Chapter 7: Primordial Magic/True Names

「How on earth did you do that!?」
「I-I don’t know.」

When I instinctively thrust my neck forward as if to lean in, Ai hunched her shoulders in fright and stared at me.

「Sorry. Did I scare you?」
「No…」

She must have been quite startled; Ai pressed a hand to her chest as if to steady her heart.
Even if she has gotten fairly used to me, I still look every bit the fearsome dragon.
If I suddenly get that close, it’s only natural she’d react like that.
Because I can’t see my own appearance, I tend to forget—but I need to be careful.

「Calm down; let’s check things one by one. First, can you stop it?」
「Yes.」

With Ai’s nod, the leaf that had been twitching piko-piko went still.

「Can you make it move again?」
「Um… like this—does that work?」
「Wonderful…!」

Seeing the leaves start moving again, I couldn’t help letting out a breath of admiration.

「I said—your fire! It’s leaking!」
「Oh—sorry.」
「Honestly! Are you trying to burn down the house we went to all the trouble to build!?」
「No, no—my apologies.」

Hands on her hips, Nina puffed up in anger, and I apologized profusely.

「But Nina, this is a huge leap forward in the history of magic. Anyone would get excited.」
「What? Even I can do that much, you know.」

When Nina held out her hand, branches from the trees rustled in through the window. She plucked a Water Apple off one of them with a pop and bit into it with a sulky air.

「Ai, can you do the same?」
「I’ll… finally give it a try.」

Knitting her brows tight, Ai made a gesture as if willing it to happen. The branch Nina had drawn inside began to move—awkwardly, but slowly. Even with the same magic, there was a clear gap in precision between the practiced Nina and Ai, who was moving it for the first time.

「Can you explain how you’re doing that right now?」

When I asked, Ai predictably made a troubled face.

「Um… like… this…」

She moved her hands as if to demonstrate something, then slumped her shoulders in defeat.

「I can’t… explain it well…」
「No, don’t worry about it. I can’t explain mine very well either.」

The sense for magic is like being told to explain how to move your arm—something I know firsthand is extremely hard to put into words.

However, there’s one decisive way Ai’s magic differs from mine or Nina’s: it isn’t inborn.
Even if she doesn’t know how to use it yet, the mere fact that she can use it at all is a tremendous first step.

「All right then, Ai. How about this?」

I stuck my fingertip out straight and, taking utmost care, produced a flame.
Not from my mouth—from my fingertip.

「Huh? Since when could you do that!?」
「Only recently.」

If producing flame is my magic, then perhaps it doesn’t have to come from deep in my throat. The thought just occurred to me.

Of course, if it weren’t magic at all—if I merely had a gas-filled sac in my body and simply ignited and expelled it as needed—then such a thing wouldn’t be possible.

But no, the magic of this world is true magic. It resembles the combustion reactions from my old world, yet is fundamentally different. If that’s the case, then I should be able to produce flame from somewhere other than my mouth.
And when I tried it, I found that while far smaller than when I breathe it out, I could indeed produce flame from my fingertip.

Hmm…

Ai furrowed her brows again and stared fixedly at her raised fingertip.
Nina and I watched, holding our breath, but a minute passed by feel, then five, then ten, and not even a spark—let alone a flame—appeared.

「I’m sorry…」
「No, no, don’t worry about it. Fire and wood are entirely different things; it’s not going to go that conveniently.」

I tried to comfort Ai, whose shoulders had drooped, in as gentle a tone as I could manage.
If I could, I’d pat her on the shoulder—but with these clawed hands, I might scare her again. Being in a dragon’s body can be a real nuisance.

「Hey—so which is it?」

Out of the blue, Nina asked that.

「Which what?」

Her eyes were fixed on my hand.

「That. The fire. Since it’s a part of you, is it a living thing after all? Or is it matter?」
「Ah. This is… what we call energy.」

Now then, how should I explain this?
Turning the idea over in my head, I decided to convey it without overcomplicating things for now.

「E-ne-r-gy…」
「E-ne-r-gy…」

As expected of a loanword, they both repeated it with a look of puzzlement.
I considered standardizing it into Japanese—power, work, perhaps force—but realized I’d run aground sooner or later. Japanese’s rich vocabulary owes much to actively adopting loanwords. When it comes time to teach writing, this may become another headache, but they’ll just have to accept that that’s how it is.

「Energy isn’t a living thing or matter—it’s a formless force that acts on things. For example…」

I slid both hands under Nina’s arms and, taking utmost care not to snag her with my claws, lifted her up.

「Like this—lifting Nina is my own strength at work… and when I let go like this, she falls because the ground is constantly exerting a force pulling us downward.」
「Don’t use me in your explanations without asking… Not that I really mind.」

She landed on the floor without a sound, like a cat, cheeks puffed. Whether because elves live up in trees or because this too is a type of magic, she can jump down from astonishing heights without issue. She also seems to like high places in general, so despite her words she wasn’t nearly as angry as she sounded at being used as a prop.

「Power… energy…」
「In the case of flame, it’s light and heat. It’s bright and warm, right? Those are both kinds of energy, and together we call that flame.」

As I explained, I felt a growing discomfort. Ai was listening to my lecture with such earnest attention that it made me painfully aware of how little I really knew. My specialty in my former world was the occult; science I only knew at the level of basic education. If she pressed me any further, I was sure I couldn’t explain it fully.

「Energy…」

Fortunately, Ai didn’t pursue it further; she quietly closed her eyes and muttered something under her breath.

「Ai? What are you—」

The instant I leaned in to look at her face, suspicious of her behavior—

「Wah!」
「Gyaa!」

Flames rose from Ai’s palm, and Nina and I screamed in unison.
It must have been about four meters. Our house was built large enough for me—considerably bigger than the other two—to live comfortably, and that slender, enormous flame reached all the way to the ceiling.

「H-hey, Ai! Put it out! Hurry!」
「Eh—w-w-what do I—what should I do!?」
「Uh—how about this!」

Gulp.

In the height of our collective confusion, I impulsively swallowed the flame Ai had produced.
I don’t feel the heat of flames on my body, and at the very least, once it’s in my mouth it won’t spread—so I judged, but…

「A-are you… okay?」

Nina asked, timidly.
Fortunately, swallowing it seems to have safely extinguished the flame Ai released.

「I’m fine… or rather—」

What is going on here?

「Does anything hurt? Or is it hard to breathe?」

I must have been making quite a strange face. Nina peered up at me on the verge of tears, and Ai, I saw, had gone pale and was trembling.

「No, I’m fine. There’s nothing wrong—so both of you, don’t worry.」

I reflexively set my fingertips on their shoulders, and both of them let out a sigh of relief.

「Ai, could you try making a flame one more time?」
「Eh, but…」
「It’s fine. If it looks like there’s a problem, I’ll just eat it again.」

I kept my tone deliberately light, and Ai seemed convinced; she nodded.
Then, just as before, she closed her eyes and made a flame float above her palm.

This time she must have been careful; it was a much cuter little fireball than before.

「…So that’s it after all.」

Seeing that flame, I was certain.

「Nina, try touching this.」
「What are you talking about!?」
「It’s fine. It’s not very hot.」

I held my palm out into Ai’s flame to show her.

「That’s because you’re a dragon!」
「U-um… it really isn’t hot.」

Ai said haltingly. Since she was holding the flame in her palm, I should have realized the moment she didn’t act like it was hot.

「See… it doesn’t even burn a leaf.」

I snapped off a twig and stuck it into the flame. The fire only wavered and didn’t spread to the leaves at all.

「…You’re right. It’s not like it isn’t hot… but it’s lukewarm.」

Nina cautiously held her hand into the flame as she said so.
A dragon’s body doesn’t catch fire, but that doesn’t mean it can’t feel heat. If anything, once you get used to it, you can sense temperature far more precisely than a human can.

The flame Ai created felt terribly cold to me—about the temperature of lukewarm water.

「I see. It’s coming together now…」

When I explained to Ai what flame is, there was something important I left out.
Namely, the scientific oxidation—the combustion reaction.
I didn’t explain it simply because I didn’t have enough scientific knowledge to do it justice—but as a result, the flame Ai produced was just a lump of heat and light with no oxidative action—in other words, something that only looked like flame.

In short, what magic produces is greatly influenced by how the user understands what they’re producing.

And what does it mean to “understand”?

「You two—can you move that tree?」

I pointed to a tree different from the one that had come in through the window and asked them both.
Tilting their heads, Ai and Nina nonetheless turned their hands toward the tree—

And seeing that only the branch of the tree Nina pointed at moved, I was convinced.

「Ai, let me teach you.」

As I spoke, I considered how to put it. There’s no way to say this in Japanese. Fortunately, Elvish has a term—so that will do.

「This tree’s name is Fagi.」
「Fagi.」

The instant Ai repeated the word, the branch of the tree she was pointing at rustled and swayed.
It was proof that her world had just expanded—if only a little.

—Yes.
The magic of this world is made of names.