´Power´

Her voice echoed in my mind over and over. Many of the other voices cheered her on, while others ridiculed her for her ´dumb´ choice. I wasn't listening to the other voices though. Completely ignoring them actually.

What is your reasoning for your choice? I'm not saying it a bad one, don't worry about that, I just want to know why.

The voice giggled a bit at that.

´Isn't it obvious? While versatility does bring along great perks, not one of them can stand against pure power. From what we have been told, those groups fighting are powerful. Very powerful. You can call me dumb, but I simply don't think that some resistance against explosions is gonna make us survive a bloody nuke´

That was… a good point actually. While the Fortuna path would show some level of versatility, it wouldn't help at all against demigod-level beings.

I can counter-argue that point of yours. While the Fortuna path doesn't make you able to survive a nuke, neither would the Evolution path. With both paths and many years of training, you could theoretically survive one. Neither one these paths make you a god in an instant. With both of them, you have to train and train, slowly gaining power, if you want to get anywhere. The only differences between them give small bonuses in either power of versatility.

I ended my argument and was greeted by silence. Not even a mutter could be heard from them. Until a single small voice decided to speak up.

´Then, h-how about we ta-take it to a vote? Tha-That way, we can choose what the majority wa-wants´

It sounded like a small boy with an edge of a stutter.

Sounds like a plan. Anybody against?

Not a single voice in protest.

Great. We will now divide into three groups. Group number one wants to go with The Evolution Path, group number two wants to stay neutral, and group number three wants to go with The Fortuna path.

Three different colored lights sprung up in my head.

Make your choice now, please.

And with that, the voices began moving, each of them represented by a small light. The lights smashed into each other, trying to quickly move over to their side. I think, I even saw a few of them forcefully taking other with them. Don't ask me how they did that without arms, or anything really, cause I don't know either.

After a few minutes, the voices start settling down around their respective lights. Not even one voice had decided to become neutral. They all wanted their opinion to be the right one. Now, I just had to find which light had the most voice. It was hard to tell, really. It wasn't completely even, with one side having slightly more voices. It was a sixty-forty situation, so to say.

´Seems that we´re taking the path of power after all´, I hear the sweet voice say.

So it seems.

Now that the Path had been chosen, the time to move to the next phase had begun. One problem, though. I wasn't really sure what the next phase was, or how to do it.

Seems that the waiting game has begun. Will I, A, wait until Jakob returns or, B, try to experiment, most likely ending in failure? Only time will tell…

Just kidding. It A. I'm curious. Not stupid.

After twenty minutes of just sitting around, doing nothing but playing with the Gazer, Jakob finally returned to the room, carrying a large, leather-bound book that looked too old to be safely touched. This was a world of magic, though, so I did not judge,

“Have you made a decision on which path you want to take?”, Jakob asked, carefully, and patiently, dropping the old book to the hard floor. Didn't even bend his knees. Just stopped holding it, while walking towards me.

“Yes, I have, actually”, I answered, with a prideful voice.

“And, what was your choice”, he asked, sitting down next to me.

“I choose; The Path of Evolution.” My voice wavered slightly at the end, unsure if I really wanted to choose this path. Just after thinking that, a voice, sounding like a small girl, told me to ´Man tæ fuk up, ya bloody wank´. So, I did.

Jakob didn't seem surprised at my choice. Had he expected me to make this choice or did he just not care? Personally, I was hoping for the former.

“That great! Now, I need you to read that book, and memorize the contents to heart”, Jakob said, pointing at the old book he had brought in.

I look the book twice over. He wants me to memorize all of the words in this, at least, five hundred page book. While I may think of myself as smart, I wasn't that overconfident.

“I don't think I can do that, honestly. It just seems like too much information to take in at once”

Jakob laughs at that, clearly expecting this from me.

“Don't worry, don't worry. I don't expect you to even be able to memorize this book's contents in a whole month. That's why I am going to help you. A little push forward, if you would like to call it that. You see, my specialty is something called Mind. While that may sound weak, to the unprotected its almost omnipotent in destruction capabilities. If no defenses are set up, everybody's minds are my personal playground. What mage could cast spells if he could even think, or, better yet, what if he thought his allies were his enemies? Pure chaos.

Back to the point, now. In my youth, I came across a simple spell. A spell that would fake memories, and make them so well they wouldn't be forgotten. Essentially, they were burned into your brain. Only magical assistance, from somebody with the Mind Talent, could ever hope to remove them. While it took me a while to realize, this spell had the potential for something more than simply confusing people. It could be used for studying.

I spent weeks trying and trying to reverse-engineer it, finding what made them stay in your head. It was a frustrating process, as I needed both willing test subjects and professors who would fix those test subjects minds.

In the end, though, it was all worth it.

I had found out how it worked AND made my own spell using this method. The spell had a simple premise really. Everything you saw for a certain amount of time, which would depend on your mana usage, would be impossible to forget. The perfect tool for memorization.

Now, that sounds like a tool every mage wants to have. Well, guess what. They can't! The spell can only be used by those with a high amount of Talent in Mind. Also, I didn't really share the spell with many, seeing as other families might want to snatch it from us.

Now, I am going to cast this spell on you, giving it enough Mana to last for about… let's say… six hours. This should give you enough time to carefully skim over the pages.

I will leave you again, as I only came to give you the book. Hope you practice… Wait, oh yeah, the spell”

Jakob raises his hand toward me, his eyes glowing brightly. While his mouth doesn't move, I begin hearing soft whispers in my head. Not those of my voices but something else completely. Something… different.

And then, the spell's effects came.

It was disorienting at first. While the normal memory would still come, hazy and unclear, the spell-memory would come in full force, being as clear as day. Two different memories of the same thing happening at the same time. Weird.

This is gonna take some time to get used to.

The voices had, in a way, the same opinions. They didn't know which ´screen´ they should be looking at.

After a small while, I begin getting a hang of it. While it felt weird at the start, the long time I have it like this, the more natural it begins to feel.

I move over to the book and get on a comfortable sitting position while having the book on my legs. I briefly look over at the Gazer and see it rapidly spinning around. That must have been disorienting.

´Focus. You have to get through the whole book´

Of course.

I look down at the book and mentally sighed.

This is gonna be a doozy.

Five hours later, and I had successfully read through the whole book. At first, I kept getting distracted, trying to search through my memories of the last pages while simultaneously reading further. Luckily though, I, at last, got my brain under control and became fully focused on memorizing instead of analyzing.

When I finally finished, I actually had a whole thirty minutes leftover time. The reason I knew this was because of my enhanced memorization. I knew how long an memory was proportionate to a second, and simply counted how many I had.

I used those last thirty minutes going over and analyzing, the contents of the book.

It described the compositions of magical creatures. While that may have sounded like a simple premise, trust me when I say this; it wasn't simple. Magical creatures technically aren't native to this realm. Technically, they were not native to any realm. All magical creatures, or their predecessors, started out as normal creatures, with nothing different about them. That is until they some way were sucked into one of the thirteen magical realms, where their very being became twisted, and their physical bodies replaced. Nobody is really sure what happens in detail, but they were sure something happens. Two things could happen after that. One was that they somehow get sucked back out of one of the thirteen magical realms, without any Summoning magic. They would then live out their lives in a ´normal´ realm, most likely having children. The other thing that could happen was that they get summoned with Summoning magic. Here, there's a chance that the Mage with the Summoning Talent will create a Bond between them, effectively stopping the magical creature to getting back to the magical realm. If the mage does not create a bond, though, the magical creature would simply come back to the magical realm, giving it another chance of getting back to the ´normal´ realm.

That was basically what the first half of the book was about. The other half was divided into three parts; How to create a bond, The anatomy of a Magical creature, and How to subdue aggressive Magical creatures.

How to create a bond was the first. Essentially there were two different kinds of Bonds. The Mutualism Bond and The Compellere Bond. Mutualism is when both sides of the bond would get equal rights. The summoner wouldn't be able to force the Magical creature to do anything unless the creature willing would do so. The Compellere Bond was a little different. Instead of being equal, either the Summoner or the Magical creature would have complete control of the others actions. It was, essentially, a Master-Slave Bond.

What Bond the Summoner uses simply depends on choice. Both bonds have benefits and negatives. If a Summoner, that is using the Mutualism Bond, gets Mind-Controlled, the Magical creature doesn't have to obey the Summoner, and, instead, attack the person Mind-Controlling the Summoner. If the Summoner was using the Compellere Bond, though, the one Mind-controlling the Summoner could control the Magical creature easily, effectively stopping it from rescuing its master.

The Mutualism Bond isn't perfect though. There is one aspect common in that Bond. Betrayal. The Magical creature isn't forced to be loyal, and can simply act against the Summoners wishes. But, with the Compellere Bond, the Magical creature is always loyal, and would never go against its master's wishes.

After reading this, a choice was needed to be taken. What Bond to use? The choice was obvious, really. From the Gazer controlled by one of my voices, it was reasonable to assume that was a perk from my Soul Talent. That meant that the Mutualism bond effectively did not have any downsides. Why would my voices betray me, when I was the only thing keeping them alive?

I hear a small chuckle.

What?

´Nothing. Just, trust me on this; Some of the others here wouldn't mind a little betrayal.

Well, that was nothing but reassuring. Moving on.

The formation of The Mutualism Bond was simple. The Summoner and the Magical creature needed to put their own Mana into the other body, gently, but firmly, rooting it into the edges of the Mana channels. This would serve as a guide when summoning the Creature for the Summoner, while giving the Magical creature something to ´hang on to´, effectively stopping it from returning to one of the Magical realms.

Having analyzed everything on the subject, I moved on.

The next subject was about The anatomy of Magical Creatures.

To say the least, I had been expecting pictures of guts of blood filling the many pages. Instead, though, there was almost nothing about the inner organs. Well, nothing about normal organs, that is. You see, Magical creatures aren't restricted by their physical body. If they needed those, they would long since have died in the Magical realms. Still, though, they need something holding their souls in place, and not just falling out of their temporary bodies. They need an anchor.

When residing in the ´normal´ realms, their souls reside within a small crystal ball. The most notorious name for it would be their core. It's the only body part on every Magical creature. Some Magical creatures are actually only composed of this crystal core.

When forming a Bond, the rest of the creature's body was irrelevant, and actually needed to be ignored fully if the Summoner wanted any chance for it to evolve. If the forming of the Bond, it would be a simply mercy to stop the Bond completely and let the Magical creature go back to the Magical realms.

The last few pages were warning on what happened, if you tried to form a Bond again, and let me just say this; I took the warnings to heart.

Having finished this subject, I moved onto the final subject. How to subdue a Magical creature.

…

Going over the last subject, I realized it was really only one page. The page isn't even completely full.

“If you find any need to subdue a Magical creature, you're either an idiot or you were put on a quest by somebody who was. Trust me when I say this; trying to make an Bond with a aggressive creature is a stupid idea. When making the Bond, the creature can seriously damage your Mana-channels, and, if skilled enough, kill you on the spot. Even if you aren't trying to make a bond, Magical creatures are known to be stubborn, and smart, creatures. It will know what you're trying to do and will get even angrier. Don't try it”

For some reason, I was glad I wouldn't have to Bond with a Magical creature. I mean, I did have to, but their mind would be one of my voices, so it should be much easier.

That was the moment that the spell decided to null its effects. I was lying down in seconds, now confused about how blurry everything seemed.

It was almost like that time… that time I… What was it again?... I-I can seem to think straight.