//------------------------------// // Chapter 23 // Story: Falling // by Angels //------------------------------// Chapter 23 I sat down on a stump. How long would it be? Two months? *sigh*... But if being alone kept thousands of others from possibly being screwed up, it was worth it. I began walking deeper into the forest. Even if I did get lost, I could always sky-hop back. In fact... I jumped up and shot up. When I could see most of the forest, I used small waves to hover. Now I had a pretty good view of the entire forest, my new home. I could see plenty of big clearings and two large rivers. I chose a meadow with one of the rivers through it, and fired myself down to it. I landed in the center, but carefully. If I was going to live here, I shouldn't destroy it. Yes. I would live here. Carefully launching back up, I made sure I could find it again. It was the only one with river, so it should be pretty easy. I still had most of the day left, and I wanted to really learn how to use my magic. Gathering more waves than ever before, I launched towards what looked like a desert. It turned out to just be a huge open flatland. But more importantly, unpopulated! I landed again. After a moment to recover from the wind blasting into my face, I looked at the sounds around me. Not as many birds here, so not much birdsong. But in such a flat place, waves from far away could echo. I began taking in waves. Flying and destroying things is great and all, but if this really is a form of magic, shouldn't I be able to do more? Come to think of it, I had no idea how unicorns normally used their magic. I stop pulling in waves, and I focus on one. I keep this one separate from the others. I visualized it as a small sphere. Without warning, a small, blue sphere appears in front of me. I look at it with amazement. I had just thought of it, and there it was! I poked it. It flew away from me like gravity didn't apply to it. I imagined it falling to the ground and rolling back to me. It fell, and rolled back! I made it into a cube, a pyramid, and then a sphere again. Picking up the baseball-like orb, I pictured it flying. It obeyed. After a few minutes, it seemed to fade. It was more gray now, and was transparent. I pictured it disappearing. With a small 'pop!', it was gone. I thought about this for a minute. If I controlled waves with my imagination, I could create anything! Over the next few minutes, I formed a variety of objects from earth. A pencil, a soda can, a lightbulb, even a small one-story house! I imagined them all as waves again, and pulled them in. So I could create things, but they would fade. Alright. I thought back to when I was at Vinyl's house. When she told me she could see the 'beam' coming out of my palm. I remembered what those waves had looked like. To be honest...they looked like freaking lasers. And that was cool. I imagined the waves inside me being in front of me. Not as anything, just waves. Mentally piecing them together, I tried to recreate what had been coming out of the speakers. The range of colors, the shapes, all of it! Once I had a whole bunch of cool looking combinations, I pulled on one of them. Yes. It felt different. Like before, it felt alive inside me. Raising my palm, I pushed on the wave. A beam of pure sound erupted from my hand. The noise it made was like melodious scraping metal. A dead tree that was unintentionally in the path of the beam was destroyed. No, that doesn't do it justice. It was fucking vaporized. I stop pushing the wave. The beam stops. For a moment I just stare at my palm. It's slightly warm. I suppose it should be. Inspired by these new 'powers', I form normal waves into several targets. I put them randomly around me. Then I blast them. Spinning around, I fire my right hand, then the left, then right. Each time I destroy one, it explodes. Only one remains. Putting my wrists together, I take the combined waves, and visualize them as a sphere between my hands. I launch the glowing, screaming ball straight at the target. It explodes with such force that I fly backwards several feet onto my ass. I stand up and clean myself off. "Yeah. That's magic."