Telekinesis was oddly easy, as was starting fires. Zachary found both to be almost effortless, even without spells. Just raw focus and intent, but to do more than weak pulses of power he needed a spell. Practicing in alleyways, he got good at levitating and banishing trash and rats. He warmed himself with spells and healed his wounds with meditation.
After a month or so of this, he started to feel people. Their auras, their essences. He got good at that, to the point that he knew to stop casting spells when others got near, to prevent ending up on a slab. He started to study divination from various cultures, tarot cards and other forms of divination like using dice and reading fires. He even learned to scry with water, fire and mirrors.
Around his third month, he started to make potions and learn wards. The potions were stored spells, for all intents and purposes. It was just fancy magical cooking, and as such was an easy thing to cast. Wards and barriers, were harder as they often required blood and more power, leaving him tired. He warded off an abandoned building to keep himself safe, though he had to kill a few rats as a sacrifice to get enough power to fuel the spell.
Most interestingly, he found out how to cast mental spells. Sleeping spells and spells to control or influence others. He used it to trick others into giving him food, stealing furniture to make his new home an actual home, and even get himself utilities! He loved this part of his magic, it gave him the most.
This, mixed with his training, eventually gave him the means to feel emotions. He could feel the general burdens of others, and that made him feel both entirely angry but also so deeply sad. People carried so much sadness in them... so, so much stress and fear and sadness.
To counter this, he started to really focus on healing spells. Rituals of peace to soothe the general agony of the world around him, spells to siphon stress and pain, spells to encourage healing and ease agony. He got really, really good at these, to the point that he started volunteer at a hospital to cast these sort of spells in the best environment.
All seemed well really.
But all things were destined to change, and so he was no exception.
"""
A Year and a few weeks of training later
"What could this power be?" Zachary muttered, moving through the forest. "I have sensed it pulsing throughout Tokyo for weeks, so potent and warped. Sometimes it's dark, sometimes it's light, always it's muddled." Irked by his lack of knowledge, he moved to the strongest source of life energy in the Forest. A massive tree, oozing potent energy.
Putting his hands on it, he drank deep of it's connection to the Earth.
"Terram appello, et scintillam canalem. Ita dico, sic oro, invenio hanc potestatem quam quaero. Terram appello, et scintillam canalem. Ita dico, sic oro, invenio hanc potestatem quam quaero. Terram appello, et scintillam canalem. Ita dico, sic oro, invenio hanc potestatem quam quaero."
The sweet power shifted, burning hot as it exploded through his soul in one moment, before pulling him into the tree itself and an endless expanse of space before spitting him out in one last that sent him into the deepest sleep, his life energy almost entirely depleted.
Chapter end, tell me what you think in the reviews.
This was a joy to write.
Love, your Ninja Overlord,
Mika.