented him and he started tumbling in midair.
Salia: I guess that answers my question! But is he always listening? That seems a bit creepy.
Liam (slowly regaining his balance in midair): I thought it would be too, at first, but somehow it just never feels intrusive - and I don't really know why. Often it feels like he's not there at all, until something comes up that attracts or needs his attention or help. When it does, he's like 100% supportive and reliable.
Salia: So, I see he's got you off the ground, and without even using any wind - do you think you can fly with me?
Liam: I don't see why not - he won't just let me fall, I'm sure of that.
And so it went - the young couple flitted slowly through the acrobatics course. Not really what it was intended for, but excellent practice for both of them. Then Salia landed and used her winds to push just Liam through the course at double the speed!
Salia: You make a great practice dummy!
Somehow I managed to refrain from trying out Inertial magic and letting her bat Liam around like a ping-pong ball.
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Undersecretary Lonea of the University was starting to regret her greed. They wanted HER along on the "acquisition". Yes, they phrased it as a request, but they hadn't given her the promised payout yet - a bad sign. With a sigh, she sent her agreement, but that she needed the funds upfront for preparations and to provide a good cover story for her absence. Cursing to herself - she should have expected it. Of course a good Mind talent would be needed to get anything useful out of the kid, and they weren't common.
They would be leaving in 3 days, and the trip was expected to take two. Lonea had never been involved with this side of the Cartel before, but was carefully scanning all her contacts for further information now that she was being trapped into it. She quickly found that they had little to no concept of "mercy", and that "primordial magic", to these people, meant "immortality fuel" - it was the only known aspect that could actually REVERSE aging.
Either way she chose, Lonea had a trip to plan - either to kidnap a young man or to try to flee a well-connected Cartel.
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Liam:
The spirit did a great job - even if I took a few falls for it. Salia was acting as a true friend again, and I could tell she felt guilty for her earlier withdrawal. I wasn't so sure about letting my body energy go like this, though - I think he's getting way too far ahead of himself. I was always taught that the body should be "iron-solid" before channels and chakras were installed. But at least, after a bit of research, I knew that was what he was doing to me. I suspected he was doing it to my astral form as well - which was even further advanced. Only Grandmasters were supposed to fully develop the astral, because any premature loosening of it from the physical body would make it easy prey for creatures from the Old World.
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A pulse of curiosity from my spirit prompted me, as I had that thought - did he really not know all about the Old World? Another pulse.
Ok, then, I started carefully going over Ancient History in my mind for him.
Life had started over 2 billion years ago, the Primordial Era, in the dark, poisonous seas of that time. Wave after wave of single-celled life had then been awash in pure magic, feeding into their only "desire" - to survive and reproduce. And each type tried to do so at the expense of all the others.
In time, most of the magic was taken in to one or another of the elemental forms - taking it away from those not adapted to use that aspect. But it was all done crudely and instinctually, creating huge amounts of chaos. Meanwhile, some of the life forms found ways to either cooperate and grow - starting multi-cellular life, or to control others, starting parasitic life.
Operating only in the realms of feelings and desires, the astral forms of these primitive beings fed endlessly and grew monstrous. Little is known of this period. We know that when air was dominate, it tried to destroy other life by creating the potent poison oxygen. At other points, frost reigned supreme and tried to wipe out the others by freezing all Atlan. Earth and fire sometimes fought and sometimes worked in conjunction with each other to raise mountains or move continents, as water tried to erode everything back into the sea.
But then the real horrors came along - the Goo creatures had the first real awareness, if one could call it that, but then came Plants, with the ability to gather solar energy and light magic, slowing winning control for millions of years, but sometimes at war with fungi and lichen that were learning to feast on their stores of light mana. But the Goo also survived and evolved via chaos magic, until some kind of great conflict finally drove them (and most of the elementals that remained from before) into the Underdark.
And so it was for many of millions of years - new forces would evolve, but the forces of Light would eventually win out and cast them also into the Underdark. But still, despite near-godly power, they had no true intellect. That first appeared with the insects, and the souls of their hive-minds. These, history says, were what locked away the Underdark from the surface world forever - on the physical side, at least.
After that, Atlan belonged to the plants and animals, and the warfare of evolution as we know it began. But sometimes volcanic or meteoric events would awaken the Old Ones, and their great astral forms would come out to try to dominate the surface once again. But they were simply too old, and the forms they forced life into were not viable in the modern world - which remains the case even today.
How the draconics overcame the insectoid is not recorded, but they managed it somehow, creating another layer of Underdark over the first.
Then there was the draconic era that lasted up until 60 million years ago when their power structures and civilizations were wiped out by a huge meteor, throwing them into crippling wars of extermination and allowing mammals to emerge from the shadows. Finally, humans progressed enough to learn to use devices found in the ancient draconic ruins and make long-term settlements rather than hiding like apes in the caverns under the old reptilian cities.
Or so the storybooks told us - research was ongoing. And no, spirit, we DON'T really know what the "Underdark" is, and we're afraid to find out!
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Okay, then - move exploration of the astral here onto the back burner. While I don't think they could harm me, there was no point in risking wide-scale disaster by provoking things I didn't understand. The other big point was that, unlike the dinosaurs, the draconics were not GONE, even though their civilizations were. Those that remained respected some sort of balance of power, and it seemed that human use of some of their old "technology" fell within their bargain as "neutral ground" - so they didn't outright destroy human cities unless seriously provoked.
The ancient insects were another story - whenever they managed a breakout, all was pure death and destruction until it was contained. Fortunately, this almost never happened. What DID happen was they might sometimes "empower" a present-day insect colony, creating a doom-hive that would go on a rampage. And they stalked dreams.
With history in mind, then, it was time to start getting Liam into shape, and then try to get myself a handle on super-speed in both thought and movement. Right now, anything powerful could just kill him before I could even react. I also needed to learn the basics of enchantment, so that I could set triggers to deal with those first moments of surprise.
And I was certain surprises were coming.