“Leave that alone for now,” he said. “We’re not using that.”
“Oh?”
“No. That’s only going to make it harder and it’s going to be hard enough as is."
Lexie cocked her head to the side. “I thought using cards made shaping easier."
Aiden sighed and seemed reluctant but he eventually admitted. "The method I’m going to teach you right now is going to make things easier and harder. It’s going to be harder in the beginning because I'm going to ask you to do something that will likely be impossible for ninety percent of mages to do, especially those at your stage. It requires a very high affinity to do it, and even then, you'll still need quite a bit of help and dedication to make it work. And if you didn't have all those things, I wouldn't be teaching you this. But I suspect you do." He didn't look happy about it, neither did he have that proud glint in his eyes. Everything about his body language told Lexie that he really didn't want to teach her this.
Which made her appreciate it all the more that he was doing it.
"I'm going to warn you again that this is going to be difficult. One because I cannot visualize the mana-field with you. Plus, you'll be using a transient skill that I'll find difficult to explain to you. Today is going to be a test, to see if you can feasibly learn this method in the first place. If you can't, we forget about it and go back to regular shaping. But if you can get the hang of it, it opens up a new world, and everything else flows much easier and faster.”
Lexie nodded eagerly. She criss-crossed her legs on the bed mimicking Aiden’s pose as they faced each other.
"The final thing I want to say is that what I'm about to teach you...I'm not going to say it's forbidden, but it's not knowledge you should necessarily advertise. So you probably shouldn't tell anyone I'm teaching you this."
"I won't."
“Alright then. The first thing we're going to discuss is pathway imaging. I’m going to teach you how to see your pathways without using the cards.”
“I can do that?” Lexie blurted out.
“Yes. The cards are an aid and a conduit but they’re not the things generating the pathways. They’re already there in your mana field. And you can see them with the right technique.” Aiden shut his eyes and took a deep breath. “This is going to be a little difficult. It’s not an elementary skill at all and I can’t exactly guide you with my magic either, so it’s more complicated. But you already have incredible mana control for someone your age. And you're only getting better faster than anyone I've ever seen before.”
“I am?”
“Of course. I told you that, didn't I?”
He had, but Lexie had just assumed he was saying it so she would feel better about not upping her time on the cards.
“Lexie. I meant it when I said, you were already doing well,” he emphasized. “Incredibly well actually, considering that you’re not using any aids like potions to speed up your progress. And it’s a good thing you didn’t use that. Those might have helped you, but ultimately they would have become a crutch and would have stagnated your growth.”
“Oh.” Lexie didn’t tell him about the one time she’d been tempted by Veronica's offer. Now she was glad she didn't do it.
"This method won’t just help you with cards but also with any magic and anything pathway-related. You got it?”
“Got it.”
“Alright, let’s start. Take a deep breath and close your eyes.”
Lexie obeyed. Excitement buzzed over her skin, just like the mana did within.
“Take another deep breath. You’ve been doing the shaping exercises, right?”
She nodded.
"Even meditation?"
Lexie peeked one eye open to meet her father's amused gaze. "You knew?"
He nodded. "I caught you once or twice doing it before dinner."
Drat. And here she thought she was being sneaky.
“But it's good that you did. If you can do that, it makes what we're about to do easier. Oh and hold on, we need one more thing." He got to his feet and quickly padded out of the room. Within a few seconds, he was back with a corked tube full of blue liquid.
"What's that?" Lexie asked.
"Vitality potion. It will help."
"I thought you said I'm not supposed to use potions."
His lip quirked. "Maybe just this once. You'll need all the help you can manage with visualizing your mana field, and this isn't as strong as some of the others, so you likely won't form a dependency with just a single use. It just helps boost your magical vitality and awareness."
Lexie vaguely wondered why Aiden had a magic vitality potion if he couldn't use magic anymore, but she decided not to ask.
Instead, she took the potion he handed over and observed, swirling it a little bit.
"I'm supposed to drink the whole thing?"
"Yes."
Lexie twisted the cork off, put the tube to her lip, and then upended it into her mouth.
"Blergh!" She almost spat at it out as the foul liquid went down her throat and spread across her tongue.
Aiden smiled. "Sorry. I would have warned you, but I thought it would be better not to."
"Yeah." If he'd warned her she might have thought twice about taking it. It truly tasted disgusting. She wiped her tongue on her shirt when she was done, trying to get the awful taste out as Aiden went back out and then came back with some juice in a glass.
She drank it down like she was dying of thirst.
"Thank you," she said once she was done. "Now what next?"
"Now, I want you to go into as deep a meditative state as possible. And I do mean deep Lexie. However deep you think you've gone, go deeper."
Lexie closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and then another.
She did just as she'd done for weeks, getting herself into the proper mind space, but something was different now. It was like the buzzing in her body was louder, more distinct. Like before it sounded like a swarm of bees but now she could almost select out each individual bee. It felt incredible.
This must be the vitality potion at work.
And it wasn't just hearing that was enhanced. As she continued her breathing exercises with her eyes closed, her sight was starting to change too. At first, it was just the darkness of her closed eyelids. But then she started to see white dots in the darkness, that seemed to expand and shake. The dots were vibrating and had a halo around them. They were growing and singing and dancing in circles.
"What do you see Lexie?" Aiden said, sounding like he was from very far away.
"Um..." she hesitated to say it but then she did. "I think I see my mana."
He was quiet for a second. "What does it look like?"
"White dots."
"I see. You're not quite there yet, but you're on the right track. Keep going."
"Keep going with what?"
"Whatever it is you're doing."
But all she was doing was sitting there and breathing.
Lexie wanted to ask more but she didn't want to break her concentration and lose sight of the dots. So she kept breathing, kept listening to the buzzing getting louder and louder. At one point, she thought her back was cramped, and her knee hurt, but she still didn't move, not wanting to lose focus for a single second. Something told her that if she lost it, it would be damn near impossible for her to get it back.
Her head felt heavy suddenly like there was fog filling her brain. The more she concentrated, the more it filled until it became an uncomfortable pressure, on a physical and psychological level. It made her feel like her head was too heavy for her neck but it was also like she couldn't think straight.
Her mind was literally foggy.
I hate this, she thought but she didn't stop. She couldn't. If she stopped now she would revert to the old weak Lexie who got tossed down like five times in the cafeteria today. Who struggled to reduce her activation time.
Who was so horrifyingly mediocre that it wasn't funny.
Lexie didn't want to be that girl. She refused.
So she would sit here as long as it took. Even as her brain filled with fog, even as she became so terrifyingly aware of her breathing that it made her want to hyperventilate because she felt like maybe she could make her heart stop at will and the thought of having that kind of power terrified her.
Even though she felt like her muscles were on fire, and she was so damn tired of sitting in the same position and everything hurt.
Even though she couldn't hear or feel Aiden anymore, and that scared her because he was her anchor.
She still sat there and waited and breathed.
And then the discomfort began to fade. The pain in her body was no longer there, or perhaps it was her body itself that was missing. The fog became clearer, it was simply her metaphysical thoughts trying to shield her mind from something deeper, something she could only understand if she was on the same plane.
She cleared it away with a phantom wave and the strain lifted from her mind. And then suddenly she could see inside her.
I think I did it. She had no clue if she spoke out loud or not, but she heard Aiden's voice, disembodied, saying, "What do you see Lexie?"
"Everything," she said. It was a messy field of everything, that was occurring all at once, but not necessarily on the same plane. It was difficult to explain. It was a tangled roller coaster, a complete motherboard of systems that interconnected to each other. She saw the physical and metaphysical all at once, saw the shapes on a board, twisting and winding like blood vessels, and overlaying on top of each other. There were three different colors of vessels, blue, green, and pink. And outside of them, casting their glow, were buzzing little particles, waiting for something to happen.
"I think I see pathways," Lexie was aware of her mouth moving but it wasn't the same feeling as she usually got while she was talking. It was just a voice in her mind. "Blue. Green. Pink. I think I see the mana as well, buzzing gold, outside the pathway."
Aiden released a breath of...relief? Regret?
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"That's good Lexie," he said. "That's incredibly good. You're in your mana field. Now, what I want you to do is to pick a spot, and slowly drive out the mana from that spot, almost like you're creating a black hole in your body."
"How?"
"You'll have to figure that out on your own. But if you've gotten to that stage then you probably already know."
Lexie didn't allow the confusion to set in because it would only distract her. Instead, she thought about it and then realized something. She could move closer to the particles at will, like she was zooming in. She could also move the particles, picking them with her phantom hands that she used to clear the fog from her mind.
She did so now, taking each particle one by one, and moving it to a pile on the side. While she did, she noticed something about the particles. They weren't like water or air particles, that rushed to fill in the empty space she created. Instead, they tended to be attracted to themselves and repelled by the mana-less blackhole that she was slowly forming in her body.
Ah. Lexie finally understood. It's like making my own internal mini-deadspace.
Once she'd formed a small space of nothingness, she said, "I have it."
"Good," Aiden said. "Now I want you to focus on that spot. Like really focus. Harder than you’ve ever done before. Try to analyze it with all your senses. Smell, taste, and sight. Feel it alright? Fuse it with your consciousness.”
Lexie tried but she didn’t even know what she was doing. She fumbled for a second then she decided to go for one at a time.
What did that spot smell like?
It smelled like her but deeper. Probably like her lungs would smell.
Not that she knew what a lung smelled like but somehow her subconscious knew.
And it told her that she was smelling her lungs.
And tasting it.
And feeling it.
She felt every pulse of breath, every crackle of air in the black hole. She concentrated on it, harder than she'd ever done on anything before and her head began to throb but she didn't stop.
Fuse with the black hole?
How?
"I don't know how," she admitted to her father.
"Relate to it," he said. "Match its energy, but anchor yourself too."
It's energy? It had none. Unlike the particles that were buzzing about inside her, the black hole was still, lifeless and empty.
Maybe she should be still too.
She began shutting down all her senses, one by one. She decided she didn't want to hear anymore so she shut it down. She didn't need her sense of sight and the world went black. She didn't need to hear or taste anything, so she pulled her attention from that too.
And finally, she didn't need to breathe at least for a few seconds.
So she stopped it.
And just like that, the connection snapped in place. She became the black hole.
The next moment, someone shaking her shoulders. She blinked her eyes open and stared up at Aiden, blinking in surprise. "What happened?"
He released a breath of relief.
"You tell me what happened." He instantly demanded
Lexie blinked and said, "I did what you said. I became the black hole."
Aiden appeared shocked for a second and then he shook his head. "You're not supposed to become it. You're supposed to link with it."
"I don't understand."
He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "Next time Lexie, you must anchor yourself before you connect to the black hole."
"Oh. How?"
"Retain awareness of at least one of your senses," he said. "Make sure you can still see the mana particles even when you're linking with the hole. That way you can still be yourself."
She nodded. "Okay. Can I try again?"
He shook his head. "Maybe tomorrow. Right now, you need rest and I need to explain to you what it is you saw."
"I'm not tired," she said even though she kind of was.
"Well, I am." He gave her a wry look. "Lexie, do you know how long you were meditating for?"
"Um…"
Lexie glanced out the window and found that it was dark outside. The moons were out. It couldn't be. It was just an afternoon a second ago.
But then she realized that she didn’t know how much time she thought had passed. Maybe an hour? A few minutes? Surely it couldn't have been hours.
“You were in there for five hours,” Aiden said. “That’s pretty impressive bee. You didn’t get distracted at all.”
“Oh.” She preened at the compliment, but she was still surprised. That did not feel like five hours at all. “So what do we do now?”
“Now, we have dinner. While you were in there, I ordered us some pasta and made some chicken to go with it. We’ll eat while I explain to you what exactly it is that you saw. I couldn't explain it to you until you experienced it yourself. Otherwise, it would sound like gibberish."
She nodded and Aiden had her lie in bed as he went out to bring in the food.
They ate chicken and pasta on her bedroom floor, as Aiden explained, "So, the process of card activation as you know it is that internal mana moves out, activates the object mana, which brings the external mana inside. A step-by-step process with three separate mana fields?"
"Yeah," Lexie said, biting into the crunchy chicken. It was really good, with the honey sauce. It reminded her of Korean fried chicken.
"Well, as I mentioned that day, that explanation of mana fields the most dumbed-down version of events. It's not really a step-by-step process and there aren’t three mana fields. There’s only one. The truth is that all those things are happening simultaneously, all at once on a different plane that all magical processes occur on."
Lexie paused with the chicken in her mouth, blinking at her dad.
He smiled at her confusion. "Imagine you were a spell user, and you said a spell. The words leave your mouth and you see the effect. But what you don't see is the process by which the effect happens because that process occurs on a much different plane than the ones we see in our human eyes. It occurs on a fourth dimension, a magical plane."
"And that was the plane I was just in?"
"Yes. Once you're on that plane, you can see that the pathways are all stacked on top of each other, and they're not as different as they initially appear. They all work by a feedback loop impacting one another. It's how cards can be shut down even after activation is complete to prevent damage. Because both internal, external and object pathways all inform each other.”
"I see."
Aiden bit a fry. "Now, using magic on the magical plane is a bit more complicated than what we've been doing so far. But once you've mastered that plane, it makes it easier to manipulate your pathways and your magic. And it makes it so much more powerful."
Lexie grinned, feeling zeal and hope race through her.
Now they were talking.
Aiden made Lexie work on her visualization for the next two days. Each time she tried it, her senses became a little sharper, the image a little better. It took a little less time to form the black hole. And when Aiden was off to work, she still kept up with her mana shaping exercises and her breathing exercises, finding that it helped her get in the mood faster.
On the second day, she finally tried to link with the black hole again. Aiden finally explained to her what he wanted, that she was to move with the black hole, and it would help her see the individual mana particles better, as she chased them around her body. When connecting to the black hole this time, she kept some of her senses still awake, enough so she could still see and hear and visualize each mana particle even clearer like it was right in front of her. When she moved the black hole, the mana particles shifted to avoid it, and it became a fun game of chasing the big golden glowing balls.
As she did, she studied and wrote down everything she found out about the pathways. Like Aiden suggested, they were malleable. People with high mana affinity had more malleable pathways than those without. And mundanes did not have malleable pathways at all.
Pathways also had pores in them, which was how mana leakage and waste happened. There was research currently ongoing about how to calculate the distance between each pore and the level of elasticity in the pathway. At this point, it was highly individual, but researchers and scientists were determined to find a general formula that would predict or govern the way people learned pathways.
And Lexie also found that the technique Aiden taught her wasn’t all that commonly known. At least not as a way of controlling pathways. There was no reference she could find online at all for 'Black Hole Exercises' which was what Aiden called them. So either they were super forbidden, or they were just not known to the general population.
Which begged the question of how Aiden had found out about them in the first place.
Perhaps she would ask later after she was done mastering this new skill. She didn't want to spook Aiden into stopping his lessons by asking too many questions.
Aiden, for his part, was continuously impressed by Lexie's mana affinity. Lexie was convinced that her unusual mana affinity was due to her being from Earth 2. Well, that and probably Aiden's genetics. Come to think of it, he said her mother had a high affinity too, although she wasn't interested in learning anything magical. Did that mean that Lara Sparrowfoot could have learned what Lexie was doing if she wanted to? Could it have helped her?
And then the thought was followed by another stunning question. Were there mundanes with high mana affinity without the capacity?
What could she do with that?
She noted it down. Potential area for research in the future.
Lexie could see herself now, studying pathways with a concentration in card magic to serve a mundane population. If she could somehow make cards that worked for mundanes, that would certainly meet the criteria for revolutionary discovery, wouldn’t it? Plus, it would help people and that was pretty heroic too.
In any case, she should probably get started looking into that.
Well, once she was done with her black hole exercises that is.
The next day, when Aiden got back from work, she gave him some time to decompress and relax. She even made them sandwiches for dinner, (plus warmed up some left-over pizza) so he wouldn’t have to worry about it. And she brewed some tea, not a complicated Muan tea, but one of the other ones he kept in little pots in the pantry.
Aiden seemed amused by her devotion. “Are you buttering me up for something?”
She sat on the dining table chair beside him. “No. Just trying to be a good daughter.”
“Ah. So you wouldn’t mind if, after having this tea, I went up to bed?”
She almost gasped. But she forced herself to choke out the words.“No, that's fine. If you're tired you should rest."
He laughed then. “Yeah right. I don't believe for a second that you mean that. Alright, then. Let's go to the living room so you can get in position.”
She nodded and scrambled to do just that. She arranged herself right in the middle of the living room, with a pillow under her butt for comfort.
"Materialize card," he said next.
Lexie did and the
"Now you're going to activate the card, but you're not going to bother with activating it all the way. We're just going to have what we call a partial activation while you visualize how the mana moves into the pathways."
She nodded. She was excited.
“Visualize first.”
She did. She concentrated until she was in the magical plane and his voice was once again, a far-away echo.
"Activate the card."
Once again, she did and it wasn't as hard as she thought it would be focusing on two things at once. Actually, it was almost intuitive to activate the card while in the magical plane. All she had to do was think about it, and since she was already in the plane, she immediately saw which part of her lit up. She zoomed in on over there, as the mana began filling out the shape."
"Again, you don't have to fill it out. Once you're halfway there, stop and focus on creating a black hole, right outside the pathway."
Lexie nodded, observing the golden stream. Then once, she had enough, she began meticulously creating a black hole outside the pathway as mana particles drifted all around her. This time, when she connected with the black hole, she left her senses open, and observed the movement of the golden mana orbs into the lit up pathway.
“Now I want you to zoom in on the pathway vessels. What do you see?”
She did as he asked, and confirmed what the online articles told her.
“They’re moving. Shifting a little.”
“Yes. And what else?”
“There are pores on it.”
“Good. Now focus on them.”
She did. And she saw something else. Constant mana, streaming in, streaming out.
“I want you to try and plug as many of those pores as you can.”
Lexie was so confused that it nearly broke her concentration. “Huh?”
“You’re going to control the stream of mana. The only way to do that and avoid mana leakage is to plug the pores.”
“How…how do I do that?”
“Pick a spot to focus on, not the entire channel, just a portion of it.”
She did, focusing deeper on the portion of the pathway she was already looking at.
“Do you still remember the shaping exercises I taught you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well here’s where they come in handy. To avoid leakage you’d have to control the mana stream and shape it so perfectly that nothing escapes out the pores. The mana inside the pathways? You’re going to mold it tighter so that it pulls back from the walls of the pathway. If they don’t touch the walls they can’t escape through the pores."
"Um..." That sounded overwhelmingly difficult.
"It is difficult, isn’t it?" Aiden seemed to read her mind. "And it would be far too difficult for you to control the entire stream. That's something that comes with years and years of these types of exercises. But luckily for you, we don’t need to do that right now. You don't have tons of internal mana so it makes it even easier for you."
"How?"
"Well, you see the mana stream, traveling along inside the pathway."
She nodded.
"What you need to do is concentrate on the particles directly at the edges of the pathway near the pores. Pretend like those are split off from the rest of the stream. Don't lose them to the stream or let them mix in. Keep them in their position, and hold them there so they don't escape."
"Okay." Lexie swallowed and tried. Just like she'd done with the black hole, she tried to select the particles one by one, to separate from the rest of the stream. But it was hard. Each particle she touched vibrated in her hold wanting to escape and link back with it's brethren.
Lexie took a deep breath and admitted, "I think that might be a bit much for me right now."
"What might make it easier," Aiden continued, "is to use a black hole you already have to cut through and create mana-less paths between the stream and the edge particles. That way you don't have to worry so much about them mixing in."
Oh. That made sense. That was probably why he had her create the black hole in the first place.
Lexie immediately held on to the black hole and began separating the stream. It was still hard, but not as difficult as what she was trying to do earlier. It was just a much slower process though for whatever reason.
“This is supposed to make activation faster?" she asked because it seemed like it was taking forever.
“It will be once you get used to it," he said.
"And it's easier than just controlling the whole stream?"
"Yes. It’s much harder and slower to corral mana when it’s moving in bulk because particles bounce around. But when you separate them like this, there are fewer particles to worry about."
“Alright.” She was kind of getting a headache now but she kept at it, shaping the lines by the pathway walls, making them thin, and using them to guard the walls against leakage. It was easier with after she used her black hole like a knife efficiently cutting paths in her mana. After that was done, all she had to do was focus on the lines closest the walls.
“Think of those lines as your little soldiers," Aiden was saying. "Every time one of them starts to get out of hand you corral them back in.”
Lexie did her best and after painstaking moments, she managed to form an immovable wall of mana particles. She felt like a sheepdog, herding cattle. Just for that small section of pathway that she focused on, she wasn't allowing anything to escape through the pores. And then she noticed that once there was no more room for escape, the mana particles inside the pathway were pushed together and gushed forward as a result of the force, like water from a spigot that too much water pressure.
“They’re moving faster.” Excitement made Lexie breathless.
“Good. Now you can stop Lexie."
She disconnected from the plane and opened her eyes to meet Aiden's proud smile.
"You did it," he said and she couldn't contain herself anymore. Giddy with happiness, she got up and ran into his arms, hugging him tight.
"Thank you," she whispered into his chest.
He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her hair.
“This is good for a start,” he said. “But it’s just a start. I have to warn you that we’ll keep going for some time until you can do that for an entire pathway, not just a portion of one. And it will only get harder before it gets easier.”
“Sure,” she said. She was just excited for progress. "I’m ready.”