The Girl who Eclipses the Moon Part 1: The Great Forest

My vision had started to become blurry as I wandered through the forest.

I tried to think of what had happened up until now, but none of it made any sense...

I remembered waking up yesterday morning being so excited. It was finally my eighth birthday, the day I was going to finally summon my familiar. But then...

“No familiars came for your summons. You’ve been thoroughly rejected.”

That’s right... I wasn’t able to summon a familiar... But why? All of my friends had been able to summon familiars... Was I not good enough? The next thing I knew, the mayor’s dragon familiar had attacked me. It was probably a miracle that I survived at all. Actually, it was probably Famu’s bouncy spell that had saved me.

I was meant to die...wasn’t I?

I leaned up against a tree and slid down. It was getting hard to even stand. I hadn’t run into any monsters yet. But I wasn’t sure if I was still near enough to the dragon’s territory or if it was simply a stroke of luck.

I had already been walking like this for a day with no sign of my village. But now that I thought about it, I wondered if they would even want me back. Had I been abandoned? Did they not want me anymore? What had I done wrong? Would my mother who didn’t even believe in me want me back now that I was definitely a failure?

I could feel the tears starting to form in my eyes. I was hungry and thirsty and tired... And I was pretty sure I was hurt too. My right arm didn’t actually hurt, but I couldn’t really move my fingers.

Life for an eight-year-old was supposed to be perfect. I was going to finally start learning magic. I was supposed to finally learn what my potential would be... I was supposed to be excited for my future... But now...

I had eaten that big breakfast for my birthday, but I hadn’t eaten anything since then. I honestly wasn’t sure how long people could go without eating, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t very long. At this point I just needed to accept it. I was going to die.

I could hear the faint noises of something approaching through the bushes, but I was too weak to notice from where. It was probably some monster that was coming to eat me. It was probably better to just let it. If I was just going to be eaten anyway, it would be mean to try and put up a fight against the monster. It wasn’t like I could use magic anyway since I didn’t have a familiar.

I thought I heard something like a voice calling out to me. I tried to open my eyes again, but it was hard to see anything. I could just barely make out that a figure was approaching me.

So, this is the end, huh?

I thought back to the games we had played in school. I had always said that I was going to become a Grand Magus like my father had been. In the end, I didn’t even reach the starting point.

Goddess, if I am to be reborn... Please, grant me the most powerful summon...

My consciousness began to fade. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the hunger, the pain, or the will to live draining from me... But I made my peace as I drifted into darkness.

I opened my eyes to find that half my vision was gone. Rather, there seemed to be something covering one of my eyes. I tried to move my arm, but a sharp pain ran through it instead. It seemed that I was still alive, somehow.

“Oh good, you’re awake.”

I turned over to look at where the voice had come from. A woman was standing there. She was more beautiful than any woman I had ever seen, and she seemed to have a radiant light around her.

“Goddess?” I asked. My voice was hoarse.

“No, not quite.” The woman pressed a hand to my forehead. “Seems like your fever has gone down. It’ll be good for you to eat something. I’ll make some porridge.”

“Please, don’t—” I tried to say, but my voice wouldn’t come out.

“Here, some water.” The woman stuck a glass of water in front of my face. I wanted to refuse it as well, but my body moved on its own to drink from the glass.

It was the most delicious water I had ever tasted! So delicious in fact, that I had managed to drink the entire glass.

“Wow, I’ve never seen anyone drink one of my medicines so enthusiastically before.”

So that was it, she had tricked me into taking some kind of medicine that was mixed into the water. The woman smiled as she stepped away, presumably to get the porridge she had mentioned.

Now that I was alone and had taken a drink, I was able to much more clearly take in my surroundings. We appeared to be in some kind of cave, but the walls were unnaturally flat. Rather than a cave, it was like someone had built a house out of solid stone. I was propped up in some kind of bed roll. My right arm also had a bandage around it. It must have really been broken.

The woman came back into my vision. She looked younger than my mother. I wasn’t able to see her familiar around, so maybe it was outside the room.

“Please, eat up.” She held a spoonful of porridge to my mouth. I tried to refuse it, but my body moved on its own again. It seemed that even if I had mentally given up, my body still wanted me to keep living.

“Now then, my name is Erda. What’s your name?”

“Lunar...” I said once my mouth wasn’t full.

“Lunar, is it? A lovely name.” She fed me another spoonful of porridge. “Where is your family, Lunar?”

I shook my head. I wasn’t sure where my village was, but I was certain of one thing. There was no way my family would have wanted me back.

I had heard stories in the past about people exiled from villages. They were only to be spoken of in hushed whispers. I had never really listened to the stories about those exiles before, and now I was starting to regret it.

“I see. Were you attacked? Your wounds are really severe.”

“No, I just...fell...”

I wasn’t sure why I was lying to this woman. But something told me instinctively not to reveal too much to her.

“You just fell? In the middle of the Great Forest?”

“The Great Forest?” I had heard stories of the Great Forest, but it was supposed to be unbelievably far away. Just how far had the mayor’s dragon sent me?

“That’s right. We’re in the southern quadrant of the Great Forest now. I just happened to find you while on my way to the City of Grandwood in the center. Is that where you’re from?”

I shook my head again. This time I meant it though.

“I didn’t think so. You didn’t strike me as a city girl. Is that where you were headed?”

I wasn’t really sure how to reply to that question at first. I hadn’t known the city was even nearby to begin with. But I had the feeling that she might take me there if I nodded. So nod I did.

“Good. Then I’ll accompany you until we get there. Are you able to use magic yet?”

She just had to ask the question that stung the most. I cast my eyes downward. It should have been obvious by my not having a familiar nearby that I wasn’t able to use magic... Or so I thought. It was only then that I realized that this woman didn’t have a familiar either.

“That’s okay. I was a late bloomer as well. How about I teach you a bit while we’re on the road?”

“You can teach me?” I had a bad feeling about this. How was she going to teach me how to use magic if I didn’t have a familiar?

“Of course. Your mana levels seem exceptionally high, so it should be easy for you.” She held her hand up above a glass and a circle of light appeared. Suddenly, a trickle of water splashed down and filled up the glass. However, no magic circle appeared. I couldn’t help but flinch.

“S-So you mean...you’re a conjurer?” I asked warily.

“That’s right. You don’t see a familiar, do you?”

I shook my head. Since she was wearing gloves, I couldn’t tell if she had a crest or not. While some people had familiars that could travel long distances away, most summoners kept their familiars close at hand. Apparently for some, it was painful to be too far away. Still, any spells cast with familiar magic would appear via magic circles that people drew with their mana. I had never seen magic be cast without a circle before now.

“Good. Now why don’t you get some rest, Lunar. It’ll still be a week’s walk to Grandwood once we set out. So I need you to get better first, okay?”

I nodded and lay my head back down. I had always been told stories about how conjurers would kidnap children who misbehaved and would feed them to their elementals. However, this lady didn’t seem to be a bad person. Or at least, if she was planning to feed me to her elementals, she was trying to fatten me up first.

I let myself drift off to sleep. This time, I knew that I would wake up again, so it wasn’t as scary. Still, I wasn’t sure how safe I was going to be travelling with a conjurer woman.

It was three more days before I was well enough to move. My right arm was still in a cast and I still had to keep a patch over my left eye. But thankfully my legs were working fine. If I had to guess, I had landed on my arm when I had been sent flying. But I wasn’t going to tell this woman that.

Over the course of my recovery, she was kind enough to share with me the basics of elemental conjuring. It wasn’t anything like how the people in my village had described it at all. They had said that conjurers controlled hoards of invisible creatures that would eat up any source of magical energy. But from what Erda told me, the elementals were not any type of creature in the traditional sense.

“Don’t say this in front of anyone with any strong religious beliefs, but I have a different theory as to how elementals exist. I’m a bit of a heretic, you see.”

“A heretic?” I wasn’t really familiar with the word. Apparently, she was a scholar that had differing beliefs from most people due to her research.

“Basically, while most people seem to think that spirits need to be pleased and revered in order to use magic, I believe that can be circumnavigated by simply learning to use your mana efficiently.”

“Circle...navy?”

“How should I put this...” Erda scratched her chin in thought. Then she picked up a rock and went over to a nearby stream. “Tell me, do you believe this rock will sink into the water if I throw it in?”

“Of course it will, rocks sink.”

“And why do rocks sink?”

“Um...because they are heavy?”

“Right. But watch now as I do this.” Erda pulled back her arm and tossed the rock. Somehow, it did not sink into the water, but instead bounced off of it twice, landing on the other side of the stream.

“It didn’t sink!” I wanted to clap, but I still only had one hand.

“How do you think I managed to get the rock to not sink into the water?”

“You used magic, right?”

“Nope. I didn’t use any mana in the slightest.”

“Huh?”

She laughed at the shock on my face.

“I simply threw the rock in a way that it didn’t have time to sink. Elemental magic can be used in much the same way. If you know how to ‘throw’ the magic, you can get it to bounce before it has time to sink.”

“But...isn’t that really bad? Won’t you anger the elementals?” If I understood what she was saying, which I really didn’t, then she was forcing magic to activate through the spirits before they had a chance to refuse her commands.

Erda simply laughed. “And now you see why I said not to tell anyone religious. Still, if the elementals were beings with consciousness, then they would be able to refuse my requests, right? But they won’t stop me even if I cast the spell multiple times.”

“So...you’re saying it’s okay for someone like me to learn this type of magic?”

She seemed to pick up on what I was implying. Perhaps she had known the entire time that I was from a village of summoners.

“That’s right. With this, even you can use magic. So go on, try.”

Following her instructions, I held out my left hand. Concentrating the magical energy I could feel inside of me, I gathered it in my outstretched palm.

“Just do as I do. Conjuring doesn’t require your faith. It is a system of cause and effect. You merely need to act out the right steps and the world will respond. Now, repeat after me...”

As I repeated her motions and words, a small ball of water formed at where my hand was pointing.

Sure enough, I had managed to cast magic, even without a familiar.

The end of my hand was not the only place that spheres of water formed that day...