C9 Chapter 9

The training begins

Dana had to shield her eyes from the blinding, bright light on the other side of the portal. She had never realized how bright it was around here. After a few seconds, she had gotten used to the brightness and started searching the perimeter for Gomek. She found him on a nearby bench, fast asleep.

She walked straight towards him, but Shari was faster and pinched his nose. He jerked up, looked around, and discovered Dana who was walking towards him. He stumbled over to her and hugged her tightly, swirling her through the air several times in the process. Then he set her on the ground with a flourish. He beamed from ear to ear, and excitedly asked her if she had any idea how long she’d been gone for. She tiredly shook her head. “More than twelve hours!”, he announced in agitation. “Your parents are looking for you everywhere. They are worried you won’t be coming back again.”

“God, no! We need to calm them down.” She was upset. “Come on, let’s find them! You won’t believe what happened to me! I’ll tell you and the others so many things, and I have gotten plenty of explanations.”

The hurried away from the plaza and through the alleys towards Dana’s home. Hardly even through the door, Tala jumped over to them, hugging her daughter tightly and repeatedly wiping away her own tears.

“Never do that again, you hear me? I was worried sick! You were gone for so long. But now, tell us what happened.”

Not beating around the bush, everyone sat down at the table and Dana started recounting her adventures on the other side: she reported to her attentive listeners all about the large cave, about Erogat and her past – she told them everything, not leaving out a single detail. If somebody interrupted with a question, she answered quickly or told them she would get to that later in her recounting of the events. That’s how they ended up sitting there until late into the night, and everyone was attentively listening to Dana’s story, their faces a bright red.

When she got to the point where she started talking about her impending training, Olo and Tala were less than thrilled, but at the end of her story they had to grudgingly give their permissions. They knew, of course, that they weren’t in a position to help Dana learn to the best of her abilities. Once Dana had mentioned that Gomek would be allowed to come with her, he with dizzy with surprise. He wanted to ask his parents for permission instantly. He jumped up from his seat, bid a hurried goodbye, and disappeared home. Gomek just had to get his parents’ permission – wouldn’t that be something, if he’d be the first dwarf to study magic?

Tala shot Dana a sharp look once Gomek had left. Of course, she believed everyone sitting around the table had to get to bed now. After all, they’d all had a long day, experiencing so many exciting and thrilling things. Dana yawned, stretched her body, and then, mumbling a quiet “good night”, went off to sleep. Olo and Tala talked a while longer, until they, too, got tired and went to bed as well. Tomorrow would be another exhausting day, that much they knew.

Much to Olo and Tala’s dismay, Gomek had shown up on their doorstep at the crack of dawn. He just couldn’t wait to find out more about the insufficient magical abilities of his own people.

After an extensive breakfast, the three friends headed out to visit Erogat and start their training. At the monolith, Dana took Gomek’s hand to walk him through the portal.

“Fascinating! It actually worked!”, Dana happily realized.

Gomek frowned and grumbled: “You weren’t sure it would even work?”

“Erogat couldn’t be one hundred percent sure. Let’s keep walking…there are a lot of things waiting for us.”

Dana beamed at him. “We should go see Erogat now. He’s already waiting for us, I’m sure.”

And she was right. The ghost had decided that Dana would stay with him for the beginning of her training, since he could evaluate her progress, or deficits, much better that way. He got down to business immediately. The two hopeful “magicians” – three, counting Shari – didn’t get around reading from countless books every day for the next weeks. After every book they’d read, Erogat tested them, and of course he also answered all their questions. To further take in the new material, they also learned by doing: the practiced magic, brewed potions, and whatever else there was to learn. There weren’t many breaks at all. Only every now and again when they returned home, there was some peace and quiet for the three. But they didn’t really mind either way. All of them were especially eager for knowledge. And anyway – who else of the dwarf people would have the chance to learn magic? This was a privilege!

Dana took in as many books as she could. Luckily, Shari was with her. She didn’t seem to mind the flood of information, so that Dana could “outsource” some of the information to her. Dana enjoyed it most when she could practice the things she’d read about before. Magic – it was her life, despite Erogat telling her plenty of times that what she was learning here didn’t have anything at all to do with magic.

“The humans call it magic, because they don’t understand the way we influence nature.”

He explained the concept to her many times.

“We are able to use the laws of nature for ourselves. If you need hot water – move the liquid’s molecules. Faster and faster, until it starts boiling. If you slow down the particles, it will freeze. You can do the same thing to any matter. You make fire the same way, only that you manipulate the wood by rubbing until it starts catching fire. Well, no wood – no fire. That’s why we always need a tiny bit of the thing we want to create, even if it’s only particles of it. That’s why we’re always carrying a sack with our most needed essentials.

If you want to eat an apple, for example, you could surely call him to you telepathically, and somebody else would be missing an apple.

But we do it differently: … use this apple core and close your eyes. Concentrate on it. Let him grow in your mind until it’s a grown tree, ready to have its fruit picked…and now pick the ripest one.

Open your eyes. See, now you’ve got the apple. If you only learn how to do it without leaving apple trees growing all over the place, you’ve really got it.”

Dana opened her eyes. She was standing in front of a large apple tree.

“Oh…what now?”

“Let him disappear, except for the apple you want. With a little practice…uh, a lot…”, he grinned, only to keep talking afterwards: “you can create these things with only your willpower, practically in the blink of an eye. You need a tree or whatever else there is you need but that doesn’t exist in your reach in that moment. The development until it’s ready to be picked – the path you take in your mind – that’s important. That’s how you get your apple – without needing the whole shebang around it. An apple, or whatever else it is you want.

But as I said before, we need a part of what we want to create. Even if it’s the smallest ingredient – an apple corn, a grain of rice, or the bud of a spice. Even we are unable to create something from nothing. Nobody can do that. Just like nobody can revive dying matter. We can form it, control it, steer it with our thoughts. But creating life? That’s impossible.”

Dana did what Erogat had told her to and had the tree disappear again. Shari and Gomek thought it to be incredibly funny, and they laughed so heartily that Dana and Erogat joined them after a while, all amused with Dana’s mishap. The next topic that the ghost wanted to teach them was called “Golems”. Erogat told them that it could consist of different matter like either fire, water, or ice. They also learned that they wouldn’t be able to let the Golem come to life, as he’d told them before, but that they would only be able to control them with their minds and the ability to shape matters as they wished. Without control, it would simply be a stone, wood, fire, or whatever else. Another possibility to create the Golem would be using the magic of runes. But they would leave that to the dwarfs.

“I’m sorry, Gomek – this would be the ideal magic for you.”

Erogat didn’t say this without any ulterior motives, because this magic probably was more up to Gomek’s speed than the other things they were doing. In fact, he was having a hard time with the magic Erogat was introducing them to. Dana had it much easier. She especially loved manipulating the air. She thought of ladders, bridges, or a chair, and could create those by shaping the air’s molecules any way she wished to. With some practice, she could even walk on thin air or sit down on it.

In the end, she was so good at it, that she started the habit of creating chairs to place in front of the fireplace each night when they were done with their studies. But Gomek also made progress with his training. He didn’t manage some of the magic that Dana could, but he redirected his efforts onto the magic of runes. Erogat explained to him that dwarfs could perfect this type of magic, if only they wanted it enough. Not even Erogat himself had managed to get as versed as some dwarfs had. Gomek created – under Erogat’s instructions and his watchful eye – various runes. Due to the lack of other objects, he had to work them into plates, cups and chairs, sometimes even dressers and closets. Thus, the things became magical, and were from then on protected against destruction or other tragic mishaps.

After a while, Dana was told to try damaging the things with her own magic, to test both of their work as well as perfecting their abilities.

One night, when they were all sitting in front of the fire once more, Gomek as the question that seemed most important to him: “Erogat, why can’t dwarfs do the same magic you can?”

Erogat stared at the fire for a long time, before he cleared his throat and started talking:

“As you may or may not know, we haven’t always lived down here. Thousands of years ago, we were searching for the last emporer of chaos, and we came across these mountains where we thought he could be hiding.

“Stop!”, Dana interrupted him. “…who is the Ruler of Chaos?”

Erogat looked bewildered.

“Haven’t you read the chronicles of the great war against the chaos? Fine then! That’s where I’ll begin. I have told you about the light- and shadow creatures that, apart from some smaller problems, were living together quite peacefully. Now, about sixty-five million years ago, the Seven Rulers of Chaos managed to unite almost all creatures of the shadow and the night, wanting them to take over to the power on earth.

They darkened the sun and fought against everything and everyone that had a different opinion. The never-ending darkness destroyed almost the entire earth, until the creatures of light – lead by us – brought back the sunlight in one last great battle – and peace returned. Only because we were unable to ensure order, this war even took place. Our people didn’t usually take part in wars – we are pacifists, and war only knows losers in the end.”

Erogat’s voice sounded sad. He continued his report, deep in thought:

“We were being deceived and tricked. To make sure something like it never happened again, we decided to capture the seven Lords of Chaos and lock them away. We never considered killing them. Per the legend, they were supposed to live forever.

So, we hunted them down for millions of years. We had already captured six of them – some were locked in stone, some captured in ice, some had been deposited in volcanoes, or somewhere else. We suspected the last Lord to be in these mountains. And we were right. He’d hidden himself in these massive mountains. He’d erected his habitats everywhere to study the people he’d captured there, and to breed more creatures. That’s how they got access to them – like in a zoo. The only thing that was still bothering him were the dwarfs. They didn’t want to bow to him, didn’t want to accept him as their sole ruler, or rather the ruler of the mountains. That was around the time we ran into the dwarfs. They helped us fight against the last demon, and we won – capturing him deep down in a cave in the mountains.”

Anxious, excitedly waving her arms, and sitting on the edge of her chair, Dana interrupted the fascinating tale.

“I think that’s who we found!” She bumped Gomek’s side with her elbow. “Gomek…remember the cave with the pentagram on the ground and the hieroglyphs on the wall? Where I disappeared for hours?”

Worried, Erogat interrupted her babbling.

“Is he still there? Is the seal still intact? Is it still strong enough after all this time?”

Dana soothed his worries and told him about the meeting, the activation of the book, and how “friendly and nice” the demon was, planning to kill without much ago. At that point, Gomek interrupted them both.

“But what’s got all this to do with my original question?” Erogat looked at him, confusion written all over his face. “Nothing. It’s simply the prelude to your story. Well, let me continue. After we’d locked away the demon we asked the dwarfs if we could settle down in these moments. They granted us permission to do it, but only if we would contribute something to the life the dwarfs were leading. Of course, we agreed. We started getting the accustomed to our “magic”. It didn’t work. Through the centuries, pure chaos settle dover the dwarfs.”

He shot Gomek a resigned look. “You dwarfs don’t have the feel for this kind of magic. They are not your…thing. You can’t control her. Or maybe you don’t want to.”

He shook his head dejectedly, only to then continue his story.

“Anyhow, the one thing you managed to do, was “borrowing” whatever pleased you from your neighbors. If one of the dwarfs needed wood for a fire, he teleported it from his neighbor to himself. Or, if it was about food … the neighbor already ate. I can just take it from him. After a while, they let it get so far, they almost killed themselves. At some point, we gave up and built this place right here, in the best interest of everyone. It was magically locked and completely safe. I have experienced it for myself…how safe it is.”

He was saddened when he looked at his captured body. “From this time forward, we only had sporadic contact with the dwarfs. If one of them was sick, for example, or if they wanted to trade, we saw them. Sometimes they also needed our magic.”

Gomek silently looked at Erogat for a while. Then the words burst from his lips: “So, theoretically, I could learn it…master it. Right?!”

Erogat seemed skeptical. “I don’t know. You’re wired differently.”

After this long talk, they stared into the fire for hours, not saying a word, to process what they’d heard. At some point, Shari started yawning, and Gomek and Dana started up as well. They were all incredibly tired.

“Hurry, hurry. Get up. We’re done for the day – go home! We’re starting early again tomorrow.”

They forced themselves to get up, stumbled through the portal, and happily landed on the other side, eager to get into their own beds.