Brighteyes tore out of the shelter forgetting to limp as he swept an anxious gaze around the camp. Adrenaline coursed through his veins as he took in the details and his breath was visible as it puffed rapidly. A smoking crater of broken stone. Ulric Glade Chief bleeding on the ground like he'd crawled through thorns.
"Hells happen you?! We danger? Say something worms in head!" Brighteyes yelled at the most likely source of the disturbance. He'd heard his strange benefactor mumbling incomprehensible nonsense the few times he'd risen from his extended doze yesterday. Now this.
Ulric waved at Brighteyes cheerfully, "Morning Brighteyes! No danger, just running some tests."
"If no danger, why are you bleeding?" Brighteyes was, naturally, skeptical of his host's claims. Good man or no, he had definite worms in head ideas. And looked at simple realities like viewing through a twisty smoked looking glass.
Wiping the blood from his face one more time, Ulric dusted himself off before he rose to his feet. He was a little unsteady but, other than a few aches seemed fine. Nothing worth worrying over. Probably looked a lot worse than it felt, judging by Brighteyes' scowl.
"New magic Brighteyes. Needed test, got a little away from me there and rocks no good targets." Ulric pointed to himself "No hurt bad, just some blood from rock pieces."
Calming slightly the elf's eyes narrowed as curiosity replaced panic.
"What magic make sound like sky falling and burn rock?" Brighteye asked while he cautiously approached the, now cool, shattered rock.
Ulric went over to his stack of hide strips and cut a fur strip to tie as a bandage on his head, likewise tending to a few other cuts while he thought about how to explain lightning.
"You see storms? Thunder and bright flash?" Ulric pointed up at the overcast sky.
"Skylance?" the elf boy's eyes widened at the word. Brighteyes was properly impressed.
"Ulric Glade Chief stupid enough to call Skylance this close?" Oh. Damn. Well, he couldn't exactly argue with that could he? The proof would be in the still bleeding pudding.
"Ah. Well, yes, I was trying to cast something similar to lightning from my hand to a target location. It did work, after a fashion. Just didn't account for how destructively my target would respond." Ulric felt the need to defend himself from the accusation of a foreign elf child. He also felt some concern that he felt the need to defend himself from said child.
"But the principles are sound!" Ulric exclaimed victoriously. And they were. He'd proven that the mana could far more efficiently condense charge than he'd accomplished with his instinctive casting. A well planned, clearly intentioned spell had somewhat easily magnified the destructive potential of the arc. That he'd very nearly destructed himself, both with a short circuit cast and with the erupting rock debris was, almost entirely, beside the point. And Brighteyes didn't need to know about that first part anyway.
For his own part, the Elven prince stood in awe at the suicidal enthusiasm of his rescuer. He briefly considered the difference in safety of roaming out into the forest half lame or remaining here where the madman could kill them both. His eyebrows furrowed as he mulled it over. Stay. Marginal. It was more likely the warrior and stupendously impractical mage would kill himself before he could do something powerful enough to get them both, so long as he kept his distance. Still. Brighteyes couldn't, in good conscience, leave this man without some iota of self-preservation. He owed a debt and debts couldn't be paid if you left the benefactor to erase himself in some act of stupendous nonchalance.
"Ulric Glade Chief, Brighteyes has lack of words for explain." Brighteyes began, boyish voice grown grave.
"Will do best. What master teach Ulric magic?" the boy asked.
Ulric tamped down his excitement at progress at the elf lad's serious tone.
"I don't have a master Brighteyes. I learn by myself." He decided that, in all things, honesty was going to be the best policy. He'd never been able to lie and detested the practice on ethical grounds. What was the point of communicating with people if all you were going to do was make shit up? It corrupted the entire process of linguistic cognition between peoples.
"Then how long Ulric Glade Chief learn self?" the child continued his line of questioning.
"Hmm…I suppose it's been maybe two, three months?" Ulric hadn't really kept track of time very well the last few weeks. Prior to Brighteyes he'd basically stopped worrying about days and only kept track of significant events or progress goals. He didn't even know if the word he used for "months" had meaning. Although, whatever language he was using probably had some sort of calendar equivalent, that seemed to be near universal amongst civilizations so it was probably fine.
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At this, the elf spoke slowly, trying to be considerate of his host but also clear.
"Brighteyes learn two years from father, father's teachers, many elf mages many years practiced. They say 'Brighteyes, you no do magic without guide. You kill self with simplest things.' None try hold Skylance. None make spells crack house open. Ulric Glade Chief, you strong, stronger than reason. Please, consider living before do more of this." As he uttered "this" the child pointed to the remains of the stone.
Ulric took his deserved scolding with grace. It was true, he hadn't really considered any safety precautions before he'd attempted the spell. He'd spent maybe an hour reviewing the relevant theories in his mind and had launched immediately into a full tilt spell that could easily completely destroy a man. No ramp up. No proofs of concept. He'd just completely gone for it. It demonstrated a severe lack of respect for what magic truly was for him. It was a dangerous unknown. A tool, maybe. A weapon, certainly. But it was like working with a machining lathe. You might use them but anybody who planned to live long with all their bits treated the things like they were scared shitless of them. Mostly because they were. Ulric had seen the workplace videos demonstrating what loose sleeves and a moment's inattention could do. It was awful enough he had to swallow back a little bile at the memory. Magic fell into the same category.
Twice now he'd done something new, with little regard for the result and twice now he'd been punished. Almost like there were consequences for fucking with things he didn't completely understand. If he hadn't pushed the ionizing air into a spark gap channel he doubted he could have stopped a runaway avalanche and uncontrolled discharge. That arc would have hit him with utmost certainty.
That a child would need to offer tempering advice was a mark of the extent to which Ulric had allowed himself to become complacent. Thinking back on it, the Watcher had specifically mentioned that there would be pitfalls to his possession of the full strength of his core, minus the lifetime of training that normally came with it.
Shaking his head and holding his hands up in surrender Ulric sought to placate his temporary ward, and demonstrate that he was properly chastened.
"Sorry I scared you Brighteyes, I'll try to be more careful. I have learned mostly through trial and error and my early successes have made me incautious. I'll do better, promise." And he would.
Mollified, the Elven prince's frown leveled out. He'd been suddenly woken by thunder in his ear and he wasn't completely recovered from a fairly traumatic experience. Then he'd seen the man who had cared for him bleeding out next to a smoking hole. These were not things given to make a restful environment and, it could be safely said, that the day was not promising.
Sudden terrorizing events aside, Brighteyes was a young man. Elf. That meant he shared all young men's love of fire and explosions and this had been a good one. Naturally, he wanted to know more, especially since the cause of the trouble had, somehow, survived it.
"Ulric Glade Chief, how not dead?" An entirely reasonable question on the boy's part.
"Well, Brighteyes, in spite of my inexperience with magic, I trained extensively to regulate the flow of electrical power. It was used for nearly everything in my life and my job." Ulric replied honestly. He didn't know how much he should reveal about his old life, less was probably better, but he could talk around the technology about fundamental principles.
"The first thing you learn to avoid dangerous electrical scenarios is to always give the power an outlet, an emergency channel to ground. Then, if what you're trying to do fails, the energy has a place to go that isn't you. In this case, my major failure was not realizing how badly my ground was chosen. I didn't expect the rock to superheat. Which was dumb, in hindsight."
And it had been. Of course the stones near a pool of water would hold water. If he'd just used the pool itself the lightning would have spread through the water and into the rock below safely.
Brighteyes nodded like that made sense, although Ulric wasn't sure exactly how much of what he said had actually registered or if he'd just gotten the broad strokes. Even that much was fine, given their inability to really communicate well. The elf seemed to have the vocabulary of a mid-elementary grader.
"Then, if no master, how you learn spell? Magic dangerous, difficult. Core is difficult control. Is hard make mana move, is very much way for Ceraun. Ulric Glade Chief no lie? Only months learn?" That was a pretty long one for him. And, again, surprisingly Brighteyes had a relatively good grasp on things, probably a product of good parenting.
Ignoring the slight skepticism, it was far from uncalled for, Ulric tried to explain to the boy about his upbringing. He described the typical childhood of people of his country, entering publicly funded, universal schooling at young age, receiving training in various fields of language use, writing, mathematics, and scientific principles. Brighteyes was clearly flabbergasted at parents having so little interaction with their children, to the point he interjected "But where mother father all day?". It had taken another few minutes to relate the role of parents in working to provide subsistence which had led to the mention of money, a concept with which Brighteyes seemed familiar, so at least Ulric was spared trying to explain symbolic exchange of goods and services.
Continuing their discussion, the Elven prince summarized what he'd been told relatively succinctly: "Then Ulric Glade Chief's people train all children in mage craft but without touching mana at all?". It was, a stunningly accurate way to describe the relationship between theoretical science and the mages of this world, from their perspective.
"You know, I never thought about it that way, but yeah. That's sort of exactly how it works." Ulric admitted.
"My people never touched magic, but we learned about the forces and flows of energy that made the world operate. I use those things that I was taught to help me understand how to move and manipulate mana into what spells I cast. Clearly there are some gaps, mostly regarding how much mana is needed to do something or how to predict the interactions of my mana with the world and prevent unintended consequences. Which is why I only cast a couple of spells, they're the only ones I felt safe enough about casting, since I figured I had a pretty good handle on how to do them properly."
That might have been too much for the kid to follow, but Ulric was somewhat excited to bounce ideas off of someone grounded in this world's experience, even if that someone was a minimally fluent elf child. It gave him an even stronger motivation to be able to communicate with the peoples he met, especially if they were from the different races, with their different viewpoints, histories, specialties, and cultural inflections on what was known.
Thus spurred, Ulric decided to ask a favor of Brighteyes, "Will you teach me Elf language Brighteyes? I want to speak with your people, with their own tongue if possible. You try hard to speak with me and it feels imbalanced for only you to be going to such lengths."
Brighteyes answered immediately in the affirmative, "You save my life. You open home to stranger, not even same clan. Is honor to share Elf speech with Ulric Glade Chief." He seemed glad about it, which was nice. Guess the elves in this world weren't the insular, isolationists that his own world painted the stories about them.
Ulric felt again, the sense of adventure that this new life provided. Here he was talking to an honest to gods elf. A prince even! And he would learn Elvish. Tolkien eat your heart out.
Besides, Ulric's plans for learning more about magic were suddenly taking on a new perspective. That shit was dangerous, and his ignorance was proving more dangerous. It would be fair to describe his position as that of some random schmuck having been handed a fighter plane and told to fly it solo. Was a fighter plane a tremendously awesome and capable piece of equipment that could perform incredible feats? Sure it could. Could the ignorance of a novice pilot result in immediate death? Yup. And not just could either. I'd like to buy a "w" and solve the puzzle, please.
Today had shown him that he badly needed to talk to somebody who knew what the hell they were doing. Where better to start with magical shenanigans than with a magical people?
Ulric gestured to the shelter and said "I'll get camp chores done and breakfast sorted. And then I'd like to learn the language of the elves. I can help you improve your human speech at the same time."
Brighteyes nodded his understanding.
"Brighteyes help camp, will be useful. Then we learn, yes?"
Ulric smiled at that.
"Always learning Brighteyes."
They got to work.