9 Years, Home. A little demonstration.
"Good morning, Rei! Wake up if you'd like. The sun has risen, rise and shine!" Oh, how unusual. I overslept, and my mother woke me up. Normally, I am long gone by the time she gets up. The fact that I overslept is not very surprising, though. I was awake until deep in the night yesterday, and racked my brain on how to properly teach Ione and her Brother my ways. It has been two weeks since they started coming to me for lessons, and while at least Ione seems to have understood the theory, good enough to even clarify them to her brother, none of them has made any advances in the actual usage of magic.
I explained them the magic muscle in theory, but they were not able to find it in their own body yet. This leaves room for interpretation: either only a few people have it or are able to sense it, which i think of as highly unlikely, or they just did not have a breakthrough yet. While there were times where I deemed movement manipulation to be almost impossible, it now feels virtually as easy as breathing. As a training method to let them discover their sense of magic, I let them try heat up a cup of water under my instructions. It is different from how I practiced, but since I accidentally destroyed the magic coefficient measurement device, that option is gone.
"Right. I will get up right away." I say, and stand up. I see clouds emerging from my breath, even in this shed it is cold. Not very surprising considering it is currently deep winter outside. Our small furnace is helping, but we can not afford to have it running all the time. We have to make do with thick blankets. Our father worked a good amount of time for them, and even then they are only second-hand.
"Oh, You don't have to feel compelled to. By the way, are you going to meet your friends today?" When my parents discovered that I meet the mayors children on a regular basis, they were very surprised, as I never had much contact to people my age. I tried to explain to them that we are no friends, but they would not listen. Noticing my mildly sour facial expression, my mother adds: "Sure, sure. They are your disciples, not your friends. You are teaching them magic, I got it!" She chuckles. "Seriously though, Rei, I am glad that you found someone to spend your time with, that's all."
She is not taking me for full. This is my fault to a degree, however. Not once did I show my parents that I was actually capable of using magic, so they must think I am exaggerating when I tell them the little about my days that I do.
Sleeping in was pleasant, but it also stripped me of a good amount of usable time. "I am going to leave now.", I say to my mother. Personally, I think it is not needed to do, but my parents say it is a sign of good manners, and therefore require me to do so. A second piece of clothing just to sleep in is not something we can afford, and since I dislike sleeping naked, I sleep in my everyday robe. For that reason, I am basically always ready to set out.
"Take care of yourself, Rei!" My mother is worried as ever, when did I not take care of myself? "Will do.", I answer, while nodding once. Instead of leaving, I keep standing in the doorway, since a thought came to my mind. I slept longer than usual, but I have still around four hours until I meet the mayors children. It has been a long time since we had meat, as I go hunting only very sparsely nowadays. I hush to my corner in the room, and grab my pouch as well as my knife. My mother uses the knife as well for cooking purposes, since it is our best and only, but she always puts it back into my corner after using it. I leave, for real this time.
There is very little snow, and small puddles on the ground are frozen over. I enter the forest, on search of an animal, ideally not to big, not to small, and not tasting awful. The last part is more optional than the first two, though. On the way, I collect a handful of pebbles and store them in my pouch. I look for ones around the size of the tip of my little finger, because rocks of the size I use for training normally would not leave much meat after a direct hit.
Out of a sudden a feeling of nostalgia overcomes me, and I feel compelled to visit the forest clearing again, the very same I read my book on. It is not hard to find, and lays only five minutes into the forest, following a small trail, half-overcome by shrubbery. For the first time in over half a year, I enter the almost circular field, with the huge boulder in the middle. I half-expected to see a pile of dead animal corpses, but I think I overestimated the toxicity of mercury at this point.
I climb on the boulder, not a easy thing to do since it is frosted over. I keep my body from losing temperature, but direct contact to cold surfaces still burns a bit. At this point, I warm myself constantly, with a special focus on my feet. I own no shoes, therefore it is needed. On hindsight, I do not know how I made it through the winter when I was not able to help myself with magic yet. On top of it, I let my gaze wander over my surroundings. However, there is no interesting point in sight, so I withdraw from the site, and head further into the forest.
I am moving outside of paths at this point, but my unusually good orientation helps me finding home as long as I do not venture too far into the forest. At that point, the forest gradually turns thicker, and there are rumours of dangerous beasts, out there even at daytime. I was strictly forbidden to go that far, and I have no intention of breaking that rule.
Maybe I got lost in thoughts, but I notice the deer only as it stands right in front of me. It looks into my eyes, and I look back. Normally I would not say such thing, but even I cannot come around to think that this is a beautiful animal. I reach to my pouch, and ready a stone. Were there an observer, he would have seen a strange scenery – a ragged nine-year old boy and a deer, only five meters apart of each other, and quietly eyeballing each other.
After a few seconds, reason hits me, and I drop the pebble. Even if I were to kill this animal, how would I transport it? How would I explain to my parents how I killed it? A boy under ten knifed down a deer? While my parents would certainly be able to make good money selling the meat we cannot eat, the hide and the bones, it would also raise questions. I turn around, after nodding to the deer in respect. It is not a logical action, but as much as I would like myself to act after reason alone, I cannot. The deer seems to have lost interest in me as well, and we quickly loose sight of each other.
After that, I encounter a surprisingly low amount of wildlife. Only after an hour, I set sight onto a squirrel. It is digging through the ground roughly thirty meters away, and does not seem to have noticed me yet. I had an advantage spotting it, its dark fur contrasted well with the white snow underneath. This is an opportunity I am not willing to waste. I reach into my pouch and grab three pebbles, each held between two of my fingers. I stretch out my arm, and accelerate one of them, adjusting direction via magic as well. It misses, and impacts with a sight thud, ten meters behind the squirrel, only barely audible from the distance. It immediately sticks its head into the air to locate the source of the noise, ready to run away any second.
This is the last Chance I have. I release a second pebble – which promptly hits the squirrel right in the head. Its corpse is propelled half a meter hindwards, and the snow is coloured in red sprinkles. I immediately reapply my heating, which I had to cease during the aiming and shooting. In that time, my feet began to ache terribly, and I welcome the warm feeling that soothes my soles. I run over to the squirrel, jumping over or circling loose branches and bushes, whatever seems right in that moment.
Upon closely inspecting the impact hole, I notice that the stone penetrated, and exited on the backside. Using my full coefficient may have been overkill, I will keep that in mind. Around a quarter would have been lethal as well, most likely, without outright penetrating the skull. The fact that the tiny pebble flew at such an enormous speed is not surprising in hindsight, however: It is simply what happens if you apply the power needed to accelerate a stone the size of your fist to a tiny pebble.
I store the squirrel corpse in my pouch. With this, I lack only one thing for todays Presentation, a large stone with a flat surface. I want to use it as an impromptu grill, to cook the squirrel on. I could do it in the dirt, but that would be filthy, and there is no suiting stone in the vicinity of the training space near the tree trunk. I still have around three hours, so more than enough time. After some search, I find one that I deem fitting. It is so large that I cannot span both my arms around it, but it is rather thin. It has a thin Ice layer on it, and I see my face reflect in it- expressionless, but with deep eyes. I almost loose myself in the reflection, but snap back after a few minutes. I have a time limit after all.
I try to lift the stone, with no success. It weighs a bit more than half my weight, if I were to guess, maybe even two thirds of it. Additionally, I cannot get a good grip onto it, and my bare fingers hurt when I touch it. I let out a loud sigh, as I know what my only option, except from searching another stone, is. I release the warming magic. I suddenly feel cold, and my feet immediately start to hurt. Additionally, the Euphoria that you get when using magic also fades away. I redirect my magic onto the stone, and slowly scale the upwards acceleration to the maximum possible. The stone does not bother, and remains on the ground. When I try to lift it, it feels a lot lighter though, and I can shoulder the rock without much trouble. Slowly but surely, I start walking in the direction of the village.
After only twenty minutes of struggling through the bushes, I stopped feeling my feet. Warned by the fact that they even stopped hurting, which they did intensely before, I stop in my tracks. I am still in the forest, but further to the border than I was before, I am certain of it. I place the rock on the ground, and release the spell I used to be able to carry the rock. I heat my whole body up, with extra focus on the feet. Immediately, an intense warmth fills my body. Maybe I even went a bit overboard, because I used self-warming with a much higher coefficient than ever before.
I sit down on, legs crossed on the rock, and take a good look at my feet. Even from first glance I can tell that they should not have this shade of blue. They are covered by a crust of snow and mud, but the snow quickly melts away under the warmth my feet radiate now. I watch them for a while, too captivated by the warmth as to take a guess at the time I actually sat there. They take on their normal pink-red colour, and I turn down my used coefficient. Part of me wants to simply sit here for another while and enjoy the warmth circulating through my body, just keep sitting here forever.
However, this will not bring me any further. I stand up, slowly, having given most of my elan to the cold. I reapply the lifting spell, and only let out a slight grunt after the cold burns into my body again. Once again, I shoulder the rock, and proceed on my way.
One and a half hour later I finally arrived at the destination. After my first, I took a lot of breaks, more regularly, but way shorter- not much more than resting for long enough for my temperature to stabilize again. I am exhausted, but in about one hour the mayors siblings will come, and I want to have everything ready by then. I open the knot on my pouch, take the squirrel out and place it on the stone. I firmly grab my knife, and try to remember what my mother taught me about preparing squirrel, or small animals in general – we only ever had squirrel once before. I think back to that day, when I was out hunting while Arstibal talked to my Parents. How he said he would come for me, and he never did. I am a bit disappointed, but since he left me the book, I was able to make advancements on my own. I should perhaps thank him for that, should me ever meet again.
A few cuts here and there, and the pelt comes of. I try to waste as little of it as possible, as my mother would perhaps be able to sell it for at least a small price. Once the squirrel is skinned, I take out the innards, and store them into my pouch. I will not be eating those, as I am not sure if some of them could be poisonous. My mother simply threw them away, which might have been a waste on some of them, but better safe than sorry. The squirrel is lacking fat, but it will still be enough meat for a decent-sized meal. I scrape the bones clean, trying to maintain as large chunks as possible. Only the ribs I leave as they are. For the purpose of my presentation, it will be advantageous if it is still recognisable that this was once a live being.
I arrange them all on the corner of the stone, and now have around fifteen minutes left- Godspeed. I frown at the thought of having to release my warmth coating spell soon for some time, but I endured it before, and so will I now. All in all, I am in high mood. I got something presented, expanded my “classroom”, and came to use my magic in two very useful ways, hunting and hauling. I look down at my hands, they are coated in blood. It had not dried yet, too little time had passed.
I start whirling pebbles around to use the time until my disciples arrive. I do not like to admit it, but the head shot was more coincidence than skill. If I were to master that way of hunting however, me and my parents would be able to eat meat more frequently. I am not fixated on it, but I eat whenever I get the chance. It would be a lie to deny that it tasted better than what we usually have, and it brings some difference. I lay a bunch of pebbles onto my palm, and focus on the most distant first, have it shoot of, and repeat. That way, I can create a kind of barrage – I will keep it in mind for later, when I continue the research. Right now, it seems Ione and her Brother arrived.
“Hello, Reiland!” Ione greets. I encouraged them to call me “Teacher”, but for an unknown reason, they refuse. It was half-hidden by my back, yet Iones Brother seems to have noticed what I prepared. “Ew! What is that?” He says, with a visibly disgusted facial expression. Ione notices it as well after her brother burst out, and gives me a questioning look.
“It is meat. Squirrel meat, to be precise. Today there will be a practical demonstration, and this will be needed.” I state, already a bit annoyed. I am rather sure that the Brother will stop being that loud once he witnesses my presentation, though.
“I am curious what that might be, but let me ask you one question beforehand – how did you even get your hands onto that meat?” Ione states, seemingly a bit uncomfortable to ask that question.
“Is that not apparent?” They watched my acceleration experiments after all, the truth should be obvious to them.
The Brothers eyes widen. “YOU STOLE IT?!”
What?
How bad does this boy think of me?
Regardless, I try to keep my cool. “No, I did not steal it. I hunted it! You saw what I can do, is it really that far off in your head that I would be able to kill a squirrel?”
“You...” His face loses colour, even turns a bit pale. This same reaction is visible on Iones Face as well, to a lesser extent. Sometime I really am forgetting they are still kids.
“Yes, I killed a squirrel! This is what you do to get meat. Can we proceed now?”
The Brother seems to be really uncomfortable with that thought. I am not here to comfort him, however. I want to say more to finally get started, but Ione beat me to it. “I don't like it either, Brian. But Reiland is right in that one. The meat we eat at home stems from killed animals as well, doesn't it? Still, to use magic for such a purpose...”
“At least they die without pain if a professional does it!”
“Oh, it died without suffering, I can assure you that. Can we proceed now? You are starting to annoy me.” In all honesty, I am fed up at this point. I went widely out of my way to prepare an impressing presentation, and all they do it complain. I walked barefoot through the snow for that for almost two hours! Finally, they are silent. The look at their faces is a bit pained, though. “Today, I want to talk about the dangers of magic. Compared to me, both your coefficients are extraordinarily high. With little effort, you should be able to achieve results I can only dream of. That, however, also means that you can hurt yourself with ease, should you act careless.”
“You told us that already! Why are you always repeating yourself?” Iones brother refuses to wait until I am finished with what I say, like so often.
“I did tell you that, truly. But did I show it to you? However, now to something else – who of you is hungry?” I nod into the direction of the already sorted meat on the stone. The brother refuses with a slightly disgusted face, shaking his head violently. “I will pass for now.”, is what Ione states dryly. I shrug, and move one piece of squirrel into the middle of the stone, distinct from the other chunks. “Have a look.” I assure that both their gazes are on the stone, and start to focus. After only a few seconds, the meat starts to sizzle on the stone, and small bubbles of fat and water form on top of it. Its dark red texture turns gradually into a dark brown, until I decide it is enough. For this time of around a minute, I had to remove my continuous body heating, and my feet started freezing again. I happily reapplied it after the meat was done. The smell of half-roasted, half-burned meat lingers in the air.
I pick the steaming chunk from the stone, leaving a small puddle of fat and water where it laid. I blow onto it a bit, and once it has the right temperature, I closely inspect it. Likewise, Ione and her brother inspect me closely, probably guessing if I would actually eat it. I do. It tastes not bad, but a bit bland, and different to having it cook inside a stew. “Magic is surely convenient, is it not? Cooking without fuel and smoke, hunting without a weapon?” The both of them nod, but not very enthusiastically. “Luckily, feats like manipulating the flesh of living are impossible to do on living beings, except for your own body – example being the warming spell I am permanently under when not doing anything else.”
While talking, I prepare the second piece of meat. After I finish speaking, both of them nod again, and I eat the second piece. “Now, if you actually learn magic, and try such a nice little trick on yourself, but fail to regulate your power – what do you think your immense magic prowess would do to your precious flesh? How long would it take to burn of your skin? Ravage your muscles? Five seconds? Two?” While saying the last few words, I concentrate on a third chunk, but without restricting myself this time. In a span of seconds, the meat spasms under internal steam, bursts open, catches fire, and finally turns into a black, undistinguishable thing, fused to the stone.
I take a pause to let this sink in. Their faces are pale as the snow surrounding them, none of them is uttering a single sound, moving a single muscle. I unsheathe my knife, and scrape the burned meat from the stone onto the ground. I then push another piece into the middle with the tip of the knife, and have it cook again, under normal conditions. Nobody says a word. After sheathing the knife again, I deem the meat to be done, and turn around. “Are you sure you do not want to try? It is delicious!” They do not react. It seems my little presentation worked, then.
“Any questions? No? A few words from my side, then. You are both will be perhaps powerful magic practitioners, if you put a little thought into it. Just be careful that you do not end it immediately with a careless action, will you? Now, continue your training as always. If you want advice, feel free to ask me.”
Silently, they pull out wooden cups, put them in front of their legs after sitting down, and fill them with water out of a leather flask they brought along. They start and continue to stare them down, probably racking their brains for a clue that could mean progress. I stash the rest of the meat, so that my mother could use it later on for dinner. For the next few hours, nothing more happens then me watching them, thinking about basic magic appliance, and thinking of own techniques and theories myself. At last, the siblings start packing their things. They do not seem to have made advancements.
“Did you two read the book I lend you? Maybe this could yield some information.” As I speak those words, a flash of remembrance hushes over their, especially Iones, faces. I gave them “What is Magic – The basics.” three days ago, after I deemed them trustworthy enough to not bring it back in tatters, or not at all.
“Ah, about that... “ Ione starts, and her brother barges in: “Dad took it away from us!” What now? Ione takes word again. “Thanks, Brian, I was coming to that. We started reading it, and it went fine for two days – But Father recognised the book when he saw us reading, and confiscated it on the spot. He asked us where we got it, and after hearing, demanded to talk to the one who borrowed it to us. That was today, and we forget about it after your demonstration.”
I see. The mayor wants to speak to me, and furthermore, he took my book. Naturally, I want it back, it was a gift of Arstibal, and I am fond of it. Additionally, it is my only book. “I will go talk to him, then. Lead the way.” I have nothing planned, so there is no reason to get this done with.
“Excuse me, Reiland... But don't you want to clean yourself beforehand? You are talking to our father, the mayor, after all...” Ione says in a tone as if she did not want to anger me. I look down on myself. My robe is covered in blood stains, in various stages of fading. There are new ones, from todays butchering. My hands are covered in dried blood as well, and my skin is generally dirty, my hair as well, probably. It is short for practical reasons, and has a shade of brown, a common shade of brown.
“Truly. I will prepare myself before, then. In about an hour, I will be knocking on your door.” Ione nods, and leaves with her brother into the direction of the village entrance. I leave as well, in the direction of my shed. A meeting with the mayor, huh...
I like it so far!
That brings joy to my heart!