Magic Arc- kid!verse

These two chapters are dedicated to my two biggest fans, KCS and PutMoneyInThyPurse, especially PMITP, who I think must be my trans-dimensional twin.


The Magus referred to it as 'meditations', but the magelings all called it 'pain lab'.

A fundamental step in fully controlling one's magic was the ability to mentally control one's own pain. Exercises in maintaining pain could, in theory, strengthen one's ability to command their magic. Mostly though, it used torture as a form of character building and tested a student's resourcefulness.

Holmes, like with many of his other subjects, had little difficulty. He used a complicated internalized, mental discipline where he accepted the pain as his body's way of telling him that something was wrong and with that acknowledgement he could set aside the worst of it from his conscience mind and maintain it elsewhere. He imagined it like creating a box made of hard crystal inside his mind and carefully placing his pain inside it where he could watch it, but was ultimately kept out of his way. He felt some discomfort, but it was certainly bearable.

Watson, on the other hand, was suffering miserably. He lay on the mat next to Holmes', convulsing every so often as the pain grew worse and worse. He had attempted a type of physicalization where he molded his pain into a physical presence, in this case a flame, in order to help him focus his mental control. As long as he kept the flame burning low, the pain was at a minimum. The higher the flame became, the more pain he experienced. At the moment his flame was at medium height, though it erratically blazed higher every time he attempted to lower it. It flickered and brightened cruelly until Holmes could bear it no longer.

"Watson," he whispered urgently, his voice lost among the whimpers and soft moans of pain emanating throughout the room, "let me help you."

Watson shook his head stubbornly, tears leaking out of his eyes.

"Give me some of it," Holmes insisted.

"Y-you'll get in trou-touble" Watson gasped past a spasm of pain.

"It doesn't matter. Think of it as another method of maintaining pain. Give me your hand."

Watson hesitated, but after transferring the flame to his left, he shakily reached out his trembling hand towards Holmes'. Holmes grasped onto it immediately as Watson opened a threading link to his pain. For a moment, Holmes was overwhelmed with the keen and acrid sensation of Watson's pain. No wonder Watson could not contain it, he thought, it was nearly intolerable. Holmes worked swiftly along with Watson to create a wave-like sensation between the two of them that degraded the sensory perception of the pain.

So wrapped up in their joint effort at managing each other's pain, they did not notice that as the flame got lower, the sounds of suffering around the room became quieter.

~*~

"What happened in pain lab today?" one of the Magus addressed his colleague, who swept aside her powder blue robe to sit beside him.

"I wish you wouldn't call it that. It sounds horrid, like we're torturing them in the spirit of experimentation."

"That's exactly what we are doing."

The Magus sighed. "Davies detached her mind. She will make a good necromancer someday. I had to reduce the level of Crawley's. I don't think he will ever make it past a second-rate conjurer. Roderick used earthcrafting to spread his pain into the ground to lessen the full impact of it. Holmes, of all people—"

"He showed signs of empathic ability."

"Yes! It was no surprise that Watson was picking up increments of everyone else's pain, but Holmes as well! He is the one I would least expect it from."

"It seems to me that there is more to him than his dizzying intellect."

"They make a good team."

"Yes, I look forward to the Games in the spring."

A/N: I just might make Infinite Universes into a full-out Magic Arc series. I thought I would run out of ideas by now, but they just keep coming. We'll see how long I can keep it up.