The Warlock's Shadow
Chapter 8 - Unusual Magic Manifestations

Unusual Magic Manifestations

A few days later after having left the Draconis Festival solemnly, we returned home to really think about everything we had been told. We knew the Elder Dragons would be laying out some wisdom and some truths but these were pretty heavy truths. The three of us were in a slump those few days. But we all bounced back eventually replaceing our own resolve to push forward and pick ourselves up. Well, most of us. The Elder Dragon’s words were still heavy on my mind.

We found out our Golem Grapple team won another game they played at another school. The game lasted a full twenty-four hours. It apparently was the longest game played in nearly a hundred years. The school was pretty excited for it and they celebrated by decorating the school in all its colors with streamers and flags everywhere they could fit them. School was pretty normal otherwise. That is until word got out that Lisa, Sasha and I got to speak with the Elder Dragons personally. Aside from the expected bombardment of questions that we didn’t mind that much, Sylas decided to bully us, more specifically me. Okay so it was only me that he bullied. I guess I was the easier target and had the most controversy to exploit for his sick amusement.

Today, he decided he was going to try to use the earth element that he happened to resonate with, even if it was specifically plants and flowers and not the ground itself as he originally thought it was months ago. It seemed to be a small blow to his hyper masculine ego, but he eventually turned it around to work in his favor like all bullies eventually do. He resorted to tripping, hitting, intimidating, the occasional punch in the stomach when no one in charge was around to see and therefore couldn’t prove he did anything to me. I was at a tipping point.

“Hey, Wannabe,” That was his name for me, as unoriginal and non-offending as it was. “Wanna drink?” he shoved his open thermos into my face.

“Not really because you probably did something to it, I imagine,” I said.

“Oh, c’mon just drink it,” He said a little more forcefully, backing me to a wall with his cronies. I took the thermos and smelled it. It smelled awful and musty. I remembered from a very interesting and somewhat scary lecture we had in Botany about poisonous plants. It was because of that I knew he was trying to get me to drink hemlock.

Shocked that he would resort to attempting to kill me and pissed off from his bullying, I opened it up and poured it out over his shoes and threw the thermos down the hall. He decided the appropriate action would be to pick me up by my shirt and slam me into the wall I was already backed up against.

“What’s wrong, Little Alex? Refusing a gift from a half-elf?” he said, as he attempted to make me feel bad and intimidated as per usual. I could feel something well up inside me.

“There isn’t a rule that I can’t refuse a gift from a half-elf. That’s just Fae, you moron,” He slammed me against the wall again knocking the wind out of me.

“Try again, smartass,” His friends laughed at my humiliation and pain. I glared at him as my anger rose to a peek.

“Then how about this?,” I pushed him in the chest and sent him flying into the opposite wall leaving a crack and two small undulating blobs of ink, which the blobs themselves quickly evaporated from his shirt. His friends, who didn’t seem to notice, helped him up and left. I looked at my hands seeing the same inky shadows that covered my hands quickly evaporating as well as I calmed down.

“What was that?” I said to no one. Without time to think the final class bell rang and I quickly ran and made my way to numerology.

#

The day just got worse from there. The incident with Sylas just got me into a bad moon and I wasn’t having it today. Alchemy was beyond frustrating when we attempted to make different antidotes and antivenoms for various poisons and creatures. For some reason I couldn’t get it right or kept forgetting ingredients. Yes, these are petty things, but when you’re in a particularly bad moon, no one thinks clearly. At one point I was so frustrated that beakers and flasks and other items started floating around me. Plants started to grow rapidly and some flames were hotter than normal and flickering. All without me knowing. That is until Lisa nudged me and made me aware.

As soon as I realized what was happening they all came crashing down, glass shattering everywhere. Embarrassed, I dropped everything I was doing, grabbed my things and left the class. I ran and hid in the nearest bathroom until class was over. I tried to take it easy until we got to dragon-riding. Surely nothing bad could come from a favorite class, right?

Today we were doing light combat training. Things to get us physically fit. Nothing major like punching or kicking, mostly grappling and light throwing. Apparently it used to be called Judo forever ago. I, again, was getting frustrated this time being thrown to the ground repeatedly without having any success myself. I was hoping I was going to have Lisa or Sasha as a partner but we had to have someone closer to our own size and weight so I got Samuel who was looking different from when I last paid any attention to his looks. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

I just couldn’t get him on the ground. He was pretty good at this stuff and apparently I wasn’t. Again, furthering the bad mood with the bad day made me feel even worse. I finally got fed up and finally got an opening. I noticed in my frustration my hands became coated in shadows as I twitched my hip. I threw Samuel to the ground with a hard thud leaving a body imprint under him. I apologized and helped him up as I waved off the bits of shadow quickly before anyone noticed and brushed them off of Samuel as well.

We moved to doing some quick magic exercises to cool down our bodies. In this case it was suspending a fireball in mid air. As each student took their turn eventually able to suspend a fireball it came to my turn. Since I got Nocturne magic came a bit easier but without him on my shoulder I still struggled with it a lot. I placed my hands about a foot apart as instructed and tried to set the air between them on fire. A few sparks made an appearance so I kept trying. Eventually a lick of fire manifested but kept going out. I kept pushing and pushing more magic to the space between my hands. Eventually the flame began to turn black and got bigger and bigger until there was a small explosion.

Luckily no one was hurt but I was knocked down and saw a few black flames here and there from the blast. I spoke with Master Elowyn and we both agreed I should speak with my mentor. I walked out of class early with Lisa and Sasha following close behind.

“Alex, wait. Hold on,” I heard them say as I was walking through the halls.

“What?” I said. “You don’t need to follow me,”

“Alex, just tell us what’s wrong?” Lisa implored. “Please. We’re your friends and we want to help.” I took a deep breath and let them know what all happened today and what had been on my mind.

“I have no idea why all of this weird stuff is happening but I’m hoping Mr. Roland does,” I said.

“Hey, just because that jerk of a half-elf pushed you around and tried to poison you shouldn’t bring you down,” Sasha said, cheerfully. “It’s not like you’ve been causing lots of property damage and, oh wait.” Sasha shut themselves up as soon as they realized what they had said. Lisa went and smacked Sasha in the chest not as hard as at the festival but enough to get their attention. We kinda laughed at that as well as Sasha’s faux pas and we made our way over to Mr. Roland’s class.

Having caught Mr. Roland at the end of his lecture on black holes, dark matter and dark energy he excused the class a little early just to talk to us. The class took its time being dismissed and going on their way as we waited outside the door. Once the class cleared out he welcomed us in and asked us to sit. We sat at a few desks in the front row and he sat on top of his own desk and crossed his legs and folded his hands into his lap.

“So tell me what all is going on, Alex,” he said casually. I explained the best I could of the day’s situation. I also tried to explain everything that was told to me by the Elder Dragons. Everything that was weighing my mind down.

“Interesting,” was all he said before going to his desk to look for a book at his adjacent bookshelf. “And, how has your dragon, Nocturne, been behaving since talking to the Elders?”

I thought for a moment. “He’s actually been more tame. He hasn’t fought or taunted our other dragon at home,” I said. “I tried paying more attention to his actions to see how he’s speaking but I’m not sure.”

“As the Elder’s told you it’s very important to listen to him but I think I might have an idea as to what is going on,” he said. He grabbed a book and flipped through it. “It sounds like something that is often associated with those who resonate with darkness, not all who do mind you but enough worth noting.” He flipped to a page and showed me. “I think it’s a phenomenon known as Essence Weaving.”

“Essence Weaving,” I repeated softly. “What’s that?”

“Supposedly it’s a rare and ancient magic that incorporates all six elements,” Mr. Roland said, flipping through his book. “We all know that everyone is able to use five of the six to some extent with one of them being a speciality defined by the Affinity Ritual. However, it appears that those who are aligned with the element of darkness, could potentially use all six elements as if the person had an affinity for all six rather than just the one.”

“That sounds like an awful amount of power,” Lisa said.

“Indeed it does,” Mr Roland agreed. “It was rumored that your father, Alex, was also an Essence Weaver but there was nothing confirmed if that was true or not.”

We all looked at each other a bit uneasy. We all saw the powerful magic my Dad used when he banished Blight to the Void using the amulet. Was that the rumored power of an Essence Weaver? Or was he just using some raw form magic or higher level of it? Sasha had an excited look on their face in anticipation of something fantastic to talk about.

“Are there any books in the Library that might have more information?” Lisa asked.

“I’m not sure,” Mr. Roland said, thoughtfully. “It’s something rare and probably not widely written about in any factual way. Essence Weavers are mostly things of legends and myths. But there are always grains of truth to such things.”

The bell rang letting out the previous class and allowing the next to start filling out again, so Sasha and Lisa said their goodbyes as I stayed since this was my next class. I took my regular seat and attempted to listen to get context for the end of the lecture we interrupted early but I couldn’t concentrate on the lesson. My mind was wandering about what power my Dad actually had and if he told anyone, or even if the rumors were true and what really were Essence Weavers?

We used our free period at the end of the day to delve into the library since we didn’t get a pass for the archives and I couldn’t think of asking for a pass when Lisa and Sasha weren’t supposed to know about it. At least that was my impression when Mr. Roland gave me the pass initially.

“Sasha did you replace anything at all?” I asked.

“Lots of good stories about them,” they said. “Actually I think I want to check this one out, it’s really good,”

I rolled my eyes as I flipped through the fifth book. “How about you, Lisa?”

“No, same thing here,” she said. “Just stories and legends. Nothing concrete.”

I closed the book hard and sighed. The room shook and a shelf of books dropped from a shelf. I let out another exasperated sigh and pinched the bridge of my nose. This was getting us nowhere. I thought of the only one who would have any knowledge of something like this. “We need to see Kur,” I said.

“Are you sure?” Lisa said.

“Yeah, are you sure?” Sasha said, their voice shaky.

“Sasha, are you scared of Kur?” I asked, smiling.

“No,” They said, defensively. “He’s just…really really big.” We all had a bit of a laugh at Sasha’s expense and all agreed that we would wait for late at night and sneak out and talk to Kur. For as old as he says he is, he must have some idea if this Essence Weaver thing was true or not. The librarian stopped by after hearing the crash of books and made us clean them up before we left. Luckily this was the last of such an incident.

#

Later that night in the early hours of the morning we all carefully snuck out of our homes and met at the boulder behind the school. Our dragons stayed with us this time rather than fitting in with the routine of going off to the roost. Which was for the better, we had no idea if anyone watched the school at night. The less signs we left the better. I held up the amulet and the portal opened up. We remembered to bring a flashlight this time. I brought it out and tapped a rune on the side. I felt magic pour out of my hand as the front lit up with light magic.

After making our way down the long stairwell we came to the end and the stone floor. We decided to keep using the flashlight rather than use the torch like last time and moved forward.

“Kur?” I said. “Are you there?”

Hhrrrmmm…he groaned as he shifted to put his face into the light. “Ah, Young Alex and friends. So nice of you to come. But it’s awfully late isn’t it?” Sasha stepped behind me and gently held onto the back of my shirt. Our dragons immediately perked up and glided over to the large draconic face in the darkness. “Oh my. Little ones,” Kur said in excitement. Our dragons chortled and chirped and climbed all over his face and eventually settled on his forehead.

“Yes, we’re sorry but,” Lisa said. “We couldn’t wait and needed some answers to a question we have.”

“Oh?” Kur said, raising a bushy eyebrow. “What question would that be, I wonder?”

“We were wondering if you had ever heard of something called Essence Weaving?”

Hoommm…, he exhaled as he gave it some thought. “Essence Weaving…,” he said thoughtfully. “Now that’s something I haven’t heard in a long time.”

“Can you tell us what it is?” I asked.

“Long ago, before the convergence, when my kind were more common and magic was a very rare commodity; mages would harness the elements and use the manipulation of the fundamental elements of the universe to perform fantastical magical feats. After the first convergence the amount of magic in the world was amplified to an immeasurable amount. These mages wielded unimaginable power and waged war with the creatures and beings that passed through.”

“The first convergence war, right?” Lisa asked.

“Indeed,” Kur confirmed. “What few of my kind remained from the millenia prior went further into hiding to preserve ourselves and guard over that which needs to be guarded. Over time the Elder Dragons created a balance of magic in the world. They manipulated the magical order so that these masters of fundamental powers would not often come about for fear of more war breaking out. The Elder Dragons gave these elemental masters the poetic name of, Essence Weavers.”

“Was my Dad one of these Essence Weavers?” I asked.

“He was truly gifted with magic and could harness the elements and fundamental energies,” Kur said, as he had me frozen in anticipation. “But, he was not an Essence Weaver. He initially harmonized with the element of light so he could not unlock or use the rare gift of darkness.”

My heart sank. I was hoping that it was true that my father was an Essence Weaver and that I could say it was in my blood. Could I still be? Or was there something else horribly wrong with me?

“There was someone else at the same time who did have such an ability,” Kur said. I perked up and looked Kur dead in the eyes.

“Who?” I asked.

“Maximilian had a dear friend to him that was lost to the power he found he could harness. But, I can’t seem to remember his name. Hmm, most troubling.” He brought a claw out from the darkness to stroke his chin in deep thought.

“What about me?” I asked. “How do I know if I’m an Essence Weaver? All the legends say that anyone who can replace an affinity with darkness is one? Is that the grain of truth to the myths and stories?”

“Indeed it is, Young One,” Kur confirmed. “You have found an alignment with the darkness element and therefore can be an Essence Weaver. Darkness absorbs light, therefore by extension, dark magic absorbs the properties of all the other fundamental elements. It takes time and training to fully master everything.” My heart felt lighter again. I was happy to know that there really wasn’t anything wrong and that it was my magic trying to form a bond with everything around me. “The life of an Essence Weaver is intertwined with world changing destiny. You must learn and come to accept that destiny no matter what.”

“Alex,” Sasha whispered. “If Kur is right this will be so cool,”

“I know,” I whispered excitedly back.

“If you two are done gushing over something that is extremely serious it’s about three in the morning right now and I’d like to go back to bed,” Lisa said. Quickly realizing she may have offended Kur. “Oh, um, no offense, Kur.”

He bowed his head slightly to acknowledge the apology. “Quite alright, Little Elf,” he said. “I also would like to return to sleep, as much as I enjoy the little ones coming to talk with me.” His eyes moved to his head, our dragons bouncing around each other and climbing all around Kur’s head.

The three of us called out dragons back and said our goodbyes to Kur. As we turned to leave Kur said, “By the way, Young Fae?” Sasha stopped in their tracks and slowly turned.

“Y-yes?” They said.

“You need not be afraid, I may be big, but I don’t bite.”

Sasha nodded, “I’ll remember that.”

“I should say, I don’t bite hard.” The color went out of Sasha’s face as we strung them along, Kur giving a hearty laugh as we left him alone to go back to sleep. We were able to get Sasha back to normal by the time we got back outside. The portal closed with a quiet snap. We looked around and didn’t see or hear anyone.

“Alright, let’s get home fast and see you both tomorrow,” I said. We left as quickly and silently as we could in the middle of the night of our quiet town.

#

None of us had the energy to do much the next day. We all felt like living corpses and vowed to never go out so late at night again, especially on a school night. The day after, however, I sought out Mr. Roland as soon as I could and fabricated a bit of information about what research we did and told him that he was probably right about me being an Essence Weaver.

“That’s excellent,” he said, clapping his hands onto my shoulders. “How would you like to learn to channel that energy?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean train to control it, channel it. That way it doesn’t cause you any more grief,” he explained. He seemed very excited over this. “We can even do it on the weekend when school is out and no one else is here. What do you think?” Of course I said yes with little thought to the matter. “We will start this weekend,” he said and went to start writing up a training regimen.

Once the weekend came we went into the courtyard so we had the room we needed but without the distraction of anyone who could be onlookers. Mr. Roland wanted me to get stronger in my magic so we made sure that Nocturne stayed in the roost while he trained me. We started going through the basics of each of the basic elements. The first exercise was channeling air.

“Alright, the first exercise is to blow out this torch,” he said. He produced a torch and lit it with a wave of his hand.

“I’ll try but I failed this the first time I tried so I doubt it’s going to be much different.” I put my hands around the fire and tried to generate a puff of air to blow it out. I struggled for a while not being able to do much at all. I couldn’t even make the slightest movement of air. I tried for hours before Mr. Roland decided I should try to channel what came easier first, darkness.

“I think this might make some more sense,” he said. “You may or may not have learned that darkness absorbs not only light but the essence of other elements. So if we can channel what comes more naturally to you, then we can begin to work on the others.” That part came easier but was still a struggle to generate the strange shadow. “Remember to let it fill you, breathe and relax. Find that essence inside and bring it out.” I concentrated and struggled but at last my hands felt warm and I saw my hands were enveloped in the weirdest of sensations. It looked like something blacker than black. But like the first time it seemed like it was alive. Like it had its own heartbeat. It looked like my hands had an aura. Like the shadow was two dimensional, but when I turned my hand, the shadow didn’t change. I was too excited that I could actually do this to care.

“Ha. I got it,” I said excited showing it off. “I actually got it,”

“Yes,” he said. “See? I knew it was inside you all along.”

I worked on being able to summon the darkness over the next couple days, even working on my own at home. It was a struggle at first to summon it consistently, but that seemed to be the catalyst to being able to do everything else. It was while practicing at home I saw that there was another Blight Cult that showed up. They had been evading capture and were starting to cause some property damage here and there, as well as secretly recruiting. There was speculation that forbidden mind control was being used to increase their numbers slowly. So far only about a half dozen people had gone missing or outright mentioned joining up.

Not making much progress, we decided to change this into training after school almost every day as it got deeper into winter, while keeping up with school and friends, the training got more intense. “C’mon, summon the darkness and use it to put out the flame,” Mr. Roland said. I thought of the orange fire, which was burning on a small campfire in the courtyard, being swallowed up whole. I noticed my own shadow that was cast on the ground from the sun, growing towards the campfire. Tendrils of darkness rose only rising a few inches and getting higher. Finally it grew into a bowl-like shape and swallowed up the fire just as I imagined.

The logs remained but the fire was gone. “Good,” Mr. Roland said. “Now that it has absorbed fire, let’s try to use it.” He added fresh wood to the campfire setup. “Now light it back up.”

“Shouldn’t we take a break?” I asked. “We’ve been going all morning.” I was starting to get sweaty from the strain.

“Just light it,” He said a bit forcefully. It honestly kinda scared me.

I timidly nodded and put my hand out. “So just, do what I did before? Imagine it?” I asked.

“Yes, that should be enough,” he said. “Imagine the logs and sticks erupting in fire.” I concentrated with all the will I could muster but nothing came of it. I started to get it, a few sparks and embers made themselves known but it literally blew up in my face knocking both of us down. “Again,”

The training was at this intense level for a while trying to get fire over the next few days. Training basically until dusk. I eventually talked Mr. Roland into letting me have some moral support and was given permission to have Lisa and Sasha sit in on some of the training while I was struggling. Lisa and Sasha were a nice contrast to Mr. Roland’s strict training style, which was quickly becoming more draconian. It was strange, in class he was so calm and kind, but here, he was like any other strict trainer. Through the help and support of my friends, plus the guidance of my mentor, I was finally able to absorb each of the elements. That is, save for light.

“It makes sense for light to be difficult for you to absorb,” he said. “It’s the antithesis to darkness. It will take more mastery of your darkness to absorb light but otherwise you’re coming along great. Before you know it you’ll have mastered your darkness and we can continue the training for Essence Weaving.”

I was still doing all of my darkness abilities at a novice level otherwise, but I was just impressed to be able to finally do magic unassisted. All the while Lisa and Sasha watched my progress and were my cheerleaders. When I decided, outside of Mr. Roland’s recommendation, to have Nocturne with me while I practiced, it was like I had always been able to do magic. Either way Mr. Roland was extremely impressed with my progress and my friends were as well.

In between training sessions over the last couple months I delved more into my Dad’s journal. I needed to know more about who he knew that was an Essence Weaver, like Kur said. But I couldn’t replace anything. Why would Kur say that my Dad knew someone who was an Essence Weaver but didn’t care enough to write any of it down. Surely someone close to you would be a subject of discussion, right? But there wasn’t anything at all. I also thought about what destiny Kur could have been talking about. I decided to talk to Lisa and Sasha about it.

#

It had been two months of nonstop school and training and quite frankly I was exhausted. Mr. Roland said that we can start taking it slow now. Working on harnessing the darkness element was what he thought was the most important right now, rather than trying to use the other elements.

“Alex, I’m so impressed how far you’ve come,” Sasha said.

“Me too,” Lisa agreed.

“I know it’s great,” I said. I looked at them both as Nocturne rested on my shoulders. “So, you remember what Kur said? About the Essence Weaver needing to accept whatever destiny is before him?”

“Yeah, what about it?” Lisa said.

“What is my destiny?” I asked.

“I don’t think anyone knows their destiny like they know their favorite pair of socks, Alex,” Sasha said. “Your destiny will present itself when the time is right.”

“Wow, Sasha,” I said. “That was kinda profound, especially from you.”

“I’m allowed a moment here and there aren’t I?” They said, as we laughed about it. But as we laughed together, I had to wonder if I would recognize my destiny when it came up.