"Is that the best you've got?" taunted Twilight, though she was obviously impressed with his abilities. "I can do better than that in my sleep!" She had also apparently been taking lessons from Rainbow Dash; either that, or she'd read some book titled The Beginner's Guide to Goading or something of the sort. Brandon would have to tease her about that later.
Brandon concentrated again, visualizing the energy in the magic-rich atmosphere coalescing into something substantial. Both of his hands began to glow, a bright blue-green to contrast his mentor's darker purple. Twilight stared in awe once more; the sight still amazed her, even after numerous practice sessions. Humans had two magical focal points, their hands; this gave them the enormous advantage of being able to perform multiple spells at once, though it took a lot of skill (more than Brandon had accrued). It also increased their efficiency if they used both hands to cast one spell, meaning Brandon could cast the same spell as her, but use less energy. It was beyond her how they could have given up that kind of potential.
Brandon was a quick learner; then again, as he had reminded her, he had the most talented magician in Ponyville to teach him. He'd already mastered basic and intermediate levitation, as well as magic manipulation, and he'd managed to grasp several other concepts, even if he hadn't actually put them into practice yet.
While the young stall- er, "boy" was attempting to perfect the aforementioned fields, Twilight had seen him do some things on accident that she had never seen done before in her life. Naturally, she was documenting everything, and she could barely keep herself focused on the task at hand, so excited was she to research these new spells. She hoped she could even use them; she suspected that some spells were unique to unicorns, and consequently there were probably other spells that only humans could cast, though it was more than likely from Brandon's description of his race that they were lost to history. And that's just how I like it, she thought. It's like when I researched the Mare in the Moon! I'll be able to re-document everything, for the first time in... well, however long it's been since humans used magic!
She blinked, and then refocused on Brandon. That second's distraction, however, had caused her to miss the fact that Brandon had hurled a sizable hunk of raw, blue-green colored magic at her. Whoops... she kicked herself for letting her mind wander as she braced herself for impact.
The missile slammed into her barrier, and she felt the shield weaken a bit. For the millionth time that day, she marveled at how much raw magic he could handle. If she trained him well, he could be more powerful than her someday! The thought struck her along with several other magical projectiles, and both surprised her. She inwardly reprimanded herself. She had to pay attention and use her knowledge to her advantage in these spars, not her raw power, because it would help Brandon learn and, at the same time, allow her to survive things like this. Reacting on instinct, she simply bumped it to the side this time instead of stopping the magic short or absorbing it.
"Powerful, but amateur. Raw magic isn't your weapon of choice against other magicians," Twilight said reproachfully. Despite her polite, kind, and usually gentle demeanor, she knew a lot about battle magic, which wasn't something most ponies knew about her, simply because they never bothered to ask. Truthfully, Twilight didn't particularly want her friends to know that she had the potential to be a walking death machine anyways. Most ponies get nervous around that kind of power.
Brandon took a moment to think, then stretched his hands in front of him again, eyes closed in the sunlight of the outdoors. Twilight observed his actions carefully, as being a couple seconds ahead of the game in a magician's duel could be the difference between life and death. As Brandon knew only the spells Twilight had taught him, she could predict which he would use, and thus remain safe.
Now, a keen observer or thinker may ask why Twilight was teaching her new student a form of magic that was rather violent and, in the current state of events, unnecessary. Well, it turns out that humans, tending more towards violence and other aspects of evil than equestrians, are thus better equipped for the magic of war than, say, a unicorn. In other words, fighting came naturally to humans. Twilight, having uncovered more ancient tomes regarding humans with the help of Pinkie Pie, discovered this, and so decided that this would be a good thing to teach her new bipedal companion. She knew humans' reputations, but she saw a good heart in Brandon, so perhaps not all humans were as bad as her books said they were.
She cast a spell that rearranged the molecular structure of the air 10 feet in front of her, causing it to compress and become electrically conductive. She then calmly observed as blue-green lightning leapt from Brandon's slender fingers to the invisible lightning rod between them, and then into the ground. He quickly cast another spell, in an attempt to liquify the earth beneath her, but found that she had nullified that as well; the ground on which she stood contained so much clay and silt that water couldn't work its way up from the bedrock.
He suspected that she may have done that seconds before the spell took effect as well, but as he had neglected to document the soil content, he couldn't be sure. Twilight may have taken him here for training for just that reason, for all he knew. She would take notes on which areas had the lowest rainwater absorbency rate...
The advice she had constantly given him ever since she became his...teacher, of sorts, suddenly rang in his head. "You should have seen that coming," she'd said, after she had dodged a random object he'd flung at her using levitation during their second training session, and then flipped him upside down and spun him around several times until he was too dizzy to stand. "I kept edging closer and closer until I was close enough to levitate you, but you were absorbed in thinking of new ways to attack! You need to pay more attention! Monitor everything! Don't just use what's in your head! Knowing what's happening around you is just as important as knowing what you are going to do about it."
He had contemplated this, and although it was difficult to put into practice, he felt that he had improved vastly from where he'd begun, and he was pretty sure Twilight felt the same way. And this one piece of advice had not only improved his magic, but if applied to everyday life, it could change everything! In paying attention to his surroundings, he noticed things he'd never paid heed to before, at least not that he could remember. Everything felt new, and not just because he was in a different world, either. In fact, it seemed like a completely separate world from the one he'd inhabited prior to his epiphany.
Brandon's training ended as usual: with him feeling exhausted and Twilight untouched. She had told him that once he managed to beat her, she would teach him how she did it. It drove him crazy, even though he knew she was right. How did she have so much energy? He always felt totally drained after a duel, but she deflected everything he threw at her in an almost bored manner, and afterwards had more than enough energy to be her normal, freakishly organized self.
He smiled to himself as they walked home. No matter how much her personality grated on him, in retrospect it always seemed so... well, for lack of a better word, cute. All of the ponies he had seen so far had that effect on him; some were very hospitable, others were full of themselves, and a few were quite shy, but all of them were cute. Several times, he'd been seized by the impulse to just hug a random passing pony, which usually ended awkwardly. (He had vowed to never try to hug Big Macintosh again, after his attempts to wrap his arms around the farm pony's neck were mistaken for an assault.)
He ate his dinner, a simple meal of sliced apples and carrots. He hadn't been able to hide his omnivorousness from his host, as she had been researching his kind nonstop. Fortunately, though she was slightly unnerved by the fact at first, she understood that different species had different diets. After all, she lived with a dragon that ate gemstones! After giving his word that he wouldn't try to hunt any animals (as if he knew how), Twilight was satisfied that he would not cause mass panic among the town's citizens by walking down the street eating a chicken leg.
After clearing his plate, he dragged himself to the Dusty Room That Belonged to Brandon, his very own title for it. The room was named to specifically to get on Twilight's nerves until she let him clean it. She was worried that he might ruin the supposed "organized" manner of the books that still dominated every square foot of the room, and refused to let him clean it without her supervision. After seeing her calendar for the next month, he very much doubted she would have much time to do so anytime soon.
He picked up his book, a large, ancient-looking hunk of paper with a faded cover, and commenced studying. The book was on battle magic, but this book had the same basic problem for him that every other book in the library had: it was written for unicorns. Big surprise, huh?
This doesn't seem like much of a problem to someone who knows little about magic, and it hadn't even occurred to Brandon at first. But after a few spells that had wildly unexpected results (he recalled the poor stallion he had accidentally turned into a manticore, and how Twilight had spent half the day trying to revert him back to a pegasus), he discovered that magic depended as much on anatomy as chants and runes. One could not cast a spell one was not equipped for, and it worked both ways; he had seen Twilight's eyes widen more than once at some of the spells he'd cast. The irony of the fact that the books were written in his language so improbably, yet they were still of limited use, had not escaped him.
He studied and practiced long into the night, trying to teach himself some spell, any spell, that would come as a surprise to his well-read mentor. He suspected that she could counter his attacks so easily because she knew everything he was learning by heart. However, he had realized that night while munching on an apple slice that his greatest obstacle was also his greatest advantage; if humans could cast spells that equestrians couldn't, and human magic was unknown in Equestria, then perhaps some spell unique to his race could get past the bookish unicorn's defenses. Then she couldn't needle him about his magical ineptitude! Heartened by this, he worked until he fell asleep, head resting on a book.
I'll say it again, though I've said it so many times before, thank you all for your positive reviews! They definitely motivate me to keep on with this story! Please, pleeeeeease, review! And review honestly, give me your opinion, and why you think what you think! If you're feeling particularly helpful, point out specific parts that you especially liked or disliked! Thanks in advance!