Three weeks later, the day started bright and sunny, with few clouds in the sky, and a refreshing breeze sweeping towards the mountains surrounding Azor's private estate. We met outside the castle, in a secluded corner of the hilly terrain, instead of on the beach as we had done for our previous days of training. Azor had a small box with him. He seemed ecstatic. He set it on the ground and cleared his throat.
"Good morning, all. I trust you have been wondering what we will be doing today." He paused for a moment. Before Riselus could say "no", he said, "As you know, the point of this training is to prepare you to take the magic gems scattered around the island and use them to defeat Ezarik. We have gone through and will continue going through training for your agility and strength, and rest assured that you will have more scrolls to read."
Here, he paused, looking carefully at every one of us. "Well, what use is it to have the strength to get the gems if you cannot use them?"
We started. We looked at each other. What did he mean? Azor opened the box slowly. We strained to look. Inside were one of each color of orb we had seen in the deep reaches of his castle. None of us, even Riselus, could conceal our looks of surprise. Azor saw our reaction and smiled. He began to lay them out on the grass. Each gem was attached inside a gold ring and was hanging on a gold chain. I noticed a few extra chains in the box.
"Before you ask, no, these are not the gems, but they do the same thing."
"Oh great, lecture time," Qassot mumbled.
"So this is what he's been so excited about for the last few weeks," Dracoa muttered under her breath.
"The gems were created long ago by the first wizard, and the concept was used to make other gems. While the first gems were made to hold the island together, the others were made to allow wizards to use magic easier. As you have read in the scrolls I gave you, wizards have to clearly visualize the magic they are trying to cast, before channeling it through their willpower. Some wizards in the past have figured out an easier way to cast them; they need to say a word that represents the magic they are trying to cast, which makes it easier to cast. We call this a spell. Eventually, when wizards got better, they could cast spells by merely thinking the name of the spell, and eventually without the spell at all. Some are even able to cast magic by instinct. This is considered the pinnacle of magic ability. However, it takes a long time to even go from saying the spell aloud to thinking the spell in your head. To this day, only a few wizards have reached that point, and even fewer, including myself and Ezarik, have managed to reach the pinnacle of magic.
"Gems were made so that we could cast spells without learning them, and soon grew to a great tool, although most gems were incredibly weak. The ones I have here today are many times weaker than the actual gems. It is no small feat to create a gem. In order to create truly powerful gems, the maker has to achieve a ludicrous level of magic ability, and that takes longer than it does to cast spells instinctively, and by that time, you are already more powerful than any gem could make you. I myself am an example of this. However, the gems themselves are still useful due to magic power. It takes a long time to gather up enough magic power to be able to cast powerful magic, as you have read in the scrolls, but gems contain magic power inherently. When combined with their ability to store a vast quantity of spells from a single type of magic, this makes gems very useful for giving those without much magic power the ability to cast powerful magic. You four are a prime example of this. A gem can make someone like Cyil here reach the pinnacle of magic within a few years."
"Cool!" I said, "Gimme!"
"Not yet, I haven't told you how to use them."
"How do we use them?" Dracoa asked.
"Simple. You must concentrate on your gem and tell it what to do. Try to link what you are visualizing with a word. For example, if you are making a plant grow, use the word 'grow'. It will take some effort, but once you've linked the image with the word, you can easily cast a spell."
Qassot snatched a gem up. I looked up in surprise. Somehow, without anyone noticing, she snuck around to the box and then to the other side of Azor, where she was now picking up a bright yellow orb. Azor turned in surprise, but quickly regained his composure.
"Each orb or gem has a specific power, often based on things that occur in nature. The one Qassot has, for example, is meant to imitate the warmth of the sun."
Qassot put the chain with the orb around her neck, and then looked around. She stared hard at a tree for a moment. Nothing happened.
"You didn't say a word," Dracoa said.
"Oh," Qassot said. She paused. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. "This feels kind of embarrassing."
"Don't worry about that," Azor said, "Think of it as commanding the orb to make something happen."
"Uh…" Qassot said hesitantly. "Sun… something or other."
"You need to be specific with your words and picture what you want it to do in your head. Be confident."
"Uh, what do you call it when there's like only a small bit of sun shining through the forest canopy?" Qassot asked.
"Wait, are we creating new spells?" I asked.
"Spells aren't something you can teach others. You can only create them yourself," Azor explained, "since spells are based on your own imagination."
"I think it's called a sunbeam," Dracoa said, "Or a ray of sun."
"Uh… sunbeam!" Qassot said. Her voice was kind of shaky. Nothing happened. She dipped her head with a sheepish look on her face.
"That felt stupid," she said.
"That was funny," I said.
Qassot went and hid behind Riselus.
"Look at what you did!" Dracoa said.
"It takes practice," Azor assured Qassot. He turned to the rest of us. "Everyone grab an orb. I will tell you what it should do, and we will spend the rest of the day practicing." He pointed to the crest of a hill. "Just over that hill are some dummies, targets, and other obstacles for you to train on."
I gingerly picked up a blinding blue-white gem on a chain. I looked at Azor.
"That one contains the power of lightning," he said.
I put it around my short, thick neck. I wandered over the peak of the hill to the targets and dummies that I recognized from our first day and from strength training, respectively. I walked up to a dummy. I stared hard at it.
Do something, do something, do something, I thought.
Nothing happened. I looked confused.
Wait, I need to say it. What were those big lightning things called again? The ones that came in a thunderstorm?
"Lightning bolt!" I said quietly, imagining the bright crack of blue light that split the darkness in two whenever there was a thunderstorm.
Nothing happened.
"Just tell it you want it to do," Azor yelled. "You need to be specific and concentrate. It sometimes helps to move alongside it."
I tried again. Nothing. I concentrated so hard I went cross-eyed. Still nothing. I angrily headbutted the dummy.
Okay, let's just calm down and focus. It's all about the image, right? And concentration?
I calmed myself down and tried to picture the lightning bolt in my head. I heard the crack of thunder alongside it, felt the cool rain of the storm, and the shouting of creatures as they ran in panic…
I shook my head. I had let my mind wander. That wasn't good. Need to concentrate.
I suddenly heard a very loud "SUNBEAM" and felt a blast of heat. I turned around. Qassot was standing there, looking every bit as surprised as myself, Riselus, and Dracoa, standing in front of a dummy that looked quite singed.
"I DID IT!" Qassot shouted triumphantly. She was sweating slightly. "THAT WAS SO COOL! DID YOU SEE THAT?"
"Wow!" I said, "How did you do that?"
"I imagined a sunbeam coming out of my claws and hitting the dummy," Qassot said happily.
"Do that again!" Dracoa said.
"Okay," Qassot said, "Everyone out of the way, I don't want to singe you."
We all moved out of the way. Qassot stared hard at the dummy and took several deep breaths. Then, she reared up on her hind legs, spread her wings open as if to catch the wind, and thrust her front legs forwards.
"SUNBEAM!" she shouted again.
A bright yellow light that looked like a sunbeam erupted from her claws and engulfed the dummy, pulsing a gentle, warm heat for a few seconds before she folded her wings and fell on all fours, stumbling in the process. The dummy was now very singed and was slightly burnt at the edges.
Somehow, Qassot shouting the word didn't sound as stupid anymore.
"Great job!" Azor called, "Now try it from a greater distance!"
Qassot was panting and looked quite strained.
"You didn't tell us how tiring this was!" she yelled. Her voice was slightly slurred.
I turned back to the dummy as Azor lectured her about how the scrolls said magic was incredibly tiring without practice and how she needed to pay attention to what they were reading. I looked at the dummy, then over at Dracoa and Riselus. Riselus was wondering how to fit the golden chain around his large head. Dracoa was trying to take Qassot's orb off her neck while she was being lectured. I turned back to the dummy. I stared at it. I returned to focusing on the orb. It was supposed to do something with lightning. My mind started wandering again. Why did Qassot's method work? I suddenly realized that maybe I was visualizing it wrong. I needed to imagine what I wanted it to do, not what it was. My mind unwittingly went back to the time when dark clouds rolled over the sky, shrouding everything in darkness. A heavy rain had begun to fall, and there was suddenly a huge flash of light that cast eerie shadows through the trees. A massive bolt of lightning, cast down from the sky, had smote the ground, leaving a tree burning and cloven in two despite the rain. The noise was deafening, like the clash of thousands of boulders falling down a mountainside compressed into the space of a second. Everyone around me was yelling and shouting in panic. "Lightning bolt! Get away from the lightning bolt!"
I suddenly felt a tingling feeling rush down my spine and across my fur, making it stand on end.
I snapped back to reality. I had flown high up into the air and dove straight down. As I accelerated, sparks of a brilliant white, like miniature versions of the lightning bolt I had seen, began to come off of my fur. Before I could react, I landed on top of the dummy. An ear-splitting boom and an explosion threw me several feet away into another dummy. A long, thin lightning bolt had slammed down from where I started my dive onto the dummy, sending it, and myself, flying with a crash of thunder. Pure exhilaration of figuring it out was mixed with the desire to curl up and go to sleep. My ears were ringing horribly, and a dull throbbing was surfacing in the back of my skull. Qassot was right. Magic was really draining. It felt like my willpower had been sucked right out and channeled into the lightning bolt. I could dimly hear someone congratulating me in the distance. I closed my eyes.
As I lay there, panting from exertion and trying in vain to find the strength to get back up and try again, a quote from a scroll I read in the past reverberated through the air.
Some wizards never memorize a single spell, but act purely on instinct. Their spells flow from their memory and their clear, unbridled imagination automatically, like a bird leaving the nest. These are the most unpredictable wizards, but the most powerful. There are no limits to their power.
That night, the adrenaline rush of figuring out magic still hadn't disappeared. I smiled.
"Magic is so cool," I mumbled to myself.
I woke up in a cold sweat again later that night, having dreamt of accidentally burning down Qade Valley with a lightning strike.