"Alright. Lesson 2! Now that you have figured out how to manipulate the power through your conduit, we shall begin with actually casting magic spells!" Warran began. We were outside again. Celestine hadn't been outside since the trip to the markets to buy materials for her chess set and the hot sun reflecting on her pale skin showed. She probably needed to get out more. Maybe start sunbathing. Then she wouldn't burn so easily. But I suspect the magic lessons will be enough to give her a tan. Warran had negotiated two hours of practice a day after breakfast from Duc'kaal while the rest of the day was bone carving.

  Celestine was looking forward to them both and opted to just sleep without dreaming that night so the day would come faster, which was hard. It's not easy to keep her from having dreams, so I just let her be. She would forget normal dreams soon enough anyway. That was a phenomenon that still existed with the humans of this world from my observations. Humans here are very similar to humans on Earth, except for the whole magic business. I haven't noticed any other differences.

  "We will start with the simplest of the common schools. Light magic. From what your mother told me, you were born with the affinity for light magic. But somehow when they tested you again, you switched to enchanting magic. A very nice opportunity because otherwise you would be stuck with just the common schools. But something like this is also unheard of." He trailed off when he said that before continuing. "So I want to test to see if your affinity truly switched or if something else happened." He paused for a bit, held his hand to his wispy-bearded chin, and thought for a bit.

  Celestine held her hand to her mouth and coughed loudly. She was wearing a similar simple top and skirt like the last time they were out here, but she was already covered in sweat. They were going to be out here for two hours, might as well do something to take her mind off the heat.

  "Right. Sorry. Anyway, magic begins with learning how to channel it willingly through your conduit, which you already demonstrated. Now the phenomena we know as spells are consequences of enforcing our will through the conduit onto the world around us. We gather magic into a focus, usually our hands but some people use other tools, and will the magic to do as we desire. Like how you pushed your magic into your hand to light the crystal, the crystal was just a shortcut in the process."

  He walked a bit to his bag and pulled out another crystal that Celestine had never seen before.

  "These crystals hold within them a will of their own. We extract them from the ground, bind them with a metal brace, and we feed them magic so they will enact their will." He held the crystal out to the side a bit and a jet of water flew out of the crystal and hit a bush on the other side of the backyard. "This allows us to use magic without needing to think of complex machinations in our heads to make the effect happen. The drawback is they are very limited because they only follow their own will. That's why crystals like the one in the attic that gathers magic from the environment are so expensive. The light crystals' wills are to simply light up and stay lit as long as they have magic to do so. So they store a limited amount of magic from the provider to follow their will. The fibers that connect the various crystals in the mansion to the energy gathering crystal in the attic are another kind of crystal. Their only will is to pass magic. This allows us to use magic without even needing to channel ourselves!"

  He put the crystal back into his bag. "Now, if we don't have crystals, but we still want to cast magic, we must bypass them and force our own will into the magic itself. By doing so, and by passing the magic through the focus of our body or tool, we create a phenomenon, or a spell. Light is the simplest because we know what light is. We experience it from the moment we are born in this world. The only people who cannot use light magic are the blind, because they have never known light and thus cannot will it from their conduit." He held his hand out in front of him, turned his palm up, and curled his fingers slightly. Within his hand, a ball of blue light shone dimly, though overshadowed by the bright sun above. And as quickly as it came, it was extinguished.

  "To force your will onto magic can be a simple thing. At first it might be troublesome, but as you age and fall into repetition and favor certain spells, it becomes as easy as snapping your fingers." He said, and snapped.

  Celestine tried to copy him, the snapping I mean not the magic. She was never taught how to snap her fingers.

  Warran saw her getting distracted and just clapped his hands to get her attention. "When you first perform spells, it's good to have some sort of visualization in your head to force into the magic. Some also choose to use incantations, or phrases, to get their mind into the right frame, especially in battle. But these become unnecessary as you get older, are more accustomed to your spell repertoire, and your limits. Now then, like I said, we will start with light. Close your eyes, and picture in your head an image of light. It can be a lit light crystal or something as powerful as the sun. Right now we aren't worried about the form of the spell, only if you are able to cast it."

  Celestine did as she was told and tried to visualize light from light crystals. She turned her hand up like Warran did and forced the magic power out and into her finger tips. She let the thought of light fill her imagination. Just a generic ball of light in the darkness of her head, nothing more. When she felt something give way in her arm, and the energy in her fingers leave, she opened her eyes to see the results of her action.

  Floating above her hand where a light ball should have been, was a ball of swirling black. Laced in the blackness were dots of innumerable colors fading and changing rapidly. The abstract visualization of void. This wasn't a black hole, this was like a window to the void that I had escaped. It was a home for me, and a hell once. Neither light nor darkness. Just imperceptible nothing given abstract shape for those to bear witness.

  There was no reason for this to happen, though. Celestine was trying to make a light ball. Instead she made a ball of void. Something like this couldn't have fit into the six schools of magic Warran mentioned, could it? One of the common schools was spacial he said, could this be it?

  Celestine looked up to the elf man and his eyes were wide open. His mouth was slack. He had seen something phenomenal and he had no idea how to react. It was kind of funny.

  So no, his reaction is too out there for this to be something he knows of. Only one solution to this now.

   I said. No reason to test the limits of this magic now.

  Celestine cut off the flow of power to her hand and the ball shrunk before disappearing in a small explosion of light. She closed her hand and held it forward a bit before lowering her arm back to her side.

  "W-w-w-what was that? S-some sort of gravity magic? No no, this was too different. WHAT DID YOU DO?!" Warran found his wits about him before he shouted at Celestine.

  She flinched and spoke softly. "I just tried to make a light."

  "That was no light! That was something else!" He held his hands up to his head and shook his head back and forth violently while facing the ground. "How the hells, how the hells are you the child of humans?"

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  "Uhhhm."

  "Hope! That's it! I need to get you to Hope! They will be able to identify what it is you can do! Nobody in this backwater city will know what it is you can do, but they can help!" Warran walked over and grabbed Celestine's wrist. He was about to pull her back into the mansion when Mother was standing at the backyard doorway with her arms crossed. Was he about to abduct Celestine over this? His face is red, but I don't think that's from the sun.

  "What were you planning to do with my daughter, Warran?" Mother asked.

  Celestine prised her wrist out of Warran's grip and rubbed it with her other hand. Damn he's got a strong grip for an old man.

  "Sylvianna, there's NO discussion here! She performed a whole new magic I've never seen before!"

  "I saw. What. Were you planning. To do about it?" Mother repeated, her eyes narrowing.

  Warran hesitated before declaring, "I'm taking her to Ho-PRRZGGGG! SYLVIANNA!"

  Mother had zapped him with lightning. She didn't even move her hands, the bolt arced from her forehead and struck the old man in the stomach. "You will do nothing but teach her."

  "But Sylvianna! We need to let the professionals deal with this!"

  "The professionals are the elves, Warran. Are you saying you aren't good enough to deal with this new magic?"

  "You know this is beyond me, woman! And I can't return to Eldwen with her, so Hope is the only option!"

  "The only option is for her to stay here." Mother said sternly. Celestine slowly inched away from Warran, but didn't approach Mother, fearing a stray arch of lightning.

  "I- I WILL TARZNGGGGGG STOP THAT!" Warran shouted as Mother zapped him again.

  "Baby, your carving lesson will begin early today." Mother said in a sweet voice to Celestine, which sent a shiver down her spine.

  "DON'T PERFORM THAT MAGIC AGAIN UNTIL I CAN STUDY YO-OOOOOOGRGGGG... it... Please stop DOING THAT!"

  Celestine walked quickly inside behind Mother while hearing Warran shouting and lighting crackling behind her. She didn't want to know what horrors awaited her would-be kidnapper.

  The next day she was stuck in a similar position. Standing in the backyard, facing Warran.

  He coughed loudly to get her attention before speaking. "I sent a letter to some friends of mine in Hope. I tried to convince one to either come here or send me some reading material on this subject. For now... let's just try to forget yesterday happened."

  Yeah, that will be hard.

  "I want you to try to make a light ball one more time. Try to focus more on it this time, with more concrete thoughts. I think you might have been thinking too abstractly yesterday and... your magic filled in the blanks... Keep the thought of light in your head. The light of the sun, the light of a crystal, anything that is light. Keep that and only that in your head. Keep your eyes open. Now cast a light ball in your hand. If what happened yesterday happens again, cancel it immediately and we will just move on and avoid light magic."

  Celestine nodded. She held up her hand with the palm facing up to the sky with her fingers slightly curved up. She willed the magic to flow through the conduit in her bones to the tips of her fingers. In her mind, she kept focus on anything that produced light. The sun was the obvious one. But there was also the light crystal sconces in the mansion, the light chandeliers and fixtures in the church, and the light magic Mother used occasionally in their home in the slums to read at night, holding perfectly still floating above her while she read silently in a chair in the kitchen. The familiar feeling of something giving way was felt in her hand and in her hand was a small ball of light this time.

  She squinted her eyes at the sudden brightness and Warran took a deep breath to sigh in relief.

  "So you can still use light magic. That's a relief. That's a relief. You might have been at a serious disadvantage without it. While it is the most basic school of magic, it is the most useful in daily life. Now that you can perform a basic light spell..."

  Warran stopped while he eyed Celestine poking the ball of light in her hand with her free hand's index finger. There was nothing solid there, just a formless point emitting light.

  "Celestine!" Warran shouted. She jumped and the ball of light disappeared as she lost concentration on feeding the ball with her magic energy. "Pay attention, girl. Now that you can perform a basic light spell, we will focus on how to manipulate the spell. Now, what is the difference between someone with a large conduit and a narrow conduit?"

   She cried.

   I figuratively facepalmed.

  "Umm, bigger means more power?" She answered the question with a vague answer in the form of a question.

  Warran took that as a sign she needed a refresher. "A wider conduit means a person can perform more and more powerful spells, but at the cost of control. A narrow conduit means a person lacks the power, but they have greater control of the spells. Before we move on to trying more complex spells, you need to gauge the limit of your conduit. Make another light ball in your hand."

  She did as she was told. She forced the magic into her finger tips and formed the ball of light. It was easier for her to accomplish this after already succeeding once.

  "Now keep forcing power into your hand and into the ball of light. Keep forcing it as much as you can for as long as you can."

  She followed his instructions. I could feel the power rushing through her arm and into her hand. She pulled on as much power from key parts of her body, like her other hand, her legs, and her abdomen. She kept her focus on the ball of light as if she were to look away, she could lose it. The more power she forced into her hand, the brighter the light got until she reached a point where she could no longer force the power flow fast enough to make the light brighter. She could sustain this flow just barely, but this much is making her head hurt and her arm feels like it's on fire with all the power rushing through it.

  This might be a good time to bring this up. If it wasn't obvious by now, magic in this world doesn't work like magic would in stories and games on Earth. Instead of a magic pool in the body for a mage to draw on, in this world the magic acts like a constant stream from a source. The source, whatever it is, is constantly blasting the body with power. The act of channeling is just moving the power from being everywhere in the body to through the body and to a certain area for focus. The focus is like a water faucet. Turn the knobs to make more water flow, but in the end the amount of water that can be forced out of the faucet is limited by the size of the pipes, the conduit. Magic can pooled a little bit in a part of the body, the sink, and the water can be manipulated, creating a spell, but in the end, a mage is limited by how much water can come out of the faucet. I would say Celestine's conduit is like that of a garden hose, actually. It's easy to control and manipulate that stream of water. But the wider conduits are more like firehoses, if I'm understanding what Warran said. So much water flows through them that there's little room for control. You just point, aim, and hope whatever you wanted to happen happens.

  I'm brought out of my thoughts by Warran deciding to end the exercise. "Keep that limit in mind. Because for now it's all you have. As you age, you might be able to draw on more. Though, widening a conduit is a very rare occurrence, one that only happens in childhood. You're lucky you went through that awakening ceremony early. Especially with that special magic. There's the chance, albeit small, for improvement. Yes yes. Hm mhm. Anyway. Now extinguish the spell."

  She cut off the flow of magic to her hand and the ball of light vanished.

  "Now you need to modify the will you put into the magic. It isn't enough to just think about light now. You have to command the light. These commands are why I mentioned yesterday that mages need incantations. Some spells are even so complex you need to read books while channeling the magic. We won't be using any of those, of course. I just thought I'd mention them. You need to be taught early that there really is no limit with magic. We will focus on simple spells for now, though. The more you practice these, the better you will be as casting them and the less you have to add to incantations, or focus on mental images, to cast them. Like a child learning to walk. It's hard at first, but the longer you do it the less you even need to think about it. Now your legs just move when you walk without even needing to be aware of the various muscles in your legs needed to move to make it happen. The next test is to cast a ball of light that is fixed in place. These are good for temporary lighting when you need to focus on other things. The basic components of the spell are to create a ball of light, have it store a bit of magic power to sustain itself without you, and to have it stay fixed in place where your hand is before letting it go. You do that and we'll finish the lesson for today. If you don't do it before it's time for your next lesson, we'll pick it up tomorrow."

  I'll skip this bit. Try as she might, Celestine couldn't figure out how to even feed magic into the ball to have it be independent of her. So the magic lesson ended and her carving lesson began.

  from Novos's observations. I hope I didn't confuse too many readers, since I did a lot of editing in this chapter. Let me know if you see any typos.