MAGUS INFINITE

The stone rose, but not far. There was no dramatic motion, as if I had just achieved something very difficult, and this space did not rebel against what I just done, which was not much when you thought about it, since the stone only rose about two inches.

I measured it, yes, just two inches. I stared at it for a moment, feeling a bit of elation in my soul, and I did not let the fact that I took almost three weeks to achieve this spoil my mood. If I did not have Stone Origin Shell, I know that I would be helpless in this place, and my only option would have been to die.

I held the stone for a few minutes, let it settle back into the ground, and began doing it over and over again. In my mind was the memory of me inside the Caelith, where the movements of my chest as I breathed were enough to expand the entire pyramid, and here I was struggling to move two inches of stone off the ground.

And what made it even more ridiculous was that I was stronger than when I was in the Caelith; at least back then my Earth Resonance had not reached Adept, and this was all I could achieve, so this suggested to me that something in this place was pushing back, since the moment I stopped pulling on the ground, it reverted to its previous shape.

I want to be precise about the word that I used when writing, because I was very careful not to write someone. There is nothing in here with intent, at least as far as I have observed, and what is happening here was closer to what happens when you press your palm into deep water and let go... it simply has a shape it prefers.

In the same way, this floor had a shape it prefers. It preferred to be perfectly flat.

I found this extremely fascinating, because it was suggesting an aspect of magic that dealt with permanence, and it must have been the reason why a Caelith could not be truly destroyed, perhaps not even by that being that cut off the head of the Jade Oracle.

Maybe this magic was related to the earth, and I could not help but wonder whether it was possible to learn a magic like this and integrate it with my flesh...

∞

I pushed aside testing with the rest of my spells for the next week as I focused on experimenting and expanding the area of control I had with the earth.

Every inch of control I acquired was fought for with tooth and nail. The first test I ran was trying to pull on the earth so it could give me more than two measly inches, and I failed spectacularly. It felt like there was an invisible weight or law that was pushing against me, and nothing I could do would make it budge unless I was far stronger.

In the second test, I stopped pushing and simply held it up, the way you hold a door, and that worked.

For as long as I stood in the stance with the connection open and my attention on it, the two inches that I could pull out of the ground stayed. It only reverted when I let go.

I could not help but see the similarities between the earth and the ever present darkness in this place. If I released a thread of lightning here and did not maintain it with my Anima, it would fade away; the same was true of the ground.

If I had a way to touch darkness the same way I was touching the earth, would I discover more connections? Anyways, I had just seen one of the rules of this place repeating itself in the darkness and in the ground... I was another step closer to discovering the mysteries of this place.

The third test was just for me to confirm how long I could hold the stone that I pulled from the ground before this place decided to snatch it back from me.

I stood in the stance and held my two inches for about nineteen hours, and I stopped because I was bored, not because I was tired. I had been sure after the first hour that nothing would change, but I pushed on for another eighteen hours just to be truly sure.

All three tests took about a day, but what consumed the rest of the week was the final test, and that involved me trying to move.

Remember, Celestial magic like I knew it was not cast, but was tied to intent; it was why I think all my celestial spells were more like abilities than skills. If I wanted to know if I could truly control this ground, then I had to move and make it a part of me.

Then I took one step to the left while holding my link with the patch I held, and my connection was ripped from the earth with a rudeness that almost hurt.

The connection had torn the instant my weight shifted, and not just that, the stable resonance I had maintained with that patch of earth was gone entirely, and it took me four hours to reconnect.

A normal person would not do this again, because it was clearly breaking a rule of this place, but who was going to stop me?

So I did it again, and again, and again. Each time I was disconnected from the earth, it was slightly uncomfortable on my channels, and I could imagine that for any other mage, just doing this would be a death sentence, as their channels would be shredded to paste.

I just stubbornly bashed my head against this wall over and over again, and although I had not managed to move with the earth after four days, I was able to reconnect with the ground in under two hours; by the sixth day, the time shrank to one hour. On the seventh day I reconnected to a fresh patch in eleven minutes, and I sat down and allowed myself to rest, because even my channels began to hurt.

It was in my rest that my Status Screen vibrated, and I smiled when I felt a flood of warmth press into my Anima Depth and radiate across my body.

Earth Resonance: 64 → 79 (Adept)

The ache inside me faded a bit as I saw the growth in this Attunement skill; it would seem that my Earth Resonance was growing as fast as my lightning, and I had been so focused on my task for a week that I had subconsciously stopped my status screen from being updated.

I could feel my control over the earth deepen with this growth, and I decided to see what changes this would mean for me. I rested and meditated for a few hours before I stood up and took the stance.

My connection with the earth was not instant, but it took four minutes instead of eleven, and instead of dragging two inches of earth that was the size of my palm, I pulled it up about seven inches, which was twice as wide as before.

Okay, let’s see what would happen if I moved. Taking a step, the connection was ripped from me.

Ah, I have long days ahead of me.