*Yawn* I hate it when I have to narrate in the middle of the night; even I rest too, you know! Moving on, I have a rather important bit for you today about the nature of magic

Of course, I could just explain it to you, but I’d rather have a bit of fun first, hehe. I decided to give you this bit of an explanation as an excerpt from a rather long-winded and annoying book about the “utilization of the mysterious and magical parts of our wonderful world”, or so it states in the seventeenth paragraph of the third author's note. It was written a very long time ago by some important scholar of Ezekiel's new world, and I found it hilariously tedious.

“Like many other remarkable aspects of life, control over the natural world varies from being to being, and race to race. The Fair races, who, through some spells another, have become one with their souls, have the ability to directly commune with the elements. This command of the element in which they are attributed allows them to cause it to follow their will, using only a bit of their magic energy as sacrifice. The benefits of channeling are low consumption of magic power and a high level of detail. A user can give elements specific and elaborate commands. It is, however, limited to a person’s attributed element, and the total amount of the element they could control depends only on their affinity.

“Other species whom are not in sync with their souls, like humans, must resort to the use of magic and incantations. To accomplish the same goal, a witch or wizard much use more than double the amount of magic energy as one who can directly commune with their element.

“The advantage of magic, however, is its diversity. A water attributed wizard can use a fire spell, but a water attributed Dryad cannot channel the element of fire. Those who can't sense the elements directly with their souls can cause physical changes in the world by bending elements to their will under the force of their magic.

“They cast already prepared spells, which significantly lowers their precision. A wizard can choose to create his own spell, but always runs the risk of it backfiring and killing or injuring him” (pg 7770).

To paraphrase: dragons ask the elements to do something, and humans force them to (expending a lot of energy in the process).

I’d love to stay and chat, but my nap beckons. I shall see you again later.

* * *

‘Screeeech’ Ezekiel started awake. Through a crack in the curtains he saw a branch brushing across his window panes, making a ghastly noise. Discombobulated, he blinked at his dark room. Or rather, the room he was in. Not his room.

‘Where am I? What happened?’ He thought back on the day. He remembered so far as the elders leaving the house, but the rest was blank. ‘I must have conked out after using up all my magic energy.’

Ezekiel shuddered. His mouth was all dry and he felt sore all over. Stretching and sighing, he crawled to the side of the bed and swung his legs over the edge. Then he hopped off onto the floor.

Yawning, he scratched the back of his head. He padded over to the window, with his long robe swishing around his bare feet. The floor was just barely visible where the thin strip of moonlight fell. Although he could see most of his path, it was still difficult to keep from tripping over the stacks of books scattered about the room.

He reached the window. He drew the curtains back and stood tiptoe so he could peer outside. The ground was blocked from view, but when he peaked at the sky a sigh of amazement escaped him.

Since there was no light pollution like Ezekiel was used to here, the night sky was pristine. Through the branches of a giant tree, he could see thousands of small twinkles, many of them colored purple. The absolute quiet and stillness exaggerated the effect of this marvelous view.

Another ‘Screeeech’ broke the mood. Ezekiel remembered why he had gotten up. Glancing downwards, he searched for a large book. When he found one titled City of Savages: The Underwater Life of E. Remmings, he heaved the gargantuan thing underneath the window pane and set it down.

He stood on top of the thick book and reached to unlatch the window, flinching as the branch dragged against the glass again. He pulled open the window and grabbed at the branch. He gently snapped the willowy limb, and shut the window. The silence was blessed.

He drew the curtains, plunging the room into darkness the rs. He paused for a moment to allow his eyes to adjust, then made his way back to the bed. He set the branch he was still holding onto the bedside table before crawling back into bed. As he slipped under the covers, he knew sleep would come reluctantly.

After ten minutes of tossing and turning he gave up. He massaged his pillow against the headboard so he could sit upright.

Sleep had fled completely from his consciousness, and he was now wide awake. He felt like he had just drunk several cups of coffee. He estimated it was about two in the morning, but he couldn't be sure since didn't know if his body clock had adjusted properly to this world, of if the two worlds even shared the same length of day.

He let out a deep breath, calming himself. He tried to get his mind in order. He organized what he had learned so far, both from the dragon memories, and what had happened earlier that day.

The most interesting thing that stuck out to him was the possibility of magic, or to control the elements. Previously, he had known there was no possibility of him utilizing the aforementioned, since he hadn't had access to his soul. But his soul was deeply connected to his consciousness now, and he could use it at will.

He tried to access the memories that he had from the other dragons, and he could, but they seemed oddly faint. He brushed his concern away, deciding to think about it during the day.

Instead, he wanted to try using magic! Looking over the vague chunks of memory he realized that there were six elements: fire, water, wind, earth, light, and dark. Each of the five dragons from his memory had a different attribute, except for the fifth, who had both light and dark. They had all been extremely powerful in their own times, able to command enormous amounts of their respective elements with great precision. He grinned, imagining how awesome his counterparts had been.

While searching over the memories in detail, he realized there were different kinds of magic, or what the people of earth would call magic. First, there was the fairly simple type that dragons used.

The person using this type of ‘magic’ communicated directly with the elements. They asked the element to do their bidding, and in return gave a bit of their magic power. The other type, supposedly used by humans, wasn’t recorded in detail in the memories.

The first step to any type of magic of channeling was magic power. So this is what Ezekiel looked for first. After his soul and mind connected, he could always sense the status of his magic reserves in the back of his mind.

Now he consciously focused on it. While keeping in mind what Adir had said earlier, about magic power being stored in a special space or room in the mind, he checked his soul ‘room’.

All the cleared space in this room was full of magic energy, but Ezekiel could tell his current maximum was only a fraction of what he has used the previous day to create his human body. He couldn't be sure, but his best guess was that he, for some reason, had absorbed excess magic energy from somewhere.

Like Adir would have said, his soul room used to be full of mud, but all the water, or magic energy, got wrung out of it when he made his human body. Now it was like anyone else’s soul room; magic energy only fills the parts he cleared. He was both grateful that he had a goodly sized amount of magic energy at present, and disappointed that it was significantly less than before. He shook it off, and set his sights on a new goal.

Before he jumped right in, he took a moment to familiarize himself with the process of channeling an element. He was about to call on one to do something, until he realized he didn't know which one, or what he wanted it to do. ‘I’d better take a moment and do some “soul searching”’ he thought.

Focusing again, he closed his eyes. After concentrating for several moments he could sense the presence of his soul. He grinned at his success. From the memories he had, he knew that a person’s soul was the color of their attribute, and the level of vibrancy and transparency correlated to the level of the attribute (the murkier the color, the lower the affinity).

He awakened his soul sense, and the elements and magic power around him flickered into view. The strange sensation was like a veil being lifted, and suddenly being able to see clearly. It was quite invigorating.

He to feel the attribute of his soul in the same way he felt his magic power, but he kept getting mixed signals. Confused, he turned the gaze of his soul sense inwards, and focused it on his own soul. When he peaked inside at it, he saw something quite unexpected.

His soul was encircled by a layer of perfectly clear lighting blue that shone brightly. Beneath that layer there was a fiery orange-red layer, also absolutely transparent. The strange thing was they didn't blur each other out, but, depending on which he focused on, each shone clearly and brightly.

He probed deeper, and another color came into view; a deep blue. Beneath that he felt one more, a yellowish color that gave off a feeling of stability. He wondered what the slew of colors meant, could it possibly signify that he had more than one attribute, and that they were all very strong?

Searching for the answer, he peered even deeper into the soul. He jolted upright when he saw what happened next. The fifth layer of his soul was very different than the others. Instead of giving off a feeling of its own, it altered the rest of the soul. One half of his soul started to shine many times brighter than before. All the colors flashed about, invigorated by the sudden light.

The other half seemed to suck in all light. The layers of soul covering it retained their colors, but gave off no signs of their existence. The whole effect was like a multicolored lighthouse, spinning round and round on a cloudy day.

This is where Ezekiel stopped scrutinizing his soul. He could feel it held more secrets, but it didn't want to relinquish them. It was like there was a wall after the fifth layer of his soul, preventing him from seeing any deeper.

It was of little consequence, at least for the moment. Ezekiel had discovered what he had wanted to know; which element (or elements) he had an affinity with.

Although he had several options, he chose to first try the perennial favorite: Fire. Not only was it thought of as the easiest element to use, but he was a dragon. And everyone on his previous world knew that dragons breathe fire.

Although he was certainly attached to the idea of being able to shoot fire from his mouth, he decided to start simple. He picked up the branch from his bedside table. He was going to try and light the tip, just the tip, on fire.

He took a deep breath. He accessed the magic power in the back of his mind. In one go, he let out his breath. At the same time he willed the fire elements surrounding the branch to ignite it.

“Owwww!” He dropped the burning branch. It glowed bright orange and blue for just a moment, before it turned almost entirely to ash. From the scalding pile of charcoal and dust stilling on the bedspread rose a flickering tongue of flame.

“Shoot, shoot, shoot! What do I do?” He grimaced while panicking. He tried to pat it out, but the flames had spread to far. Then he remembered the deep blue in his soul, the water attribute. He speedily calmed himself, and called upon the elements again. This time he told the water elements in the room to condense and extinguish the blaze.

As if from a great bucket, a rush of water fell from midair. Not just on the fire-affected area of the bed, not just on the bed, but every nook and cranny of the room was soaked. Ezekiel raised an arm in protest, but it fell limply to the ground. ‘Oops. Big oops. Really really big oops.’ He couldn't believe he just did that. He raised his soggy head and shook it, In the middle of doing so, an immense lethargy suddenly hit him. It suddenly felt difficult to breathe, much less get up. He started to snore, even while sitting up.

And so fell a very soggy boy, onto a very soggy and charred bed. With no reserves of magic energy, this boy would not wake until a pair of considerably less soggy, but quite startled parents rudely woke him with a pair of rather loud shouts.