Fire & Pain - A Vampire's Tragedy
Chapter 23

Sophia

Adam stood in front of me, his eyes closed as he took deep breaths. I watched him, wondering when we were going to start the lesson.

He peeked one eye open. “To get in tune with your magic, you need to reach out to the source of power inside you. This is best done with grounding yourself and meditation.”

That raised even more questions in my mind. I was never great at meditating. Being alone with my thoughts would cause me to get anxious, and not trying to think made me overthink. I wanted to summon fire and whirl fireballs around, not get in tune with my inner self.

“You know, meditation was never my kind of thing,” I admitted.

He tilted his head to the side slightly. “I can see how it can be hard for you to get used to it at first, but if you don’t activate your magical core, you won’t be able to bring out your full potential. Magic is more than just summoning flames or shields, it’s an extension of yourself.”

I sighed. “Honestly, I don’t know what you mean by magical core. How am I supposed to replace that?”

He stared at me for a moment, before he ran a hand through his hair and sat down on the forest floor, tapping on the spot next to him.

I sat down next to him, leaves sticking to my hand. I wiped them off and sighed. “Okay, and now?”

“Now, we focus,” he said, and placed his hands upright on his legs. “Place your hand in mine.”

Unsure where this was going, but curious enough to not question it, I placed my hand on his, surprised by how cold it was.

“Okay, next, close your eyes. Don’t worry, I will watch out for both of us. I promise.”

I looked at our hands and bit the inside of my cheek. “Are you sure that’s necessary?”

“I know you can’t fully trust me yet, but I won’t do anything dangerous. All I will do is show you how to replace the magical core within you.”

I glanced up at him. He smiled at me softly, his eyes warm. Nothing about him seemed threatening, but everything inside me was squirming to be vulnerable in front of him, to hand over any power to him. But then Claire’s face popped up in front of my eyes, and I knew I had to do everything I could to get her back. If that meant I had to put my trust in someone I didn’t know, then it had to happen. He didn’t give me a reason to fear him yet, anyway. Well, besides that, he helped murder my family, but that wasn’t his fault, right? He didn’t have control over that.

His fingers twitched, and I shook my head, focusing back on him. His smile had faded as he looked at me with pain in his eyes.

“I know after everything I did, it’s hard to trust me, but I won’t hurt you. I only want to help you. Let me gain your trust. Give me a chance.”

My heart raced, and my mouth went dry. I had to trust him. If we wanted to work as a team, this was the first step. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. My stomach churned as darkness greeted me, and I squeezed my eyes tightly together to stop myself from opening them again. Anxiety hit me like a truck. My chest tightened, and I gasped for her. Everything was too loud. The water in the river behind us, the leaves rustling in the soft winds, and birds chirping in the distance. It was almost deafening.

Until it stopped, and a calmness washed over me, I’ve never felt before. I let out a staggering breath, swimming in the warm embrace of peace.

“Do you feel better now?”

Adam’s voice reached me through the dense fog in my head, reminding me I wasn’t alone. “Yes.”

“Good. Now, try to feel what my magic feels like.”

For a moment, I didn’t feel anything else but warmth, but then I felt a tugging in my chest. First softly, then getting stronger and stronger. Fear took hold of me again, shattering the warmth that had oozed me into security.

“It’s okay, nothing bad is happening,” Adam said, but it did little to calm me, until a blue butterfly popped up in front of my inner eye, shimmering and glittering as it flew away. Then another one appeared, dancing in the darkness of nothingness.

“I see butterflies,” I said, my voice nothing more but a whisper.

His fingers twitched again, and I wrapped my fingers through his, tightening my grip around them, not wanting him to pull away.

“What you see right now is my signature. It’s not always the case, but sometimes our signatures also appear as visualizations of our spells. But it’s not what I wanted to show you.”

“I enjoy this, though,” I said, not wanting him to stop as the beautiful images mesmerized me.

He chuckled. “If we had a little more time, trust me, I would let you watch those butterflies as long as you want, but we’re running out of time. So, instead of focusing on the signature, focus on the energy they radiate instead. They are coming from somewhere. Find the source.”

I tried to focus on anything else than the butterflies, but it was hard to not get distracted by them. I felt another tugging in my chest, and this time I tried to focus on that more instead of panicking. The feeling didn’t feel threatening, just weird. The longer I concentrated on it, the easier it was to see past the butterflies, and then I spotted a shimmering in the distance, something that looked like some sort of string. I grabbed onto it and followed it, revealing where it would lead me to. Sweat broke out all over my skin, as a pounding pain spread around my head like it was getting squeezed between two rocks. Eventually, the darkness disappeared, and white light surrounded me, revealing a blue shimmering ball of light vibrating with energy.

Adam clenched my hand as he groaned next to me. “Do you see it?”

“The blue ball of light?”

“Yes, that’s my magical core, located in the middle of my chest. It’s the center of my magical powers, and you have it, too. It might not feel the same, or look the same, but everyone with magic has a magical core.”

In a blink of an eye, everything vanished, and I opened my eyes with a gasp. “That was quite the experience.”

Adam laughed, but he looked pale, a bit shaken even. His eyes were glazed over, and his body was slightly trembling. “Are you okay?”

He nodded, clearing his throat. “Yes, I’m fine, just a bit exhausted. Do you think that helped?”

“Hopefully. I just have to replace my magical core somehow.”

“If you want, I could help you guide you to your magical core. But it could feel a bit intimate.”

I didn’t understand what he meant by that, and I wondered if it was something I should decline, but I couldn’t detect any threat in his warm dark-brown eyes, as he softly smiled at me. Besides, it couldn’t be too bad if he let a stranger do the same thing to him.

I nodded. “Okay, let’s try that. At this point I need any help I can get.”