From the bottom of my heart, thank you to my p4tr0ns: Morpheaus, and RTB <3 <3 <3
Become a p4tr0n too and read up to FOUR chapters ahead!:
h t t p s : / / w w w . p a t r e o n . c o m / t r a s h w i t h g l a s s e s
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"Each and everything in existence, with the exception of conjured objects and powers, carries a entity. And each entity has an affinity. These entities are called 'Manitou', and can be interacted with in two ways.
The first way, is to convince the spirit to work in your favor, and act upon the natural world, for example, convincing an earth Manitou to rise up, and protect you with an earth barrier. This is completely different from conjuration, for the object, in this case the wall, is not a temporary creation of the magician, and will not decompose in magic with time. However, while this may initially seem immediately superior to conjuration at first glance, it depends on you actually managing to convince the Manitou to work for you, and each of them has their own personalities: since they are a weaker type of spirit, which are almost divine beings, the Manitou are proud and won't work for those who they deem weak. Plus, a mage who is only able to manipulate manitou cannot create something from nothing, he cannot, for example, create a water spell in the middle of a desert to cool himself if there's no water Manitou nearby.
The second way to interact with the Manitous is through empowering and therefore enhancing their inherent qualities. This is what is normally called 'enchanting'.
Using enchantment, we can turn a simple wooden spear into something much more powerful by, for example, empowering the natural wood Manitou inside of it. How exactly? This depends on the enchanter. Perhaps he wants to enhance the growth potential of the Manitou and creates a spear that can grow and contract in size. Perhaps he wants to enhance the hardness of the spear and make it stronger this way. Either way, through enchanting many cultures are able to fight against the many troubles of this world, and thrive. Wood, rock, bones, everything can be used, and improved."
"What about metal, teacher Glance?", I asked the man who wore way too many belts. Since it was an element that seemed to be quite present in my memories, I was curious.
"Metal? They are rarely utilized, and when they are… Well, gold can relate to the fire and light elements, silver to water and dark, copper to electricity, and bronze to earth, and they are mostly used as ornaments. And when it comes to conjuration, they are just too magic-expansive for the majority of shamans to create."
"…What about other metals?"
"I don't think you need to learn about rarely used metals like, platinum, or iron, which is mostly used to create mirrors."
That was weird. In my memories, people used metal everywhere; they built whole fortresses out of it!
"Thank you, elder Glance. Sorry for making you teach me in your free time…"
"It's fine, it's fine. Just don't get into trouble again, okay?", he winked at me, understanding.
"I'll try to", I got up from the tree trunk we were seating on, and walked back to inside the Bear Mountain. Back to my friends.
Near one of the ribs of the giant Bear corpse, in the same entrance hall where we all saw the Council Members bickering with one another, Spruce and Ike were already waiting for me, and having a heated discussion as usual.
"Sorry for the wait!"
"Coyote!", both of them screamed at the same time.
"Can you believe it?! Even after all of that that we went through, this guy still thinks violence is just to be used as a last resource!", Spruce pointed at the awkward swordsman with disbelief.
"What's the problem with this guy?! He wants to beat up everyone that so much as throw him a weird glance!", Ike pointed at the little person, exasperated.
"It's about power! You can't increase your own power if you don't protect it properly", Spruce facepalmed with slumped shoulders.
"I still don't intend on 'increasing my power'. I want to share, just not to a self-destructing level again", Ike rolled his eyes, taking a deep sigh.
"Well, well, let's calm down, guys…", forcing a smile on my face, I tried to de-escalate the situation. "I've heard the portal room is quite bustling all the time, so we better not waste time here, right?"
"…Right", both of them agreed at the same time.
We got moving, and walked towards a large door right behind the dais on which the Council members gave their speech, and bypassing it, we got to the second largest room in the entire school, the teleportation room. And it definitely didn't stay behind any other room in the Bear Mountain when it came to impressiveness, however.
The leather ceiling was 50 meters high, and floating some 50 centimeters above the ground, a giant image of the night skies was spinning, a giant shinning multicolored disk passing through many peoples around. I noted many, many, many gray dots all around the disk, but one single blue dot right on the edge of the disk. And right at the center of the disk, and the room itself, there was a golden structure that looked like a giant drum, which was constantly being beaten by six men, carrying two equally big drumsticks, and at each beat, someone in a line of people disappeared out of thin air.
The three of us approached a man holding a long knotted string, who seemed to be overseeing the teletransportation.
"Excuse us, we'd like to go to the Rock With Wings location", I asked the man.
"Rock With Wings? The nearest teleportation spot is…", the man lowered his hand to the disc floating above the ground, and the only blue spot in it quickly came to his hand, and expanded itself, until it showed a terrifying creature that looked like a mixture of turtle and squid swimming on… something, and then greatly zoomed in on its back, until an image of what seemed to be a desert, and then a river was displayed. "One of the tributaries of the Big River", I remembered the name from one of my geography classes, it was the biggest river that side of the world!
"That's fine. Can we teleport there this same day next week?", I asked again.
"Just make sure to pack up well your stuff. And remember: we don't take responsibility for anything that happens the other side of the portal, including death."
What… inspiring words.