"Last, but not least, the elements of destruction, fire and darkness. They have no other purpose than consuming everything they touch. Know that whenever you use them, someone or something is bound to get hurt."
Lith took half of the flower in each hand. The left started to burn while the right withered and crumbled.
"Fire keeps us warm and darkness keeps us clean, but they are like an angry beast. Lose control for a second and…"
Suddenly the fire spread to the tall grass that surrounded the clearing, lighting its tip into a sea of flames that danced in the wind. The kids clung to Lith with fear, unaware that the fire was magical.
It burned only his mana, leaving the vegetation unaffected.
"…bad stuff happens." The flames disappeared without leaving a trace of their passage.
"We'll start with water and air, then light and earth, keeping the elements of destructions for last. Any questions?" Lith asked.
"Wouldn't it be better to go in the same order you explained them? Creation, balance, and destruction?" Aran asked without letting his brother go. Suddenly fire had lost most of its charm.
"Excellent question." Lith ruffled his air, making Aran feel proud and Leria envious.
"The problem with your idea is that at low levels, light does almost everything by itself, like when you treat a skinned knee or a small cut. Earth magic, instead, it's equally safe but it requires a lot of juice to do more than move dirt and pebbles.
"They are hard elements that require a lot of skill to shape." Lith conjured a stone doll resembling Aran and a hologram of Leria.
"Air and water are shapeless. Even a novice can have them move according to their wishes. They are the best tools to learn how to control your powers with minimal risks for others."
"What about fire and darkness?" Leria asked.
"They have no shape at all and they don't require control to be unleashed so much as to be stopped. That's why they are the worst elements for a beginner." Lith said.
"Now, if you want to have dinner, you better start practicing. I've brought no food aside from vegetables, but luckily for us, the lake is full of fish."
"How are we supposed to catch them?" Aran's stomach was grumbling at the sight of his meal swimming in the clear waters, yet he had no idea how to move it into his plate.
"In any way you like. Jorun!" Lith moved his index and medium finger tracing a short wave in the air, the rune of water.
It generated a small geyser as if a whale had puffed through its blowhole, throwing several fish in mid-air. While the kids followed the trajectory of the prey, Onyx jumped from one shore of the lake to another, gobbling them before they could start falling down.
"Bad Onyx! Bad! That was my dinner." Aran said.
"No, it was theirs. After all, they carried both you and your luggage until now. We'll eat only what you can catch." Lith replied.
The grumbling stomachs of the magical beasts put an end to the argument.
"I'm sorry, Abominus. I'll try to get enough for you too. Jorun!" Leria said while mimicking Lith and obtaining just a few bubbles.
The Ry had no expression but the worry in his eyes was tangible.
The great love he had for the small girl wouldn't fill his belly nor give him the strength to defend them if something happened.
"Take a walk and come back only after sundown." Lith winked and removed the saddlebags from their backs. Without the extra weight, they could move as quickly and silently as the wind.
Rys and Shyfs could manipulate the air element like true mages and they used it to catch their prey before they could even hear them coming.
'Just remember to wash away the blood. The kids still see you two as living plushies, not as predators.' Lith said via the mind link.
The magical beasts trotted away in search of their dinner. They had never been on a mountain, but their hunger and instinct allowed them to cope quickly with the new environment.
"You don't have to brute force it." Lith said after noticing how much the children struggled to move the surface of the lake. "You can also do it like this. Jorun!"
"Or like this." The water froze, trapping another fish in an ice cube that floated for a split second before melting and releasing its prisoner. "As I told you, water is shapeless. Use your imagination."
While Aran and Leria suddenly discovered the urge to learn swear words with each failure they made, Lith prepared their shelter for the night.
He used earth magic to soften the ground where they would sleep and conjure a small house made of stone that would protect them from the wind, while a darkness array took care of all insects that might have disturbed their rest.
"Uncle, are we doing something wrong, or is this water cursed?" Leria was tired, hungry, and covered in sweat, yet she refused to back down. The sun had started to disappear behind the treetops, leaving them half an hour of light at most.
"Back home, I practice water magic when Mom isn't watching and I'm pretty good at it."
"Since the Shyf is out of the bag, I too practice the magic words I know even though Mom has forbidden me to." Aran scratched his head in embarrassment. "I don't have much control, but I'm usually very powerful."
"I believe you." Lith looked at their radiant yellow cores, knowing they could do much more than the parlor tricks he had shown earlier.
"Then why nothing works here? Is Lutia special?" Aran was so frustrated that his words caused a ripple through the surface of the lake that scared the fish
"The water is not cursed. No matter where you are, it's always the same. The problem is that while at home you manipulate a small volume of water at a time, here you have a mass beyond what even a full-fledged mage can control.
"The method you use spreads your mana evenly whereas you need to focus on a specific area. If you don't manage to do it, you will keep wasting your mana like you did until now." Lith replied.
He watched them improve with each attempt they made. Leria tried to trap the fish in ice cages, but they formed too slowly and the prey escaped. Aran practiced the bubble technique, but he was unable to make it dense enough to keep the fish from bursting out with a jump.
The area nearby the camp would have long been devoid of fish if Lith didn't trap them near the shore with a mix of water and spirit magic.
"Truce?" Aran offered Leria his hand.
"Truce." She shook it, too tired to care about their rivalry.
Aran trapped a fish inside a bubble, but this time, whenever it was about to jump, Leria would freeze the surface of the water and make it spin. The impact stunned the fish and the current disoriented it, buying precious seconds before it could make another attempt.
When the creature finally escaped, it found itself on the ground, too far from the lake to get there with a jump.
