Sorcerer from Another World

I opened my eyes again into a dream. I must have tripped out of the real and into a dream or slipped into somewhere like a dream. Why do I think this? 

I saw a humongous oak tree the size of a planet hung perfectly upside down in the infinite blue space. 

I floated on my back in what seemed like water, and felt wet along my skin, but I was completely submerged and breathing fine. Neither cold nor choking, I felt comfortable.  

“It’s magical.” I declared.

The upside down and the blue space shook in response. A relaxing tune played that produced harmony in my head that I would later realise that theta waves were made in approval of my declaration. 

“I’ve finally snapped.” I exclaimed. 

A low hum reverbated everywhere and I felt a prod of disapproval. The space that I was in made a sound, a vibration that hurt me. It pricked my gently.  

"Uh huh."

I was sane? It had disapproved. How?

“Where am I? Why am I here? What… what is going on?”

Nothing. 

What had made me feel good. What had I said?

“Magic.”

A soaring choir raising their silent voices sang what ought to have been an unheard song, however here I was, it was a tune only I received and it was like, but greater, than Lacrimosa. 

This endless blue expanse shifted, converged and encompassed my entirety. It swallowed me; Yet, I absorbed it. I knew from the first burning pain it was magic. A magic broad as a galaxy, greater than a planet and as profound as the atom.  

I felt the magic pour into me like I was an empty vessel, and it brought me great pain. Body burning. Bones shattered, skin tore and the flesh ripped away. My body burned along every inch of its surface and beneath my skin, my organs froze. 

I was dying in the utmost agony. 

My skin started to heat up and sharp stabbing pain pressed into flesh. I died and was reborn in magic. I died…

I grew an astral body, all my flesh was gone. I become a magus able to form magic from nothing. A sorcerer able to cast magic in a material plane. But, not a wizard learned the lore of magic. 

I became magic’s essence distinct from this dimensional space. In whatever space I occupied, magic was now a fundamental force of nature that I could create.

New bluish ‘skin’, but made of magic and not flesh, formed and created an astral body that was still somehow my body. Me. The knowledge that I was looking at the astral made of magic and ideas, not a physical body was bizarre. I had become mana itself. 

The sublimity of it all wiped the memory of it from me. Terror sent my mind astray, for what could have been forever or a moment. I forgot, blanking from my mind this bizarre astral creation. It was all too much. I wanted it all to go away and so I stitched myself, cladding and layering over a new flesh body just like my old one. 

Blinking into awareness again, “What happened?”

Still in this strange palace with the upside down tree. 

I felt powerful, “I’m like Aisling the Witch.” 

She could defeat her foes with her magic. What had I said?

I’m like Aisling the Witch. Prove it.

Lightning sparked, plants grew out of nothing, I gave myself the buff build of boxer, and then I made metal appear and shaped into the beautiful, fictional character of Aisling the Witch. I was just like her. 

I had been reborn to be just like her. How cool. This must be like one of those stories. A god or something has given me powers just like Aisling the Witch. 

I explored my new powers. 

 

My body; flesh. 

Less than magic, but it had been mine. It would be mine again. I changed my body so it different. 

Years of anxiety and depression had worn me to my bones. CBT helped, I was on the waiting list for therapy. But, with control of flesh I got to the source and undo the damage of trauma. 

I altered the brain with my clumsy grasping. I would still feel the full range of human emotion. But, I no longer had the damage of trauma and I was more resilient to mental illness at the biological level. It was still possible.

But, the brain, however vital is just one part of the body. Unimaginatively, I kept most of my original body. But, I developed the talent for altering the body. 

I was bound to get hurt more during combat. I doubted a fantasy world had free, quality healthcare. Healers are always valuable to any society. Aisling had won over many friends healing people. 

So, like her I had the power of organism and the magical ability to affect a living, organic form. My understanding of flesh granted greater clarity and ease of control adding depth to my understanding of how to alter bodies at will. 

It wasn’t perfect.

I’m not going to come back to life if my head is cut off, I don’t think. Perhaps not something to test out. The process was hell, but I got it. The complexity of transforming life.

 So long as I breathed no disease could harm me. No need to worry about the effects of a pandemic anymore. Mental illness with a few careful tweaks to the wiring and parts of the brain any biological aspect could be repaired and cognitive learning be retrained.

But I also had access to more, much more. Age would have no effect on me if I did not will it. I had achieved the possibility of everlasting long life.

I could breathe again with ease and my muscles relaxed. I was still in the womb of magic. In complete control now. 

I had gotten a body again, but that was rather mundane. Magic is wonderful, but I was rather tickled by the notion of getting something cool. Being innately cool in a superhero sort of way. 

I felt the tips of my finger swell with the power of the storm.

My fingertips burned anew with fresh agony as a bolt of blue danced between them. Pure understanding flourished of the instinctive kind crystallising into a single concept - Electricity. 

The key to heating, lighting and communication in the modern world. 

But to the ancient Greeks it was the power of the King of the Gods to hurl lightning. The great warrior Thor of the Norse Gods god commanded thunder. The power to connect and destroy. 

The blue bolt arced across my body and tickled instead of burned. 

I tasted blood in my mouth and remembered iron. Controlling metal. Aisling had solved her parents' debt by making coins. I could be as rich as a king with gold, clad in impenetrable armour. The ability to manipulate magnetic fields.

Magnetism. 

The ability to alter metal: the material of war and backbone of technologically advanced societies. A hundred warriors with guns could face an army armed with bows and win. The island nation with a steamship could control empires thousands of years old that still used wooden boats. Trains, planes and cars to travel across the land, air and into space were forged of metals.

A metal mage would be a powerful one. 

By itself, magnetism had modest value but in combination with electricity, it would allow with effort electromagnetism and through it the ability to manipulate electromagnetic fields. I can alter light, move metals, levitate and produce heat at will. 

But with contemplation, I could perform even atomic manipulation and be able to manipulate the building blocks of matter along with being able to change substances and their reactions. The powers of modern societies at the tips of my fingers.

Then there was Aisling, another power similar to her ability to change bodies she could also grow food. Superful useful so the village never starved. 

 I focused on agriculture and the growth of wild food. It was an extension of Organism but this time focusing on growing fields of crops, plants and trees. I struggled. It did not seem to fit well but I gained some control over plant life. Chlorokinesis was the power. The concept was Cultivation. 

To be more specific, the growing of plants.    

Perhaps not as handy in battle as lightning or metal. It was plenty useful for surviving during war, raising burnt fields and living well during peacetime. Be it wheat, barley, grapes or more I could grow it. Bread to feed an army and beer to give them the courage to die. A vineyard to ferment the sweetest wines. I was now a sorcerer with power over the land. 

I was already powerful beyond my wildest dreams. Less than a year's labour and I could live contently and in luxury for as long as I wanted to. 

But live where? Earth seemed the obvious answer, but not the right one. I couldn’t place it, was earth too familiar and I wanted to explore new worlds or was earth too alien now and I sought a new native land? I didn’t have an answer, but in me was an emptiness and the only ties I had left were to my parents. Yet I believed then I would not be satisfied merely going back to earth.

I drifted in thoughtful contemplation. Someone intervened accidently giving me an out from my stuckness. I felt a call, a pull, of what was really a summons. A dimension apart I knew the scent of need and desperation. I heard her, the would-be summoner, I listened to her plea, “They are going to kill us, use my life, the Fae are silent, I Iris, give it to you, if you must. Save Morgana Pendragon, save my love. Anyone, someone. Please. They are coming.”

“I’ll help. I’m someone. I think I can help. I’ll try if that is good enough.”

“Please, it’s enough. Slánaitheoir, please.”

I felt her tears as if they fell on my cheek.

“Here I come.”

I hurled myself from the origin of magic and to a new fantastical world. I’ve had regrets about my ill-prepared choices at the origin of magic, but the future was closed to me.   

I arrived with pain absent, but I was left with a feeling of exhaustion. A toll from the absorbed the mana and becoming of a sorcerer. For once in my life, I had limitless potential and anything and everything seemed possible. 

It was ironic then that I found myself sprawled against the cold dirt.