The next day my training started. Due to I was still injured and couldn't move much, Mirthia decided to start with magic classes. Specifically, magic theory. Mirthia sat me in a chair in a half-empty room. She stood in front of me with her arms crossed and an unconvinced gaze. She already warned me that she was not good at teaching, so I was prepared to suffer a little...
"First of all, meow, do you know how magic works? Without knowing the most basic things we cannot start."
"No, I have never used magic. Actually… I don't even know what exactly is."
"Meow...," Mirthia sighed with a downcast face and floppy ears. "Let's see how I could explain it to you. In short, magic is the art of using our mana to emulate the energy that forms the world and control it at will."
"Ahm… well okay…"
"Do you understand?"
"Not at all."
Mirthia stared at me with narrowed eyes, as if I was an idiot who would be hard to deal with.
"Meow… do you at least know the basic elements that make up the world?"
"Well, I remember some… Lithium, sodium, potassium…"
"Meow, what bullshit are you saying?!" she yelled with her right hand on her head.
"The elements…"
"The basic elements are earth, air, water, and fire!" she interrupted me.
At that moment I was the one who stared at her without saying anything and with narrowed eyes, which made her return the same expression to me more severely.
'Hello, middle ages… nice to meet you…'
I gave up arguing and agreed to be treated like a fool who knew nothing. After all, that's how it was when it came to magic. After taking another sigh and scratching her head, Mirthia put her hand on her chin, probably thinking of how to explain anything to a newborn idiot.
"Better start with the mystical energies, meow. Listen, anything that exists is made up of two components: matter and essence. Both parts coexist in harmony, in such a way that if one is modified the other changes accordingly. The essence is a powerful energy present everywhere and because it is the very nature of the world, we call it natural energy. Controlling this energy would be equivalent to controlling the essence and, consequently, matter."
Then she paused, inquiring if I had understood what she meant or not. I just nodded silently.
"Then, apart from that natural energy, there is an independent energy that every living being with an autonomous mind is capable of generating within itself, we call it mana. Since it is a part of us, we can control it at will. Meow, so far so good?"
"Yes, no problem at the moment."
"Good, meow. This mana is a special energy with both parts at the same time, matter and essence. We call magic at the ability to use this mana to emulate those energies and matter that forms the world, generating or altering its content at will."
"Sound quite… not credible."
"Of course, meow, it's just a theoretical definition. Magic is not omnipotent nor does it make you a god. There is no way that a person can alter the world at his will. It is also not as simple as wanting to do something and made it happen in a moment. It takes practice and talent to be able to handle it."
"Well, that sounds more logical…"
Mirthia nodded at my comment.
"Look, this is mana, meow."
She came just in front of me and raised her right hand with her palm up to the sky. Above it, a blue-white sphere began to form, and in a few seconds became a fist size ball sparkling with different colors and hues.
"This is a sphere made of pure mana. A mass of energy without a defined essence. Now that you understand what it is, I'm going to talk about magical affinity."
She raised her other hand in the same way. As with the previous one, a sparkling sphere began to form on top, with the difference that it did not have multiple colors but was completely yellow.
"Earth, air, water and fire, natural energy is made up of these four elements. Each element has a unique essence and controls a different part of the world. Mana doesn't have a specific essence and can emulate all of them, but each person has more or less facility to control one element or another. That is what is called affinity, the innate talent to fully use a particular element."
Just how she created both spheres of energy she made them disappear before starting to walk around the room while she continued explaining.
"Affinity is something you are born with and cannot be changed. Some people are born with the bad luck of having no affinity and there are extremely rare cases where some are born with two, but most people tend to only have one. Nobody is able to use all the elements to their fullest extent. It does not mean that a person is not able to use several elements, but controlling those with one doesn't have affinity is much more complicated and sometimes even useless, meow. There are also many things that are not possible if you don't have the proper affinity. That is why magic is neither omnipotent nor miraculous, meow."
"Okay, I think that more or less I understand what you mean."
"Meow… what a luck… Well, finally, I will tell a little about the variants or specializations. Within each basic element it could be said that there is another advanced one. This element cannot be used unless you have the proper affinity with the basic element. For example, my affinity is earth. Thanks to this I can also use the wood element, which is a variant related to plants. Without specifically possessing this affinity I couldn't use this magic. Another example would be a variant of air called lightning, which I wouldn't be able to use even training my whole life. I would show you some examples, but most of the inhabitants of this forest use the element earth, so it will be difficult to show you other types of magic."
"What about dark magic?"
"Meow? That does not exist!"
Mirthia yelled at me as if I had said the biggest nonsense of the day. But Raidha had used that magic in front of me, so apparently, this meowler didn't know as much about magic as I thought. I didn't care about her level of knowledge anyway. Learning something from her was enough for me.
"Well… and the most important, how do I use this mana?"
"You release the mana from your body and give it the essence and physical form you want.
"Yeah… something more accurate please…"
"Meow… Putting it in easier words, imagine a container full of water inside your body, that water would be your mana. From there you take a bit of that water and mold it into the shape you want."
I opened my mouth to reply to that absurd, unintelligible explanation… but closed it with a sigh.
"It is better to learn with practice than only listen to words, but before we start we will need to discover your affinity, meow. Normally one would figure it by itself, although considering that you don't even know the most basic, meow... Discovering the affinity of someone who knows nothing about magic is not easy, although with a little luck we can at least discard one… Let's see where I put that, meow."
Mirthia went to a large closet at the side of the room and began to pull things out of the drawers.
"Oh, I knew that it was around here," she said, putting out a small stick. "This is a piece of a branch from the sacred tree. The sacred tree has a large amount of natural energy in it. By picking up a branch and letting it dry, you get a stick that reacts to earth-related mana."
She broke the stick in half and directly showed me one of those pieces. The dry stick began to recover its color quickly and even a small bud with a leaf came out.
"You see? It reacted to my mana and regained its energy. With this at least we can know if you have affinity with the earth element or not. Try it, meow."
She threw the other piece of stick at me. I stared at it with doubts, however, barely after spending a couple of seconds in my hand, a sprout came out… followed by another sprout… and another… In five seconds the whole stick has become a small miniature tree that didn't give signs of stopping growing up. Scared to see that its growth did not stop, I threw it back at Mirthias's feet. When it left my hands it finally stopped growing.
"This… I wasn't expecting it… meow," Mirthia said, staring at the small tree in front of her.