Don’t play with fire

A lot, apparently.

The garden where he practiced the spell was on fire, the house behind the garden too, was on fire. Caras, now safe inside the pond, had been on fire.

All of this began a few hours ago. Robert had first read how to cast spells, instead of being like in H*rry P***er where you waved your wand and spoke the magic words, the magic here was an act of will and focus.

You had to understand how to shape mana into an idea, first inside your head and then let it out in the world. A fire spell, for example, consisted of producing an image of vibrating the atoms inside the air and generating heat until combustion.

That's why the magic book he had found closely resembled a physics book, sure, you can imagine a building in flames, but can you imagine the reaction of different materials to heat? The more understanding you had, the less mana you would use. The less you understood, the more you had to push in the world and let it do its own thing, mana would generally understand the idea of what you wanted to achieve and would figure it out, as long as you had enough.

This made Robert realize that mana had to be at least slightly alive or conscious. Maybe as it aggregated, so did its ability to examine and solve problems, like nerve cells clumping into brains.

The idea was fascinating and Robert pinky promised himself he would research it in the future, or grab a few nerds and let them explore it. He was a busy man and had stuff to do, people to kill, and as soon as he learned how to make fire, stuff to burn.

He read twice the chapter on he was supposed to image vibrating atoms for the spell to be effective, and then how to drive it out of his head.

Once he memorized it, not much of a challenge for an educated modern man such as Robert, he untied Caras, and together they went into the garden.

Previously Caras had to be tied in case magic was so easy to use that he could glance at the spells and become a threat. The idea now seemed absurd, first, because humans without a proper mana collecting tool would be unable to cast anything.

Second, because Caras was an old goat and Robert very much doubted he would be able to reconstruct his whole mental image of matter and energy.

The pudgy black man had lost a lot of weight in the past month, abuse and forced labor really did him good. Robert pondered when he would be thanked for his service, however, he knew better than to expect gratitude from those that didn't understand his intentions.

Robert sat Caras behind him, the experiment would be a great chance to remind him who wore the pants in this relationship.

"Master, please sit down here and don't disturb me, I have a surprise in store for you." He said with a wink.

Autumn had already arrived, the seasonal gardeners hired by Caras in the past came precisely like clockwork and had gathered a giant pile of dried leaves in the yeard.

Robert focused on it, feeling his pyromania stir inside he wasted no time and imagined the center of the pile, he imagined the air getting as excited as he was, vibrating faster and faster until with a spark it burst into flames.

Now, Robert had never considered himself much of a botanic expert, so it is understandable why he didn't know that the leaves in his backyard had an unusual content of oil, like a certain tree back on earth loved by koalas.

This is why, when he pushed the idea out of his little bump-horns, he couldn't imagine what would come next. The horns, just like those described in the book were a great magical tool that gathered and mixed together mana and the idea.

A moment later, Robert's wish came true, and he saw smoke come out of the pile. The next second he was thrown backward by an explosion. The oil had ignited causing rapid combustion that devoured oxygen inside the pile and created a sack of hyper heated gas that caused an explosive depressurization.

Burning leaves scattered in the area igniting the trees of the former, also rich in oil that followed the example of the pile. Sap and oil inside the trees violently burned and caused the trees to explode scattering even more burning leaves.

The sky had turned crimson and black, and burning leaves carried by the wind ignited the trees in the nearby gardens and caused some of them that shared the same predisposition to carrying oil to cause a fiery chain reaction.

As explosion after explosion rocked the usually peaceful gardens, the burning hell outside somehow managed to spread to a few chimneys. Usually houses with chimneys would hire chimney sweepers to clean up the accumulated creosote, the families that had been holding back in this regard would soon receive a grim reminder.

(Creosote is a tar-like black substance that accumulates after normal use in chimneys, it is highly inflammable.)

The ignition of Creosonte didn't raise heads as much as entire gardens exploding like fireworks, who would pay attention to a flaming chimney amid a war zone?

Quickly the bricks making up most chimneys started cracking and allowing more oxygen to get in, intensifying the heat and allowing the fire to go down the chimney pipe destroying the house on its way.

(fun fact: chimneys are made to resist heated smoke, not fire.)

Robert pushed his body up and looked at the world burning around him. His horn kept twitching and growing at a crazy speed, the tips had already poked past his hairline and showed no sign of stopping soon. He coughed a little blood that had infiltrated his lungs and scratched his head.

"Hey Caras, you think they gonna blame this on me?" Robert asked without even looking away from the fire. When no one answered he finally turned around and couldn't see his prisoner anywhere, "sneaky little man, I'll deal with you later." He smiled and went inside.

The second floor was being devoured in flames, but as heat tended to go up it would take a little while more before it spread to the first floor. Robert grabbed the book in the study room and leisurely went to the exit.

He could some window-shattering explosions, caused by pipes bursting under the heat and then exploding when the oxygen in the air mixed with the gasses carried. Without the oxygen no matter what, the gas wouldn't ignite, this and other safety measures in place prevented the fire from spreading down the pipe and igniting the whole city in a firework.

When Robert left the house and saw the crowd of people running around in misery and dread he cackled madly, however, inside him a voice kept telling him how wrong this was.

Robert, distracted by the voice didn't notice Caras coming back to the house and certainly didn't notice the peace enforcers with him. In a matter of moments, three guns were aimed at him while he was distracted.

"That's him! He is the demon causing all this, shoot him!" Caras's voice broke Robert out of his trance. He noticed the guns and his old pal but merely chuckled.

"I told you what fate had in store if you tried to betray me and yet you dared to run to the cops? tsk tsk." Robert made a disapproving sound and shook his head.

He had learned only one magic trick, but it was a useful one. He imaged a spark inside a bullet case going off and destroying the gun from inside.

However, the people around him were not gonna give him time. Had he been any other perp or suspect they would have held their shots and attempted arrest.

However, they were scared stiff by what they saw. Blood around the lips from when the explosion made him cough blood, slightly charred clothes, horns poking through the hair, and finally, the fire in the sky painted everything in a conspicuous red hue.

In front of such a demon apparition, they hesitated no longer than a second before opening fire. BAM BAM BAM.

9 bullet holes appeared all over his chest, sending Robert sprawling on the floor. He didn't feel pain, just death approaching once again.

"Fuck," he whimpered. The reason why mages chanted their spell had a strong mnemonic reason. If every time you needed someone to drop dead you had to form a full fantasy of him dying would the idiot just wait for you to finish?

That's why by repeating certain activation keywords, mages would create a mental shortcut to their spells. And be able to cast a spell by indicating a target and saying the magic words.

Wouldn't be much use to Robert anymore now tho. At least not in this life.

He watched the red sky as he became paler due to blood loss and died while thinking. "Beautiful."