After my little show with the fireball, Audric got very excited about teaching me magic. He gave me a brief speach about how imagining what you want your magic to manifest as is only part of what is required. Only through practice can you get your magic to match up to what you imagine.

I had a thery as to why this was. All through his speach, Audric always talked about imagining the end result, he never mentioned imagining the process. In some of the web novels I have read, imagining the process brings better results. It was possible that it was the same here, which I can only determine through experimentation.

Audric ended his speach by telling me were running low on food and that he was going to go into the forest to obtain more. He wanted me to continue to practice while he was gone, without destroying the ruin.

I waited until he was gone to begin. I held out both hands flat Infront of me and formed a baseball sized sphere of ether over each. For the one over my left hand, I imagined a water ball, a small bead of water formed at the center of the sphere and over the course of a few seconds it filled up to the baseball size. For my right hand I imagined the ether drawing moisture out of the surrounding air to form the waterfall. When I manifested that, the waterfall formed almost instantly, in contrast to the one over my left hand.

It seems that if you have a clear picture of how you want to obtain the water, the effects are much faster. Since I had two waterballs available, I decided to move my experiments on to making ice. For the one on my left I simply imagined it freezing solid. When manifested it took nearly a minute to form and appeared quite brittle. For the one over my right, I imagined the water molecules slowing down and linking together to form a crystal structure. Instantly the waterball turned to a solid blue ice.

To test the quality, I smashed the two ice balls together. The left side one shattered into thousands of pieces while the right side one remained unharmed. This confirmed my hypothesis, imagining the process is better than imagining the effects.

For the next several hours I practiced every effect I could imagine, creating a gust of wind, drawing up dust in the ruins to make a block of earth, making a cloud, making electricity jump between my fingers, forming ether into shields, water blades, healing after I cut myself with said blades... And everything else I could imagine. And the best part is that I did not even have to use any of my mana, the flowing river of ether provided me with non stop energy to work with.

Audric came back about an hour after lunch with fresh woodland vegetables and a deer.

"Audric, can I set up the fire?"

"Sure, I will clean the deer while you do."

I decided to give a spell idea I had a try. I sat down across the room from the fireplace and stacked wood. I gathered ether into a bubble around a single piece of firewood and solidified it into a shield, then I lifted up. The piece of firewood looked as if it had been yanked up into the air and was hovering there. I moved the shield into the fireplace and then dispelled it, the firewood dropped in.

I had just developed telekinesis for dummies. Audric was out cleaning the deer so he didn't get to see it unfortunately, I wounder what he would think of it? Using the same method I moved the rest of the firewood I needed into the fireplace. Then I used ether to heat it up until it cought fire.

While I sat back waiting for Audric, I realized something. I knew next to nothing about this world, the language barrier had kept me from ever asking about it. I knew it was a fantasy world, ya know because of the magic, but was it a humans only fantasy world? Would my new appearance stand out or were there enough sapient species to for no one to care? What continent where we on? Did this world even have continents? Now that I had an understanding of the language I had so many questions I needed to ask.

Later, after Audric returned and we began to eat out late lunch, I decided to ask him the questions I wanted to know.

"Umm... What is this world called?"

"Oh... Ah it is called Araven."

"OK, so how many [continents] are there? Or rather... Land masses?"

Audric nodded and seemed to get what I was getting at.

"We know of over two hundred, but only fifteen are populated. Right now we are on the ••••••••• of Eirin."

Two hundred! Either there is a misunderstanding or this word is fukin huge! Now that I thank about it, aren't fantasy worlds usually bigger than earth?

"How many different types of peoples are there?"

"You mean besides humans? Several hundred types that I know of."

Several hundred! And that just the ones he knows of! This is awesome! Elf babes here I come! Maybe I should start a collection... AHEM... I mean harem. Actually that doesn't sound any better... MOVING ON.

"Could you tell me about some of them please?"

"Ok then, the second most populous people behind humans would be the halflings. They look just like a human except smaller. Then there are the ••••• (the word he used here sounded suspiciously like 'elves' so that is what I am assuming he meant), they are thin and agile, have long pointed ears. The high elves are usually light skinned and have blonde hair, but there are also many different •••••• of elves, like dark elves, shadow elves, •••••• elves... Well you probably get the picture.

The there are the dwarves, who are short and stocky. They usually wear a beard and live underground. Excellent metal workers to." Audric paused to take a breath, " let's see... There are also the beast peoples, who have ears like an animal and a tail. Some have more animal qualies than that but that is the minimum. The Amol look like humans but have four arms. The Oni usually have red skin and one or two horns. And I could go on, but those are some of the more populated peoples."

This was amazing! So many different races to find hot babes from! OK, OK jokes aside, I was now very eager to get out of this forest and to a city. I decided to ask about it.

"Audric, can we go to a city?"

"That would not be so easy. We are close to the center of the great forest of Eirin, it stretches out for thousands of metras (a unit of distance similar to a mile) in all directions. The dense ether in the forest has turned many of its animals into dangerous monsters. What is more, it would be dangerous if I left this forest, you see this gray skin? The ether here changed me. I would be shunned or even hunted down by society."

Well that is depressing, it seems that it is going to be some time yet before I can leave. With that our conversation lapsed into silence. I spent the rest of the afternoon parctacing magic under the watchful eye of Audric. Soon my first day studying magic came to an end.

Unbeknownst to Ambrjrn, while he was sleeping, his subconscious began to inhale ether, it moved throughout his body nourishing it before it finally entered his mana pool and expanded it. His subconscious continued to do this all night.

The next morning when I tryed to get up, I ended up tripping. When I got to my feet, everything looked ever so slightly smaller. Audric who was already awake looked over and gasped.

"You have grown! At least an etera (inch) and a half!"

I really had grown taller during the night. For the first time since I came here I felt joyous that I might not have to go through childhood all over again. Audric spent the next half hour measuring me trying to determine my exact rate of growth. It also occured to me that this message I would need new clothes soon.

Once my the excitement from my sudden growth spurt wore off, we finished breakfast and moved on to the next step of magic training.

"You seem to be able to use your imagination for magic casting far better than even some masters I know of, but there is still a lot you need to learn. So next up it chanting. Chanting can be done in any language and is usually done for two reasons. The first you don't really need, it is to strengthen your cast, for example most novices can only cast a small weak fireball, but when they chant a description of how they want their fireball to be, it allows them to make a stronger fireball."

"The next use of chanting is for more advanced magic users. It is for when there is something that is difficult to fully imagine, chanting allows their subconscious so form the full picture they need to cast the spell."

"Now chanting can not be used if you do not understand the concept behind it. You can't just repeat the words you heard someone else chant and expect to get results."

OK, sounds easy enough. Let's give it a try. I stood in the center of the room and gathered ether around my right hand.

"[Flaming fist]"

My hand was enveloped it red flames that swirled around it but spread no further than my wrist. The concept that came to mind when I said flaming fist included the flames not burning myself, which is rather important for something like this.

"Ooh, the flaming fist, very popular among fire mages."

Ok, so it wasn't that original, but I now knew that I could do even more now than with just my imagination. Well its time to see the limits of what I can do. I dispelled the flaming fist and began to gather ether around Audric.

"Hey now, what are you doing with all this ether around me?"

"[Dispell curse!]"

Nothing happened. Apparently this wasn't a curse.

"[Dispell mutation]"

All my memories of human anatomy and genetics rushed through my head in that single moment. Large amounts of ether began to rush into Audric and he dropped to the floor and started spasming.

"[Oh shit oh shit oh shit]"

I rushed over to Audric an rolled him on his side, you where supposed to roll a person on their side when they spasamed right?

"[I'm sorry old man, but please don't die on me!]"

Audric slowly stopped shaking and lay still. He was still breathing, so just unconscious. I noticed that his gray skin was slowly turning back to a normal human pink. Holy crap it worked!

It took nearly an hour before Audric woke back up, and by that time he had tribes fully back to a normal human skintone. He sat up and slowly shook his head.

"It feels like an ork decided to use my head as a drum. What happened?"

"Try looking at your hands."

Audric looked down at his now thin, fleshy pink hands. He scrambled to his feet.

"What did you do to me boy?!?"

"I just used a bit of [dispell mutation]"

Audric immediately held out his hand and began to focus. A small golden orb appeared above his hand.

"I can use holy magic again! I am cured!"

Audric may have went a little crazy after that, throwing a celebration to his cure. Apparently he thought he would have to spend the rest of his life like that, and live in seclusion.

Once he finally calmed down he turned to me and said:

"Now let's get out of this fucking forest."