Urasmian had said that magic had to be done using words in the Keftios language only, and he wondered why that was when he had clearly shown that magic wasn’t restricted to that language. Odd. He considered the hybrid spell he had just used and saw that most of the action words were still in Keftios. The few English words he had used were only there to define the action he wanted to make happen, for which he had found no suitable Keftios words. Interesting. He would have to continue to study the matter more and see what other hybrid spells he could come up with! Why Urasmian and others from the sorcerer’s Earth believed you could only use the Keftios language was still a question to be pondered, though. There had to be something to it, as you’d think that over three thousand years, someone would have tried adding words to spells from other languages, wouldn’t they?

He put the thought aside for the moment and began formulating ideas for spells that would enable him to do all sorts of interesting things! If he could mix in English words, then the spell crafting became a whole lot easier! He decided that he would only use English words where he had no alternative, although he resolved to try an English-only spell at some point. There were all sorts of things he should be able to do now that he’d overcome the language restriction. That night he thought about the use of Keftios only and decided that perhaps it was like they still used Latin for animal and plant proper names. Maybe if you had the whole language available and only a limited tech base, it meant there had been no need for anyone to actually sit down and develop a spell without using Keftios. Hmmm.

His not having to work made life easier. Even if it meant he had no money! A week of pondering and practicing had resulted in him developing a range of spells, and he was pawing through his old superhero comics, looking for more ideas. The hardest part was not showing off! He wanted to show off his newfound abilities to his friends so much! Impress the girls who never gave his nerdy self a second look! Right wrongs and beat up bad guys! Just like a real superhero! Fortunately, his common sense got in the way of his wanting to show off. It was tempting, oh so tempting, but no. He had to keep his newfound abilities hidden and to himself for the moment. Real-life wasn’t like a movie or a comic. Of that, he was certain.

It had always been very obvious to him, at least since he was fourteen or fifteen, that there was a clear dichotomy between real life and the world of superheroes, as shown in the comics and movies. The movie and comic superheroes lived an almost completely make-believe life, as far as he could determine. In real life, someone who could do what he could do would be jumped on by the government, locked away, and studied before being made to work for the government. And if not his own government, then some other less scrupulous one would kidnap him almost certainly. Any government would want his sort of power for themselves, not running around loose! And even if he could protect himself, that would only mean they would kidnap or threaten his family and or friends to get leverage on him.

He spent five minutes lying flat on the ground with his vision tunneling and all sorts of shooting lights flickering around in his mental vision. He did manage not to faint. His breathing, which was again threatening hyperventilation, finally calmed down, and the light-headedness faded somewhat. He lifted himself up and found he could sit. All right! He looked around carefully, but no one seemed to be about. Standing up very carefully, leaning on the hood of the truck, he checked around once more, but then he felt so lightheaded he waited a bit longer to make sure he didn’t faint. He grabbed the cooler box in the back and pulled out one of the beers he had tucked away in there. A few swigs from the can, and he felt much better!

Everything was still quiet, so he sat on the same rock he had sat on earlier and finished the beer. When he felt ready to try again, he studied the hill and focused on a spot maybe three hundred yards away. And he moved there instantly. Woo hoo. He grinned even as his head spun again, but then, as it settled, he quickly looked around at the few houses relatively nearby. Nothing, Oh, no, wait. There was a woman in the yard of that house looking up here. Okay. Time to go. No need to get any official attention. He refrained from teleporting and simply wandered over to where the rod was, retrieved that, and then sauntered back down the hillside to the truck. It took a bit of maneuvering to get the truck turned around on the narrow track, but eventually, he had it facing downhill, and then he headed home, mentally exhausted but jubilant.

Over the next few days, he surreptitiously worked on developing a range of spells to move things. He noticed that as he practiced, the ease of making the spell increased to the point where it was like his mind subconsciously triggered the spell without him being required to parse it out. The more he practiced the same spell over and over, the easier it became to the point where it was like all he had to do was think of a particular spell, and it would happen. He kept studying any Minoan tablets that were available on the internet, and his vocabulary kept growing, albeit slowly, but mostly in ways that were not a lot of use. He now knew the words for various household items and even some plants aside from the frequently mentioned food crops, but the general vocabulary was still very limited. He worked out a spell to apply kinetic force to an area but lacked the Minoan words for kinetic energy. He tried various combinations of words, but he simply lacked the right terms and the appropriate ordinary connecting words that the tablets simply hadn’t provided. After all, they were not conversation pieces, merely accounts of things for calculating tax, most likely. It was annoyingly frustrating, that was for sure! He got to the end of his tether one day, and in sheer frustration, he formulated the spell in his head with the appropriate English words for the action he wanted to accomplish in the places where he had never found the right Minoan words. Hmm. He repeated the spell in his head several times and then looked at a Coke can sitting on the workbench in the garage.  He said the spell with force, and the coke can promptly flew across the room and hit the garage door quite hard. Whoa! He trotted over, and the can was badly dented, although fortunately, there was no matching dent in the garage door, as the can had luckily hit one of the crossbeams that reinforced the panels. Jeez. Then it dawned on him what he’d done! Alright! He could mix in English words, which would give him the flexibility to do the things he wanted!

He jumped like a yard in the air and nearly fell over in surprise! Fuck! Then the full impact of what he’d just done hit him. Yeah! He hadn’t really believed it would work. Not really! His heart was thumping out an African drum solo in his chest, and he felt so light-headed he abruptly sat down on the packed dirt of the track and almost started hyperventilating. He sat for a couple of minutes until he had the incipient hyperventilating under control, and his breathing had calmed back down to almost normal. Then he grinned to himself. He was a sorcerer! He looked at the broom handle and changed the word for east to the one for north. He knew the word from the tablets, along with the words for the other three cardinal directions. He ran through the spell, and the broom handle, sorry, axle, disappeared and reappeared four or so yards north! Oh yes! After using the spell, he felt extremely light-headed again and decided it would be better to continue sitting on the ground rather than try and get up.

He looked over at the hillside beyond the road and thought about moving the broom handle east about thirty paces so it would reappear inside the hill. Then he realized that moving the broom handle into the same space as the hill could cause the atoms to fuse, well, maybe. Oooo. A fusion bomb, possibly. Right here. Not a good idea. He could be wrong, of course. He probably was, in fact. Particle physics wasn’t his area of expertise after all, but he decided that interpenetrating solid objects was something he would experiment with from a long, long way away! If at all! He went to stand up and immediately saw stars, so he reluctantly sat down again and tried to calm himself some more.

After about five minutes, he felt his body had calmed down enough to get up, and it was then that he realized that his real problem was going to be the lack of vocabulary. He really didn’t have the words he needed to do other magic. If that was what it was. It was possible that what he was doing was simply redefining the position of certain atoms in the space-time continuum. Uh-huh. It was an interesting explanation of the teleportation thing that he had come up with after Urasmian’s little disappearing act. Was that what was happening, or was he just rationalizing an effect of real magic? He looked at a spot on the road about a hundred yards up the slope. Right….

He grinned to himself and fiddled with the spell. It didn’t take him long to develop a modified version of the spell in his head, and then he said it with power. And he was a hundred yards up the road, slightly off-balance, as his reappearing a foot higher variable was only just enough to keep him above the road… but whoa! He thought about the spell and then looked at the ground near the truck, about a hundred and twenty yards away. He removed the distance component and changed the height to be two inches above the ground level at the spot he was looking at. He ran it through his head again and decided he had indeed made a spell to simply move there. As in that spot right there. Focus. Cast the spell, and there he was! He dropped two inches and nearly collapsed while seeing stars and feeling faint! He sat down, which this time didn’t really help as he still kept seeing stars, so he lay down completely on the dirt track while feeling very strange.