Chapter 14: Chapter 13: Awakening

After a few days of practice, magic had become almost routine. Granted, directing the elements with pure thought still felt pretty surreal.

Verna had them lined up for progress demonstrations, but they all knew it was just a formality. They’d caught the hang of it by day 2, and while the practice did get monotonous, at least it was legit magic. Besides, rushing fundamentals never ended well.

A tea service waited on one of the training room tables. “Right then!” Verna moved to it. “Let’s start with something proper. I’ve various teas for you here. Telsur, steeped at one-hundred sixty degrees Fahrenheit; marreth, best at one-eighty; and lastly,” she set down the last cup, “rennes at two-hundred ten. Mind the temperatures, for there’s naught worse than ruining a fine tea by carelessness.”

Cole figured Verna would test them somehow, but this definitely wasn’t what he expected. Tea, of all things. Something about getting judged on proper brewing made all that practice feel inadequate.

Might as well get on with it. He started with the telsur, amping up the temperature the same way he’d do it on a stove. Of course he had to get stuck with the hardest to discern – trying to hit that sweet spot between warm tap water and a boil was quite a pain in the ass. But he managed.

Verna lifted the cup and took a careful sip. “Perfect! Sergeant Walker?”

Ethan crushed the marreth test, like his dormant British genes finally woke up for something. Verna’s nod said it all.

Miles drew the rennes – lucky bastard just had to crank it up to just under boiling. No finesse required; just heat till the bubbles started to hit.

Verna gathered the cups. “Right then. Let’s move on.”

Water was next on the menu, and the task was simple enough: manipulate the water in some bowls and show they know how to shift between states of matter. Water to ice, then ice to steam, then everything back to liquid.

Cole didn’t need a formal test to know he could do this, but here he was, staring down a basin of water. The visualization was pretty easy; just an extension of the temperature exercise they did earlier. The only tricky part would’ve been the manipulation of the water itself, but Verna had probably seen enough of their party tricks the past few days. The liquid spiraled up, freezing into a statue before discombobulating into steam. A little condensation and it rained right back into the basin.

It wasn’t the most exciting thing, but then again, neither was the important task of loading a magazine.

The next test was a series of hoops filled with faint smoke drifting through the air. All they had to do was guide the smoke through the hoops without spilling a wisp.

Cole pictured the air currents like flow lines in a wind tunnel, then pushed with his mana to make them real, and voila. The smoke followed the path he carved, zipping through the obstacle course cleanly.

“Man,” Miles muttered from somewhere to his right, rueful as shit.

Cole knew that tone – new toys, old problems. After all those times eating sand in the field, being able to just push particulates around at will almost felt like cheating. And earth magic wasn’t much different.

Once Verna had approved Miles and Ethan’s attempts, she had them raise a pillar, then dig a ditch.

Cole crouched, placing a hand on the soil. The pillar rose steadily, stopping just shy of the marker. Without pause, he carved a clean trench alongside it. Easy, but damn if it didn't leave him jealous. If they’d had magic like this back home, half the shit they did might’ve taken minutes instead of hours. No more shoveling foxholes, stacking sandbags, or waiting on engineers to haul out HESCO.

It didn’t scream battlefield glamor, but it was the kind of thing that made life a hell of a lot easier. Not that it was any news to him. Shonen fanboys always got hung up on the flashy stuff – fireballs, lightning bolts, et cetera. They’d gobble up fights but call something as great as Frieren boring, like they couldn’t wrap their heads around the idea that magic wasn’t just about the explosions and OP shit.

This, on the other hand, was what made it truly powerful. Hell, Ethan was already getting a hard-on over his new ability to shape terrain at a whim.

“That will do. Now... offense.” A prideful smirk grew on her face. She sounded like she’d been waiting to get to this part. Well, they all did.

The earth restored itself without even a lifted finger as Verna walked past, bringing them to a section of yard where someone had set up earthen targets on stone stands. “Offensive magic offers myriad approaches, but we shall begin with the essentials. Given your admirable progress thus far, I suspect we shan't tarry overlong!”

A small flame sparked in her palm. Nothing fancy at first – just enough to light a smoke. Then it grew and condensed into a tight sphere: a fireball.

She launched it. Unlike the glorious weapons of mass destruction fantasy media always painted these out to be, this fireball started to fizzle out en route to the target. The final product that actually made impact was a shadow of its former self, leaving barely a scorch mark on the clay target.

It was lowkey disappointing. He’d seen molotovs do more damage. The principles seemed similar – contained incendiary projectile – but the execution needed a lot of work.

All part of the plan, according to Verna’s explanation. “As the fireball traverses the air, it disperses its heat outward, warming the cooler atmosphere that surrounds it. This cooler air, by contact and motion, absorbs the fireball’s energy, hastening its loss of heat. The very motion of the fireball stirs the air into turbulence, which further accelerates this exchange. Should the fireball expand as it travels, it will cool yet further, much as steam does upon escaping a boiler. However, with the proper refinement of focus and technique, one might counteract these losses to preserve its heat until the moment of impact.”

“Lemme guess, combining spells?” Ethan asked.

Verna nodded. “Spell combination. Any novice may summon forth a flame or stir a breeze, but true mastery lies in the union of such forces. These principles, of course, may be applied to all branches of magic. Consider a simple imp or goblin in some considerable misfortune: first ensnared by gravity, then thoroughly drenched to ensure the full effect of lightning, and finally crushed beneath a stone drawn down by the very force that held it captive.”

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Cole fought a chuckle. There was a certain je ne sais quoi to this absurd overkill. Of course, nothing came close to nuking a level 1 slime several times, but this was up there. “Sounds a bit uhh… excessive?”

Verna quirked an eyebrow. “Excessive? I daresay it’s efficient. The imps rarely raise objections to our methods.”

Miles snorted. “Yeah, if there’s anything left to object with.”

“Ah, but there’s the beauty of it,” Verna said. “The layering of forces makes even a simple spell vastly more effective. Perhaps not the most judicious approach for a lowly imp, but indispensable should you instead face something far more formidable – say, a Dread Revenant, or some other commander serving under the Demon Lord.”

“I imagine a fireball won’t cut it?”

“Not as it is, no. A lone fireball would scarcely do more than singe a Revenant’s armor. But with air magic? Ah, now we’re speaking of something far more effective! Add air magic, and you invigorate the flame, much as a forge bellows does for a blacksmith’s fire. Then, encompass it within a barrier, and then you loose the fireball.”

She’d shrunk this one down to about the size of a golf ball before launching it. The compressed flame smashed into the earthen target, exploding like a thermobaric grenade. And this was her holding back.

At original size? It’d probably pack the punch of a Javelin missile. And that wasn’t even the upper limit. Cole was willing to bet that there were tons of designs these guys had probably never even thought of. With some tweaks to the barrier shape and a simple nozzle for makeshift rocketry, it could hit even harder. But Verna was already moving on.

“Thus do the classical elements so captivate mages – easy visualization, and perhaps more importantly, they lend themselves most readily for enhancement.”

“Classical elements,” Ethan muttered. “Not y’know, like… hydrogen and oxygen?”

“Ah, well,” Verna said with a slight laugh, “we do keep to the classical terms. To remake centuries of practice merely to conform to hydrogen and oxygen would be quite absurd, even setting aside the difficulty. I daresay most novices would rather picture burning wood than concern themselves with caloric or kinetic reactions, or even the alignment of carbon and other atoms.”

Cole nodded. He was sure glad he didn’t have to imagine millions of molecules undergoing an exothermic reaction just to make a simple fireball. Though that spawned some more concern about how magic even worked at the most basic levels. “What, so when someone pictures burning wood, the magic automatically handles all the uh… ‘kinetic’ stuff underneath?”

Verna blinked. “I… hmm.” She frowned – first time Cole had ever seen her caught off guard. “I’m afraid I’ve no ready answer. Some have theorized that, yes – that magic itself resolves such complexities. However, no one has yet been able to confirm it. All we know is that visualization works, though how precisely it does so remains a mystery. Perhaps the Istraynians knew the truth of it. Yet, as none remain to verify their wisdom, we are left but to speculate upon whether an understanding of natural philosophy serves to deepen the workings of magic.”

“Well, it’d explain why we picked up magic so quick,” Ethan said. “Easier to visualize when you know what’s happening under the hood.”

“Yes… perhaps you are right. To comprehend what lies beneath may well aid the mind’s eye. Shall we put it to the test?”

Miles nodded at the scorched target. “Reckon we oughta start with air first, ‘fore we go tossin’ in the barrier.”

Verna stepped back. “Focus on the flame and the pressure around it. Direct the air to cradle the fire.”

Cole tried his first shot without air magic, just to get a baseline. Pretty much matched Verna’s initial demonstration: decent fireball that sputtered out en route. Adding air flow took some finesse, even despite the practice. The first attempt accelerated the fireball too much, making it break apart from the shear forces – something that barrier magic could probably be used to remedy. The second attempt got it under control, but he overcorrected – likely too much turbulence and drag mucking it up.

He got it by the third attempt, though. Not his best, but at least he could gloat about it to Ethan and Miles who took five each to get it right.

Adding the barrier was easier. It was just like treating the interior as an engine’s combustion chamber – strong enough to contain the pressure but sized correctly to allow the reactions to take place.

Suboptimal at first, but still functional. Eyeballing it was tough, but it only took a few tweaks to get the compression right. Within minutes they were launching fireballs that hit just as hard as Verna’s demonstration.

She clapped her hands. “Defying all precedents again, I see. Though… I suspect I ought not to be astonished any longer.”

Cole smiled. Hopefully they’d be able to keep this up. “Guess that means we’re ready for what’s next, then?”

“More than ready,” Verna said. “Though perhaps we ought to start with something properly simple: fog. You might find it rather interesting.”

The air shimmered around her hand. Fog was familiar territory by now; Cole had done enough practice to recognize that initial gathering of vapor. His usually spread out like bathroom fog, filling whatever space it had – which meant disappearing into the large ass training room or blending into the surrounding atmosphere outside. Hers didn’t. Instead, it engulfed their immediate surroundings without losing consistency.

The mist drew itself tight, probably dense enough to eat radio signals. It turned into that perfect, unnatural white that made everything past five feet look like an old photograph. Real unsettling, but otherwise fine as long as a pyramid didn’t jump at him.

It made his work with steam look almost amateur in comparison, but he’d gladly take the blow to his pride. This mist had a ton of utility; it functioned less like the wispy shit from actual smokescreens, and more like Call of Duty smoke that actually blocked line of sight.

The mist dissipated just seconds after, and she moved on to her next spell. “Now, mud.”

A patch of ground beside them cracked as she set aside a square for demonstration. Water seemed to well up from within the soil itself, like a spring but everywhere at once. The dry earth turned into mud in just seconds.

More water pushed up through the mixture, turning it into a slurry before it suddenly subsided, slightly solidifying the mud. This was the type of shit that would make the Vietcong weep with joy. Perfect consistency, on demand, anywhere it was needed. No digging or hoses required.

Wasn’t as conventionally ‘cool’ as the fireball spectacle earlier, but it sure as hell beat it in utility.

“Which would you prefer to –” Verna began, but the door beside them crashed open.

Elina burst out onto the yard, barely dodging the patch of mud. The grin on her face said everything. “He’s awake.”

Cole’s heart skipped a beat. He damn near broke into a grin himself. Miles and Ethan looked about the same – faces screaming a mix of ‘holy shit’ and ‘no fucking way’. They didn’t need clarification on who ‘he’ was, and they all trusted Elina. But they needed to see with their own eyes first.

They sprinted through the castle’s halls, leaving Elina and Verna behind. Cole’s heart pounded, and not just from the running. Didn’t Elina say several weeks to a month? They’ve been here just under two weeks and Mack was already awake.

What, was Celdorne’s medical practices really just that good? Or maybe Mack was too stubborn to stay down as long as they’d thought. Probably both.

They rounded the final corner. The door was open. And there he was – Mack, propped up against his pillows. He looked like absolute dogshit, but he was very much conscious and awake. Eyes open, and having a conversation with a nurse.

Mack caught their entrance. “Ay, y’all not gonna believe what they just told me.”

The words came out rough and raspy as hell, but they were his. Actually his, not just Cole’s memory of them. Fuck, he hadn’t realized how much he’d started to forget what Mack’s voice sounded like.

“Jesus,” Cole broke out into a grin. “Sleeping Beauty’s finally awake.”

“The one and only,” Mack said. “Wait, you better not tell me I’ve gotta thank you for the kiss.”