Two months passed since the visit to the park. I found myself going again with mother from time to time. In one of the many menial conversations we had (more like mother’s monologue) I discovered the name of the park was “thal’mer”. I don’t know what it specifically means, though.
In ellari, park was terven ef’al. Which it literally meant hand-placed trees. Mother mentioned this terven ef’al was called thal’mer, but the way she put it, implied it was a name on its own and not the park’s name. It isn’t Crystal Park, but the Crystal. If I explain myself. It was confusing, but I think stated my point. I think. Analogies weren’t really my forte.
Linguistics aside, today my father declared it was time again to return to my magical studies. He said we would work in my sal men’ora, which I translated to mana pool. Ninety-nine percent sure I was right. I didn’t exactly know what mana was to begin with. It was part of this intrinsic knowledge I possessed, the type that didn’t actively hurt me. But anyways I was able to understand the concept of mana pool with ease. The inner deposit of mana, the storage for magic energy, however you wanted to phrase it.
My father wasn’t idle all these months, as soon as he told me the news, he gave me another book like the tel’men’ora one. More than a year had passed since that book, so father felt free to have it more word centered than the previous drawing-ridden book. He added a bunch of new concepts, now that I was able to infuse my mana into the crystal. I was thrilled to progress further into the magical arts.
A thing I noticed was that he used ellari child orthography, as I called it. He may forgo the drawings for words I already know, but he tried his best to not put words I did not know. In a fifteen-page book, there was only a dozen words I didn’t know.
Perhaps you are asking how a manual was as long as fifteen pages, but father used long sentences to describe something that wasn’t easily comprehensible, instead of a word that already existed in their language.
An example was: Mana flows through one’s body naturally, absorbing it from the air. This is not the good-est thing as a lot of the mana ends up escaping.
The “not the good-est thing” (yes it was written in a way that implied good-est and not best) was long way of saying, not the most efficient. As in fact, I did not know the word for efficiency.
The booklet was mainly centered around one concept: mana pool formation.
Forming a mana pool was trivial compared to manaflowing. An even more tedious task, but considerably easier. Only about five pages were about how to do it, the rest were warning about what not to do, as the process may be simple but can be dangerous if done wrong.
Too long, didn’t read: Meditation.
The whole process enveloped the idea of flowing mana across the body in a state of stasis and tranquility, a.k.a. meditation.
Instead of releasing the mana outside to fuel magic, one had to conserve it inside, circling through the body. Once enough cycles around the whole body were done, you had to let the mana go away in a controlled manner. You couldn’t let it all free in one sweep or be too slow about it. The process needed to be as constant as a stream of water. Once you did this activity an innumerable number of times, you would naturally generate a mana pool.
Though the “naturally” part of the statement was rather… flourished. I don’t know about your father but hitting your head against the wall isn’t exactly a “natural” way of getting hurt.
My hypothesis was that you have to acclimate your body to the mana to be able to store it, as father didn’t explain the fundamental concept in the book and kept it only as a manual and a warning pamphlet, rather than a scientific paper.
How many times did I have to do this enterprise you ask? A lot.
Another of the hundreds of warnings was to make this process short. Not letting a manaflows cycle last more than five minutes, and not doing it more than once an hour. That meant, that I could only dedicate about forty minutes a day, as I had to sleep for twelve hours thanks to my horrendous newborn endurance.
Forty minutes a day! I spend hours upon hours in tel’men’ora practice out of sheer boredom when I was younger (more like a few months ago). And that’s assuming I would perfectly follow a timetable and never skip an hour. Difficult, yes. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t try.
An average sal men’ora practice was inhaling air slowly, starting to flow the mana that was already in your body. Then by something that I didn’t completely understand, more mana would come to you, pushing the streams of mana to go even faster. Then you exhaled, letting the old mana go away while the recent occupies its place, decreasing the speed of the flow again.
This cycle lasted for twenty seconds. Ten for inhalation, ten for exhalation. Though they could be greatly extended as I explained previously. With simple math, you could know that a common everyday session you could only make up to fifteen cycles. Which weren’t a lot to be honest.
After every session I ended up the same as I began, maybe refreshed for the little moment of rest. I couldn’t even tire out in such small amount of time. Though I won’t deny that breathing air so deeply made me a little dizzy.
Hey, at least it had something good. I had a routine to keep away the existential dread that accompanied me. Sometimes I remembered the time I passed in the River of the Damned. The souls crashing against me, their screams of agony as the torrent pulled them away. Distraction was appreciated, even more so if it means to keep my head still. I was thankful to the Lady of the River for her boon, I truly was.
Hmm, so yeah. I was bored.
As with tel’men’ora, days became weeks, weeks became months, yadda yadda, a lot of time passed. So much time passed, in fact, that even Marissa started grasping the motion of manaflowing. She was just beginning, but progress was progress. Unlike me, when I had reached a wall, I had been stagnated for months, yet my father pushed me to continue, that I was getting close, he said.
Before I even noticed I had become five years old. How did I know it? Well, besides calendars (which were an interesting topic that I will explain later), ellari tended to celebrate their child’s birthday every five years. Having such long-lasting lives altercated the concept of a yearly tradition.
“Flushia, flushia. Edrie, sa’lin a fer til’ma!” Mother chanted.
“Flushia, flushia. Edrie, sa’lin a fer til’ma!” And father continued.
This was the ellari version of ‘Happy Birthday to you’, nothing to translate, really. Huh, so is there a song called like that?
What interested me more was the food in front of me. Cake. I once said that ellari didn’t like eating meat, and that was true. But they weren’t vegetarians nor vegans. Just a difference in diets. They could totally eat it if they wanted. And oh boy, did they like eggs.
A massive cake (to children standards) was presented before me. There wasn’t a tradition to blow candles or anything like that. A simple song, presents, and a dessert, is all that composed this celebration that was reaching such a milestone.
Father, mother, and me were present around the table. It also seemed ellari didn’t have the tradition of inviting friends to one’s birthday. It was supposed to be a familiar celebration, so they didn’t bring their friends or even Marissa. So, I don’t know if it’s right to call Marissa my friend, there was too much of a gap here. More like a playmate.
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This also brought another question, where was the rest of my family? My parent’s must surely have their own parents, right? I haven’t had any notice from my grandparents yet in my five years of life, so one can’t be sure.
“Edrie, sel’na.” Mom asked for my attention.
Before eating the colossal birthday cake, mother and father gave me my present.
“So’ne.” Open it, mother said.
It was a simple wooden box that contained the present, wrapping paper wasn’t a thing here. I slid the lid of the box to reveal the present, a hard leather cover book.
“Do you like it?” I perfectly understood mother’s words, in a moment of inspiration. I almost shed a tear, not for the present, but for the clearness of the message. I was getting there, so close.
“Yes.” I tightly hugged my parents.
They gifted me a compendium of plants, animals, ellari culture, geography, everything in general. An atlas I would gladly devour.
About calendars. As someone who has lived half a decade after reincarnation, is strange that I didn’t talk about something so useful and ever-present as calendars. The year was divided into four seasons (awfully familiar) that lasted for one hundred days each, for a total of four hundred days a year.
The year started with the cold season of Frost. Then as the hoarfrost disappears and plants bloom again, it is Bloom. Third is Scorch, a season of unnatural heat. Yet I didn’t feel much heat in our city. Magic probably. Last was Decay. Every season is self-explanatory except this one. You could say that the others are based on cynicism, while Decay is a more mystical season.
Decay is the season of magic and the dead. The perfect time for rituals, traditions, and horror stories. All of this is superstition, but as a former spirit, I couldn’t deny the appearances of the undead in such a season. I would love to say I was able to observe the souls walking around the place alike the River of the Damned, but that wasn’t the case. And I hoped it stayed that way. Forever.
Ferilyn was the ellari stronghold, the capital of magic. We, ellari, were protected by the elements and invaders in our city-state. Not only we were prodigious mages, but the famous, almost deified, High Arcanist was told to be the strongest mage in the world. Yes, the whole world.
But my knowledge of the outside world was next to nothing. The only information I got was from children’s storybooks, which weren’t reliable at all. I still had to read the compendium, there was no index, and I had no rush, so I was reading every page in order.
The book started in ellari flora, and was about one thousand pages long (did my parents just give a brick of a book to a toddler? I didn’t know if they were incredibly intuitive, or plainly stupid), so I didn’t expect to get more intelligence on the outside for a while.
I centered myself in the monotonous task that was sal men’ora. If I was awake and I didn’t meditate for an hour, I would immediately begin the five-minute process. Age did help a bit in getting more practice. I no longer needed twelve hours of sleep, just half a day (such an incredible upgrade!). Which gave me a measly ten more minutes of practice a day, but even the scraps satisfied me.
But I was feeling I was doing something wrong. Three years of constant meditation and not achieving the formation of a mana pool didn’t feel right. So, I asked father.
“Why is it taking so long you ask?” Father repeated. He was laying in the sofa as mother went to buy vegetables for today’s dinner. “It is strange indeed, but not abnormally so. Mana pool time formation can vary from the individual, it can go from two years to four.” I wasn’t really sure about this phrase. Father forgot from time to time that I was a toddler and I couldn’t understand complex words. “Though those are optimist estimates. I personally took five years to form my mana pool. But to be honest, I wasn’t as dedicated as you, back then.”
“Why I not have it?” It was still difficult to form ellari sentences on the spot, even if I could mostly understand people talking to me.
“Hmm. I concur it’s your affinity, Edrie.” He loved using complicated words when talking to me even if he didn’t use them with mother. Probably to stimulate learning, but most surely, he forgot once more I was still a child. “You have the highest affinity possible in the arcane, superb affinity. Whilst that aided you in manaflowing for the first time, it seems to slow you down now.”
“Why?” I asked once again. I don’t know what he means by affinity, but it must be a good thing for it to be high, right?
“I have my theories, but it’s better if we ask an expert. Do you remember Novela, Edrie?” I nodded. “Well, she may be able to answer our questions.” Finally, a phrase I could fully grasp without grinding my gears.
So, we went outside. I loved walking across the main avenue, it never got old. While places like Thal’mer, home, and other streets, were peaceful and calm; the avenue was colorful and irradiated with the cacophony of ellari.
Hmm… I hate that ellari is both singular and plural.
We reached Novela’s shop without complications in a matter of minutes. The scenery prevented the walk from being boring. One could never get bored from the extravaganza that was ellari vanity.
Father opened the door and the bell rang, but as he entered the shop he stumbled upon another man.
“Oh, sorry.” The well-dressed ellari excused himself and went away. His clothing was noteworthy as he dressed in leather instead of the typical ellari silk. It didn’t look like a comfortable attire.
There was no one in the shop except Novela, we literally crashed with the only client. Talk about probability. Disregarding the event as no more than a common nuisance, father talked to Novela.
“Hi there, Novela.” He greeted. “I’ve come with Edrie.”
“It’s been a while, little boy.” The shopkeeper wearing a comically large hat saluted me as father patted my head.
A while? Ma’am it has been four years. Four years! Ellari truly has a distorted sense of time. At least she was far nicer now than the last time we saw her. I wasn’t able to understand her then, but she wasn’t exactly polite.
“Edrie wanted to know why it takes so much time to form his mana pool.” Father explained.
Novela looked at me closely, as she was inspecting me beyond my looks. As I followed her gaze, I noticed that she dressed more glamorously than my parents. Her clothing wasn’t exactly rich, but the quality was better than I had seen.
Last time I hadn’t noticed this detail. She was also more beautiful than I remembered, with a more curvaceous body than my mother. Yet she wasn’t able to surpass my mother’s beauty. Something told me that if I said that to her face she wouldn’t be as polite as she had been.
“How much time did he need to make his first manaflow?” She asked without worry about my inquisitive looks.
“A year.” I responded myself.
“Huh, he knows how to talk.” Novela commented. “Well, a good time, but certainly not prodigious, not even while considering his innate capabilities.” She thought over for a second. “Edrie, could you flow your mana to this device?” She placed an ashen wood plate on the counter.
I nodded. Flowing mana to objects was a triviality for me now, even if originally it was an arduous task that took one year to achieve. Before I even began, Novela instructed me once more.
“I want you to infuse mana slowly and with constancy.” The mage said. “Think about it like the reverse of the mana pool formation practice.”
Though it was a weird way of phrasing it, I understood what she meant and followed her orders. Mana left my body, one drop at a time. When I was a minute into it, and my head began to spin, Novela put a hand on my shoulder as to order me to stop.
“I see.” She expressed. “Tel’am, this problem is caused by his superb affinity, but for reasons you could not have imagined.”
“How so?” Father asked.
“I saw vestiges of a mana pool inside him, the formation is progressing well.” Novela explained. “The problem is that his superb affinity is very mana hungry. It cannot be satiated with common mana, it needs to be refined into higher quality, which requires more time.”
“I’ve never heard of this phenomenon.” He spoke.
“It’s a problem for high-tier spellcasters, of course you don’t know it.” Oof, lady that jab hurt him. I even saw him flinch. “But it is indeed strange to see it in an initiated. Probably caused by an innate superb affinity, instead of a cultivated affinity that has bloomed into one of higher quality.”
“Will there be any consequences to his health?” Father was firstly concerned for my well-being.
“While I’m not a doctor, I can say it’s probably not a hindrance,” Novela commented. “The only problem he will have is his mana recovery speed being on the lower end, alongside his mana pool growth being limited.” Those seemed like problems, yes. “But his mana will be of a higher quality from the start, and it isn’t like children use their entire mana pool anyway.”
Father and Novela talked for a while, though words quickly passed through my brain as their conversation gained speed. I still wasn’t at the point I was able to handle a fast-paced conversation. I took advantage of the situation and looked around the magical shop.
Everything was so alien and mystical that I was actually worried if I touched anything it would spontaneously combust. So, I conformed myself with simple window shopping (was it really window-shopping if you were already inside the store?)
“Thank you, Novela,” Father told her once their dialogue seemed to cease.
“Thank you~” I repeated after him, not surely why, but.
“No problem.” She looked at me. “It’s always a pleasure researching the intricacies of a superb affinity.” I had the hunch the phrase had some sort of double meaning I was not able to discern.
And with that, we said goodbye and left the magical shop.