My father and I were sitting next to the fireplace in the main room of the house. It took a while to sink in, but he was going to teach me magic.
“Give me your hands.” His entire demeanor shifted. He had become as cold as ice. I couldn't explain why, but it was almost frightening. My instincts were telling me not to, but he was my father, I trusted him.
I hesitated for a moment, but just as I began reaching out he grabbed my hands on his own. Their familiar roughness scratched against my skin. ‘Why are they so cold?’
He closed his eyes, and soon enough his cold hands began to glow, heating up until they began to feel like freshly baked bread, still a little too hot to touch. “It’s hot…” I muttered
He stayed completely motionless as his hands grew hotter and hotter. “It burns…” I made sure to make my words clear, hoping he would let go, but again he remained motionless.
The heat continued to grow until I couldn’t take it. I clenched my fists and tried to pull away. “Father, it hurts.”
His hands grew hotter still until it felt like I was trapped in scalding iron gauntlets. His grip was too tight for me to get out, and the heat quickly became too intense for me to fight it.
My nerves tingled from the pain just before the heat began to spread through my entire body like a pressure valve that burst from holding back a flood.
The blood running through me began to pound and all my veins and arteries ached from the intensity of each heartbeat. I couldn’t scream, or make any noise at all, and then my mind went blank.
He let go and in an instant, everything returned to normal. I sharply inhaled, not realizing I had been holding my breath. My eyes were open, but a strange sensation of my mind coming back to me ran through my body, and only then was I able to process what they were showing me.
My veins had a faint glow that slowly vanished as my blood pressure dropped and the intense heat drained from my fingertips. My hands were fine, albeit a bit slow to move from shock. I wasn't burned, but I was still left with the obvious question.
“What… was that?”
“You should be able to sense manna much more easily now, having experienced so much being forced into your own body. Your senses will sharpen even further, you might feel disoriented though, so take it easy. Even if I didn’t hurt you, your body won't forget the pain.”
I tried to crack a smile, but as he was speaking I was already starting to feel the effects he was talking about. Everything in my line of sight began shining like I was looking through a lens of water, refracting light from the sun. It all blurred together until eventually I closed my eyes, thinking it would be easier to balance that way.
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Before I knew it I could feel I was laying on the ground.
“Just give it a moment.”
It felt like all of my senses dulled, and I was wandering through a lifeless void. Suddenly it was dark, even after I opened my eyes. I was cold and alone.
With another gasp of air, my senses returned to normal. I wasn't sitting next to my father anymore, instead, my head was resting on his leg.
“There, do you feel better?”
A piercing headache kept my thoughts from racing as he moved me to the side, offering me a hand to help me stand up. ‘Having experienced so much manna being forced into my body, but isn't that what Finlo talked about? No, whatever he went through was probably a lot more intense…’
My mind lagged behind, still trying to process the words he had spoken several minutes ago. “Not… Just…” I raised a hand to my head and closed my eyes. “Just, one moment… please.”
He grunted, but then sat back down.
My entire body tingled as if my nerves were firing off at random, trying to reconnect to my brain. I could still speak, but the movements my mouth made felt foreign. “I still don’t understand…” I muttered, lying down on my side. “My body feels so heavy…”
He raised his left palm, staring at it. “Right, and explanation. Those tend to give motivation. I suppose now would be a good time for one.”
‘It would have been nice to have one before… But better late than never I suppose.’
“Let's start at the most basic level of understanding. Although I only know the most simplified version. It's easy to think of it like this. You have two bodies and one mind. One body is responsible for physical movement.”
He grabbed a knife, flipping it up into the air and balancing its tip on one finger. “Balance, correcting, reaction. Even breathing, every time a muscle contracts it’s because of a signal from your brain.”
“When you are using magic though, your brain is sending signals to your second body so to speak, meaning your physical body becomes all but useless.”
His arm fell limp, the knife crashing to the ground.
My head still hurt, and there was still an intense warmth circulating through my body, but as I began to regain control I slowly managed to sit up. “So that's why it felt like everything just turned off…”
He nodded.
“Wait, how will it help me if I can’t even move while casting it?”
He smirked. “There are two kinds of mages.” He said, picking the knife back up off the ground. “The first is immobile, training to enhance their magical body, while the second tries to combine them.”
He paused as if waiting for me to ask how they did that, but it was such an obvious question I thought he would just continue. Finally, he did.
“The second type will be you. Most mages of this type train to link physical actions to coincide with magical ones, for instance, my body might shoot out fire when I throw a jab, and then electricity if I throw a cross. In your case though it's a matter of just generating more power with every movement.”
My breathing finally fully returned to normal, but the warmth still hadn’t faded. ‘I wonder if this is the feeling of manna then…’ “Ok, so then what's this training going to be like?”
“Since we have such little time, there are many shortcuts we will have to take, but you have already done several of them.”
‘Several? But, wasn’t this the first time we've done anything with magic?’ “What do you mean?”
He leaned over, shifting his weight to one knee. “The first step was when you ingested poison. Th-e ne–”
My mind went blank, all of his words fading into the background. ‘That was… The first step? The first step in my training to use magic… But Catherine is the only other person who would know something like that sense magic is forbidden… That means the only person that could have poisoned me was… Him…’