Chapter 283: Nature Magic
"Now then—cough—nature magic is a very difficult branch of magic to learn. It's like prophecy in that way: without the right talent, it doesn't matter how hard you try, you simply won't manage it."
At the far end of the cavern, in a smaller open space, the young man in the pointed hat was patiently lecturing on all things related to nature magic.
If one ignored the bruising around his eyes and the various rips and tears in his robes, he did look like a conscientious teacher. Remembering what had just happened, though, made it hard for Evans to keep a straight face.
It had been a one-sided slaughter. Faced with the Dark Wizard King's seemingly endless black mist, this fragment of Merlin had stood no chance at all. He'd been knocked flat and pummelled into the stone within moments.
The beating had been followed by a barrage of questions that had wrung every scrap of information about Merlin's current whereabouts out of him.
Compared with the Merlin in the portrait, this fragment clearly knew more, which made sense. A painting held a memory. A fragment born of magic had its own mind, more flexible—and far less controllable.
Thinking back to how this one had spilled everything he knew like beans from a jar, Evans couldn't help but feel speechless.
A fragment this unreliable might be better off not existing at all.
Even so, watching the ease and familiarity between the fragment and the Dark Wizard King, Evans's curiosity stirred again.
He'd sensed there was history between them back when she'd thrashed the painted Merlin. Seeing them now, he was certain: whatever lay between those two, it went back a very long way.
Yet magical history said nothing about a Dark Wizard King like her. He still didn't even know her name.
His eyes drifted to the garden.
In its centre, the crimson sphere lay beside a rose. The Dark Wizard King crouched by it, explaining everything she knew about spring nymph inheritance to Sothia.
With each sentence, the water in front of Sothia shifted form: shrinking into blocks of ice, then scattering into drifting mist, then reforming into flowing streams.
She had always been able to use water to create bodies and constructs, but changing its temperature and fundamental properties like this had been beyond her before.
Watching Sothia's control grow more fluid by the moment, Evans looked away and back to his own "Tutor".
One look at the face in front of him—swollen, bruised beyond recognition—and his features threatened to crack again.
"What are you smirking at? Pay attention," Merlin snapped, cheeks reddening under the bruises. He slapped the rock wall beside him for emphasis.
"I wouldn't look like this if it weren't for you. These trials were meant for you to clear, not for you to bring in someone else to cheat with—"
His voice trailed off as he glanced nervously toward the garden to make sure the Dark Wizard King wasn't listening. When he saw she was still focused on Sothia, he breathed out quietly.
"If your little seal puzzles had even a passing acquaintance with common sense, I might've thought twice before agreeing to help her find you," Evans said dryly, folding his arms. "You still haven't told me what you actually want me to do."
"Has it occurred to you that I might simply have spotted a promising youngster and decided to nurture his talent?" Merlin said. At Evans's flat stare, he sighed and lifted his hands in surrender. "In any case, I'm not planning to sacrifice you to anything. You can relax on that front. As for the rest… I don't entirely know."
He dropped the topic there and turned back to his lesson.
"When you hear 'nature', you ought to already have an inkling: this family of magic is bound up with life and the natural world."
He waved towards the garden. Several plants that had not yet flowered suddenly burst into bloom, opening lush, vivid blossoms.
"That's the sort of basic application most people think of. Nature magic has deeper forms, too. But with this fragment's limited magic and mind, the strongest thing I can reasonably teach you is nature mimicry."
"Like an Animagus?" Evans asked. He had looked into that branch of Transfiguration before, but the ritual alone required at least a month of preparation, and he'd never seen the point in devoting so much time to a form with such narrow use. He'd left it alone.
Merlin shook his head, a faintly smug smile tugging at his lips.
"No. Animagus transformations are descended from the last, tattered remnants of druidic shapeshifting. They're still a form of Transfiguration."
"And Transfiguration has a significant flaw: you cannot transform into a true magical creature. Unless you already have that creature's bloodline, at which point you're not transforming so much as reverting to a latent form."
"Nature mimicry does not have that limitation."
As he spoke, Merlin's body rippled into waves of light and folded into the shape of a strange bird—the same one Evans remembered seeing before.
The sight jogged his memory. Back at the orphanage, he had seen a peculiar bird like this almost every year. Judging from how fond this fragment was of the form, that annual visitor had probably been one of Merlin's fragments… perhaps even the original himself.
He hadn't seen it in more than ten years. If that really had been Merlin, there was no way to check now.
Nor was the bird his only option. A moment later, its body twisted into that of a fire salamander, then into a Murtlap, and finally into a tiny fire dragon. The little dragon flapped up into the air and opened its jaws as if to unleash a plume of dragonfire.
Unfortunately, the fragment's reserves ran out before he could manage even a spark. The dragon shrank rapidly, dissolving back into the pointed-hat youth mid-air, who promptly crashed to the ground.
Given how filthy he already was, a little more dust hardly made a difference.
He picked himself up with as much dignity as he could muster and cleared his throat.
"Ahem. This fragment's magic and mental capacity are too low to sustain a dragon form. But you see what nature mimicry can do."
"With it, you can do things no fixed bloodline could ever allow. Abilities granted only to certain creatures can become part of your own repertoire."
For a moment, real pride shone through the bruises.
"Of course, nature mimicry requires a long and difficult chain of prerequisites. In your current state—knowing nothing at all about nature magic—you won't be able to reach it."
"For now, managing the simplest revival and growth spells will be an achievement in itself—"
He broke off mid-sentence, eyes going comically wide as he stared at the ground in front of him.
Evans was gone.
In his place stood a blue-and-gold bird, head tilted, looking straight at Merlin. The intention in its bright eyes was obvious.
"That's it?"