Alex is going to learn magic. From someone that outlived the dinosaurs no less.

"Alright. Step one, feel the magic around you. It's strong, isn't it? Solid. That's because of me. Go to the other side of the ship and feel the magic there. Taste it. Explore it, but don't move it, just experience it. Enjoy it." says Lanetli, pointing out to Alex the magic Alex had first noticed at the beginning of this eternal night. Lanetli gets up and walks to the stern, Alex stalking up to the bow and feeling the magic get less gelatinous as he walked away from Lanetli.

Alex throws his legs over the edge, sitting on the deck and watching the frozen waves as the magic moves, completely independent of time. Alex tastes the air with his skin, feels the ocean in the magic, hearing the identity of the ocean being carried through that magic. Alex smells the magic within reality, a part of nature to balance every part of this world. . . but also a force to break that balance.

Good, bad, left, right, all things brought to balance, fighting for dominance, always winning, and always losing. A maddening dance of chaos and order, a world so complex that Alex lost himself in it for hours. Alex sees the chaos inherent in this world and asks for more. He sees what makes no sense and tells you that six chickens make a cantaloupe without batting an eye.

Alex sees the world as nature intended, without understanding, and without care. Alex loses himself until the magic gains a sharp order to it, a nasty exactness that fills the world and condenses it into disgusting monotony. Alex feels time take over the other minions of madness that make up his world and is disgusted by the calm and hateful fiddle it forces all other aspects of reality to dance to.

"Alex! Alex! What the fuck happened? Alex, can you hear me!?" frantically shouts Lanetli as Alex grimaces, glaring at the world around him in disgust.

"Time is a dick." was all Alex says, and Lanetli busts up laughing, dropping the kid he had been shaking out of a stupor.

"You go silent for hours, and all you have to say is that the very thing I devoted endless hours to is a dick?" Lanetli exclaims, doubling over in laughter. "I guess you got a point," he says when the laughter finally subsides. "Time doesn't care about anything, but it applies to everything. I can see how you could consider it like that. But it's beautiful in that way. It applies to everything while keeping its own identity so thoroughly, it's wonderful."

"Time doesn't apply to you. Or to magic. Or any other mage with the ability to live beyond a normal lifetime. Time actually seems kind of impotent to effect anything that can so much as connect to an icon." Alex says. Lanetli is brought up short, staring in shock at the kid that had just tried to undermine his entire existence.

"Everything dies eventually. Time is the one thing that can kill anything." Lanetli tells the kid matter-of-factly.

"No. Only biological beings can die of old age, and even then it's really just organ failure. And anyone that has an immortality power physically has to die by literally anything else. Everything must die eventually, but it's almost never time that kills it." Alex tells him, countering his previous statement.

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"I. . . I guess I can't really argue with that. Can't argue with stupid."

"You can say that again." Alex agrees, throwing the insult back into Lanetli's face. The two glare at each other for a moment, Time staring through Lanetli and bearing down on Alex, who stares back at the minotaur that forms in the Time-aligned magic around Lanetli like a second skin without flinching or fear.

After a moment, Lanetli chuckles again, breaking the tension between them. "Your tough kid, in mind of not body. You can fix that retroactively though. Let's move on to some other exercises, alright? Just like, don't get stuck in that weird ass trance like last time. Start messing with the magic. Manipulate it. Try and move it into a light spectrum anyone can see by gathering it up."

"What kind of magic do you want me to gather?" asks Alex. "Time?"

"What do you mean? Magic is pure until it is aligned with an icon. The area around me might have heavy influences of Time, but the rest shouldn't be aligned." explained Lanetli.

"I haven't seen any pure magic yet at all. All of it has a flavor, it's affected by the world around us. It's not really aligned per se, but it's far from pure. A taste of the ocean, a bite of cold, a smell of wood from the boat. It's all mixed into the currents of magic." Alex tells Lanetli, looking at him as if he was the child, not Alex.

"That has a lot of implications if your right, most of all that you are the most sensitive person to magic ever born," says Lanetli. "If you are lying to me, there will be consequences."

Alex is confused but tells him that, indeed, he was not lying.

"Holy shit. Holy shit. This changes everything. Different influences on ambient magic could change how rituals run, and how everything works! If I wasn't already going to incarnate this would push me over the edge!"

"I think previous madness mages already knew. It's probably some weird prerequisite." Alex says distractedly, staring out of Lanetli's range of conversion at the unexplainable dancing around the world around them.

"No, I don't think it's a prerequisite, I think that's something you may have inherited. A mutation that is completely worthless to the world you live in." Lanetli says. "But powerful in the world you were meant to be part of."

Alex had completely started ignoring him now, starting to move his fingers through the air as he moves to the stern, away from Lanetli, and watching the magic flow around them. Alex sees opposites fighting one another to exist in the same space and Alex reaches out with his mind, telling them that, yes, they can exist at the same time, in the same place. They combine, creating a new influence of magic, and the heat and cold together produce a puff of steam through the air, shocking Lanetli who only saw magic being squeezed lightly, which normally would have just caused it to move, rather than. . . that.

"What was that?" asks Lanetli.

"I combined opposites by asking nicely, and the corruption shot out in a combination, and the pure magic gained new influences," Alex explains simply.

"Produced an effect without a ritual. . ." trails off Lanetli in response.

"So, how about rituals?" asks Alex, still moving the magic along its natural flows, streams combining and splitting randomly, yet somehow predictably to the boy.

"Alright. You clearly have a talent for this though. You will master the simple rituals quickly, I have no doubt."

With those words, Lanetli pulled a book from his robe or made the appearance of pulling the book from his robe, as he summons the item. The cover was faded leather, and the pages were old and yellowed vellum, with a glowing and shifting ritual on the font. "This is a book of rituals and notes on them by a genius in the field. The entire thing is unintelligible and has been for longer than I've been alive. It has to do with that ritual on the front, but no one knows what it is. And it can't be destroyed without destroying the book. I will teach you some basic rituals, and you are going to see if you can make heads or tails of any of this." Lanetli says, brandishing the book next to his head.

"Then we better get started."