Ascended

I was going to learn magic!

I had to grab the seat of my chair to contain my excitement. I could see apprehension on Val’s face. While becoming a Bokor had been my life goal, it was her nightmare. As long as she didn’t have magic, she could act like it wasn’t real. But as soon as we learned how to use our magic, it would become real.

Master James must have seen that because he held out his hand towards her. He nodded at the stone. “It’ll be okay. Just take the stone.”

Val slowly reached for the stone and took it out of his hand.

“Good, now I need you to focus your magic in it.”

“I don’t know how to do that.” Val glared at the other Bokor.

“Here.” Master James got up and walked around behind her. He touched the mark on her right arm and started tracing it towards her hand.

Val pulled away quickly. “That was weird.”

“That was just magnetism between our marks.” Master James offered her his hand again, “I can run magic through it now so you can feel how it’s done.”

She was still leaning away from him, but she slowly straightened back up and offered him her arm.

There was a small spark as he ran his finger down her mark. The purple ribbon pulsed as his magic poured into it. The stone in her hand began to shine, then turned blue.

Master James pulled his hand away and the stone still glowed. He smiled as he looked down at the new Bokor. “Do you think you can do it yourself now?’

The glow on the stone dimmed, then vanished. It looked like a gray stone again.

“I can try.” Val’s eyes focused on the stone. Her marks began to brighten and the stone began to glow blue again. She looked up at the older man, “What does that mean?”

“You have an affinity for water magic.” Master James plucked the stone out of her hand and tossed it to me. “You’re going to be a little more difficult.”

I caught the stone and looked at the gray object in my hand. It looked like smooth rock, but I could feel a buzzing coming from it.

“Why?” I looked across the table at the Master.

He tapped the purple lines on his arms as he walked over to me. “You don’t have marks.”

I looked down at my arms as if looking at them might cause the marks to appear. He was right. There were no marks for him to jumpstart, nothing for him to focus his magic into.

“What are we going to do?” I looked back up at him. I had to adjust my bandages again. It was getting aggravating and I thought about taking them off, but there was a chance that someone could walk in and I wouldn’t have time to get the bandages back on. Sure, I could close my eyes, but as soon as the person saw that there was nothing wrong with my face, I was going to have to find another reason to cover my eyes.

“Here.” Master James took my hands. “I’m going to try running magic through you and see if you can feel anything.”

There was a buzzing in my hands and the hair on my arms stood up.

“Did you feel anything?” He searched my face for a reaction.

“There was something.” I flexed my fingers in his hands and tried to replicate the sensation.

Nothing happened.

“Can you do it again?” I looked up at him

He nodded and that same buzzing sensation tickled my hands.

“Can you do more?” I didn’t want to just feel the magic in my hands, I wanted to try to spread it throughout my whole body. I reached for the buzz and pulled. It shot up my arm and into my core.

It was like something exploded inside me. Like a campfire that had been trying to catch fire, but had just been smoldering until it blossomed.

I touched the sensation and willed it into the stone. It felt like my hands were on fire as the magic hit the stone. I looked down at my hand and realized the reason why my hands felt like they were on fire was because they were.

“STOP!

I knew exactly why Master James was worried. I was sitting at a table in front of seven zombie hearts. They would be enough accelerant to light up the house nicely. Granted, it was a stone house, so it wasn’t going to burn down, but still. There were lots of things inside that could burn.

I got drenched as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water at me. I looked across the table, expecting to see Val with an empty bucket, but instead she was holding out her hands towards me.

“Well, that’s convenient.” Master James started laughing.