[WP]Sometimes you need to do some stupid shit to discover your inner genius.

...

You know what's really difficult to figure out?

Taxes, vehicle registrations, divorce settlements, magic. Oh, that last one? No, you heard me right: I said Magic.

Magic is really difficult to figure out.

You've got your mana, the World's mana, the Chaos mana, your own Inner-spirit (something that sounds suspiciously like mana- but isn't) and the Fae. Mix and match these elements with any number of rituals, chants, or voodoo nonsense: You've got magic.

Summoning elemental monsters, casting spells, raising the dead, healing wound. The people of this world use the methods of magic like a giant crutch to solve all their problems and woes. "No rain in the dry season?" Best summon some. "Wagon wheel is breaking down?" Just find someone who can regrow the wood, then polish it up a bit. "Pa's hurt?" Hire a Faith Healer of the White Path. Truly an entire reality, where everyone has just been breezing through life on the metaphoric "Novice" setting.

While my ancestors were rubbing two sticks together for fire and throwing rocks at saber-tooth tigers, these jerks were probably just snapping their fingers and laughing over roasted cat-steaks. Easy mode: everything on a silver platter.

But there's a catch- I mean, why wouldn't there be a catch? There always is for things like this, and life has conditioned me to look for it.

See, it's especially tricky to someone whose past thousand some-odd years of known ancestors had to do things the hard way. More than tricky, it's down-right near-impossible for person who lived without even the faintest whiff of mana for twenty-something years, to suddenly just adjust and "snap their fingers." It's a transition: a dramatic shift. A person who came from a world without magic and landed in another one full of it, well... They're going to have a bad time.

That person can read the right books, ask the right questions, practice the right routines, and still not have a clue why the arrogant git of a stable boy can talk to the horses or the old woman on the corner can make her broomstick do it's own work. A person coming from the outside in isn't going to know how to use magic properly. They're not going to be fluent- that's just the way it is.

I tell you this from experience.

It took almost a year from my first arrival to this world, before I could even make the slightest bit of progress on the magical-front. Learning to read was a much more pressing priority, and though I tried to mingle these two together, it was another full year before I had the wits about me to read a grocery list- much less instructions on how to shoot fire-balls out of my hand.

They say everyone has to start somewhere, and I imagine that's true, but maybe three years living in this reality, and my progress in the magical arts has been a slow grind. Out of all my efforts to make the mana and spirits of the world obey my will, the best I'd managed to come up with was making a small explosion come out of a metal tube. A cheap imitation of sub-par results, and at best an effective range of ten feet.

Now, I've never been much of the type to settle on problems that actually matter to me. When I was younger, I fit the bill as a studious sort of adolescent. If I didn't understand something, I would hit my head against the subject until it gave up its secrets or I fell unconscious at my desk, but the more I force myself to apply the old-world methods of understanding to magic, the more frustrating it becomes. Even the oldest trusted tool in my arsenal of comprehension: The ever-beloved Scientific method, falls to its knees and weeps at the conundrums before me. How is one supposed to control and test variables, if you don't even understand what the variables are? When the best description provide to you, is to "treat magic like breathing."

Well, I'll tell you the answer I came up with.

It came to me after rational thought had more or less fled the building, when things were really getting down to the wire. Really, I'm not going to recommend this to just anyone, and in honest truth I'd strongly recommend against in most circumstances where life and limb aren't directly threaten. Unless your back is against the wall, the honest conclusion and breakthrough that was reached isn't for the faint of heart.

See, sometimes you need to do some stupid shit to discover your inner genius. Sometimes you need to throw caution to the wind, give up on logic, and just dive in head-first.

If that means blasting apart a few hundred Goblins with a beat-to-shit Remington 700 that has long since found itself emptied of real ammunition, so be it.

Sometimes you just need to Get good.