There wasn't much to any of it. Indeed, I felt rather foolish trying to make the point that Chivalry could be a cause of death, too. Looking at faces though, later as I'd been walking towards the academy and begging forgiveness for my 'crime', I'd provoked the thought I wanted and there was no shame. Just the humility, no shame about it.

The difference was whether your ego was still in the equation, which was the difference, humility either made you humble or shamed. Do you take the shame personally? Or take the humble lesson that's trying to be given to you, the one that benefits wholly ones self and everyone else around them? We take things personal enough, without consciously trying to do so.

At the academy, things were different for me, as a twelve-year-old-boy alone, and as a journeyman student. As an apprentice one was not entirely in the dark when it came to percieving the element of their study, or studies. Everyone had the 'seeds' for everything where magics, ethers, and alchemy were concerned. As such, people of all stages of life were there to learn, as many who sought them as had not.

It may be natural for people to make the same mistakes everywhere. Only a small number of those with the greatest potentials as children were sought out, one-in-ten, for the imperial academy with the most comprehensive resources. Those others were royals and imperials, who did have consistently high potential, and admittedly their parents funded it.

It was just difficult for me to see older adults who would never fight, if at all, be those that an empire would spend these resources on. Except it was all to control the knowledge, the ability to accelerate these developments, that I found the reason for this. 'Why not help build and spread other schools?' There was not even any material resources, just books, and teachers. Even just a teacher and student would suffice.

A novice could not exhibit their gifts, not even inside themselves, despite the sprout comparison which had suggested to me they could at least do that. Evidently Kostya had been referring to that as a point of beginning the first stages of control. Interference, which just like it sounds, isn't anything other than scrambling everything ones meager aptitudes. They were short, intense, and occurred rapidly.

An apprentice did manifest these in themselves, to a degree that masters could detect. Here the sapling part made better sense, they guided one in Manipulation, which was more intensive. It took more time, effort, and focus of student and master. The result was a more thorough agitating, it was like rythmic-interferences mixing up ones aptitudes into separate things until one was aware of the difference.

Manipulation, it was in a way an attack on the same fundaments it was composed from, mostly because the source and nature of altering that source held that their 'location' be the same. It wasn't harmful, even though the potential involved already would be devestating, the process wasn't yet catylyzed and the powers-and-energies involved had no kind of effect. Well only on themselves, anyway.

Power, and Energy. Manipulating would ultimately lead to these, which, were also the journeyman stage. Once one had identified both, the capablity led towards the possibility for Control, or adept calibre with an Element. Actuating was the simple and stable usage that people would call 'Magic', where an elements energy was used as fuel, and its power used to actuate.

Five years in the academy had been spent manipulating elements until I had isolated eaches power and energy. Before I ever got to start using any 'Magic' I was tasked with unmasking all these partitions first. 'Like a gem, once the facets were clear, the work starts.' Kostya's self stated view. 'Centrifuge. I've been spinning these things in circles and in place so long, I have become a centrifuge.'

That was my thoughts and feelings until the last element was isolated. They usually had come in pairs, and in a little over four months time between, but I'd paid no larger mind than to reflect on them as individuals coming at the same time. Even if they'd come two at a time they did not seem connected, until the last pair.

Earth and Void were first, the bottom. Matter and Divine were last, the top. Every convention and I'd have been saying the earthly elements matter was the only kind of physical matter. This wasn't material-matter, it was energy. Energy in a greater sense that even its own 'power' appeared to be pure energy with the newfound awareness.

If earths use led one to be able to use soils, stones, sediments, matters use was making. It was energy-materialized that would become when you used it, what you needed. The void was physical matters mass, collectively gravity, with inability by itself to be more or less than a universal law, and the earth was that material-mass we called matter; two-in-one balance.

The divine was that force animating everything. Even the void would be helplessly subjected to its whims, and it was that most special in the world, life. With everything alive heightened to more than the sum of its parts, it was spirit, more dynamic and permanent than even the mechanations of the vessel itself. The vessel was of the void.

The matter that was not worldly, and the divine that was spirit, they were the closest heaven came to earth and yet could not be more different. Two-in-one balance. Earth and matter could not come into contention. Physical matter could be altered, created, but not occupy the same space. Void and divine would not come into contention either; mass was solid, spirit was beyond physical touching or detection.

Air and Shadow were those mediums of the truest and most obvious sort. Concentric pinpoints, or fulcrums, for which to percieve and move through. Physically matter moves through air. Mentally minds move through shadow. It was shocking by how much the greatest perceptual and sensory organ was ahead of any other; the heart. Feeling it once, you know it true forever, and I don't mean in sappy ways either.

A heart can feel other hearts. It can be guided, pulled, know, yet never do you hear how much the heart is involved with perception or sense. Who do you ask how you feel, who do you ask anything to that's yourself? Your self is your heart, ego, subconscious, and all that is your heart.

It was that thing you were feeling with, talking with, treating with, begging for, and it was the mind. The heart minds, the mind doesn't mind, it just thinks and remembers. Even if earths science hadn't gotten that far, I just had, and the word 'minds' implication and reality were you thought with your heart.Not only supplementary or secondarily, physically, but physically and literally.

If you think you can act outside of thinking with your heart, consider: You might be able to slow down your heart a bit by thinking calmling thoughts for awhile and relaxing, but your heart in an instant speeds the mind up when you're facing a threat. Wrestling the mind for control was a folly, one I'd never known until then as I started wrestling my heart for self control.

Shadow was heart and mind, sense and self all. It was the inner medium, opposed to its outer counterpart, and air was also what the heart needed to live, it was vital to life, but what all life lived in and moved through as well. Divine might be life, but living was more close to air in its motions, and being caught in circulations of 'air'. They were two-in-one balance, but lacking contention made it clear, those things contended with themselves only. They were the only things in their league.

Ice and Dark, two-in-one balance. Cold and dark never needed me to put them together, that was closer to eaches nature. These were my second pair. Dark places more than light will always be cold. Water and Illusion were two-in-one balance, my third pair developed, and as interconnected as those before and after. Who needed to hear waters elusive tale?

Of how waters depths are deceptively deep? Conversely how fluid thoughts are, and how they flow, like water which can never sit still and is always being acted upon to stay mobile by all the forces around it? Air and shadow had been fourth, and I wished I'd had their perspective sooner, for it was the concentric-centering-completion I realized for zen.

Fire and Alchemy were fifth, two-in-one balance. These two were particularly interchangable, fire was used in so many processes of refining, producing, synthesizing, mixing, anyone knew heat sped up reactions. It made, fused, destroyed, and both were rapid moving and reacting until their process was finished, hard to stop if begun.

Lightning and Light were my sixth, the next-to-last. Two-in-one balance. Divine and Void, Earth and Matter were those elements that were alone in two respective contentions. To say any element other than these were contending would be too obvious, yet, their power and energy were just a part of it.

Earth and void were slow, yet could be the most overwhelming, and were more potent as defensive, strategic, planned-usages. Things got faster, more offensive, responsive, and intensive onwards. Water and illusion still held modest defensive quality, yet were suitable for rapid reactions, and a surge with them could turn a tide.

Earth and Matter had abominable weaknesses, all things considered, as with earth use of magic meant restructuring your terrain via the local soil. That means, the soil you use with the magic could pull the same dirt you were standing on, making earth magic require more preparation than seems implicitly obvious at first. And the bigger, denser, wider you used it, the more you'd have to move from elsewhere.

Matter wasn't so supreme, there was the most limitations. If you wanted to make something distant, its molecular bonds would be fragile. If you wanted to make something all-at-once or fast, it would contain the molecules local in the space that couldn't be filled because of what was there already. In short, gaps in what you made, gaps occupied by the air if that was where you used it.

Divine would only be useful for regeneration of intrinsic constitution. That sounds like 'healing', but flushing excess and irregularities from the body was more appropriate. Cell, tissue, organs including the brain, and even the mind. Nothing could damage or interfere with souls, it was limited to the vessel.

With void, it would be 'draining', if crudely in all ways one could be 'healing' with divine. The veritable difference was one could saturate to full with divine, but oversaturate to excess that would only slowly decay over time with void. Stealing 'youth' with it was not impossible, though, it would permanently degrade rationale by a small-margin and emotion by tall-margin.

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Materialization was inner-space. An alchemic ability, the only such one which related to matter. An inner 'inventory', more energy efficient so that efforts went unwasted, but also power conducive so that the results had greater molecular bonds. Its space would improve with my matter power and energy, power decreasing effect of mass, energy increasing the volume of the area.

Transference was the alchemic ability to interplace a magics energy of one element, via converting it, but more. It was transcience, the change that was within potential for the materials at hand, direction and speed for reactions of the material-elementals simple elements being compounded. It supplemented materialization, but the love was not as reciprocal.

Materialization complimented transference. I couldn't create composite elements inside the space of materialization, or alter the things in it with transference, but that space would keep foods and drinks fresh forever. There was no time in that space. Chemical-reactions were as impossible as spoilage or degradation.

The Philosophers Stone. It was this, all this, and everything that came after. I experienced the epiphanies of these things realized all at once. Only when they were seperated apart would the differences stick out, it would all be clearer, the true sum could stick out like the sun. Parts just did too little justice.

My pineal harmonically resonated with my heart. That one instant, if brief, was something I felt slip away and then had to center myself like never before to hold onto. It was 'release' from toil, the centermost-concentric-circuit, that fleeting zen became nirvana. Nirvana, free from metaphysical-change. Body, mind, soul concentric and in allignment, harmony, perfect, ultimate, for the individual.

This state was self-sealing, not one you could lose on its discovery, the experience would be closer to going inwards to a sensation overcoming you outwards. Were it not that my glands were all bio-synthesizing many much-more effective hormones, there was no way anyone could have survived the process of this final great change.

Having the stone before was one thing. Unsealing its prowess had been another. Kostya said the Philosophers Stone, or 'eye', was ever sealed to keep being overwhelmed. The sensory information of 'parts' of a memory were too much, when you consider, you have your own senses as well to deal with. 'Peering' minds was intense, and I knew why better, learning how involved hearts are in memories.

I'd hit my knees, as it started, and my face after. With zen had accepted this as it was, I had been overwhelmed of all sense once more, my reality was I would be fine with, 'Visions of delusions of grandeur, though vexing and vain, dreamlike and delusional, insane mumbo-jumbo whisperings in my head, once more.', and with zen I'd been better than ever at staying calm. Yet it had gone on.

Magic- earth, ice, water, air, fire, lightning and matter all had their own insanity. Etheric- void, dark, illusion, shadow, alchemy, light, and divine had theirs. Each was its own major revelation, and the perspective of them apart had been manageable, until the perspective of them all at once had come with materialization and transference. The former was minor. The latter wasn't. The stone was my only connection with a true philosopher.

The 'zen' state was not sufficient for my mind to handle the realities of what I could do, that before transference had caused its more dynamic revelations of alchemy, energy-conversion, and then the knowledge of what attempts to 'force-weave' the contending ethers of void and divine, or magics of earth and matter betwixt their energy.

It wasn't 'Nirvana', either, I can promise you that wholeheartedly. In this greater knowing had been feeling, sensing and experiencing horror. Undeath, void power fed divine energy, necromancy. Rebirth, divine power fed void energy, biomancy. Neither was life. Neither was living anymore at all, and there were big and permanent costs to the afflicted. Death was better than either. At least, for what rebirth cost here.

The sense of matter appearing, colliding, reacting where it already existed, it was only in my mind yet I'd been reacting to it physically all along. That particular one was the most excruciating, which sent me snowballing onwards. Elevation was the adept mage bodies innate response to extreme molecular friction.

From snowball, to skyrocket, this was when I had lost outer consciousness to Nirvana. For me, the worst was over, forever. For everyone else, my 'Magic-Adept-Manifestation', a thing every other mage could remember and would fondly, my manifestation was occurring. It was a reflection of what was happening inside myself, hemorrhaging profusely, and quite a lot was happening inside me.

The overall magics more apparent effects at a great, smooth stirring across a dozen miles of the local atmosphere were just the start, one that remained gentle until it finished, marked by more than odd winds and shadows. The more 'intense' heat and electricity filled the air with energy, first. Lightning, light, fire, alchemy, these permeated, saturated and stirred.

Matter and divine only would have been detectable by some able, which was some few, but most of these were have been quite impressed. The rest of those who felt the stir and its magnitude were awed, because they were farther than they'd ever admit aloud from the source. They were the most effected, of anyone.

The energized air started picking up and evaporating the water that it caused to condensate just before, re-saturating it and quickly melting the minority that had turned into ice, overall the scene for those witnessing the weather only was not at all frightful. It was to them like a sudden storm, so subtle and sudden they'd never doubt someone say the air had taken on life. Anything else was too much or little.

For the average person it was. It was whatever they percieved, for most a little surprise, those within a dozen miles feeling various charge and motion to their environment. For the adept mages and priests, there was no 'subtle' to it. Their senses were by their respective elements of a very powerful manifestation.

For nearby masters, they were all thinking the same things, as they had all seen only one thing similar. 'Planar-prism crystal; a circle of a thousand master-illusionists are bombarding the area with the illusion of a planar-prism crystal as a source of projection. This is either an sieges-onset, or someone is about to attempt to steal a mystical object.'

The crystal in their minds was itself a mystical item, one there were a few small known specimens of only, rich in every type of magic and etheric energy but unable to be used if any one of them were depleted. Until the crystal regenerated it, it would be useless, and the more magics a mage could use the more they'd have use for it. Most masters braced for anything for a few minutes. They could sense elements other than theirs, unlike adepts.

When that time passed none of these knew what to think. It would've been impossible to gather two sets of one thousand illusionists. One, unlikely, two, impossible. It would've been spotted coming, or stopped. A break-through could cause this for a tiny window, had it killed the source responsible, and their escalating panic made them press on in error.

It wouldn't be the first time an adept 'Burst-their-battery', gorging on the nectar of growth, or abbreviated to 'gong' or 'gonging' regretfully by masters. There was a following wave, one that never came, the 'sound' which had cemented the phenomenon, a distorted-vibration made all the more troubling in that you heard it where it happened. Even a mile off from a moderate 'gong' one could survive, you'd know exactly where it happened.

This was above even the worst known by far. Worse was that after five-minutes, it stopped, and after ten there was no 'gong' to speak of. The manifestation was stable the whole time, the subtle-smooth-storm it caused never caused harm enough to have revealed who this individual was, and what the masters saw made them awe.

'Someone didn't just sip the nectar to choking, they'd quaffed the barrel everyone sipped at, and they'd done it without gonging over.' It relieved them all to note that the individuals magic days were done. Gong, or no, Chakral-Circuits were never designed to have been so recklessly and relentlessly overblown with each others powers. Energies, those were less harmful. The biggest waste, dud, failure they ever experienced, none would ask questions soon about.

Kostya witnessed. He watched the boy elevate, had been coming to ease and watch him in his process. He couldn't. Even if he'd known what he now did, and had more people and planning, the boy was beyond any ability to be reacted with. There was no Sun wielder close enough to kill him, the only thing that could stop it, but after a minute Kostya had doubts there was enough of the processes potential left to destroy the imperial castle and city.

After two, he wished the boy could pull through in a fleeting moment of insanity, but he began to hope a Sun wielder would come quickly, the city would be safe but the castle more surely destroyed. He only realized why others wouldn't come the third minute, when it was too late to try and go for anyone. 'They think its stable. They don't know the first adept is in a state of elevation, wielding all of this.'

He laughed. He cried. Both at once, then neither. This occurred in the span of five seconds, quick to go hysteric from one end to the other, cheeks still sore at the corners from tears and wet at the same time. It was too fast to know it happened to him, but too sore to have been anyone but. 'It'll be a sun, alright, that he casts. A blue, no mistake. Royal, at least, probably rife with Imperial violet sun spots in it.'

The fourth minute stretched on unlike the others, because, hysterics he was now detatched from completely or not, Kostya new his time was short. He prayed in his mind, his body was trying to rave against death, but he was blacked out from consciousness outside himself. A fog thicker than fugue spread in his mind, and, he was quite aware his body had detatched from reality in self preservation.

Complete physical and bodily disassociation. Even if a sun was overkill on instant deaths, it wasn't something he could force himself to face. Six minutes in, he was terrified that his mind was playing tricks on him, then he considered his own masters warnings about sun magics. They had intensity enough to alter time if slightly.

After nine his eyes opened and he was mesmerized. No destruction, just the boy elevated in that hyper-phasing state still, floating facedown feet off the ground somewhat flatly. He overcame his fear then, as while void wasn't a good way to die it was quick, and he didn't want himself or the boy to be alone. He still had his mind out towards the boy at the tenth minute, but he'd already seen into some of the minds change.

That the grass his hand first touched below him smoldered slightly, and his breath had made the grass he first breathed on shoot up to stalks full of seeds, Kostya would only see after returning. When Alyseus woke, Kostya was running with him, and the first thing he realized was how light he felt in the mans arms. Kostya himself was thinner, tall, but had little muscle. He wasn't strong, but boy, did he have strength right now.

"I could see. I saw all things, but I was too blind, too stupid to catch it. Nirvana was mine for a moment." "Bliss? Boy, if you'd had a bad thought or feeling for a moment in the first few minutes, and even until the last ones you and I could have-." "Kostya! To the palace. The Emperor needs you, now, lay down your injured if he isn't dying. This can not wait.

"A phantom sun spell was just sensed." "Was it me?" I asked him as I made to get out of his arms. He shook his head confidently for a few seconds and sat looking towards the path the woman had gone. Several seconds later he peeked at me curiously, before shaking his head again fervently. "Not even you could have done this, no. You should come with me though, there is no way I can leave you in your state.

"It's too bad you 'Burst', it can be hard to accept, but you'll have to start over with magic again. Magic spillover is toxic between chakra and your powers went haywire when you disassociated. You..lost it, all." "My chakra? Their fine. They're concentric, now. That's what happens when you manifest all of them." Kostya nodded, and pulled me along too gently, with a sad look. "It doesn't work that way, you have none actuatable. I can percieve you do not."

"Oh?"