CHAPTER THREE

Transfiguration for Dummies

“Genius!” was the first word to spill out of the major’s mouth like it didn’t matter that I’d caused an explosion in the nursery only half an hour ago.

“Number One is a bloody genius!”

It wasn’t just the major looking down at me with greedy eyes, though. A host of military officers and researchers had surrounded the spare bed they’d put me in, which was in an entirely separate room from the other kids.

Lieutenant Wolf wasn’t among my gawkers either. I hadn’t seen him in a few months.

What could that slacker be up to?

There was a lone woman among the gathering who I didn’t recognize — pale blue eyes, long locks of golden hair, and skin as white as softly falling snow. She was beautiful in that ethereal sort of way that women in paintings sometimes were. There was also this otherworldly aura about her that made this woman stand out compared to the men on either side of her.

I didn’t like the way she looked at me. There was a hunger in her gaze that caused the hairs on the back of my arms to stand on end.

“Congratulations, madam.” The major offered his hand to the ethereal-looking woman in the lacy white dress. “It appears our experiment has proven a success.”

The madam turned her dreamy eyes over to the major, and I swear I saw him flinch under her gaze.

“The congratulations belong to you, Major Heinrich,” she replied in a faraway, almost lazy tone. “Your dedication to the project brought about this success... This will please the Primarch.”

Major Heinrich — whose name I learned just now — blushed at her praise.

“You honor me, madam,” he answered with a slight bow of his head.

Following her cue, the others gathered around them shook hands with Major Heinrich and sang his praises like he was the four-year-old who’d unlocked his magical power four years earlier than the earliest recorded awakening of the spark.

Well, it didn’t matter to me if he got the praise, although I felt bad for Lieutenant Wolf because it was his training that got me this far.

Fine, fine... whoopee for you, but you better give me something good for all my hard work, Major... and I don’t want another pacifier. I’m already four, for fuck’s sake...

The major, along with most of the surrounding adults in the institute, was a little too into the idea of racial purity for me to like him, but he was also a generous guy. Case in point, my latest feat of excellence earned me my very own room, complete with a ‘Number One’ placard stuck to my bedroom door.

Hell yeah, achievement unlocked!

Honestly, though, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to go solo. Barely a night in that room and I was ready to crawl up the walls out of boredom and loneliness. It seemed I’d become so used to the noises of my nursery that I actually missed the “oohs,” and “ah's,” of my crib mates.

So, to stave off a bout of depression no one should have to suffer through at age four, I leaped out of my bed in the middle of the night and crept back into the nursery like a ‘Peter Pan’ seeking to steal away the sleeping children. It didn’t surprise me that one of them was already sitting up and waiting for me. Her name was Number Three, and she was my favorite.

“What you doing?” she asked in an endearingly sweet, childish voice.

She was sitting lotus-style in her bed with her hands formed in a circle while positioned close to her chest.

“What are you doing?” I asked her back.

“Copying you... focusing,” she replied.

Strands of pale, golden hair clung to her sweat-streaked cheeks. Her cute little face was puckered up in that expression people get when they’d eaten extra-sour candy.

“I can see that,” I chuckled, “but do you know what you’re doing?”

Number Three shook her head. Then she spread her arms wide like she was asking for a hug.

“Teach me, One...”

She looked at me with pleading big doe eyes, and I melted instantly.

I could never resist Number Three’s charms, a point she seemed to understand almost instinctually. So much, that she often used it against me whenever she wanted to play with the toys I’d been given by the researchers who favored me over the other kids.

“Alright...” I trotted over to her and climbed up the railing to join Number Three in her bed. “Okay, it starts with a rumble in your...” I tapped her gut, which made her giggle. Sheesh, this kid was such a cutie.

That’s how our nightly sorcery lessons began. Within days, this secret cram school would include my entire nursery. Then, two months after I taught them all how to meditate, seventeen of the kids awakened to their magical potential and caused all kinds of chaos in the nursery.

Number Three was the fastest of them all. It had only taken her two weeks to conjure water from the moisture in the atmosphere and shower her bed in it. Unfortunately for her, no one but me had seen her do it, and so the adults thought she’d just wet herself badly.

LOL, I can’t stop laughing...

“No laughing!” she snapped at me.

We were in the playroom the next day, and with her irritation at max level, Number Three conjured a ‘Water Ball’ so vast that getting hit by it was like getting dunked into a tub full of water.

Holy shit, she’s strong...

The sight of me all wet and nearly drowned from Number Three’s attack finally caught the attention of our handlers, earning Number Three got her room which she demanded had to be right next to mine. As for me, well, I made a mental note not to tease her too much because the little girl had a nasty temper.

Number Three was also the first of our nursery to discover her elemental affinity. It had taken her mere days after she’d nuked me with a single ‘water ball’ to escalating her shenanigans by lobbing two to three of them across the nursery to hit the other kids she would designate her targets for the day.

“Number Four,” she called gleefully, “Incoming!”

“No!” Number Four yelled just as a tennis-sized water ball fell on top of her head, splashing her in about a tall glass’ worth of cool water. “Not again!”

Funnily enough, Number Three’s nursemaid echoed Number Four’s sentiments exactly as it would be the woman’s job to clean up after the little rascal.

Yes, Number Three was extremely proficient at using natural energy to conjure bucket loads of water into being, and she wasn’t at all reserved with using her power against anyone who disagreed with her or to just to have a bit of fun at the expense of our crib mates. Yep, I’d created an adorable little monster.

Months later and Numbers, Four, Five, and Seven also discovered their elemental affinities for earth, wind, and fire respectably. None of their awakenings had been as chaotic as Number Three’s, though.

As for the so-called genius, I was having a pretty hard time figuring it out, resulting in a slump that would take more months for me to recover from. In that time, the praises that were poured onto me were slowly drifting to the other kids — kids I’d taught magic to — and that got me pretty depressed.

Was I just fooling myself? Am I just ordinary, after all? I often asked myself during this slump.

In between our daily lessons of Armestian etiquette, reading, writing, and basic math — my most hated of subjects — I continued to struggle against the proverbial ceiling I couldn't seem to break through. Meanwhile, my crib mates had turned our playroom into a space of magical silliness and achievement that left me feeling more and more dejected with each day.

Twelve months after I’d first awakened the spark of magic, and just a few days after my fifth birthday, I was meditating in my room when a familiar voice called out to me.

“When did you learn to draw so much natural energy into yourself, kid?”

I blinked my eyes open and found Lieutenant Wolf grinning at me from my nursemaid’s couch.

“Missed me?”

I bolted from my bed and rammed my head into his stomach. Yes, I missed him, but I was also angry with the guy for leaving me alone all this time, and so I hoped my head-butt hurt him as much as it hurt me. Seriously, it fucking hurt where a small bump had grown at the top of my forehead.

“You’re late, Wolf...”

The tears had come unbidden and rolled down my cheeks.

“Sorry, kid...” Lieutenant Wolf ruffled my short-cropped hair. “The Turians were making a lot of noise in the south and I was sent down there to shut them up.”

I looked up at Wolf’s face and noticed how weathered he looked. There was a brand new scar across the bridge of his nose, too.

“Are you... okay?”

He tapped on the two silver bars pinned to each of his shoulders.

“I’m better than okay. I’m a captain now.”

It wasn’t just the frown at the corners of his mouth. There was also the way the new captain said it like he wasn’t at all ecstatic with his promotion. These two things made me realize Captain Wolf might not love his role as the human equivalent of a guided missile, and that just made me like him more.

“D-does that mean...” I hesitated. “You can’t teach me anymore?”

I didn’t understand why I acted like a child whenever I was around Captain Wolf, even though he was the only military officer around who treated me like an adult.

“Actually,” he patted me on the shoulders with his enormous hands, “the major insisted I come back and tutor you... You’ve been lagging in your sorcery studies.”

I frowned. “It’s not that big a deal...”

“I bet.” A smiling Captain Wolf didn’t bother correcting me. He was encouraging like that. “I saw just how much natural energy you drew into yourself earlier, and it was way more than anyone could manage at your age.”

The dude was also excellent at doling out compliments, by the way. Although he wasn’t entirely wrong as I’d felt my bed vibrating pretty roughly before he called out to me.

“This isn’t a power issue because you’ve got tons of it. I think your problem is direction and control.”

“Number Three says I’m a crappy conjurer...”

“Maybe she’s right.”

Fuck no! Are you telling me to give up on my dream?

“And if conjuration isn’t your thing,” he pulled chalk out of his jacket pocket, “then maybe your real forte lies in transfiguration.”

My ears perked up.

Of course! I had almost forgotten that there were two primary schools of sorcery; Conjuration and Transfiguration.

“But the Major says transfiguration is too advanced for us and that we should practice conjuration first...”

It was Captain Wolf’s turn to frown. “When have you ever shied away from anything advanced?”

Just like that, I felt a bucket of liquid confidence pour into my chest, and I suddenly felt like I could defy everyone’s expectations yet again.

“Teach me, Wolf!”

“It’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?”

For the rest of that day, Captain Wolf hung out in my room while teaching me all about the arcane arrays that made transfiguration possible.

“An arcane array is a visual representation of a specific set of commands that’ll allow you to control your magic and direct it into fulfilling a purpose you’ve set.”

“But you didn’t use an array when you turned the glass of water into ice two years ago...”

He spent a long moment marveling at how I could remember something from my earliest years so vividly before he replied. “That’s because my command that time was really simple.”

Captain Wolf drew a symbol for glass on the floor with chalk.

“Do you remember the two stages of transfiguration?”

“Disassembly and Assembly...”

“The first time I showed you transfiguration,” he shaded the inside of the glass using his chalk, “there was nothing to disassemble as water is already in its malleable state.”

A light bulb lit up inside my head. “Then all you had to do was tell the atmosphere around the glass to get cold...”

“Exactly,” he beamed. “Now, for more complicated commands, you’re going to need an arcane array.”

According to Captain Wolf, the basics of an arcane array were the ‘circle’ that bound the energy and matter together, and the ‘arcane symbols’ which provided the source code that triggered disassembly, malleability, and reassembly of the matter within the circle.

As an example, Captain Wolf drew another circle on the wooden floor before adding in the basic arcane symbols for ‘stone’, ‘shape’, and ‘man’ in a triangle formation within that circle. Next, he dropped a fist-sized chunk of rock into the center of his array.

“Stone represents the rock we’ll be transfiguring...” He pointed to the shape symbol at the top of the pyramid next. “This is our base command.”

Then he pointed to the symbol for ‘man’ at the bottom-right of the pyramid.

“This represents the shape we want to transfigure the rock into.”

As Captain Wolf placed a hand over his arcane array, his eyes lit up like a spark had come to life inside their depths.

“There’s no need for incantations... You just will the natural energy you’ve harnessed with your spark of magic into the array, and—”

Captain Wolf’s hand tensed up, causing blue sparks — the kind that flies out when metal grinds against metal — to pop out of the tips of his fingers.

The array beneath his hand glowed like a bright blue neon sign while blue sparks flew out of its glowing lines to penetrate the chunk of rock within its circle. These sparks destroyed the element in seconds only to reshape it back again into the stone figure of a soldier that was roughly the same volume as the rock it had been transfigured from.

“Voilà,” Captain Wolf lowered his hand, “one toy soldier for you to play with, Number One.”

My jaw had dropped to the floor while I watched Wolf’s sorcery at work, and I couldn’t wait to try transfiguring stuff for myself — and that’s why my room looked like a war zone the following day.

Transfiguring matter was easiest when the matter involved was connected to an element one had an affinity for. This meant I was back to square one, as figuring out what my elemental affinity had also been my problem with conjuration. Luckily, Wolf was a better teacher than all the other idiots who’d tried to explain things to me. With a lot of patience plus trial and error, we circled through an entire catalog of base elements before we finally found the one material that didn’t give me a colossal headache. That element was iron, which meant my elemental affinity was actually earth, or metal if you want to get anal about it.

Motherfucker... I’m a metal bender! No, even better... I am... Magneto!

Yes, I was extremely excited by the tiny knife I’d reconstructed from the chunk of iron Wolf had stolen from my bed frame.

Finally, my first step to becoming the magical savant I’d always dreamed of being was now at arm’s length. And, with confidence back in my step, I would prove that the very next day. I just didn’t expect an even bigger audience than I was prepared for. Hell, it was pretty heart-wracking showing off in front of the primarch and his underlings, who, in the worst timing ever, arrived for a surprise inspection that very day.