Codex

10 - Division Debunked, Sort Of

Doesn't matter. Don't make me say it.

"Aww, Eric wants to meet me and become close friends. Or do you want me to have a physical body for another purpose?" She poked fun at me, but she was right on the former point.

"Hello? Anyone in there?" Dawn knocked my forehead.

"Oh, sorry, I was thinking, about something."

"Well, I guess I'll leave you to it then," she smiled.

"Yeah, thanks for doing this, I'll see you."

She still stood there, a little awkwardly. Oh... "Well, I took the initiative a minute ago, it's your turn now," I placed the ball in her court. She bowed her head even more in anxiousness, then suddenly looked up, moved in, and pecked me on the cheek, speeding out without giving me a second look.

"Well, gotta start off somewhere, right?"

I was at least expecting lips though. I mean, come on!

"Says the guy who only held his girl's hands and couldn't even recognise her signals in the desert."

Fair enough...

I practised and studied Division relentlessly for the first week, balancing in meals, classes and showers, but foregoing some sleep in the name of knowledge. Unless of course Dawn insisted I sleep. With that week of practise, came improvement in tangible Division, yet, I had to question, was it really Division I was practising? I stressed my magical energies, my own advanced form of spell conditioning, and indeed, I could feel less physical energy needed to use magic, but what exactly made this training different from any other besides its efficiency? I had to look at what exactly Division was at another angle. Was it achievable passively? Or was it something of an active cooldown like Purist and Timedial? Was Division a spell, or a state? If I took the concept of non-tangible Division and applied it to the tangible version, it would mean the actual cast and the mana requirement were two separate entities.

I had to revisit the basics, just to clear certain misconceptions. A cast, was a visualisation of a spell in your mind, a pre-spell to your spell. But a cast without mana was just imagination. Only the siphoning of mana would give physical form to a cast, making it become a spell. The second week I spent my time buried in words and diagrams. The more I read, the more I began associating the word 'cast' with consciousness, and the word 'mana' with energy. It was becoming clearer, I could feel it, but I wasn't quite there. To cast is to think. To think is to be aware. To be aware is to be conscious. Donna, where the hell does mana come from? I mean really? It was becoming frustrating, because it felt like most of the puzzle was assembled, but some snot-nosed prankster little hooligan kid stole a piece, a central piece.

Donna, do you remember anything about storing your consciousness in the codex? I asked her, tired of scouring the library for texts on the subject.

"Just one thing, which I suppose would be good advice for you. If you try to store your consciousness in something or someone else, you will die."

Is that w–

"What happened to me? No, it nearly did, but my master saved me. It's stupid how obvious it was after I'd done it, but I realised the minute you separate your consciousness, your mind is literally gone. The only thing you'll be running on is raw, primal instinct. I wasn't completely dead yet, but I was getting there. Anyway, that wasn't how I actually died. My death is still a mystery."

So how the hell did you end up in a book?

"Beats me," I felt her shrug, "but I know that no one but me could do that."