"Now." I intently met each of their focused eyes as I held up my first two fingers in the air. "Watch closely."
Using my established technique, I produced a flame large, billowing flame from the tip of my middle finger as if it were a giant lighter. Once the flame was stabilized, I began emitting a stream of air from the tip of my index finger, which caused the flame to first flutter and condense into a thin blue stream before burning out.
"I used too much mana as fuel." I cursed, mostly under my breath as I lowered my hand and turned to Toril. "Adjust the ratio of air and fire until the reaction happens."
"What reaction, Lord?" Toril asked.
"You will know once you see it." I grinned. "If your flame goes out as mine did, lower the intensity of your flame. If it comes out billowing and smoky, there is too much air. Try it." I gestured, stepping back a meter or two.
Toril took a wide stance at once; with his legs shoulder-width apart with his knees slightly bent. He clasped his hands together before his chest and extended the first two fingers of each hand forward, then emitted a hand lighter-like flame from his middle finger much like I did, only a bit smaller. Once confident with the levels of his flame, he then concentrated a mass of air in his hand in a continuous loop before emitting it in a blast of concentrated air.
Immediately, the flame sputtered a few times before catching with the oxygen and turning from a column of loose orange flames, into a near-cylindrical pillar of red fire.
"Add more air," I advised. "Slowly."
He turned his seemingly worried and awed eyes to me before nodding and returning his concentration to the task at hand.
As instructed, he began increasing the throughput of his air bit by bit, slowly turning the raging pillar of flame from an amber blaze to a shortened cone of light blue fire
"More." I prodded with my hands. "More. Slowly."
He continued adding oxygen bit by bit until a blue cone of concentrated fire enveloped by an outer flame of the same color sat just beyond his fingertip. Roaring and screaming into the night like that of a dragon's roar.
"This is it!" I cackled maniacally as I pointed and turned to look at the dropped jaws of Jaimess and the bulging eyes of Jonet.
Toril on the other hand, let the flame die out and then stared at his hands for a few moments like he couldn't believe what he had just done.
I let him have his moment and come back to reality on his own before I continued with my explanations, gripping their scattered attention. "That is what's known as a neutral flame," I explained with a grin I just couldn't contain at this point. "It's a torch made from fuel and excessive amounts of air. And obviously fire." I chuckled.
"How do you know these things, My Lord?" Jaimess managed to gasp. "The books you've written, your theories, they're unlike anything I've ever read or seen. It's…" He chuckled despairingly. "I-"
"Listen." I turned to Jaimess with a sudden cold seriousness, causing him and the other two to snap their spines rigid where they sat. "As your leader, I give you my word that I will share with you, all of my wealth, knowledge, and privileges. In exchange, I ask only for your everlasting loyalty, that you serve me to the best of your abilities, and that you ask no questions about the source of my knowledge or the rationale behind my decisions. Just know that everything that I do is for a reason."
"Of course, My Lord." Jaimess immediately bowed. "My deepest apologies-"
"And no apologies." I coldly spat, looking to him and the rest of them. "Don't be sorry, to anyone. Not even me. Acknowledge your mistakes and move on. If you're sorry, then prove it with your actions. But be unapologetic with your words."
"I- I understand." Jaimess nodded.
"That goes for you two as well." I snapped my eyes back to the other two. Causing them both to quickly bow and acknowledge in response.
"Good." I nodded, then pulled a sphere of water from the surrounding air and snow. "Now, back to our lessons. "Toril. I want you to put a neutral flame on this water."
Toril opened his mouth as if he had a question but quickly shut it and did what was asked. And after only a few moments, the water began to roil and soon after start boiling in midair.
"Remember what I said of all things being made of particles or molecules far too small for us to see?" I asked, causing a quick affirmation to come from Jaimess. "Those particles are under constant motion. Vibrating perpetually and colliding with each other without end." I gestured to the still boiling water with my grinning chin. "The intensity of these vibrations is what we perceive as temperature and the phases of matter."
"Phases of matter." I heard Toril mutter to himself as if to recount his memory.
"Take water for example." I continued with a wave to our wintery backdrop. "We perceive water to grow colder as the molecules move about with less and less energy and ice forms when the molecules are hardly moving at all. Conversely, the water turns into steam when the molecules are moving with too much energy.
"Solid, liquid, and gas. Regardless of what form; or phase of matter it's in, it is still water at its core. My theory." I gestured towards the sphere of roiling water. "Is that we can turn water into steam or ice with elemental manipulation alone by using mana to either agitate the molecules or calm them to a standstill."
Jonet seemed to give me an almost offended look as I formed a smaller ball of water in between my hands and began focusing. Straining myself to imagine the endless sea of water molecules within that were banging against each other furiously and will the mana around me to act on them in the same way. To conduct and convect and radiate energy into the fluid that'd cause the molecules to scatter and lash out at everything like a box of shaken bugs released upon an unsuspecting someone.
After a few moments, the boiling bubble of water suddenly exploded in my hands, causing a shockwave of hot steam to bloom over the immediate area and my face. Scalding me a bit before I could assume my Wraith Form and allow the heat to spread to tolerable levels. My vassals, however, weren't so lucky and managed to get showered with steam from where they stood.
"Surely you all know of steam, right?" I asked through the dissipating cloud. "As I've said before, the vapor produced by boiling water is still fundamentally water; as is the case with mist. And thus you should still be able to manipulate it. Try it, Jonet."
With a quick nod, she began waving her arms around her in a fluid motion. Causing a subtle shift in the saturated air around us that soon after condensed into a cloud that began to swirl in on itself and snake around to her.
At which point she strained and eventually lost her grip.
"Amazing." I gasped to myself. Then continued. "In addition to using water in different phases, water and steam can also be used under different pressures, though it cannot be compressed in a liquid phase." I pointed out with a finger. "When we generally manipulate water, it's done at low pressure. But like air, water is capable of extraordinary things when put under high pressure. And, it can even cut better than any blade. Who wants to try?"
Jaimess nearly leapt from where he was sitting at once. "I will, My Lord."
"Okay." I pointed to a nearby blackwood tree. "Use air to cut down that tree."
He held out his index finger and, like Toril before him, compressed air at the end of his digit before reforming it into a barrel-like shape. Causing the air to burst forth about a meter ahead of him and splinter bark from the tree he aimed at.
"Make it thinner and have it impact horizontally head-on," I instructed.
He nodded and condensed the air again before swinging his hand before him in a horizontal arc, releasing a crescent blade of compressed air into the tree. Knocking the surrounding snow loose from where it sat and leaving a long gash in the bark of the great tree.
"Thinner," I demanded. "Thinner than that of a blade or a leaf. As thin as a single particle of air. Add as much power as you can, and cut down that tree."
He seemed hesitant, but nevertheless strengthened the throughput of his spell by condensing sphere after sphere of air into the palm of his hand until a near-glowing ball of barely contained wind swirled and mixed above his hand. After focusing on his target, Jaimess formed a knife shape with his hand before carefully drawing his arm over his chest, stepping forth, and slinging the blade of concentrated air at the tree.
A torrent of snow and wind traveled in the wake of the clearly visible wind scythe until it slammed into the chestnut bark of the great tree. Leaving swathes of brown permafrost and thousands of black rings from the great tree to remain after the chaos had settled.
Without hesitation, I extended my forefingers towards the neighboring tree in the same fashion I had earlier. Sending out a thin jetstream of water that loudly skinned against the bark as I carved it over the surface, leaving a deep groove in the trunk.
"Lastly, comes Earth." I relaxed my grip on the water and instead swiftly raised my fist, pulling a basketball-sized chunk of semi-frozen earth up to face height before I began blasting it with a torch. "Turning rock into lava requires a ridiculous amount of heat energy. So much so, that it's not even worth trying with elemental manipulation." I killed the fire after a few moments, revealing the dry and toasty chunk of stone. "Conversely, it takes ridiculously low temperatures to turn air into a liquid, much less a solid. As such, I assume that it's extremely difficult; if not impossible, to manipulate the earth, air, or fire in the same way as water. However." I doused the stone in a heavy hose of water, turning the chunk of earth into a sopping saggy mess that began dripping into clumps as it hung in the air. "I do think that these elements can be used in conjunction with each other to manipulate mud or dust in addition to steam and mist."
After instructing Jonet to use the wind to erode another chunk of dirt I had produced, we practiced the various forms of elemental fusion I'd shown them until we all had a significant understanding of the basic principles. At which time we trained in relative solitude for the little time remaining until midnight and retired for the night.
While they returned to their rooms, I took my nightly detour to the library and wallowed in the satisfaction of seeing my hypothesis proven before my very eyes.
As impressive as it was, however, I was certain that it was a far cry from actual magic. The rest of us may have gained the ability to crudely control the ice and snow around us, but it was nothing when compared to the abilities Jonet had from her ice affinity. Unlike us, she could conjure ice directly from mana with no regard to the surrounding atmosphere. Even in the harshest desert, she could conjure walls of ice and grant herself abundant elemental munitions to manipulate at nearly no effort, I was sure.
And unlike us, she could form the ice into shapes and creations otherwise impossible to make. Which meant that we couldn't use these elements in any way outside of practical means or basic attack and defense spells.
Not that I was complaining.