The Last Guardian || KTH

10: use your magic

Taehyung had been telling Zeila stories of magic and how it had come to be. How people had believed it had a soul of its own, revealing itself to those who listen close enough. He told her that magic had once existed on earth when people believed, but when that belief faded into stories that people had forgotten, magic found itself in the pages of legends, written by those who remembered.

The legends then became myths that were carried by word of mouth and when the myths were too long to be passed down they were sung as songs for children to sleep.

"Magic follows a will of its own," he told her as both of them watched the sky above. It had been almost three hours since Zeila had a strenuous training session. And three hours since she had learnt that Taehyung had been doing this since he was five.

"And there's magic inside me?" Zeila questions him back looking at her hand to figure out just what he had meant. She was born with what he told her, but all her life she felt normal and lived her life like any person would (without magic).

"Yes, there is," he told her, fiddling with his ring which the queen had passed down to him before sending him here, "but the thing with magic is, not everyone can use it even if they have it."

Zeila turns to look at Taehyung who has his eyes fixated above. "In our world there was a curse passed down to all the men who had once used magic such that anyone who were to use it would find themselves consumed by a madness." There was agony in his voice, but not for himself Zeila figured that much, but for someone else closer to him.

"Then, how do you-" Zeila inquired pointing to his ring. He seemed to treasure it more than his life.

"The council found a way to bend the curse. Usually magic wielders use magic from their own spower," he told her, turning over and supporting himself on his side to face Zeila. He could see her eyes gleaming up upon the mention of 'spower', eager to quench her curiosity.

"Spower is like your soul force, not essentially your soul itself but a connection between the magic around and your soul if that makes sense. Every living creature has a spower capacity of their own which decides if they can use the magic around them from within," he explained it to her knowing well how twisted his words were. These were the words passed down to him from the person he once looked up to.

"So like a switch? Only if it's on it can take the energy from outside so you can use it however you want," Zeila simplifies it to her understanding, bobbing her head when Taehyung told she was right.

"But the curse restricted us to use our own spower. So now we use borrowed spower, a temporary switch to use the magic given to us, so that we can use the magic around," Taehyung said, watching her keenly to his words. "We can't directly tap into our spower force but we can use the spower we borrowed to use the magic around us to put it in simple words. The only problem with this is it drains our energy twice as fast than a magic wielder would lose theirs."

"So this spower, is it like trapped in your ring?" Zeila speculated. She had noticed how he never had it on him all the time but did manage to slip it into his finger just at the right moment.

A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. "You are right," he elucidated, "the ring is indeed a vessel to store the spower in. The council gathered together to make this with the hope that it would suffice for a month, although I wouldn't be needing it for long." He propped his arms and rolled over with his back on the ground, tilting his head so he wouldn't look away from her.

"Better safe than sorry I suppose," he continued. "The only repercussion with using magic now is the toll it takes on my body and I was never heavily trained to master this either ways. So I'm better off without it."