The Josh Eckhart Trilogy: Initiation

Chapter 11: Burn the house down

Math classes finished before I knew it, meaning we now had our lunch break, and a spare hour after that. After a quick bite at the cafeteria, where the lunch ladies gave us an extra portion, just because we helped them earlier, we went outside to the courtyard to learn the activators. Victor, Evelina and I sit down at a quiet corner, and focus all our attention on Victor, as he has to work on his magic most. "Close your eyes Victor, and focus on the word ignis." Evelina tells him, but when the word ignis leaves her lips, a small burst of flames ignites from her hand. She quickly shakes it away so Victor doesn't see it. Victor already had his eyes closed, so he didn't even see it. Evelina and my eyes connect for a moment, and she mouths 'woops' to me. "Imagine in your head the letters of ignis, and imagine tendrils of mana flowing over it. Connecting it to your mana pool." One of Victor's eyes open, and his eyebrow shoots up. "What? That's how I learned it, and it works, so stop looking at me like an idiot, and just do it!" He shrugs and closes his eyes again. At the same time I'm thinking how can I imagine the tendrils if I don't know how or where my mana pool is? "Can you see it Victor?" she asks. Victor nods his head, "Okay, now, you're going to say the word out loud, and try to imagine that more mana is flowing from your pool to the letters, which each letter you pronounce, that letter is engulfed in mana." Victor takes a deep breath, and slowly says the word ignis, you can see he's really concentrated on visualizing the mana flow. When the last letter is said, we can feel a small rise in heat around us, but there's no flame in Victor's hand. He opens his eyes, and sees that to. "Don't worry Vic, you'll get the hang of it, try it a couple of times, but relax, you're so tense on making it work, maybe that's holding you back?" I remark to him. A slightly angry look crosses his face, "for you it should be easy, you already excel at everything." I can hear the frustration in his voice, but I'm not so sure this will work as easily for me. "Okay, I'll try", and I sit down against one of the pillars. I close my eyes and picture the letters of ignis in my mind. How am I going to imagine that in my mind, if I don't even feel where my mana pool is, or how it is shaped? But I'm not going to disappoint myself and my friends, I'm still going to try! The letters are now floating before my mind's eye, crawling with blueish tendrils, and feed from a lake of blue mana. I open my mouth, and easily say the word ignis, feeding more mana to each letter in my mind. As I say the last letter, I imagine the word to explode in a ball of fire, and I open my eyes, both my friends are looking at me weirdly. "What?" I question. "Well, where's your fire? Even Victor heated the air around us." Evelina replies, while Victor snickers. "Haha, finally something the almighty Josh can't do out of the box!" "Shut up Vic, Evelina, it's your turn." I'm a bit outdone. This is the first time that something magic related didn't came easily. All other magical actions Archie asked from my I could do right away, like it was second nature to me. So why not this? Evelina is looking at me with one eyebrow raised, "my turn? Okay." And she turns her palm up. "ignis" she almost whispers, and a blue ball of fire bursts into life above her hand. "Heh" is her only response, and she snuffs the fire out. "You guys are going to need to practice." And she gets up, and walks back inside. Leaving me and Victor behind baffled. Victor turns to me, "What was that?" I shrug, "Seems Eve already has it figured out." I mean, she's good at magic, but I didn't expect this. "Come on Vic, your turn again, this time try not to force it, but relax more."

After five tries each, Victor has managed to to start a small fireball on his palm, but lacked the ability to keep it going. But what's worse is that I didn't even get a fire going, let alone warming up some air around us. I don't know what's wrong, I never had any problems starting a fire before. Maybe it has something to do with the way I'm imagining the mana in my head. "Vic, what kind of image do you use for your technique?" I ask my friend, maybe if I can improve on the way he's using. Hell, I would be happy if I managed to warm up some air, it would be an improvement. "I just see what you and Evelina where talking about. Big letters that spell ignis, and bluish snake like tendrils sneaking around it like snakes, sprouted from a pool of blue mana."