Link : https://m.fan fiction.net/s/12300152/1/Music-of-the-Spheres
WC : 223k+
Plot : I'd always been good at understanding things - be it science or language, comprehension came naturally to me. But what I couldn't understand, was the kind of power that can turn the tears of the dying into laughter. That knowledge was beyond me. But now, in this new world, I have a chance to grasp it, to understand it - the power of Fairy Tail. (Self-Insert; Lucy/OC)
~ Well its basically an SI with gravity magic, its a OK read for me, I would have held it in high regards if the MC was a little more OP than Natsu and the rest. Still the way the plot goes makes sense, so i can't really complain about it~
Chapter 1
When you're young, you think you'll live forever. The idea of death hasn't sunk in yet, you can't grasp the concept or even conceive of the possibility that, one day, life just...ends.
I was no different. Even when I thought I understood it, thought I'd accepted it, I didn't truly understand mortality until I was seventeen years old.
That was the worst year of my life – and the last year of my best friend's life.
It was genetic, they said – something she inherited from her mother. They called it 'terminal', 'incurable', and said 'sorry' a lot.
The worst part was, they meant it.
But apologies weren't worth anything in the face of what was, for me, a world-shattering truth.
We'd been friends ever since our first year of highschool, when general social awkwardness drove us both into the library, to the same little corner of the Fiction section. The conversation hadn't been great, but it had been there; a few shared interests later, we were inseparable.
A lot of people thought we were a couple, considering neither of us dated and we were rarely seen without one another in school. It wasn't true, oddly enough. Did I love her? After a fashion. She was the little sister I'd never had...or, occasionally, the older sister. Maybe even a mischievous twin, from time to time. Certainly, a lot of people thought we were joined at the hip.
We let people think what they wanted. We didn't care about them; we just wanted to get our qualifications and go out to take the world by storm, laughing all the way like lunatics.
I wasn't laughing when she called me over the phone and told me she was dying.
If I'm entirely honest, I don't remember much of what I did after I heard that. There was shouting involved, and I think I might have punched someone, but I came to my senses having broken through the library window and curled up in that same little corner of the Fiction section.
My emotional state only got worse from there.
I spent what felt like a lifetime's rage in weeks, until I was too burnt out to even curse the world any more. I did all my studying at her bedside once she got too weak to stay at home, spending more time with her than I did at school.
When my family went on holiday, I stayed behind. That was a shouting match and a half, but I got my way in the end.
I wasn't going to leave her. Not for anything.
A year seemed like a long time, while it was just the two of us in school. We joked about it; how it was Declan and Heather against the world, how it was trying to slow us down but we'd never let it. We spat in the face of public perceptions and set fire to its security blanket, our time stretching out forever.
The months flew by me like bullets at that bedside.
She was barely ever awake, near the end. When she did wake, she was rarely lucid, more often than not simply smiling vaguely in my direction as I held her hand.
Her last lucid moment also produced the last words she spoke.
"We had some good times, didn't we? So many dreams... Hey, can you do me a favour? When I'm gone, please, go make some of our dreams come true. I'll be watching you from whatever afterlife dares take me, so don't think I won't know if you're slacking!"
She laughed, then went to sleep with a smile on her face.
Two weeks later, she passed away in that same sleep.
Typical of her. She never let me have the last word.
Her family asked me to help pack up her things. As it turned out, with the exception of what savings she'd accrued and a few personal affects, her Will had bequeathed a great deal of her possessions to me.
Namely, her library.
I was a bookworm, and I freely admitted it. Heather? Heather was Smaug next to me. Her walls were almost made of literature, though she would never have described it that way. She was a firm proponent of there being a difference between Literature and a Good Book.
I'd come to feel the same way. I always came around to her point of view, in the end – she had that kind of effect on me.
There was one series in particular that she'd read almost all the way through over the course of her final year. It wasn't British, European, or even American; instead, it was a small mountain of manga – a manga called Fairy Tail.
While she read it, I would often watch her face from behind my own book, or my notes. Sometimes she seemed awed, and sometimes she seemed exasperated. She got angry a few times, and I swear I saw tears in her eyes on occasion.
But more often than not, she was smiling. Smiling and laughing, her face alight with mirth and joy as she read.
I couldn't understand it.
She was dying. Her life and all her dreams were coming to an end. Yet, she still laughed...and at the Japanese equivalent of comic books? It made no sense whatsoever.
So, when I ended up at the reading of the Will, and when I heard that she'd left her library to me, I knew what I was reading first.
Several nights later, I sat in my apartment, staring at the thin volume in my hands. There were boxes piled everywhere in my little living area; I had moved out of my parents' house not so long ago. It seemed that my putting Heather before them hadn't sat well, and my brother and I mostly stayed out of each others' way in any case.
This was my little kingdom. Or, really, my own little mausoleum.
It tapped my fingers on the cover. Fairy Tail, volume one.
Heather was gone...but here was something that could help keep her memory alive in me.
I opened the cover, and began to read.
Then I promptly closed it again, flipped the book upside-down, and tried again.
That was better.
"K... H...y, ...d. ...an yo... h...r me? H...llo? Kid!"
Oh. Oh, God, PAIN.
My ability to scream apparently short-circuited for the moment, I managed a pitiful moan instead. What the actual Hell? I'd gone to sleep last night...er...this morning...late this morning, after having read my way through a goodly chunk of the volumes I'd been left, taking in the story and the characters, trying to understand.
Honestly, I could see it somewhat...but, the manga didn't seem to do for me what it had done for Heather. I couldn't seem to crack a smile, or shed a tear. I wondered if I had burned myself out more than I'd suspected, to the point of emotionlessness.
One way or another, the throbbing my entire body was experiencing was like a mix of cramps, a full-body beating, a fall from a great height and an intensive exercise regime rolled into one and then used to beat me again. I didn't know what could have caused that, but my train of thought was derailed by the sensation of a hand gripping my heart.
I moaned again; it felt almost like I suddenly had a second heartbeat, and even as I registered that, there was a...sensation, running through me. It was almost like being submerged in water, but at the same time it reminded me of taking a breath. It was a strange, alien feeling, and it seemed to pulse in time with the sharp pain in my chest.
Idly, I realised that the voice I'd heard earlier was shouting for help now, and that I could hear running feet. I tried to pay attention, and managed to catch parts of the conversation around my headache. "Lying here...half-dead...healer...Hargeon..."
Wait...what was that last one?
I strained my ears, gritting my teeth around the increased pain in my head, hoping that my ears had somehow deceived me and that this person had not just said- "New lady...Magnolia...small Guild..."
Oh shit. Oh shit. Hargeon, Magnolia, Guild. I recognised all of those terms, especially when they were used in concert.
With an effort which seemed far more monumental than it ought to, I managed to get my eyes open. A fairly nondescript (or maybe that was the blurry vision talking), middle-aged (probably) man (almost certainly) was kneeling beside me, a similar figure crouching to the their left and two others mirroring them on my right side. "Ready?" One of them asked, the first voice, and the others nodded. "Then on one, two, three!"
They slid their hands under my shoulders and knees, lifting me between all four of them and raising my point of view.
Looking forward, I saw that we were atop a cliff – and that, spread out below me, was a port town, with a couple of stone piers, a lighthouse built on an island a fair ways into the bay, and roofs painted in colours ranging from pink and red to turquoise and navy blue.
"Don't worry kid," one of the men said. "We'll get you to Hargeon safe and sound – the healer there'll fix you up."
Oh God.
I was in Fairy Tail. I was in Fairy Tail.
Just before I passed out, from a mix of exhaustion, shock and sheer dint of pain, I found that I couldn't help but be excited by the prospect.
Maybe, from inside the story, I could come to understand just how Heather could smile.
When I next came to, I was lying on a bed. I was still throbbing, but I could think now, and that strange submersion/breathing sensation had lessened, alongside the ache in my chest – the strange second heartbeat was more natural, less like a hand gripping my true heart and more like a pump set alongside it.
I wasn't entirely sure how that had come about, or what it signified, but then again I was probably going to have to deal with a lot of that in the future.
I was in Fairy Tail. Somehow, I had gone from my apartment filled with books, to being laid out and feeling like death warmed over on the cliffs above Hargeon, the first location seen in the manga.
I should probably have been in more shock, right about now...but I'd been living life through a cotton wool haze these past days. I didn't even know if I could summon the energy to be afraid, or angry, or...anything, about this. Feeling was just...too much work, now.
Grunting, I tried to sit up. I was met with a modicum of success, although the muscles I was using screamed in protest. I didn't bother listening to them – I was well used to 'character building', as my father called it, and this was no worse than any post-workout burn.
Discounting reality displacement, of course.
Once I was partially vertical, I cast my gaze around. The ward seemed fairly consistent with what I'd seen from Fairy Tail's infirmary in the manga – flagstone floor and stone walls, the ceiling wooden. The bed I was lying on had crisp white sheets, the frame wood instead of metal.
There were a few other people lying on various beds, all appearing to be asleep; they were dressed in an eclectic mix, though. Every primary colour was on vibrant display on various robes, interspersed with seemingly more ordinary clothing like trousers and shirts.
This appeared to be a male ward – and, unless I missed my guess, the strange fashion senses on display seemed to make it likely that this was a ward for dealing with magic users. But that didn't make much sense; if this was a ward for magic users, what was I doing here?
I remembered that the ratio of normal humans to Mages was roughly nine to one; and I hadn't exhibited any signs of being able to use magic before I woke up here. I didn't even have any kind of training, which I knew was necessary for using magic in the first place.
Still, if my guess panned out, the fact that I was here was rather telling.
Looking down at myself, I found that I was dressed in the same outfit I'd passed out in while reading – namely, the same outfit that I'd worn out the door that morning. Outdoor trousers, the kind with zip-up pockets and detachable legs; an under-armour shirt, plus a plain blue t-shirt; and my jumper, a thin hoodie coloured a redwood-brown.
Looking to the side of the bed, I found a night cabinet and a chair. Beneath the chair were my battered black-and-white trainers, looking no more the worse for wear than they had that morning. Likewise, my outfit seemed intact, beyond the usual signs of consistent use.
So, whatever had happened to me probably hadn't constituted physical injury. Yet, I felt like I'd been run over several times in quick succession, which was an improvement over how I'd felt upon awakening for the first time.
I knew this was a world of magic, where the metaphysical and the spiritual could be affected just as easily as the physical, and where there were far more dimensions to...well, everything, than I was used to. So, had magic been responsible for this?
...That was a stupid question. Nothing on my side of this...inter-dimensional fence I'd hopped could have sent me here, meaning someone had opened the door from this side. The questions were, 'Why' and 'How'.
Actually, 'When' could go on that list too. I needed a plan, for what I was going to do. A quick inventory check revealed that I still had my thin, camo-pattern wallet, but that the change, notes and debit card within were gone. Likewise, my cellphone and iPod had disappeared.
I took a moment to mourn the loss of my music before continuing my self-assessment.
I had both my knives – the Highlander Kingfisher, which was just short of the maximum legal length for a knife which could be carried in public, in Scotland at least – namely three inches, or roughly seven and a half centimetres – and the Leatherman Squirt, which was more of a multitool. My notepad and pencil, usually used to note down writing ideas (I kept it mostly out of habit - I hadn't written in it for months now), were also present.
But that was it. I had an empty wallet, two knives, a pencil and paper and the clothes on my back. That was not a good start in this or any other world, and I needed some way to make money quickly or I was going to go hungry real fast.
Deciding that the first step on that route was finding a library to do some research, I swung my legs out of the bed with a grimace, setting my socked feet on the stone floor and bracing myself to rise. The moment my toes touched he flagstones though, a weird sensation intruded on my focus.
It was...somewhere between plucking a guitar string and hearing the note played. But even stranger, paying attention to it seemed to cause my spatial awareness to expand. In much the same fashion as I could touch my hands together without having to see them, I felt like I could see wherever it was this sensation was leading to, like following a trail as it headed out of the ward and on to a point which radiated the same pseudo-audial sensation, but with a suggestion of...radiance. Like being able to tell the difference between a dark room and a lit one even with your eyes closed.
All in all, it was quite possibly the single most confusing thing I'd ever experienced - and I'd wrapped my head around things like the Theory of Relativity.
I shook my head, trying to banish the disorientation the sensation had brought, but looked up when the doors to the ward opened and a figure in white bustled in.
It was a middle-aged woman, greying hair done up in a bun and a no-nonsense look fixed on her face. Her uniform, or what I assumed to be her uniform, consisted of what seemed to be a simple dark grey dress, with a peaked cap on her head and some kind of white mantle hanging down to her midsection, with a red caduceus symbol over her heart.
She crossed to where I was sitting on the edge of the bed faster than I would have expected, putting her hands on her hips and frowning at me. "And where, pray tell, are you going in such a a hurry, Mr...?"
Some part of her voice went straight to the part of my head which governed instant obedience and start pulling levers, and I answered without really thinking about it. "Ross, Declan Ross. I was going to go and find a library..."
The woman snorted, shaking her head disapprovingly. "You Mages and your books...I've said it time and time again, spending days upon days locked away and doing nothing but reading doesn't do anyone any good in the long run!"
Shaking her head once more and muttering, the woman gestured to my feet. "Well get those back in bed; you were almost completely out of magical power when you got in here, it's a wonder you didn't fall into a coma!"
I did as instructed, if a bit reluctantly, as I considered what she'd said. Apparently she was under the impression that I was a Mage – probably because, according to her, I'd been drained of magical power, which I knew to be how the Mages in the manga powered their abilities. "So, that's why I feel like this?"
The woman nodded, curtly. "Indeed; whatever it was you were doing out there, it just about wiped out your entire energy reserves. In fact, it seems you even tapped the stored energy in your body's cells – something I didn't even know was possible until today. Hence what I'm assuming is a rather impressive collection of aches and pains."
I couldn't help but grimace my agreement with that assessment. Still, I'd learned a few things from this little conversation.
A, if I was in any remaining doubt, I was definitely in Fairy Tail and in all probability not dreaming.
B, I could apparently do magic now, or had the potential to do it; that would certainly explain that confusing experience a moment ago.
C, I should probably avoid ever getting this low on magical power again, because damn this hurt.
Sighing, I looked up at the woman who was checking a clipboard at the end of my bed. "Well then, thanks for looking after me miss...?"
The woman raised an eyebrow, but answered anyway. "Amelia. Matron Amelia."
Getting the point, I nodded quickly. "Right. Thanks for looking after me, Matron Amelia."
Nodding in approval, the Matron replaced the clipboard after marking something down on it, then headed for the doors once more. "Focus on resting for now, Mr Ross. You should be recovered in two or three days, at which point you'll be released."
Suddenly struck by a horrible thought, I called after her. "Ah, Matron Amelia? How am I going to pay for your help? I don't have any money."
Stopping abruptly, the woman turned on her heel, shooting me a look that was partly respectful, but also partly annoyed. "Mr Ross, I do not charge patients who are carried into my ward with no money, no identification and no incriminating injuries. All you have necessitated from me is the use of a bed which was unoccupied in any case."
Thus relieved, I let out another sigh, before sinking back to lie down properly on the bed. The aching was starting to get to me, and I escaped into the dreary abyss of sleep barely seconds after the ward's doors had closed behind the Matron.
True to my keeper's words, I was up and mobile two days later. Stepping out into the street, I took in my first proper look at this new world I had found myself in.
It was...oddly familiar.
Really, there weren't many obvious differences from the home I'd left behind beyond the technology difference. Fashion sense maybe, but Hargeon seemed to blend the convenience of 'modern' times with the sensibilities of a time gone by. It was...oddly refreshing.
Then again, I'd always been called old fashioned, so maybe that was just me.
Things like toilets, baths and showers existed here. However, everything ran on magic, as opposed to electricity and combustion engines. The main modes of transportation were trains, ships, wagons and your own two feet. Or, of course, whatever esoteric means of transportation a Mage happened to possess.
The buildings were constructed from stone - I wasn't sure what kind though, particularly since there seemed to be very little rhyme or reason to their construction. Colours ranged from yellows to blues, passing through green on the way; some buildings were purely stone on the exterior, while others seemed to have incorporated wood as a support material. Businesses and unmarked buildings which were probably residences stood side by side or perhaps one on top of the other, while the heights ranged from simple two-storeys to towers which wouldn't have been out of place serving as church steeples.
It was chaotic, in a very placid kind of way. Disordered, but very...bright.
I almost wanted to shade my eyes. Still, I had more important things to be thinking about than the scenery.
My first point of business: Find myself a job. With no ID of any kind, no references, no family, no money, and no real skills which would be applicable here.
Suddenly, my years of learning how to work with computers didn't seem quite so fulfilling.
Still, I had to start somewhere, so I set off into the crowd in search of employment.
My search was...about as fruitful as I'd been expecting, honestly.
I'd wandered what must have been damn near every street in this town, and at least poked my head in the door of every shop I'd come across. Yet, no luck. Either they weren't hiring, or they specifically weren't hiring me.
At this point, I was down to what was, to my knowledge, the literal last shop in Hargeon that I hadn't tried yet. It was painted a navy blue, with the shingles on the roof having a pattern almost similar to fish scales, with blues ranging from turquoise to darker shades than the building proper. Dark wooden beams seemed to indicate where the first, second and third floors were separated, while a white sign hanging above the front door read 'Proper Grocer' above what I thought was a red octopus - whatever the hell kind of name that was meant to be. A cream awning hung over the front of the store, providing shade and shelter.
This was to be either my salvation...or the last nail in my coffin.
I pushed inside, cast my eyes around...and suddenly realised where I'd found myself.
The shop floor was fairly small; not incredibly cramped, but certainly nothing impressive. The counter was set on the wall opposite the front door, with a velvety-blue curtain hanging behind it probably concealing the stairs to the second level and several posters pinned to its front. On the counter itself, there was a bronze till (strangely out of place in a world of fantasy) and a box set at an incline filled with stones, like the 'birth stones' displays a lot of gift shops liked to sucker people with.
Looking in from the door, on the right-hand side of the store was a glass-fronted bookcase prominently displaying several books, all with titles like 'Wizardry' and 'Sorcery', featuring very occult-looking scenes and symbols. Further into the store, there was a set of shelves where vases, small chests and other containers had been placed, likely containing reagents or similar.
A couple of wooden pedestals displayed objects like a crystal ball and some miscellaneous metal objects I didn't recognise. Forming an island in the middle of the floor where two more sets of shelves set back-to-back, featuring more containers - largely vases and bottles.
The left-hand side of the store seemed to have been left mostly clear; there was another set of shelves complete with various containers directly left of the door moving in, but moving up toward the counter there was only what looked like a chest of drawers of some kind.
Just to make the place seemed smaller, there were several objects hanging from the roof - including a lamp that could have been taken straight out of Aladdin.
Then I set eyes on the owner, who was standing behind the counter watching me look around with a notably inscrutable smile fixed in place.
There was a character design I wasn't going to forget in a hurry. There were only so many people with pig's noses, a dark-gray hair which stuck out to either side like horns and a conical hat with a star on the front and a sphere atop it going around after all, even in Japanese media. "Welcome!" The man greeted me, bright smile in place. "Can I help you with anything, sir?"
"Yes actually," I replied, shaking myself as I focussed on the man. This was...just about perfect, actually. If I could get myself a job in this store, the rest of my rapidly evolving plan could spring from it with ease. "I was wondering, do you have any interest in some help around the store? I recently found myself in some rather dire straits, and at this point I just need any job that I can earn some pay for."
I tried to form a 'please believe me' face as I made my plea – but really, judging by the way I had to consciously shift the muscles instead of letting the expression form, it probably didn't look right. Still, I need this to happen, so I had to make the effort - and the man might have realised that as he looked me up and down.
I probably wasn't the most impressive sight. I kept myself in shape more out of vanity and mild necessity than anything else, since I was often called on to help move heavy objects or run errands. As a result, my build was fairly balanced – a sort of cross between a weightlifter and a runner. One way or another, it kept me slim but physically competent, and that was enough for me.
Really, not much stood out about me. My skin was somewhat tanned from time spent in the sun for various reasons, my hair was about as pitch black as human genetics could manage - kept short, 'mole fur' as my mother used to call it - and my eyes had the odd tendency to fluctuate between a murky green and a stormy grey depending on the lighting. Not even I was entirely sure what their true colour was.
I was a fairly average face, with a somewhat above average build. But still, the man seemed to find something worth looking at, because he began to smile again after adopting a shrewd expression. "Hm...as a matter of fact, I do believe there is something you can do for me."
Retreating into the space behind his counter for a moment, the shop owner returned with some kind of glassy orb. "Do you mind placing your hand on here quickly?"
I shrugged, doing as he'd asked. I didn't feel like I was going to be in any danger from this guy, and unlike several of the artefacts which had been laying around the hospital where I'd been staying, this orb didn't give off a 'feeling'.
It was an odd talent that I seemed to have picked up. If an object contained magic, it seemed to...strike a chord somewhere in me. Like a part of my soul was resonating with it. The feelings varied, from the alarm on the floor of the ward to the sort of magical x-ray in a pane of glass Amelia had passed over my chest on the second day - even if I couldn't quite make sense of the differences yet, I could recognise that there were differences.
As I rested my hand on the sphere, yet another sensation I couldn't place started up in my hand. It kind of reminded me of when a nurse took my blood, except my body was unharmed. The only logical conclusion was that the orb was taking magical power from me, and I felt I was proven right when, after a few seconds, the sensation cut off and the orb began resonating.
Unlike the other sensations I'd been exposed to lately, this one was clearer - or, perhaps, more familiar. It was hard to put into words...but, 'Weighty' seemed closest - a suggestion of an inexorable downward pull on my sixth sense. The orb itself had changed to my eyes, as well; a corona of light, starting at purple and fading through the spectrum to black, danced within it like a campfire.
The shop owner let out a low whistle. "That's a fine magic power you've got there," he informed me, looking up from the sphere. "If you really want a job, then I could use an assistant. Someone to help keep the place ticking over." He frowned, then continued. "Plus, though I might be the only Magic Shop in Hargeon, I've been wanting to expand for a while now; the problem is, a lot of products run down their power even in storage, and I have no way of recharging them. No magic of my own, you see."
I chose not to comment on it; I wasn't entirely sure of the sentiments on either side of the magical/non-magical divide here. Was it like an X-Men scenario? Or perhaps a more cooperative view? The latter certainly seemed to be the case on the wide scale, but I wasn't sure about the small-scale, which would pertain to a town like Hargeon. One way or another, better to keep my mouth shut until I understood more.
"If you were around, you'd be able to keep them topped up so I could demonstrate them to customers," the man concluded. "That sound okay to you?"
I nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine with that."
It was a simple job. Act as an assistant, which seemed to mean a kind of handyman in this context, and occasionally put magic into a product. Not a particularly big deal.
Well...assuming I could figure out how to actually use my magic, anyway. I'd yet to visit the library, and my probing attempts to work with the 'second heartbeat' I'd been getting used to had met with abysmal failure.
"Excellent!" The older man cried. "My name's Chester, Buggy Chester. You are?"
The now-named Buggy extended a hand, and I shook it. "Declan Ross. I won't let you down, Mr Chester."
I got to work immediately, learning the function of each of the devices my new boss kept stocked on the building's third floor, as well as the number currently in stock and where they all went. It was a bit of a steep learning curve, but I'd had worse, and I stuck with it until I was finding my way around the displays without really having to think about it.
I re-organised the stock room first; as it turned out, Buggy had been meaning to do so for ages, but his back wasn't what it used to be and the top shelves had proven the undoing of his below-average height. When that task was accomplished and my borderline-OCD born from too many hours of Minecraft was satisfied, I started looking at the shop floor itself.
First things first was getting it clean and keeping it that way. I'd found a broom tucked away in a cupboard off the stock room, and set to work getting the wooden floor cleared. Admittedly, when the cleaning implement suddenly grew arms and started lifting the shelves so I could get under them, I damn near tossed it away – but really, I didn't even feel like I could have expressed shock beyond that. It would take too much energy. So, I simply thanked the wood and straw.
It gave me a thumbs-up, and I idly bade farewell to a little bit more of my sanity.
Getting the storeroom, cupboard and shop floor cleared of dust, leaves, rocks, sand and various other detritus ate up a couple of hours, during which time no one came to visit, and Buggy sat dozing in his chair behind the counter. Hell, he didn't even stop snoring when the broom lifted him out of the way, chair and all.
And if that didn't set the tone for how my time working with Buggy was going to go, nothing would.
I had just finished shooing the last of the various impurities out the door with my semi-sentient tool (which Buggy had helpfully informed me was called 'Cleansweep') when we got the first customer of the day.
A teenage girl, a brunette with an irritatingly squeaky voice, practically skipped inside in order to purchase a device I actually recognised from the manga – a ColorS. Without the U.
Goddamn Americanisms.
It was that simple interaction which brought about the realisation that, in this world, magic was not the reality-shattering revelation that it would have been back home, or that it was, even for me. It was a widely accepted art-form, science and engineering principal, something that people had been raised alongside and had lived with for a very long time.
Here, magic was...ordinary.
It took me a couple of minutes just to sit down and come to terms with that, Cleansweep apparently noting my fragile state of mind and patting me consolingly on the shoulder.
I had to wonder just how sentient this item was – and if such a level of intelligence was present in more magical devices, or if Cleansweep was unique.
The rest of my day passed uneventfully, and I went to sleep that night with a meal in my stomach, courtesy of Buggy paying my first week's cheque in advance. It was a show of trust from the man that was good for me, if a touch illogical based on his only brief acquaintance with me, and I decided that I should attempt to repay that faith with a greater effort in my work.
He'd told me that he could handle the store himself for the next couple of days, while I got used to the town, since it was the weekend anyway and he'd only be open for a few hours around midday in any case.
So, when I awoke and left the room in the Inn which was my home for the foreseeable future, I headed straight to the Hargeon Library with a purpose in my step.
If all evidence pointed to me having magic, that meant that I had a resource at my disposal which I wasn't currently exploiting – a resource which could potentially become a massive aid to me in the future. I needed to learn, and quickly.
Time Skip
Frowning to myself in badly muted frustration, I let out a low breath through my nose as I once again failed to manifest the energy which I knew I possessed. My frustration was running as high as it seemed possible for me to experience these days at the moment; understandable, perhaps, seeing as this was my third week in Earthland and I didn't seem to be getting any closer to using magic.
My time in the library had definitely been helpful; there were several volumes on the history of magic, its use and, when I went looking for it, a treatise on the creation or rediscovery of new/forgotten types of magic - all texts which seemed to have been widely distributed and just as widely stocked. Put together, they made for something of a beginner's primer on becoming a Mage - which made sense to me. After all, better to have newly manifested magic users who had a basic idea of what they were doing, than risk ten percent of the population trying to figure it out on their own.
If my experiences with DIY on Earth were anything to go by, the consequences of the same idea in Earthland, where reality was shaped with thoughts and gestures, would be...well, bloody terrifying.
According to the treatise, once you got down to it, there seemed to be three ways for someone to learn magic. The first, and the one I was familiar with from the manga, was learning from someone else, or making some kind of contract with a magical being; in this case, they were unlikely to ever learn more than one magic, for reasons which were referenced but not fully explained. (When I read the appendix and saw, 'Hawthorne's Principle of the Resonance of Magical Cores in Master/Apprentice Bonds and its Effects on Magical Affinity' was the shortest title on the list of referenced texts, I could understand why.)
Another route was manifesting a magical talent naturally through the instinctive manipulation of magical power, the result pf being decided by some metaphysical aspect of the user's being (again, the appendix almost made me yawn just looking at the titles). Or, there was the 'Not Recommended' route - experimenting with various ways of doing things until a working system was developed (I disregarded that possibility after I found an obituary listed in the appendix).
As Hargeon had no resident Mages, and travellers passing through would likely want to be paid money I didn't have for imparting their skills, I couldn't ask to learn magic from someone else. Simultaneously, I didn't particularly want to learn in that fashion even if it was a possibility - after all, this was Fairy Tail; a world of wildly varying magical abilities, where reality was changed on a whim. Learning magic would, no matter what, be the single most fascinating pursuit I ever underwent - but if I could have the option to learn more than one, as Makarov Dreyer's character page alluded to the man himself having done, then I wanted to take that path.
To further cement my choice, the possibility of contracting with a magical creature simply didn't appeal to me – no matter how benevolent creatures like Igneel might be, I still recalled the stories of the Seelie and the Unseelie.
Relevance to my current situation aside, it wasn't in me to trust a magical being with something so fundamental to my life as the reflection of my willpower made manifest in the world around me.
Or, that was how magic was described in the books I'd read, anyway.
According to them, a Mage's magical power was influenced by the size of the 'container' within their body – a metaphysical thing rather than a biological one, but the wellspring of magic nonetheless. That container drew in Ethernano, magic particles, from the air, and then the Mage could channel it from within themselves in the form of spells, according to training, natural inclination, willpower, or a mix of the three.
Magical power grew with time, and with training – just like any aspect of a human being. Based on what I'd managed to surreptitiously get out of Amelia, and what Buggy had said, I'd apparently started out with a decent well of power to draw from. Thus, what I needed to do was move that power from within me, into the world around me, so I could discover what kind of magic I was naturally inclined to perform.
This was where I'd hit a snag. Namely, that the instructions for actually using magic boiled down to 'There are no instructions'. So, I'd been experimenting with different ways of drawing out my own power.
At this point, I was trying the Nasuverse way. In that canon, everybody had their own triggers, their own mental images, habits or tricks that summoned their magic. The vast majority of people tended to train themselves to perform specific actions accompanying phrases – hence incantations, and yelling attack names at all and sundry, 'surprise' attack or no.
So, I was trying to come up with something that would work for me – but I hadn't had any success so far. I'd tried Shirou's old 'hammer of a gun' image, I'd tried shattering glass a la Persona, I'd tried taking a stance a la DxD...I was almost desperate enough at this point to find a stick and start yelling about the joules per second output of a refractive device related to an Earth-orbiting satellite.
I had run through the vast majority of my pop culture data-banks in the past three weeks, and in trying to invent new possibilities I had developed a headache which thudded in my ears with each beat of my heart, the rushing sound of blood flooding through my body stealing more of my attention.
I paused. A flood...well, there was branch of images I hadn't tried yet.
I closed my eyes again, letting the wind blowing through the clearing calm me down. I'd hidden myself away in a little clearing in the woods, atop the cliffs overlooking Hargeon, to ensure myself some privacy, and some quiet for my little experiments.
My first attempt, a dam breaking, led to nothing.
Likewise my second attempt, a sudden submersion in water, was a bust - as was water freezing over, boiling away, a rainbow shining through spray and the swell of an ocean tide.
Starting to feel my headache encroach on my focus again, I decided to try once more. One more attempt, then I was done for the day, and I would go back to the library to continue researching Earthland or, perhaps more specifically, Fiore's history - so I had at least the basic information anyone might be expected to know.
Casting around my imagination for any water-related trigger image I could conceive of, I finally reached one. I'd had water coming sideways, going forward, going up and me going into it...but I hadn't tried water going down.
Letting out a long breath, letting the movement of air distract me from my headache for a few moments, I concentrated on both the thrum of my magical power in my chest, and the newly generated image of a waterfall in my head, recreating the sensation of the crushing weight suddenly falling on my head and shoulders, like a shower only hundreds of times more voluminous and powerful.
After a moment, I realised that I wasn't just imagining it any-more. The warm pulsing in my chest had spread out, further with each thud of my heart, until everywhere from the tips of my hair to the tips of my fingers and toes were tingling with power. It suffused my entire body, granting an awareness beyond even my normal spatial awareness, as if I'd spontaneously developed an entire supplementary nervous system.
It felt...amazing. Like a massage, a warm bath, my favourite meal, a fluffy blanket and a good book somehow rolled up into a teddy bear and with a kitten just for the hell of it. It was like coming home after being away for years and years, like waking up from a dream only to find that your life was even better than what your sleeping mind could conjure, and my headache seemed inconsequential. In fact, everything seemed inconsequential - like for as long as I stayed like this, nothing else could possibly matter.
It...reminded me of Heather.
With that thought, my chest pulsed with a dull ache - just as it always did when my thoughts turned to her. What was not usual, however, was the sudden cracking sound which coincided with it, and my eyes flew open.
What I found, was that the tree directly in front of where I sat had just broken away from the ground and risen into the air.
I stared disbelievingly at it for a long moment; the massive plant, complete with large clumps of earth between its roots, simply hovering in place as if it were perfectly natural.
Idly noting that the magical power flowing through me hadn't subsided yet, I stood carefully and approached, trying to maintain the feeling of the waterfall, of the power running down through me and out into the world.
I reached the tree, then extended one arm and poked it. The touch sent it drifting lazily away, and I looked in mild awe between it and my outstretched finger. "Gravity..." I breathed. "I placed it in zero gravity..."
I frowned, looking over to where the tree had bobbed along until it collided with another tree, whereupon their branches became tangled and the floating plant got stuck. "No...I reversed gravity on it, then counteracted the force once it reached a certain height, before balancing the force and placing it in a zero gravity field..."
I hadn't been trying to do that. I didn't even know how I'd go about doing that. And yet, unless someone was really messing with me, that was exactly what had just happened.
"Strange..." I muttered to myself, as I brought my arm back in and stared at the palm, then to the still-floating tree. "The feeling isn't lessening at all...so this probably isn't costing me much magical power at all..."
I tilted my head, examining the tree. "Maybe...if this was telekinesis, then I'd be having to work against gravity in order to move the tree. However, if I'm working with gravity itself, then..." I took in a sharp breath, the implications hitting me. "Only the area of effect matters; the mass within that area is irrelevant."
That was...that was huge. I'd seen telekinesis put to some amazing uses in various media, but a big limitation was always the mass which could be lifted at one time. If I didn't have that limitation...and especially, assuming that my ability didn't mess with the object's mass...
Striding forward, I grabbed the trunk of the tree and started walking backwards, finding myself somewhat awed that I actually moved it with no real difficulty beyond getting the branches untangled. When I reached the centre of the clearing, I was effectively holding a several metre long, multi-tonne clobbering weapon.
Setting myself into the stance I vaguely remembered using for baseball back in PE classes, even if it was really awkward using the tree this way, I swung the plant as hard as I could at another of its ilk. There was a lot of air resistance, but that was all – and so when the weightless tree impacted, the smaller tree which I'd targeted snapped right down the middle, falling with a crash.
I stared from it to the whole tree in my hands, then at my hands, and then I stepped back while letting go of the weightless plant.
It bobbed towards me a bit with momentum, but came to a stop and just...hovered. Not even moving up and down; it just...stayed there.
I would have jumped for joy, I would have smiled, I would have loosed the mother of all evil scientist laughs at the sheer number of applications I could think of for manipulating one of the universe's most basic yet mysterious phenomena...but I couldn't.
Not just because I'd yet to manage even one of those expressions since I'd arrived here...but because all I could think of, was that I wished Heather could see me now.
With the twinge in my chest, I had to jump back as the tree fell, gravity re-asserting itself with no warning as a cacophonous impact echoed through the woods for the second time in as many seconds.
I stared at it, feeling that the magical power had largely retreated from my body...but it was still there. Not as bright or vibrant as it had been, but definitely still there, like the difference between the charge for an eco-friendly lightbulb and that of a halogen spotlight.
"So..." I murmured, "I guess magical power is affected by emotion, huh?"
That...could be a problem. But for now, it was enough for me to know that yes, I could do magic, and yes, I had got something awesome.
Not that I'd have been cursing my luck or anything, even if I'd gotten something less powerful or useful – just the ability to do magic was enough in and of itself – but with something like this, my plan seemed all but assured.
All that was left now, was to learn how to properly use this ability of mine, and wait for a certain customer to appear.
I didn't know how much time I had. So, sitting down and crossing my legs once more, headache and dull frustration forgotten, I began to focus – I could be moving on to the next phase of the plan any day now.