Chương 19: Progress

Ch 19: Progress

"Don't worry, he's always like that." Lina smiled at Felix as he closed the door to the High Wizard's office.

"But he's a softy, really. He just covers it up by grumping." Felix stuck out his hands, making sure the girl understood his intentions before he gently took most of the stack of books.

"Oh. Thanks." She blushed and looked around like she had no idea what to do unless carrying them.

"Should we go get started? I can show you around later. We could sit in the square. But it's kind of loud. There's libraries and study halls. Or your room is fine." At the final words the girl's blush got a lot worse, and Felix expected he was going to have to deal with some teenage hormones sooner or later.

"Whatever's closest is fine," he said, pretending not to notice. Lina nodded and led him back outside, where Felix almost winced to see Silas still waiting, staring intently at a dandelion. He had the urge to warn the girl, but he had no idea how to say 'Lina, I apologize, but I think my weird little roommate is about five seconds from falling madly in love with you'. They stepped out, and Silas blinked and grinned, then looked at Lina and froze like he was having some kind of attack.

Felix sighed but decided actually it might be nice to have a third person around.

"Silas, Lina. Lina, Silas. He's my roommate."

"Oh." The girl smiled politely and bowed her head.

"Nice to meet you, Silas. Are you from House Charnik? I recognize the crest. That's very interesting. We don't get a lot of earth wizards." Silas shrugged and made some kind of…squeaking sound. Felix dropped a hand on the kid's shoulder.

"Silas here pretty much saved me. He's been feeding me with his amazing magic and a bunch of pots and seeds. And I'd have been wandering this place for hours without him."

"Oh, wow, I'd love to see it." Lina beamed.

"I've never actually seen earth magic. Though obviously it's everywhere." Felix squeezed Silas' shoulder and stared until the kid winced in pain and nodded.

"I…of course. I'd show you anything." The girl went pink at the awkward choice of words, and Felix held back the sigh. It would have to do.

"Lina was about to show me how ignorant I am concerning all things magic. Want to come watch me get humiliated?"

"Oh." Lina frowned.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea. We should focus on teaching you the many…"

"It'll help me, I'm sure of it." Felix put his arm around Silas' shoulder and gave Lina a little shove.

"And I expect Silas here has a different perspective, right? Being from, uh, House Charnik. Who knows how useful he might be?" Lina nodded helplessly, and Felix smiled as the teenagers led him towards whatever exactly a 'study hall' was. He walked and smelled the fresh air, feeling ridiculous in his uniform and mostly wishing he could see Isa.

It was hard to believe this was the same life as a week ago—that literally in the span of a few days he'd gone from fighting pirates to the death on the open sea, to wandering some invisible island and learning how to be a proper 'wizard'. The gods of fortune were fickle little bastards. But then Felix the Fox had always known that. He walked and tried not to notice the flame inside him checking for holes.

To not think of Isa's brown eyes or the softness of her lips, or feel the pain of knowing he had no chance with a girl like that. All he could do was move forward, to take one step, and then another. To remember he was alive because his father had survived the horror of war to come back for him. Had protected him and given him this chance. He'd promised to make the most of it. He wouldn't break that promise now. **"No, it's…" Lina looked in pain as she tried to explain 'symbology' again.

She tossed up her hands as if she had no idea how to explain it any more simply. They were sitting in a corner at a small table in the 'study hall'—another incredibly large and beautiful building that looked made by master craftsmen. Felix could hardly believe the structures in this island. They were all richer and more elaborate than anything he'd seen on the continent, other than maybe a royal palace.

"It's not important what it means." Silas finally stepped in.

"You don't need to read them. The symbols themselves are a kind of magic. You just need to memorize them." Lina pointed and nodded, and Felix tried not to hate them both. He'd never been formally 'taught' by anyone except his father. And it was safe to say a former soldier and blacksmith wasn't terribly concerned with 'book learning'. Felix had held some version of a sword in his hand since he was eight.

He'd learned the rules of magic—such as his father understood them—the limits and tricks and first-hand dealings of a man who'd fought beside and killed men and mages. He'd learned how to protect his body and mind. How to survive in a world full of people who might use or kill or exploit him. How to control and define everything about himself, how to hide, to fight, to survive. It was what you might call… a practical education.

"I'm never going to remember any of these symbols unless I learn to read them," he said.

"Right now they just look like squiggles to me. I think it's a waste of time until later." You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. Lina slumped in her chair, closing the ridiculously large book and literally huffing like a kid. Felix supposed she was.

"This is the first and easiest lesson," she said.

"If I can't teach you this, I have no idea what else to do."

"We can try numerology," Silas said helpfully.

"They'll be squiggles, too. But at least there's not that many." Lina nodded but didn't look hopeful. She drew nine symbols, which were obviously 1 through 9, then started counting them like she was teaching a child. Felix rolled his eyes and took the quill. He made dashes and marks like a sailor, which were just lines and dots that could be used to count or mark digits. Most continental people couldn't read or write, and couldn't count particularly well.

But men of the sea had to by necessity, and most sailors Felix knew could calculate days and months (not to mention cargo and weight) far faster than the average person. They used a short-hand system to explain it all quickly.

"Dot is one, line up is five, line sideways is ten. You make the dots and stick lines around them. There's more symbols for bigger numbers, but that should do for now. Get it?" Silas nodded, sitting up with obvious intellectual curiosity as Felix made the marks. Lina shrugged, then looked at her book helplessly.

"I…have no idea if that works. Numbers have magic, Felix. There's different kinds of mathematics, and they have different uses when it comes to elemental mana." She took a breath.

"But I think it should do. For now. Can you, um," she looked a bit shy and glanced at Silas more than him, "can you count to a hundred?" Felix wondered how many times he'd multiplied himself into the hundreds of thousands. In the middle of a fight to the death.

"Yeah."

"OK great." Lina smiled like he'd been a very good boy.

"Counting is associated with earth and water magic. You are literally channeling them when you use numbers in your mind. At least if you have the mana. Though everyone has a little." Felix blinked as that lodged in his brain. It was probably the most important thing his father had taught him—counting exercises to tame the fire burning in his soul. Had he actually been using 'water mana' to get himself under control? Is that what it was?

"Earth and water are predictable," Lina was saying.

"They're logical and consistent. It's believed they operate using a kind of natural mathematics, and it's possible even to calculate and create formula to predict the effect of certain earth and water spells. But we'll get to that later." Silas was staring now with his chin on a hand, looking at the girl like he looked at one of his plants. Adoration leaked from the poor boy's eyes. Fortunately, she hadn't seemed to notice yet. Felix kicked the kid under the table.

"Ow. What was that for?"

"Just keeping you awake. So if earth and water mana are math, what are fire and air?"

"In a word? Emotion," Lina said.

"But some wizards describe it as 'will'. Or just 'thought'. It's hard to describe and I'm afraid I'm no expert. Your fire wizard teacher will be able to explain it much better. For now, I want you to count. We're going to try a simple spell." A spell? Felix nodded, but he was surprised they'd actually do something so quickly. As far as he knew, he'd never actually cast a water spell in his life, so the idea was a bit exciting. Lina set out three small, stacking clay bowls from her pocket.

Then she walked off and came back with a cup of water, filling one of the bowls.

"You're going to move the water between the bowls," she explained.

"It's a good first spell because it can literally be done with nothing more than mana and calculation. If you know the math, you can move the water. Understand?"

"Uh." Felix winced.

"Small problem. I don't really know how to use mana. I mean I've done it. But I don't know exactly how I did it." Both Lina and Silas stared at him like he was an idiot. Felix shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

"Look, I didn't know I was a water wizard until two seconds ago. OK? I can do fire, but I don't think you'd like that. So just…explain how to do it like I'm new. Alright? How do you do it?" Lina still looked at something of a loss, but Silas nodded and stared at the table thoughtfully.

"For me it's about thinking. I mean, I have to stop it. If I think, I start imagining the world around me, and pretty soon I'm moving dirt and growing or building things. So I have to clear my mind. It came natural, you know? I just think about it, and then it happens." Felix glanced at Lina like she'd go next. Again she had this sort of teenage 'oh my goodness you are an idiot' sort of stare.

"I'm not a wizard, Felix. Like one in a thousand girls with mana are wizards. I'm an earth and water pool."

"You're an earth pool, too?" Silas's mouth hung open. Felix just about cuffed him and said 'down boy'. He stared at the water in the bowls and shook his head.

"OK, so what's the math? Explain that part."

"Very simple." Lina again didn't seem to notice herself rising up on Silas' pedestal.

"Moving water is like percentages. You know what that means?" Felix gave his best annoyed 'yes I'm not an idiot' stare and the girl shrugged like 'how should I know?'

"Well. You imagine whatever percentage you want in the other bowls. But you need to keep the total in your mind. It gets hard if you try to split it into lots of parts. But it should be simple with just three." She looked torn whether or not she should tell him what those percentages would be. Felix looked at the bowls and the water and tried not to think this was ridiculous. Do math… to move water with his mind? It couldn't possibly be that simple.

But then he'd lit candles and torches without doing anything except wanting it. So really why was this more ridiculous? And after watching Silas grow food, he'd decided to overcome the urge to reject it. He tried just 'willing' it, but whatever his water source it wasn't like his fire. In fact he had no idea where it even came from. Mostly he just sat there staring, wandering the fortress of his soul, trying to even understand where it would be. He'd been all over that fortress.

Over more than a decade he'd built it with his own imagination, or whatever the hell you called it, wandering the 'cave' and the 'field', building walls and gates and pathways. He'd never seen any water. A little later he was pretty sure he heard someone saying his name. But he didn't stop staring. He felt sweat on his brow, felt his body locking up with intense concentration, like he was frozen as he stared at those stupid little cups. It was the sweat that finally stopped him.

There was only one source of water, one thing in his fortress that he hadn't accounted for. Him. He looked down at his imaginary hands, thinking about the fire that had come and tried to burn him but always failed. And he saw the water mana glowing beneath his skin. In a spray of drops, the water from those stupid cups exploded into the air, drifting like a still cloud as Felix stared.

"You have to…use the um…" Lina was muttering like she couldn't focus.

"The math, Felix, remember the math," Silas added excitedly. Felix realized he could almost see the numbers in the water in the air. Or maybe hear them. They weren't symbols, they were just true. Numbers that didn't need to be drawn. Like they were spoken in his mind without language, or some new universal tongue. He flicked them towards the cups in simple percentages, and the damn water actually dripped or spiraled with little sounds. They pooled in all three bloody cups, just like he wanted.

"OK." Lina wiped some water off her face and smiled.

"You did it. It's a spell we teach to ten year old wizards, but still. You did it. We'll call that progress." Felix grinned like an idiot. The teenagers had exchanged a look and he knew there was something they weren't saying, but he didn't care. He clapped Silas on the shoulder and grinned.

"I'm a fucking elementalist. Er water wizard," he said loudly.

"Whatever. That's what I am. I made a god cursed spell." All kinds of other students at other tables hushed him or turned and stared. Lina and Silas shriveled at all the attention. Felix slapped the table as he laughed.