Chapter 9: 07. Practicing magic

Now that we are finally moving, I feel liberated and free while steaming down the tracks and through the mountains at speeds between 30 and 65 mph while watching the mountains and forests flying by. Meanwhile, I can see Anya looking around in awe at the sights and our speed, even running up and down the train cars in her excitement at seeing all the new things. She is looking a lot better now that we aren't trapped in that cave and barely surviving. Thankfully she had also gotten pretty skilled at hunting, even taking out enemies by herself with the bow and arrow we got from the slavers before when we had to slow down to around 10 mph on parts of the mountain range. Most of her hits were lucky shots, but she's been improving the whole time while I managed to grab a few of their corpses with telekinesis as we passed by so we could cook them. To cook, I used telekinesis to hover it over the coals in my boiler for a very fast bit of cooking and smoking of the meat. It wasn't the tastiest food, but it would do. 

Now that she had been practicing with the bow a while, with us unable to retrieve most of the arrows, we were running a little low on ammunition, so I decided to see if she had any talent in magic. I don't know how magic works in this world, but I read enough novels to know different possible methods of using it. Also, Anya said at one point that her mother was a healer and used magic to do so, so she should have some magic potential herself if my theory is correct. I just hope she does have talent in it, since I am not really wanting to be the one to crush someone's hopes right after getting them up.

"Hey Anya, have you ever tried to use magic before or did your mom ever tell you how it works?"

She gave a pained smile "Sadly no, mother said she would teach me how to use it when we saved enough money to leave the village. I didn't understand why at first but...I do now. She did heal me a couple of times though, so it's not like I've never seen magic used before."

"Okay, well first off, what kinds of magic are you most interested in?"

"Hmm, probably Nature, Water, and Healing magic. I just don't know how useful it would be?"

"That can be extremely useful, and water magic can be molded into ice magic just like how nature magic and earth magic can. They are so similar to each other that you can use the knowledge of one magic to complement knowledge of the other. You just have to know how to use it and have a good enough imagination." I am really hoping I'm right about this, because I am just winging it at this point.

"Alright, so first try to feel for an energy inside of you that moves around your whole body. It might be easier if you close your eyes and focus. When you are ready try to do a waterball, make sure to imagine a ball of water forming where you want it to while you channel your energy. Also, don't get frustrated if you don't get it on your first try."

"Okay, I got this!" She looked pretty pumped up, excited to try out magic for likely the first time ever. She closed her eyes and waited, but nothing happened.

"I'm not feeling anything, no energy at all." 

"Hmm, try seeing if you can feel energy in the air, it should be similar to the energy you feel when I share skills with you."

After a while of trying, I saw a small ball of water appear above her outstretched hand. It was tiny, only about a millimeter wide, but it was there.

"You got it, nice!" As soon as she opened her eyes, she lost focus and the waterball fell down onto her hand. 

"I did it? Really?! YES!" I could see her excitement bubbling over as she jumped up and down before taking off running. It took her about an hour of running up and down the cars and climbing over anything in sight before she finally exhausted herself.

"Are you okay? Finally calmed down now?" It took everything in my power to stop myself from laughing at the sight of Anya sprawled out on one of the passenger seats in the foremost train car. Since I got no response, I thought of a better way to wake her back up.

*Thunk* (First 20 seconds)

"EEP! Too cold, shut the window!"

"Hahahahaha, you awake now?" She glared at me, arms crossed. 

"Yes, thank you very much. That was completely unnecessary, you know."

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"Oh, was it? Okay, I'll be sure to wake you up with my whistle next time then."

The look on her face was priceless and I again barely kept myself from laughing, but I cut her off before she could reply.

"Now! Let's get back to magic practice, since we already missed out on the last hour of it."

At that, she looked a little guilty before changing to resolve.

"What's next?"

"That's more like it. You need to work on your imagination, since that is how your spells come to fruition and your magic knows what you want it to do. Magic is malleable, meaning it can take any form you want it to. How you tell it what to do it by properly imagining what effect you want your magic to have and the form you want it to take. It might also help if you create a chant for your spells to help you imagine the process. You also might want to learn a bit about science, at least for the elemental spells like water and ice magic."

"What's science?"

"It's the study of how the world works and why things react the way they do when something else affects it. Like how water doesn't just come out of nowhere, it's in the air and all around us. Water is made up of small balls you can't see with the naked eye and float around in the air. By calling upon these small balls of water and bringing them together in the air, you can squeeze it out like a rag and have a large amount of water to use that you got from all around you. That's why sometimes the air feels humid or dry, it all depends on how much water is in the air around you."

"Woah, that's cool! Let me try it!" Her eyes sparkling with a new ferocity.

"O' water surrounding me, come together and do as I command. Create a ball and hit my enemies as hard as you can, WATERBALL!"

While not the coolest sounding chant, it did its job and she managed to make a waterball the size of a basketball before launching it out the window and towards a tree we were passing by. She surprisingly already managed to figure out that she can control the spell mid-flight and smacked her spell directly into it, splashing apart harmlessly. I doubt it would do much against enemies, but we have a long time to work on it, and she has already made extremely good progress. I'm just glad I didn't butcher my advice and make her lose hope.

"I did it!" she looked super happy but extraordinarily tired. I'm guessing she used up a lot of mana, so she definitely needs to rest before doing anything else.

"Don't even try it, you need to rest first!" She lowered her hand sadly as I said as such, looking like I just gave her the biggest betrayal of her life.

"But I need to practice! I just got started and I need to get better."

"You look like you're about to collapse, the magic isn't going anywhere, so get some rest first and continue when you recover your mana. Do you want to injure yourself so badly from overusing mana that you can't ever use it again? Heck, if you overuse it too much, you might even die! I am not about to let you do that to yourself, so I'm sorry but no more magic for today. We will continue tomorrow."

Thankfully that seemed to settle her down for a while. The next morning and for the following week, we kept experimenting with different kinds of magic and got her relatively proficient in water and ice magic. The nature and healing magic will have to wait until we have a way to actually practice it. It's a little hard since there are only dangerous monsters and mountains covered in snow around here. I just hope these peaceful days can continue.

A/N: I will get the second of the promised chapters out sometime tonight, hopefully before midnight. I have been suffering from some writer's block, so if you all have a certain direction you want this story to take in the coming chapters I would be happy to listen. Thank you for all your support and I will see you again next chapter.

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