Falling Into A New Life

The next few days went by in a blur for me. I found out my teacher's name is Alderra, and I learned that to use magic you need mana. Mana is made and held in the heart for a demon. The stronger the demon, the faster their heart can make mana, and the more mana they can hold. When a demon consumes the heart of another demon thats close or greater to them in strength, they also absorb the mana they have and use it to increase the mana they can hold. However, the mana you already have will try to fight off the new mana. So if you eat a demon with too little mana, their mana will be destroyed before it can make you stronger.

I also got through magic theory for intermediates. Though it was harder than it should have been, with her constantly playing pranks on me. Turns out you use runes to manage how your magic behaves. It was explained to me like this. Take fire and ice for example. One makes things hot, the other makes them cold. Normally, if you tried to mix them the spell would fizzle out and you would waste a ton of mana. The fire half would try to change the cold half so it caused heat, and the cold half would do the opposite to the fire. Both halves would try to maintain their own way of naturally doing things at the same time. So you would have your spell waste a bunch of magic from trying to both change itself and keep itself the same. Which is a paradox and can't happen, so if you tried doing that in a fight you're basically going to die.

Now, the way fire magic normally works, is to use oxygen once cast to cause combustion and spread heat. Ice magic draws in heat. With the right runes and commands, you can make the outside of the flame use ice magic, causing it to drawn in the heat nearby. You than change the fire magic on the inside of the flame, to only direct heat inwards instead of in all directions. Doing this gives you the spell frost fire. Making the area around your target freezing cold and effectively incinerating your target. Imagine all the heat in an area focused into one spot. Whatever you just used it on is most likely nothing but ash. The downside of casting spells like these, is you have to focus and only let the two halves of the spell intermingle to a certain degree. You also have to hold onto the runes in your head and use mana to give them power, so they can command and change your spell. A frost fire flame the same size has a normal one requires five times the mana, and unlike a normal flame, actually requires mana to maintain. Because of this, you have to be able to maintain the spell if you really want to do damage. Intermediate spells require a lot of mana, so only greater demons can even use them. They also require more than one alignment though, so I guess only greater demons can use them either way.

After I got the theory for all that down, Alderra took the book away saying the next part would be useless to me until I can properly cast spells. Instead she gave me another rune book, detailing how to begin making my own ruins. To make a rune, you have to picture completely and utterly, what that ruin does when you draw it. It's highly recommended to keep all runes that do similar things well, similar. That makes it easier to memorize them. To make a rune work as best as possible, you also need all the lines to connect in some way, you can't have a line just end. A good example of what you want is a circle, triangle, or rectangle. You get the picture. You can even have a triangle within a circle, with another circle thats half in and half out. As long as the lines don't just end, it can be anything. When I asked why, Alderra said it was to prevent the magic from leaking. If you wrote a rune down for enchanting, and lets say it was a d, the magic you put into the rune would slowly leak out of the top part. If you used an O, than the magic would flow through it endlessly. Well, until it got used up for whatever you needed it for. When I finished a rune for both fire and ice, Alderra left and came back with a bowl filled with straw.

"What's that for?" I asked looking at the bowl.

"It's for you to practice magic on. I want you to light the straw on fire, then put it out." She said setting it down.

"Finally, at the rate we were going I thought I'd be learning advanced magic before I even cast a single spell."

"Yeah, I know it sucks, but the reason you had to memorize intermediate theory is your alignments."

"What do you mean?" I asked with a confused expression lining my face.

"Well, most demons can combine their magic right of the bat. They won't need intermediate stuff until they figure out how they can branch off their magic. You however, already have two different types of mana that can't normally mix. So the quickest way for you to learn magic, was to learn how to be able to use your magic, instead of just wasting mana on spells that won't work, since your mana would eat itself without you properly controlling, and separating it. Now no more questions, let's see if you can manage."

I walked over to the bowl and sat down, taking another look at the two runes a wrote down. I focused on the beat of my heart, and imagined one half was filled with blue blood, and the other red. I then imagined some of the red blood was flowing form there into my paw, than out it through the air. The blood passed through a floating rune before touching the straw. Feeling a flash of heat, I opened my eyes to see the straw was on fire. Next I repeated the process, but this time with the ice rune, and blue blood. When I opened my eyes I saw the fire was out, and the bowl was lightly covered with frost. Strangely though, I could still sense my heart, and I could feel how much 'blood' was left for both sides. I asked Alderra about it.

"That's because you just connected with both your mana pools. You're now in tune with them, so you can tell how much is there."

She had a very excited look on her face, maybe she takes pride in her work? "What's got you so excited?"

"You'll be caught up soon, and at the rate you're going I just might be able to relax before the academy starts up again."

(That's weird, why are there still so many demons here if they're on break?)

"The academy is just the name for this part of the city. All demons who are still just learning magic live in this section. It's not unusual to see them lounging about in the halls."

"For the last time, please stop reading my mind."

"Actually that time I just guessed, the look on your face said it all." She said with a very amused expression.

That was way to accurate to be a guess. (You are the least demonic demon ever to demon.) I thought while looking at her closely. Yep, theres the eye twitch. "HA, I knew you were reading my mind."

"Alright fine, so what if I was. I'm your teacher and I make the rules. What does 'to demon' even mean? That isn't even a thing!'

"You're just mad I caught you."

"Shut up and go work on your runes!"

I went back to work with a smile on my face. (You know what, she may be a demon but she's still a pretty good friend.) It had been days since that story had crossed my mind. Recently I even found myself being attracted to some of the demons I saw in the hall, the few times I looked out of my room. At first I had another breakdown, but I quickly thought of it as a blessing. I would most likely never find love in one of them but, I'd rather not be a virgin for eternity. I was waiting for marriage before this, but I don't exactly have to worry about the small sins like that anymore, being a demon an all. (Has a nice ass to.) I thought with a glance behind me.

"You aren't so bad yourself Shade, and thanks for the compliment."

"... Mind reading is fucking unfair."

"Oh, don't say that, how else will I know your favorite positions?" With a saucy wink, and a laugh, she turned around and went back to reading.

(Focus on the runes, focus on the runes, focus on the runes, don't think of anything but the runes.)

"Ooh I like that one, kinky."

(God fucking dammit!)

I spent the next twenty minutes trying to work on runes, while listening to her never ending giggling.

"Dang, looks like class time is over. But it's fine, I'm sure you have some pent up... frustrations you need to relieve. And hey, if you're good tomorrow..." She slowly walked up to me, in a very feminine way. "I might even let you stay."

In my rush to leave, I accidentally pushed some fire mana into my face, making her laugh even more. Yep, that's what it was.

The next couple days were spent much the same way. Alderra made sure I always knew she wanted to have some fun, but never initiated anything. I made some more runes,and applied them to make spells. I even managed to pull off three of them. The classic fireball was my favorite. Though Alderra was pissed at my bad aim. Her dresser fixed itself quickly, but I burnt half her clothes. Not that she ever wore any clothes anyway. She kept saying she might have at some point, but I didn't believe her. I also created an AOE freeze spell, but it drained most of my ice mana, and only worked on a small area. So as long as my enemies stay perfectly still, and don't try to move, than I can freeze them. Yeah that one isn't very useful. The last, and most impressive by far, was a defensive spell. When I accidentally light the dresser on fire, I tried to use the first ice spell I learned to put it out. In my panic, I tripped while still pulling the mana, right into the dresser. Thankfully I didn't get burned. Instead, I felt my ice mana pool slowly shrinking, as it was used up to keep me from getting to hot. That's right, I discovered how to be immune to the heat and cold, completely by accident. Unfortunately, I was to excited to keep watching how much I had left. Now, I just tried out the failure ice spell before this, so I only had little ice mana to work with, which became zero pretty quickly. Imagine my surprise when the fire I was laughing at started to burn me, before Alderra put it out with a bucket of water.

After giving me some burn ointment and a lecture, she sent me back to my room for the day, even though I was already mostly healed. She also told me where I could find the books in my room, so I could study while I rest. I spent the day just making and memorizing runes. Before I went to sleep, I had twenty-three runes written down, along with what they were supposed to do.

Alderra surprised me the next day. She said I was close to catching up to the other first years. She told me that having 20 runes, and being able to cast 6 spells is required of every first year. I just needed to be able to cast one more spell. She also said she had a surprise for me if I was successful and sent me back to my room again. I spent the entire day thinking of a new spell, and then practicing it once I did. I fell asleep completely and utterly confident in my abilities to perform the spell, and very curious about what her surprise was going to be.