The Incident

by gplane1749

Chapter 9: The New Student

The Incident

The New Student

"Twilight, do you think that you will be able to begin teaching Matt how to control his mana on his own? I have to get back to Canterlot to finish up some important documentation."

"Of course princess!"

"Okay, well I will see you later. Probably tomorrow but feel free to send a letter if anything like today comes up."

"Will do!" Twilight reassured the princess as she walked out of the cottage.

"Now how do I teach some one not to summon mana?" The purple unicorn asked herself.

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Matt woke up to a rather loud thumping sound, almost like a very large stack of books being plopped onto a nightstand. He turned his head to the side and confirmed it.

"Twilight what are all of these books for?"

"To teach you magic of course!"

The very confused human shot a look at the unicorn, "What?"

"Hold on, let be back up a little bit. What happened to you yesterday is called magical burnout, it's what happens when a magic user summons to much mana and doesn't cast any spells. You were summoning so much mana that I had to get the princess to come and help me get rid of the excess."

"I thought they got rid of mana burn in the 2010 rules update."

"What?"

"Sorry that was a joke from home, don't worry about it."

"Anyway, I need to teach you how to stop summoning mana. This is kinda weird actually because usually the trouble comes when trying to teach how to summon mana in the first place, not how to stop it."

"Is that what l of these books are for?" Matt asked eying the rather tall stack sitting next to him.

"Yep! Don't worry you don't have to read all of them just bits and pieces for reference. The first thing we need to work on is getting you able to feel the flow of mana. Once you can do that you can stop the flow."

"Okay. How do we start?"

"Well you need to lay down and hold your breath," Matt did so, "Close your eyes and find a silver stream in your mind."

After about half a minute Matt gulped down some air and looked over a Twilight. "I couldn't find any silver streams or anything just dark."

"Hmm, maybe we need to go to a place where there a fewer distractions. I know! We can go down to the basement you should be able to find the flow a lot easier down there."

"Uh, okay." Matt got up out of the bed and slowly walked to the door. He felt much steadier on his feet than the day before. He was able to make it down to the basement door without too much trouble. He slowly opened the door and cautiously walked down the stairs. There was no light coming into the basement other than the light coming in from the doorway.

"This is the perfect place to practice, Matt. With no light or sound you should be able to focus much better down here. Okay now do what you did earlier and try to see the flow."

Matt lied down on the floor of the basement and tried to see this 'flow' again, but as many times as he tried he just could not see it.

"Twilight I just can not see any special flow silver or not."

"Well what do you see?"

"What I normally see when I close my eyes just colored circles."

The unicorn's eyes lit up with a new realization,"Maybe that's it! I was trying to teach like a unicorn but you are not a unicorn, maybe those circles you see are your mind's representation of the mana forming instead of the silver stream! Try and close those."

"But I've always seen the circles they can't be my magic."

"You could see it but never call it forth, but when you came here Celestia flooding you with magic for the transformation spell must have triggered your magic!"

"Okay, I guess that makes sense. So I should try and close the circles?"

"Yes, try that."

"Here goes something." Matt once again settled down on to the floor and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and tried to focus on the task before him. He stayed like this for almost two full minutes until he slowly opened his eyes and looked over at the unicorn.

"I think I did it, can you check?"

"Yeah, hang on." Twilight's horn lit up and she probed the human looking for any new mana formation. When she found none she started to dance like a school filly but quickly remembered that she wasn't the only one in the room.

"What was that all about?" A slightly concerned human asked.

"You stopped the mana! You did it! Now you don't have to worry about magical burnout any more. Now we can begin working on your magical skills."

"You mean I'm going to become like a wizard! This is awesome."

"Well maybe not a wizard that title is reserved for only the best magic users like Starswirl the Bearded, but maybe you could become a mage or a specialist. You are going to start really small and it will be hard to teach you because of how different your magic seems to be from standard unicorn magic. Tomorrow we will start with Foal's First Spells Volume One. "

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Twilight."

Author's Note:

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I really want to hear from all of you!

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[gplane1749]

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I just updated two weeks ago and have added two chapters.