4
Magic
Stacy
Max bringing up the idea of magic totally put movie night on a back burner for me. I still remembered when we were kids and we used to play this game we made up all in our imaginations and all we ever called it was “Magic”. We would come up with elaborate scenarios and decide what kind of magic we had and play pretend that we were casting spells on each other for hours. To be honest we played that far further into adolescence than I care to admit, it was always so fun.
The thought of being able to make that game a reality relit something inside me where I hadn’t realized a fire had gone out. Suddenly, the Mana inside me wasn’t just a sensation. It was a possibility
“How are we going to learn magic?” Max asked and brought me back to earth. “Are we just going to search the internet for some wiccan ritual that might actually work now that the System is changing the world?”
“Why do you have to be such a downer,” I responded, a little miffed that he didn’t seem to be on board. “Lets brainstorm ideas. Use your imagination Maxy, I know you still have one in there even though you try to hide it.”
“I am on board, and I’m invested in this,” he says, and for the first time in ages I saw a glimmer of something in his eyes that I hadn’t since my family moved when we were in high school, I saw joy. Thankfully I didn’t realize right then just how long it had been since I had last seen Joy from my cousin or it may have broken me. Instead I got excited. This was going to be just like when we were kids, only this time we would make it real. Max continued, “I really just don’t know where to start. What are your ideas?”
“First up, I think I am going to look up wiccan rituals and all the idea’s I can find that people have had about magic. Maybe there is something there. Genie said she didn’t know we were capable of perceiving Mana. Maybe that’s because she is technology and Humanity has always advanced technology, what if somewhere way back in time people could and it never left the collective subconscious?”
“Wow you have put a lot of thought into this really quickly.”
I felt a little smug about the look of disbelief on my cousins face, before deciding I should pull back the curtain on myself, “I may have taken a couple anthropology electives in college that dove into possible uses for ritualism and the ideas of magic in ancient societies. I also may have had a lot of thoughts in those classes that lead me to spend a lot of office hours with the professors.”
“Cool,” Max said with a shocking amount of earnestness. “So while you are looking that up, what should I do?”
“First bring me your laptop. I don’t feel like trying to do research on my phone screen. “Then, try to focus your meditation further. It is supposed to help regain lost resources. You have the perfect excuse to test that out and try to get rid of that bruise before you have to explain it to my mom on Sunday.”
Max
I forget how smart Stacy is sometimes, but the speed that she came up with a game plan for this drove home which of us got the brains in the family. Following her plan I sit down and place all my focus on my cheek. Before I know it the outside world has completely faded away and all that’s left is me the minty Mana and pain in my cheek.
Stacy said to try to focus my meditation and those words really resonated with trying to heal. Meditation was about regaining all resources, but could I distill that? I was full of Stamina and Mana, the only resource I wanted to recover was health. As I focused on the pain in my cheek I realized that it felt warmer than the rest of me. My hands, heart and brain all felt so menthol cool, that I hadn’t realized the rest of my body had the slightest sensation of mint as well. All except my cheek right now.
That didn’t seem right, deciding that I couldn’t accept that a portion of me wasn’t suffused with my newly discovered Mana, I did the only thing I could think of at that time and focused on how I thought it should feel. I did my best to split my focus between both cheeks and imagined what it would feel like for both of them to feel exactly the same. And slowly felt something shift as the feeling of pain and heat vanished and all I could feel was the newly formed image of an ever so Minty suffusion.
Suddenly, I my concentration broke as a dizzying head rush forced me to throw my hands forward to catch myself.
*Ding!*
MINOR DISCOVERY
You have Discovered the Skill Minor Rejuvenation. No Announcement is made for Minor Discoveries
WIS has experienced growth due to extended use of the Skill: Meditation
*New Skill Minor Rejuvenation: Healing is a journey, but they don’t say Distance heals all wounds. It’s about time to feel better. Aches and pains begone.*
“Holy shit, Stacy! I did it!” I shouted as soon as the dizziness disappeared.
Open interface!
Status
Skills
Titles
NAME
Maxwell Elias Rosen
Health
110/110
Stamina
80/80
Mana
63/140
Attributes
END
11
VIT
11
STR
8
DEX
8
INT
14
WIS
14
PER
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16
Holy cow, my wisdom went up by 2 points that time, I thought as I quickly navigated to my Skills tab pausing for just a moment to see that my meditation had leveled up in additional to the new Skill being displayed now.
Status
Skills
Titles
NAME
Maxwell Elias Rosen
Lvl. 2: Meditation - Passive/Active
Lvl 1. Minor Rejuvenation - Active
Minor Rejuvenation - Active
Healing is a journey, but they don’t say Distance heals all wounds. It’s about time to feel better. Aches and pains begone.
Active state:
Use your mana to correct the body’s structure. Mana cost is variable. Knowledge of the targets Biology and Mana structure increases efficiency.
This ability can only heal minor injuries or repair inconvenience level issues in the target.
Range:
Touch
Holy cow, the range says touch. I can use this on other people.
Stacy is gone from the living room and my bedroom door is closed so she must have decided to claim my bed since I was Meditating. I grab my phone and find that I have been Meditating for 5 hours this time, wow, if nothing else, that skill is great for passing time. If I hadn’t been so focused on learning to heal myself I would have felt like I just fast traveled to the future.
I grabbed a spare blanket from the closet and got comfortable on the sofa. Somehow, I fell asleep in record time when I woke up the next day I truly did feel rejuvenated.
*****
Stacy
Max slipped into meditation immediately after I told him my idea for what he could do to Discover magic. As I researched different idea’s of magic throughout history I started to uncover a commonality in many of the different societal practices.
Magic in general needed to be physically invoked according to most ancient societies. The invocation could come in different forms, I found the most common forms of invocation to be verbal, gestural, and alchemical. It was very common for different societies to mix and match, and although a lot of the alchemical invocations seemed to rely on mind altering substances, I didn’t want to disregard them. For all I knew, being on drugs allowed our ancestors to somehow experience Mana even before the System said we Discovered it.
I decided that if I was going to gain magic, I was going to aim high and started to create my own invocation. Wanting to do something that wouldn’t cause damage I settled on trying to make wind. I started off by making a verbal aspect. Figuring that imagery might be important I made sure my invocation was in line with my idea of wind by forming it around the Greek wind gods as Greek mythology always called to me in ways that modern religion just couldn’t. I then hunted down a candle that I set down and lit across the room from where I was going to try to invoke wind. I wanted to make sure I could see it when I managed to blow a breeze through the room.
As I began my chant, I thought about how I focused on the feeling of Mana to gain my meditation skill and I brought my focus to bear on the mana in my right hand.
“Oh Anemoi, I call upon thee. Boreas the Cold. Zephyrus the Gentle. Notus the Storm, Eurus the Forgotten. I beseech thee,” As I approached the end of my chant I raised my right arm and positioned it so my right hand was relaxed amount six inches in front of my left shoulder. I had decided on a simple gesture that I thought met my expectations of a sudden but forceful gust. “Empower me, that I may shape the world in your image. Come forth!”
As I whipped my hand forward, as though I were throwing a frisbee my hair and whipped forward as well, the candle across the room was immediately extinguished and a few pieces of mail blew off the counter onto the kitchen floor. I lurched forward suddenly feeling as though I stood up to quicky and just managed to keep myself from falling to the ground.
*Ding!*
MINOR DISCOVERY
You have Discovered the Skill Elemental Manipulation. No Announcement is made for Minor Discoveries
For being the first person to unlock an Elemental Skill you have received the title Lesser Wind.
*Ding!*
MINOR DISCOVERY
You have Discovered Titles. No system announcement for Minor Discoveries.
*New Skill Elemental Manipulation: Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. Balance can come from opposition. Wield the world*
*New Title Lesser Wind: Increased proficiency with Air. You are the Lesser Wind*
Holy shit! I can’t believe I’m the first. Lesser wind though? That doesn’t sound very impressive. Open interface, Max told me earlier how he was able to look further into his Skill and Title details and I really want to see the details of these two.
Status
Skills
Titles
NAME
Stacia Elaine Windberg
Lesser Wind – Unique(Upgradeable)
As I focused on the title a new window appeared just like with my skill.
Lesser Wind - Unique
Increased proficiency with Air. You are the Lesser Wind
This title was granted for being the first to Discover an Elemental skill and shaped by your first elemental manipulation. The Lesser Wind is still an Anemoi.
Affect:
Aptitude increased for all Manipulations involving the Air Element.
Mana cost is reduced for all Active Skills using the Air Element.
Beings sensitive to the element of Air can feel your Authority.
I guess the only thing lesser about this title is in its name. I think I just became an actual air elemental.
Status
Skills
Titles
NAME
Maxwell Elias Rosen
Lvl. 1: Meditation - Passive/Active
Lvl 1. Elemental Manipulation - Active
Elemental Manipulation - Active
Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. Balance can come from opposition. Wield the world
Active state:
Use your mana to control the world around you. Knowledge of the elemental structure and your affinity affect the mana cost.
Required focus can be reduced by using a chant to guide the magic.
Elemental manipulation can be made simpler by guiding existing energy.
Range:
Unbound (Limited by Mana control and PER)
I looked over at Max who hadn’t moved an inch in the previous 3 hours and decided my feat of magic earned me his bed for the night. I grab the mail I accidentally blew off his counter and set it back where it came from before heading to bed and drifting into an incredibly peaceful sleep.