The Lightbearer's Gift

A blindingly bright beam of light burst forth. For a fraction of a second, it looked as if I held the sun in the palm of my hand. I immediately closed my eyes. This was far brighter than the one I used on the creature.

Eventually I opened my eyes and examined the tree which was my actual target. A grin spread across my face at what I saw. A circular palm sized hole was burned clean through the bark, and I could see small glowing embers inside, a testament to how hot the light was.

I wanted to get a closer look. In trying to get up, I realized my limbs were numb to the point of paralysis.

"Ok I went a bit overboard with that one", I admonished myself, though I didn't mean it as I was incredibly pleased.

It took a few minutes before feeling returned and another 10 for warmth. A groan from my stomach informed me how hungry I was. I wonder if doing magic like this burns a lot of calories.

'Calories?' I thought to myself.

The term, like many others have been floating around in my mind for some time, but I decided to ignore them. These insights into biology, while interesting, were largely useless to me. Perhaps in the future they will come in handy.

After that I felt close to normal. I started to build energy again to perform that spell. I wonder if I should name it? thinking for a few seconds I decided to just call it what it reminds me of.

"Daylight." I said aloud.

I was embarrassed by how dramatic it sounded, but there was no one around to judge me, so I decided to keep the name. I cast daylight once more. This time with significantly less energy, aiming at the same tree.

As I expected, instead of a cylindrical hole, there was only burnt bark. That should be enough to completely incapacitate any creature that would attack me. Since they would have to deal with a palm size circle of singed flesh. There was only a moderate drop in my body heat, so I decided to cast another daylight with my right hand at the same energy level. There was no noticeable difference, though I felt more comfortable casting with my left.

"Now for some tests." I said excitedly.

It isn't enough to have a weapon. I would need to know how to use it, along with its limits. I paced out nearly 100 feet from a nearby tree and cast daylight at it. Jogging over I noticed that there was barely any singed bark. I paced out 110 feet and fired again. This time the bark was completely unharmed. So, my effective limit was a hundred feet at a moderate level of power. I paced out 50, 25 and 10 feet, each time casting the spell. I noted that below 10 feet there didn't seem to be any increase in damage from daylight. At 25, I guessed, would be the max range to incapacitate a target. If I hit its face at 50, it would probably cause a second-degree burn. At 100 feet, actually hitting the target would likely be a greater problem.

Next, I decided to test how many times in quick succession I could cast daylight, before I became immobile. Standing and taking aim at my test tree I fired as fast as I could. At around 11 is when I decided to stop, as I began to lose feeling in my arms and legs. Anymore and I would likely tumble over. Next, I tested how long it would take for my energy to recover fully once I fire a moderate daylight.

After about 10 tries, I discovered that it was around 3 minutes before I felt normal again. So, in summary, 15 seconds to cast and 3 minutes to recover and roughly 11 shots before I'm exhausted. Now I had something to work with.

At this point, the sun was now hidden behind the trees and cloud cover started to set in. I hoped that it wouldn't rain through the night. Since dozens of bright flashing lights didn't seem to attract anything to my location, I decided to stay within the cluster of trees for the night. I took another gulp of water, ate the rest of the dried meat, then sat down in the clearing. I watched the forest slowly get darker.

'True darkness is a terrifying thing.' I thought. It was so dark I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face. With the heavy cloud cover I didn't even have the moon to offer some light.

So, I sat there in the center of my clearing, hands wrapped around my legs in an attempt to preserve some warmth. The lack of clothing was really starting to get to me, as my only option was to brace my back against a tree and drape my waist length hair around myself. That didn't really do anything to help, but it did offer some comfort.

The darkness was maddening; there was nothing to accompany me but the wind, the sounds of insects and the stray cry of some animal. I was unsure if I could ever fall asleep like this, so I decided to do more practice. Summoning, moving, and dispersing the energy within myself. This went on for hours until at some point I fell asleep.

I jolted awake after a particularly loud squawk of an unseen bird. Somehow, I was able to sleep to the early hours of the morning. Fortunately, nothing attacked during the night.

I moved to stand up from my sitting position and groaned in pain as my entire body felt like a giant bruise. My muscles were sore from overuse, and my joints popped as I stretched, trying to get some blood flowing into my limbs. In the middle of my stretching, I noticed that I didn't feel any significant pain in my arms. Checking both I was shocked at what I saw.

My wounds were considerably healed, granted it didn't look good, since they were scabbed over. Poking at the scabs I noted that there was no puss or redness. It was hard instead of the soft moist scabs that would occur from infection.

'This looks like days of healing. Not half'.

I looked at my stomach, where the creature scratched me with its toes. There were still long red lines from its toenails. I wasn't concerned about it since it was relatively minor damage to my skin when compared to my arms. But if my arms looked as if they had days of healing and my stomach didn't, what was the difference?

pondering for a second the only thing I could think of was me constantly concentrating energy in my arms.

'Could the concentrated energy heal?' I wondered.

I picked up my pack and hefted the axe in my right hand. To test my hypothesis, as I traveled, I would exclusively practice gathering and moving the energy, with my left arm. If the constant concentration of energy in that arm somehow contributed to healing, then my left arm would be considerably more healed than my right by the end of the day. With more confidence in my ability to defend myself, I headed forward in the same direction, keeping the rising sun to my right.