The walk back to the inn after my lesson was, thankfully, uneventful. I didn’t feel anything more than the distant sense of unease that I couldn’t seem to shake ever since getting Sense Danger. I guess it could be that I was sensing the general idea that something could technically go badly at any moment, but I wasn’t entirely certain that that was the reason for it.
Regardless, I got back to the inn and had a meal before heading off to bed. I didn’t bother to close the window properly, it didn’t seem inclined to stay shut after all, and settled in to sleep.
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The next day I went through my normal morning routine and headed out to the Fields once it got close to noon. My bandolier was secured beneath my cloak and, as I ran my hands across all of the empty pockets, I realised that it would probably be a good idea to get a few more potions just in case.
I’d probably just stick with a few less effective healing potions, but there were apparently a whole bunch of unusual effects that they could give. Though I wasn’t sure what kinds of potions there were, or how much they’d cost, so I’d just have to see what was there whilst I was looking for the healing ones.
Walking into the Training Fields, I noticed that it was emptier than yesterday. In fact, it looked like the only other person there was Kaelan, which was odd. I’d have to ask him about it or something.
“Hey Rob! Ready to learn?”
“Yup. By the way, do you know why there’s no one else here today?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” He shrugged, “There aren't usually a lot of people here on Sunday for some reason,” Had I not been keeping track of the days? I don’t even know what day I Awakened now that I think about it, and I’ve been unconscious so much since then that I can’t be sure how many days have passed.
“Oh yeah, that’s usually when people go into church. I guess you’re not from Dillak so you probably go on a different day or something.”
“That makes sense, I always forgot how organised you guys make religion. Anyway- “ He clapped his hands together once, “Let’s stop getting distracted and get to work! Would you rather go over Structured or Unstructured magic first?”
I’m not sure that I could wrap my head around Structured magic, so I’d better stick to the basics for now.
“I’d prefer Unstructured for now. I think it’s probably the only one I’d be any good at.”
“That makes sense. With your Affinity I doubt Structured magic would ever be able to come close to the power of just raw control.”
Kaelan quickly walked over to the side of the field, where there was a row of wooden dummies with practice weapons held loosely in their hands, and stood a few metres away from them.
“Alright, the easiest thing to do with Unstructured magic is to just use your Mana control to exert force at a distance. For standard mages this would be nearly invisible to the naked eye and can be done instantly as long as there’s ambient mana in the air, but for Affinitied mages like us it won’t be that easy.”
An explosion of flame burst from his outstretched palm, flying at the wooden dummy in front of him. At first I thought that he was just shooting a Fire Bolt, but instead of ramming into the dummy at full force, it slowed down and formed into the shape of a hand, then used that shape to take a stick that I thought was meant to represent a spear. It flew back to Kaelan and I realised that the whole thing had only taken a few seconds.
“We’ll need to either generate some of our element ourselves, or find some that’s near where we want to grab something and take control of that. For your Path, I wouldn’t bet on there being any Lightning nearby at any point in time, so it’s best for you to use some that you made yourself,” Kaelan stepped back from the row of dummies and gestured for me to move forward, “Now, why don’t you give it a try? Keep in mind that you don’t need to make a hand, and it probably wouldn’t be viable for Channel Mana anyway, so feel free to experiment a little.”
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Alright, I guess I’ll just give it a try. I don’t see why a hand wouldn’t work for me, I just have to make it. Somehow.
This was actually the first time I’d used my magic since learning Channel Mana, so once I began to Generate Lightning I was shocked at the ease with which I could control the Lightning. Before all I could really manage was moving sparks across my skin and forcing it to arc towards something violently, but now it felt trivial to make the Lightning snake through the air, just floating there harmlessly.
I made a few streaks twist together until they formed a kind of string, then tried to shape that into a hand like Kaelan did. Unfortunately, I was met with little success. It was like the lightning refused to change into a shape other than a cylinder, or more like if I tried to make it do that it just fizzled away.
My brows furrowed and I felt a frown come across my face, this simple task frustrating me more than anything else. It didn’t just feel hard, it felt impossible. Like I was trying to stretch my arm into the clouds, only I’d just moments ago watched someone else do that with ease.
“Don’t just try to copy me, we’re using different skills for this, remember? You’ll need to use a different method.”
That makes sense, he said he had Mana Manipulation, right? Whilst I have Channel Mana, which probably works slightly differently.
I spent a while experimenting with the limits of my Mana control, eventually managing to figure out a few useful facts. I couldn’t stretch a cord, as I’d taken to calling the tubes I could make, to turn it into a rectangle or anything like that, but I could make a pretty convincing replication. If I just made another cord I could just stick it to the first one and they’d act like they were completely fused, so just chaining a few together made a flat plane of lightning.
It didn’t really do anything. Objects could pass through just fine and I didn’t even feel anything when passing my hand through, so it would make for a pretty bad shield, but it was proof that I could do something at least.
I didn’t just stop with that though, after a few more failed attempts at changing the shape of my lightning I was able to make a cord branch out of another one. This one was honestly really fun, and I had a good time just making shapes and writing my name out of lightning. Kaelan even looked impressed with my accomplishments, which made me feel pretty happy, I won’t lie.
After I’d managed to exhaust a quarter of my mana pool, even with it constantly regenerating, I decided it was time to go back to the first thing I tried to do, making a hand. This time, I looked carefully at my own hand for reference, reasoning that my cords acted a little like bones (although calling them bones feels a little necromancery for my tastes) so I could probably make a kind of skeletal hand without too much trouble.
“Yes!” I actually did it! I don’t even want to know how long it took, but I actually did it!
My celebrations were interrupted by someone clapping, and I realised that Kaelan was still there. Not that I thought he’d left, it was just super easy to lose track of your surroundings whilst doing magic.
“Good job, but can it actually do anything? I saw you testing that pane of Lightning earlier, and it doesn’t look like this one would be any different.
Right, that makes sense. I’ll just have to test it then.
Turning back to the row of dummies, I manoeuvred the hand towards the weapon of the one closest to me, this one was holding a sword, and wrapped it around the ‘blade’. The fingers touched the thumb and palm as they gripped it, and ended up merging into something that looked more like a bundle of rope than a hand, but if it worked I didn’t really care.
The hand slowly pulled the sword upward, and I began to get excited as it looked to be working, before losing its grip and letting it fall back down. It looked like the hand could work, if it just had a little more power.
But how to give it that power?
After a moment of pondering, I decided that the simplest solution was probably the best one, and made a cord connecting the Lightning hand to my own real one, then began to push Mana down the connection. At the same time, I made the hand grip the sword tighter and tighter, ever so slowly managing to pull it up.
Soon the weapon began to smoulder as the power in the Lightning increased, but I kept at it. For a moment the sword almost slipped but I caught it with another cord wrapping under the hilt and, finally, managed to lift it into the air.
From there, pulling it towards me was as easy as shortening the cord I was using to power it, like pulling a rope, and it even brought it straight into my hand! Admittedly, I had grabbed it by the blade so if it was a real sword trying to grab it like that would just hurt, but that didn’t dampen my amusement at all. (partially because the thought didn’t cross my mind at the time)
Kaelan clapped a hand on my shoulder as he congratulated me, saying, “Well done! I bet you managed to get it level 3 with that stunt! Most people take a couple days to get that far, but I suppose your Affinity is helping you out there. That’s a pretty unique way of going about it too, I’ll have to remember it in case any of my future students could make use of it,” He put a hand on his chin in thought, then took it away as he continued to speak, ”Anyway, that was a good few hours of work so we may as well stop for the day. Tomorrow you’ll have to work on making it do less damage, but not even I can make my fire completely harmless so that’ll probably be a long term goal for now. I’ve got to get back to doing Jobs, so see ya later!”
“Later,” I waved at Kaelan as he left, and spent another hour or so playing around with my new technique before I also left.
I’ve really got to come up with a name for that haven’t I? It’s not technically a Skill, but it would be convenient to have an easy way of referring to it. Unless it counts as telekinesis, or just lightning-kinesis maybe. Hmm.
I spent most of the walk to the inn thinking about it, but never ended up getting a particularly good answer, so I settled on lightning-kinesis until I could think of another one.
After having a good meal and getting back into my room, I drifted off into another peaceful slumber.