Page 141 of Death of a Mortal

I nodded as he handed me the flicker. “How long do I have to use this thing?” I asked, feeling mildly embarrassed.

“That’s entirely up to you.”

“Well, then, here.” I tried to hand it back to him.

He just smiled and pushed it back toward me. “Not your preference, but your control.”

“Right…my least favorite C word.”

He laughed so hard it took several minutes before he could speak to carry on our session.

“Okay, okay,” he said, wiping his eyes. “You were pretty damn good at lighting objects yesterday. Let’s see how you do producing a stand-alone fire. It might not seem very different, but when there isn’t an object to catch on fire, like wood, for instance, the flame can be harder to control. You’ve got to sustain it instead of lighting something and letting your magic fizzle.”

Made sense. Controlling the uncontrollable, no big deal.

“You’re gonna picture the magic flowing from your heart to your open palm, just the way we’ve practiced, but you’ll need the magic to take shape, not just flow. Let’s first imagine a sphere.”

I nodded my head and set to work. Bramick hadn’t been joking; this was definitely more difficult. Several attempts in, I still had yet to manage maintaining a flame, let alone a sphere-shaped one. Each time it flared in my palm, it remained only for a few seconds and faded out.

About half an hour later, sweat was dripping down my face from the effort. I now had a newfound respect for the fae I’d seen fighting through Ashthorn Castle during my escape from Caedryn. They’d had so much control and power. I only had power like that when I exploded.

“There’s already a mild dampener in the flicker. Don’t fear your abilities,” Bramick said, feeling my frustration. “You’re tampering it down. Let it loose. Live up to Aerie’s name for you.”

Fireball.

I took a deep breath and wiped my brow, imagining my heartfree-flowing with magic, the trickling stream becoming a flowing river down to my hand. I willed it, coaxed it to life. Godsdammit, I wanted this!

Fire burst free from my open palm in a burning pillar taller than me.

“Good, now shape it!”

I forced the pillar into a ball in my mind, and slowly it shrank until a sphere the size of my fist remained hovering over my palm.

If my smile was big, it was nothing to Bramick’s. Pride lit up his face just as brightly as the orange ball of sustained fire did.

I envisioned the sphere growing larger and watched with pure glee as the fire in my hand grew to the size of my head. I now knew how it felt, how to move it, and how to control it. With each thought, it became easier and easier to change the magic to fit my whim.

First, I changed it to a square, then a triangle, then a bird, complete with flapping wings. With a little more effort, I grew the bird and morphed it into a dragon.

“Is that a…dragon?” Bramick asked.

“Yeah, it just came to mind.”

He eyed me, then the fire dragon suspiciously. It was then that I felt eyes on me and turned to my right to find Drayce watching from afar. The golden glow at his chest seemed to pulsate, and I got the strangest feeling that he was influencing my magic somehow.

Bramick followed my line of sight, and when he saw Drayce, he gave him a nod.

I felt like I was missing something, but Bramick said we were done with fire for the day and would move to basic magic, and my excitement overshadowed my confusion.

“Magic not tied to your innate abilities comes from raw magic. It’s what sustains fae life force, so only small amounts are typically used at a time. Small things like untying a knot or picking a nonmagical lock.” A mischievous look came over him.

“What happens if you use too much raw magic?”

“If you used all of it, you’d die. You’d have spent your entire lifeforce. Even coming close to depleting it would cause a kind of a sickness, and it takes a long time to replenish. Elemental magic, on the other hand, replenishes quickly if you use too much, because it’s not tied to your raw magic; it’s tied to the raw power of the element. So long as water flows in Caelia, water elementals can draw from it.”

“So elemental magic is infinite, but raw is finite and tied to the life of the fae.”

“Perfectly succinct and correct.”