The Walker Of Voids

"No, stupid! Don't just create flames; manipulate them! That's what your ability is called right? Flame manipulation, not combustion creation."

"Well, actually, it's called [Flame control], not flame-" Lloyd argued.

"Shut up and actually do something. No time to blabber." Tina shouted with her fists resting on her hips.

"Yes master." Lloyd replied with an imaginary tear going down his face.

Never in a million years would he have thought that someone's personality could change so much in a few hours, which was a little ironic since the same thing could be seen about him whenever he puts his mask on.

At first, Tina had been mostly shy, finding it hard to form proper sentences without stuttering once or twice throughout it. Yet, within the same hour, she had transformed from a babbling idiot to a professor when she saw Lloyd showing interest in magic.

"Flame control. I see. Your mana pool is not the problem right now, but your comprehension of the element and your ability to control your mana is. Let's not forget that your flame control ability should only be something you gain after reaching the first commandment." Tine explained while reading about the ability in one of the books she had grabbed from her work desk.

"Comprehend? Well, I already understand how flames work." Lloyd argued with a raise of a brow,

"Well, you might understand it, but it doesn't mean you've comprehended it." She explained while Lloyd took a trip down dejavu as he remembered Lachlan telling him the same thing.

"Okay. So I have to break it down and think about how it works. Break it down and understand every component at play. First, we need air to create flames. Flames thrive on oxygen and usually release carbon dioxide, but since I'm not using carbon products to fuel the flame, it won't be creating co2, but instead, it will be creating syngas?

Wait, no, I'm not creating plasma; I'm creating flames, with my main fuel being mana. But what would the waste product of mana be? Oxygen + mana doesn't really mean anything. Mana isn't an element in the periodic table..." Lloyd began thinking long and hard about how it worked.

They both stayed like that for about 40 minutes as Lloyd continued to mutter to himself.

On the other hand, Tina had a soft smile on her lips, portraying her gratitude for finally finding someone who found magic as interesting as she did.

Of course, many people found magic as interesting as she did, but for some reason, she felt a sense of comradery with Lloyd. A sense of comradery that was much stronger than any comradery she felt toward anyone else on the team.

"I think I understand it..." Lloyd muttered with a beaming smile on his face that almost made him forget the torture had gone through less than 4 hours ago.

"I've never really taken any time in the past to think about this the way I am now, and I'm not sure if it was because I hadn't awakened or the fact that I didn't think I would be getting the fire element, but it's all starting to make sense now," Lloyd exclaimed to Tina, who told him to carry on.

"Okay, while we have lots of elements on the periodic table, the ones we are taught in high school are simply the ones that have physical properties. H2O, for example, is something we drink. It is a liquid that becomes a solid when cooled, and a gas when heated. Same thing with oxygen, but you can only really cool it to make it a liquid without bonding it to something else.

Anyway, I've been thinking of flames created by mana as the same as flames created through combustion and burning carbon fuel, but it isn't.

These flames are closer to plasma than they are to actual flames, because the fuel isn't just mana; it's mana fused with fire particles to create it.

Elemental particles aren't like the elements in the periodic table. They are almost like radiation, a bit like mana but in a more physical and elemental sense.

Each particle acts like an unstable proton or neutron, acting more like electromagnetic waves and radioactive particles rather than atoms or atomic bonds.

They bounce off the oxygen, creating a spark that is fueled by the mana to create a flame, and when it does create a flame, the waste element of the flame isn't co2, but its but its quite literally just water." Lloyd explained with the utmost enthusiasm, yet Tina's eyes widened at his last words.

"What do you mean water?" She asked, yet from the look in her eyes, Lloyd knew she already knew the answer.

"The elemental fire particle quite literally destroys the electrons, protons, and neutrons on the oxygen, setting it back several elements, to the point where it literally just becomes hydrogen.

However, while it could have stopped at carbon and allowed the oxygen to bond with it, it goes even further and almost completely destroys the atom to the point where the oxygen is forced to bond with the hydrogen to create water vapor, and the elemental water particle in its place.

The oxygen is successfully bonded with, and the fire particle has a waste element," Lloyd thoroughly explained, with Tina nodding throughout the entire explanation...

With the Sutter in her voice having seemingly disappeared, Tina opened her mouth and spoke-

"Honestly, that was one of the best and most well-crafted theories I've heard, especially since you had very little knowledge of this before today..."

"I mean, for all you know, I could have learned it all from a book before meeting you." Lloyd shrugged, yet he could not help but feel slightly proud of his intelligence.

"It is a good theory though. Your logic states that everything needs an opposite; therefore, the flames are balanced out by the water. It works out on paper...

Yet the reason I know you haven't researched this before isn't that I trust your word for it... It's because you're wrong."