I was getting better at illusions, and it didn’t take much for me to form a gun in my mind. I imagined the feeling in my hand— the shape of the grip and the cool of the metal. A solid gun took shape.
“Now, aim it at me and shoot,” my grandfather instructed.
“I’m not going to shoot you,” I insisted.
“Go ahead,” he encouraged. “Aim it right at me and pull the trigger.”
“Are you insane? No.”
“Aren’t you mad?” Cassiel said. “Don’t you want to take your anger out on someone? Don’t you want to punish me for allowing your father to marry his guard? After all, why didn’t I step in and stop it? How could I let your father move on from your mother, and stop looking for you?—?”
Bang!
I aimed the gun at his leg and pulled the trigger. A loud noise sounded through the garden, but something wasn’t quite right. I’d shot guns before, but this one had no recoil. It felt more like shooting a water gun than a real gun.
Cassiel laughed. “Very good, Charlie! I didn’t expect the sound. It was very realistic.”
I frowned. “Well, clearly I missed my target.”
“Of course you did,” Cassiel said. “That’s because there was no bullet— you merely created a lump of metal and a nice sound effect.”
I furrowed my brow and began running my fingers over the gun. I’d created an old-style revolver, and itfeltreal. I opened the chamber to find it was full of bullets, and I emptied them into my hand. I thought they’d be mere casings, but they were all heavy and hadn’t been shot.
“In order to create an illusion and make it function properly, you must firstunderstandthe thing that you’re making,” my grandfather said. “Some illusions will be easy, while others require a deeper understanding. The bullets, for example, very likely could be shot, but you neglected other parts of the gun. You have the frame of the gun and the trigger, but where’s the hammer? Without it, the bullets couldn’t fire.”
“Then why’d it sound like it?” I asked.
“Because youbelievedit would,” he explained. “The sound was an illusion itself, spurred by your expectation. But when I told you to make a gun, did you think about what kind of gun you were going to make, and how it would be designed?”
“No,” I admitted. “It didn’t matter to me whether it was a revolver or a pistol. I didn’t really think about it.”
“That’s why wemustbe intentional,” Cassiel said. “If you understand the tool you’re working with, you can utilize it most effectively. The same is true of our anger. Initially, anger makes usreact, sometimes irrationally— just as your first instinct was to make the gun go off. You went for the quick result you’d come to expect, but underneath it, you forgot to utilize the real function of the gun. Anger can drive us to action, but if we react too quickly, all we get is a bang and no real solution.”
“So how do I utilize it properly?” I asked.
“The first step is patience,” Cassiel answered. “Our family does not simplyreact. We use our anger to devise strategy. I cannot cover strategy in a single lesson, but as you train with me, you will come to understand. Today, let’s focus on shifting our mindset. You must get comfortable with the idea that anger does not require immediate action. Your rage is better utilized for long-term strategy. Furthermore, damage is not the only course of action. You know as well as I that you can channel your emotions into your magic to create things out of nothing, so whynot transmute that anger into something that can help everyone, instead of hurting them?”
“I think I understand,” I mused. “Instead of being bitter about everything I’ve been through, I can use that anger to enact policies that will ensure none of our people ever live the way I did.”
“Precisely,” Cassiel said. “I wanted our lesson today to cover mirrors and portals, as portals will be incredibly valuable to you. Perhaps we can use that to demonstrate some of these concepts. Follow me.”
I stood and followed my grandfather across the garden. He led me into a wide hall that was open to the gardens. There was a roof above us, but I could still feel the breeze on my skin.
“This is the Royal Wall of Mirrors, one of our main portal hubs,” Cassiel explained. “Although we try to limit our portal use as much as possible so we aren’t discovered, this is where many of our agents portal in and out of Ilamanthe.”
I reached out to feel the wall, and my hand traveled over a cold, flat surface. I felt an ornate frame that stretched taller and wider than I was. As I continued feeling the wall, I found more and more of these frames, all evenly spaced. There had to be a dozen of them.
“They’re mirrors,” I realized. “They’re magical, like the Mirror of Ingress in Forevermore, but smaller.”
“Yes, but you misunderstand,” Cassiel said. “Elves do not have to use magic mirrors to create their portals. Any clear reflective surface will do.”
I was excited to learn about portal magic. I’d never done it before. “How does it work?”
“Think of portals like a fold in the fabric of space,” Cassiel explained. “The fae are able to connect any two points, but Elves are more limited in this power. We can connect any two mirrors to create a portal— or any reflective surface, such asa body of water that is still enough to be clearly reflected. But you must be careful, as this kind of portal magic can come with consequences.”
“What kind of consequences?” I asked.
“There’s a space between each entrance and exit to a portal— a separate realm, if you will,” Cassiel said. “For a brief moment, you will pass through this realm before exiting the portal on the other side. This realm— the Mirror Realm, as we refer to it— exists outside of space and time. If your connection is not secure, you may find yourself entering a portal with no exit. When you are in the Mirror Realm, you are stuck between time and space, which means you can’t even age to death. You simply go on existing for eternity, with nothing but your thoughts to exist alongside you.”
