Lucas couldn’t sleep.

  The moon was hanging high in the sky, casting thick shadows into the room through the bedroom window. It was late, and yet Lucas just couldn’t fall asleep. Not even the warmth of his little familiar curled up against his side helped.

  His mind was running a mile a minute, thinking about how the single day had gone. He’d learned so much from Wren that morning, and he was eager to learn even more soon enough. His date with Fay had easily been the highlight of his entire day, though, and it was hard for Lucas to stop thinking about the beautiful blonde as he laid in bed. Then there was the fight he was going to have with Magnus the next evening.

  Or rather, that evening. The time had already ticked past midnight.

  And to top it all off, Lucas just had so many ideas about how to use his magic. Now that he’d found a way to use his Darkness affinity, there were so many ideas and tests he wanted to try. He could even think of a few combinations he could create with his Darkness and Illusion affinities. Sure, not all the ideas he was thinking up were good or even likely to work, but he wanted to try everything.

  Staring at the wall, Lucas idly lifted his hand, allowing the rays of moonlight streaming in through the window to catch the limb and cast a shadow of his hand against the wall.

  That was something that he’d taken notice of recently. While the natural darkvision that his magic had given him was incredibly useful, it made actually spotting shadows a lot more difficult for Lucas. During the day it was a bit easier, just needing Lucas to search out the grey-ish patches the shadows became in his vision. But at night, when everything was tinged a shade of grey to him, Lucas struggled. Shadows were just a slightly brighter shade of grey at most times, and it took Lucas some time to figure that out.

  Watching the faint shadow his hand left on the wall, Lucas poured his mana into the room, connecting his will and magic with the shadow his hand left. When he lowered his hand a moment later, the shadow remained as if he’d never moved.

  With a flex of his will and a trickle of magic, the shadowy hand changed shape, taking the shape of a stick figure. Lucas chuckled quietly as he made the shadowy figure walk and move on the wall before spreading the shadow out into a wide square in an attempt to cover the wall.

  When his controlled shadow came into contact with another shadow in the room, Lucas jolted. He’d felt something when his shadow had touched another, a connection that allowed him to quickly subsume the new patch of darkness into his own shadow. Suddenly, stretching his shadow across the wall became even easier. It was as if he had more material to stretch out.

  And as Lucas experimented and touched a few more shadows to ‘consume’ them, he realized that he could actually sense the nearby shadows. It wasn’t anything perfect, but he could feel where the little patches of darkness were within the room.

  …

  And now he had even more ideas bouncing around in his head. Shit.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  At some point in the early morning, Lucas actually managed to doze off. He didn’t remember when, but he knew it was late thanks to how groggy he felt when he woke up. Or rather, when Dusk woke him up. As always, the fox was quite insistent on getting her breakfast.

  “I’m up! I’m up!” He groaned as the little ball of black fur hopped on his chest like a trampoline.

  When he and Dusk got to the kitchen, he was surprised to find Fay and Lissa sitting and eating but no Magnus to be seen.

  “Where’s Magnus?” Lucas asked as he took a seat.

  “He got a rush order early in the morning. The person who made the request needs Magnus to be done by late this evening. Normally, Magnus isn’t a fan of orders like these, but the buyer did pay quite nicely.”

  Magnus was going to be busy all day? That certainly got Lucas’ mood to improve a bit. Maybe he’d be able to survive another day before having to actually fight the man.

  And then Lissa came in and completely crushed his hopes.

  “He made sure to go and start on the order early so that he would be done around dinner time and still have time for your match tonight.”

  Lucas slumped into his seat, much to the amusement of both mother and daughter. Dusk at least took pity on him, patting his leg with one paw after finishing a mouthful of fresh bacon.

  “You’ll do fine,” Fay reassured him. Lucas wasn’t so sure.

  “Maybe. I need to practice a lot more, though. Maybe you can help me?” He suggested as he looked at his girlfriend.

  “I’d love to!” She quickly agreed.

  “I’d suggest eating a light dinner, Lucas. Magnus isn’t going to be taking it easy on you,” Lissa warned as she watched the two teens quickly finish their plates.

  All the teen could do was sigh and nod. “I know.”

  “I do still hope that you win,” The older blonde commented, giving the young man a little smile.

  It was a small gesture, but one that Lucas still appreciated.

  “Thanks, Lissa.”

  At that point, Fay had cleaned both Lucas’ and her own plate and was quick to grab his hand to tug him towards the backyard.

  “Come on! We’ve got work to do!”

  Lucas allowed himself to get dragged as Lissa’s amused laughter followed after the pair.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  “So, you’re working on the air stepping?” Lucas asked as the two got outside.

  “Air stepping? Is that what you’re calling it?” Fay asked as she spun around to face him.

  “I mean, can you think of anything better that doesn’t sound ridiculous?”

  The silence from his girlfriend was enough to get Lucas to grin and earned him a little shove from Fay in return.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m working on now,” She huffed. “But it’s definitely not easy.”

  “I don’t think it’s meant to be,” Lucas pointed out. “I’m not even sure if it’ll work, but you did say that magic is based off of creativity and imagination.”

  Lucas had learned a fair bit about magic, but he knew there was still so much left that he didn’t know. What he lacked in knowledge, though, he made up for with ideas.

  “If you want, I might have another idea for something you could try,” He offered.

  Fay perked up when she heard that. “You’ve got more ideas?”

  “Oh, tons. Just don’t know how many of them will work,” Lucas replied with a shrug. “But this one I’m pretty sure will work just fine. I think you’ll be able to do it with just your arm, but it’ll probably work better with a weapon.”

  In an instant, Fay had one of her new daggers in her hands and Lucas had to hold back a chuckle at the blatant use of her Speed magic.

  “So, the idea I have is that you can create a wave of air to slam into someone or something and push it back. Using your arm or a weapon lets you kinda guide the air.”

  As he explained it, Lucas demonstrated roughly what he had in mind, swinging his arm out in a sweeping crescent.

  “I figure that, if you get a strong enough wind and condense it enough, it’ll be like a small explosion going off when it slams into something.”

  “So, kind of like this,” Fay said as she threw her hands forward and a large, wide angled blast of air shot from her hands and ripped some blades of grass from the lawn. “But try shaping it?”

  “Kinda, yeah!” Lucas agreed.

  “That sounds like a really good idea. I think I might know how to do it, too,” Fay mumbled. She started to get lost in her thoughts before her attention snapped back to Lucas. “What about you? What are you working on?”

  “Everything,” Lucas replied with a shrug.

  “That’s really vague,” The blonde pointed out.

  “I’ve got a lot of ideas I want to try. I just don’t know how many of them are going to work. So, I’m going to find out,” He explained.

  “You still ok with me asking for advice?” Fay asked.

  “Of course,” Lucas replied, walking up to his girlfriend and pressing a kiss to her cheek. “I want to help you.”

  “I know,” Fay sighed happily and smiled. “I just wish I could help you more,”

  “Well, if I figure something out, maybe we can spar in a little while and you can help me that way,” He offered.

  “Deal!” Fay agreed, leaning in to peck Lucas on the lips.

  The two separated after that, spreading out in the backyard to give one another some space. Fay immediately got to work trying to create a more concentrated and shaped blast of air while Lucas sat down and began to focus.

  The first thing he tested was his ability to sense shadows. Using the same idea that he came up with for his Illusion magic, he allowed a small amount of his mana to spread in a bubble around him. This time, though, he spread it far. It took a few seconds, but he was able to ‘sense’ the shadows and patches of darkness that his mana touched. Immediately, he knew that he could use them. But there was one other idea he wanted to try.

  Pulling back his bubble, Lucas glanced down at his own shadow. This time, he pushed his mana down through his feet into the shadow itself. It took a few times to make it work like he wanted to, but soon Lucas was standing still while his shadow danced around behind him.

  “Wonder if I can shadowbox myself for real, now,” He joked to himself.

  Then he started really thinking about it. Maybe he could do something like that.

  Lucas thought about how he’d manifested his sword and made it solid. It worked for his sword and he’d been able to make small shapes before, so why wouldn’t it also work for his actual shadow.

  The next half hour was spent working towards that goal. One thing that became immediately clear was that using his Darkness affinity during the day was noticeably harder than during the night. The shadows were darker, yes, but there was much less darkness to pull from during the day.

  But after some hard work, Lucas grinned as he looked at the shadowy figure standing in front of him. A trail of darkness connected the two across the ground as they stood across from one another. It wasn’t a perfect copy, as the shadow lacked any real distinguishing features. But it had a proper, humanoid shape and had all the right limbs and proportions!

  It was proof that he really could do more with his affinity than just making weapons and simple shapes. And if he could make a whole person, then what else could he do?

  One major fact Lucas noted was that his shadow constructs required a constant source of mana to stay solid and under his control. The moment he let go of that connection; the shadows melted back into the ground and returned to normal.

  The shadow body was a good idea, and while Lucas had some ideas for it he didn’t have the time to really experiment with it. Instead, he shifted gears to a more… Offensive experiment. He knew from experience with his blade that he could make his shadows sharp, so why not use them that way.

  He looked to one of the simple training dummies that Fay and her family had set up in the backyard. Fay was working on one, and a quick glance her way revealed that she seemed to be doing pretty good on creating Lucas’ wild idea. He watched for a moment as she swung her arm, knife in hand, and a small crescent shaped distortion in the air cut through the distance between herself and the dummy. It knocked it over, but Fay clearly wasn’t satisfied with the amount of force.

  While she wasn’t quite happy with the results, Lucas felt incredibly proud of how fast his girlfriend was picking up the crazy idea he’d suggested. In his opinion, Wind magic easily had the potential to be terrifying. Other than a faint shimmer and some distortions in the air being controlled, it was almost completely invisible to the naked eye.

  He watched Fay for a few more seconds before focusing on his own training dummy. He knew what he wanted to do, it was a fairly simple shape, just taken to a larger scale. But as he stretched his mana out across the yard and tried to execute his idea, he found it to be almost impossible. The shadows resisted his efforts to take a solid shape, and Lucas was left wondering what he was doing wrong.

  It took him longer than he would have liked to come up with a solution. His own shadow worked so well because he was directly channeling his mana into it, not trying to make a connection through the air. So why not use his own shadow to bridge the gap?

  Once he had the idea, it was easy to execute it. His own shadow shot out from his feet, winding across the grass like a pitch-black snake. Lucas nearly lost focus when Dusk lunged at the shadow and tried to pounce on it. But in doing so, she added her own shadow’s mass to Lucas’, and he found that he had an even further distance he could reach.

  Stretching his shadow out across the yard, Lucas felt when it connected to the shadow of the training dummy. And with a quick flex of his will and a small surge of mana, he was ecstatic to see a thin spike of solidified shadows shoot out of the ground and stab into the cloth dummy.

  “Holy shit!”

  Lucas jumped, his control fading and his shadow returned to normal an instant later as the teen turned to see Fay standing a few feet away. She was still staring at the training dummy, which now had a small, quarter-sized hole punched through it.

  “That’s incredible!” She cheered, grinning wide as she finally looked away from the dummy. “I never would’ve guessed that you could’ve done that.”

  “I wasn’t too sure whether it would work or not until I tried it myself,” Lucas sheepishly admitted.

  “Think you can do it again?” Fay asked.

  Lucas glanced towards the dummy, then back at his girlfriend. He grinned and nodded, focusing on his mana once more.

  “Let’s find out.”

  Now that he knew what he was doing, Lucas’s shadow shot out from his feet faster than before. It slid across the grass, meeting with the shadow of the training dummy a second later. This time, Lucas flooded the connection with mana.

  Immediately the shadow beneath the dummy erupted in a horde of shadowy spikes. They pierced through the cloth with ease, turning the thing into more of a pincushion than a training dummy. That much Lucas had expected to happen, but he’d also noted something else that would need more testing.

  When he’d flooded his shadow with mana, he noted how his shadow, stretched thin to connect to the dummy’s, seemed to grow even larger and darker.

  When he turned back towards Fay, Lucas couldn’t help but laugh when he saw her jaw hanging open and her eyes wide as she stared at the destruction he’d caused. When he pulled his mana back, the training dummy completely collapsed as well.

  “I think I made a pretty good point, don’t you?”

  The terrible joke got a snort out of Fay, and she soon joined Lucas in laughing. They were training hard, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t have a little bit of fun along the way.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~