Chương 15: Chapter Fifteen

"So, that took away everyone's mana? Even mine?" I asked for the umpteenth time as the wagon bounced along the road leading us away from Tenoth. Dad chuckled softly, a smile on his face.

"That's right. I can't change who it affects, only where. And I myself am not affected of course."

"But I…"

"Lyra. Why don't you leave your Dad alone and come over here. We're far enough away that I think I can start teaching you a spell." Mom called from the back.

"Oh!" I scrambled into the wagon with Dad's laugh chasing me.

"Can you teach me what Dad did?" Boyan reached for me with his stubby little arms as I found a crate next to Mom and sat. Leaning forward I gave him a raspberry on his cheek causing him to giggle.

"I think that's a bit advanced for now. I am going to teach you a very important spell." She didn't even snap her fingers and a ball of fire appeared in the air giving off an orange light.

"It's called Faerie Fire. And it doesn't burn, go ahead and touch it." I did, and it felt like… nothing. Like I was just holding my hand in the air.

"It's not really fire then." I said, trying to decide if I was disappointed or not. It was still magic, and therefore awesome. But it wasn't as cool as Dad's Null Zone spell.

"It's not. It's primarily illusion, and a safe spell to get started on. It will help you practice your External Mana Expression skill. And not hurt anyone in the process." She tapped my forehead as she stated the last sentence. I'm not sure why. It's not like I've cast any spell yet. Or hurt anyone. Well, I made those villagers uncomfortable. But that wasn't hurting!

"Okay. So how do I cast the spell. Do I have to recite some ancient language while waving a wand…" I looked Mom over carefully for a hidden wand, but only found Boyan giving messy raspberries as Mom bounced him on her knee. And a smile on her lips that told me I was being ridiculous.

"No. You just need to control the mana externally to you. Watch." She held her hand up for me to see, palm up.

"First you gather mana in your hand. There are a couple of ways to do this, I simply block the flow of mana and let it build. But you can take more direct control of it depending on how much you've practiced your mana control." She gave me a look that clearly said'See? I wasn't having you practice for nothing.' Before continuing.

"Then, when you have enough, you push it out into the air." I watched as mana left her hand to form a sphere just above it. I saw it as a blazing orange sphere, which was almost as interesting to me as the spell. Wait, no. No, it wasn't. But it was interesting the Mom's mana was burnt orange and not the cyan I saw everything else as.

"Afterwards, you make the spell runes." An image of two mirrored triangles with circles in the center appeared in the center of her mana.

"The center one is called the control rune. It sets the primary characteristics of the spell. In this case, it's the illusion rune." Two other runes appeared in the sphere one above and one below the control rune.

"Then you add the attribute runes. These can be singular, like the fire and light runes in this spell, or those runes can be connected to form sentences for more complex spells." A circle appeared around the runes and all the mana that had been floating in a rough sphere shape was pulled inside, making a perfect sphere significantly more solid than what it was before.

"Finally, you feed the mana you collected into the control rune while imagining the effect you want. This is called igniting the spell. Or simply ignition." The mana within the circle moved into the control rune only to be pushed to the fire rune above then circled around to the light rune before heading back to the control. In that fraction of a moment, I saw the complete path before the sphere bloomed into the ball of fire she had shown me before.

"How important is imagination in the process?" I asked poking the ball. She made an unsure noise and waffled her hand.

"You might be able to change elements through imagination so long as it is within the bounds of the runes you used. But for the most part, you won't get much deviation." Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. I nodded thinking. Could I change the color? The shape? Illusion, Fire, and Light. Nothing applied color or shape. So long as it looked like fire shouldn't I be able to make it whatever shape I want in whatever color I want? A thought for later.

"Why don't you try it?" Mom asked canceling her spell and sitting back. Or as back as she could be in a wagon sitting on a crate. Okay. It looked easy enough. I held my hand out, palm up. My mana pathways aren't connected, but mana is constantly being brought into my pool. So, I should still be able to… yes, there it is. I managed to stop the flow and waited a moment for the mana to build. It felt like an itch had formed at the base of my palm, making me want to scratch it furiously. But I resisted.

Okay, that should be enough. I just need to push it out. Or express it externally. I haven't done that before. Intentionally. I pushed.

"Stop! Stop!" Mom yelled as the inside of the wagon was covered in a cyan fog that I couldn't see through. I stopped pushing, and looked around awkwardly.

"Everything okay in there?" Dad's voice came back.

"Uhm…"

"Just fine!" Mom answered.

"Okay, it's just that there is a lot of Lyra's mana coming out of the wagon…"

"It's fine." Dad paused for a moment.

"Okay."

"Uhm, what do I do now?" I asked. The mana was still out, but wasn't getting thicker since I was no longer pushing. But it was still there. Was I going to have to make a ball of fire as large as the wagon?

"Just imagine cutting that mana off from you. And then we'll give it a bit to drift into the ambient mana." I did what she said. Imagined cutting the mana off from myself and jumped when I felt a small zap travel over my body. It didn't hurt as much as startle me, and the mana started drifting. Towards me. Mom sighed.

"I should have expected that. Let's give it a minute." We waited and slowly the mana disappeared in my vision.

"Okay, it joined the other mana you have around you." I tilted my head obviously asking what she meant.

"You have a small bubble of mana around you. Not big, but clearly denser than the mana around you. It's where all the ambient mana you're pulling ends up. I'm honestly curious how dense that bubble will get, and how big." She shook her head.

"Time will tell. For now. Try again. Not so much, okay?"

"Okay." I tried again. And again. It took me a couple of hours' worth of trying before I managed to get a small enough blob of mana over my hand that Mom didn't immediately call off the testing. As it turned out, I didn't have to make a blockage at all. Instead, I had to divert mana from my channels into a small pool, and then push from that. Anything else was simply too much. I thought getting the mana externalized was hard. But it was nothing compared to etching the runes.

"No, see." Mom quickly brought up an illusion rune etched with her own mana.

"You don't have the lines evenly spaced in your mirrored triangle. And see that? It's starting to far to the left. If you don't get these exact, you're asking for the spell to misfire. Which could be dangerous. So, try again. Your system will help, but only after you become proficient with the spell. But then, you won't be able to use the spell to train your control anymore." Mom drifted off as she continued on her tangent explaining a host of details that weren't important to the lines I drew incorrectly.

"Try again." I kept trying until we came to a stop for the night, having barely gotten the illusion rune drawn correctly a handful of times. My ears were drooping as I got out of the wagon and saw dozens of Faery Fire spells floating in the air in a myriad of different colors as members of the clan went about setting up camp for the night. They never did this before. Demons tend to have good night vision, even I can see perfectly well in the dark using Mana Sense, which I haven't stopped using in days.

So, someone gossiped about what spell I was trying to learn, and the clan decided to make this demonstration. But why? Were they showing off? I jumped as one of the balls flew at me, dodging it by a hair. Neera stood behind our wagon smiling. Amusement. That makes sense. I barely had time to think that before all the balls started flying my way along with the laughter of the casters. And my own. It took longer to set up camp than usual, and I wasn't able to help. At all!

Anytime I slowed down, another fist-sized ball of imaginary fire flew at me from at least two directions, causing me to try to dodge. Dad eventually got fed up and told me to just run after the third time I dropped the hoof pick. When I went to pick it up again, a ball of purple-black fire appeared in his hand. After wagging his eyebrows at me, he tossed it at me causing me to jump to the side laughing. I was exhausted and smiling by the time I laid down to sleep near my family. My family.

A warm feeling took root in my stomach at the thought as I closed my eyes and wiggled to get comfortable.

"Alarm!" The shout wasn't nearby but it was loud and I bolted upright, my previous thoughts forgotten.

"Alarm!" Another shout came from another direction. Dad was already standing up, while Mom reached for Boyan.

"Lyra, come here." Mom said as light flared in the trees. More shouting erupted from the edge of the camp. I could hear voices, but they were drowned out by metal-on-metal noises that made my blood run cold. Then a concussion so loud that it made my chest hurt. I was temporarily blinded by a bolt of lightning that was somehow traveling horizontally into the trees. Mom's hand grabbed my shoulder and pulled me towards the wagon.

I caught a glimpse of Dad's face, and had a moment to be glad that he never looked at me that way, before he ran off towards the fighting. Mom's mana surrounded me, this time it solidified into something that looked like a hard shell before fading from view. It felt like a significant step up in power from the shields she had used around me before. I could only swallow with a mouth that had turned dry as I finally recognized what the voices were doing. Screaming.