"Lightning snake!"
I felt my hair moving as if the air was filled with static electricity and the air felt heavy. From the plam of mothers hand a blue colored transparent anaconda sized snake started to move.
It's scales was like spikes and from it, small sparks of lightning bounced between them from time to time. It's eyes was like ruby stones and seemed to be searching for a pray.
"This spell is a little more advanced lightning spell." Mother explained as the snake wrapped around her front arm. "To cast a spell from the four advanced elements you need to combine two of the basics." She moved her hand and the snake crawled up her arm and around her neck to find it's resting place.
"Is the snake alive?" Maxime asked as he stared intently at the mystical creature now wrapped over mothers neck and shoulder.
"Yes and no. The snake is built from mana created by my essence. As everything that exist is built from essence and mana, you could say that as long as I feed this snake with my magic it is alive. But if I cut it off." With the snap of her finger the snake started to fade away as she stopped supplying it with her essence.
"Mother? What exactly does that spell do? Except summoning a snake?" I asked as I watch the disappeare.
She gave me a wide smile and cast the spell again. The snake appeared and wrapped itself around her arm. "Well Bellz! This spell has both offensive and defensive properties."
She walked over the the blackboard and on the side was a bag filled with wooden darts. She grabbed the bag and handed then to me and said. "Here, use this to try to hit me." She walked back to the blackboard and stood there waiting for me to toss a dart at her.
I obliged and threw a dart her way and before the dart could reach her the snake lashed out and generated a barrier of strong electricity, scorching and stoping the dart in it's track.
"I could show it's offensive properties but not here so that will have to wait until we start our practical exercises." She turned back towards the blackboard and pointed at the lightning symbol and asked. "Can anyone tell me why wind can only be combined with fire and water? I think I have said this before and this should be standard knowledge."
The room got quite until Maxime put up his hand and said. "Because you can't combine opposite elements?"
Mother gave him a nod of approval and pointed at the symbol of fire. "My primary element is fire and there for I have the possibility of learning to cast both earth and wind magic and from there the more advanced combined magic of lightning and magma." She then started to draw different sympols this time separate from the circle.
One was just an empty circle, one was an hourglass, one was a circle with four smaller circles inside of it and the last one was a filled white circle.
"Beyond the basic magic of elements there are more endless different kinds of magic out there. The four primary categories are these four. Darkness." She pointed at the empty circle. "Time." Then pointed at the hourglass. "Space." She moved over to the circle with the four smaller circles. "And lastly light." Then pointed at the filled circle.
"These magics are both the easiest to learn and at the same time hardest. Easiest in the way that anyone can learn them as they are not bound to your own magic essence but hard in that they can be almost impossible to learn." She held up her hand and once again started to chant.
"Oh darkness snuff out these bright starts and embrace us with the nights boundless dark blanket."
Suddenly the candles in the library flickered before the room turned pitch black. I looked towards the window and saw that even the light that should have come from outside wasn't able to fill the room with light.
She then cancelled the spell and the candles lit again and light returned once again to the room. "I have studied magic for a few hundred years now. And the only other magic outside of the elemental magics I have learned is Dark magic and one other."
Lilly held up her arm and asked. "What is the last magic you learned?"
Mother gave a wry smile and said. "That's a secret." She turned to the blackboard and erased everything she had written and drawn. "I might show you in the future but lets hope it is not needed."
She then wrote down all the ranks from E-SSS and above it G rank in a large letter.
"I am now going to explain to you what the ranks means and what how to improve your magic capacity." She sat down on a char and took out a blank magic disc. "As Bellz and Lilly has already seen on their discs the rank or quality of the magic is stated in different ranks that goes from E all the way up to SSS and then above that G rank or God rank."
She pointed at the A she had written and said. "Bellz on your disc it said that you have A rank in the fire element correct?" I gave her a nod. "But then I ask you this. Do you know how to cast a spell?" I thought for a bit, the only spell I could cast was the instinctive spell. And the same was for Urpie and Lilly.
"Spells still needs to be learnt like anything else in this world you need practice, so then I ask you this then. Lilly, you have C rank. What's the best spell you can cast?"
"Force fist, a spell that assists my punches and heighten the speed of my arms movements. It can or rather should also be able to send out a shockwave at impact father said but I haven't been able to succeed with it yet."
"That is because you have not reached the quality of the spell to that level yet." Mother turned to the blackboard and started to draw an arrow from the E to the C. "When you learn a new spell you almost alway start the quality of the spell at E rank and the more you master it the higher the quality and the effect of the spell becomes."
She then pointed at me and said. "If you would cast a fire ball now it would only be the size of my fist at best. But the quality of your fire is ranked at A and that is the level you are able to reach when you have mastered a spell."
She looked around the room and asked. "But then the question is. How do you think you can improve the quality of your magic?"
Maxime held up his hand. "Thought practice?"
"If it was that easy Maxime everyone would have reached high level of magic quite easily. But no, it is quite hard and complicated that we shall cover in a future lesson but it is something called essence and mana circulation."
Mother explained the different uses of the eight elemental magics and examples of different basic spells that you might be able to learn.
As a quick summary what we learned was that.
Earth had the form of force and weight in them. The unmoving element ment to stand against the hardest impacts.
Some basic spells she mentioned was, stone skin, rock shot, rock fist and wall.
Then we had wind the ever changing unpredictable element that has the freedom of movement.
Some spells she mentioned was, air push, wind slice and float.
After that she explained about fire. The ever burning and destructive force but also the energi.
Some spells was fire ball, flame and heat fist.
And lastly of the four basic elements was water. The ever floating element of life and adaptability.
The spells she mentioned was healing water, water jet and water ball.
Lastly she explained the more advanced elements but didn't mention any spells as she said that she would go through them as we reached that topic in the future.
Lightning the element of pure the destruction force and an endless energi.
Ice the element of stopping and freezing anything in it's path that sucks the energi from it's surrounding.
Then we had magma or metal magic. The element of shape and heat to the unmoving solid earth.
And lastly Nature the element of healing and life.
The rest of the day we practiced with father Rachel and that night I feel asleep immediately as my head hit the pillow.
I was looking forward to the coming months to learn magic and also what the future holds.