“Magic!”

“Yes.”

“Gray! Magic!”

“I know.”

Why did this trip feel like bringing my kid to D*sn**l*nd?

The taxi had just dropped us off outside the city, in the coniferous woods surrounding the eastern border of the city.

The whole state was quite rural in nature, and you didn’t need to drive long before meeting forest and fields alike.

We were in a in-between here. In front of us was the beginning of the dark forest I did not know the name of, and behind were large fields of corn. At the center of this boundary, we stood, facing a beautiful house and a greenhouse.

I said the house was beautiful, but that was just a personal preference. It gave the feeling ghosts lived inside, and so most people would have said it was creepy, and maybe I would have too if it was night. Under the sun of the awakening spring, it was only peaceful to me. It seemed like a lived-in house and was an old building, but its condition was pristine.

Our teacher, well mainly Marie’s teacher, hadn’t asked us to visit her house though, and we walked towards the greenhouse.

Natasha had said our teacher would be young, but that was in comparison with other U magic teachers. Our teacher’s name was Illy, and she was, according to Natasha, a forty-year old-ish nature witch with a husband that worked at NASA.

If that wasn’t a killer duo, I didn’t know what was.

Marie had texted the middle-aged woman quite a lot since she had gotten her number, and the greenhouse was where we were expected to come.

“Is someone there?” I asked in my best horror story rendition, as we entered the opened glass door.

The inside was not as green as you would expect a greenhouse to be. It was actually very colorful, most of the flora inside were flowers with crazy color distribution, and even stranger plants. Some had the roots seemingly inverted out, others had Morningstar-like leaves, and one was quite large, had two legs and was giving us a big smile.

Wait no, the last one was a human being in a green dress, my bad. Her hair was disheveled, she was a bit on the heavy side, she had earth all over her face, and had very sharp hazel eyes.

“Welcome! Welcome, to my humble about!” She began, fumbling on her words. “Oh no. I meant to say to my humble abode. I’m so sorry.” She gave us a very worried look, like we were going to go away on the spot. “I’m so excited, no one wants to learn about nature magic anymore, and then new U babies. Just for me! Please don’t leave.”

I immediately liked the middle-aged woman a lot, but maybe not for good reasons. She was acting like a rabbit, and my stomach was rumbling.

Marie had heard the noise, and she cleared her throat, before giving the witch a nice, reassuring smile. “I’m not leaving before I’ve learned everything there is to know about nature magic, don’t be worried!”

“Oh, you’re Marie, right? So great! I’ve never had anyone so motivated to learn! And you’re Igris, right?”

I blinked a few times and looked down. Yup, I was in Igris’s body. “Yes, though…”

“Oh, yeah, you want to be called Gray, Marie told me that in her message, sorry, I forgot.”

“Don’t worry about it, we’re very happy you’ll teach us.”

“Oh, you want to use magic too? I thought…”

“I don’t think it’ll be good for me to try…” At her face crumbling in sadness in front of me, no warning could have stopped me from changing the end of my sentence with “…but once can’t hurt…right?” That last part was directed to the darkness within me.

IF YOU CREATE TOO MUCH CHAOS, IT BECOMES ORDER AGAIN.

The Beast actually answered me. It was already gone, and the sentence didn’t help me in any way, but it was something at least.

The witch had no idea of what was happening inside me, and just squeaked in joy. “Oh, thank you! Thank you! Come on then, join me.” She urged us with her hand to get closer.

Two small spaces had been made in the long rows of plants, though a leaf was still sticking out from a larger one and was poking my nose annoyingly.

“So, I’ll introduce myself, I’m Illy, or Mrs. Fenwood, it’s my husband’s name, and I like to be called Mrs. Fenwood, but I’d prefer you call me Illy. That’s how my friends call me, and I would love for us to become friends.

Her jovial attitude was hard to resist, and I cracked a smile. Marie had been smiling non-stop since we had arrived, so it was harder to say in her case.

“You can call me Marie, Illy.”

“And me Gray.”

We had said that already, but well, it was difficult not to introduce yourself once someone had done the same.

The witch made little happy movements with her fists. “Oh, I’ve dreamed about this so much! So, you’re here to learn about magic.”

Marie’s ears perked up. I grinned.

“There are many types of magic." The witch began immediately, maybe as excited as Marie was. "But there is also only one. Wait, that’s confusing. I mean the energy is the same for everyone, but the techniques to gather it are endless.”

“Energy?”

“Yes. If you’ll stay for dinner, you’ll ask my husband, he’s way more knowledgeable about it than I am, but he believes magic is coming from another dimension.”

“Cool! Sci-fi and fantasy mixed into one!” Marie was already fangirling. I simply waited for the exciting stuff to happen.

“Basically, you can only use your own magic, but everything has only very little magic in it, the human body being no exception to the rule.”

“No genetics involved?” Marie asked.

“Unfortunately, nothing is equal in this world. But in magic quantity, even if you had three times as much as someone else, it still wouldn’t be enough to do... this.”

She opened her palms, and inside, a tiny water droplet emerged, then grew bigger and bigger, until it was the size of a baseball. She made it hover over a plant, then the water fell down on it.

“Gray! Gray! It's magic!” Said the little girl who had stolen my girlfriend's place.

I wasn’t going to ruin the moment by saying it would have been faster to use a watering can.

“Isn’t it fun!” Illy said to us cheerfully. “But that’s a really basic spell, usually only used for training. That’s why it will be the one I teach you first.”

“But we can’t do it, because we don’t have enough magic?”

“Exactly. That’s where the real individual differences take part. Your ability to harness magic from external sources. Interestingly, actions, more than living things, create the best magic source. As I get my magic from growing plants and brewing potions…”

“Potions!”

“…I am called a nature witch. Or a plant demon. If you’re a sixteenth-century inquisitor.”

“I’ve forgotten to tell you about that.” I joked.

“What?”

“That I’m a sixteenth-century inquisitor.”

“Ah, Oh!” She started laughing. “It’s so rare for someone to joke about that in the U, it feels good to have people so simple. Oh, I didn’t mean simple in a bad way, I meant…”

I laughed wholeheartedly myself. “I’ve got it, don’t worry.”

“So, where was I…”

I stopped listening for a second, just to check if Marie was still breathing or if she was just staying still and being too overly excited to do anything else.

I gave her a look, and she turned around to face me, a giant smile on her face.

“Magic!” She said for the two-millionth time.

Still alive.

“…so you need to gather energy through a magic-creating action, and transfer it inside yourself.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” I remembered some of the effects magic had on the human body, as Natasha had explained to us before.

“Yes and no. Magic in and of itself is perfectly safe. We can stock as much as we want inside our body, our capacity is almost endless. What’s dangerous is the process of gathering it. Once magic is inside you, not moving, it’s safe. But when you’re pulling it inside, that’s where if you go too fast, bad things happen.”

“Is that why demonologists get their brain fried?”

She was initially frozen in place at my intervention, but quickly recovered.

“Oh, no, demonologists are very bad, did you meet one?”

“No, nothing like that.” We had met way worse.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Good. And to answer your question, yes. Demonologists open a constant pathway through the magic dimension, or hell, as you would call it if you were…”

“…a fifteenth-century inquisitor.” I finished in her stead.

“Hahaha, no silly. Sixteenth, during the fifteenth they would have called it…wait a minute I forgot…”

“That’s not important right now! I want to learn magic!” Marie was almost having tantrums now. Would I need to change her diapers soon?

“Yes, of course. So, we’ll be using my plants here. You have to draw this sign here.” She turned around and pulled out an old book from a library hidden underneath roses I hadn’t spotted before.

She put the book in front of us on the makeshift desk, and pulled out a pen, darkish ink, and paper made from a strange material.

“The paper, I make myself out of the plants here, and the sigil you’ll need to copy is very old. Given to me by my mother, who was given it by her mother, and so forth for fifteen generations.” She flipped through the large book. It was extremely old, the simple leather covering it completely discolored, as you would guess, but had no dust like in the movies. Probably because it was used all the time.

“That’s where your innate ability counts. Sometimes, people can draw the sigil perfectly, and have no result, and sometimes, a botched attempt gives great results.” She gave Marie and me a very hopeful, yet frightened look.

The sigil was a simple circle, with straight lines going towards a flowery pictogram at its center.

“I won’t bother you with the meaning of the sigil right now, just know it’s different depending on the way you want to extract magic. Natasha, for example, would need to draw a different one, preferably with blood, on soft skin, and then have sex with the person she drew it on.”

The word sex coming from this innocent-looking and acting nature witch bothered me slightly, but then I realized she and Natasha had almost the same age and were most likely friends. Marie had told me, you had to fuck Natasha to be friends with her, so I needed to change my opinion of the nature witch.

I now imagined the woman as sweet and loving, but with sexy leather underwear in her drawers.

I realized I had done nothing for thirty seconds, and Marie had almost finished her drawing.

“Is everything alright, Gray?” Illy asked me.

I blinked myself out of my reverie.

“Yup, no problems, I’ll just wait to see how it goes for Marie first.”

“Of course.”

“Almost…Done!” Marie exclaimed.

“Let me see.” The teacher came closer to my girlfriend. “Yes, very good. I’ve got a good feeling about it.

“What’s next?” Marie said excitedly.

“You have to put it on your heart, just slip it under your clothes, sigil on the skin, and think of a flower that grows here. Just look at it and picture it in your mind. Only one though! That’s very important. You’ve never pulled magic in before, so your magic…” She hesitated on the next word. “Ermmm… tube? Conduit! Your magic conduit is small. If you break it, moving magic will spill into your body, and it’ll be very bad.”

Great, life-threatening risks, here we come. “Marie?” I asked her even though the answer was obvious.

“I’ll be fine! Don’t worry. One plant. Pick one for me Gray.”

I looked at the teacher, raising an eyebrow.

“That’s no problem at all.” She answered my unasked question.

I pointed my finger at the strange plant in front of me, the one with the inverted roots.

“That’s no flower.” Marie noted.

“It’s perfect. The Ungodly One has a very scary name, but it’s perfect, as it’s edible, and grows slowly, so pulling from it gives little magic content.” The teacher approved.

“Here goes.” Marie said, as she slipped her paper beneath her clothes.

Nothing happened at first, then the plant…shifted?

Yes, it moved slowly. Was it…wilting? It was my enhanced senses which let me see it, as the shift was so microscopic, it wouldn’t be noticed by a normal human being.

“Perfect, perfect!” Illy said. “You can stop now, or the plant will stop growing in the future.”

Marie removed the paper. “I don’t really feel…” The paper in her hand just scrunched up unnaturally, and the sigil disappeared. “Cool.”

“I hope that doesn’t happen with the sigils drawn on humans.” I noted, seeing the crunched paper.

Illy laughed. “It does. But with the same strength, so it just feels like a tickle to the human skin.”

“Oh, good.” I answered before realizing that my teacher’s sentence meant that she had most likely experienced it firsthand.

New revision needed, maybe she had a sex dungeon inside her house?

“Your turn.” She urged me to draw.

A bit anxious, I began reproducing the form on the book on my plant paper. Well, I corrected myself, all paper was plant paper, but this one was from another plant.

A few strokes was all it took.

“Wow, that is…elegant.” She said.

“Show off. She’s a painter, no fair.”

“I’m slightly less hopeful, actually…” Illy said with a very sad expression.

“Oh?” Marie asked.

“Let’s just try. Gray?”

“Yup.” I did the same thing that Marie did, and put the sigil on my chest in front of my heart. It was beating slowly, unmoved by my mental anxiety.

“This.” Marie pointed at what looked like a small palm tree.

“Usually people pick flower, you both seem to prefer sturdiness over exterior beauty. It’s good, very good. Those plants aren’t hurt much by the ritual.” The teacher noted.

“We hurt the plants?” Marie asked.

“Well…” She seemed bothered, for an instant. “We’re taking from the energy of growing, so if you take too much, they’ll just stop growing.”

“Won’t they wilt?”

“No, that’s a very different branch of magic.” That was a lie. But Illy wouldn’t say more about that subject, as she changed it almost immediately:“Gray? Are you concentrating?”

“Yup.” I pictured the small palm tree in my head. The lie would wait for now.

The palm tree did not move.

“Could you remove the sigil from your chest, please?”

“Sure.”

As I did, the paper in my hand did…nothing.

The sigil was still there.

“As I feared.”

“What happened?”

“Gray here just isn’t lucky, she’s not attuned with nature magic at all, she’ll have to try other rituals to gain magic.”

“What?” Marie exclaimed. “But it makes no sense she’s a wo…”

I coughed very loudly.

“…wonderful ecologist!” My girlfriend finished.

“It doesn’t matter, it’s just how it is. I can still teach you the spell I showed you, though. It will only be a small droplet for Gray, but she’ll be able to use it.”

“Isn’t it bad if I use all my magic like that?”

“No, you can’t be depleted of your inner magic.”

“Wasn’t this energy? How can you not deplete it?” Marie asked.

Illy scratched her head. “I can’t explain that part to you, it’s my husband’s theory. What I know is that external magic that you make into your own is like fuel, once you use it, it’s gone. But your inner magic never changes, from birth till death.”

“And your husband has a scientific theory about how it can be like that?”

“Yes. He’s very smart.”

If he were at NASA, like Natasha told us, he would be, that’s for sure.

Illy clapped her hands. “Let’s start. Give me your hands.”

I went to stand next to Marie and gave my hand to the nature witch. Marie did the same.

“It’s super easy when someone shows you the way, look.” Illy said.

I felt something move inside our teacher, or more like appear then move, it felt weird. Not a smell, not a sound, nothing we could register with our five senses. Still, it existed, and we could feel it.

“Epic.” Marie said out loud.

I had to admit, it was pretty cool.

“See what I do with this, now.” The thing changed, and something in my brain suddenly unlocked.

In front of Illy’s face, a ball of water was floating.

She let go of our hands, and it fell on the ground.

“Your turn now!”

“I’ve got this!” Marie shouted. Even though I wasn’t touching her, I had the same feeling as with Illy. Something inside my girlfriend popped up.

“Erm…what then?” Marie asked out loud.

“You have to use your head and picture what you want to do with the energy. Right now, you can only do the one thing I taught you, so just find it inside your brain.”

Marie had a pensive look for a while, then: “Does it have to be a picture?”

“No. Not at all, but it’s really rare…” Illy began.

I felt the energy morph, recognized the feeling inside my own brain, and Marie was now faced with a floating ball of water.

“OH MY GOD GRAY LOOK!”

My ears for heaven’s sake! I gave her an annoyed look; she didn’t care one bit.

After a few seconds of Marie happily playing with her small ball of water, it began falling on the ground in slow motion. “Oh…” She said with heart-breaking sadness, as her magic fell apart.

“Hey look, there is still some there.” I pointed at the little droplet in the sky.

“Yes, that’s your inner magic, the rest was used up. The plant and sigil couldn’t give you much, only for a simple spell, after all. Gray, your turn.” Illy explained before turning towards me.

“Ok…”

“You’ve got this Gray!” Marie had stopped her own spell, and was encouraging me.

“I’m only going to get the droplet experience anyway; I’m not having much hope.”

“Anything can use magic once they’ve been taught how to. I’ve taught it to you, so now you can use it.” Illy encouraged me as well.

“Here goes…” I repeated Marie’s words.

I tried making the energy appear.

“Hey, that’s funny, I can sense Gray’s magic even though I’m not touching her, is that normal?” Marie said out loud.

“Oh.” Illy was now blushing.

“Oh no.” I guessed the following sentence.

“That’s rather private Marie.” Our magic teacher answered.

“Erm, why?” My girlfriend asked.

“That effect is called the body fusing effect, and only happens for a few hours after sex.”

Marie’s blush came in a deep shade of merlot red.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got nothing against gay people…”

Well yeah, she knew Natasha, so she probably didn’t have any problems with anything sexual, really. You deviant, dungeon filled with sex toys middle-aged married woman. Wait, maybe she was even a mother? She felt like a mom, really, but it was none of my business.

“Let’s skip that. Can you use the magic, Gray?” Illy asked.

I concentrated again. I felt the sliver of energy in my core, but it felt…partial.

“Dunno, I’m trying but…” The energy began popping up as I said that.

“Wow.” Marie weirdly said.

“What is it?” I asked.

“You’re shiny.”

“Shiny?” I asked absentmindedly, as I was focusing on the image of a bubble of water in front of me.

“Shiny?” Repeated Illy as well. Before repeating louder “SHINY?”

Something deep down laughed.

Oh no.

In front of me, a pool of water suddenly stormed out of nowhere, making me completely lose my focus. I was instantly submerged inside the flood, as were Marie and Illy. The spell instantly stopped, but the whole greenhouse was already flooded. Water burst out of the single door but miraculously the glass panels didn’t break. The water took its sweet time to surge out of the greenhouse, and finally, I found myself on the earthy, now muddy ground, a few meters away from my initial location.

“Is everyone ok?” I asked loudly.

As Marie was laughing, I had an answer, and Illy moved closer to me, a worried look on her face.

She was perfectly dry.

“Gray?”

“Yup.”

“Did you lie? Have you done rituals before?”

“Nope.”

“Oh. I see. Well, that’s a problem.”

“I’m a Conscient, though.” I tried to give her an explanation to the phenomenon.

“I know, but that doesn’t come into play here. Not according to what I’ve read, at least.”

“I’m sorry about your greenhouse.”

“Don’t fret.” She gave me a reassuring look. “The walls may be glass, but I warded them long ago, I need to check the plants to stop them from drowning, though.” As she said that, she moved towards a fallen lotus flower “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.” She whispered as she put it back into its bowl.

I got back up in a splish splash sound, and saw Marie come towards me, still laughing.

“That was so…magical! You’ve made my day Gray!”

“Not jealous?”

“About what? You failed, extraordinarily so. But it was great, nonetheless.”

I smirked.

She wasn’t looking at us but Illy interjected, mostly still talking to herself: “I wouldn’t say it was a failure, but the magic involved is unnatural. Maybe a curse…only an old god would be able to handle such power, and to put it on a curse? Makes no sense.”

I winced.

“Do you think it's…?” I began.

Marie denied it, shaking her head, then whispered to me. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand Arte, but on this specific point, I’m pretty sure of myself. She’d definitely do that, just to have a laugh, but then she would have gotten out of her bush by now.”

I agreed with Marie, being sneaky didn't seem like Astarte's type of action.

“Do you have an idea what happened?” I asked our magic teacher.

“Mhh, wha? Oh, I don’t know. I’ll ask around. It’s really strange though, as even if you were a demonologist and had immense magic flowing constantly through you, the spell wouldn’t have gotten bigger than what you pictured it should be.”

“Great. Another mystery surrounding me.”

“At this point, one more, one less, who cares anymore?” Marie added.

“Is that supposed to help?”

“Nope. It is funny though.”

“Meany.”

“Ow. I’m so hurt.” She gave me a sarcastic look.

I growled.

Her face changed immediately, and I gave her a wolfish smile.

“You…” She began pouting.

“I’m sorry about the lesson, I’ll have to stay here for a few hours, we can continue afterward if you want.” Illy said, unconcerned by the noises behind her.

“I can’t do that, Illy, I need to fix what I’ve done.” I answered.

“It’s my responsibility as a teacher.”

“I don’t believe it is, let me help.”

She finally turned around to face us. “That’s really sweet of you. If you really want to, you can take this bucket here and a sponge, and try to remove the excess amounts of water, and put the plants back on their roots. Don’t touch the flowers though. Some are poisonous. Let me handle those. Oh, but before anything else.” She moved her hands in the air.

Warm air vented around us in a frenzy. The flow was unnatural, finding the entrance of our clothes to flow all around and inside. In a few seconds, we were both dry.

Marie had an enormous grin. “That’s useful!”

“I’ll teach it to you then. Do you want to wait inside my house, Marie? My daughter will be back in an hour or so, but you can take anything you want and rest a bit.”

“Oh, no, no. I’ll help you clean as well.”

“But you…”

“I’m just too excited to continue to learn, the faster everything is cleaned up, the happier I will be.”

“That’s so nice of you! If only Rose was so…anyway. Thanks to you both. Marie, you can help Gray then.”

Marie and I nodded and began sponging away the remnants of my disastrous spell.