"Alright, here's what you need to do." Trix was directing Ciara and me in an exciting new exercise. "First thing, you'll want to be in physical contact. It's not required, but it helps you focus. Second, you need to have a clear image of what it is you want to do with your Tandem Magic. This should be the easiest part for you two, as you have telepathic communication. You should be able to get across a full idea with that, and that makes the discussion much faster. Third, and most importantly, you need to put in an equal amount of mana each, being uneven could cause backlash to the weaker one. You two ready to try it?"
"Yes, I think we are, Trix. Should we get further away from our camp?" I was a little worried about the last point, but I was sure we would be in sync. I trusted Ciara fully, and she trusted me.
"Let's do this, Amara." Ciara grabbed my hands and stood facing me.
'What do we want to try? We have every aspect at our disposal. Should we do something destructive, or creative?' Ciara and I began brainstorming ideas for the spell we wanted to create.
'I would prefer if it were creative, I don't like to destroy things very much. I know that's what your magic is best at right now, but I know it can be so much more. Let's make something unbelievable, you and me.' Ciara was getting a crazy idea in her head, and I couldn't say I didn't like it.
We began throwing ideas back and forth, trying to create something perfect between us. It was a unique challenge, but it was something that would define the beginning of our relationship.
'We'll make something together again once I begin forging your sword, I already had a similar idea to this when we met. But for now, let's make something that isn't a weapon. Maybe something to protect you in my stead. I think that would be ideal.' I settled on a perfect idea, now we had to figure out how to actually make it.
'Light magic is good for healing, and so is water. Maybe mixing them would make it more potent?' Ciara suggested one potential mix of aspects.
'There may be a way to incorporate dark into my earth and cause the resulting spell to absorb mana from the air and repair itself?' I wanted this to always be with her, so I needed to find a way for it to never break.
'If that's the case, maybe add in air and fire to make it more efficient at absorbing and breaking down the ambient mana to something the spell can use better? I think we may be onto something here.' Ciara's thoughts were getting increasingly giddy about the final result, and I felt the same way. 'Is there anything else we can do with our aspects to make it better?'
'Possibly, we could try to form an advanced aspect from our separate aspects, like metal from fire and earth, but one we can only use together? Any ideas for one?' We were using a lot of our brainpower, and a good amount of time, to work on this.
'Is there some aspect between light and dark we could try to create? I've never heard of one, but that may be because it's a very rare combination to have in a single person, or even two people.' Ciara brought up a great point, another amazing idea that we had to try.
'We'll never know until we try. I get the feeling that this compound aspect will be powerful, so let's use it as the core of the spell. Is there anything else we need to think of before we start casting?' I tried to cover all our bases, and Ciara couldn't think of anything else either. So we began casting.
As it was the core, the first thing we did was try to channel and fuse our dark and light mana into something greater.
"Wait, what are they doing? That seems pretty dangerous." Ms. Jasmine was worrying herself, asking Trix questions at every change.
"I've never actually seen Tandem magic done in person before, but it looks amazing. I wonder what they're doing? Can't wait to find out."
We tried to bring ourselves into sync, using the same amount of mana each, we put our foreheads together and closed our eyes. After a few minutes, our light and dark mana started merging, changing, and condensing. It began to pulse, and heat up, changing forms and colors. There was a sudden burst of power as the fusion was completed, and energy started radiating from it.
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It looked like we took a slice of the night sky and brought it between us. It was purplish, and speckled with colorful lights. I could sense that it was more powerful than I expected it to be. But now that we had made this starry core, it was time to form the rest.
Around the core, earth and fire mana merged together, being reinforced by light and air mana. Water mana merged with light above the core, while dark and fire mixed below. A funnel of mana was created above us, and the world around us started to lose some of its color as its mana was drawn into our spell.
"I don't know if it's supposed to do that, but we should get further away. They're drawing in a crazy amount of the ambient mana, and we don't want to get drained along with it." Trix stood up and grabbed Ms. Jasmine, starting to run from the center of our funnel. They could feel their mana being drained already, so they ran faster.
The elements started fusing, not as powerfully or showy as the light and dark fusion, but still integral to the construction of their spell. Metal from earth and fire, water and light became a healing liquid. Dark and air mixing with the fire and metal to change its properties, causing it to flow and change shapes. The glowing liquid mixed into the liquid metal, changing its color and causing it to glow a dull grey color. It formed into a shell around the nebula core, connected to it, and solidified. The grey glow flashed purple, then dimmed down. The final result was a black metal sphere, around half the size of one of their heads, with purple cracks along the entire thing.
"It's beautiful. But how does it work? I thought this was supposed to be a spell?" Ciara was confused at how the result came to be this ball.
"I'm not sure, but I think it's what we wanted to make. Try using it." I really hoped it turned out as well as I wanted it to.
She pushed a bit of her mana into the sphere, and it started to morph, then it latched onto her arm. It stretched out and covered her skin, under her clothes. We watched the central orb of stars shrink a bit, then travel to her chest, glowing with light. It stopped right at the center of her chest, and the metal covered her skin, from fingertips to toes, only stopping at the top of her neck. It looked uncomfortable, but Ciara didn't seem to mind it.
After it was done it seemed to disappear, changing its color to match her skin, only keeping the purple veins. The core on her chest dimmed, and was basically no longer visible. It seemed to work, but there was no great way to find out until she was attacked, and I wasn't willing to really do that right now.
Trix and Ms. Jasmine came back up to us after a few minutes and were worried about what happened.
"What happened? Where's the spell? Did it fail?" Trix was worried that something went wrong.
"We did it, but, now that I'm looking around, we should probably never do it again, if that's even possible. It seems to have killed quite a lot of the plants around the clearing. But yeah, Ciara's wearing it." I noticed that the mana was stripped from the trees at the edge of the clearing. The grass was gone, and the air tasted stale. We clearly did something damaging here, and I didn't want to do anything like this again, if we had the option.
"What do you mean she's wearing it? How do you wear a spell?" Trix and Ms. Jasmine were stumped.
"I don't understand. She's wearing it right now. Why can't you wear a spell?" Ciara and I were stumped too.
"She's just wearing her clothes, I don't see anything special about them." Ms. Jasmine pointed out what she thought was an obvious observation.
"It's on under my clothes. See?" The flesh colored metal flashed back to its original black, and then back to her skin tone.
"What in the world is that?! How could you make something like that with pure mana? This shouldn't be possible." Trix was on the verge of a mental breakdown.
"Trix, I've been told that like, five different times since I gained my {System}, and this time I worked with Ciara, who is just as powerful as me. What did you expect?" I looked at her with a dumb face. She should know better by now.
"To be fair, we haven't really told her much about those incidents yet." Ms. Jasmine came to her defense.
"I guess not. But yeah, I wanted us to make something to keep her safe when she's out adventuring. She didn't want to make something destructive, like a weapon or a massive spell, so we decided on armor. And I think it turned out amazing. Though we haven't actually tested it at this point. For now, I think we should probably end off for the night. We have important work to start tomorrow. We can probably do tests on it when we're back tomorrow night." I was very tired after doing all that magic fusion with Ciara, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
"That's fair I suppose. We'll figure out what you two did tomorrow. For now, let's go back into town." Trix patted my back, and we headed out of the forest.
"Are the stale air and dead plants normal for tandem magic casting?" Ciara was concerned about the death we had caused.
"No, only things that consume massive amounts of mana from the environment do things like this, and they're usually very rare. It's good you finished when you did, because it could have gotten a lot worse if the forest was any more damaged. Some nature spirits don't take too kindly to that type of thing happening, and I would expect a forest like this to have at least one living in it." Trix let us know some more information, and gave a very welcome warning.
We arrived back home, and Ciara and I went our separate ways for the night. I made sure to give her a hug before she left, and made sure she knew to meet me in the forge tomorrow.