Story: Ending Part 1
[[Continuity Note: Damien doesn't want to use magic and admits that it's because it means he has to lie to his parents. Alf persuades him to still learn about magic even if he's not going to use it.]]
A few weeks passed without any cause for alarm. The teenagers learnt and studied. They were on summer holidays, now. Rock was (not) looking forward to his final year of high school and the dreaded HSC. Alf and Damien were looking forward to the School Certificate, and Jessica was looking forward to seniordom at East Hills High School.
Jessica received her school certificate results band sixes and As in all of her subjects, the best scores you could achieve almost. Her parents were proud, but not overly happy, since they were all about magic. After all, Jessica only needed to pass, how much time had she spent on her non-magical studies that could have been spent on studies of the magical variety?
But it was January, so the teenagers had no worries, other than how to stave off the boredom. Alf began working part-time at a nursery, nursing his green thumb while covertly ensuring that their plants were always healthy and vibrant. Damien and the others weren't allowed to take on part-time work, so Rock often took them on road trips out to the Blue Mountains or they'd sleepover in the city. The long line of Alduses had managed to amass a large amount of money over the centuries they'd been alive, meaning that money was pretty much no object for the two Aldus teens, who had no qualms about sharing their money with the two younger boys.
So when Mr Wiley and Mary-Ann Aldus called together the entire magical council, the Aldus family, Alf and his parents, and Damien it was a bit difficult to track down a time when they could all meet. As a result they met on Australia Day, a couple of days before school started again for the teens, and a public holiday. They gathered in a room in the Aldus house that seemed to be intended to be some sort of ballroom or something but had been converted to contain a large meeting table surrounded by chairs.
Mr Wiley and Ms Aldus stood on the window side of the room and began the meeting.
"As you all know," Mr Wiley began. "The purpose of this meeting is for us to explain the results of the tests we ran on Rock Aldus, Alfonso Struthers and Damien Reid. I hope you find our presentation informative. If you could please wait to ask questions at the end, there will be time to answer all of them."
Ms Aldus continued. "Our initial information collection involved an interview and magical sample taken from each subject." She waved her hand and an image projected in the middle of the table. Three pictures were shown of the three boys, followed by their magic samples. "Those of you who are familiar with magic samples will notice right away that there is something strange about each boy's sample.
"If we first examine Rock's sample." Rock's sample was highlighted and enlarged. "You'll notice that it's a dreadfully ugly shade of green indicative of someone who has an affinity for the earth element. But earth elemental magic usually takes the form of sand or dirt when released. You can see that Rock's magic more takes on the shape of fire if tipped from the crystal that contains it." The crystal tipped and poured out Rock's magic to indicate this.
The projection then returned to the three boys before Alf's magic sample was highlighted and enlarged in the same way Rock's had been. "As you can see, Alf's magic is the same dreadfully ugly shade of green as Rock's sample. As I said earlier, this means an affinity for earth magic. Alf's magic, instead of pouring like sand instead pours like water. Something one would associate with fire elemental magic." Again the image of the crystal tipped to demonstrate this.
"And finally we have Damien's sample." His sample was selected as the two boys before them. "Once again it's that same dreadfully ugly shade of green I've decided to call 'dreadfully ugly'. So we deduce that Damien is once again earth elemental. You'll notice that it doesn't pour, but instead appears in the crystal, then out of the crystal. This trait is characterised by the time element.
"But what does this all mean? Neither of us were certain, especially when the next facts are brought to light. Alf has an affinity for growing plants, control over the earth element as was predicted. But his magic moved like water, and Alf has not shown a great degree of ability to control this element. However Rock showcases an affinity for the fire element rather than the earth element. He can easily call it forth and command it to do his will. Damien on the other hand is more skilled with his control of air. You'll note that Rock's fire ability is echoed in his magic's physical form. But Damien's does not manifest itself physically in his magic at all.
"But these can be attributed to the immature growth of their magical power. Young witches often have difficulty controlling their spiritual element, so one is often not dominant over the others and if diagnosed too early, the spiritual element is often mistaken. The more pressing matter is that the physical embodiment of their magic is altogether different from that of your average born witch."
Mr Wiley began speaking. "The magic of the average user manifests itself cohesively into its core element, or the spiritual element as we call it. Although there is a degree of control over all elements, a magic user's magic will always manifest itself in this way. Earth magic is green and flows like sand through an hourglass, as Mary-Ann mentioned. Fire magic is red and seems to burn. Water magic is blue in colour and flows rather like water. Air magic is white and blows rather than flows. And time magic is black in colour and seems to teleport itself rather than go from one place to another as previously mentioned.
"But the boys' magic has colour and way of movement incongruous with each other. This intrigued us, but we had no explanations so continued to study the samples as though they were normal samples. We thought perhaps that we were dealing with an evolved form of magic. One where the dominant spiritual element - taken to be the colour - also had a lesser spiritual counterpart - evidenced by the motion - that was also strong in the person. We imagined this to be a breed of more powerful magic users.
"This was especially backed up by the evidence of magical incontinence shown by the boys." Realising that Alf's parents were looking at him a little strangely. "Magic users who are more powerful typically experience magical incontinence, where their magic leaks out of them. This tends to happen with teenagers as they mature through puberty, so does their magic and it often grows at a different rate to their ability to control it.
"These leaks can take the form of subconscious magic use. For example, having something suddenly appear near you that you remember thinking you wanted, or finding yourself some place you were thinking about. Other times the raw magic itself, as you saw earlier, can leak, especially if forced out as occurs in the case of a magical sample being taken. Both Alf and Rock required that temporary binding spells be placed upon their magic to allow it to resettle inside themselves after the sample was taken. Damien's magic only required a quick blocking spell to settle. The non-magical equivalents would be a band-aid for Damien's blocking spell, and something like a full body cast for Rock and Alf."
"We thought of explanations for everything," Mary-Ann continued. "Until we checked the magical signatures of the magic. When we take a magical sample, we usually take it to determine the user's spiritual element, and also to determine their magical signature. The magical signature is like a unique magical thumb print that distinguishes each magic user's magic from the other. It is like magical DNA, determining the strength and type of magic. We keep records of magical DNA to aid in settling disputes between magical parties. I won't get into how that works right now, though.
"So to add to our database, we used our usual means of determining magical signatures when we found something quite strange. The magic from all three of the boys had the exact same magical signature. This is impossible. Even in the cases of identical twins where their genetic information is the same, this has never been the case. We curiously compared the points to the familial signatures of the fifteen known magical families. While magical signatures are unique, they share many points in common with anyone from the same family.
"Obviously we began with the Aldus family, as Rock is a member. All points matched. To verify that this wasn't just an anomaly, we compared it to my own magical signature, and Dexter's as well. It was of course quite different from Dexter's as he is from the Fulke family, but there were points in common with each of the family signatures, while there were no points in common with individual signatures. It seemed as though the magic was a generalisation of magical signatures.
"We began looking for signs of this magical signature throughout the town. Of course we found it where the boys were known to have used magic. It was also especially found throughout the Aldus house. But it the Aldus house and grounds, carried so much of the signature that it would be impossible for the boys to have done it. A time spell also confirmed that much of the magic had been there for a time longer than the boys had been alive.
"We had a theory that the generalised magical signature was formed when magic from several people was mixed together. Our experiments in the laboratory proved successful as we were able to create a similar generalised magical signature from our many volunteers in the laboratory. But where could this magic have come from in the first place?"
"That was the next question we sought to answer," Mr Wiley continued. "This led us to observing the habits of the Aldus family, and we noticed in particular, something when Eric Aldus fell ill. It was a typical magical illness. Stress causing exhaustion causing the need for magic to heal itself causing an excess of magic which was then grounded in the family grounds. Tracing Eric's magical signature, we were able to watch as it joined the rest of the magic in the grounds. Mary-Ann added a little of her own magic to the mix and we noticed that the magic left the grounds, heading towards the nearest non-magical person. An eight-year-old girl.
"It is our belief that the magic over the many years of magical illness have caused magic to morph into a general shape unlike that ever seen. So much magic could not be contained by the grounds, and since the family took such good care of the surroundings, there was not much for it to do. Magic does not like to remain stagnant. Therefore it goes looking for places where it can heal. We believe that since all three boys live close to the Aldus household, the magic took root in them, building up over time to the point where it has filled them so completely that they are now able to use it like normal magical users.
"Because of this, we believe that the magic will dissipate from the boys over time, and through magical usage. We would also like to study the boys a bit more to ensure that our hypothesis is correct."
"Now we have time for questions," Mary-Ann said, as the room brightened. "So does anyone have any questions?"
[[Not quite end scene, but a good place to stop.]]
>>Questions about hybrid, borrowed magic (explanations about the incontinence and the shape of the magic), how long it should last, possible political ramifications, solutions, who will be affected...
posted by Cedric @ 9:16 pm
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