4 Magic

Six months had passed since the incident and the life of Kol Mikaelson had been ordinary, yet eventful.

He was already ten years old and gotten used to his new body. He even looked through the knowledge library he had in his mind.

Kol mainly focused on Odin's knowledge because it was more complete, and wanted to make it his own.

Everyday, after getting up early in the morning, he would do some morning work out with Mikael.

He even introduced several different exercises like, push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, jogging, running, and several shoulder exercises using iron water-buckets, instead of dumbbells.

Michael dismissed the idea as silly, and thought of these exercises as childish games. But Kol didn't try to convince him otherwise, and just kept working out by himself.

Mikael was a smart man. He could see the benefits of these exercises, but he would never admit it because he was too prideful for his own good.

After the workout, Kol would either go out for hunting with Mikael, or stay back and study magic while accessing Odin's knowledge in his mental library.

He discovered that magic worked according to the laws of the world. So it worked differently in different alternate realities. Just as physical constants and universal frequencies are different in different parallel worlds of a same reality.

Therefore, in order for his spells to actually work here, he needed to first figure out how Magic here worked, and then adjust the spells that he knew from Odin's memories to work in this world.

But that wasn't hard for Kol. After all, Esther was a witch and she never felt the need to hide her Grimoire.

The best time was when she was busy doing housework in the morning, or when she went out after lunch on some afternoons after Mikael came back from hunting.

She was a busy person and always occupied with something, so she couldn't always stay in her room to look after her Grimoire.

Though sometimes Finn would be given homework for the witchcraft he was learning, so he would have the Grimoire.

Esther trusted Finn greatly because that boy was a complete mama's boy. So much so, that at one point, Kol himself considered acting like that, but he still had his pride and dignity, so that idea was thrown out as soon as it came.

Anyway, Kol might be in the body of a ten year old, but he had more than fifty years of experience in his mind, so there was no way Finn could stop him from reading the Grimoire.

At the end of the third month, Kol figured out a way to add the knowledge from Grimoire directly to his memories using Magic. All he needed to do was chant a spell and read the Grimoire once, then he no longer needed to read it ever again.

Kol wasn't just studying this world's Magic, but figuring out how Magic here worked would allow him to use the Magic learnt from Odin's knowledge, after a little adjustment.

Magic was divided into three different categories --- Personal energies, Universal energies and Dimensional energies. All the Magic was built on the concept that all realities could be reshaped by tapping into the existing power that was found in either themselves, the Universe, or other dimensions.

Kol discovered that it was very difficult to connect to any other dimension in this world, so witches mainly used either their personal energies, or channelled the energy of the Universe to fuel their spells.

Kol found that his talent for Magic was unusually high, and he had an almost inhumane amount of personal energies.

He was sure that it didn't come from the original Kol Mikaelson from the TV show, but most likely an extra gift from Barbara, so it only made him even more curious and cautious about her intentions.

Kol did not yet know the specific reason for this advantage of his, but he was still going to use it to its fullest potential before he inevitably figured it out.

From Esther's Grimoire, Kol discovered that witches here could only cast spells with either their personal energies, or by channelling someone else's energy into themselves.

They could also use different celestial phenomenon to channel universal energies, or summon the spirits of their ancestors to channel universal energies into them even without any celestial event. These ancestors sometimes even helped with their spells.

Kol considered these methods, crude. From Odin's knowledge, he knew that he could learn to directly manipulate energy for various effects, including projection of concussive force, creation of force shields, levitation, molecular manipulation of matter, matter-energy conversion, illusion-casting, inter-dimensional teleportation, etcetera.

There was also high level knowledge about enchantments, runes, and arrays. So Kol decided to first learn most of the Magic theories from his knowledge library before dabbling into the Magic of this world and then altering his own Magic to work here.

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Very early in the morning, somewhere in the forest surrounding the settlement in Mystic Falls.

The smell of early morning dew, and refreshing scent of new green plants plus wet soil was now mixed with a metallic smell of blood.

The usual serenity among these tall trees was broken by constant battlecries, sounds of metal hitting metal, and fearful, desperate screams of men. It seemed like a war was being fought here.

Kol held a sword and lightly jogged towards a man coming at him with a sword.

The man did a battlecry and went for a stab. Kol side-steped and turned full circle while passing by him. Then kicked backwards at the man on the back of his knee, which brought him to his knees.

But before he could finish him off, Kol had to duck and avoid a sword-swing from the left meant to take his head off, as he simultaneously drew a knife with his free hand and turned around.

As soon as the sword passed above his head, the side of that man who just swang it was exposed to him, so Kol first stabbed the knife at his armpit from behind, then turned back around and threw the knife at the first man who was still kneeling.

The knife accurately pierced the man's throat from the back. So Kol turned to the second man who was still holding his shoulder in pain, and swang his sword to finish him off.

It takes time to describe it, but it all happened in just a few seconds.

This was an invasion. This group of men were trying to invad their village, so Kol, Mikael and every able man who could fight were fighting to defend their home.

Unfortunately, from their family, only Mikael and Kol had enough skills to participate in a war.

Finn was too focused on witchcraft, Elijah didn't yet have enough skills and Nicklaus was wearing the Starling Necklace given to him by Esther.

Starling Necklace made Nicklaus weak. Esther gave it to him so he wouldn't accidentally kill someone and trigger his werewolf curse, which would make him a werewolf.

Nicklaus was not Mikael's son, but a result of an indiscretion Esther had hidden from everyone. An affair with a werewolf. So Nicklaus had the werewolf gene which Esther desperately wanted to hide.

The invaders had come very early in the morning, hours before the sunrise, and this war had been going on for a couple of hours now, so soon it was about to come to a conclusion.

Three years had already passed and in a couple of months, Kol would be fourteen years old.

He wasn't just participating in this war solely based on his skills with the blade.

Kol was currently using many spells to increase his combat effectiveness, like one increasing his strength and agility to match an average adult, one increasing his senses and intuition, one increasing the processing power of his brain which allowed him to see things in slow motion.

He had even enchanted his sword to be sharper and lighter. It could easily take a man's head off, without much effort. He was practically cheating at this point.

Kol could use many low level spells at the same time, unlike the witches of this world who could only use them one at a time. And his inhumane level of personal energies reserves helped him keep them active for as long as he wanted.

Kol gripped the sword tightly with both hands and deflected an overhead sword-swing to his right, then released his left hand on the sword, and only gripped it with right hand.

Then he swiped the edge of his blade at the inner elbow of enemy's hand that was still holding the sword.

Kol then took half a step forward to the side while simultaneously shifting his sword to his left hand, and used his now free right hand to draw the enemy's knife before he could. Then he swiped the edge of his sword at the enemy's throat while passing him by.

It takes time to describe it, but it happened in only a couple of seconds.

At this point, Kol noticed two more men coming at him at the same time, so he threw the knife that he just drew from the enemy at one of them, successfully nailing him in the chest. But that was not enough to kill him.

So he prepared to finish them off as he charged ahead. Just at this time, all of a sudden, Kol felt a pulling force acting on his body.

His body was moved to the side all by itself. It was like he was gripped by a giant, invisible hand that pulled him aside.

At the same time, at Kol's previous location, an arrow passed by the position where his chest would've been, and instead pierced one of his enemies in the gut.

This was one of Kol's spells. He wasn't naive enough to believe that he could avoid each and every attack on this chaotic battlefield, so he enchanted his leather armour in a way that he would be automatically forced out of the way of any dangerous attack that he was unconscious of.

He initially wanted to make his armour invulnerable, but that didn't work, so this was the alternative.

When Kol landed, he lost his footing, which made him unable to avoid a fast approaching sword meant to pierce the side of his torso, but fortunately for him, all of a sudden the enemy wielding the sword suddenly dropped dead. He was hit in the neck by a throwing knife.

Kol regained his footing and looked in the direction where that knife was thrown from.

It seemed that Mikael just saved his life, and also returned a favour from before when Kol saved his in the beginning of this war.

Kol then looked at the direction where that previous arrow came from. He failed to notice it just now, so it had to be a hidden enemy which needed to be taken care of.

But what Kol saw was a man already dead on the ground just outside some bushes. Noticing the bow loosely held in man's hand, he appeared to be the enemy who just fired that arrow at him. But it also exposed his own position, which resulted in him getting killed by one of Kol's allies from the village.

Moving on, Kol firmly gripped his sword and charged ahead while simultaneously removing an enemy's head on his way. This guy was already on his knees and bleeding, probably thanks to one of Kol's comrades.

The war continued this way and only came to a conclusion half an hour later.

All the enemies were dead, but Kol's village also lost many good men. Such was the cruelty of war. Nobody had truly ever won a war. It was always a competition of who lost the least.

But unfortunately, in this era, war was unavoidable, and somewhat necessary. Especially in this world where monsters from fantasies were real.