It feels like I’ve been traveling for years, though if Julia’s phone is correct, I’ve only been traveling for a month and a half.
All six of us are travelling
to Brooks Hallow. Michael needs help learning how to control his magic, Zac is
looking for people to steal from, I don’t want Michael traveling by himself, and
Rachel, Julia, and Johnathon want to ask the leader of Magitronics Inc for
help. They don’t know what else to do.
If it wasn’t for The
Enchantress, I’d be excited about going to Brook’s Hallow. From what Rachel
tells me, it’s on the cutting edge of technology. Not only do they have Magitronics
Inc building computers that can use magic, but they also have new artifacts
that can sense the amount of magic in an area, project images into your brain,
and write down your thoughts for later retrieval. To say nothing about advancements
in medicine, engineering, and entertainment. I asked Rachel if it was a big as Portland
and she said, “It’s much bigger.”
I don’t know that
much about Brooks Hallow. People at the Citadel didn’t talk much about life
outside and almost nobody ever came to visit. What I do know is that, in
addition to being a big city, it’s the oldest city in Altra other than the capital.
According to Rachel, you wouldn’t know that if you went to visit, because they
keep tearing down and rebuilding old buildings. There are a few buildings that
are more than a hundred years old, but only because they bring in a lot of
tourists.
I suppose it’s a
good thing the Citadel isn’t part of Brook’s Hallow then.
I’ve been thinking,
if we can’t find anyone to help Michael learn how to do magic in Brook’s
Hallow, I’ll teach him magic myself. I don’t think going back to the citadel
would be a good idea, for either of us.
I knew magic had
moved on, but until I left, I hadn’t realized how far behind we were at the
citadel compared to everyone else. It’s not just that, outside of certain niche
fields, nobody practices magic as magic anymore, or that even magic artifacts
have fallen out of favor, it’s that spells are a lot more complicated, so
keeping them balanced is beyond what a mage could hope to do. If Michael had
been born five hundred years ago, I would take him to the Citadel instantly to
see that he was properly trained for his calling. But everywhere I look, there
are spells that could be unbalanced by a stiff breeze, let alone the kind of
magic a human can do. I think he’d be better off learning how not to do magic,
so that he wouldn’t destroy anything by accident.
I have to say, as
someone who had a lot of trouble learning how not to destroy things, I’m a
little worried at the direction the world seems to be going. I know there are
benefits to having so many complicated spells, but if someone like me lost
control, a city could be shut down instantly. I can’t see how that could be
sustainable unless you measured everyone for channeling potential and magic resistance
and told everyone who couldn’t manage to control their magic to leave and not
come back. Portland had a lot of spells like that, and the capital had quite a
few as well. If every city is like this, my only hope is to find a village I
can live in or go back to the citadel.
If I get the chance, I’ll ask Rachel’s mother
what she plans to do about this. Surely, she’s aware that this is a problem,
and maybe I can convince her that it isn’t fair to force people like me to live
in the middle of nowhere. If I can’t do that, then I think our future is very
bleak indeed.
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