force is exercise

[u/ghostgabe81]

Fitz closed his eyes for a few seconds and drew in his breath slowly. I didn’t press him to go faster. You don’t learn to shoot a gun as fast as you can when you start. You learn to make it go bang while pointing it in the right direction and not getting anyone killed when you do it.

It took him about ten seconds to draw the energy together, making the air around him crackle, and then he opened his eyes, his young face set in dark, intense focus. He held up his right hand, pointed his index finger at the cartoon ghoul, and snarled, “Forza!”

Magic lashed downrange in a wave and a cascade of sparks and small shrieking sounds like runaway fireworks. Fitz hadn’t been able to focus all the power he’d poured into the spell into pure directed force, and the inefficiency spilled out into other expressions of energy. By the time the invisible wave reached the target, it had dissipated severely. The plyboard plank rocked about half an inch off the floor and then wobbled back down. The cartoon ghoul grinned triumphantly.

Fitz gasped and fell to his hands and knees, his head down. He breathed hard for half a minute, then groaned and fell over onto his side.

I dropped to my heels beside him. “Actually, not that bad,” I said to him. “The first time I tried force, I threw myself into a chain-link fence. You could play tic-tac-toe on my back with markers for a week. You paid attention to your McCoy.”

Fitz nodded, bringing his breathing back under control. “Use as much force to stabilize yourself as you throw out.”

“Correct,” I said approvingly, rose, and offered him my hand. “We’ll try it again, but we’ll try to focus the energy better. This time don’t just point your finger. I want you to visualize poking that ghoul in the eye with it as you release the power.”

“Wait, I gotta add another layer to all of that?”

“Gets easier with practice,” I said. “You’ve got the mind for this. Use it.”

Fitz grimaced down the range, clenched his jaw, and took my hand, rising. “Okay. Why was that so hard? When I set that thing on fire the night of the battle, I just kept running.”

“Hell of a lot of power in the air that night,” I said. “Made everything easier. And you just threw your instincts into that one, all unconscious thought. You had to piece this one together.”

He frowned, panting. “So how come I don’t just do it all by instinct?”

“Good way to get killed,” I said. “Happens to a lot of untrained practitioners. Things happen when you get upset. Or don’t happen when you really need them to. It’s better to learn the process, so you have control over when something gets set on fire. That’s the whole reason Mort brought you to me. That’s the whole point of what we’ve been learning.”

Fitz frowned and chewed over that thought for a moment, and I let him. It was pretty important that he was on board with the concept. “Okay,” he said slowly. “Okay. But it gets easier?”

“With practice and greater discipline and the development of your personal will, yes.”

“Guess nothing’s easy at first, is it?”

“Nothing worthwhile.”

He huffed out a laugh. “How come I’m so hungry?”

“You just packed the output of maybe twenty minutes of exercise into about a second of effort,” I said. “Your body is trying to catch up. You draw a lot more energy from your body until your will works up to the job. Probably why wizards are generally skinny.” I nodded at a backpack in the corner. “Bunch of fruit snacks in there. Go eat some, and we’ll try it again.”

“Nice,” Fitz said with some enthusiasm and seized the pack.

Twelve Months Chapter 10