“So how come you can shield yourself strongly but can’t pull in a lot of power?”

“I can only shield myself strongly in a mental way. I think that is as much about personality as strength. A physical shield, on the other hand, is all about magical strength, which is why I was weak at them.”

She paused and nodded at Andrew. “Practice your shields for a month or two, and then I might be able to show you something really cool.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Now, a sleep spell is about adjusting their brainwaves to drop them into sleep, while a stun spell is related to the force push spell. Instead of pushing big, it applies limited force to the person’s brain and knocks back and forth against the inside of the skull. It’s rather like a concussion, and you can do damage to people if you are not super careful. I was never steady enough, power-wise, to try it.”

“Once you have you have shielding down and are steady, I will show you push, and then we can go from there.”

“Yeah. Thanks, mum!” Andrew beamed at his parent and trotted off.

Over the next couple of months, he worked on his mental shield practiced collecting power from first the sun, then the air around him even when inside. On one occasion when his mother had started cooking dinner, and his father hadn’t gotten home yet, he cheekily pulled power from the stove. It worked well, except for the food on the stove failing to cook. After laughing, his mother told him to go away before he ruined dinner.

She taught him the sleep spell and one that made people spin on the spot. The stun spell she taught him theory. She was reluctant to do it herself because her abilities were erratic, and she claimed rather weak. They sure impressed him, though! He promised he’d only use the stun spell in a dire emergency. He became really good at Push and his physical Shield very quickly. The school bully threat might have had something to with that!

He worked on his energy shield as well, although the only test he had was not feeling hot when standing in the sun or approaching the stove when it was on. Other things mentioned in the journal he couldn’t work out. Far Seeing worked like a telescope, apparently. He had a couple of ideas to follow up on, but nothing just worked straight off, so he’d shelved that for the moment. Levitation he was still working on too.

Unnoticeable, he deduced, was more a mental compulsion on those around him not to notice him. When he was confident he had it working, he tested it out by walking past two of the bullies who regularly tried to pick on him in the main street. They looked at him briefly and then kept talking as they walked in the opposite direction. Yes!

Over the next two years, he kept slowly getting better and better at magic. Gradually, over time, things in his grandmother’s journal that had made no sense at first he slowly deciphered. He narrowed down the push spell and began punching holes in tree trunks barely half a centimeter wide, and by the time his eighteenth birthday approached, he could punch right through a small tree from ten meters away.

And then the invasion happened.