A Mage's Power (Journey to Chaos) by Brian Wilkerson Page A

countered.
    “Eric, save me!” Annala begged. “Hang with us! Please!”
    Eric opened his mouth to decline but Aio spoke up instead. “We'd
LOVE to hang with you, right, Eric?” Eric shrugged.
    The three stared at the boy who appeared out of nowhere. “Who
are you?”
    “I'm Aio Ricse.” He hugged Eric. “Better known as Eric's
bestest friend in the world!”
    Eric pried him off and said, “He's my roommate.”
    A second bell rang.
    “We'd better move or we'll be late for Biology,” Annala
said, “What do you have?”
    Eric checked, smiled, and said, “Biology.”
    Annala smiled in return. “Wonderful.” She has a wonderful
smile . . .
    As the day passed, Eric noticed a pattern: all his classes
were with his new friends. A part of him shouted TASIO! but he wrote it off as
coincidence. He met them by chance and surely Tasiocouldn't have
foreseen that . Even if Tasio had interfered somehow, he wasn't
going to question his good fortune. My friends are a bipedal lizard, a humanoid
cat, and a . . .?
    Biology was where he learned how something like his friends
could exist on this world. Oito was a “lizard demon” and Revas a “cat demon”;
their ancestors used to be ordinary animals until a colony was simultaneously
mana mutated into monsters. Somehow, they regained sentience and found the
mutation made changes in their spine and hind legs that allowed for upright
walking and changes in their throat to produce vowels and consonants. However,
the teacher didn't say anything about Annala. Eric yearned to ask her, but he
didn't want to say anything for fear of offending her.
    After Biography was Geography. Tariatla may be a world with
magic and talking animals, but geographically it was just like Threa: a chunk
of water-covered rock orbiting a star. The difference was the number of major
landmasses and their locations in the world's oceans. Eric drew a map of Threa
and compared it with one of Tariatla in his textbook. Annala noticed and asked
about the former.
    “Well, we don't have any monsters.” Annala gasped. “That's
bad, right?”
    “If there are no monsters, then there must not be any mana
either,” Annala explained. “Mana powers our lights and our indoor heating and
air conditioning; our Crystalvisions and airships and scrys! How do you
live without mana?”
    “We use other sources of energy, like electricity.”
    Annala tilted her head to one side. “E-lec-tri-cty?”
    “It's like lightning, but not as powerful.”
    “How do you get this . . .electricity?”
    Eric's confidence surged. Rarely was he needed to explain
anything to anyone; mechanics of commercial electricity flew from his mouth. My
job . . .. Memories flashed: losing his car, getting fired, Emily going out
with someone else. The warm feeling vanished and it was replaced by chill.
    “Eric!” Annala looked at him with concern. “Are you okay?”
    “ . . .Yeah . . .I'm fine.” He wasn't, but he would never
admit it because no one would want to hear the troubles of a loser. Annala
smiled and the warmth returned.
    “When you're ready to tell me, I'll listen.”
    “Really! I'm—”
    “Ssso thisss isss how nerdsss flirt,” Oito said with a mock
scholarly tone. “What a fasssscinating dissscovery.” Eric blushed and Annala's
ears turned pink. “Don't you agree, Dr. Revasss?”
    The cat-boy pulled out a notebook and scribbled. “I do
indeed. It's so hard to find a pair in their natural habitat. They scare
easily, you know.”
    “Oh, come now, stop teasing them.” Aio made shooing
gestures. “There's nothing wrong with aspiring scholars discussing physics.”
Eric and Annala returned to their normal color. “If they talk about chemistry, you can tease all you want.” The blushes returned and the other three laughed.
    “Revas, Oito, and . . .Aio . . . do you find the Siduban
Chaos Explosion funny?” their teacher asked, “The Otherworlder is excused, but
I thought you would know better.” Revas and Oito immediately