On Bated Breath We Wait

Chapter 10 (part 2)

I picked up the book, stood up and walked into the other room, hunger was getting the better of me. As I placed the book down on my bed I could see the fairy looked saddened. I turned to it and explained that I would be studying from the book in a bit but first I need to eat; its mood instantly shifted. As I heated up some of the soup from yesterday I asked it about itself, after all if it was going to be help me I should at least know its name.

“You may call me, Camie or Teacher. I will accept either from you.” it said.

Curious I asked, “So you’re a female book fairy?”

Camie looked down at their own body and froze. Instantly, their faint blue light became so bright I could no longer see them. As the light dimmed back to how it once was, Camie now had short dress on. “Yes, I am one and I ask that you forget what you just saw.”

Clearly embarrassed I said, “I don’t know if I can forget, but if you know of any way to alter or get rid of my memories I will happily do so for you.”

I could hear Sir Damian calling me an i***t once again, but I did not care. Such a tiny memory shouldn’t hold that much power over someone, let alone someone you just met. Camie flew up to my forehead and placed a hand. It was over in an instant; all that remained is that I knew that I had a memory that I willingly let Camie erase it. As I sat down and ate Camie, flew around the rooms making observations about the books on the shelves. As I finished she landed at the table in the kitchen saying, “Oh, I’m going to love my time here. Tasty mana and so many interesting books.”

As I got ready to resume learning magic, a thought occurred to me, “Camie. Since this relationship seems to be building on a foundation of trust and respect I would like to ask you a question, free of charge if that’s ok?” She agreed but said that if she believed the answer was complex, then she would have to ask for some mana as payment. So I continued, “I have a good understanding of the rules around increasing my mana. But I don’t know how often I should, and if I should repeat that lesson. My question to you is this, should I repeat the lesson and what would be the benefits of it if I did?”

She began flying circles around me, eyeing me up and down as she went. She stopped and claimed, “Hmmmm, it does seem like your body could handle a bit more, but you wouldn’t gain much mana from it; however that training is good for something else. While yes it does help you increase your mana, it also allows you to get a better understand of how your body feels with mana leaving your body. With better understanding of that you can learn two things. First is when to stop yourself before using too much mana, and second is that you will learn better control over your mana and thus you will learn spells easier.”

Sir Damian warned me, “Oh, she is good. Be careful with this one Nikos, she knows magic very well. Maybe too well.”

“Well, then it sounds like a good thing to do on a daily.” I commented. I could see her ears began to wiggle with excitement; from that reaction I guessed that it was Camie who was actually getting the mana from that training just like she had hinted at when we first met. I proceeded to do the training and while doing it, I could see from the enjoyment on her face that I made the right choice. Once I finished, I turn to the next page wondering what I was to learn next, only for Sir Damian to hint, “Skip to the conjuration section.”

As I flipped the pages searching for the section, Camie grew curious, “What are you looking for?”

I explained that I was looking for conjuration and told her my plans to stay in here for a while. “Smart, smart. Conjuration is good to learn first then. I’m good at conjuration.”

“Oh?” I replied.

“Yes, yes. I can help you learn it very fast, for a payment.” She eagerly awaiting my answer.

With a smile I replied, “Sure. It might make my first application magic actually easy to learn.”

Once I paid what was due she explained, “Conjuration is part of the Creation pillar of magic. That pillar of magic includes summons, conjures or creates what you want. Summoning moves something from one place to another, conjuration creates a copy of it, and lastly creation. Creation is the most dangerous one, as you can make anything as long as you have a complete understanding of what you want. You want to learn conjuration and you say you want to do it to have more water, but you are wrong. You want creation, much better for creating water. With conjuration, yes you have more water to drink and cook with but with creation you can do anything with it as you aren’t limited on how much water you are creating. Understand? Yes? Yes?”

I asked Sir Damian, “Is it true, would creation be better?”

With a sigh he replied, “Yes, but I wanted you to take baby steps when learning magic. But since you have a teacher it might be better for you to attempt the hardest stuff first.”

Out loud I commented, “Creation it is. Where do we start?”

She flew over to the glass I had used when I ate, “This. This.”

“But that’s a glass.” I pointed out.

“Exactly! Better for you to learn with!” Excitement filled every word she spoke, “I continue now, yes? All types of Creation magic is easy if you know how your five senses experience what you want to create, method of creation doesn’t matter.” She instructed me to pick up the glass, and then commented, “See how it feels? Its shape and its temperature. Now, rotate it. Feel where its weight lies. Notice there is more weight at the bottom.” She stopped and flew down to the table and sat, “Now place it on the table and listen to its sound.” As the glass touched the table it made a slight thudding sound. She got up and walked over to the glass, “Now flick it!” I clear note came from the glass. She began to giggle, “LICK IT.”

I paused, “Excuse me?”

“Lick it! Lick it!” She cheered. As I picked up the glass her giggling got louder. Rather than a full lick I brought it up to my lips as if I were taking a sip of water, my tongue lightly touched it before I sat it back down. She erupted, “No fun! No fun you are!” She pouted for a moment before saying, “You are ready now!”

“Ready? That was only three senses.” I rebutted.

“Yes. Yes. Only three senses I talked about, but you were looking at the glass the whole time and the last time I checked glass doesn’t have a smell. Now are you ready? I will explain how to create another glass now.” She told me to pick up the glass once more, and to pay attention to how it felt to hold it, but not to focus on the texture but rather how my hand was. She continued, “Now put down the glass and put your hand back into that position.” As I pictured myself holding the glass she added, “Good, good. Think about the glass and how it was in your hand. Now add to that thought everything you learned from your senses about the glass. Do you have it in your mind?”

I hesitated, “Yeah, I think so.”

She squealed and said, “Release the magic then! Let your mana flow out your palm, your thoughts will do the rest.” As the mana flowed out my palm I could see it for the first time. My mana had a silver sheen almost, as it were metal itself. It quickly took the shape of the glass and she shouted, “Now, stop the mana and continue thinking about it.” As I stopped my mana it took shape, a glass was now in my hand. My hand began to shake, not wanting to drop the glass I steadied it with my other hand. Carefully I placed it down and she walked over to it inspected my work. She congratulated me, “Nearly perfect.” She proceeded to knock on the glass, instant it shrunk to the perfect size for her.

My hand was still shaking, “Any idea when this will end?”

While she was eyeballing her new glass she commented, “A few minutes, you are just low on mana and since it only came out your hand this time; it’s the only thing with your negative effects. I’ll let you know when I think you are ready to make another.”

“How many do you think you will want me to make today?” I asked.

She flew over to the window and came back, “At least twelve, it’s only mid day.”

I protested, “Twelve! What am I going to do with all of those glasses after? It’s not like I have a lot of room to put them.”

She admitted, “I didn’t think about that. Hmmm, I guess I’ll just destroy them.”

Confused I asked, “Would destroying them just turn to glass shards?”

She fanned her hand at me, “No, silly. I’ll be destroying them with magic and once I’m done it will be like they never existed.”

Before long she let me know I was ready to make the next glass and I repeated the process. With each glass it seemed easier, and the time it took to recover my mana shortened. At the end she commented, “You are learning this faster than I expected, we might be able to move onto the next lesson tomorrow.”

She was right, as I looked into the other room only to see that it was barely illuminated. I ate once more, used the bathroom and called it a day.

Soon I was greeted by white void that is inside the crystal. My mother greeted me and instructed that we would be doing squats today. Oh the pain, I had never experienced such stomach pain before. As I complained about the pain, she couldn’t stop laughing and commented, “If you have the strength to complain, you have the strength to do more squats.” She helped me stand up and I continued. By the time I collapsed in pain again, she said that our time was almost up and almost like clockwork my vision faded and I found myself waking up in my bed.

The sun was just starting to rise and Camie popped out of nowhere, “Good morning!”

I attempted to lean up only for a bit of stomach pain to send me back down into my bed. Out loud I commented, “I thought she said I wouldn’t feel anything once I got back.”

Camie tilted her head, “Where did you go?” I apologized and explained what was going on while I slept. “Interesting! I’ve never heard of that before! You are full of surprises. Much fun!” As I tried to start my day every movement hurt; I couldn’t believe how much I still hurt but I pushed onward. Hoping to continue where we left off, I picked up the book and brought it over to the table. As I bent down to get it though the pain surged and I drop it instantly. Camie rushed over, “What happened?”

I admitted, “Nothing. It’s just the pain spiked.”

Worry filled her face, “Show. Show!” I straightened up and lifted my shirt, Camie froze her gaze locked on my stomach.

“Is it that bad?” I hoped that her answer would bring me comfort.

She looked up to me and yelled, “Why are you so yummy!”

Confused I looked down at my stomach, “Abs? How?” I doubled over in pain from the yelling.

“I heal. I heal. But that means I have to touch.” Her eyes fell back upon my abs, just the thought bothered me. She flew closer to my stomach her arms outstretched. She leaned in and touched my stomach I could barely feel her hands, between the pain and their size. As she healed my stomach I felt and watched as she moved around my stomach. Soon the pain subsided and she looked up, “Tell. Tell, when you are in pain. I heal. I no charge payment this time. Abs too tasty!”

Still the thought of now have abs bothered me. I was skinny, yes but I would have never dreamed of having them. To distract myself I picked up the book and continued on my original plan, I looked over to her. She was now sitting on the edge of my bed, her feet dangling over the edge, “Can we continue yesterday’s lesson Camie?”

Her head perked up, “Lesson. Yes. Sorry, was lost in thought.” She flew over and landed on the table, “First, do mana training.” I quickly started the training, and it felt different than before. I looked over to her only see her head tilted upward, her eyes closed and enjoyment on her face. I wanted to asked if something about me changed but I didn’t want to break her away from that happiness.

It felt like at least an hour had passed by, my eyes were starting to get heavy just because I was almost doing nothing. Sir Damian chimed in, “You are still going? This doesn’t make sense. Ask her to look at your body for how your mana is flowing.” As I asked why he snapped, “Just do it!”

I sang her name not wanting her to lose her current happiness, “Cccaaamie?”

She turned her head and began to smile, “Yes?”

I apologized, “Sorry, something is off. I’ll still doing to the training and I’m having no issues at all. I’m not even tired yet.”

She tilted her head, and brought her hands closer to her face. Her fingers formed a square, as she looked through her fingers she flew around me, “Hmmmm. Interesting.” She continued to fly around me for a bit before landing back on the table. “Everything looked kind of normal.” She paused, “But it also seemed completely wrong. Your mana levels are massive, I don’t even know a good way to describe it. As for your mana recovery rate, I have no clue. It’s like you didn’t even cast anything today, let alone channel your mana for an hour. So I guess you don’t need to do that anymore.” She looked down in disappointment at the thought.

“Wait, how about now?” I took the necklace out.

She flew around me again before commented, “Nope.” She screamed, “Wait. Wait, I see it. There is a connection between you and your necklace. It’s a perfect connection! No, wonder it seems like you have infinite mana.”

I groaned, “Why do such strange things keep on happening to me?”

Only for both Camie and Sir Damian both to say, “It’s because of that necklace.”

Camie continued speaking, “It’s basically the rarest and most powerful thing and you have it around your neck, of course strange things are going to happen. I say embrace it. Strange is fun and exciting!”

“I can try, but won’t this effect me learning magic?” I sighed.

“For sure. For sure, but we can also use it to your advantage. Let’s continue to creation lesson. I don’t think I need you to experience water. Do I?”

I smiled, “No.”

Without hesitation she said, “Good. Good, now create a glass like yesterday.” I open my hand like I did yesterday and allowed my mana to flow. It took shape almost instantly and dropped to the floor. I looked over to her thinking she saw what happened, “Wow, that was impressive! Looked like you need to work on your reflexes next. It was almost like you thought about creating the glass and there it was.”

“Is that not normal?” I asked concerned.

She explained, “Yes, like you experience creating or conjuring something that fast creates its own problem. Not dropping it.” Before shouting, “Again!” I repeated the process several times, each time I dropped the glass. Each time she shouted, “Again.” Final at the eighteenth time I finally managed to catch the glass. Confidently she demanded, “Good. Now do it again five times in a row.” Luckily for me, it only took several more glasses shattering on the ground before I was able to catch five in a row. “Perfect. Now go fill up one of those with water.” As I filled it up with water she commented, “See how it feels?”

Sarcastically I commented back, “Feels like a normal glass of water to me.”

“Good. Then put that glass down and pick up an empty one.” She said in a mocking tone. She then instructed me on creating water. She described it similar to creating the glass, my mana would flow out of my palms and rotate in place before becoming water.

As I picked up the glass and began allowing my mana to flow I noticed that it was coming out like it did yesterday and so I asked, “Camie, what does my mana look like right now?”

She raised her hands and formed the square again with her fingers, “Huh. Your body is like I told you earlier basically infinite and tied to your necklace. But your arm is a different story! I think your hesitation to cast magic and create something new is allowing you to control your mana.”

“Hesitation? Why didn’t this happen when I was creating all of those glasses?” I huffed.

She reassured me before saying, “That was fear. Fear that you would get it wrong again.”

Then I noticed it, the glass was full of water and was now overflowing into the table. I stopped the flow of magic and pointed out, “I think I made too much.”

She laughed and waved her hand in the air and I watched as it all disappeared, “Fixed! Now this time focus on how much water you want and how much of the glass it would fill up.” I looked over to the glass I had gotten and tried again. This time, I was able to stop the water at a similar level to the original glass and like before she shouted, “Again.” With a wave of her hand the water disappeared. Countless time I filled up the glass only for her to destroy it. Before long I had nearly mastered it and she introduced and added another part of training.

She explained Transformation magic and how it was used to alter or change somethings form. We started with freezing the water in the glass, and as we practiced she soon added melting the ice. But that wasn’t where she wanted to stop, she pointed out that the sun hadn’t even begun to set. So we continued on, next was boiling. The process on magically getting water to freeze or boil was basically the same, apply mana to the water and envision the result. By the time I had gotten the hang of boiling the water she had decided to change my training again. This time I would create the glass with the water already in it; from there I would freeze then boil the water. I was happy when I was able to create the glass and water together first time, but as I practiced I could feel Sir Damian getting irritated. Each time I went through the steps to completion his anger grew until he snapped, “Enough! This is mostly just useless survival magic, I thought you would have moved on and actually learned something useful!” As he yelled, I could hear is voice coming out of my mouth.

Camie was stunned and started to tear up, “Sorry. Sorry I thought I was being helpful!” As she finished speaking she began to cry.

I exploded in anger, “Did you take me over just to make her cry?” Sir Damian didn’t even know what he had done; and he asked me to explain that it was him who was talking and not me. Camie didn’t believe me and Sir Damian asked to take me over to apologize.

I allowed him and he said “He tells the truth Lady Camie. I have been helping Nikos here learn and more importantly survive. But I have also blocked him from seeing things that I believe he was not ready for. What just happened is how I’ve been doing so, normally with permission I have taken over his body and protected him. This time was different and I apologize, with my anger I somehow took control of him. My intent was to yell at him so that the next thing he might learn could be used for combat. If you don’t believe me, or rather Nikos, right now look at his mana like you were earlier you will see my mana also right now.”

She squinted and looked at my mana, her jaw dropped and a look of disgust appeared on her face, “Let go of him you evil, evil thing!”

He started to laugh uncontrollably, “Evil. It’s been a while since I’ve been called that. Now Lady Camie can I ask you to teach Nikos how to make an ice spear. I think he could have the ability to make it now, he only needs your guidance.”

She replied in a huff, “Fine, but first. Get out! Get out! Get out!” He released his control and I saw a look of relief on her face. She commented, “I don’t like him, his mana is yucky!”

“Yucky?” I questioned.

She nearly gagged at the thought of his mana, “Yes. Yucky, it’s like his mana was dark and terribly sinister. I’m surprised you aren’t violently ill right now.” She gulped and fought the urge, “Well, if Mister Yucky Mana wants you to learn to create an ice spear then I shall teach you. Anything to get rid of him.”

She explained that to create it I would need to create water and control its flow. I would need to hold my hand in a manner so I could grip the spear once I created it. As I tried to figure out how thick I wanted to create the spear Sir Damian interrupted, “Nikos, imagine you are holding a broom.” I closed my eyes and imagine holding the broom I used to use to clean, my hand instinctively closed to about the size of a silver coin. He once again interjected, “Perfect!” She continued to explain that I would create water so much so that it would flow out my hand and form the handle. By controlling my mana, I could control where the water went, and if I prevented it from touching the ground it would erupt and gush over my hand. This would allow me to carefully have to control the shape of both above and below my hand. Once it got to the shape I was looking, for I would put out as much mana as I could to freeze it solid. The precision it took to shape the spear made it extremely difficult. Several times I failed to hold onto the form, either by not stopping the water from touching the ground or wasn’t able to contain it as it started to surge upwards.

When I finally created it, I shouted with joy proclaiming, “I did it.”

Sir Damian only had a snarky response, “Took you long enough, it’s almost night. But weirdly you have good timing. Look across into the other room.” I could barely see the other side as I looked, “Throw it between the bookshelves. Aim for the gap that is at the center of the wall.” It felt like I had done it a thousand times, and before I realized it the spear was embedded several inches deep into the stone wall.

A man cloaked head to toe in black clothing sidestepped away from the spear and I felt Sir Damian take over. He locked eyes with the cloaked man and shouted, “Lady Camie. Hide now! Take the book too!” Camie became a blue blur as she to the book, her form merged with the book and both disappeared.

The cloaked man smirked, “Impressive that you sensed me. But your effort’s will be useless, I was told it’s your time to die, Nikos.”

Sir Damian couldn’t help but laugh at the arrogance before him, “Nikos. This time I’m going to show you my power.” I was looked down upon the room once more, and in the blink of an eye my body was acrossed the room. The cloaked man was now pinned to the wall where the spear had once been. Sir Damian was holding the man by his throat a clear foot off the ground. As Sir Damian let go the man stayed pinned to the wall.

The cloaked man shouted, “I’ll never talk. I’ll die first.”

Sir Damian smiled, “Good.” Sir Damian pointed to ceiling as black mana wrapped around my arm and flowed up to my hand. The mana twisted as it climbed my arm, once it reached my wrist it all converged to my pointer finger. There I saw it take shape, it was almost if my finger had become a claw that was double the length of my hand. Sir Damian brought it closer and closer to the man, and as he did the man began to scream. The claw tapped the area where the mans’s heart was, a thin translucent layer of dark green mana appeared over his whole body.

He screamed louder, “No! No! Anything but that!”

The layer of green mana started to flow to Sir Damian’s claw and as it touched the claw pulsed. As the last bit of mana touched the claw and disappeared the man’s head drooped and then his body dropped to the floor. The black mana that formed the claw flowed back around my arm and disappeared. Sir Damian smiled and snapped his fingers, “Time for the clean up.” The body disappeared. He looked up to me and said, “I’ll finish up here.” My vision faded and as it came back to me, I found myself laying in bed with Camie asleep on my chest.