“There are two distinct parts to it.” Edwin said. “And they must be considered separately to fully understand the process, which is necessary to using telekinesis efficiently. As you no doubt know, mana conservation is the greatest challenge when using magic.”

Salissa was listening intently, and while her arms were still crossed in rejection, her facial features had relaxed as she was following his explanation.

“The first part is the most obvious one: You use magic to touch something from afar. We call this ‘grasping’. In principle, it doesn’t require much mana at all, but the farther away from your body you grasp, the more mana you expend. It goes up quite quickly, so you always want to stay close to what you’re levitating.”

Edwin wriggled the fingers of his right hand towards the pebble, moving it forward and back with his left as he talked.

“You can grasp as much or as little as you wish. Think of your grasp as a magical hand that sticks to the object. Take for example your backpack: You could envelop it completely in your grasp, or you could simply grasp a small part of it, like the shoulder strap, and carry it that way. Does this match what you were taught?”

She thought for a moment, then nodded slowly. “It does, I think. The larger the hand, the more mana I use, right?”

“Exactly.” Edwin said. “One last thing to note about the grasp: Mana expenditure goes up linearly with its size, but exponentially with range.”

Salissa looked at him in abject confusion. “What?”

“Erm, how to put this differently…” Edwin scratched his head. It had been a very long time since he’d discussed thaumaturgical theory with anyone but an academic.

“You’re raising an object right in front of you. If you make the ‘hand’ twice as large, you use up twice the amount of mana. If you move twice as far away, you spend several times more mana. The exact amount is unknown, but it becomes unsustainable very quickly. As a general rule you don’t want to levitate anything more than a few steps away. Closer is better. Makes sense?”

Salissa muttered something in the affirmative, eyes unfocused, clearly imagining what he was explaining. Edwin couldn’t help but grin. Walter had never much cared for teaching, only doing it when required by the College, but every now and then it could be fun. As long as he didn’t need to do it day in and day out, that was.

“Good, then let’s keep going. The grasp alone doesn’t do anything, it merely connects you to the object via your magic. The second part is how you actually influence it, moving it about or holding it still. We call this ‘forcing’. Let’s take your pebble. While it’s in your hand, you connect to it with your grasp. Then you hold it in place and remove your hand. You’re now using just enough force to counteract the pebble’s weight. Question: You have a pebble twice the weight of the first one, how much more mana does holding it require?”

Salissa had been nodding along and startled when he asked her. “Uhm, what, I mean, twice the size, so – “

“Twice the weight.” Edwin corrected calmly, trying his hardest not to laugh. Seeing the abrasive mage behave like a flustered student was simply too good.

“Right, twice the weight. That should be, uhm…” She paused for a moment; her face scrunched up in thought. “Twice as much mana?”

“Correct.” Edwin said with a smile. “Forcing is straightforward in that regard. Think of it like holding the object in your hand. If it’s twice as heavy, you need twice as much strength. Of course, this only goes for holding it up, but the same principle applies to moving it about. If you hold a heavy rock in your hands and want to smack someone with it, swinging it takes more effort than simply not letting it fall. Clear so far?”

She nodded, and he continued.

“Where using your hands and using telekinesis differ is the amount of effort you can apply. In the case of the heavy rock, swinging it with your hands makes it start slowly and then accelerates it over time. Telekinesis doesn’t do that. If you levitate an object and move it, it will immediately reach the targeted speed, siphoning as much mana from you as is necessary to do so. That means that you want to move things around slowly whenever possible, as speed is expensive.”

Edwin continued gesticulating with his hands and his teaching pebble throughout the explanation. He moved it from left to right quickly, then stopped it.

“You also have to realize that forcing controls every part of the object. If you hold it up and somebody pushes against it it won’t move, but the mana draining from you will increase. In the same way, if you move it quickly and then stop it again, you will have to pay for its speed twice: Once to achieve it, and again to remove it. Objects don’t like change, they want to keep doing what they’re doing, whether that’s lying on the ground, rolling down a mountain or flying through the air. Still with me?”

“Yes.” Salissa said. Her eyes were almost glowing as she hung onto his every word.

It might have been a while since her courses, but she should nevertheless know all of this. Who taught this girl?

Edwin paused, listening. The forest remained silent, the only sounds the even breathing of his companions. Satisfied, he kept going.

“Now we’re coming to the heart of the matter, and the trick I promised you. There are two ways to force, a simple and a complicated one. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you tried using the second, but failed. After a while you gave up and used the first. Am I right?”

This was a gamble. Edwin actually wasn’t sure that she hadn’t succeeded, there was no real way to tell from the outside. It was an educated guess, mostly based on the way she had looked while doing it. Considering how long it had taken her to lift the pebble, she wasn’t very good at it. The second method was very hard to achieve for a beginner, and it was just as hard to hold it. She hadn’t seemed very taxed in that moment, however.

Salissa looked away, embarrassed.

I’m so good I impress myself sometimes.

“The first way is to simply use your mana to push against the object. There are different names for it, basic telekinesis, brute forcing, mana lifting and many others, but it works just like I said: The heavier, the faster, et cetera, the more mana it drains. The second way, called linking or dispersing, is different. Instead of pushing against the object with your mana, you create a link from it through yourself into the ground, dispersing the weight of the object to the earth beneath your feet. Instead of expending mana to hold up the pebble, counteracting its weight, you only need to maintain the link. That means that levitating this pebble and a rock ten times its size would drain almost the same amount of mana.”

Salissa perked up. “Almost?”

“Yes.” Edwin nodded. “A heavier object needs a larger link, and the link acts like the grasp. When levitating something small, you can link it to a small patch of earth directly around you. If you tried lifting a massive rock, you would have to disperse its weight over a large area, going further and further away from you. As we said before: Distance is expensive.”

“Couldn’t you mix the two, linking only as much as makes sense and brute forcing the rest of the weight?”

Edwin raised an eyebrow, smiling. “Good thinking!” Salissa beamed, at least until Edwin continued.

“Sadly, it doesn’t work like that. You can’t link and brute force at the same time, and you can’t choose the size of your link either, just like you can’t accelerate an object slowly. If you decide to move it a certain way, your link will expand and drain mana to make it happen.”

Salissa frowned. “I was told linking was the superior way. That doesn’t sound that much better, definitely not worth the hassle.”

Edwin shook his head. “It may not sound like it, but your teachers weren’t wrong. There are almost no cases where brute forcing requires less mana than linking, but on the other hand, linking allows you to levitate much heavier objects than you would otherwise be able to. The largest rock you could barely lift with basic telekinesis would barely, if at all, tax you while linking. It is, without a doubt, superior. Just out of curiosity, did they teach you about the third method?”

“A third method?” Salissa asked, confused. “No, they said there were only two.”

“Makes sense.” Edwin nodded. “The third one is forbidden because it’s extremely dangerous.”

“Is it so powerful?” Salissa said with gleaming eyes.

“No, it’s pretty much useless.” Edwin answered. “It’s a great way to kill yourself, though. It’s called half-linking. Where linking creates a bridge from the object through the caster into the ground, half-linking stops at the caster. Basically, you push the object with your body. Now if you remember that telekinesis allows you to lift objects that you otherwise couldn’t, and will always accelerate to the speed you choose, you can maybe guess what happens if you half-link something heavy.”

Salissa looked shocked. “That…really doesn’t sound very useful.”

“It can have some use.” Edwin admitted. “Half-linking small items doesn’t tax your body at all, and it requires less mana than even proper linking. But it really isn’t worth the hassle of learning it, and not teaching it to students is definitely the right decision.”

“How do you know about it?” Salissa asked, incredulity in her voice.

“The person who taught me about magic knew. Apparently, the College researched it a long time ago. But back to linking, I promised you a trick after all.”

“Right.” Salissa said, thankfully dropping it.

“The hard part of linking is to create and sustain the bridge between the object, yourself and the earth. Doing that while also moving the object is quite simply a lot to think about at once. You know that telekinesis is, at its core, a conversion, correct? As with your fire and all other conversions, it works somewhat like a part of your body. You’ve used fire a lot, I’m sure it’s getting easier and easier. You probably barely have to think about it, right?”

“Right.” She replied again.

“That’s the beauty of conversions. With enough practice, we… that is, a mage can use them as quickly and precisely as they can their own hands. You don’t need to think about which muscles to contract, your hand just does what you want.”

“But how does that help me? I don’t want to use brute forcing.”

“That’s the beauty of it.” Edwin said, grinning. “Your body wants to link.”

“What?” Salissa asked, confused. “That doesn’t make any sense. My teacher said that he used brute force reflexively and he had to concentrate to link.”

“Yes, because students at the College learn basic telekinesis first. Only when they’re proficient in that, do they start linking, and even then they only use it for especially heavy objects. They’ve already trained themselves to use brute force. The natural way to use telekinesis is linking.”

“Why?” Salissa asked, confused. “It’s so complicated. Shouldn’t one of the other two be more natural?”

“I couldn’t tell you.” Edwin shrugged. “But what’s simple isn’t always what’s natural, is it? In any case, you can train yourself to reflexively use linking without having to concentrate on actually creating the bridge. Your subconscious will do that for you.”

“How?”

“Like I told you in the beginning: By dropping the pebble. Put your other hand behind your back, so you can’t grab the pebble when it falls. Then close your eyes and meditate. You have to make yourself believe that the pebble won’t fall, that you won’t let it. That there is no way that it will fall to the ground. It just can’t happen. Absolutely impossible. This will take a while, early on, but it will become much easier once you get the hang of it. Once you’re there, you reach out to your core as you always do when using your mana. Then you slowly rotate your hand. Try not to think that you’re dropping the rock, you’re simply rotating your hand until the palm faces downward. The pebble won’t fall.”

“And that works?” Salissa asked doubtfully.

“It does. It might not work immediately, but if you manage it even once, it will immediately become easier. Try it. I’ll keep watch.”

With that, Edwin dropped his pebble and rose, quietly stepping across the sleeping forms to retake his position by the hillside. The forest was still quiet. He could feel Salissa’s eyes on his back, and he fought the urge to turn around. After a while, he heard her breathing quiet as she slipped into her meditation. Edwin grinned.

He’d gone a bit overboard in his explanation, revealing a little more knowledge than he’d intended, but he’d accepted that he couldn’t play the ignorant village boy. He had adjusted his cover story to explain his strange knowledge of magic, and while it seemed weak and far-fetched to him, it should at least distract them from the truth.

Behind him, a pebble fell onto the dirt. Salissa sighed, then quieted again. Edwin turned, furtively glancing over. Salissa had her eyes closed again, pebble in hand.

Would you look at that? Under all that bluster there’s an actual person. Maybe this can work after all.