The Child of Many Worlds

Chapter 15:

That summer any sleeping time not spent on demigod dreams, which were usually horrifying or insightful, I was learning from Nut. By the end of the summer I could easily do basic Norse and Egyptian spells and had learned quite a bit about magic theory. It turns out magic was best defined as an energy source, governed by it's own set of rules and patterns like any other force in our universe.

The Asgardians and other advanced races had been able to create machinery that was capable of using magic, but they also had people who could personally use magic. You see there were five types of people when magic was concerned.

There were normal people who couldn't see or sense magic. They couldn't use magic, but could be effected by it.

People who had the ability to sense or see through the magic were usually called clear sighted or attuned. They were less effected by magic but couldn't properly use it.

Demigods were usually a third class, called inherited attunement, which meant they could see and use a little bit of magic due to their godly blood, compared to normal mortals who couldn't use magic at all.

Most magicians were in the fourth class, those who were naturally well enough attuned to magic that they could manipulate it. It allowed them to preform a large variety of things, from changing shape, to growing flowers, to killing people. However no matter what type of magic it was, Asgardian, Egyptian or other, the main principle was the same. A physical conduit collects and has magic pass through it and with enough will and control the magic can be shaped to create a phenomenon.

And finally there was a fifth class, that was a strange, almost subclass. It consisted of people who interacted with magic strangely. The class was so broad and general there wasn't really a way to truly define it. The closest one could get would be saying it was full of beings who didn't fit into the other four categories well.

I was between the fourth and fifth classes. I could use magic like those in the fourth class, but I could use pure magic. Unlike most magical beings, who used energy that they had to refine into their aspect before they could use it, I could use magical energy from any aspect or even aspect-less energy.

Unlike me who had to spend hours learning every thing about magic, Natasha got the cliff notes version and had been thrilled to learn it. She said having me explain the theory behind it really helped her wrap her head around some of the stuff that had happened recently. The government agency she worked for had been dealing with some strange situations in the past few months. Quite a bit of it was due to higher monster activity, but beings not associated with the Greek pantheon were also appearing.

When the end of the summer came, I was actually excited to go home. I know, weird. But getting away from camp meant I could be in whatever form I wanted and that I could finally see Natasha again. Because even though CHB was apparently less strict than Camp Jupiter, I still couldn't leave to see Nat that often.

I had also convinced my mom to let me take college classes online, even though she insisted I still go to middle school for half the day. She said I needed to learn how to interact with kids around my age, but I don't know why I would want to interact with most of them.

Anyway, I was mostly taking classes from an elderly professor at MIT, who had insisted that I call her Cora. She was incredibly intelligent, but just as kind, she reminded me a lot of Chiron. She didn't treat me differently because of my age, she expected just as much, if not more, of me than from her other students. She said it was because I reminded her of another student of hers, that he had entered when he was 15. The boy had also studied computer science and coding like me, but she refused to tell me his name

If she had been almost anyone else I would have hacked her systems, but I respected her enough to give her, her privacy.

So here I was, sitting on a bean bag, in a class with middle schoolers listening to an inaccurate lecture about the American Civil war, after spending the night debating with a computer genius. The gap was terrifying.