Sunlight passed through the gaps between leaves, and so touched upon the closed eyelids of a person whose body laid relaxedly on the grass. “Hmm.” He sounded, and with the persistent brightness and heat of the light, he lifted his upper body up.
“(Where?)” He looked straight on through, and this forest was far from being the usual sight for him. And, he could hear the birds chirping, which wasn’t something he’d get to so closely hear upon waking up.
Turning around, he saw another person lying on the ground. A girl. The clothes she had on had a rather fancy sense to it. It wasn’t so fitted onto her figure. Unlike what he would usually see girls wear, her clothes had more fabric, and showed no privy skin.
“Eh?” He felt like there was something wrong with this situation. Him, and a girl, alone. “Uh...” He wasn’t going to panic so easily, though. Still, he was confused. He took a look at what he wore. It didn’t seem like he went somewhere fancy.
“(What happened?)” He tried recalling the most recent memories he had. At school as usual, but then, an earthquake. After that, nothing.
“(I was at school?)” It was even more confusing how he ended up near this girl. From her looks, it didn’t seem like he had met this girl before, either. He pushed his mind to remember more of his most recent memories. “(A bright light?)” It appeared there was nothing more he could get out of that.
He stood up. “Lady,” he decided, shaking her, “wake up.”
Her eyelids opened. But outside of expectations, a new pair of eyes were added in. Aurora, the name of the boy, could see his own self, from the perspective of the girl.
In confusion, neither thoughts nor voice came out, as he focused on the memories of the girl as it mixed with his.
For a given name, she had the same as his. With each second that passed, Aurora felt it become difficult to separate the two identities. They both had the same birthday, and so, the same age. And adding on to what matched, they even got the same family name.
The male Aurora lived in a world of physical sciences. The female Aurora lived in a world of magical studies. To him, her world was of fantasy with the setting of old history. To her, his world was strange, for everyone to complete tasks by hand, or to have to rely on so many tools.
He was born to an average family, above the poverty line, but far from qualifying as rich. They could buy what they needed, but a bit of an effort had to be put in to satisfy their wants. From such a family, he had grown to live by himself, while working a part-time job.
She was born as the daughter to the fourth of six wives, and so had grown to be well off enough as to have some freedom, while still being given the privilege of learning from private tutors.
“This is crazy.” Aurora’s male self reacted verbally to the experiences of the female, specifically on magic. In excitement, the female self was controlled into casting the most fundamental display of magic: a ball of fire. Above her palm, it floated as a sphere, a flame burning.
With that, he had evidence of magic’s existence. The excitement of it being so new to him, though, through the memories of the girl, was dampened with it being considered old news.
Some questions rose on how he and she felt so concretely there being a shared consciousness, but after about a minute, Aurora had to focus on another subject.
The first decision to come to mind was leaving the forest, and Aurora went with leaving.
He held out his hand, and with her grip, she pulled herself up. And following that, she patted the lower half of her dress. From doing so, she then looked at her male self.
It seemed that while she was the only one performing an action, there was the normalcy again of having only one pair of eyes. But even then, from his eyes did she still see herself when she tried to rid her clothes of what was from the soil.
“(Hmm.)” Aurora turned the two bodies to face away from the other, and they each slowly walked forward for a bunch of seconds. Aurora was able to concentrate on one body, while it was still for certain that Aurora had the senses of the other.
At the thought of some more actions to try out, they sharply turned to each other in one instant. Aurora was going to have the two bodies flail their arms, but there was an immediate precognition of its silliness, and as such, Aurora did not. However, pressing on, the two bodies were made to walk in circles. And, they could simultaneously move, stop, or change what they were doing without so immediately disturbing the other.
“(What am I?)” This was a philosophical question that Aurora had no absolute answer after giving it a handful of time. The best Aurora could come up with was that they were as one mind, with a mysteriously small yet large sense of separation between their identities and sense of self.
They sighed, to change what to think on. The scenery around them, and how to leave.
The heights these trees were reaching were impressive. And while they were thick, the space between each of them provided a great amount of options for choosing whichever way to go.
Her carriage rides did pass somewhere where she could see this kind of place, so it felt not so unfamiliar for her, though she did not exactly experience going so far into any wooded areas.
When she had done the magic of a ball of fire, she utilized what was taught to her as an important thing to do: perceiving the presence of mana, since mana was the energy for magic, which was essentially the fuel for the creation and sustenance of the ball of fire she had shown.
There was indeed mana around this place, and it was more evenly distributed than the view of dense spots or different concentrations she was expecting.
And with the ability to see where mana was, another thing to do was to absorb or take into their body the mana, as it was how one would put sole authority over it.
With her experience and knowledge as his guide, he saw how mana gathered to his hands.
He found himself feeling the mana as though it had physical tangibility. The moment he saw it entering through his hands, his sense of touch was in agreement with his sense of sight for it.
It told him that something was there, on and in his hand, but it was on the borders of non-existence. Like the presence of water on a submerged hand, it was there, but more was put into the sense of sight than in touch for this case.
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With mana, he gave creating the fire ball a try. The handling of magic and mana for him was easy, to the extent that he wondered why they on his world had not so easily discovered this with all the history it had. As much as one’s imagination brought barely a feeling of physical stress, no effort could be felt being required in doing so.
Though he did have her knowledge to use, it still was enough for him to describe the procedures in doing magic as just imagining the result into being. The energy for magic certainly behaved differently from the energies within the physics his world experienced.
After walking for quite a while, they had the time to set their eyes on what decorated the area around them. Covering the soil was shrubbery where both of them identified small berries being many.
He wasn’t so familiar with them, as he lived mostly as someone who chose not to go outside if unnecessary. When it came to the stuff he ate, he didn’t even mind much about variety, and knew not a lot on fruits.
She, on the other hand, felt more familiar with this kind of subject. For him, her decision to bite into them was based on nothing but bravery. Being critical, it could have been poisonous.
Even though they knew themselves as being one person, there was that differing feeling with the different experiences of the bodies, because their brains weren’t physically connected or weren’t physically as one. In such terms, there was no quick way to find evidence of them being the same person.
They are in that sense different people, but with their kind of mental link, as Aurora thought of using that to separate the two identities, their memories are shown in a peculiar jumble. As his inactivity continued, he was gradually compelled to also just eat.
The vegetation wasn’t so tall or abundant enough as to hinder them from seeing further out. So, it was possible to see if anything was coming their way.
Like as depicted in the video games he knew of, in her world, there were beings that were more dangerous or powerful than in his. However, there were those that were common but easier to kill. In a timely manner, something like a rabbit materialized into existence.
It was safe to say that this was just as much a rabbit as any other that was biologically birthed if one were to not consider why and how it came into being. It had none of the biological mechanisms in their traditional form and location. Its internals were completely filled, but not with blood. It had what was functioning as a brain, but not in the head.
The rabbit creature’s two responses to distress were fight or fight. With no other option, it chose both.
Its leap caused the two to step to the side, and it was easily dodged.
Though as this particular rabbit did not get much time to become developed, it was not necessary to dodge its attempt at an attack.
It landed in a shrub, and out again it went. This time, it was intercepted by her with a wind sharpened by magic. It was sliced into two in mid-air.
Two parts of what was once a single ball colored blue dropped to the ground. The ball was simply called a mana core, a result of when enough mana was naturally combined together, which created the rabbit that could be succinctly described as an imitation of a living species.
The imitation of a rabbit dissipated into smoke. As the mana core, which acted both as a brain and heart, was no longer able to contain its mana. It was the same as the rabbit body, it was returning to their original composition as inactive, ambient mana.
As part of what the mana core was, she took it in her hands, and absorbed whatever was spilling out. From her memories, she had done so because it was related to what the strong users of magic did.
This was what they did to gain power. The absorption of mana cores increased the capacity of mana they could store within themself.
Being one of several in the lower positions of the hierarchy in the family, she had not gotten much of an opportunity to get her hands on something like it.
She was only taught that it was processed while whole, so she had not much in the way of knowing if there was a difference in absorbing the mana from one that was broken into two.
After a while, there was a change in what they could look at. There was a river, and in the distance on one end of the river, the trees were shorter, but were spaced closer to each other.
In survival tips, a river was something one could follow to find a settlement. A source of water was essential for people to live off of.
They could choose between going where it seemed just deeper into the forest they were in, or into the direction of where a forest of different make was.
Considering just how long it took to get this much of a change in scenery, “(I should be using magic to speed us up.)” Aurora began thinking, and tests were to be conducted.
Although it was natural for her to improve on what she knew, she was taught only in what to protect herself with. There was no precedent for Aurora in increasing travel speed. Both had lived mostly in one place. So, it was a learning process both brains would undergo at the same time.
The area around him was then drained of mana. As he went on to pull more, he discovered how harder it became to do the further away they were.
But, the energy was more than enough. Wanting to know how much he could lift with this much, his body was hoisted up. With the view on the mana, she could see its brightness within him darken. It lasted less than twenty seconds before he had to drop back to the ground.
It was sufficient to know that mana was quite a strong kind of energy.
He prepared himself, recovering them for a boost. A foot was set behind the other. And with a kick on the ground, he lunged forward.
After the first few steps, he felt a loss in speed, and a look at the mana was taken. While he no longer had them within him, he was going through the ambient mana, the mana in the environment. And to keep his speed up, he just took them in, while he was still running.
But with the mana introduced, he failed to prepare himself for how it would affect his balance. With poor timing and coordination, his legs failed to properly land, and his upper body began its fall.
Fortunately for him, with the practically instant reaction time of the magical energy, his flop to the ground was made gentle.
“That was dangerous.” He smirked.
With that, she saw how fast he moved, and Aurora felt good with it. And as for which direction he sprinted in, it was where the river lead them more into the spacious forest they were already in.
As he was further ahead, it was her turn to try trying it. Unlike him, she moved at a slower pace.
Her dress would add to her weight, and it was going to hinder her in where she could plant her feet, so it was trimmed with magic before she tried experimenting with boosting her running speed.
As her legs left the ground again and again, Aurora recalled how he lifted his body, to test the strength of mana, and she started pushing herself forward only while in the air. This was done in small strides, and it was gradually built up to have bigger jumps for a faster speed.
Her feet stepped off, and on the soil. She passed by a tree, and a few more. Each time, she was more accurate with when it was safe to be boosted.
The time it took her to cross the wide spacing between the trees became no more than two seconds. But then, she reached a point where her legs started feeling pain.
With those times she returned to the ground, it became evident that landing at increased speeds was the cause behind it. She was not as easily excited as him in getting to use magic, so the result of the force of impact was at the level of a warning.
“Phew.” She exhaled. A bit of adrenaline was circulating for her who had not many opportunities to be so physically active.
From her try in acceleration, there was more of an understanding on how it was to be properly done. Mana shouldn’t push while the legs were in the moment of stopping or being on the ground.
It was possible to recharge himself with mana while running, so this was how he would sustain what was needed for the acceleration.
To assess the issue of possibly breaking a leg whenever stepping back down, a solution was to negate the momentum just before landing.
However, after catapulting himself, it was found to be inefficient. Mana would be consumed at quite a rate for when it came to movement. And when Aurora slowed himself to mitigate the force of impact, slowing down was, on top of the added energy cost, opposite the purpose of wanting to be fast.
So, one of the solutions Aurora thought of was just gliding through the air, she basically already did that, as to reduce having to slow down so much to keep their legs fine. But if gliding was possible, flight looked not so impossible a feat. Aurora wanted to achieve it. Flight without wings.
He put himself into a steadier mindset in trying for this. Body filled with mana, he was lifted into the air.
With its distribution throughout the forest, it would not take much to move to where they could recover the amount of mana used.
With just taking them as they go, they could fly for as long as the path was where more mana was. “(All right.)” Aurora was firm on the idea for moving out of the forest quick.