“First of all, you and I both know this test was BS, because you’ve already unlocked my mana permanently, unless you were lying about that.

Second, if you ever put a mental compulsion on me again without my permission, I’ll take your ass to court.

Third, explain who the fuck those two were.

Fourth…. Just stop doing this shit.”

The fucker just smiled.

“Let’s go through them in order, shall we? Yes, you’re absolutely right, but I technically shouldn’t have unlocked your mana yet. I didn’t set up the mental compulsion, but you can sign a form stating that you have to be asked beforehand, otherwise it’s implied you consent.”

“Jim and Donald? Jim’s a sweetheart, bit nuts. If you do get the chance, have him train you in Light, he’s one of the best. If you go to his house, say Hi to his wife Coco for me. Be prepared, she likes to take animal forms, I think she has been using a pangolin for the past few years.”

“As for Donald, as you saw, he has his head so far up his own ass he can probably see what he had for lunch. Also, he will likely be your instructor on the rules of magical society, and their history…. Soooooo good luck with that.”

“As for stopping…. I will when you can make me. And one last thing, in…. recompense for your troubles. The dryad’s name is Lira and for magical creatures, and by extension those who interact with magical society in any way…. Your word is your bond.”

With that, he too vanished, the accursed popping noise returning with a vengeance. I swear when I get teleportation magic I’m gonna teleport as much as possible just to piss off people who ca…. You know what, thinking about it, the fact they seem to constantly teleport makes a whole hell of a lot more sense now.

Still standing in the park I wondered about what the hell Nox could have possibly meant about recompense? It’s not like there were actually kids to save…. But then again, that’s not what was promised was it. Oh Nox you sly bastard, I’ll forgive you this time.

I made my way over to the nearest large tree, and activated mana sight. I immediately saw what made the tree’s with dryads in them different. They were…. Shit I can hardly describe it. It was like there was a tree within the tree, only made of pure white and green energy, and its roots connected to every living thing nearby. The branches drifted from tree to tree, momentarily connecting and sending a pulse of green energy.

“Dryad, I would speak with you.” I stated as imperiously as possible.

A man appearing similar in complexion to Lira appeared, though looking much older.

“What do you want, wizard?”

“I am here to tell you to reprimand some of the Saplings under your care for spending too much time in barkform.”

The dryad looked at me quizzically. “I received the notice some time ago…”

“Oh, I know.”

He finally caught on, and smiled.

“Get as much as you can from her.”

“Don’t worry, I will.”

I returned to Elysian Park with a smile on my face. Magical knowledge to improve my wizardry, in exchange for like 5 bucks and pissing off a history teacher? If you think that isn’t worth it you’re out of your mind.

As I approached Lira’s tree, I could virtually feel the tree projecting ‘go away’. Thinking on why Nox had given me her name, I realised that if the old adage of magic creatures being bound by their word was true, then their names having power might be true too.

“Lira, I have come for what I am owed.” ‘Gotta get in your wizard speech practice somehow.’

Her ethereal form slid out from behind the tree, almost feline in her movements.

“Oh hey, um, what do you mean? I sent a message to warn the other dryads….”

“Well, you asked me to tell a dryad nearby to where those Saplings were in danger to reprimand them. I did so. You promised me in exchange you would, and I quote, ‘give me an insight into my magic’. Now I’m not some asshole who would make you tell me..”

‘I said, y’know, like a liar.’

“..But I would really like to be your friend, and I don’t know if I could do that if you were someone who didn’t keep their promises.”

Upside of being raised by a mildly dysfunctional family? You learn to emotionally manipulate with the best of them. Don’t get me wrong, I had nothing against Lira, and wouldn’t mind being her friend, but I’m not above a bit of petty manipulation in revenge for being conned into a test.

“Well….Okay, it was kinda mean to trick you. But Noxie asked me. Hm, but he didn’t say I wasn’t allowed to reward you. Okay, I’ve got it. This’ll help, but I don’t really know how much. I’m a spirit of the forest right?”

I nodded.

“So I have a really strong connection to Wood. All that science stuff that you already know, or the emotional connection you get taught at the academy… that’s only two thirds of the picture.”

“You also have to understand fire. On a…. spiritual level? No, maybe…. fundamental? That sounds right. I guess…. You need to understand the elements. I can’t really help with anything other than Wood. There, I think that counts as an insight.”

I was barely paying attention when she stopped speaking. It made sense. We were evoking our scientific understanding of fire, but that was just the foundation. You had to build upon it, interlacing scientific knowhow with emotions and understandings. The relaxing feeling of a cozy fire. The destruction of a raging wildfire. The wonder of fireworks.The tremendous might of an active volcano.

“Thank you Lira, hope to see you soon.”

She materialized my bag from thin air, and I took it, turning to leave, before a final thought struck me.

“Hey, Lira, how did you send that message to the other dryads?”

She looked at me curiously.

“What do you mean? I used the Weave?”

I was at home, sitting with my head in my hands. Of course Nox hadn’t told me about the Weave. The WWW. World Wide Weave. Apparently wizards and magical beings had their own version of the goddamn internet. There was everything.

To get set up, I needed something crystalline, some wire, and a reflective flat surface.

20 dollars for an amethyst crystal from some hippie, and a coil of wire from dad’s shed and I was good to go in my room, my monitor screen the best reflective surface I had on hand.

The spell was simple as hell, simply coil the wire around the crystal 3 times, and tie the ends into a roughly triangular shape. Then simply push mana into the crystal.

Wizard Amazon was called Atlantis, and it’s ‘Instant Delivery’ option was them literally teleporting the deliveryman to your location. Wizard scam advertisements screaming the value of ‘100% Real Unicorn Horn Wands’ and ‘The Division hate him, follow this one simple casting trick to double your Dark skill’.

Yes, before you ask, there was porn. No, I am not going to describe it.

Lira had given me a leaf with a seal that was suspiciously similar to the one on the coin Jim gave me, only the celtic knotwork on his was replaced with a nature theme, all leaves and twisting branches. This, apparently was the Weave’s version of an IP address.

I held the seal on the leaf up to the crystal, and a window opened up with a chat box. I didn’t actually type anything, simply miming the action of typing was enough to input what I wanted.

[Hi, Lira, I got set up, thx again for your help. Cya later.]

A few minutes later I got a reply.

[Hey Charlie, nice to see you’ve gotten set up. I hope you have fun on the weave! For some reason, the Division’s apprentices aren’t allowed to access it til their second year. Anyway seeya!]

Balls, I wasn’t supposed to have access to the weave yet. Will Nox care? He’d probably clap me on the back. Just to be safe, I didn’t interact on any forums, or place any orders. I didn’t even put up my stock of focus crystal, or azuralite as I found out it was called, even though I saw offers of thousands of dollars for the smallest amounts…. And offers of other things, more suggestive in nature…. Those amounts were in grams….

Sigh

Of course it's a drug, and of course he didn’t tell me. After some digging, I found Manapedia, real creativity there fellas, and looked up azuralite and found out just how depressing it really was. Apparently it wasn’t illegal to trade in raw azuralite, but combined with some chemicals, a good alchemist could turn it into a medicine used to advance mages, up to the 5th tier.

It was also ridiculously addictive, causing a literally euphoric rush, as pure mana suffused your body. It was illegal to trade in the finished product, without a licence, so of course there was an illegal market undercutting official prices, mixing who knows what into the powdered drug. On the streets it went by ‘Blue Heaven’.

Just another reminder that human….or, I guess, mortal failings abound no matter where you are, magical or not.

Determined not to depress myself, I found the wizard version of youtube/twitch, called ViewPortal. There was an endless amount of content, videos of dryads and other nature spirits playing video games for the first time, live streams of potion brewing by a few entrepreneurial witches. I was in heaven. I spent the next couple of hours just watching funny videos of mages doing dumb shit with magic.

Seeing a chair have zero compressive resistance and watching people try to take a seat, only to have the chair fold under them like a limp noodle was the highlight of my day, aside from getting one over on Lira.

I finally understood why Nox acted the way he did. It was like heroin for wizards.

— 2 days later —

I woke up unsatisfied, as I had the last couple of mornings. I had been trying to ‘deepen’ my connection to fire. Let me tell you, that shit is hard.

Trying to conceptualize what feelings fire evokes is like trying to find a set of straw coloured needles in a haystack. You could spin just about any emotion as being related to an element, but that shit won’t fly for a foundation, apparently.

I was racking my brain, trying to figure out the last piece of the puzzle. I was certain I nearly had it, I could feel the mana taking on a reddish hue as it drew into my practice spellforms, signifying that I was getting somewhere, but I had no idea what the last emotion required was.

It was just so frustrati…. Oh holy shit. Frustration. That’s the one I had forgotten. Quickly making sure my bedroom door was locked, I had been forced to buy a lock after the ‘optical illusion tech’ incident, I sat down on my bed and got ready to make magic.

Breathing slowly to calm my mind of the frustration from moments ago, as well as the elation of figuring out the ‘puzzle’, I calmed my mind. I prepared to cast my very first spell again, a simple, small ball of flame. I watched with mana sight as the mana got pulled into the spell form as I spoke the word, this time the mana turned a deep scarlet and stayed that way.

“ʄɨʀɛ.”

This time I could feel the difference. It wasn't the same as actually feeling the emotions I had linked to Fire, it was akin to seeing a fake flame on an electric heater, you felt the heat, and saw the flames, but it wasn’t the same thing as the heat from a real fire.

I flicked my fingers after making a circle, and what came out was breathtaking.

If my fire from before was cool, even incredible, this was something beyond that. The only comparison I can make is it was like watching a video without sound, and then plugging in high quality speakers.

The small ball of fire above my fingertips felt like fire. I could tell it was still missing something, now that I knew there was something else to be added, but I could feel the warmth, the fury, the passion that fire is, that it envelops, in the little ball of flame.

I could also tell my manipulative skills had increased. I tried again, this time without the gesture, simply willing the emotional aspect to curl into a ball, and was able to summon flames around me with relative ease. I didn’t even have the usual headache from bullying the laws of physics. I produced far more complicated shapes than before, stars, cube frames, dozens of tiny flame wisps dancing around my head as I gazed at them in wonder. This was magic. The raw, untethered stuff from before was still available to me, but in comparison this outclassed it completely.

I lit a cigarette with a tiny ball of flame, still guiding it with my fingertips, because it looked cool as hell. I tried what I wasn’t able to do before, and made the fire glow blue, but not burn any faster, and let me tell you, that working was the best real sign of my development, at least in my book. It seems the deeper your connection, the further you can tell the universe to fuck off.

I’m not going to lie, I was incredibly excited to see just how big a ball of flame I could create. I know, it’s not the most scientific method, but good god, based on how much bigger the fireball had gotten after adding scientific understanding I was incredibly excited to try it with the emotional link.

Was I going to try it in the house? Absolutely not. What are you, insane? I was pretty tempted though. Maybe if I aimed it into the center of my room….

A shout from below broke me from my potentially catastrophic musing.

“Breakfast, Charlie!”

Before you start thinking I’m some useless dependant, I would normally get my own breakfast and look after myself, but ever since the Johnsons, my mother had insisted that we eat at least one meal together as a family, with her making the meal. With how our schedules interacted, that meal was breakfast.

Willing the magic to stop and putting out the cigarette, I made my way downstairs and sat at the kitchen table, ready for the mornings trials. I knew my parents weren’t happy with my decision to quit college and join the force. If only they knew.

“So Honey, your father and I just wanted to let you know, that after some…. deliberation, we have come to understand and respect your decision to join the police.”

Dad spoke up,

“After all, our family has a long and proud tradition of keeping people safe from monsters and the like, so you’re just continuing the legacy.”

He grins, before continuing,

“Who knows maybe you’ll end up bringing in some of those scum sucking wizards, and they’ll get what they deserve for once.”

My dad is a real ray of sunshine huh?

“Yeah Dad, I’ll tell ‘em you said hello.”

“That’s my lad. Here, it was your 19th birthday recently and we didn’t really get you much, but with your decision to join the force, I think you’ve proved yourself mature enough for this.”

He walked over to the fireplace, on top of which was the cabinet in which he kept all the family heirlooms. Opening it with a key around his neck, he pulled forth a small…. crossbow looking thing, and laid it on the table in front of me.

“This is how our family was successful for so many years hunting those abominations. The bolts are laden with a compound that stops them from using their filthy taint, and the bow limbs react to any nearby magic by glowing blue.”

As my father spoke, the bow limbs were indeed growing blue. He noticed the glow with a frown on his face, and went to pick it up, muttering about how it couldn’t be broken.

As he brought it past me to examine it, the glow intensified, and the frown turned into a grim stone face.

“Charles, why are you registering as having their taint on you? Think carefully about your next words, boy.”

He was pointing the crossbow in my direction.

| L14R mode: E N G A G E D |

“Woah, calm down Dad, I think I might know why it’s reacting to me. I didn’t really want to tell you, because I wanted to wait until I had caught one, but on the day they told me I was accepted into the academy they showed all the potential recruits a captured…. beast they had arrested.

He looked completely normal, but under their special scanners you could see his true, hideous form. We were all standing right beside him, and the cell he was in was covered in his shed hair. I probably picked up some germs or something from him, and that’s why it’s registering me as one of those abominations.”

Hypocritical, I know, but it's better to agree with one old racist… speciesist ...magicist? person, than lose my father.

My dad lowered the crossbow with a sigh and gave me a one armed hug.

“Thank goodness, son, you really had me scared for a minute.”

My mother and sister hadn’t said a word during the exchange, and they didn’t seem to want to start speaking now. After finishing up, I wordlessly picked up the crossbow and headed back to my room. Setting it inside my desk cupboard, I locked the door again.

| Lie successful, emotional suppression disengaged |

Then I sat on my bed.

And cried.

My own father.

Ready to kill me at a moment’s notice.

For being the thing he hates most in the world.

Sometimes I hate magic.