The magic of this world is beyond anything I imagined before.
In every comic book, manga or webnovel I have read, the magic came so effortlessly to each user. Especially the main character.
It seemed destined that whoever the main character was, they could draw effortlessly on a well of magical reserve and skill within them, casting spells at age 5 that would put the greatest wizards to shame.
So why can't I do the same?
The image of my OC floated in front of me, tumbling in the air guided by whatever momentum I had applied when I summoned it.
Not a second after I had drawn it, it dispersed into millions of blue shards.
This was the tenth time I had drawn my OC perfectly from memory, but each time the result was the same: it would float a bit, each line would wobble in uncertainty and the entire thing came apart at the seams.
I sighed.
"You can't just do that you know," a voice said.
I screamed.
A very high pitched, terrified scream.
I turned around and a young boy was standing behind me, watching me curiously.
He was dressed much better than I was. In fact, I was feeling insecure just being next to him. Where I had a shabby dress, he was dressed exquisitely like a noble. The fabric of his tunic looked soft and cool, and his hair was kept neatly.
I grabbed at my rough greasy hair.
When was the last time I washed my hair?
I looked at him some more and inched a bit away from him. He looked to be just a kid, the same age I was.
I intentionally set out for this shaded tree so nobody could spot me, who is this kid?
"W-who are you? Where did you come from?" I said, regaining my composure.
"Name's George le Cuid, I live down over there" he said, pointing over the hill. As I peered over, I saw a a beautiful house; no, not a house, a mansion. The architecture was exquisite, the white stone gleaming as if never worn by weather nor time. An ornate hedge garden poked out front, perfectly square with not a stray leaf out of place.
In fact, the entire house seemed to be highly geometrical, built out of basic polygons and shapes. Even in spite of the simplicity, I could tell the aesthetics of the building were well thought out.
"Wow." I couldn't help but marvel.
"It's not that cool," he said dismissively.
"Your house is so beautiful though!"
He gave a big smile.
"My dad built it!"
"The entire thing?"
"Yep! He's a sorcerer! He made the whole thing through construct magic."
"All on his own?"
"Of course, it's quite easy with magic! Still took a long time though."
I recalled the recent memory of my new dad building the slope with magic. He didn't need at all to physically move rocks, only to construct the shape and let magic do the rest. This drove me to learn this even more.
"Not to brag, but I am following in my dad's footsteps to become to be a sorcerer like him!" George said
My eyes gleamed with opportunity.
"Say George, did have you ever considered taking on a pupil?" I said, slyly.
"A pupil! I would need to pass the Master's examination before I would even begin to consider it!"
"But you are learning magic right now right?"
"Yes of course!"
"So aren't you a master of magic as compared to someone like me?"
"Hmm..." he began to think.
"And besides, you know that teaching someone else is the best way to learn more yourself?"
I'd heard that fact from my teacher Mr. Smith, who was trying to encourage each student to help each other out! I never ended up helping anybody but so many people came to help me...
"Sure! What's your name by the way?" George agreed.
"I'm Lillian Lightwood! Nice to meet you!"
"Nice to meet you too! Um... where do I begin?"
"Oh um..."
I hadn't thought this far into it. I guess asking a young kid to teach me complicated magic is a bit of a difficult task.
"Do you know why I can't draw my pictures?" I asked, hoping that would probe in the right direction.
"Oh that's easy, because that's not a valid construct," he replied instantly.
This kid is fast!
"What's a valid construct?"
"My dad told me a valid construct are things that you are allowed to make with magic, at least basic geo-magic."
"So... what can you make?"
"A dot, a line and a circle! Watch me."
The young kid closed his eyes, and outstretched a hand in front of him with his index and middle fingers extended.
"In my mind, I just think of an nothing and then..."
In a motion, he tapped at the air in front of him and a tiny golden orb appeared where he tapped.
"This is a dot! I think my dad calls them v-taxes? But he said to just call them dots."
"Amazing!! What can you do with them?"
"Not much, but they're good for anchoring your constructs."
He waved at his hand the dot disappeared.
"The dot is basic. With the dot you can make a line."
George once again closed his eyes and formed his hands like before. He quickly seemed to tap and throw his arm out in one direction, in the same motion my new dad did before.
What appeared was a thin golden line that stretched our seemingly infinitely.
"WOW!" I yelled. George smiled bashfully at my intense reactions. "Why is it golden?"
"It's golden because it's a complete construction. I've done what I needed to do and the magic knows this, so it's gold."
"Awesome!"
George once again dispelled the line and readied his pose once again. He first tapped at the air, moved his arm out a certain radius and threw his arm in an arc. Before us popped into existence a brilliant golden circle. It was drawn to utter perfection, perfect curvature and not a defect in sight.
"That's amazing!"
"Can I try!?"
"Yeah!"
I closed my eyes and put out my hand, copying the form George had. In my mind, I cleared all the thoughts I had an imagined a black empty void. A strange feeling began to take over my mind, whereas usually I would've been unable to focus and clear my head of all forms of distractions, now I felt truly freed from all external thoughts.
There was nothing but an empty void in my mind. It was a playground, for me to do whatever I pleased.
I imagined a line. Straight and true as an arrow. With a quick throw of my hand and a burst of intention, I opened my eyes.
There it was, a perfectly straight golden line.
"You're a quick learner Lillian!" George said, with a big goofy grin.
"Maybe I just have a great teacher," I said, returning the goofy smile.
George immediately began to blush and started stammering about something else.
"Can I try one more?" I asked.
"S-sure!" he said.
Again, I entered my playground.
I pictured a square in my head, a simple shape. I can do this right? I tried tracing out the edges of the square in the same way I saw George do it, imagining to myself the perfect straight line that I would draw. In a quick motion, I opened my eyes.
A wobbly blue square protruded from the edge of my fingers, its edges seemed uncertain. In an instant, it exploded.
"What!!!" I was mad.
George seemed to laugh at my failure.
"Stop laughing!!" I screamed.
"You can't just do that!" he said, between dying chuckles.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"If you want to make more complicated shapes, you first have to construct them fully from scratch using the rules of valid constructs."
"Rules? I didn't know there are rules!"
"Of course there are! There are 5 rules. If we don't have rules, you'd be doing wild magic and that's very dangerous."
Wild magic? That sounds interesting.
"Ok, then what are the rules!?"
"Well the first three rules are that you can construct a dot, line and circle."
"Ok that's easy enough."
"The fourth rule says that all square angles are the same."
"What's a square angle?"
"So an angle is like how far between two lines is and a square angle are all the angles in a square."
Ah! So what I call a right angle they call square angles in this world.
"So what's the last rule?"
George hesitated for a second.
"It's sort of a mouthful, my dad made me memorize this: 'if a straight line falling on two straight lines makes the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles.'"
I keeled over trying to follow what he was saying.
Laying there dazed George came over to check if I was ok. After poking at my leg a bit and satisfied that I was still alive and breathing.
"It doesn't make much sense, but I think it means if two lines are are pointing at each other even a little bit then they will touch."
My ears perked up a bit. In an instant my mind flashed back into the empty world of constructs. In an instant, I could see hundreds of combinations of two lines drawn out in every position. In every scenario, if either of the lines were angled just a bit towards the other, then they would eventually cross each other somewhere further out.
Why is this a rule? This seems pretty obvious to me.
"So does that mean if I draw two lines that don't point to each other then they will never touch?"
"I think so! My dad calls them pair of L lines."
Parallel lines! Duh.
George continued to explain to me the basics of what he called 'geo-magic.' He says that in order to create shapes or other useful constructs, one must first construct them by building from dots, lines and circles. When you do understand the method of construction, that basically becomes a spell you can call on at any time. A 'prop' he called it.
George demonstrated for me the first prop he ever learned, how to form a triangle whose sides are all the same.
First, he drew a line segment that was to be the base of a triangle. Putting two dots at each end of the line, he drew a circle whose radius was equal to the length of the line segment, repeating at each endpoint.
I watched as the two constructed circles overlapped at a single point. He placed a point there and connected it to the ends of the line segment he first drew.
With the wave of a hand, he dispelled the remainders of the circles and what remained, glowing beautiful and gold, was the perfect equilateral triangle.
From the direction of George's mansion, I heard a voice calling out. They were calling his name.
Quickly, he got up and looked down before turning back to me and giving me a cheeky smile.
"My servant is calling for me. Maybe dinner is ready! I have to go, maybe I will see you another time?"
I was disappointed that our time came to an end. I still had so many questions to ask of him and my mind was racing with questions.
How do you construct a square? A pentagon? Can you construct any other shapes? What other things can you do?
"Ok, bye George! I'll be here tomorrow!"
He waved goodbye as he sped off towards his mansion. I waved back as his figure grew smaller and smaller into the distance.
Sitting back down under tree and began practicing with my newfound knowledge.
First a dot, then a line, next a circle.
Over the next few days, I would shirk on my chores and wander to this tree atop the hill. I practiced seeing what I could construct, what sorts of shapes I could form and what techniques I could use. Gradually, I came to understand the beauty of this magic, its simplicity in what I was able to create. Every step I took forward was a result of my efforts, with the help of George who occasionally popped by.
As I stepped more and more into this world of magic, George became less a teacher and more of a study buddy. His dad wanted him to follow in his footsteps to be a great sorcerer and would often assign him little problems to figure out.
If he couldn't do it on his own, he would come share the problem with me and we would do it together.
...
"Let's see, so you have a square and you want to fit a circle inside of it?" I asked.
"Yep, but the circle must touch all 4 edges of the square. My dad calls it a sir-come-scribed circle."
I giggled. George always has a hard time pronouncing words.
He looked at my with a half-angry look and quickly pulled out his grimoire. He told me that a grimoire was a book that contained the sum of knowledge that a sorcerer knows, which includes props and other spells that are useful.
"Ok, let me use this prop to form our square."
George looked at the small text written in his grimoire and with quick hand motions, much faster than a construction from scratch, formed a perfect square in front of us.
I was amazed. I suppose he could see that I was and said "You should really get one you know."
I looked at him annoyed.
"My parents said paper is very expensive, so only the rich folks can afford to get grimoires."
"Oh," he looked embarrassed. George clearly didn't understand what it meant to live without means.
"It's a chance to practice my props anyway. The more I do them, the faster I get."
"I think to get this we need to find the center of the square."
"I'm confused why we can't just draw a circle?"
"I tried that but it doesn't touch all the sides."
"Hmm..."
This is a tough one. In order for the circle to touch all sides of the square, you would probably need it to be centered. So we need to find a line that goes through the center of the top and bottom sides as well as the left and right sides. Then, their intersection is the center!
"George, what if we used the bisector prop?"
Flipping through his grimoire, he stopped on a page early in the book.
"Prop 11?" George said. He looked up at the square and began, "are we bisecting the square so that we can find its center?"
"Yep! So look at this," I said as I began to continue the construction.
No sooner had I finished partway through my circles did I hear rushed breaths approaching up behind me. George and I both whipped around ready to flee, but I immediately recognized the rugged face of my brother Maris.
"Lillian! I've been looking all over for you," he said, between pants of breath, "is this where you hide off to?"
"Is something wrong? I've been with my friend George here," I responded.
My brother's eyes dashed to George and he dropped instantly to the floor in a crouched bow.
"Sorry to bother you, Master le Cuid, I have been asked to bring my sister back home."
"Wait what? Why?"
"Come hurry!"
My brother sprung up quickly after his formalities, grabbed at my hand and tugged me along quickly.
I barely had a chance to turn back towards George and say "I'll see you some other time!"
"OK!" George yelled cheerfully back before running in the direction of his home.
Turning back to my brother, I was miffed.
"Why did you have to pull me away so quickly?"
"You shouldn't be playing so casually with Lord le Cuid's son anyway," his voice sounded worried. The sun was setting, was he hoping to get me back before nightfall?
"What's going on?"
"No time to talk, we have to get back before night!"
With that, Maris tugged at my arm even harder and strung me along.
What's going on!?