I thought a lot about how to increase our magical energy while we walked through that accursed wasteland. I even tried out a few theories and came to a few conclusions.

First, magical energy was definitely not stored the same way regular energy was. I never lost any visible body fat, even after pushing my magic past its limits, which should have been when my body started burning fat instead of carbs. The fact I could use a fair amount of magic on an empty stomach meant a full stomach might help my body create more magical energy, but magical energy couldn’t be turned back into normal energy. This meant a certain amount of regular energy from food would be converted into magical energy and stored somewhere, and that reservoir of magical energy would be filled up, perhaps by burning calories, whenever my magical energy reserves began running too low.

Second, magical energy wasn’t stored in an easy to access physical or mental space. I felt around my body for any strange, alien parts, but if there was some sort of organ storing magical energy, it would have to be hidden somewhere inside. I couldn’t exactly dissect an elven cadaver right now, so I had to assume there was no special organ involved, at least for now. And thinking about accessing the magical energy in some sort of space inside my mind or by trying to follow the feeling of magical energy leaving my body, didn’t seem to work either.

And so I concluded I wasn’t going to be able to find where magical energy is stored. But I remembered what Noel had done when she didn’t know about combustion, and assumed that magical energy was stored inside a “magical battery.” I knew regular energy from my body was converted into magical energy and then stored inside this “magical battery” and that my body didn’t prioritize filling up magical energy over the energy used for vital or physical functions. I also knew this “magical battery” couldn’t convert magical energy back into everyday energy.

“Hey Noel, do you think wisdom only works on specific spells?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean if we have two elemental spells, like water and air, does practicing one increase our wisdom of the other?” I said.

Noel thought for a moment. “I think so. It was a lot easier to use earth and air elemental magic when we came up with it a few days ago than it was to use water elemental magic when we first invented it.”

“I think so too. It won’t be as effective as practicing that exact spell but it makes sense for there to be some spillover,” I said. “But what if it goes further?”

“What do you mean by further?” she said.

“You remember that time after the Immortal of Desire taught us the fundamentals of magic, how I argued we needed to dig even deeper and get to the roots of magic?” I said.

Noel nodded. “We talked about what ‘knowledge’ and ‘wisdom’ actually mean, and how we learn things in the first place.”

“We mostly talked about knowledge back then, but we didn’t think too much about wisdom. If wisdom concerns how we use knowledge, isn’t it a type of knowledge itself?” I said.

Noel frowned. “That does make sense. But then why is it different from knowledge? We know ‘wisdom’ helps make our spells more efficient and powerful. That’s different from how ‘knowledge’ helps us shape the spells in the first place.”

“Is it all that different though?” I asked. “If ‘wisdom’ is just ‘knowledge’ about how to use a certain type of magic, shouldn’t gaining that ‘knowledge’ about a specific type of magic also increase our ‘knowledge’ about ‘wisdom’ itself?”

“You’re still bad at explaining things,” said Noel. “But I think I get what you mean. Every time we gain ‘wisdom’ about one type of spell, we gain ‘wisdom’ about magic in general.”

“Exactly!” I said. “How can you say I’m bad at explaining things when you understood it so perfectly?”

Noel sighed. “Whatever you say. Anyways, I don’t think we’ve gained a lot of wisdom about magic in general even though we’ve invented so many spells. I don’t think the effect is that big.”

“No, it isn’t,” I said, “it’ll take a long time for our magic to become more efficient and powerful this way. Still, I think it’s worth keeping it in mind. We’ll get stronger if we invent more kinds of magic and learn how to use them.”

This was my solution to the problem of having a limited ‘magical battery’. If I couldn’t make the ‘battery’ bigger, I could at least make it more efficient! It should be effectively the same thing, since most people think in terms of how many hours their batteries will run, not how large they are.

“We might find a way to increase the amount of magical energy we can use,” I said. “But I think we’ll have to do a lot more tests.”

“We don’t have the energy to spare for tests right now,” said Noel as the highlands loomed overhead. “Especially not for tests that won’t help us go up this cliff.”

We made camp for the night after setting up some traps and quenching our thirst. We woke up early the next morning, when the air was still cool and climbing up a steep cliff would be less tiring. We waited a little longer so the first rays of sunlight would help us see our way up.

We used the same trick we’d used to climb down the husk of the giant tree where the Immortal of Desire used to live. With magic hands created through motion magic, we scaled the side of the cliff carefully and slowly. Or at least, I was careful and slow. Noel was halfway up the thing by the time I looked up. From my perspective, she looked like a gecko rushing up the rocky surface with suction cups.

I promised myself not to look down but couldn’t help it once I was high enough. I slipped just like last time, hanging on with only my magic arms. Still, it wasn’t as hard the second time around, and I managed to get my footing and scale the heights relatively easily.

Last night I’d asked Noel if there was an easier way up. I knew there had to be one since there was no way the entire tribe was climbing up these steep cliffs without magic and while carrying things like babies and supplies. Noel said there was a steep path further East, but it would take too long to get there. She was determined to reunite with the Jora tribe as quickly as possible. I reluctantly agreed since I wanted to join the tribe as quickly as possible too. The allure of soft bedding was too difficult to resist!

As I scaled the cliff, I got my mind off the incredible height by thinking about the Jora tribe. Noel’s family had quickly become like a second family to me, as well. When the Oracle held them hostage, there was a painful feeling in my gut, a mashed up feeling of anger and worry, that felt like a great big ball of lead had been embedded in my stomach. That feeling was lightened after I defeated the Oracle, but it never went away since I realized that Noel was in danger. And after rescuing Noel and seeing the Jora tribe’s camp had disappeared, that great big ball of lead was right back in my stomach. I was sure that weight was making my climb even harder than it should have been. It almost made me want to go back down. To avoid the prospect of what I might see at the top of the cliff.

Speaking of cliffs, my old roommate, the one who was a literature major, once told me about another one of Wordsworth’s poems. “The Prelude,” it was called. He said it was long and beautiful, but there was one scene that he could never forget. It was when Wordsworth rowed out on a lake in a small boat, in view of a massive cliff. The scene was beautiful in its imagery, with lines like: “Small circles glittering idly in the moon, Until they melted all into one track, Of sparkling light.”

But it was when the scene turned sinister, and the cliff became “a living thing” that “uprear’d its head” with “voluntary power instinct” and “Rose up between (him) and the stars,” that my roommate said to me: “isn’t it amazing the way a good writer can turn your emotions on a dime? How he can take a feeling of natural beauty and twist it into earthly horror, all so it can merge into the paradoxical feeling that is the sublime?”

And in case you’re wondering, yes, that is exactly how he spoke. The guy had a way with words, even when he was sloshed out of his mind at a beer pong party at 3am. I remembered his words as I pulled myself over the top of the cliff, relieved that I was finally done. I smiled as I sat near the edge, taking in deep breaths and admiring the view. Even an empty wasteland can look beautiful from this high up.

I turned around and saw Noel on her knees, staring at the vast emptiness around us.

With a quivering voice, she said at last: “They aren’t here.” She looked at me. “Cas, they aren’t here!”