“This was created by Anna,” explained Nightingale, “She made it with her new ability. When a witch awakens to her power, her body will begin to gather magic. At the beginning, the gathered magic looks like a cluster of fog. However, after a few years, it will turn into a colorful whirlpool. For example, Wendy’s magic is white while Leaves’ magic is green… Previously Anna’s magic reservoir was already very large and condensed into a dark green whirlpool on her day of adulthood, but now, the magic within her body has become fist-sized, solid and completely opaque.” She picked up the quill on his desk and began to draw its outline, “It’s almost like that.”
Although Nightingale’s painting skills were very rudimentary, Roland could still distinguish that it had the form of a cube.
Roland turned in Anna’s direction. “What happened last night?”
Hearing this question, Anna began to recount everything from last night. When she finished her story, the other witches were wearing a confused expression on their faces. They were totally unable to understand what these things that were coming out of her mouth, like small balls, vibrations, and connections had to do with the change to her ability.
Only Roland’s heart had begun to beat faster.
In his opinion, magic was a kind of energy, and the witches were its outlets. Magic could endlessly be transformed into different kinds of abilities, and in the end, the witch herself would decide what kind of effect her magic had. It always depended on how the witch manipulated it, or more precisely, it depended on the witch’s own imagination.
If his guess was right, imagination could have a far-reaching impact on the developing of their abilities.
In short, for a person who had never seen an airplane, it would be difficult to think of the idea that a huge iron bird could fly in the air; a person who had never seen the universe naturally didn’t know how wide the world was. The height of their own imagination and the breadth of their knowledge limited their use of magic. Each further understanding of the nature of the world had brought great advances in science and technology, so why wouldn’t that also be true for the witches’ abilities? The deeper their understanding of the world became, the closer their magic and their effect would come to the origin.
“Let me see your new abilities,” Roland asked, full of curiosity.
Anna spread out her arm, and on top of her fingers a black flame appeared out of the thin air. Even when taking a closer look, there was still no difference between the appearance of her flame and that of an ordinary flame, with the exception that it was black and didn’t create any light.
So, Roland asked further, “Can you change the shape of your black flame?”
Anna nodded, and under her control her flame moved down to the top of the desk. Then her naturally-shaped black flame turned into a cube. Not giving anyone the chance to react, the block began to spread out and turned into a black sheet-like cloth, covering almost the entire desk, then gathered at the center, gradually changing into a thin, upright line. Roland could not help but touch, only to discover that this long and slender object, resembling a hair, didn’t move a single jot. This was simply inconceivable. It seemed to be as hard as steel, but moments later he could easily bend it with his fingers. She could decide if it was flexible or absolutely rigid; a true body didn’t exist.
“Can you make it even thinner?”
“Yes, but then you cannot touch it anymore,” said Anna, “or else it will easily cut into your hand.”
“But you can still freely control its temperature?”
“Right, and compared to my previous green fire, I can now control it to such a degree that different parts of my flame can have different temperatures.”
Roland could now somewhat understand what Nightingale meant by completely new ability. Compared to her former green and warm fire, her ability at the moment had become completely different; describing it as flame like before wouldn’t be appropriate. When Anna accepted the idea that the universe was built out of microscopic particles, her control of the temperature had also achieved a completely new stage after connecting it with particle motion. It was certain that Anna wasn’t manipulating the particles the same way she had manipulated the flames before…. No matter if it was her original flame, her green flame she got on her day of adulthood, or now her black flame, they were her form of expressing her magic.
Although she converted her magic into heat in both methods, the true effect was very different.
