Chapter 22
Levi summoned his power into his cane and did his best to throw a barrier between himself and the flames. He was far too surprised to feel angry, so the barrier was just the pale blue-white of his normal energy, and when the fire hit it, his shield burst like a soap bubble. There was a flicker of heat as the fire splashed over him, and then it was gone. He lowered the cane as he stared at Nox in shock.
“What the hell? What was that, Nox!” he asked in shock.
She giggled and pulled her uniform shirt open to reveal her generous bust—and specifically the I branded over her heart. “How about, what was this, Levi? I’m out on a field exercise and sleeping in my tent when it suddenly feels like someone put a hot iron to my tit. I look down and find I’ve been branded. You’re lucky I really like you or I’d have been more upset. House mistress Goldenrod explained it to me.” She crossed her arms over her stomach and stared at him. Levi felt himself grow flushed.
“In my defense, I had no idea that was going to happen… I would say that it means I owe you a whole tray of cupcakes,” he offered with a smile. The delight that spread across her face proved he had made the correct choice, and then she dashed across the room to fling herself against him. Zuzan and Flix scattered as Nox wrapped her arms around Levi’s neck and kissed him. He tugged her close and lost himself in the kiss, then she pushed him back.
“Alright, enough fooling around. We do have to teach you incantations and it is important for you to be prepared to use them at a moment’s notice. Fortunately for you, I can control how much damage my spells can do, which means that I don’t burn anything I don’t want to,” she said with a smug smile as she backed away from him.
Levi watched as she buttoned her uniform properly and adjusted her tie, giving him a wink before she walked back to the front of the large room and motioned for him to follow after. She did have a bowl of chopped meats and another filled with nuts on the table behind her. “I thought Zuzan and Flix might want to relax up here. Don’t want them caught in the spells if you screw up,” she added.
Levi felt himself smiling at her, and he watched as his companions went to the table. Zuzan scampered along the floor, and then ran right up the table leg while Flix spread her wings and flew with a brief demonstration of her grace. “See, Nox? That is why I love you, you’re always thinking about other people,” he said without thinking about it. It wasn’t until her ears went crimson and her eyes widened huge that he realized exactly what he had said. The upperclassman was in the middle of putting a cube of chocolate into her mouth and she froze mid-motion. The chocolate dropped from her fingers to splatter on the floor—Levi immediately worried he had made a mistake.
Nox lunged, blurring across the room faster than Levi could register and he found himself spinning in the air. Literally. He realized they were floating after a moment when Nox stopped kissing him long enough for him to register his head thudding against the ceiling. She looked radiant as she kissed him again, her arms tightening around his neck. Levi put his arms around her once more and let the kisses wash over him as he smiled. He couldn’t even make a joke about the situation, because she never allowed his lips to get the space needed for words.
He broke into laughter when they flattened against the ceiling, and she began to pout at him. “Nox, why are we on the ceiling? Not complaining about the kissing, or holding you—but being stuck to a ceiling and bobbing like a balloon is a bit weird for me,” he explained, and she giggled at him. Her blush had faded and her bright eyes stared at him with a look of adoration.
“I love you too,” she whispered breathlessly. Unfortunately, she blinked several times, so whatever magic she had used to make them float vanished. The pair dropped to the floor with a thud and Levi let out a groan. He had twisted at the last moment and cushioned Nox’s fall with his own frame, but now he ached from head to toe. His vision was blurry, and at first he worried he had struck his head on the stone floor. When Nox slipped his glasses back on and kissed him gently, he realized his skull was fine. Mostly. “Sorry about that. Sometimes when I get excited, I make things float.”
I give up, this world is just fucking weird, Levi thought. “Okay, well, that is a good thing to know I guess,” Levi replied with a chuckle. He kissed her again and took a moment to enjoy the smile on her face. She blushed under his gaze, and he felt himself grin even wider. Then she smacked him on the chest.
“Stop distracting me! I really do need to teach you how to use incantations in combat, otherwise Darren or someone else of his sort is going to kick your ass. Raw power isn’t enough to stop everyone,” she announced as she rolled off of him and dragged him to his feet with a bright smile.
It turned out that the first part of learning to use an incantation was drawing mana up into his throat without hurting himself. That part turned out to be amazingly hard. They worked at it for over an hour. Levi had no problem calling up his mana. The regular power was weak, but he could control it. His problem came in trying to tap into the energy they claimed made him a Demon Lord. That intense power tied to his emotions would rise into his throat and then burn. It was like swallowing live coals, and at one point he coughed blood as he tried to hold the energy where he could shape it.
That was when Nox called a halt to their practices. She didn’t like seeing him in that much pain when they didn’t have a way to heal him readily available. Levi gritted his teeth and shook his head. “There’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to get this, right?” he asked. Is there any way I’m missing a step?
“No, but… I mean,” Nox said hesitantly as she looked at him. She took a white cloth out of a pocket and handed it to him so he wouldn’t have to wipe the blood off his lips onto his sleeve. Levi offered her a smile as she frowned at the sight of his pain. “Let’s try it another way, since you’re a homo draconic. Imagine taking a breath in, then picture exhaling the words with your fiery mana behind them? Maybe that will work.”
He raised an eyebrow at the idea. It made a sort of sense visually. Then he stepped away from her and faced the target on the far wall. He felt that ball of churning energy inside of him. It seemed to throb in time with his frustration. He closed his eyes for a moment and focused on the concept of connecting his mana and his breathing. He felt the power flutter as he let his air come in, and then pulse when he exhaled. The movement felt easier and smoother than it had when he pictured it rising in his throat. The pain of that attempt had left his throat more damaged than he wanted to let on, but he was too stubborn to quit. Once he felt he had a grasp on the energy, he focused on the word she had taught him, then whispered, “Ti.”
He felt the exhaled mana and the sound snap together, causing a ball of flames to explode in front of him. A wave of heat washed over his face and he smelled something charred. A quick glance down revealed that his sleeve had caught fire and he slapped it out with a started yelp. Nox was bouncing on her feet and clapping as she looked at him.
“You did it, Levi!” she yelled brightly. She hugged him tight and then stepped back to take in the disgruntled look on his face. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Well, I didn’t expect a fireball to literally explode in my face,” he said with a wry grin. She giggled again and shook her head.
“No, I’m surprised you managed a fireball. Most people only get a pop of sparks the first time they use that incantation. That one summons heat and fire; you have to envision where you want it to go when you speak the incantation. Otherwise, the spell just goes off in the air around your mouth. If I had considered your power, I would have explained that better. I’m sorry,” Nox said.
“It’s okay. So, I just picture where I want the flames to go?” he asked, trying to be sure. When she nodded, he repeated the process. He focused his attention on the space at the end of the room and breathed slowly in and out. “Ti,” he said, envisioning the fireball racing down the hall to explode against the wall.
The word had been harder to get out this time. It was like the mana expanded in his throat and stuck there, not wanting to be spoken. When he had managed to say it, he felt it drain from his center, though the draw wasn’t as deep as he had envisioned. The flames flickered with strange black sparks and it glided toward the target. He couldn’t say flew—the attack was disappointingly slow. When the fireball struck the wall, it popped and left a faint layer of soot on it. He wasn’t tired, exactly, but he felt a strain. He unconsciously raised a hand to rub his throat as he stared at the blackened stones.
“Unless you’re even more powerful than I think, that should have been harder to produce than the last one, right?” Nox asked. She continued speaking when Levi nodded. “You can force the magic with your will, the same as you do when it is raw, but it is harder. If you add other incantation phrases to determine the direction, speed, and force of the spell, the mana pressure goes down. They build a sort of framework around the mana you’re summoning and allow it to flow easier. That is why rituals are used for performing larger feats of magic. The combination of runes and sigils on the ground and spoken incantation allow you to fine-tune your mana and reduce the cost of what you’re trying to do. Most people don’t have the kind of power it takes to simply hurl huge spells with their will alone.”
Levi scratched the back of his neck for a moment as he thought about what she’d described. He would have said he’d grasped the concept from Tawny’s description, but the practical demonstration had already given him a much bigger understanding. “And these words are just something you learn?” he asked, curious as to what made the symbols and incantations work. He saw Nox hesitate for a moment there, and then she shook her head.
“Every dimension seems to have its own language for incantations. You told me that your home didn’t have magic, so I just started teaching you mine. As far as I know, the words themselves are just another way to focus the mana, because each dimension uses a different method to express things. Some use song, some draw with their mana in the air, others use dance, or math. It is about familiarity, intent, and focus,” she offered.
“Wait, so the whole thing is about focusing my mind on the mana in a way that refines my visualization skills?” he asked after a second. When she nodded, he thought back to the way he’d kicked Darren across the room. He hadn’t wanted to kill him, but he had pictured the other man hitting the wall. Levi felt a grin spread across his lips, and he looked at Nox with a new excitement in his eyes. “I think I can get behind this.”
Levi was starting to think all the magic stuff around here was just a complicated way of acting like the Green Lantern. He ran his finger over the engravings on his cane for a moment, considering. “Nah I’d look terrible in green,” he muttered to himself.
He did take a moment to close his eyes as he thought about what Nox had been telling him. If all he needed was to visualize exactly what a spell was meant to do, then say a phrase that encapsulated that—how would he summon magic? He didn’t know Latin, so none of that mumbling and wand waving was going to help him. He’d end up choking to death if he tried that speaking backwards thing from the comics. He definitely wasn’t in a position to try and use math to focus himself. He could keep learning the words Nox was teaching him, which would give him something to fall back on, but he felt like he should try to work up his own system too.
He looked at Nox and nodded. “Let’s keep practicing and see if I can get better. You’ve given me a lot to think about,” he said. As they went to working, she taught him the building blocks of her world’s magic. It started with simple concepts: elemental names and words that were supposed to determine things like how far, how fast, etc. In some ways, the fact that words being gibberish to him made them easier to remember. She had him practice performing a task using that word over and over before they built onto it. By the end of his normal lunch period, he was sweaty and tired, but there were a lot more soot marks on the wall. She had given him the words for ice, stone, lightning, and light as well. He was still rolling the ideas over in his head, but more important, he was hungry. The fact that her stomach was rumbling loudly enough to echo in the room proved it was time for a break.
“Tawny doesn’t want me to go to the cafeteria for a while, got any ideas on where we can get some food?” he asked.
Nox smiled, and a mischievous look crossed her features as she nibbled on her lower lip. Then she clasped her hands behind her back and leaned toward him. “Oh, I think I have a good idea, but you have to promise you’re not going to back out when you see it,” she purred in a sly voice.
Levi raised an eyebrow and laughed softly. “Alright, Nox, let’s see what terrible fate you think I deserve,” he said.
OceanofPDF.com