body with magic is more like filling a canteen with a leaky bucket. If the Blessed in question has a weak source, such as a rare metal, it may well take years or decades for his body to fill up. A more common source, on the other hand, can refill faster, but both Blessed can hold only finite amounts.”
“And you don’t do that all the time because . . . ?”
“It scares me,” Isaac said.
Alocar slapped the table, his tactician’s mind coming to play. “Can you make it more spread out, like a flood instead of an arrow?”
“It’s possible, but I only have so much control over it.”
“So you’re equally as capable of fending off a small force of men as you are fending off a skilled opponent, which means you can handle more than one type of situation.” Alocar stroked his chin.
“If I have enough warning, yes.”
“Useful,” Alocar said. “Could’ve used you under my command a few years back. Saved me some trouble and some men.”
“Back to the canteen theory.” Crymson waited for another drunk to pass their table. “The records spoke of other things. Of men becoming something other than human. Creatures, almost. I thought it sounded like made-up fluff, more rumormongering, but there was validity to that?”
Isaac drew another deep breath, “There is some truth to that idea. Magic changes a person, its user. Blessed with immense power, especially ones that store it over time, drawing on powerful sources, are the ones in greatest danger; I don’t want to trod that road, so I only take what I need.”
“So what about those records?”
“Change,” Isaac said. “The type of power that a Blessed wields brings with it an . . . appreciation of new things, and sometimes physical changes, too. Just not enough to be considered less than human, I don’t think. For instance, my mentor used to tell me about this Blessed whose source was a grizzly bear’s rage, and by the time they finally brought him down, the Blessed was close to seven feet tall and bloodthirsty.”
“Wait, so you don’t have total control?” Crymson raised an eyebrow.
“I do, to an extent. Imagine my canteen at a quarter-full. That’s almost all me, at that point.”
“But what about half-full, or three-quarters?” she countered.
Isaac shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. I’m always going to have an element of control in it, but it’ll vary depending on the Blessed’s strength of will and his or her source. I’ve never had much of a need of filling it that much, to be honest. That fight back in the forest? That was me running low, maybe a tenth of my canteen.”
Groping in the dark for words to explain something to people who had never before experienced magic, Isaac said, “But that’s not how you should think of it. Magic is not – eh, it’s not good or evil. That’s the problem. People think that magic has sides to it, but really, it’s no more than a tool. A sword can take a lover’s head as easily as it can take an enemy’s; magic is no different. The Blessed is the one who determines his morality, side effects included. But, the more power, the more potential for change. And the more you use the power, the more it compounds that change.”
Alocar and Crymson exchanged a look, but Isaac barely noticed. Secrets weighed people down, and telling his biggest one had lightened him, even though these situations were the ones he’d learned to avoid, for good reason.
“And you, you’re one of the very few who can wield the magic of one of these people. Why aren’t you changed? Or are you changed, and we just don’t know it because we didn’t know you beforehand?” Alocar finished the last of his beer and pushed it to the center of the table.
Isaac hesitated. In the dark confines of Whispers, he’d mulled over this question more than once, but he’d never come to a satisfying conclusion. “My, umm, my time away from the outside world cut me off to the source of power I’d always used. I can’t be sure – I wish I was – but being away from my source seems to have reversed the change, or at least stalled it.”
He pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek. “Now that I’m back in the real world, it’s certain to affect me, but like I said, it isn’t a change for the better or the worse unless I let it become one