Mage Catalyst by Christopher George Page A

about my skating abilities. I wouldn’t say I was the best skater in the world, but I was pretty good.
“No, I thought I’d hire some,” said Tina. “From the skating rink.”
I had pictured teaching her on the streets. “Yeah, sure… when were you thinking?” I said.
“What about this Friday? I’ll pick you up,” Tina suggested shyly.
“Umm, that could be difficult. I need to go to my dad’s on Fridays.”
    “I can drop you back there or at least to a train station afterwards,” Tina assured me.
“You’re sure? It’s a long way.”
“It’s no problem. My dad bought me a car for my birthday,” Tina stated proudly.
My dad had talked about buying me a car for my eighteenth but I don’t think he was ever really serious about it. I was happy enough with the laptop he had bought me instead, but a car would have been awesome. I didn’t have my driver’s licence anyway – so a car would have been wasted on me.
“Sure, I’ll ring my old man, and let you know tomorrow,” I replied. “ Who else is going?”
“Umm… I’m not sure,” Tina said.
“I’ll invite Sarah and Tony?” I said.
“Great!”
“See you then, Tina,” I called as she got up to leave.
I got back to the documents with an eagerness I’d never shown to my text books. It was dry – but it was relevant. I badly needed somewhere to practice – somewhere where I wouldn’t be interrupted. I pondered going back to the toilets, but quickly dismissed the idea. I really didn’t particularly want to hang out in a dingy bathroom for any extended period of time.
I needed somewhere remote, somewhere no-one would go. I quickly scanned the timetables in the entry hall to the library and quickly realised that there wasn’t going to be such a place – I’d have to wait till I got home. Mum wouldn’t come home until late tonight as she had her night classes.
The rest of the day passed pretty slowly as I worked the concepts that I’d learned over in my head. I still wasn’t sure that I completely understood all the specifics of how the Principle of Detonation varied from the Principle of Extension.
I went straight home after school, telling Garry and Tony that I still hadn’t finished my homework. Tony gave me a funny look as if he didn’t believe me but let it go. I moved into my bedroom and began by re-reading the section on the Principle of Detonation. The document was getting easier to read the more of it I read.
I began with the breathing techniques that the document had recommended. The awareness spell required a high level of focus as I forced the mana particles to leap from my fingers into a swirling vortex between my hands.
It took me a good hour or so to get the mana to leap from my fingers and not form a thread. I hadn’t seen this performed before so I didn’t really know what to expect. I had just about given up when a mana particle fell from my fingers and hung suspended between my two hands.
It dissipated almost immediately, but I was able to duplicate the effect afterwards. The next challenge was getting more particles to join the first.
I forced more and more particles into the mana vortex and watched it grow in size. It gradually grew to the size of a basketball. Once the vortex reached a certain size I could see that I was losing more particles than I was gaining. I’d obviously reached the limit of what I was able to use. I knew from my previous attempts that if I tried to make the vortex too big it would collapse in on itself. Nervous about making a mistake I attempted to detonate the mana. Nothing happened. Once I had stopped pumping in more mana, the vortex quickly dwindled in size and quickly disappeared completely.
I had no idea how to get the vortex to detonate.
The document wasn’t much help as it didn’t give any specifics. It had said that the amount of mana required was minimal. Maybe I had used too much and that was the problem? I tried a second with much less mana this time. This