You’ll Work It Out

Rowen sat on the stone stool next to the pillar of flame rising up out of the floor of the cave.

He sat there trying to digest the information he was just given. The four “Guardians” told him his mission and what “Gifts” he was given in order to complete said mission.

The Guardians had promised his free will would not be impeded or manipulated at all. They even said his gifts were not to be taken away, even if he were to stray from his mission. Barring egregious abuse of his power of course.

They told him a bit about the world he was supposed to complete this mission in.

The world of Twalling Cade was in a parallel dimension to his Earth and it had at one time been part of his reality until it was split off more than ten thousand years before his time. With the sundering the majority of magical energies or mana went with the Twalling Cade and left very little behind on Earth. This is why magic had fallen into legend on Earth.

Twalling Cade resembled Earth of old in the time of the Roman Empire and yet there were some key differences:

Humans were the dominant race on this continent but there were several non-human sentient races as well. Among these were several kinds of Beastkin, Elves, Dwarves, etcetera.

Among the Beastkin there were, Foxia a race of humans with fox like ears and tail, Wolfen a race of humans with wolf like features. Bearkins, Dogua, Felineans, and so on were just a few.

The “Demi Humans” included such creatures of legend as Centaurs, Minotaurs, Lamia and Spaders or Pan. These were very rare since they had been hunted by humans as they considered them to be abominations.

All of these and other ‘fantastical creatures such as dragons existed here.

According to the Guardians, the problem had slowly risen over the last few generations where humans started asserting their dominance over the non-human races. There rose a tendency to call the demi humans the “tainted". With that derogatory term it made it easier for humans to commit all sorts of atrocities against the demi humans such as enslavement, banishment from human towns and cities as well as out in out pogroms or genocidal attacks which didn’t even spare women and children.

When they told him, he thought to himself, “No different than the history of Earth. Depersonalize your enemies in order to make it easier to kill them.”

The Church of the Creator used to welcome all and preach tolerance of all races. Not anymore. It was gradually taken over by the humans and used as a weapon against the so called “Tainted” races.

“Churches have unfortunately been playgrounds for intolerance and ignorance on Earth too. No surprise there.”

The Guardians did not know what brought about this gradual shift in human attitudes, but they did know it was being orchestrated by some unknown hand.

“I guess they do know but won’t tell me because of this ‘Free will’ thing. How can divine beings not know?”

The leaders of the church have either began to ignore the portance and other guidance given by the Guardians or they were being blocked somehow. They weren’t sure which.

Since their primary commandment from the Creator was to not interfere with “Free will” they could not directly intervene with the Church.

Since the Sisters rarely agreed on anything, they had taken quite a bit of time to finally reach a decision on how to fix the problems.

“That I believe. Whoever thought divine beings would argue such.”

On one of the few occasions of complete agreement, they chose to summon Rowen from Earth and give him the tools he needed to accomplish his mission. However, they couldn’t give him anything more than the goal and the gifts to do so because of his free will.

Zenith said, “You’ll work it out. We have confidence in you.” Although there was a glint of doubt in her eyes.

He said to himself, “Right, I’ll work it out or make things worse. I wish they would give me a little more direction.”

The gifts he was given were several primary abilities and some minor ones. That much they told him. The details were thin though.

They told him he could create objects, somehow. Again, they told him he would figure it out. But it was going to be easier to make simple things than complex things.

One of his first experiments was trying to take care of himself. Since he was cold, he had to make himself a set of blankets, sleeping pad, and some warm clothes. This was a great way to experiment.

It was a unique experience feeling the mana flow through him up from the soles of his feet all the way to his hands. The funny thing about creating things, it ended up the main component of creation was he had to visualize in a very specific and detailed manor what he was trying to create in his mind’s eye and if he could maintain the vision and focus of every minute detail at the same time then they would shimmer into existence before his eyes, sometimes whole or sometimes part by part as he would find later. If he lost focus, dropped elements, or was distracted in any way, it would fade away or appear incompletely. This led to some interesting but useless items laying around as he worked on it in the coming days.

The second gift was the ability to use angelic runes to either enchant the objects he creates or cast spells with. One of the big problems was they gave him the ability, but he wasn’t exactly sure which symbol was which. Some of the symbols or runes rather, had multiple meanings depending on the context that it was used in. Other meanings or concepts had multiple runes that shared their meaning. The proper runes to use depended on syntax of the spell or enchantments.

It was like trying to remember Morse code having only seen the chart once. He knew he had to work hard to pull up the images in his head and really learn what they were and how to use them. That would be the only way to effectively use these types of spells.

Spells? This world had real, honest to goodness magic in it. The rules of magic were both complex and simple. The simple explanation was manipulation of mana or magic which was shaped by the caster’s mind. Most people had a problem focusing sufficiently to cast or manipulate mana through sheer force of will. They usually required verbal or physical focal points to make it happen.

In truth, only deities and the draconic races have been known to be able to cast magic with just thoughts alone.

“Got to give it to the dragons. They are as badass as they were in legends on Earth. I wonder if I’ll ever meet one. Do I really want to?”

Another limitation to casting magic was one’s capacity to hold and channel mana. For the humans and demi humans of this world, this was determined by a crystalline structure growing beneath one’s heart.

One’s genetics determined how large and clear this structure was.

Only one in ten had this mana stone structure reasonably large enough or clear enough to be able to cast magic in any meaningful way. Of those individuals, only one in ten had a mana stone worthy to practice higher levels of magic.

There were three basic tiers of magic in this world. The first tier was known as Low Magic or Common Magic. This included simple household cantrips that did things like such as creating a spark or breeze. Of the low magic were also the simple spells to defend or be used to attack. They were simple and straight forward and took little time to cast. Most practitioners of magic could cast these spells.

The second tier of magic was known as High Magic or Uncommon Magic. These were more complex spells which required larger amounts of mana to accomplish. Among these were curses, charms, and other strong attack spells. Only maybe ten percent of the ten percent could accomplish these kinds of magic.

The final tier was known as Divine Magic or God Magic. This tier was limited to divine and other high beings such as Dragons.

“Yay, go dragons!”

They told Rowen he was able to use these third-tier spells because of the angelic runes he could use. He also would know lower forms of runic magics as well once he figured out how to do it.

This is where the rules of magic get complicated.

Of the different kinds of magic there were major categories such as chanted magics, Runic magics, motion magics, and artifact magics.

Chanted magics were the most common and had the most complex set of rules. Syntax and tone were very important when casting chanted magics. It often took years to perfect a spell.

This also included Bard’s Magic which used music and song to perform their spells.

“I wonder what would happen if a bard were to sing ‘Thunder Struck’?” he said with a smirk.

Runic magics were very rarely used because of the need of perfection of said runes needed to be in order to not backfire on the caster.

Motion magics or otherwise known as expressive magics, required one to perform complex movements with one’s body. This form of magic is also used in the martial arts of this world, thus increasing a user’s strength and use of force to reach beyond “human” limits.

Artifacts magics require objects imbued with magic producing a specific effect. Artifacts are limited by the Rule of Three, which limits artifacts to a multiple of three for powers and usage.

Another complexity of magic is numbers have specific meanings within magic usage.

Rowen was unsure he fully understood the last part, or for that matter a bunch of the rest of it. He just knew of the numeric rules around magic, the Rule of Three was the most important.

His third gift or power was an interesting gift. It was a gift of psionic powers. This gift didn’t require any mana to use and was determined by the strength of his own mind. His psionics had three abilities. Telekinetic, telepathic and clairvoyance. He wasn’t sure yet how strong he was with each or how far he could use it. Only time will tell.

One of the minor gifts was imbuing his body with the essence of self-defense. He now knew ways and moves and blocks and punches he couldn’t even picture outside old kung-fu movies. This enabled him to have skill enough to defend himself from most other people.

Another gift he was given was a true title and authority within the Church. The title was Rowen, High Lord Magedi of the house of Dawn and Grand Knight of the Order of the Blue Rose.

He was told the title of High Lord Magedi made him the equivalent level of authority to the Pope.

His signet ring on his left index finger confirmed his title. This ring was magically imbued to confirm the authenticity and authority of his title.

However, he was advised he shouldn’t identify his title until he had a better idea of what was really going on within the Church.

“Well, that’s a no brainer. Tell the bad guys ahead of time that I’m coming to fix things and I’ll get nothing done!”

Several other talents came with the body. Some of them made sense like the ability to sense impending danger and track like a primitive hunter.

His final primary ability was the one causing him the most disquiet.

Evidently, he was, after a fashion, immortal.