Ripple In Time - Chapter 4 Troubleshooting

Let me just say this first. I don’t consider myself a perfectionist. Perfectionism implies a desire to be right about everything all the time. That’s not me. Well, it is in the sense that I happen to be right a vast majority of the time, but that’s more so just a consequence of my genius and talent, rather than any active desire I may exhibit. No, I am not a perfectionist. If I am anything, it’s an obsessionist.

I often get into these phases where nothing else in the world matters to me but the object of my obsession. And what that is can change rather violently and without warning. One minute, something might seem the love of my life, the next, I’ll hardly even remember it existed. But you can bet in that moment of obsession, where I pour my heart and soul out for that one thing, I would be willing to die for it.

In general, my obsessions come in the form of challenges, problems that seem without a clear solution or explanation. The greater the difficulty, the greater my obsession. Take, for example, the problem I just experienced while casting the spell, Flame. It was indeed a perplexing one, a perplexing problem that is.

Why had my Flame spell exploded like that? Why had pain shot up my arm unexpectedly? I had casted the spell a thousand times before. Not once, not even when I had first learned it, had it behaved in such a manner. So what had caused the change? Was it the time ripple? I don’t know. But I want to. Badly. And that’s how I become obsessed.

I lean down, pick up another leaf, then cast the spell, Flame, once again. Like before, it spontaneously combusts, and I think all is going well, when again, a pain shoots up my arm. The spell goes haywire, the leaf explodes into a ball of fire as it drops to the ground, and I manage to dodge just in time to avoid being burned alive. Essentially, it is a repeat of the first instance. But I have not yet learned anything of note, so I repeat the cycle. Again. And again.

In a brief moment of clarity, I wonder how I must appear to an onlooker. A five-year-old boy, naked and alone on a rooftop- yes, rooftop. Did I mention I’m stuck standing on a rooftop? Another quirk of the time ripple, I suppose. I mean, it would have been nice to wake up somewhere normal, like on my bed, or you know, on the ground. But I guess the universe thought that the roof of a hundred foot tall clock tower was good enough for me. That or it was confused. I don’t know. But yes, back to what I was saying. The scene must be rather jarring to the average onlooker. Me, a young child, standing naked atop a roof, blowing up leaves in spectacular bursts of flames with an obsessive grin on my face. Pyromaniac much?

But then again, when have I given two shits about the peanut gallery. Certainly not when I was first coming to prominence as a mage, when they would all laugh and jeer at me, at what they perceived to be the foolishness of my actions. The funny thing was, they only acted that way because they were too stupid to even comprehend what it was that I was doing. And then when I became known as the strongest mage in existence, well, they all shut up faster than an oyster guarding its pearl. That is to say, they clammed up real good. And then no one had any impression of me but awe. I could be picking my nose, and people would praise the booger that came out. So you see why I have so little respect for the opinions of others and the fickleness of their emotions. Well, the one exception is probably Sarah, but now’s not the time.

Another leaf disintegrates into a puff of smoke. It’s the tenth one, and my hair is starting to singe around the tips. But I grin, having figured out the issue. “Of course! Mana acceleration!”

Mana acceleration is the rate at which the flow of mana along a conduit can be changed, either increased or decreased. While the acceleration itself can be influenced by a variety of factors, such as the type of mana being manipulated, the recipient of the mana, the quality of the conduits present and so forth, one of the largest contributing factors to the acceleration of mana is the composition of one’s mana musculature, the “magic muscles” I had mentioned earlier. With regards to my Flame spell, the reason it keeps exploding instead of maintaining a steady, controlled fire is due to the overexertion of those muscles. Actually, one muscle in particular, the thermalis major, which is heavily involved in the casting of spells from the Thermal Branch of magic.

To illustrate what I mean, it is perhaps helpful to think of spell casting in the following way. Imagine space, the empty air before oneself, to be filled with millions upon billions of very thin pieces of string, extending infinitely in every possible direction. These strings are what’s called conduits. Threaded through these strings are some amount of mana particles, also known as energy particles. These particles come in six variants. That is why it is called the Six Fold Path of Magic. As to the the actual difference amongst the particles, I don’t have time to go over each at the moment. For now, I will simply make the claim that the particles are uniquely different, varying in properties such as abundance, inertial mass and so forth. As such, each particle type must be manipulated differently, the manipulation of which is the fundamental principle of spell casting.

Take, for example, the Flame spell I cast previously. Using the model of threaded particles I just described, the process of casting it would simply involve pushing the corresponding particles, the thermal mana or thermal energy, from the surroundings along the proper conduits until those particles coalesced around a central point. In this case, the central point is the leaf. Once enough thermal mana has gathered around the leaf, the spell becomes activated. The leaf spontaneously combusts into flame. Simple, right?

Now, let’s return back to the issue of mana acceleration, which is why we had the mini-lecture in the first place. In order to push mana particles along their corresponding conduits, one needs to engage one’s mana musculature, the act of which results in mana particle acceleration, or mana acceleration for short. Think of it in terms of basic physics. If I push a cart harder with my biceps and quadriceps- that is, my arm and leg muscles- thus creating more force, the cart reacts by speeding up at a faster rate. The same principle applies to spell casting. The more I exert my thermalis major when I cast the Flame spell, the faster the thermal mana accelerates along their conduits towards the leaf. The problem here as it turns out, and this is not me bragging, is that I have a very big, and I mean giant, thermalis major, if you know what I mean.

In my past, this allowed me to speed cast spells, accelerate mana quickly and activate spells almost instantaneously. In my juvenile body with its uncoordinated muscles, however, it simply meant that I was liable to overexert myself, accelerate mana too quickly, and cause spells to become unstable or blow up. It’s like a strongman trying to swat a fly on the wall, but rather than simply killing the fly, he also breaks the wall. In casting the Flame spell, I strained my muscles, hence the pain in my arm, and fed too much mana too quickly into my spell, hence it going haywire.

In layman’s terms, my muscles are still jacked as fuck, but my control is basically shit.

I’m going to have to take a more active approach to mana manipulation, instead of relying purely on muscle memory, at least until I adapt to my new juvenile form. But as long as I pay attention, I should be fine.

To prove my theory, I pick up another leaf. This time, I actively sense the force I exert with my thermalis major, limiting the power I use for mana acceleration. This time, the leaf spontaneously combusts, but there is no sudden pain in my arm. The flame remains stable, even after a minute of burning. I let out a wide grin and pat myself on the back. I even get a bit creative, trying to manipulate the flame into the shape of a thumbs-up. It comes out looking like a turd. “Yeah…control is definitely going to need a bit of work.”

I cancel the spell and drop the leaf, letting it burn itself out on the ground. Then I walk over to the edge of the clock tower. I crouch down and peer over the ledge, at the streets a hundred feet below. At the moment, it was empty. I stand up and then take another step forward. My bare toes are now hanging freely in the air, while my heels rest on the edge of the rooftop.

As I stand there, a thought passes through my head. I really should do a test first, make sure this spell is going to work. After all, won’t it be rather anticlimactic if I spent all that effort reviving myself, only to splat on the sidewalk?

But then the thought passes. I feel supremely confident and a wicked grin snakes its way onto my face. I look down again at the streets, eyeing my landing spot. And then, I jump.