(24) A Stampede, Then

“Haa,” Tara exhaled, mana flowing through her body.

“Good. Now, cast the spell,” Nephthys ordered, sitting cross-legged in the air before her.

Right. Just cast the spell. Easy.

She made it sound as if casting a spell was as easy as walking. She had never cast a spell manually! It took several days of practice—and vomiting—just to circulate her mana properly. However, the distance from mana circulation to spell activation felt infinite, an impassable gulch squeezed into a millisecond.

“How?” was all Tara managed to get out, the circulation occupying most of her focus.

“You have invoked before, yes? Remember what that felt like? Even if the Words were controlling the process, your body was still the conduit. When you cast a spell, it will feel the same. Your body remembers what to do, even if your mind does not,” Nephthys instructed, her voice impassive.

Tara thought about the last time she had cast this spell, coincidentally also with Nephthys observing. She had made Tara focus on the feeling at the time, and while watching the Words work, she had glimpsed a strange—

Suddenly, Tara was staring at a mountain vista. There were trees whose leaves swayed calmly in the breeze. There was a small river—

Tara shook as the vision vanished and a light appeared in front of her chest. It was faint and white, little more than a candle flame.

“Congratulations,” Nephthys said, clapping softly.

Tara smiled. It was not impressive, nor was it even as bright as the invocation. Still, it was the first spell she cast on her own. Her first real spell.

She started shaking, surprised that she would be so emotional, but the shaking grew more intense, and she quickly realized it was not emotion she was stricken with.

Drip. Drip.

She glanced down to see drops of a black fluid hit the back of her hands. She touched under her eyes and felt tracks of a familiar sludge trailing from them and her nose. Her breathing had increased, and she was now wracked by tremors as black sludge began to press out of every orifice it could find.

“Gah,” she coughed, wads of sludge exiting her throat like phlegm.

She doubled over, holding her knees close to her chest as sludge pressed through her pores, the stench unbearable. She had few thoughts, strangely. The physical sensation of filth exiting her body occupied her full attention, grounding her firmly in the present. Yet, she watched herself tremble and bleed neutrally, disconnected.

It did not disturb her to see and smell all the horror exiting her body. It was almost comforting, like when a fever finally breaks, and one’s body begins to stabilize. It felt less like a change and more like a reversion, as if her body had somehow deviated from its proper course and was now being corrected.

The trembling stopped after only a few seconds. Tara straightened, sitting on her knees and wrinkling her nose as she examined the puddle of filth around her. She glanced up to see Nephthys, still sitting in the air, posture unchanged.

“Hold still,” she said, making a quick gesture, as if waving something away.

Water suddenly assaulted Tara, swirling around her in a whirlpool, whisking the black sludge away from both her clothing and skin. It went flying away toward a corner of the training room, where it seemed to soak into the floor.

Blue flames followed the water, swirling around her and steaming the water away, drying her. The flames felt only slightly warm, like bath water, despite being bright and blue.

“How do you feel?” Nephthys asked as the flames died.

“Better, thank you. That stuff was nasty—” Tara started.

“How does your body feel after that ordeal, is what I mean. I do not need you to describe the impurities. I experienced them enough from over here,” Nephthys interrupted.

Tara blushed slightly, opening and closing her hands. She stretched, working various muscles and feeling her body from top to bottom.

“Good. Nothing life-changing, but it feels like I got a really good night of sleep, or maybe like I just recovered from a cold? Something like that,” she mused.

Nephthys nodded, her eyes seemed to glaze over, as if lost in thought. Tara continued to stretch, allowing her time to think, but her curiosity eventually got the better of her.

“What happened, exactly?” she asked.

Nephthys’s eyes refocused on her, looking her up and down.

“I have only hypotheses, no firm answers. Are you okay with speculation?” she asked, to which Tara nodded.

“I suspect it is like resistance in a wire,” she said.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Resistance in—what?” Tara blurted.

She knew cutting her instructor off was rude, but she also did not want Nephthys to waste time on an explanation she would have no way to understand. Nephthys glanced at her before looking up at the ceiling, seemingly pondering a different explanation.

“I described your use of magic like a breaking dam, yes? When dams are built, riverbeds dry. If the dam were to suddenly release, the torrent of water would tear apart the bed and banks, stripping away layers of dried soil and debris.

“My hypothesis is that your body possesses similar ‘riverbeds’ that mana flows through—mana channels, perhaps. I doubt they are a physical thing.

“Regardless, your ‘mana channels’ have been unused and accumulated…let us call them ‘impurities’. These impurities are stripped away by using your mana, but they also must exit your body somehow, so they are pushed out.