Chapter 4 - Flynn & Lester

The cocoons fell of and revealed two animals, both shared the colour scheme of my soul. One was a tiger, that was the one the size of the harley its base fur coat was matte black and its stripes silver the eyes were pure globes of glowing azure blue, the other was a tortoise the size of a pickup truck, It had the same base coat of matte black but had random lines and that curved all over its giant shell, legs and head it’s eyes shared the same blue as the tiger.

The tiger immediately changed at me, I felt momentary panic before I felt a large heavy tongue start licking my face which was painful due to a cat’s barbed tongue. I tried to push it off but it was heavy and I was pitifully weak, physically. Eventually I got message through in an unconventional way.

“OFF” I screamed in both my voice and mind.

“Sorry” I hear a voice in my head say.

The tiger gets off and pouts while looking at me.

“Did you just talk, in my head”

“Yes, Im flynn and the weird lizard thing is lester, sorry about the umm licking” I hear a voice ring again in my head.

“Flynn and lester, huh so umm you are my familiar yeah?” I ask speaking

“Yes we are, and thank you for taking your time midget” A different voice rung in my head, assumedly lester.

“Took my time, what do you mean” I asked the turtle

“Since you were born we have waited, that is how familiars of those born with the inability to use qi live, we wait conscious in the abstract, which is trying at the least and torment at the most”

“Ahh, well sorry, well that over now” I ended with a nervous chuckle.

All lester did was bow his head. So it seemed that my familiars had intelligent thoughts and personalities, I had no problem with it it made life more interesting. Flynn on the other hand at this point was running in circles around the grove, probably revelling in the freedom he was a cat after all.

After getting further acquainted with them I discovered they had something like innate spells, or more like innate skills. For example lester had some sort of energy barrier called the tortoise shell, It could be used on both him and I. Flynn had a sort of shadow walking ability letting him be able to blend into and shadow and move faster than normal, if in a closed environment he and by association I could do short distance shadow jumps. These were innate abilities I assume that only one magus could possess, unique ones if you will.

Personally he could see many useful application of these abilities in the future if his theories on spell casting where true, where there was large ammount of cast time therefore leaving yourself open to attack, using these abilities he could shield himself or escape.

I left the two in the forest as taking two giant animal that resemble magical beasts into town is asking for trouble. Before I leave lester kindly informs me that more innate abilities await as the two grow in strength. After giving me that tidbit of information they leave to cultivate as magical beasts do, lester manipulated the earth and sunk into it until his shell was the only thing showing was his shell leaving the illusion of a very exotic rock in a grove. Flynn left to hunt and do his own cultivating.

As I get back to the inn I think about how to go about forming my first core, now I know that mages will have no limits on these cores but for me this will be a significant moment along with some reminiscence in the future. I feel like fire, due to its staple as a supreme magic in my old world, albeit in fictions but still pretty cool. Remembering what the book said about how the core forms based on the mana source and one's own comprehension of the element.

Thinking I want my fire core as something destructive, due to my supreme lack of offensive power at the moment I instantly throw out ideas of using a candle to form it, so i decide to again use the hearth downstairs however this time I don't want to be disturbed so I make a quick plan with my mother.

“Hey mom, I need some help”

“With what sweetie”

“Well I need to use the hearth again and don't want to be disturbed, have any idea’s?”

“Oh I think I can come up with something” She said with a smile that could send shivers down the spines of devils.

Soon later I was again in front of the hearth but this time there was 6 behemoth sized guards in charge of making sure noone fucked with me. I like the feeling it was a strange sense of power, knowing I was pretty much untouchable the next step of course was reaching this feeling with my own power.

I delve into my mana vision and start to absorb the fire mana and without purifying it I start to concentrate it in a space near to my spiritual core. In the real world the fire rapidly dimmed, more and more logs were put on to sustain it. At some point the fire physically started moving towards me and wrapped around my body like a scarf, becoming a rather interesting spectacle for the surrounding guests.

The fire mana eventually became condensed enough in that one area for me to form the core, like I had done before with my spiritual core I condensed the core but this time it was different. I was surrounded by fire. I thought immediately this is where I gained the comprehension part of the core, so I became a temporary philosopher. Looking into the fire I seek to understand it, I see the vision of the hearth fire itself and try to find a source of destructive fire. What I saw was enlightening to say the least, I saw sources of fire and was surprised at all the source one hearth fire could produce. There was the heat that it produces, the streams of pure fire that coiled along the log and the logs of fire that broke down to feed the hunger of the fire.

I chose the streams of pure fire, they seemed like the best offensive ability. As soon as I chose that the core formed and my body felt like it had went through a baptism. Standing up abruptly I found out that if I focused on the core the air around me became heated and my hair started acting like fire, moving in unpredictable ways. From this I deduced that this was a side effect of using the core for anything elicited effects in the surrounding environment that related to the cores properties. It looked cool though.

Smiling I stood up and thanked the people who guarded me and went to sleep.

Waking up the next day I returned to the forest to talk with my familiars and try the ball spell. I went to the grove where lester was talked to him for a bit, he was focused on cultivating so there wasn't much of a conversation, I could feel my connection to flynn and it seemed he was busying hunting so I decided not to bother him. Finding a pond I decided to aim for that considering the otherwise very flammable environment.

Sucking mana from the world around me I channeled the purified mana into the flame core. The flame core began to glow and I could feel the power it held, so I raised my hand and pushed the power from the core and through and out of my hand which was pointed at the lake. The power gathered beneath my palm without release, well until all the power gathered was in my palm. With a final bit of effort I ejected the power and a baseball sized ball of fire shot from my palm and into the water with promptly exploded in a geyser of water.

“HEHEHE, that was COOL” I said with a grin.