fandomhigh | Fun with Magic | Monday, 2nd period

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magic for dummies

Fun with Magic | Monday, 2nd period

Class today had been handwavily asked to meet in the Danger Shop, where they were greeted by a beaming Bob. Bob loved the Danger Shop. He could touch things here. Sort of.

"Today, we paint," Bob said, grinning. He programmed up a bunch of sticks that looked like paintbrushes, but although the ends were colored, they had no actual paint in them. He picked one up and waved it through the air, leaving a trail of blue glowing behind it. Then he reached out with one hand and smudged it. "Like so. Enjoy!"

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Creatively!

Prince Sidon

Norman Babcock

Manfred Bernardo

Yang Xiao Long

Have fun painting all over with light!

Norman wasn't really much of a painter, but he couldn't help but admit that this... this was pretty cool.

And maybe a little reminiscent of what Bob had showed him the other week, at the magic box. So he was smiling as he experimented with a greenish light he'd picked up, doodling little squiggles in mid air, trying to re-capture the likeness of the spirit drafon that he'd seen in Sidon's world.

It needed some work, maybe...

Bob stepped up nearby, drawing a knight in golden light with his finger. "Why use a brush?" he asked pointedly.

"Because..." Norman glanced at the brush, and then looked at Bob, and then back at his own hand.

...

"Because..." He still felt weird and uncertain about experimenting with magic in front of people. Because he wasn't even very good at what Bob had showed him yet. Because the front end of his dragon would be long faded and gone by the time he got to the butt.

Because.

"I wasn't thinking," he said, instead, and turned to set the brush back down again. "Sorry."

Bob made a rude noise. "Of course you were. You were thinking you were nervous; don't be. You'll never get any better if you don't practice."

He waved a hand at the knight, and it lifted its sword and brandished it.

He liked to set a high bar.

Norman chewed on his lip for a second, and then when he stopped doing that, he held his breath instead and lifted his hand.

Make the light visible. Bring it out, it wants to be seen.

Right. Just right here, in front of his classmates, that would be fine. It was just light. Nobody could call him crazy for light that everyone could see, and they were all occupied with their own anyway, weren't they?

He reached out and finished the dragon's tail, long and sinuous, a dragon that looked more like it had come out of ancient Asian lore than something that might throw down against a knight, and then he considered the crude drawing he'd made. The head was glowing so much more vidily than the tail, which looked, appropriately, as though he'd switched paint halfway through and couldn't quite get the two to match. And he had no idea how to make his dragon do more than just sit there, a moment in time facing down a knight that was capable of moving forward in it.

He looked at the knight, and then to Bob in question.

Bob smiled. "Once you have it drawn, grab it with your mind. Feel the magic you built it with - it's different from the air around it. It has a current to it, it will push back ever so slightly. Grab it, and move it."

"A current?" Norman looked at the faintly glowing light, lifting his hand experimentally to see if he could seek out that push. He nudged at it, and the dragon seemed to twitch.

He blinked.

Bob grinned briefly before controlling it to a pleasant, encouraging expression. "Less like electricity, more like water. Give it a channel to run into, and it will."

Norman squinted for a moment, as though trying to envision such a channel. Really, so much of what he could do boiled down to sight, after all. And while he couldn't see it, he could imagine it, the dragon as he'd seen it, winding its way across a Hyrule sky.

He reached out again, this time tracing a wave shape, and the drawing complied, writhing in place in serpentine movements until it settled into the new shape.

"There, you see?" Bob said. "You can do it. Learn to control those currents more precisely and you've taken your first steps."

"First steps," Norman echoed, and nodded, tentatively. "First steps to magic. That's..."

He tried not to flail around, there.

"This is still so weird."

Not bad. Weird.

"A pleasant weird, I hope," Bob said. "Learning you're capable of more than you thought can be daunting, but it's always worth exploring."

He paused.

"Safely and ethically exploring."

Do as he said, not as he did, Norman.

"... Is there an unethical way to make lights from your fingers?"

Norman. Norman. You had literally rescued a bunch of zombies from eternal damnation.

"I can think of a few," Bob said. No, he wasn't going to elaborate. "But it's best to learn good habits from the start, regardless."

Norman tilted his head at Bob curiously. He didn't doubt the man, but now he was curious.

There was clearly a story somewhere in there.

"Well, then I guess I'm lucky I've got someone to tell me that."

"A good teacher is one of the best things a young wizard can have," Bob said modestly.

"... Wizard?"

Really, that part was probably kind of a given in the same way that Aggie had been a witch, but it was... weird... taking that word and appending it to himself, as though he somehow had some kind of potential beyond just seeing the dead and talking to them.

Aggie had.

None of this train of thought was making him look any less dazed, though.

"Would you prefer 'mage'?" Bob asked. "Or given your inclinations, likely 'necromancer', although that is by no means certain."

There was a long pause before Norman replied again. Little gears were ticking in his head as he picked apart the implications of all of those words. His father would be less likely to blow his top off if they settled on 'mage' instead of 'wizard,' if only because one sounded way more... crazy fantasy obsession... than the other. Then again, Bob wasn't wrong. His inclinations did lean far more strongly toward the dead.

But what Aggie had done to those people...

He chewed on his lip.

"What's the difference?"

Maybe there was something more to necromancy than eternal torment?

"The difference?" Bob asked. "The difference between a wizard and a mage is predominantly which world you come from and which word you're comfortable using. A necromancer is a more specialized form of wizard, one who works primarily with the forces of life and death."

He eyed Norman. "Given your abilities, necromancy would be a logical step, but I won't lie - it doesn't have the best of reputations everywhere." He shrugged. "Regardless, the basics of magic," he tapped at the light streams they'd made, "are the same to start, no matter where you intend to go with them."

"It isn't like my reputation has always been that great already," Norman noted, looking at his dragon, a pale green haze as the light that had been made to create it started to slowly drift apart. "I guess I'll learn more about either as I go...?"

He had a sneaking suspicion that he knew which one he was basically hard-wired for.

"You will," Bob confirmed. His own knight was drifting a little as well, though not nearly as much as Norman's. "Fortunately, I have been a teacher for centuries, and I began as a very good necromancer."

Well, that was interesting.

"Tell me about it?" He tried not to sound too eager, but there was somebody standing in front of him who had used magic that was entirely in tune with what he was born to see and experience. It was hard, after having only his crazy great uncle as an example of what he could do, to not leap at the possibility of finding out more. "What was it like?"

"Fascinating," Bob answered. "Gratifying. Rewarding. Right up until I went too far and wound up bound to my skull for eternity. Magic is boundless and wonderful, but also very dangerous."

Now Norman was chewing on his lip.

"If I ask you how far is too far...?"

Because he really had no intention of being bound to his skull for eternity, either.

"Raising the dead is generally frowned upon, at least in my world," Bob said. "Once a person is entirely dead, returning them fully to life, body and soul, is as close to sacrilegious as you can get, considering most wizards don't follow any one religion."

He gave Norman a serious look. "Whether it carries similar consequences in your world or not, it is certainly never something to be considered lightly."

Norman gave that information some consideration that was about as serious as the look that Bob was giving him. He pulled in a breath, and then exhaled.

"I don't think I've ever considered... that," he replied. "I've never even really wanted to. Maybe because even the dead aren't necessarily completely gone. Not from where I'm standing."

He blew out a little breath. The last of his dragon, or at least the last of the dragon that he'd created without the brush, faded away.

"I've seen souls trapped in ruined bodies before," he added, after a pause. "It's not something I think I could ever bring myself to do."

"That is a very good point of view," Bob said. "Remember that, and you'll be fine."

Norman nodded a little bit, turning his attention back to the lingering glow of the green paint from the brush.

"It's not something I'm likely to ever forget."

It really, really wasn't.

He's around, possibly painting himself.

Who Bob may be prodding a bit with this exercise.

Norman totally saw that prodding, Bob. But he was taking it as a challenge, if anything. Which he'd totally lean hard into... when maybe there wasn't an audience.

And now I head off to build an org chart in PowerPoint entirely using VBA. Whee?

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Fun with Magic | Monday, 2nd period

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OOC!