Rumius stood in disbelief at the turn of events.
' Was the wait finally over? Did she finally come around to teaching him?' He was so lost in his joy that it took an impatient kick to the ribs to bring him back to his senses.
Rumius regained his balance and offered a dazzling smile. He seemed to see his mistress wrinkle her nose. It was a marvel how clearly her distaste came through, even when he could barely see her face.
' But how many times would she do this again? Wait, could this why she'd said we were going to stay here a little longer?' He thought excitedly.
'But then he was reminded of who he was dealing with and things immediately took a more serious tone. ' Mistress loses interest in things really easily. I'm going to need to persuade her with my magic if I want her to take me seriously.' he thinks.
The bar here was mistress's expectations of him. And he was going to reach it.
Rumius squinted again at the target in the darkness. It took a while until he'd managed to locate it again and it was only now that Rumius realised how far away it was. He sucked in a deep breath.
' That must be two kilometres away! It's like the distance the mansion was away from the town's white bell tower! Oh god, how on earth…'
Rumius looked back at Mistress Isadora in disbelief. How on earth was he going to reach it?
Meanwhile, his mistress was still standing there, arms crossed and a scowl on her face. A finger tapped impatiently on the side of her other arm.
" What are you waiting for? The sun to rise? Start casting already!"
Rumius turned around. ' Urghh…no helping it. Though let's test the waters first.'
Rumius instinctively lowered himself into a deeper, more stable stance. He held his hands out in front of himself, covering them nicely over the target, but not enough to obscure the silhouette of the entire straw-man from view. Then he started chanting.
Magic depended on imagination. Regardless of it being unique or conventional, you had to imagine yourself doing it for it to happen. And it goes even beyond that. Magic worked such that everything must have played out in your mind already before you did it. The user needed to understand the magic he was using, knowing the feel of it. The churning of its mana, the rumbling of its impatience, the power of its impact. It all depended on the mind. It didn't matter how this state was achieved, be it ego, empathy or simple genius.
To be, you must first imagine. But to imagine, you must first be. It was the most basic of basics.
The chant was fast approaching its end. Rumius liked to use chant incantations more than chantless ones. It helped him imagine better, it made the spell feel more concrete and grounded in space.
And once he got to the end of it, Rumius could only describe the feeling as…power. He smiled nervously.
' Well, here goes.'
" BOOOOOM!!!"
A giant boom echoed through the mountain plains as the spell was discharged, creating a giant blast of air so strong it that the force of it leaving his hands tore away the grass beneath his feet. Rumius watched as the white comet of compressed air streak across the sky. The first hundred metres blitzed through in a matter of seconds. Then after some distance, the blast seems to have..slowed down?
Rumius rubbed his eyes then looked again. He wasn't imagining it. The blast had slowed down. And it was slowing down even more and more considerably as time went on. Eventually, it dissipated to nothingness about a three hundred metres away from the target.
Rumius' eyebrows shot up in disbelief. Unbelievable! His spell was gone just like that?
A snicker from behind him caught his attention. Rumius turned around stiffly, slightly red in the face.
" Well, I expected about as much." She said. " That was passable for a first try.
" Why do you think that happened?"
Rumius dwelled on it for a moment.
" Is it because I'm still too weak? Output wise?" He asked.
" Oh! What an intelligent student I have!" Mistress Isadora mocked monotonously.
" Try again with actual thought, would you?"
Rumius was taken aback for a moment.
" Is my imagination…not strong enough?" He answered again after a while.
This time it was Isadora's turn to raise her eyebrows. Rumius's face unequivocally brightened at the scene.
" Correct." She said. Rumius turned as she walked past him.
" What do you think caused this problem?"
Rumius frowned. Was there something that he was doing that was wrong? Rumius thought hard about it, but in the end, he could find nothing. Most of the magic he could do now was self-taught, formed from bits and pieces of instruction of books and hours of experimenting.
Rumius shook his head.
Mistress Isadora looked him in the eye." It's because you are relying too much on your chant. And your focus is completely off." She said.
Rumius didn't understand.
" What is the chant of the spell?" She asked.
Rumius recited it.
" Now I want you think about it. What goes through your mind as you say this chant? "
' What goes through my mind?'
Rumius repeated the chant again in his mind. And then again.
" I'd just…imagine how the spell looks like." He said weakly.
" And therein lies the problem." Mistress Isadora finished.
Rumius paused, confused.
" Why is that the problem?"
" Because YOU.." She pointed to his face. " Are too preoccupied with creating the spell, and not what you want it to do."
Rumius frowned. Weren't the two the same thing? Rumius looked away into the distance towards where the straw dummy was.
' Creating the spell…not what you want it to do…'
" Think about what magic is defined as. It's the most basic of basics." Mistress Isadora nagged, her voice impatient.
" Creating something from mana to achieve a particular aim." He answered.
" Yes. To achieve a particular AIM. And if to create magic is to envision the fulfillment said aim, what does this say about what you have to do?"
She left the question hanging in the air. Rumius didn't answer her, but instead began lowering himself into position.
' It means I have to envision the outcome, not the process. So that is to say that once the outcome is fulfilled, the rest will fall into place?'
He smirked inwardly, a sense of revelation filling him. ' Let's test that, shall we?'
Rumius began chanting. And as he did, he saw the images of what would happen play in his mind. A gale would burst from his hands, stronger than any other that occurred naturally in the natural order. It would soar into the sky and arc down onto the straw man, obliterating it in its entirety.
' It's not enough.' whispered a voice in his head.
' That's right. It's not enough. That is why I have to go even further.'
Rumius zoomed in on the outcome. The end goal. He saw the blast on its descent, bearing down on the straw-man atop the tree. The tree's leaves would flee from their perches in terror, scattering to the air. The forest would rumble with the might of it all.
' STILL NOT ENOUGH, EVEN MORE!'
Rumius saw the rocking of the tree branches. He felt the loose straws on the straw-man rock and sway, gently at first, then trembling as calamity crashed down onto it. The straw man then exploded, the straws of leather holding its straws together punched cleanly through, scattering to the air by the wind currents.
' EVEN MORE!!!'
All time seemed to slow down. Every minute detail of several milliseconds played out like a movie in Rumius mind. Yet it was even better than a movie. He could hear the rustling of the leaves. The air currents' angry howl. The whooshing of surrounding air. The cracking of the branches as the blast of wind struck them down like the straw-man all the same. All became clear in his mind—the shape of everything. The senses it left, the sounds that echoed. Everything was in the grasp of his mind.
The outcome had become crystal clear.
The moment the blast of wind left his hand, Rumius felt the feeling of something that he'd never experienced before. It was as if he was being lifted into the air, as if he was floating.
Then the explosion brought him back to reality.
The white comet of wind punched cleanly through the top of the tree where the straw man stood and for a second, Rumius thought he saw the flicker of purple alongside the sound of something cracking. In the next instant, the blast landed on the forest floor and tore up the surroundings around it like a child cannonballing into a sandpit.
" BOOOOOOOOMMM!!!"
It was only when all the sounds died down that Rumius turned back to his mistress to ask for an evaluation of his performance. And in that instant, he saw what looked like a smile grace her lips. It was the usual smirk that she would always give him, but a smile, given that his eyes weren't playing tricks on him, of course. Teeth, lips, eyes, all of it.
He was so shocked for an instant that he simply stood there, staring with his mouth open.
Mistress noticed his look quickly.
" What are you looking at?" She demanded.
" Ohh-uh nothing!"
" Tch. Now thanks to you, I have to spend go back and get a new target." She griped in annoyance.
" I'm..sorry? (You were the one who asked me to shoot at it though? )
Mistress Isadora turned and began making her way back to the hut.
" Stay here. I'll be back soon."
Mistress Isadora crouched, and in the next moment, she vanished.
Several moments later, she came back with a new straw-man. She casually tossed it to Rumius.
" Go put it on a tree yourself."
As she watched the little boy race off, Isadora couldn't help but feel a little something that she couldn't quite put her finger on.
" At this rate, maybe we won't need to stay that long afterall." She murmured.