Tsaimath
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Chapter 1062
🕑 Added 2024-10-04 16:00:19 +0000 UTCDaniel was a fascinating student. He lacked any distinct elemental affinity, his soul incredibly balanced and in harmony with itself but, as if to make up for that lack of elemental affinity, his general magical talent was through the roof, far beyond what his intelligence should have allowed him. And that was not to call him stupid, far from it. While I wasn’t sure what his original intelligence score had been, or how exactly the attribute influenced worked in regards to, well, the way one thought, it was easy to recognise the intelligence in him when talking with him. Plus, I learned that he had written multiple papers and even a book or two on ancient languages and cultures, something I doubted a stupid person would be able to.
Or they might be capable of it but not of having their work peer-reviewed and published in serious journals, after all, there was that one guy who claimed the pyramids were landing devices for ancient aliens or something outlandish like that. Though, given the change and everything that came with it, I had to reevaluate just what ‘outlandish’ was. Because, before the change, I would have seen our current everyday situation as somewhere between outlandish and outright impossible and yet, it was exactly where we found ourselves now. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be aliens landing on pyramids around the world right now, or if there were, maybe we would be lucky enough to have those aliens be nice aliens, we already had enough problems.
Shaking my head, I focused on the situation around me, especially on the mental representation of Daniel and the way he was intently focusing on the Astral River, tempting me to give him that little push and have him tumble into the teeming streams of power instead of merely watching them from the safety of the platform I had established. The hesitation I was observing might be what was holding him back, a desire to play things safe and remain cautious and prudent, even if he would be better served to make the leap of faith, trusting his inherent abilities and the things he had learned to keep him safe.
“Why is it so important for me to decide which element I want to focus on? You said I had an equal affinity to them all, so why pick one at all?” he asked, his voice sounding slightly weird as he wasn’t really speaking but transmitting his thoughts into the mindscape I had drawn him into.
“You started out studying history, right?” I asked, already knowing the answer, “But there’s just too much for a single human to understand in a reasonable amount of time, especially if you try to go in-depth, so you have to specialise,” I continued, letting him realise on his own why specialisation was important.
“Also, it’s not as if you pick one element and ignore all the others, you already know that I have a few primary elements but, at the same time, I seek to further my understanding in all of them, simply because they give me insight into aspects of reality my primary elements would not. Reality, and the Astral River digging into its foundations, are made up of all the elements, or rather it’s the other way around, all the elements are parts of the Astral River and reality. So, improving my understanding of a segment will allow me to understand other parts more easily. But you need to start somewhere and that somewhere is the element you decide upon,” I explained once more, finally getting a nod of acceptance. As I started to get to know my student, I realised that he was just as stubborn as he was smart. Usually, that was a good combination, indicating that he would go far in his studies, but it could also be a pain in the neck.
After hesitating just a little longer while Daniel dithered back and forth, mentally debating just which element he wanted to focus on first, I had enough. Given that I had pulled us both into the Astral River and was using my Mind Magic to stabilise his own position until he deliberately broke that stabilisation, I gave him just a little push, or, in terms of the mental reference frame we were using, I let the platform he had been standing on crumble away, causing him to tumble into the streams of power below. Well, at least below in the mental model we were using, it was difficult to relate physical dimensions to a non-physical space like the Astral River.
Daniel’s scream filled the space we were in for a moment, only to cut off as his mind was slightly overwhelmed by the inundation of power all around him, trying to swim, for lack of a better term. He wasn’t drowning but he was clearly getting overwhelmed at first and I readied myself to pull him out until I recognised his attempts to overcome the situation and take shelter within one of the streams of power, using that singular stream to insulate his mind from all the rest, exactly as I had hoped he would. Now, I could easily see what element his mind had taken refuge in during a moment of fear, which element was the one his instincts preferred, something I hadn’t been able to figure out before, his conscious mind had continued to overwhelm those instincts. Until now, where he had been forced to pick in a moment of panic.
“You pushed me?!” his mental voice echoed through the mindscape, filled with equal parts anger and disbelief, making me grin just a little as there was also some serious squeaking going on, likely a remnant of his earlier panic.
“In a way, yes,” I calmly replied using the same method, “You were dithering back and forth, trapped in analysis paralysis, so I gave you that little push you needed. Now, you made a choice, or rather, your subconscious made a choice, and I believe it will be suitable to you. Why don’t you tell me what element you instinctively choose to take refuge in while in an almost blind panic? You should feel it all around you;” I told him, barely managing to keep my voice perfectly calm and level.
“It’s…” he petered off, taking in the enormity encompassed in the stream of power all around him. It was so easy to assign a single word to an element but when feeling them, they were so much more. Ice, a single, simple word but when I immersed myself in the element, I could feel it all, the cold, the crystalline structure of the most common water Ice but also more metaphysical concepts like the sheer weight of unchanging eternity that were part of the element. Similarly, Daniel was now knowing the single word to describe his element but he was getting overwhelmed by what it all meant.
For a moment, I realised that maybe that was what runes truly were. You had a single superset Rune, encompassing all the numerous runes below it within itself and while one was learning more about Rune Magic, one managed to unearth more and more pieces of that singular superset Rune. It was something to look into at some point in the future, especially as I had already experienced that some Runes were composed of multiple other runes, just like one could say that the letter double-u on a keyboard was composed of two letters v, as silly as that sounded.
“It’s Earth,” Daniel finally managed to verbalise, after tearing his mind from the sheer enormity of the element all around him.
“And now, you can show me that you can leave the Astral River on your own, either by joining me on the platform up here or by, well, leaving it all together and returning to reality,” I told him, letting him make the decision on where to continue. Staying within the Astral River had its advantages, one of them was the fact that time could behave funny here, but those could also be serious disadvantages for all the same reasons. Moments later, his mental representation disappeared and I took a moment to gather my thoughts before pulling myself out, too.
Looking at my pupil, sitting in front of me on a fairly comfortable chair made by Luna, I gave him a moment to readjust his mind to the reality around us before I continued to teach him, now focusing on the general concepts of Earth Magic, as I understood them before we could continue on to the intricacies. Luckily, we were in an excellent place for that lesson, given that we were literally surrounded by a giant construct created by the very magic I wanted to teach him, giving me ample examples to show him and demonstrate.
“Now, I want you to look around, to feel the stone of the tower and the power I have imbued into these rocks,” I started, my voice calm and collected, even as I felt a bit of amusement at the way he was glued to my lips. If nothing else, he was an attentive student.
Comments
Hauke Sattler
Now Daniel probably feels like Charles Babbage after being gifted a modern computer.
