by CM Raymond
The old man stared down at her. She read a sadness in his eyes. “I was...visiting with an old friend. It went poorly. But enough of that, today we focus on you.”
“So, are you going to teach me to call down magic or something?” She peeked at him from the corner of her eye, but the man stared at the wall across the room, unmoving.
After a beat, he said, “You don’t call anything down. Weren’t you listening yesterday?”
“Mostly,” she admitted. She practiced holding her breath and taking a sip.
His voice seemed to echo from her ears, and inside her mind.
What the hell was in this tea?
“Magic is inside of you, me, everyone. The work of the magician is not to conjure anything from outside, but to draw the power from within and direct it with intention. But it is a practice that needs complete focus. Not something for a smart ass like you.”
She looked over and Ezekiel was smiling.
“OK. Focusing.” She nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Now, magic is most easily directed when the user has a desire to change the world in some way. The deeper and stronger the desire, the more potent the magic. Remember your brother on the street? That was your magic, without you even knowing how to do it, streaming out of you based on your subconscious desire. That sort of thing would have likely destroyed someone not as strong as you. Most don’t have what you possess.”
He looked around the room and continued, “Now, you need training and guidance. Also, we will talk about what magic is for and what it isn’t.” He sat back down in front of her, his back straight.
Her eyes were closed. “You mean, so I don’t become a douche nugget like your first student.”
“I don’t have the faintest idea what that means,” he replied.
“Yeah, never mind. OK, focusing again.” She made sure her back was straight as his was.
They sat like that for what felt like an hour. Hannah was starting to wish they were doing a history lesson.
After some time, her mouth disobeyed. “Hey, Zeke?”
“Mm, hmm?”
“Pretty sure I’m focused enough to blow fireballs out of my ass.” Wow, where had that bit of truth come from?
“That would be a very unorthodox style,” Ezekiel told her. “Now be quiet.”
After what felt like an eternity of waiting, the man finally stirred.
“All right. Come with me,” he told her as he stood up.
She wasn’t going to admit that her back seemed to have a little kink in it. If someone as old as Zeke wasn’t complaining, she wouldn’t complain either.
At least, not yet. She would allow herself a little time to make a final decision later.
Hannah followed the magician to a room that had been locked since her arrival. She expected to find something marvelous waiting behind the door—glowing goblets, strange creatures, mystical tablets, but there was nothing. Well, almost nothing. In the middle of the room was a rock the size of a large potato.
“Thrilling,” she told him, staring at the rock.
“Physical magic is first. It is the easiest of the arts, well, at least I found it to be. It is the one that humans are most naturally connected to. And, after the Age of Madness, it was the one we discovered first.”
Hannah thought of the men in the alley and of fireballs. She felt sweat gather across her body and the now-familiar feel of the magic danced inside of her. This was why she was here. It was her reason for being.
She would be a magician; she was a magician. Damn, what she knew was true in Arcadia was playing hell with what she was learning to be true. Old beliefs warring with new information not fully owned, yet.
Ezekiel continued explaining. He was either ignorant of her concerns or wasn’t bothered by them. “Physical magic gives you, Hannah, the ability to control and even change nonliving matter. The better you get at it, the more complex your magic can be.”
He looked to her, making sure he had her attention, and said, “I’ve seen physical magicians do powerful things. Raise towers and bring down rockslides. The confluence of physical magic and a healthy imagination can allow you to cast things that would blow your children’s stories away.”
She looked from him to the potato rock. “Got it. So, what do I do?” she asked, thinking how she might blow it into little potato rock spuds.
He laughed at her assumption while enjoying her gumption. “Not that simple, Hannah. Magic doesn’t work because of an action or a spell spoken by you. The only thing you need to do to cast magic is to focus your energy out and direct it to do the work. But, we found early on that this was more easily said than done. So, as we developed an art of physical magic,” he moved his arms around, his hands held certain ways, “we created routines, practices—each one connected with a different kind of spell.”
He stopped and looked at her, a mischievous grin under his bushy eyebrows. “There is no power in the ritual, it’s all within you.”
Her lips pressed together, her head cocked to the side, “The man in the alley and the fireballs. He swung his arms across his chest,” she exclaimed as she mimicked his action.
“Impressive, right?” Ezekiel asked, beaming.
“Um… not exactly. I was about to get gang raped and killed, so that kind of dampened the mood,” she answered.
He ignored her. “I invented that one.” His smile remained. “Magicians don’t require the same motions to focus the magic, but the rituals are passed down through generations from teacher to student. I taught Adrien that move over forty years ago. He taught one of his students, who became a faculty member—”
“And she taught the monsters with the appetite for barely legal girls.”
He nodded. “Which is why you must learn it, too. Those barely legal girls will need someone like you to protect them as we take back Arcadia.”
The notion of reclaiming Arcadia was appealing.
But, the idea of wiping the streets with the asses of the men who assaulted her was downright captivating. “OK, let’s get started.”
Ezekiel nodded toward the stone in the middle of the room. “Move it.”
Hannah took a step toward the rock, and the magician grabbed her arm. “With magic.” His steel-gray eyes sparkled.
“OK. I’ve got this.” Hannah stared at the rock, thinking about it moving. Nothing. She pictured it hovering over the ground. Nothing. Raising her right arm out before her, she flicked her fingers. Nothing. Finally, she gave up. “How the hell—”
“It’s much harder when you are trying.” He answered, cryptically.
Sal, who had followed them into the room, stood up, turned in a complete circle, then laid down again ignoring the two of them.
She blew out a breath. “Zeke, you are one confusing white-haired son-of-a-bitch.”
He nodded in agreement, all stuff he had heard before.
“Think about sitting on the mat in the great hall. Empty your mind first. When all is gone, don’t focus on the rock. It’s not about the rock; it’s about what’s in here.” He leaned forward and tapped her chest, and Hannah could swear she felt the tingle of magic come through his fingertips.
She nodded and tried to focus.
The thought of failure rushed over her. Hannah pushed them out as if her life depended on it.
Images of the men in the alley appeared. She struck them away.
William. Parker. Her father. The tower. The lizard. As each thought came, she pushed it away, and soon… there was nothing.
Breathing slowly, she turned her mind inward, toward the power that had become a part of her existence, her awareness. Hannah felt so in tune with that which was within, she felt like she could slow her heart to a stop if she wanted. Then she tried to pivot. To direct the internal outward toward the rock, a smile on her face in excitement.
Nothing happened, her anger rose up in her frustration.
“Shit bucket!” she shouted.
Ezekiel stepped up next to her and spoke quickly. “
You’re frustrated. Good. Channel that frustration now. Let it build Hannah, without holding onto it. We’re going to use it. Now, do what I do. Copy me.”
Ezekiel spread his feet shoulder-width apart and slid his right foot out a few inches further than the other. Raising his right hand, he kept a flat palm up, and his elbow bent at ninety degrees.
Hannah mirrored his every move.
“Good. Just like that.”
Extending his arm, he turned his palm down toward the floor. He pulled his fingers back, and then quickly extended two, like he was trying to flick away an invisible object. The rock in the middle of the room shot toward the opposite wall. He turned his hand over and pulled his fingers back toward him, slowly this time.
The rock slid back into the middle of the room.
“Do that,” he told her.
Hannah laughed. “Really simple.”
The old man stepped away, giving Hannah her shot. She went through the process of clearing her mind, focused inward, and did the motion exactly as the man had shown her. Power surged through her body and then burst free. The rock didn’t fly across the room, but it did roll over once and come to rest five whole inches further away.
“Did you see that!” she called out, excited, “I’m a bloody magician!” She exhaled. “Whoa!” she wavered then dropped to her knees a little lightheaded.
Ezekiel chuckled. “That’s right. Foul mouth and all. You’ll fit right in with the physical magicians. Now practice. I’ll be back soon. I want to see progress. And be sure to rest between attempts. Energy is energy, and when you shoot some of yours out into the world, you need to recuperate it.”
“Like the teleportation?” she looked over her shoulder at him.
Ezekiel nodded. “Just like that...”
She heard him leave and Sal chose to move around in a circle again and plop his lizard ass right back down in the same spot. Maybe he had warmed it up and he liked it?
She eyed the rock, and the feeling of weakness after throwing her first spell, well, on purpose. Hannah realized that taking down the Hunters would be a hell of a lot harder than nudging a rock and take a thousand times more energy.
Her eyes narrowed. “Let’s do this,” she said as she stood back up and got into position.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ezekiel puttered around in the area he was using for a kitchen.
The smartass girl was special, there was no doubt in that, but seeing the amount of energy that it drew from her to move the tiny rock, he started to wonder just how long the training would take.
She was old—to start in the arts, that is. Hannah had learned how to be normal. Her body, for the sake of self-preservation, had taught itself how to withhold the magic since she was born.
The extent a body can go to keep itself from implosion always amazed him.
Students in the Academy didn’t start fresh. That’s why Adrien had started a prep school in Arcadia. While the younger children weren’t taught magic proper, they were trained in the arts of meditation and mindfulness. By the time they got to the Academy, they were ready for what it had to teach them.
Hannah had none of this.
Her body had become a self-defense mechanism against itself. Now, Ezekiel had to break down the walls and breach the self-control the girl never knew she had. He grabbed some food to feed her body the energy it would need to keep going and slid it up on his right hand. He carried it like a waiter would. Which, truth be told, he had done that once or twice just because.
This might not work, he thought as he turned the knob of the training room.
But as Ezekiel stepped through the doorway, the rock launched toward his face at light speed. Hannah screamed at him a warning, and raising a finger, he stopped it a foot from his face and let it float in thin air. Snapping his finger, the rock burst into a thousand pieces in a three-foot sphere.
Hannah gawked at the little tiny pieces enveloped in a perfect globe before he waved his hand again and it all dropped to the floor.
He managed to do all of this without dropping the food tray in his hand. There was a small smile on his face.
My doubts were ill founded. She’s ready for the fire.
“Making some progress, I see,” the old man said, raising his brows.
“Shit,” Hannah sighed. “I didn’t—” she started.
Ezekiel put a finger in the air. “No apologizing for your magic. Now, let’s go. It’s time for fire.”
He led her to another locked door. Behind it was a room identical to the last, only this one had a pile of wood and a bucket in the middle. A leather couch was shoved against the far wall. “Let’s sit. Why don’t you eat some food, and I will tell you what’s next?”
As Hannah laid back on the couch and dove into the lunch he had prepared—a meaty soup with a thick piece of bread. Crumbs rained from her mouth as she tore into the bread. Ezekiel sat on the edge and told her the story of fire magic.
While still a part of the physical arts, it had been years until Ezekiel had discovered fire magic, and even more until he mastered it. His first use was completely by accident. His power of manipulation of matter had grown, and he had begun to teach Adrien all that he knew. The boy, not much younger at the time than Hannah was now, showed marvelous potential.
Ezekiel had welcomed him, an orphan, into their community early on. He showed great skill, particularly in the way he could easily channel his power with simple mechanics. Adrien was so good that Ezekiel realized he had met his protégé.
One night, he took the boy beyond the little village that would one day be Arcadia. They walked for miles, telling stories, and talking magic. The boy never knew that the trip was an exercise, something Ezekiel had planned for days.
Once deep into the forest, the magician feigned confusion, claiming they were lost. As the night grew dark, all warmth from the sun had passed. They huddled down at the base of a giant oak.
“Looks like we’ll have to call it a night out here. It’s been awhile since I’ve slept outside of a proper house,” Ezekiel had said. “Though, years ago, the forest was the only home I knew.”
Ezekiel laughed, but the boy was not happy about the situation. Adrien kept complaining about the cold and how his cloak was just too thin.
Finally, the wizard said, “So, do something about it. You’re a magician now.”
The boy’s eyes turned black, and he rubbed his hands together as if he were warming them. A moment later, the twigs at their feet burst into flames.
“By the Matriarch,” Ezekiel had shouted. “How the hell did you do that, Adrien?” It was the first time that the student had become the teacher.
As Ezekiel watched Hannah eat her lunch, he expected that the young girl would have much to teach him, like that trick with the lizard.
That was something he had never seen before.
“It didn’t take me long to understand and even master fire magic once I had seen it. However, until someone pointed out the path, I was ignorant,” he admitted.
“They all love fire magic,” Hannah told him. “All the bastard students running around Arcadia. It’s the most impressive.”
Ezekiel laughed. “Yes, well it’s useful as well. But certainly not the most useful.”
“How does it work?” she asked around a spoonful of meat.
“All magic comes from within you, as does the fire magic. The more passion, the hotter the flame. Remember the man from the alley?”
“How could I forget that asshat?” she grumped.
“Yes, well. He was actually quite good with it. The way he taunted you. Throwing the balls in the air and then over your head. Now, that was some magic.”
“No, that was a jackass.”
Ezekiel smiled as he watched the girl’s face tighten with anger. He just needed to push a little harder.
“Yes, but his form. It was really quite beautiful,” he mused.
“Nothing beautiful happened in the alley that night,” she told him, fairly stabbing the b
owl.
“Oh, don’t be a close minded, little—” he started, his eyes half closed, watching her.
Hannah shot to her feet, the bowl went flying, but Ezekiel caught it all off to the side. She never noticed as she spun her hands across her chest, just as the man in the alley had done. When she completed the rotation, the logs burst into flames.
“Yes!” Ezekiel screamed watching her eyes fade from red. “That is it. PASSION! Anger, rage directed. Extraordinary.”
