"What do you an with ’true magic’?" Lith said.
"At this point is still too early to tell. Off course if you are too curious you can look at my mind right now, but I don’t know how helpful could it be."
Lith rged his mind with Solus, discovering she wasn’t exaggerating at all. Her mind was full of ’ifs’ and ’buts’, constantly examining facts, revisiting mories, making one speculation after the other before dismissing them.
"What can I do to help you?"
"I need two things. First, all the books about the history of magic you can find. Second, we need to get out of here and do so experints. I’ll explain everything later."
Lith went to Nana, asking her for help.
"Sure, I have a magic history book. But is not such an interesting topic, so I only purchased one covering the last couple hundred years. Is that enough for you?"
Lith shook his head.
"Can you please contact Count Lark and ask him if I can borrow so more from him?"
"You sure are an oddball. First you beg
to teach you magic..."
"I never begged. It’s you who offered to teach
and I accepted."
Nana pretended to not have heard anything and continued.
"... and now that you get an opportunity to practice real magic, you want to bury yourself in history books?"
"After pondering about what you told
and what Magus Lochra wrote, I understood that I need to understand the past to comprehend the present and plan for the future." Lith improvised, digging up an old family motto.
"Makes sense, sort of." Nana conceded. "I’ll contact Lark via the communication amulet and see what I can do."
"The Count has one too?" Lith asked in surprise.
"It’s not so sort of secret or anything. Nobles, rchants, soldiers, no matter your background, as long as you can afford the price, you can get yourself one."
Lith thanked Nana before returning to the study room. The book was very detailed, recording both historical turning points and lore.
Lith didn’t know what they were looking for exactly, so he read carefully, skimming only the parts about conflicts between countries or Magic Associations. Instead he focused on studying the life of influential mages, archmages and Magi.
After spending a few hours researching the past, he had already found a recurring pattern in the rise of the Magi. So were recognized as geniuses at an early age.
But most of them had started being considered diocre at best, never achieving noteworthy results until at so point their talent simply skyrocketed.
It usually happened between the thirty and the forty years of age, well past their supposed pri, when the magical community had pretty much forgot about them.
Of course, the author had no idea of what happened to cause such a turnaround, so he just presented the theories most popular at the ti. Too bad that those paragraphs resembled more a work of fiction than history reports.
According to so rumors, Magus Elista had married in secret the god of magic, while others claid that she had found a mystical amulet from a lost civilization that was able to grant her unlimited mana.
The sa had allegedly happened to Magus Morgania and Frejik. An obscure start, followed by a sudden rise in power and glory, with no plausible explanation outside fairy tales and divine encounters.
"Could this be what Solus was looking for? Maybe what changed them wasn’t so insane stroke of luck, but the discovery of the ’true magic’ Solus ntioned before."
Lith was about to close the book, having ran out of Magi, when Solus stopped him.
"Turn the page, please." Lith had no idea why, but did as instructed. By quickly reading through the page, he noticed it was about so disorders in a faraway place, during which several low ranked mages had died.
Solus had him flipping every page until the book ended.
It was already lunchti, so Lith started walking back ho.
"Did you find anything important?"
"Yes, I think so. I just need us to perform so experints to put my theory to test. If I am right, once you experience the difference between fake and true magic, you’ll be able to understand my reasoning.
I hope that once you do, you can help
fill the holes I am unable to explain."
Lith’s mind and heart were in turmoil, the road seed to stretch endlessly in front of him. Even when he sat around the table together with his family, he was unable to hide his unpleasant feelings.
"Dammit! Dammit all this cr*p! First my real origin, then spirit magic, fusion magic and now this? How many secrets do I have to keep to protect myself from this world, to protect my family from ?
Couldn’t I just find a magical hamr or sothing, granting
godlike powers? Or maybe just be handpicked by an ancient magician, to beco the champion of order just by speaking one frigging word? Why does everything have to be so complicated?
I really love my family, except for Trion, but I can’t be honest with them. At this rate, I will never have friends, a lover, anything. I will be forced to spend my life alone with my secrets."
"No. Not alone." Solus’s voice resounded in his mind, full of kindness and affection. The tower core around Lith’s neck pulsed, releasing gentle waves of mana that enveloped his body like a warm embrace.
Lith’s mood lightened a bit, allowing him to have a pleasant al and conversation with his family, telling each other the respective day’s work.
After doing the dishes, he was finally able to leave ho and go to the Trawn woods. Lith had his own special glade, deep in the woods. A place spacious enough to train his magical skills without endangering trees or wildlife, away from prying eyes.
Lith and Solus double checked their surroundings for intruders or magical beasts. Finding none, Lith could finally take out his grimoire from the pocket dinsion and start morizing the simplest tier one spell he had found in Nana’s book.
"We don’t need sothing powerful or complex for our experints. Only sothing to compare with your own spells. The faster you master it, the sooner we’ll have our answers." Solus explained.
The spell was Piercing Ice, a watered-down version of the Ice Spears spell that Lith used against huge opponents like the Ry or the boars. Its magic word was "Joruna Lituh
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