After a month of experimenting and going insane trying to figure out how the heck physics works as it interacts with magic, I think I've finally sort of found the balance.
Physics can be used in magic, I can make lightning move how I like by changing charges on gases and objects, and by using purified water I can block electric current.
But magic is capable of overcoming physics.
Lightning cannot pass through purified water, and usually me or Kire just let the lightning move naturally towards the charges we set or through the conductive material because it takes more effort to mentally control its entire progression.
But if we DID control it entirely, we could force it to pass through purified water. Because magic overcomes physics, it is just much harder than using the laws of physics to my advantage.
So I can make it easier on myself, or forcibly do something much harder but feasibly impossible.
Such as make cold lightning, or...
Wind, not condensed but just thin and fast.
Flame, heat and fire to feed.
Kire flinched as a thin shard of glowing red gas flew at him!
It looked like the sort of dull red glow metal does when being forged, and the heat on the sharp breeze was terrifying!
Kire took wind and replicated the sharp breeze, but with an intense cold to it making frost within it!
The two spells collided, releasing a blast of gases powerful enough to throw both of us back as waves of hit and cold were thrown about!
"Ha... had... had enough... yet..."
I breathed deeply, not necessarily because I need to in such a strange place, but because it helped calm me.
[Think those temperature wind blades count as a level 1 spell?]
Kire nodded as he slumped his shoulders in relief that I'd stopped attacking.
[Hm... we should do this more often if we're going to spend every night here. It's good practice clearly.]
Kire moaned in terror. "Seriously? So now I'm gonna have to fight to the death every night as well... what if you kill me here?"
[Your body here is made of your will and spirit, the elemental Magic's here can't harm you even if I slammed a lightning bolt as thick as a mountain through you.]
"How do you know that?!"
[This is my space. Plus lightning has been striking you in small amounts every second you spend in the air magic.]
He looked around at the small bits of electricity in practically every bit of the air magic surrounding us and how it was flickering in and out of the both of us without hurting us.
"Oh."
[Spells I cast might sting a little because of the small bit of my will I put in them to manipulate magic CAN hurt you here, but that's it.]
"Oh... that makes sense." He nodded.
I thought about some recent things.
I was closer to figuring out how spells worked, and by finally figuring out how to start fusing magic into myself I found my way forward to grow stronger without blowing up along the way.
'...'
And then a lightbulb went off in my head.
'OH!' I suddenly swung my head to stare at Kire with bright eyes.
"...what is that look for?"
[Kire, you should try to fuse your 2 elements into your body.]
He froze.
"What?"
I explained further, [think of it like how you use fusion magic, but use it to break and rebuild your body with the element fusing into it to make it stronger!]
[Plus I think it should help you become closer to a normal awakened considering they usually have to fuse the elements with themselves, not just "get them" as a gift.]
"Okay... sure I'll try."
I nodded to myself. That's good.
[Well, see you next night then.] I flew off before getting a reply, leaving the human to "stand" there amid the air magic with a stupefied expression.
"Un-fucking-believable. They just beat me up and left?"
I flew over to the star of light, and looked at my star and how the light was seemingly less brutal in its assault on the barrier?
I grabbed a few small sparks of light and controlled them... to hover uselessly as I tried to figure out how to refine my flesh and bones with magic from in here.
'Hmmm... I guess it's about time to leave.'
I wonder what will happen when I "wake up". Will Kire still be in here, or be kicked out cause this space belongs to me?
Well, I'll ask him next night what happened to him.
Something had changed after fusing with some of that light magic, and now I could almost feel the... I'm gonna call it a 'veil'. It's a small barrier between this and the rest of my body(not to be confused with the barrier around my star), and by slipping through it I SHOULD wake up-
I opened my eyes to the most uncomfortable sensation I've felt in this world.
First off, the SMELL. You know that smell do compost and puke that immediately hits your gag reflex? It's all I could smell.
As for feeling, I felt like my entire body had been forced to run 10 marathons, leaving every muscle feeling like jelly! And that's not mentioning the sensation of there being some kind of gunk ALL OVER ME!
Ugh! It feels like I swam in sewage or something!
I lifted my head to see what made a noise just now as I heard a "BANG!"
There was some sort of red-skinned humanoid with tusks... I think? It was hard to tell considering that half it's body was being eaten away by tendrils of darkness magic as his vitality was absorbed and then redirected by the light magic to feed into the spellcaster.
'Korven... you're a lot scarier than you've been letting on considering you can BECOME CTHULU!'
Korven sat in the center of a ring of tentackes of darkness with light flowing into him to power him, allowing him to keep using magic as he used the lifeforce and mana of the fallen to fuel his spells.
I stumbled onto my weak legs, looking about for danger.
There was a few more red things, most green actually, and yeah they had tusks and... feathers for hair.
Also their legs were bird talons, except UNCOMFORTABLY thick ones with bulging muscle. It just looked so weird.
Their knees bending the wrong way and the scaly legs, ending in claws.
I'm gonna shiver from goosebumps.
I turned my long neck to look at myself.
'...I'm absolutely covered in black gunk, blood, and I'm pretty sure I can see cooked bits of me lying around me.'
I looked like I just shed my old body and blew it up in the process, leaving myself covered in its blood and gore while at the same time creating some sort of black sludge that stuck to me.
There is so much "EW" going on with me right now that I am just going to ignore it all for my own sake.