The man is surrounded by a mess of fairly random things, A strange mask, a lift of crossed-out names, strange looking weapons, all strewn haphazardly across the strange, jagged rock around him.
The clutter doesn't seem to bother the short man however, wearing only a pair of loose jeans, he sits cross-legged a slight distance away from the mess, eyes closed, hands on top of one another, breathing slowly.
With each breath, strange symbols scarred all over his skin begin glow in varying colours, accompanied by the distortion of the air around him, each breath makes it look as if the air around him is absorbed into the symbols on his flesh, absorbed into the skin itself.
The symbols increase in luster fairly slowly, though as he spends more and more time with his eyes closed, other changes begin to happen on his body, the bags under his eyes slowly disappearing, his posture straightening as he sits, his breathing becoming more steady.
It takes ten minutes for him to stand up once again, the symbols on his skin losing their luster slowly, fading back to simple scars littered across his body, though he maintains the upright posture and steady breathing.
"I really had to use these old runes again- I guess I still have some improvements to make"
With his typical cynical chuckle, he mumbles to himself.
"Own power will have to do then- I do feel a little bad for the recipient though"
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Caught in a seesaw of emotions after watching the news broadcast, Daniel regains hope to once gain feel the burning motivation he felt the day prior, and to do that, He knows he needs to prove to himself that it wasn't just all a bunch of smoke and mirrors, a bunch of misinformation online.
Turning on his dinky laptop without bothering to finish getting ready for school for the day- Daniel spends the next few hours watching replays of the mornings chaotic news broadcast, downloading the clip to make sure that if it gets taken down from any website, he can still watch it over.
Then he starts digging, first searching for the 'powers like magic' and finding a website, likely the one originally posted by the broadcast hijacker, taken down only minutes after being posted.
'People will download things in minutes'
Daniel knows the Internet well enough to know that people will no doubt have already saved and re uploaded the site's contents, and all that he now needs to do is find a re-upload and download it himself.
It really doesn't take very long for him to find just that, on some ad-ridden corner of the internet. Daniel finds what he has been looking for in the form of a pdf, a rather small file considering the effort the man on the news went to advertise its importance, He nevertheless downloads it immediately, wanting to know whether the man was just a crazy person taking credit for the chaos the days prior, or really was up to something important.
"What on earth?"
Reading through the first few pages of the document, Daniel confirms to himself the it's definitely the former, a loopy hacker backpacking on the previous cyber attacks to spread some crazy 'magical' theory to a bunch of people at once.
'Seriously, whats all this magic business? Ambient mana? Runes? Rifts? Fractures?'
Each line of the text that Daniel reads makes him more and more amused at the ravings of the broadcast hijacker, to the point that he decides to try some of the supposed 'low tier magic' within the document, whether out of some childish desire to throw fireballs, or just to have someone else to make fun of for the time being, he doesn't bother thinking about it as he starts following the instructions.
Reading the words whilst following the steps, Daniel begins with the first 'introductory mana manipulation'
"start by holding your hand out with an open palm, before concentrating on a space in front of your hand- This will vary based on concentrations of mana within your current fracture- Before reaching your will out towards the concentrated on space, and willing the mana to move alongside your will- as though an extension of your limb"
Daniel does just that, focusing on an empty space infront of him before following each step showing on the screen in front of him.
And yet something magical happens!
He looks incredibly stupid.
Closing the laptop screen after doing his best to exert his force of will onto a piece of air for ten minutes, Daniel finishes donning his uniform leisurely before begrudgingly leaving for school, the excitement of the morning having worn off by now.
The first lesson is a bore, getting scolded by his absolute fossil of a teacher for coming to class late hardly helped as Daniel struggles to take in much of any information from the lesson.
The next class isn't much better, The usual chattering and whispers come into his ears, though he tunes them out entirely, the rumors of the day before having shown him why they���re just rumors.
Break rolls around and Daniel is the same, typical, despondent boy, not even bothering to walk about this time, simply taking a seat against a tree on the school yards and doing his best to keep his mind occupied with meaningless thoughts.
Not even bothering to look up from his seat, Daniel is startled back to the real world as another boy takes a seat infront of him, legs crossed and a grin on his face, It doesn't take him long to recognize the blond hair and youthful face.
"Oh, Hey Aaron"
Daniel had been fairly close with Aaron for the first year of secondary school, though as he started becoming more and more de-motivated, he had stopped making any efforts to talk with his friends. As such, seeing him with such a big grin on his face, eager to see him, surprised him a little.
"Dan! Did you see the news this morning?"
Aaron's face only grows with excitement as he sees Daniel looking so glum, as if he can't wait to tell him something incredible
"Yeah I did, the hacker, right?"
Hearing Daniel, Aaron's face is written with confusion
"You're not really believing all that security breach stuff right?"
Daniel responds, looking equally confused
"What else would it be Aaron? Magic?"
The confusion on Aaron's face builds, before the excitement can't be held back any more, his grin coming back as he talks.
"Well, Yes? Exactly, Isn't it awesome?"
Rubbing his temples with his fingers in building frustration, Daniel looks Aaron in the eyes with concern, was his friend really this naive?
"Dude, you're saying that you really believe that some guy hijacked like three random news stations to spread 'magic for dummies' to the masses?"
Aaron thinks for a second
"Well, when you put it like that, it does sound a bit silly"
Daniel sighs with relief, happy to have talked some sense into his fri-
"But then what about all the videos of people trying the magic from the guide then?"
"for fucks sa- Wait, what videos?"
Aaron looks fairly confused once again upon hearing that Daniel hadn't seen any of the supposed videos
"Yeah, a bunch of people have come out online with videos of them drawing those runes on themselves- most of them got deleted fairly quickly, but there were too many of them for it to be fake, right?"
Daniel can't hold back the naive curiosity building in him as Aaron speaks, finding his friend's excitement fairly contagious.
"Runes? What are runes?"
Seemingly happy to see his friend somewhat interested in what he's saying, Aaron speaks in the same peppy tone
"Yeah, The book says that some people have this 'mana' stuff stored inside of them, and drawing weird symbols on themselves can draw it out to create effects. though all that I've seen happen so far is the symbols glowing"
"So it could have been fake"
"Yeah, I guess- But why would people all come together to fake something like that?"
"Could be the hackers again"
Even Aaron's eagerness starts to be dampened by Daniel, his smile starting to droop
"Look- Fake or real, I just came over here to see if you had that 'mana' or whatever, It didn't work on me and I was going around asking people I know to check, Can I just try draw the 'rune' on you?"
Immediately feeling bad about dampening his friend's mood, Daniel quickly agrees.
"Yeah, of course"
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Though not much of change is visible on the drab sky, the man previously looking full of energy, once again looks exhausted.
Standing over a massive area of strewn paper, he looks down at his creation, a massive interlocking web of symbols covering many meters of paper, all interconnected, written in a mixture of gunpowder and plain pen ink.
'Really not going to enjoy this am I?'
he looks at the mass of runes and symbols with hesitation, pacing around the large area, double, triple checking each piece of the large, puzzling web, before looking at the center of it all, realization coming across his face, he makes his way to his primary pile of clutter, pulling out a plain looking copper ring and a strange looking copper knife.
Carefully navigating the precocious creation, he places the ring at the epicenter before once again double checking each centimeter and placing the copper knife within his pocket.
Taking a few deep, calming breaths, he simply can't shake the hesitation from his face.
Opening his palm, on it is a freshly drawn rune. The rune appears rather simple, though it gives off an unnerving aura, as it slowly starts to glow a sinister, deep red.
Then he plunges his hand into his chest- his fingers turning an ethereal red as they enter his chest without causing any apparent damage.
His eyes fill with agony, trumped only by the steely determination behind them, as he grabs onto something within himself.
A pale blue echo of himself is wrestled from his body, a carbon copy of his own form, though formed of a pale, bright blue light. The echo desperately tries to return to his body, stopped only by the red glow of his hand, the other runes etched in his skin sputtering in duress as his other hand shakily pulls out the knife from his pocket.
"Aaargh!"
He cries out with agony as he cuts a part of the blue echo off, the main part instantly snapping back into his body. Tossing the knife, now glowing with sinister looking runes, to one side, he opens his free hand, revealing an extremely intricate set of runes, thought not as menacing as the ones on his other hand; they also appear to have been drawn recently.
Ethereal ropes erupt from his hand, wrapping around the piece of the echo, still desperately trying to return to his body, then beginning to glow with runes themselves, each rope covered in complex patterns as they slowly constrict the now ball-shaped piece of blue light.
Eventually ending up with a ball of stable looking blue energy, the ethereal ropes having faded away, the man looks as though he's barely able to maintain consciousness. Making his way to the center of the area of symbols, he slowly places the sphere atop the ring, before quickly getting off of the paper, he barely manages to make out of the paper rune construct before the gunpowder starts to set itself alight.
Running in complex, burning spiderwebs around the mass of paper, symbols glow brightly, symbols glow faintly, the air around the entire construct is a mass of distorted space, warping and bending into the lines on the paper.
It takes a few hours, all the while the man remains unconscious on the ground, sweating profusely, his breathing rough and ragged. Though beside him, where once was a mass of paper and symbols, now only lies a single copper ring, nothing special about it, not even a scrap of paper remaining.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
It takes Aaron only a few seconds to bring up an image of the 'rune' he intends to draw on Daniel on his phone, placing it next to Daniel's hand.
Looking at the symbol, Daniel notes the rather extreme complexity, Wondering who would have had enough time to come up with such an intricate design.
Another five minutes pass as Aaron uses a ballpoint pen to draw the symbol onto the palm of Daniel's hand, Though it doesn't really bother Daniel how long it takes, as he wasn't really doing to do anything with his break anyways.
"There, It's done"
Daniel looks down at the finished design, doing his best not to move his hand and smudge his friends hard work, all the while Aaron continues speaking
"Now you have to will your internal mana towards the rune to activate it"
Aaron reads instructions from his phone
"As though an extension of your limb-"
"Yeah, yeah I got it"
Having already followed the instructions, Daniel absentmindedly alters the 'external mana manipulation' that he did earlier to within his body. Before glancing up at Aaron as he realizes how irritable he sounded, doing his best to explain himself.
"Sorry, I already did something like this this morning"
Though he gets no response.
Looking closer at his friend, he can see his eyes focused solely on his palm, unwavering.
Following his friends gaze, His eyes widen as he sees the rune on his hand glowing with a pale, grey light.
"What the…"