6 Magic Training

Now that I know I have an innate talent for Gravity magic, I've gotta practice. I mean, it's so fun. So far I know I can float, but what else can I do? Let's start with standing on a wall.

I walk up to the wall and start trying to walk up it. It was a little hard at first because my body naturally tried to stop me from walking face-first into a wall, but as soon as I put my foot on the wall it stayed there as if I was standing on the floor. I took another step, than another, than another, now I was standing halfway up the wall.

"This is so cool!" I wonder what else I can do? I sit down on the ceiling and start reading some other books about Gravity magic.

"Okay, so a basic spell to Gravity magic is... 'Float'." I cast 'Float' on the book I'm holding and drop it. The book starts to fall but stops 10 centimeters before it hits the ground. "I see, float is a basic spell, thus it doesn't have much power."

I experiment with other spells and this is what I find. Simple spells like 'Float', 'Gravity Up', and 'Gravity Down' are weak and the most basic type of Gravity spells. What they do is obvious by the name, but they aren't that strong and only have small effects, which earns them the title of basic.

Second, using spells too much leads to mental fatigue. Unlike in video games, there is no numerical way to measure how much more spells you can cast. No MP bar. However, a concept similar to mana exists. It is called mental power. MP for short. (When I first saw that all I could think was how funny of a coincidence that is.)

Running out of MP leads to something called mental fatigue where you can become exhausted or even die if it's too intense.

Using magic you are used to or have a talent for means using less MP for spells. And the stronger the spell the more the MP. It seems I can use Gravity magic intermediate spells like 'Levitate' indefinitely as long as I'm not casting any other spells. My MP goes down slower than I recover it.

However for using spells in other categories, that is another story. If I try to cast 'Light', the most simple Light magic spell, I can sustain it easily, however intermediate spells are another story. Most elves can sustain Light magic's simple spells for a long time, but the MP cost goes up exponentially from there. It's like running versus walking. You can travel a further distance walking than running because walking is energy efficient, but running is faster.

Gravity magic is convenient though... I wonder if I could teleport with it? Gravity is caused by something's mass and speed bending space itself. So if I can bend space, which is essentially what gravity is, could I make the distance between two points shorter? Worth a shot.

I focus and imagine bending the space between me and my kitchen and creating a door in which I can travel from one to the other. Suddenly a hole appears, in which I can see the kitchen, but then it quickly disappears. I fall onto my bed exhausted.

"It seems it's possible but it takes so much out of me! Ugh! I'm so tired!" As I fall asleep someone walks up from behind the door, having seen my experiment.

"What was that? Did Jess just open up a portal to the kitchen? I swear that's what I saw..." - ?

As I wake up from my sleep, I'm greeted by the sight of my little brother sitting in my desk chair. I haven't seen him since the Shift but he doesn't look a lot different, other than the ears and blond hair of course. "What are you doing here?"

"I saw what happened. How did you do that?"

"You mean the whole teleportation thing? I was trying to see if I could bend space with Gravity magic to teleport into the the kitchen. I ended up making a portal, but it closed too quickly. Maybe if I just displace my location it will work... next time I'll try..." While I go off on a tangent, it annoys my brother and he gets impatient.

"You realize you just created a spell for something that requires magic machinery to operate? Right?"

"Uh... well... I was just experimenting mixing my knowledge of gravity with the magic and this happened."

"What kind of crazy sister are you?"

Getting called that is gonna take some time to get used to. Forgot I'm a girl now. I wonder if I'll be able to use magic to fix that one day. Magic is unexplainable after all. Maybe I can use it to fix an unexplainable problem.

"Hey! I'm not crazy!"

"Then stop floating, can you learn to stand on the ground for once? I get it's 'more comfortable' for you but come on!"

Wait... I'm floating again! I guess it has become a habit of mine. I didn't even notice. It is quite fun to float though... I did hear that people with innate talents often have personalities that match their talent. Like people with Water magic innate talents being calmer. Maybe that has to do with why I float so often and why I enjoy it?

"And if you don't wanna float too, leave me alone! Jeez!" I push him out by changing gravity around him to push him out the door, then close the door with the same technique. I know people with innate talents have amazing control over their element, but my control over Gravity magic has to be abnormal.

Later that day, I start to feel hungry so I start to float out the door, when I feel the similar sensation of passing through a veil, and in an instant I'm back inside the weird magic laboratory from before in Magic Studies class.

"It seems a visitor has arrived."

"Who are you, where am I!?!" I yell at this mysterious voice.

"You are in the middle of nowhere, my own personal bubble. For how you got here, I do not know."

"That makes no sense! This is the second time today, there has to be some reasoning behind this."

"Looks like your time here is up, maybe I will be able to answer your questions if you wonder in here again."

"Wait!" And in an instant, I'm floating outside my door again with no idea of what just happened. What is connecting me to that weird lab? And why does it keep happening as I pass through doors?

I decide to think about it later since there isn't much I can do about it and head through the hallway to the kitchen. I float up to the top shelf, grab some snacks, and start eating them at the table. I feel like since the Shift, my personality has been changing. Before I wouldn't just casually float around like this, even if I had the ability to. Heck, I wasn't doing it earlier today. I wonder if the Shift affected me more than I thought?

I mean, floating just comes so naturally to me. Good thing I stayed on my feet during school today, it would be weird seeing a high-school girl just floating around to her classes. Still weird to refer to myself as that though.

As I get back to my room, I sort the books I've finished reading from the ones that I am currently reading and continue to study up on magic. If I am going to keep using it, I want to know all I can about it. That is only the most logical thing to do, right?

I learn some more applications for gravity magic while reading the book. First is that, Gravity magic can be used to change something's center-of-mass by changing where gravity is pushing down on the object or person.

It can also make things be crushed under their own gravitational pull... that one seems dangerous. I could do a lot of damage with that spell, so lets stay away from it for now. Also, couldn't I theoretically create a black hole like that? Only a very temporary one, like less than a second. I don't know where you could get the mass to create a stable one.

I also learned that Gravity magic has a effective range, and going beyond that makes the expense for using the magic increase. The effective range is around ten meters so I'll have to keep that in mind. While I can go past that, the amount of MP required will increase and saying that magic is my lifeline, I don't want to run out of MP.

Finally, I learned that it is possible to mix multiple elements to get different results. For example, mixing Fire and Water magic can make steam, or Earth and Fire magic to get lava. These are called hybrid spells. I wonder what I could combine with gravity magic? I could make boiling water by increasing the pressure of water. After all, a boiling point is determined by heat and pressure.

Maybe I could combine Earth and Gravity magic to make diamonds by getting carbon from the ground with Earth magic and compressing it with Gravity magic? I could do the same with Air magic and Gravity magic, using CO2, separating carbon from oxygen, and compressing the carbon. That is definitely for a different time though. It's 10 o'clock and I have school tomorrow.