Chapter 7:
Meditations and Scouting
Izuku breathed in deeply through his nose and slowly out of his mouth. Seven, seven and seven. Inhale for seven seconds, hold for seven seconds, exhale for seven seconds. Repeat.
It was the first and most basic of the breathing exercises that Akara had taught him, and he had done nothing but practice it for four days. Okay, that wasn't true. He also still spent his early mornings practicing with the bow and knife, and he offered a helping hand with absolutely anybody in the encampment. He still worked on making arrows, fletching and all, and had even been upgraded to knapping arrowheads out of river stone. It was an even more cathartic art than making the shafts and fletching, if such a thing were possible.
But studying underneath Akara? That wasn't cathartic at all. Holed up in her dark, smoky tent with the smell of all manner of incense, Izuku couldn't even begin to identify, but several of which he suspected wouldn't be legal back home.
"I have never seen somebody become so stressed by breathing techniques." Akara commented from her cauldron. "The whole point of that one is to make you calm and relaxed, how is it doing the opposite?"
Izuku grumbled something about expecting magic training to be more magical, and thankfully Akara found the complaint funny.
"Isendra warned me you had an intense reaction to the mana potion she gave you, so I expected you to struggle." Akara admitted, standing up to walk over to him. "But after four days the amusement of watching you be afraid of your own magic has faded. It is time you grew out of it."
Izuku cowered underneath her glare as she stood over him and crossed her arms.
"You described to both of us a burning sensation. What kind of burning is it? Is it like the burning of a rash, of spicy food or fire?" She asked.
"Actual fire." Izuku told her. "Moving through my body like a liquid."
"It is peculiar but everybody's relationship with magic is unique. OR at least as unique as unique can be. We are graduating from breathing and moving onto focusing on the mana within your body before directing it." Akara said. "You already have an advantage by being able to feel your magic so acutely, so you must become either inured to the discomfort of it or in some way adapt to it until it is no longer unpleasant."
She turned around and walked over to a chest in the corner. It was one of several littering her tent and the smallest. It was also the oldest in appearance. Akara dug around inside it and eventually retrieved a stick, er, wand. Right. Wands are real. She retrieved a wand with a crystal at the end of it.
"This was my first, failed, attempt at creating a wand of identification." Akara told him. "It cannot identify magic at all, merely detect it. If I hold it against a magical object it will glow blue, and that's about all it's useful for."
Izuku nodded to show he was following her.
"However, it can also detect magic inside a person's body if they are actively using it. The crystal I chose was of poor quality, hence why it cannot help with any detailed identification, but this had the surprising benefit of making it significantly more durable. High quality crystals used for identification magic will break upon being used, they are that delicate."
Izuku retrieved his notebook from beside him and wrote that down. Identification crystals will break when used. Good to know.
"So, what? Are you going to have me hold it against different parts of my body and try to make it glow?" Izuku asked.
Akara blinked at him.
"That is exactly what I am going to have you do. I just want you to focus on bringing that burning sensation up to your skin where the crystal is touching. Focus on the feeling of the stone and your mana. Once it lights, move to a different body part. We will be starting with your fingertips, then the different segments of your fingers, palms and move inward from there." Akara instructed.
She handed him the wand and Izuku took it, holding the tip to his index finger. Then he breathed. Seven seconds inhaling, seven seconds holding, seven seconds exhaling. Deciding he was sufficiently calmed he rubbed the smooth stone with his index finger to try and focus on the exact spot he felt it on his skin. From there it was a simple matter to split his focus on the now ever-present burning sensation of magic beneath the skin's surface and slowly pulled it to the surface.
He opened his eyes to find the stone was unchanged. Hm.
"Oh, you're going to be here for a while." Akara told him as he frowned at his finger.
She turned out to be right in that claim. He spent the rest of that morning trying his hardest to make the crystal light up without an ounce of progress. It was well into the afternoon, after being forced by Akara to take a lunch break, that it finally happened.
"Misses Akara! Look!" Izuku called out to the woman.
She looked up from the book she was still reading and she did a double take when she spotted the soft glow of the crystal against the tip of his index finger.
"That took you five hours." Akara informed him in an almost disappointed tone.
"Oh, I'm sorry." Izuku apologized. "I'll try harder to not take so long."
The deadpan look she gave him, with her mouth slightly ajar, almost looked offended. The angry look she followed it up with when he switched to his thumb and immediately made the crystal like could have vaporized tungsten, but for the life of him he couldn't understand what he'd done to anger her.
By nightfall he could make the crystal in the wand light up with the tip of each finger and every single segment as well, but strangely enough not the knuckles which she told him to skip for now anyways.
The next day he focused on his palms and arms. The former only took a few minutes to be able to do relatively easily, but each arm took the better part of an hour. The inner wrists, where he could feel his pulse, were the easiest to channel mana through to light the crystal. But the elbows? Both were a nightmare until he held it to the funny bone tendon beneath the elbow. But when he switched arms it wasn't any easier or faster the second time.
A week of training with Akara passed without any sign of his real master, or was it mistress? He would have to clear up what to call her when she got back from her scouting mission. But in the week of her absence, he had managed to make the wand light up from nearly anywhere on his face, chest, legs and even every individual toe. Any actual bony parts of his body were nearly impossible to focus mana through, as if the magic was made by his flesh or blood in particular. Or maybe it was water based? Were lakes, rivers and the ocean more magical than dirt and stone? These were questions he decided to save for Isendra as Akara's scowl grew angrier by the day and she refused to tell him what he was doing to enrage her.
"Aside from the bony parts of me, what are the hardest places to channel mana?" Izuku asked.
"Your scalp and your back." Akara said in a monotone.
"Oh. Should I do that next?" Izuku asked.
"Do as you please, child. You're ahead of schedule." Akara said.
"I am? How far ahead of schedule?" Izuku asked.
Akara stared at him blankly before turning around, taking a seat and picking up a book before promptly ignoring his existence. This was fast becoming the norm.
And so, for the next two days he practiced with his back and scalp. He would occasionally try again with the bone of his elbows, knuckles and the like but never made any progress.
He spent hours sitting cross-legged in front of Akara's human-body sized and shaped mirror trying to make the crystal glow again while holding it against his head or the back of his shoulders. The latter made for an uncomfortable position to hold for hours at a time, but the former was nearly as impossible to pull off as the aforementioned bony regions of his body. Serious, why were those regions so hard to channel mana through? Was it because they had no nerves in them?
"It's time for you to learn your first spell." Akara began their tenth day together by saying.
"My first spell?!" Izuku said excitedly.
"Your first spell." Akara confirmed. "The first spell any person ought to learn, though usually do not do so until several years into their training. So to answer your question from a few days ago, you are three years ahead of schedule."
Whoa. That seemed like a lot!
"Is that mostly because I already know reading, writing and arithmetic?" Izuku asked.
"That makes up about ninety percent of the reason for your abridged training, yes." Akara told him. "I would have continued your academic training in at least mathematics, but Isendra told me you already know geometry and something called Algebra?"
"Well. Not all of algebra. But some of it, yeah"
It was weird that the people of this world don't even have that, let alone trigonometry, calculus or higher mathematical fields. It was a huge wake up call for him to learn he was now officially one of the greatest mathematicians on the planet. This wasn't saying much when everybody was blown away by his mere ability to write his own name. Was victory by default still a victory? It didn't feel like a victory.
"The light spell will require you to master the fundamental steps to casting most spells." Akara continued. "You bring the mana out of your body, usually into an area between your hands for control, and then turn that mana to a purpose you intend. In this case making light from it. You need only be able to make your mana glow on your skin then the next step is to first bring the mana out and control it from outside of your body."
Fascinating. Was it a coincidence that the first spell was a clear parable to the first quirk? Surely not. But more interesting was her description of how spells were cast. Mana was just fuel for spells, it didn't conjure or create fire or lightning or ice. Fire needs air, heat and fuel. Mana must be able to easily transfer into heat or light electric or kinetic energy. What about biochemical energy? Could people metabolize mana and live off of their own life force for extended periods of time?
"We really need to do something about your mumbling problem." Akara eventually interrupted his thoughts. "But you're on the right track. Magical theorists since the dawn of time have been trying to come up with a unifying theory for the nature and function of mana. So far there is no consensus, let alone proof. Which I used to find rather terrifying to learn, as using such a great power without knowing anything about it is something all magicians are taught to never do."
That was good advice. Izuku would make certain to follow it, just as soon as he finished learning how to completely break it by wielding this arcane power to reduce a few thousand demons to piles of ash.
"No, you have pretty thoroughly mastered moving mana around your body. Now all I want you to do is make your skin glow where the mana touches it. Then we can move on." Akara instructed.
She proceeded to walk around the inside of her tent extinguishing her candles to make the room as dark as possible, save for one candle next to her reading chair. She then drew a curtain around herself to dim the light from the candle coming towards him but he could still see her from where he sat through the humanoid mirror to his left. Likewise, she could see him.
She returned to her usual habit of reading her book and ignoring his existence and Izuku returned to his usual habit of trying to teach himself what she had just promised to teach him. And so, he began channeling mana into his skin.
Isendra trudged back into the encampment late that evening. Her week and a half away had been thoroughly unproductive, but it was a necessary unproductivity.
The monastery and east gate required watching. Everyone needed constant visual confirmation of Andarial's whereabouts. Surprise! She's still there. In the monastery. Protecting the east gate and perverting the holy land to increasingly twisted and hellish mockeries. But she did her duty, and for an entire week she remained hidden near the monastery, watching and documenting all she saw.
She was so very eager to hand in the journal she had filled out and get a good night's sleep. Maybe she could even convince Warriv to loan her his tub for a hot bath? Surely, she had earned it.
She crossed the stone bridge looking longingly at the cold water and track of towels but stopped when she saw the bandaged figure at the other side of the bridge. For a moment she thought a survivor of a fallen ambush had been brought in and bandaged up, and his sad state made him look like he was mourning. But she recognized that mess of untamable hair beneath the burns.
"Young one?" Isendra asked.
The figure looked up at her greeting and sure enough the constantly worried and over-analyzing eyes of Izuku Midoriya met her own.
"What happened to you?!" Isendra demanded.
"Oh, um. I happened to me." Izuku told her cryptically. "And I happened to Akara's tent too."
"What did you do? You were just supposed to be learning the basics of meditation and maybe start towards channeling mana. Why do you look like you were doused in lamp oil and lit on fire?" Isendra demanded of her pupil.
"Oh. Well I did those things. Learned the breathing techniques, a little bit of meditation and all of the mana channeling stuff. Still can't do it on my scalp or bony parts, but Miss Akara decided I was ready to learn the light spell." Izuku explained.
Isendra stared at him. She had only been gone for a week and a half. There was no way in all of the heavens and hells he mastered channeling mana, a skill that takes most half a decade to master, in that time. Let alone advance towards learning any spells.
"I was trying to make my skin glow, but instead lit myself on fire." Izuku finished. "Along with Akara, Akara's books, Akara's tent, and a lot of her potions which turned rather explosive. I am in temporary exile from the village until you return."
Isendra stared at him some more.
"But I DID eventually figure out how to make my skin glow. See!" Izuku claimed, lifting his arm up.
A bright blue light erupted from his unbandaged hand
"That is not light you are producing. You are merely channeling enough mana through your skin to become visible and provide light." Isendra told the boy.
"Oh. That explains why it's so exhausting, I guess." He said before cutting off the flow of mana.
She returned to staring at the boy slack jawed, absolutely baffled how a child could be this much of a prodigy and this much of a moron. Then she imagined Akara spending a week and a half trying to teach such a prodigy in the manner sorcerer's are traditionally trained. She scowled in empathy and ducked into her coin purse.
"Come along. I need to go pay restitution to Akara. It looks like I'll have to be solely responsible for your training in the future." Isendra told him
Two days later saw Isendra taking Izuku out on his first scouting mission. They were to relieve the team of rogues guarding the ancient burial grounds. It was considered the safest place for a first scouting mission.
"She hates me." Izuku told her.
"She does not hate you!" Isendra consoled the now fully-healed boy. "She envies you. So do I, for that matter."
"She said if you ever try to pawn me off on her again she'll kill herself and then us both, which I think she meant because it is not longer beyond my imagination for a sorcerer to use magic to kill and reanimate themselves as a deadlier threat than in mortal life." Izuku countered.
Isendra decided not to comment on the existence of such magics. Nor her anger at Akara for insinuating the existence of such magics to her young pupil. Sorcerer's weren't supposed to learn about that kind of thing until they were much more experienced and disciplined. Then again, with all of the demons and undead running around it was difficult to keep the existence of such foul magics secret from anybody these days.
"Izuku, you have been blessed with a shortcut through your magical education that makes even my lightning-fast ascension through the ranks seem slow." Isendra explained to the boy. "Being able to essentially skip the longest and hardest step of becoming a wielder of arcane power is quite possibly the most unfair boon I have ever heard of. And I worry that this privilege will spoil you and prevent you from advancing at some higher level of magic."
Izuku lowered his head in, of all things, shame at her backhanded praise. She was trying to avoid stroking his ego too much, not make him feel bad. This child was impossible to read, let alone predict even in regards to basic social interaction.
"But, even if you turn out to be completely incompetent in all other aspects of becoming a sorcerer, you will still become a great one all the same. For no other reason than your ability to feel and harness mana with the same ease with which you breathe." Isendra said more nicely.
Izuku nodded along, his face scrunched in consternation. It was a look he wore often.
"Wait, you were a prodigy too?" Izuku asked.
"Indeed. And much like you I suffered for it. Being at the top means everyone below you will hate you." Isendra explained. "And I worry about your future because I myself suffered from plateaus and walls I could not overcome because I did not struggle early on in my training. I did not gain the ability to work hard and overcome challenges, so that when I finally found something challenging in my arcane studies it nearly destroyed me. In fact, I have yet to choose a specialization while my peers are all wielding higher magics in their chosen fields."
Izuku looked up at her.
"Specializations?" He asked.
"Most sorcerers specialize in a single type of magic. Necromancy, healing magics, scrying, or lightning." She explained. "Everybody must choose a specialization or risk becoming a jack of all trades like me using all manner of magic at a weak level, while specialists use one or two types of magic with much more power than I can manage. You, like many, seem to have been blessed with having your specialization chosen for you."
"Fire?" Izuku clarified.
"Indeed. To accidentally ignite yourself and all Akara owns may mean you have an affinity for fire. Many people with strong affinities have similar, though usually not as pronounced, accidents. You may turn out to be a fire mage above all else. You should still learn to use other spells, at least at a low level, for too much specialization becomes an exploitable vulnerability. But if you do turn out to be a fire specialist that will free me of one option of specialization to focus on another one." Isendra explained.
"Ohhh, you could specialize in ice then we could be like an Endeavor and Rei power duo!" The boy said excitedly.
"Endeavor?" Isendra asked. "Rei?"
"Second greatest hero ever. He is the embodiment of fire and nearly as powerful as All Might." Izuku told her. "He married a woman from the Himura family, an entire family of very powerful ice wielders. There's a legend that Endeavor accidentally hospitalized his first love when he kissed her, leaving a burn in the shape of his lips on her cheek. But it's just a legend, but the legend says he sought out Rei specifically because he could touch her without burning her, and she could touch him without causing frostbite."
Isendra's smile grew as the young man rambled, and she listened without interrupting. With them walking in the wide open moors with nobody nearby to hear she was happy to have him tell her all about his world.
"That is an adorable love story." Isendra admitted. "Is there a similar legend about this Rei? Did she turn her first fiancé into an ice stalagmite?"
Izuku laughed.
"Probably. This was all before I was born. I only know about it because I saw the Mini-Series on it."
"Mini-Series?" She asked.
"Oh. Um. Pictures that move and talk to tell stories. We call them motion pictures. There was one made about them going out and being heroes together, fire and ice, like everybody thought they would. But that never panned out. They started a family and lived a quiet life. She decided on homemaking, not hero work beside him."
Isendra suspected that whatever Izuku was trying to describe was far different from what she held in her mind. Remembering the boy's shirt and the obscenely handsome man, she suspected these motion pictures must have looked and moved just as realistically as that image. Not for the first time she wondered if she could convince the boy to give or sell the shirt to her so she could ogle it in her down time.
She would have asked him then and there had they not reached the edge of the burial grounds and the fire pit where the rogue guard was stationed. Or, more accurately, where the rogue guards were supposed to be stationed.
The fire pit was unlit and wet, and looked to have been so for a while. No journal nor weapons, no personal belongings had been left. The entire place had either been abandoned or ransacked and the tracks covered. Isendra suspected the latter.
"Wasn't this place supposed to be guarded." Izuku asked worriedly.
"Arm yourself young one. We have fighting to do." Isendra said by way of answer.
"And rescuing?" Izuku asked hopefully. "Right?"
Isendra smiled down on him and his blatantly optimistic, arguably naïve, question. She decided to let herself feel that same optimism. Why else have such a young and bright student if you do not allow yourself the emotional blessings of having a child around?
"And rescuing. Yes."
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