章 10: Opportunity
As he was growing his scrawny and sickly build became more and more obvious for everyone to see. It was even worse than Drac's. This coupled with his blood not clotting properly led to him being physically weak. He was prone to illness and getting injured. Too much so.
It was becoming hard for the family to take care of two sickly kids. Lilly was working like a horse both around the house and on the fields, and even the usually apathetic Ezakiel doubled his efforts to make ends meet.
But one can overwork for so long.
Before the atmosphere of the family was cheery and full of life, but by the time Zora turned 4, one could've cut the tension in the air with knife.
Both parents were usually dead tired by the time they managed to stumble back into the house, long after the Sun has set. Next to work they were supposed to play with the kids and teach them stuff, but the playing was not viable anymore, and the teaching part only persisted because it was essential for their future.
Nobody felt like this was the fault of either the sickly kids of the family, but they themselves certainly felt guilty.
When Zora turned four years old, at one of their visits to the healer he wanted to get Olak to teach him about magic. He was already fluently speaking the language, so that was not a problem. He was also considered a mathematical genius, simply because his knowledge far exceeded that of his uneducated parents. He didn't show all his skills though, that would't have helped him at all.
So at one of the regular checkups, when Olak was performing a diagnostic magic spell, Zora felt like it was the appropriate time to come up with the request.
"How do you do that?" he asked, respectfully only after Olak has finished.
"What do I do? You mean the magic?" Olak asked back after the sudden question. Zora was always quiet, he barely heard him speak before, so this caught him off guard. Instead of a reply Zora just nodded.
"I am a magician of sorts, but my power is quite limited. I can summon a few fireballs or heal open wounds or broken arms, not much as you can see. Are you interested?"
"Of course I am! Magic is the best thing, I want to learn all about it! Will you teach me, Olak? Please?" Zora pleaded with a never before seen childish fervor and big kitten eyes.
Olak looked as if he considered the thing, while secretly shooting a glance towards Lilly as if trying to say with his eyes something like 'what the hell?'.
Upon catching his glimpse Lilly merrily laughed a bit, then tried to help her son out in the matter. This was the only thing she ever saw him get excited about.
"Actually Zora is kind of a genius if I do say so myself. He learned a few months ago how to count, and is already way better at it than us. If we could write or read he would've already learned that too. He kept nagging us about it for sure..." hearing this Olak could only look annoyed. There was no parent in the world that wouldn't be proud of their young ones, or brag about their skills. It was quite annoying for him for sure.
"Is that so? A genius you say? Mind if I ask you some questions?" Olak said, directing the question to the kid. Zora replied only with a small 'no', so Olak started giving him increasingly difficult problems to solve, ranging from single digit additions to huge multiplications that even himself had some problems calculating without writing down, while Zora solved them all in a few seconds.
"Marvelous... Don't you find numbers boring? Same with reading and writing, why do you want to learn it?" Zora, hearing the questions pretended to think for a bit, then answered.
"I heard from dad, that all the knowledge are stored in books. And I want to know all there is to know! Especially magic!" he said with the enthusiasm of a 4 year old, who couldn't be healthier. He was already a pro at using his age as a leverage in many ways.
Olak and Lilly exchanged a curious glance, then the man checked on his waiting room, and when he saw that no one was waiting for treatment he headed up the stairs to his study. He soon returned with a blue-ish feather.
"Look here. This is a mana-sensitive feather. With it we can check if you have the innate talent to become a magician. I got it from my old master as his only disciple, so I could find disciples of my own. You just have to reach out with your hand, palm facing the ceiling, and I'll put the feather on it. If it starts floating that means you have enough inner mana to become a mage. Lets see."
Zora did as he was told, Olak put the feather on his hand, which immediately started rising up into the air, propelled by the mana passively emitted from every part of Zora's body. This passive emission became much stronger ever since he kept refining his mana core, thus the feather kept going and going, until it reached the not so high ceiling.
Olak was just standing there, dumbfounded, he was unable to understand what actually happened, he could only scratch his balding head in his confusion. Soon he grabbed a stool to retrieve the feather and run the test himself. The feather was floating a few centimetres above his hand, but it was also moving sideways, the opposite direction of where Zora was. With this he had seen enough.
"Lilly... Your little devil seems to be extremely strong in innate magical capacity. I have never seen something like this... Would you mind if I taught him magic? I am willing to treat your family for free if you let him stay here and become my disciple. What do you say?"
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