Awakening - The Last Science #1

Chapter 9 - First Lessons - IV

  "Alden, wake the fuck up!"

  "...huh?"

  He spluttered back to life. There was a wall of red bricks above him, the underside of the bridge leading out of town. Apparently Rika had moved him under cover while he'd been out.

  "What happened?"

  "You passed out for a minute. Don't do that again," Rika snapped. There was genuine concern on her face.

  "I'm okay," he mumbled, struggling to sit up. Rika planted a hand on his shoulder, pushing him back down firmly.

  "Nope. Stay down, let yourself wake up a bit more." After a moment's indignation, Alden felt grateful for her insistence. Even that modicum of effort sent his head spinning, his blood pounding through his skull. His relaxed position was easing the pressure, bit by bit.

  It was still sunny and warm out. Rika was sitting just off to the side of the blank wall where the door to the Market would appear. She was alternating concerned looks at him with glances around the river, to the swathes of trees lining the far bank and the road leading away. He decided that, being relatively incapacitated, now was as good a time as any to ask a few more questions of her.

  "How long have you been doing this?"

  "Eight months, give or take?"

  "That recently?" he asked, shocked.

  "Well, they only discovered the first parts of the book like a year and a half ago," Rika continued. "Maybe a bit earlier. Then there were a few months of people going nuts with magic, before the Gods stepped in. After that they made the Council, got everyone organized, then they had a falling out. No one explained that part to me. They all get nervous when I bring it up," Rika said dismissively. She clearly didn't think much of their fears.

  "Going nuts with magic, but still no one found out?" Alden prompted.

  "The council and such helps, but I'd bet anything the Gods are working behind the scenes pretty constantly to keep us all out of trouble." Rika frowned. "Makes you wonder how they do it."

  "Yeah, it does," Alden added pointedly. Rika gave him a look.

  "Fuck if I know. Maybe they just disappear them, that'd be easy. Oh hell," she faltered, seeing the expression that had briefly crossed Alden's face. "Sorry."

  "How do I get better at magic?" Alden asked, determined to change the subject.

  "Practice," Rika answered simply.

  "That's it?"

  "Fuck no. You gotta learn and experiment, do research, and train yourself. It gets a bit easier over time, but not by much. Unless it's your affinity, but even then it's never easy. Might be magic, but it's still work." Rika pointed at her arm. "It's like a muscle in a way. You work at it, it tears and gets sore. Like that migraine you had earlier, or the fact that you just passed out a few minutes ago. But when it heals, it heals back stronger than before."

  She reached out her hand toward the paper Alden had been struggling with. With a few gentle movements, it began to flip up and down, fluttering around in figure eights. She made it look effortless, until he glanced at her face instead of the paper. She let it down a moment later. Alden could see the exertion affecting her, but Rika still always seemed to want to show off what she could do.

  "You said you have to research?" he prompted. "Research how, exactly?"

  "Scientific method. Take a guess, try some stuff out, see if it worked, find a pattern. Calling it magic's just a placeholder, I'd say," Rika replied, settling back against the wall again. "It's a science, but no one's got a clue how it works yet. What's that quote? 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.'"

  "But you can shoot lightning from your fingers and move things with your mind," Alden protested.

  She shook her head. "Yeah, but there's a logic to it. It's consistent. We know exactly how anyone can start using magic, even if we don't know why it happens." Rika pointed up at the sky. "The entire universe was formed by the Big Bang. We know how that happened, and roughly how everything formed after that, but we know fuck all about why."

  "So logically..."

  "Logically, magic's gotta follow some rules. Yeah, it breaks the laws of physics as we know them, but so did a thousand other things in the past, and we revised those laws. Someone's gonna have to revise them again."

  "Not you, though."

  "Nope. Too lazy."

  He laughed. Rika grinned.

  "Glad you've still got some sense of humor. Now, any other questions from the peanut gallery?"

  "What's a peanut gallery?"

  "Cheap seats in a theater, you uncultured hack." She stood up. "You good yet?"

  Alden pulled himself up to a sitting position, and found that the nausea and headache had subsided substantially. "Yeah."

  "Cool. So what's next? You wanna try making fire?"

  Alden grinned. All caution fled from his mind as an image of himself popped into his mind, with balls of fire floating in his hands and an intense look on his face. He rubbed his hands together excitedly. This was going to be fun.