The Moment You See It
Chris had been thinking the same thing himself, but he couldn't bring himself to say it. Tom had already lived out a hundred and fifty years of his sentence, with another hundred and fifty still ahead of him, and the guilt of that kept the words locked behind Chris's teeth. He was grateful when Tom broached the subject first. Even so, he hesitated, reluctant to leap at the opening and announce that he would leave.
"Before you go, I'll teach you a training method that'll serve you in a mage's life."
A new method, in place of the breathing technique that had struck a wall. The offer tugged at him.
"What is it?"
"It's called Iron Body. A way of making the flesh as tough as steel."
"Iron Body?"
"They say that when a knight and a mage are forced into close combat, the knight has the advantage."
"I've heard that."
"This training is for that day."
He rolled up the cuff of his trousers.
"First, learn how to draw mana in through the sole of the foot."
"Through the sole? Is that even possible?"
"The notion that a mage can absorb mana only by breathing it in through the mouth is a prejudice. Once your level rises, you can take it in through your whole body. The first time you felt mana, it entered through your palm, didn't it? It only passed through, so you can hardly call that absorption, but think of it as roughly the same thing."
"Even so, the sole of the foot is a little..."
"Why? Got athlete's foot?"
"What?"
"I'm joking."
Out of respect for the man's dignity, Chris did not tell him the joke wasn't funny.
"If I add the soles to the mouth, the amount I absorb ought to increase."
"Right. The efficiency goes up. Considering how thin the mana is in this cell, it's training you can't do without."
"Yes. I'll learn it properly."
"Let me see your foot."
Chris slid his foot in through the bars of Tom's cell. Tom jabbed the center of the sole with a fingernail.
"Here."
In that instant the spot Tom had marked burned and ached, as if a branding iron had been pressed to it.
"Agh!"
The scream tore out of him on its own.
"You felt it?"
"Felt what?"
"An intake opened there."
"No, it didn't."
Tom looked at him as if that were impossible.
"You didn't feel it?"
"No. It just stings and burns."
"You'll feel it more and more."
"But, Master..."
"I told you to call me Tom."
"You're still my master."
"And what are you going to do if you slip and say it outside later?"
"Ah. You're right."
"Stay careful in ordinary moments, and you can keep yourself from the mistakes you make without thinking."
Tom taught him the incantation in careful detail, then shoved him in the back and told him to get on with the training. Chris threw himself into it as hard as he had before.
Unlike the breathing method, Iron Body showed results almost at once.
"Oh—oh—it works. It's working!"
Chris had the strange experience of mana entering through the sole of his foot. At first it ached; later it turned cool and pleasant, and he felt the strength gathering in his leg.
"Good."
Pleased, Tom rubbed his palms together.
"Put out your left foot."
Chris looked puzzled.
"Why the left?"
"You planning to stop at one foot? The balance will be off, and it'll bother you."
It was sound reasoning, so Chris offered his left foot at once and suffered the same branding-iron pain. Then a thought struck him, and his eyes flew wide.
"Tom! This is magic, isn't it?"
If it weren't, his sole wouldn't hurt like this, and mana would never come in through it.
"That's right."
"I thought you couldn't use magic."
"I'm a great mage. A magic-disruption formation doesn't mean I can't cast anything at all."
He spoke with pride written all over his face, then deflated in an instant, shoulders slumping.
"I can only manage simple things. Nothing powerful enough to help with a jailbreak."
Seeing him sag, Chris watched his face with care. Tom let out a short laugh at the look.
"You training hard is you helping me. Don't mind my mood. Throw yourself into it."
Chris did. When he curled his toes and imagined drawing the mana in, it rushed through the sole of his foot.
A week passed, and Chris grew used to drawing mana in through both feet.
Tom spoke.
"Put out your right hand."
"Hands work too?"
"Of course. A palm is easier than a sole, so you'll pick it up fast."
Just as he had boasted, the palm was easier than the sole. Chris had the peculiar experience of absorbing mana through all four limbs.
He bounded around the cell. The crown of his head brushed the ceiling and dropped back down. Had there been no ceiling, he would have leapt higher still.
"I think the strength in my arms and legs has at least doubled."
Then he poked his forearm with a finger.
"But it hasn't gotten hard like steel."
"You've only passed the foundation. The training starts now."
"So there is a secret art."
"There is."
"Please teach me."
"The next stage needs preparation."
Chris was overflowing with eagerness.
"What do I have to do?"
"Not you. I need to prepare."
He sighed and went on.
"If there weren't a magic-disruption formation, I could teach you right away. Because of it, I have to gather power. Wait a day."
The preparation took not one day, but five.
"It's done. Come over here and stand."
Chris pressed himself tight against the bars.
"Put your forehead between them."
Chris did as he was told.
"Grip the bars hard with both hands."
He obeyed that, too.
"Clench your teeth."
He followed this instruction as well.
"Empty your head."
Chris drew a deep breath and settled his mind, then emptied his head completely. In that instant Tom's index finger touched his forehead. Chris's head snapped back as if a hammer had struck it.
Bang.
Thunder cracked inside his skull.
"Don't move!"
Tom's shout rang through the cell.
Chris yanked himself back to his senses and turned his head to where it had been. He had closed his eyes when his forehead was struck, and in that moment his vision suddenly blazed bright. Reality had not grown brighter. The cell was still dim. Chris was seeing a vision.
It's me.
A naked version of himself stood before him. It felt as if his soul had slipped free and was looking at his own body.
"Inside the skin!"
A voice boomed from every direction. Tom's voice.
"Look through it!"
He was about to protest — how am I supposed to look inside the skin? — when the skin turned suddenly transparent. The flesh filling it grew faint, and the vessels and nerves running through it stood out sharp and clear. Between them, thick lines had been drawn.
I understand the vessels and the nerves. What are those?
As if the question had been heard, an answer came flying back.
"The paths mana travels."
Then he understood. Mana absorbed through the Iron Body method moved along those paths. But here and there along them, something dark showed.
What's that?
The moment he thought it, the dark stretches enlarged. They were dark holes, and something lay inside them. It might have been black liquid filling them, or a wall standing there, or a bead set into the flesh.
In the end Chris settled on the sense that they were black beads. And then they truly looked like beads.
"Try drawing mana in through your limbs."
The voice was like an incantation. When Tom spoke, Chris's body obeyed at once. Mana entered from the four limbs. Before, it had passed smoothly through them toward the pit of his stomach; this time it snagged hard against the black beads and only barely crawled along their surfaces. There was more than one or two of them, so a single circuit took a long time.
"Remember the positions well."
The black sphere at his left ankle suddenly lit up. Chris named it Left Foot One. From there, lights came on one by one as they climbed: two in the calf, one at the knee, three in the thigh, one in the pelvis, and two along the path from the pelvis to the pit of the stomach. Ten in all. The matching right foot held ten as well. The left arm and the right arm each held ten of their own. And at the pit of the stomach, the end of the paths entering from the limbs, a black sphere appeared. This one was so large it felt less like a bead than a boulder.
A boulder! There's no way a rock that big is inside my body.
In that instant, understanding struck like lightning.
So this is a mental image.
A chill ran through him.
If I'm to reach true greatness, I have to get this boulder out of the way.
He had no confidence.
How am I supposed to clear this away!
Chris understood that he had run into an enormous wall. He understood that he was caught in a grave binding.
Maybe this is a curse.
Pop.
The vision shattered, scattering like smoke. Chris opened his eyes and found Tom looking as if he had aged another hundred years.
"What did you do to me?"
"I passed on our tower's greatest secret art."
"This is the greatest?"
"Yes. It's a hard road, but if you succeed, you'll pass Thought Formulation and reach Seed Cultivation."
"Seed Cultivation!"
"Yes."
Chris's cheeks flushed red with excitement, then cooled at once. He had grasped how harsh the reality was.
"Your disciple has no confidence."
"The greater the pain, the greater the achievement."
"Mm."
"Do you want to live as some middling mage? Or become a great mage and hold the world in your hand?"
"If I have to choose between the two, the latter, but..."
"I believe you'll become someone great."
Drained, Chris sank down where he stood.
"I hope so."
"You saw the holes?"
"Yes. The black spheres looked ominous. Are things like that really inside my body?"
Tom's brow furrowed.
"You saw them as black spheres?"
"Yes."
Chris's expression turned grave.
"Was I supposed to see them differently? At the stage before that, they looked like liquid, then a wall, then spheres."
"So you decided on spheres."
"Yes."
"Hmm."
The groan Tom let slip grated on him.
"Why? Is it bad?"
"It's difficult."
"What do you mean, difficult?"
"Those are gates you have to pass and obstacles you have to break. You have to deal with them before you can go on. Black liquid has a flowing nature, so it's easier than the others... It would have been better if you'd chosen the liquid..."
Certainly easier than breaking a wall or a sphere.
"But spheres are easier than a wall, aren't they? Aren't they?"
"No. A sphere is harder than a wall. You picked the worst of them."
Chris grumbled.
"You should have told me beforehand."
"No. Plant a preconception like that, and the magic doesn't take properly. It's best if you choose naturally."
"I didn't know any of this before, and the Iron Body training still went well."
"You only imagined it went well. It didn't, not truly. As you said yourself, your arms and legs never turned hard as steel. If you want to rise to a higher realm, you have to pass through this."
Chris scratched his head furiously.
"Can't I just ignore them, the way I did before?"
"You've already seen them. How are you going to ignore that?"
"I can just treat it as if I never saw them."
"Chris, by that logic, are you going to treat it as if you never felt mana, either?"
"That's different. Only the black spheres — as if they aren't there."
"The world doesn't turn the way you want it to. The moment you felt mana, the mana changed. In the same way, the moment you saw the black spheres inside you and recognized them, your body changed. Once they're carved into the mental image, you can't go back."
Chris felt stifled.
"Why did you make me see them?"
"If you want to become a high mage, you have to."
He spoke sternly.
"From now on, remember what I tell you."
Pressed by the force of it, Chris nodded.
Chris murmured after him.
"The moment you feel it, it changes. The moment you see it, it transforms."
"Doesn't seem like much right now, does it?"
Chris had been about to lie — it seems important; a profound principle runs through the words; they feel as if they hold immense power; I sensed the secret truth of magic — and at the last moment he changed his mind.
"Yes."
"Right. For now it'll sound like grasping at clouds. No different from saying the sky is blue, or the wind is blowing."
Flame rose in his eyes.