“Magic is, as you said, quite awesome,” Mallory said, his inflection of the word giving it a more profound meaning. “Are you by any chance familiar with the concepts of dark matter, dark energy, or quintessence?”

Aaron had to think about that for a second. He knew he knew what it was, but it was somewhere in the back of his mind. Being a nerd was one thing, but there were so many different flavors of nerd. Aaron appreciated science, but he was more of a fantasy and gaming nerd than a hard science nerd. And he was years away from the last time he’d had a serious interest in philosophy.

“Dark matter is supposed to be an unknown type of matter that exists in the empty spaces in the universe. Quintessence in the sense I think you mean is Latin, if I remember right, and has something to do with philosophy.”

“Are you a student of classical philosophy?” Mallory asked.

“I was a smug, angsty teenager at one point so, y’know, obviously at least a little bit.”

Mallory smiled at that. “Well, adolescence is much changed of late if reading the great thinkers of antiquity is part of the rebellious phase. As it’s been some time since you were a teenager, perhaps you’ll forgive me for retreading old ground.”

According to Mallory, quintessence — or quinta essentia as he sometimes called it with unnecessary pretension — was a Latin term attached to an even older concept, which the Greeks had called aether. It was considered the fifth of the more well-known four classical elements — fire, water, earth, and air. The concept was not exclusive to the western world and could be found in other cultures, such as akasha in India or ku in Japan.

“Aether is so pervasive, so omnipresent, that it ceases to be a substance in a way we could understand and, instead, becomes a concept. It is in, around, and between all things on all planes and through all dimensions,” Mallory said.

“So it’s like the Force without the bugs in your blood?”

Mallory’s eyebrows furrowed. “That is startlingly close to something Miss Kellogg told me I should be prepared to say, though I’m unfamiliar with the context. It is conceptually similar, I believe.”

Quintessence, or aether, was the medium in which magic was worked. It could be manipulated in a way that changed or altered the rest of reality around it. While a few cultures had gleaned that aether was a fundamental element of the universe, more had understood it in a more practical way, recognizing that it could be manipulated by the individual. Concepts like ashe, mana, prana, qi, and many more were manifestations of the varied understandings aether — even if they were not the thing itself — translated through the lenses of various cultures..

“Aether makes magic possible,” Mallory explained. “We must consider not only how magic happens, but how it is performed. There are two fundamental qualities that define how magic is crafted — the expertise of the caster and the engine by which they cast.”

“When you say engine, I take that to mean the mechanics of casting. Like, how the sorcerer does their sorcery.”

“Well reasoned,” Mallory said. “Expertise is relatively straightforward, although there are many instances in which no skill or knowledge is required yet the magic is performed expertly. Exempli gratia — the heightened endurance and resilience most drakus enjoy is a magical effect requiring neither knowledge nor training, yet it should be viewed as an expertly-crafted magic.”

“Exempli gratia…” Aaron mumbled to himself, though Mallory took no notice.

“The engine of a mystic endeavor, on the other hand, is generally less malleable. Although it could be charted on an axis just as expertise can, the two extremes are so broad as to make differentiating them effectively binary or, perhaps, trinary, rather than the gradient of expertise.”

Aaron held up a hand so Mallory would pause his explanation. He was trying to decipher what the ancient sorcerer had just said and failing spectacularly. Things had been making sense, but then they had veered into the weeds, hard, and Aaron completely lost the thread.

He sounds like the worst written RPG ever, Aaron thought.

He didn’t want to seem stupid, but he needed clarity if he was going to understand this stuff and he very much wanted to.

“Okay, I get that expertise is how much skill a person has or applies when they perform magic, but what do you mean when you talk about an axis and binaries for the engine? Do you mean like the axes on a graph?”

Tia stepped up next to Mallory. Aaron glanced behind her and saw that the sarcophagus wasn’t finished being reassembled, but it had been compiled into a dozen or so large pieces that could be put together quickly.

“Zeke is very old and talks like he’s writing the Declaration of Independence sometimes,” she said. “The engine of sorcery is the specific way the magic is enacted, which only really has two methods — structured and spontaneous.”

“What does that mean, in practical terms?”

“When we were at the lake, I drew all those runes and sigils in the ground and Zeke performed an incantation; that’s structured casting. When you were in the Vault, you basically just used visualization and sheer willpower to change reality; that’s spontaneous.”

“An apt synopsis, Miss Kellogg. Well spoken,” Mallory said.

“That makes sense, thank you. If the engine of magic is either spontaneous or structured, how could it be a trinary?”

“When it’s neither,” Tia said with a smile. “It’s usually magic that is innate to the various mythics, like how we’re strong and tough. The engine is unconscious or passive, so it’s not structured or spontaneous; it just is.”

Aaron thought he had a grasp of what Tia was describing, but he was hung up on semantics. As much as he hated to keep asking them to simplify things, he needed to know how a thing could be both spontaneous and non-spontaneous.

Isn’t that one of Aristotle’s basic laws of logic? he thought. A thing can’t be true and also not true.

“Wouldn’t it be spontaneous, then?” he asked, then answered himself. “Wait, no, because it’s not both, it’s neither.”

Tia beamed at him and Mallory gave him a respectful nod of his head. It was like the concept had been locked in a box in Aaron’s mind, but it had flown open mid-sentence and understanding had popped out. It was a rudimentary understanding of a deep and complex subject, but it was a good start. Tia held out a fist and Aaron tapped it with his own, then she went back to work on the Vault with Alice and Barrett.

Aaron watched her go, his eyes involuntarily straying down to check out her ass and legs then flitting over to Alice, as well. He dragged them back to Mallory, cursing inwardly.

I don’t want to be that guy, he told himself. But if women like those two are going to be around, I am one hundred percent for sure going to make an awkward jackass out of myself in the very near future.

Limiting the damage from his inevitable stupidity was probably going to be a far greater challenge than either of the Tribulations had been. Aaron was very good at making an ass of himself and equally bad at fixing the mess in the aftermath.

“It’s most heartening to see Miss Kellogg has a way of communicating that’s conducive to your education,” Mallory said. “Thankfully, the final factor in the casting of magic is more straightforward, for all that it is vastly more inscrutable.”

“There’s a third thing? I thought you said there were two, uh, two ‘fundamental qualities’ or something like that.”

“Indeed so. In addition to the expertise of the practitioner and the engine of their practice, a third component exists that is not necessarily part of the caster’s craft. It is both internal and external to the sorcerer and vastly more difficult to quantify and measure — that factor is emotion.”

“Emotion?”

“Magic is rooted in emotion, Mister Abrams,” Mallory said. “It is the primary catalyst for the conducting of magic and, thus, quite necessary. Moreover — and more complicated — any conscious efforts to produce magic evoke an emotional response which requires redress if the casting is to succeed.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Again, Mallory had a tendency to communicate with language that was as stilted as it could possibly be, but Aaron thought he got the gist of it. However, what Mallory was describing didn’t entirely match up with what Aaron had witnessed so far, so he had to ask about it.

“If you need strong emotions to do magic, how are you and Tia able to do it so easily?”

Mallory’s brow furrowed slightly, the white tufts of his brows knitting together. “Forgive me, I may have provided an inadequate explanation. While emotions are central to the production of magic, they need not be tumultuous or overwhelming. In those instances when they are not, however, magic will often inflict an emotional state on the practitioner, attempting to subvert, distract, or undermine their efforts to manipulate the aether.”

“Magic attacks you with emotions for trying to do magic?”

The old man nodded. “An accurate assessment. In both cases — whether you are invoking emotion or it is being evoked against you — you must find some way to resolve the conflict introduced by this emotional element lest the energies involved go awry.”

“I imagine those energies aren’t only a threat to the spell or whatever,” Aaron mused.

“Quite so. The consequences of losing control are unpredictable and indiscriminate. The magic you performed in the Vault was performed with low expertise, no structure, and while in the grips of great emotional turmoil. The results could have been calamitous.”

So Aaron had risked some kind of magical blowout by conjuring up that weapon to escape the Vault. Looking back, he was pretty sure he would do it again even if he’d known the risks. An involuntary shiver ran up his spine as he recalled the sensation of all those disgusting things swarming over him.

“I cannot place enough emphasis on how careful you must be to avoid such unstructured manipulations of aether,” Mallory said. “While it may come to pass that you find yourself in the unusual position of having a greater aptitude for spontaneous workings than structured magic or rituals, making such attempts without any proper training can have calamitous results.”

Behind Mallory, the last few bits of the Vault were being compared against the gaps to find their rightful place. Mallory’s lecture seemed to have ended, so both men turned their attention to the process, where Alice, Barrett, and Tia traded around the remaining fragments and fit them in their proper places.

When the last piece was set, the faint red glow returned, limning the curved edges where each of the broken pieces met. Mallory walked up to the Vault and bent down, his face barely an inch from the smooth stone surface. He ran his hand over the faintly illuminated remnants of Aaron’s frantic slashes, fingers splayed wide. The light faded after a few more seconds, leaving no sign of the damage behind. Finally, Mallory seemed satisfied with his inspection of the Vault and rose.

“Your hypothesis appears to have been correct, Miss Kellogg, and the Vault is capable of repairing itself. I cannot estimate when it will be ready for use again, but it is mending.”

“Guess you better stay alive for a while, then, eh?” Tia remarked to Aaron.

“Sounds like congratulations are in order,” Barrett said. “Well done, Aaron!”

There was a general clamor of agreement and Aaron felt a surge of satisfaction. The moment was short-lived as he felt like something was crawling along his neck and he brushed at it impatiently, knowing it was just a phantom sensation. Even knowing that, he was no more able to ignore the sensation than if it had been the real thing. He had the same problem any time he saw an ant within arm’s reach and knew it wouldn’t stop until he did something to convince himself he was clean.

“Thanks, everyone,” Aaron said. “It was a pretty fucked up thing, but I’m glad to have gotten through it. I’d very much like a shower, though. Soon.”

Barrett clapped his hands together enthusiastically. “An excellent idea. You will need rest after that Tribulation and you’re going to want to have a large dinner.”

“I’ll ride home with him and make sure he eats enough,” Tia offered, drumming her hands on the stone lid of the reconstituted Vault.

“Ah yes, Mr. Abrams' accommodations are in the same building as yours, as I recall.” Mallory said. “That should make things rather convenient.”

“What kind of things?” Aaron asked, unsure where this was going and unwilling to trust himself to make any guesses.

“Miss Kellogg, as my assistant, is well-suited to helping you gain a greater understanding about our world, which is, of course, now your world, as well. As she demonstrated earlier, she is also quite adept at explaining intricate concepts in a manner that seems digestible for you, which I hope will prove to be a great boon to your development.”

Aaron shot Tia a look, hoping she could explain, as Mallory had put it, this intricate concept in a way that was easily digestible for him.

“I’m the TA for Magic and Weird Shit 101, which means I’ll be teaching all the actual classes while Zeke writes a book or something,” Tia said.

The awkward bomb is definitely imminent, he thought ruefully, as intrigued as he was anxious at the idea of Tia teaching him about magic and all this secret world stuff. That doesn’t mean I have to start shaking the box and yanking at wires. Just try your best to be a normal human who can say normal human shit.

“Cool,” Aaron said, trying to act like he, personally, was also cool.

At least it’s not Alice; that would be too difficult, he told himself.

Tia was beautiful, smart, and had a great sense of humor, but Alice was so beautiful it was practically cliché. Add her glamour into the mix and Aaron would be sure to make an ass out of himself in record-shattering time.

In either case, finding women like that suddenly in his social orbit was surreal. It was awesome and terrifying in a way that was not entirely different from meeting Raz’ale, the dragon residing in a lake of magma under Yellowstone.

Tia sauntered over to the stone doors with an air of exaggerated braggadocio, her head and shoulders thrown back as she strutted across the stone chamber. She beckoned for Aaron to join her and he started to, but Mallory offered a bit of parting advice before they left.

“Before you sleep tonight, Mr. Abrams, try to clear your mind. You may experience some unusual sensations as your nature awakens to new heights; if you can maintain your composure, they should pass quickly.”

Unsure of what he was supposed to say to something like that, Aaron simply nodded his head once, then joined Tia at the wide doors, which swung open for them.

Albert, Griffin, and Kiara were in the midst of a heated argument which had been completely blocked when the chamber was sealed.

“What the hell do you care, you contentious shrew? It’s not like it’s hurting anyone,” Griffin said, jabbing an accusatory finger in Kiara’s direction.

“Listen, dickless, it doesn’t matter if there’s no specific victim, it’s still utterly disgusting,” she replied. “And if you keep pointing that finger at me, you’re going to fucking lose it.”

“Okay, but-” Albert tried to interject, but they both turned to look at him with furious glares and his mouth snapped shut again with an audible click of his teeth.

Before they could start back up, Tia practically skipped up to them.

“Whatcha talkin’ about?” she asked coquettishly.

All three of the security detail turned to her, saw Aaron a few steps behind, and grew quiet.

“Nothing,” Griffin said, a bit sheepishly.

“It looks like you made it,” Kiara said to Aaron.

“Congrats,” Albert added, clapping Aaron on the shoulder.

“We should get on the road,” Griffin said. The other two nodded in agreement, acting as if they hadn’t just been at each other’s throats.

Aaron was not an expert on protecting people, but it seemed obvious that kind of bad blood in a situation like this could be dangerous. Plus, it sounded like Griffin might be into something that Aaron wouldn’t want around him, either, so he felt like he needed clarification. For perhaps the first time in his life, he was in a position where he could actually expect to get it.

“Hold on a second,” he said. “What was that argument about?”

“It was nothing,” Albert said. “Really. Just pissing about.”

Aaron shook his head. “It didn’t sound like nothing. You guys are supposed to be keeping me safe, so I need to know what’s going on if there’s a problem.”

The trio exchanged a look that made their reluctance clear, but Kiara shrugged, flapped a hand at Griffin, and said, “It’s your nasty ass thing; you tell him.”

Griffin sighed. “Albert suggested we split a Pile o’ Nuggets for dinner. I said we should make sure to get plates or bowls or something so our skins don’t get all mixed together. Kiara asked what I meant by ‘skins’ and I said I liked to peel the breading off and eat it separate from the meat. Then she said my, uh, parents were obviously lacking and I was poorly raised. It sorta got rolling from there.”

Aaron blinked at them a few times while Tia snickered quietly. That told him a lot about the dynamic of the friendship between the three of them and it was something he was familiar with, even if it had been a while since he’d really engaged with his friends.

“But right in the middle of it, we came in, so nobody won, I guess. Sorry to interrupt,” Aaron said.

Albert, Griffin, and Kiara were quiet for a moment, then they shared smiles with him and each other. Aaron felt mildly confident they appreciated that he appreciated the nature of their relationship and how they had fun with each other.

“Well, it looks like we’re back on the clock, boys,” Kiara said. “Let’s get the package safely to its destination, alright?”

“I’m in the same building, so you have the honor of giving me a lift, too,” Tia said.

Kiara shrugged. “It’ll be a bit cramped, but I don’t mind having some extra magic muscle tossed in the mix, just in case. I need you to follow my orders if things go sideways, though. No questions, no backtalk. Okay?”

Tia straightened her posture and offered a mocking salute.

“Whatever you say, captain lady! Let’s move out,” she said, and began to trot in place, solemnly intoning a marching chant of, “Hup hup hup hup.”

Kiara rolled her eyes and her two compatriots snickered, but nobody made a thing out of it. Moments later, they were back in the tunnels.

Aaron was curious to find out what his new home was like and he was looking forward to seeing more of the city. As exciting as everything going on was, he was most eager to get in a shower. He was still suffering the erratic sensation of something — or somethings — crawling on him, causing him to swipe, rub, or scratch at himself.

They really couldn’t get to that shower soon enough for him.