“It’s moving!” Arcus cried.
“This is psychokinesis,” Craib explained. “It lets you move objects wherever you want.”
Craib steered the stone around a while before finally allowing it to rest. The artglyphs formed by his words broke down and scattered into the air. For a time, their light remained, but soon that too was gone.
“This is a simple spell that you’ll find in any book. You know that you don’t have to copy my spell word for word, right?”
“As long as my words mean that I want it to move, my spell will have the same effect, yes?” Arcus said.
“That’s it. You can’t just stick any old words together, though. You gotta be careful with it, or the words might fight back or contradict each other, and you won’t be able to do anything at all. You have a lot of freedom when it comes to the words you use, but you still gotta make sure they’re the right ones. For example...”
Craib cleared his throat, ready to recite another spell.
“Allow me to use my will to move the object as I please.”
Just as before, the artglyphs appeared, and the stone floated into the air before coming to a stop.
“Wow!” Arcus’s excitement grew by the second.
“See? Remember that spells are something you can build yourself.”
“That was really impressive!” Arcus exclaimed.
In all the books he read in the man’s world, magic tended to be activated by very specific sets of words. The prospect of having absolute freedom to create your own spells made Arcus’s heart race. It spoke to the inborn human impulse to tinker.
“I gotta warn you now; we’re learning the absolute basics right now.”
“Yes, sir!”
Craib pulled out another book from his bag.
“This one’s all about your fundamentals. Make sure you read it, but promise me you won’t try and use any of it yet, ’kay?”
“Okay.”
At this point, trying to recreate anything would most likely lead to some sort of accident. Arcus could understand that, and he would hate to disappoint his uncle just because he was curious to try something out.
Craib continued to demonstrate different kinds of magic for Arcus.
“Uncle, I have a question,” Arcus piped up after a while.
“Shoot. Ask me anything you want.”
“Is there any way to know exactly how much aether you have to put into each spell?”
Since the necessary aether depended on the words or phrases you used, Arcus couldn’t help but wonder whether each word needed a set amount of magic when you used it in a spell. If there was a way to measure that beforehand, it would be invaluable.
He should be so lucky.
“Nope. You just gotta feel it.”
“Feel it?” Arcus echoed.
“Yup. It’s all about intuition.”
The vagueness of Craib’s response disappointed Arcus. He was sure there would be some way to accurately gauge how much aether each word called for, but it seemed that wasn’t the case.
“It’s impossible to say how much magic you gotta put into each word. You get why, right? You can’t see magic with your eyes, and it’s not a physical thing either, so it’s not like you can measure it.”
“But then how are you supposed to remember the right amounts for each spell?” Arcus objected.
“Like I said, you just gotta trust your gut. Also, you start by just trying out the spell again and again, and eventually you’ll work out how much power you need.”
However, his answer still didn’t satisfy Arcus.
“B-But if you have no specific amount to guide you, doesn’t that just mean that you’ll end up miscalculating the aether you need on each repeated attempt?”
“Miscalculating, huh? You sure know some fancy words.” Craib smiled. “But yeah, you’re right. That’s why magic’s all about training.”
So there really wasn’t a way to measure aether accurately. A part of Arcus suspected as much; after all, if such a method existed, his aether wouldn’t have been tested by something as primitive as creating ripples on water.
Deep in thought, there was a slight pause before Arcus realized that Craib was studying him with an unreadable expression.
“Is something wrong?” he asked his uncle.
“I wouldn’t say ‘wrong,’ but... Y’know, I noticed this yesterday too, but you really don’t talk like a normal six-year-old. It’s like you’re too... fluent. Or too confident. I dunno.”
“O-Oh, really?! That’s just... It must be the result of my studies!” Arcus was under the impression that speaking more loudly would make his statement more convincing.
His fluent speech and speed at picking up new vocabulary was, of course, a result of what he’d learned through that man’s memories. He always had to memorize new words when he was receiving his heir’s education, but now he found it much easier to actually put them to use. Before he knew it, he was able to speak at length without even needing to pause for breath.
“Yeah... I guess that makes sense.” There was a hint of pity in Craib’s eyes. The next moment, he placed his large hands firmly on Arcus’s shoulders. “Don’t worry, Arcus. I ain’t gonna let all that hard work of yours go to waste. We’ll get you up to scratch on magic, I swear!”
“Oh, um... thank you.” Arcus wasn’t sure what else he could say under his uncle’s intense gaze.
Apparently, he had given Craib a false impression. It seemed he thought his family had forced him to study day and night.
Still, I’m very lucky to have a kindhearted uncle like him around.
Arcus genuinely thought so, especially when considering what the rest of his family was like. He found hope rising in his chest: hope that he would be able to master magic like he wanted to. So long as he didn’t dwell on never knowing for sure how much power he would need.
Even though Craib was teaching Arcus magic now, it wasn’t like he could be by his side at every hour of the day. Thanks to his scholarly and military work, and the fact that he held his own territory (small though it was), he was actually fairly busy most of the time. Instead of teaching him directly, he would give Arcus assignments to do at home before catching up with him in his spare moments.
Arcus worked hard on these assignments daily. Today, he was reading an old grimoire he had borrowed from Craib’s library. He was chasing some hint of how someone might increase their aether. In the stories told in that man’s world, magic power increased the more you used it, but that wasn’t the case here. In this world, aether was set from the day you were born, and it wasn’t thought that there was anything you could do about it.
Craib had once followed this same line of inquiry that Arcus now pursued and apparently found nothing of use, so Arcus didn’t hold out much hope himself. Even then, he felt he had to check. With the knowledge from his dream, there might be something he would spot that Craib couldn’t.
He wasn’t having any luck. The book mentioned nothing on increasing your power, merely listing ways your power could manifest once you learned to control it, among other similarly unhelpful things. Not only that, but the last few sections of the book were so complex that not even Craib was able to understand them. For example, he had just come to a section about kneading one’s magic. Craib had this to say about that section:
“Oh, yeah. I don’t really have a clue about this part.”
Craib himself had done as the book said, manipulating the magic inside his body and working hard to build it into something greater, but he never had any success with it. In the first place, he wasn’t quite sure what the book meant by “knead.”
“Knead? I mean, what the hell is that supposed to mean, right?” Craib had remarked.