And as suddenly as she fell asleep, she awoke the next morning.
Luz took her phone of charger and looked at the time, *6 AM*
She groaned and wanted to go back to sleep, only to find she was not sleepy at all.
Luz got up and stared at her bed as if it betrayed her, she was always sleepy in the mornings, even if something exciting was happening she needed at least a solid 10 minutes of rolling around to get up.
But now.., she was wide awake, not feeling tired in the least, that was..almost creepy.
Was this another side effect of her 'defense mechanism'.
She needed more information, she walked to the window, her mom was just leaving for an early shift.
Luz literally got up at the exact most convenient moment she could.
Well..that did nothing to help her being creeped out by the situation.
But Luz decided to ignore that..or at least tried to.
She dressed in a hurry, leaving her house and not even saying anything to Vee, she needed to know more, this was seriously scaring her.
She quickly walked towards the library, hoping it would be as abandoned as always.
And to her luck it was.
She quickly walked down to the basement and started her search.
Luz looked through book after book, but to no luck, until something else caught her eye.
*Magic and its use - for witches of all skill levels*
Well Luz could not resist reading this, now could she.
*Up to this date there are several ways to practice magic, the oldest and widely considered least effective way, is the use of paper, parchment or other written means, to write the glyphs on and then activate these by touch.*
Somehow, Luz felt personally attacked by this.
The least effective way you say, 'Well let's see what better, more effective means you have',' she thought, stubbornly reading on.
*Because of this, the practice had been mostly abandoned, the impracticality of it severely hindering the witch.*
'Yes, yes impractical, now get on with it,' she thought, defensive over her paper glyphs.
*The way glyphs are used these days, is for a witch to have them etched into their body, usually by the means of temporary paint or indefinitely by tattooing them on the skin, with this method, witch can than visualize the glyph, to summon it anywhere on her body she pleases, for example by having the light glyph etched, you can imagine it and summon light from the tip of the finger, on top of your head or from you leg, if you for some reason wanted.*
'Etched into their body', read Luz again, she was unsure if this was for her. The advantages however were hard to ignore, on multiple occasions she had trouble when her glyphs ran out, the thought of never having to deal with that problem.., it would help a lot, especially in combat.
*The witch then combines their etched glyphs with one of the advanced casting techniques of their choice, after a witch has managed that, they are considered full members of the Order, having the benefits of..*
The text continued on about some benefits, about courts and standing, and such, which Luz did not read, as those were no longer relevant.
She needed to wrap her head around this, so you had glyphs on your body and then you used some techniques.
What about those techniques.., she listed in the book before she found the relevant pages.
*Advanced techniques*
*The problem that arises with having glyphs on ones body, is that making combinations of them can be taxing and slow, for this to happen a witch needs to visualize each glyph precisely and how they are meant to be connected, for the desired combination to trigger, mismanaging can lead to no effect or danger to the witch or/and their surroundings.*
*To offset this, witch needs to substitute the glyph for something else, the most regarded method is a substitution for numbers, which gives rise to an advanced method of Numeration.*
'Math??', and here Luz thought the Order were the good guys and no good guys ever used math!!
Unless there were Allies in world war 2 or Einstein, or any other guy who counts stuff, okay maybe she was a bit biased, but still she did not like where this was going.
*Let's take the remote force combination, or in slang terms telekinesis combination as an example.*
Now this was interesting, there was a glyph combo here, Luz took a paper and started drawing.
It was not as good as it could be, but it should work.
Carefully Luz touched the glyph and watched as it filled with light.
It did no take long for it to be activate and as soon as it did, it crumbled and Luz held a strange sphere in her hand, it was white, looking like a white tennis ball, it was resting in her hand, a strange sensation filled her, it was like there was a sudden pressure all around her hand and she could push it in any direction.
Carefully, without moving it, she looked around, she did not think this thru, there where bookshelves all around her and pushing into their direction would surely topple them, she could damage the books, that was the last thing she wanted.
She mentally cursed.
'Down it is,' it was the only direction with nothing and she did not believe herself enough to try and get up, she would surely move her hand with the sphere.
'Well let's see what this does,' she thought and pushed down.
Immediately she felt the pressure leave her and then several things happened at once, the dust from all around her flew away as if a strong wind just exited her hand and before she could process it.
*Thud!*
She impacted the ceiling, a wave of pain hit her as she swiftly fell back down.
"That...was not the best idea of today," she said heavily, having knocked her breath away.
When she directed the force towards the floor she was unable to move it away, quite obviously, since it was the floor, so the force pushed back to her, kinda like if she was doing a push up and that's what threw her against the ceiling.
She groaned trying to get up, quickly checking herself for injuries and fortunately finding none.
'I am going to need more practice if I want to use that one,' she thought, laying back on the floor to rest a little before resuming her studies.
*While this combination is comparatively quite simple, to clearly picture it and visualize it correctly is quite hard.*
*The first step in any advanced casting is to correctly substitute the glyphs, Numeration uses numbers, 1 for light, 2 for fire, 3 for ice and 4 for plants, if witch trains accordingly she can cast light by thinking the number '1' instead of imagining the glyph itself.*
*The real beauty of Numeration is in more complicated combinations, as for example, the before mentioned telekinesis can be instead imagined as.*
*3- ~-3-~ -3*
* 3 - *
*2- -2- -2*
*Which is much more simple and less prone to mistakes than the entire formation with glyphs.*
Well, this was interesting, Luz even with her math aversion, could not deny that she would need to get back to this stuff later, as for now she still had to find more information about her condition.
She put the book about magic back in its place and started looking again.
And it took her a good while until she found something relevant.
She froze and hesitated when seeing the title.
*Jericho's secret diary*
Was she entitled to read this.., Jericho was Jacobs partner, but she was also a magus, it was very likely there would be something interesting in here.
She needed the information, so Luz decided and started reading.
*Hello anyone reading this, I hope the name did not freak you out, do not worry, this diary is not actually secret, as what moron would call their secret diary 'The secret diary', so you are welcome to read this..*
'Never mind then,' Luz chuckled, feeling almost silly for worrying.
*If I am reading this thing again..I hope you are doing dishes Jericho!, I know you..since you me, so I know I/You forget sometimes, but please but do not let Jakub do all of them.. I/you will feel bad again..*
Luz smiled, she already liked Jericho, 'Good choice Jacob,' she thought and continued reading.
Luz skipped several parts, they were endearing, but she wanted to know more about Jericho being a magus and how it affected her.
*Being a magus is a pain sometimes, or more like all the time, it has serious uses from time to time, like that time I grew gills or got night vision, but most of the time it's a hard thing to live with.*
*One of the sweetest part of being a magus are the life adaptations, which magus automatically develops in about first month after awakening, you need less sleep, less food, and you get in shape faster and stay that way longer,(pretty much indefinitely), your limits on strength are also much higher than that of a normal human, or witch for that matter, however there are some serious drawbacks.*
*While they are bad, there are not as bad as some books say they are, as they were written by other witches and not by an actual magus, but one needs to keep them in mind at almost all times, the most annoying aspect is the emotional side, being a magus means that I can get really coldblooded if the situation requires it and I can get numb to emotions at times, this means that if I and Jakub fight, it has negative effect on me and if I feel bad about it for long enough it can change me.*
*Which is something Jakub knows and takes into consideration, which however sucks, since I can not tell if he is angry at me for something, but is not saying anything since he does not wanna upset me, or is not upset at all, I than overthink the matter which upsets me...so its hard.*
*The changes don't happen that fast, it takes at least a several days normally, however it's much faster if I was to exhaust myself of magic.*
Now this was interesting, Luz skipped some parts and continued reading.
*I found out it works kinda like this, change equals distress multiplied by exhaustion of magic, so changes happen all the time, but reeealy slowly, like maybe after a month there would be a noticeable change, if I am distressed, nervous, or feel negatively it speeds up, as it does when I am low on magic, so if I have no magic but feel fine than it does something, but not much, if I feel bad but have full magic its similar, but the problem becomes when I both feel bad and have no magic..*
*Real lucky thing is that no changes are irreversible, not that it helps much as you still need a valid reason to change back. That's why changes to empathy are so bad, sadly it is hard to find a good reason to empathize, having a partner or several close friends helps immensely.*
*The changes based on emotions happen faster than most other changes, this is because 'the defence' sees it as an active currently happening threat, kinda like if someone was slashing you with a sword, you would become resistant really fast, if you survived long enough of course, emotions are not that fast as physical attacks but they are not that far off.*
So exhausting her magic was speeding things up, that was interesting, it was probably the reason she could lie so well after her mom left her in the hospital, she was both low on magic and positivity, she there was a quick change.
It was nice to know that no changes were permanent but still, today was too much information all at once.
Luz needed a break.
But there was one last thing she was interested in, 'How did magic work in general and could she get more of it.'
And she had just the book to ask that question.
*The basics of Magic*
*Magic is like a muscle, it grows when a person exercises it, but methods for this are varied, some think expanding ones magical abilities over its basic limit is dangerous, however it is known that magic grows if one pushes their limit, by exhausting all their magic, this is a necessity, as stopping even one spell short of exhaustion, will have no results at all.*
*Only some mages try and expand their magic capacity, save for magus, having no magic is a terrifying and very undesirable experience for any other witch.*
Luz was slowly nodding her head, she pulled out her paper and started writing, she needed to make it clear for herself how this thing worked.
So lets for the simplicity of it call magic, 'mana' like in games, so I recover mana passively, let's say 1 per second, than if I exhaust all my magic I get more mana capacity, like from 100 to 110, if I do 9 more times I would be at 200, Luz checked the book to make sure she understood it correctly, 'Yea that's what it says'.
'But I am also a magus', thought Luz, pulling out her own notes.
Which means,.. she searched for the relevant information, that every time I cast a spell I recover mana, let's say 5 per spell, so a spell that would cost a normal witch 10, costs me 5 since I get 5 back...
'Wooow', being a magus really does help a lot, she thought, before diving into the book for more.
'Sigils, runes...', she read, sighing, she would have to sit here all day to read all the stuff..,' well no time like the present.', she thought as she dived back in.
Note : The term mana is used only to describe the system, it will not be used after this chapter, unless I feel the need to do it.