Lyris considered it for a moment but reluctantly agreed. "Well, I see no harm. Go ahead. Try it."
"With pleasure." Nolan cracked his knuckles and stepped up to the arch. He placed his hands against the stone and closed his eyes.
Nothing happened.
"You have to channel your energy," Lyris said from behind him.
"I am channeling."
'Okay. How do I do that?' he thought.
"You're just standing there with your hands on a rock. You have to actually channel your energy and push it in."
"That's what I'm doing. Relax. I'm just internalizing it first."
Lyris pinched the bridge of her nose. "Jeez. You could've just said you don't know how to use your mana." She sighed.
"Look, it's simple. Focus. Feel as if you're pulling from a fire in your chest. You take a single ember from the flame, place it in your hands, and push it outward."
Closing his eyes, Nolan looked inward.
'Flame in the body. Flame in the body.' He repeated the mantra in his mind as he tried to imagine this so-called flame.
He searched through his body, tensing his muscles one at a time, starting from his shoulders down through his core, trying to feel for anything resembling a flame in his chest.
Nothing.
He squeezed harder. Flexed his arms. Tightened his stomach.
Still nothing.
'This is stupid. I'm just standing here flexing on a rock like an idiot.'
But when he stopped trying when he let his muscles relax and his mind went quiet for just a moment he felt it.
Not in his chest.
Lower and deeper somewhere behind his sternum. Buried so far down it was less like a flame and more like a coal that had been smoldering.
'Take a single ember, Nolan. Just one.' Remembering the words of Lyris, Nolan reached for the coal with care. His mental hand, as he called it, reached out, touching the coal.
'It's warm.'
The coal pulsed beneath his mental touch, alive and waiting. He pressed against it gently, and like breaking a piece off a graham cracker, a small fragment snapped free in his grip.
And as if that was the spark it needed, the coal caught fire.
The flame roared to life inside him, not painful but overwhelming a rush of energy that flooded through his body like stepping into a hot bath after being out in the cold. It nourished him. Fed something deep in his bones he didn't even know was hungry. His muscles hummed. His skin tingled. Every nerve lit up as the fire spread from his core outward, filling him to the tips of his fingers.
"Wow." Nolan not expecting such a rush can't help but exclaim.
However knowing the journey is not over he slowly takes the burning piece of coal in his mental hand and puts it in his right hand.
His right palm ignited against the arch.
The symbols erupted. But not blue like Lyris's. They burned a deep amber, almost copper, and the light that filled the archway wasn't the gentle shimmer Lyris had produced. It was thicker. Heavier. Like honey being poured into the air.
The arch hummed with energy as in golden waves the frame of the arch gave way to what Nolan could only describe as.
'A portal to the Aether just like in Minecrack.'
And from the portal something stepped through.
Something short.
Something furry.
Something with a flat, wide tail that slapped against the stone as it waddled forward into the morning light.
A beaver.
"..." Lyris.
"..." Jeffrey.
"HELL YEAH!" Nolan screamed, throwing his fists in the air, excited that he was actually able to do it.
His celebration lasted about three seconds before he opened his eyes and actually looked at what he'd summoned.
The beaver stood roughly three feet tall on its hind legs, because it was standing upright like a person. Its fur was a deep chestnut brown and its small dark eyes blinked in the sunlight with an expression of vague annoyance, like it had been pulled out of a very important nap.
Nolan's fists slowly lowered.
"…What."
The beaver looked up at him, tilted its head, and then raised one paw. It pointed at itself, then pointed at a tree, then made a chopping motion with the side of its paw.
And somehow, Nolan understood it perfectly. Not as gestures. Not as charades. The meaning arrived in his mind fully formed, as clear as spoken English.
"I cut trees. That's what I do. You need trees cut?"
"Uh." Nolan blinked. "Yes?"
The beaver slapped its tail on the ground once. "Good. Point me to the forest."
"Nolan," Lyris said very carefully, "you just summoned a beaver."
"I can see that, Lyris."
"That probably shouldn't happen right? That's gotta be the unusual part that Vespa was talking about isn't it." Lyris walked closer to the beaver close enough that she could see the happy gleam in the beaver's eyes, one that could only come from pure happiness.
The beaver looked up at Lyris and held up both paws palms-out.
"Tell the pretty lady with the big honkers I don't bite. Unless she's made of birch."
Nolan choked, coughing into his fist.
"You alright?" Lyris looked at him, confused.
"Yeah, yeah I'm fine." He cleared his throat. "Weren't you listening to him?"
Lyris frowned. She looked at the beaver. Then back at Nolan. "Listening to what? It waved its paws around, Nolan. That's all it did."
"You seriously didn't hear any of that?"
"Hear any of it? It's a beaver Nolan what is there to hear. All it did was move its hands. How could you possibly understand what it said?"
Nolan scratched the back of his head. "I don't know. When he does his hand gestures, it just… goes straight into my mind. Like someone's speaking directly into my head in perfectly clear English."
"..."
Lyris stared at him.
Her mouth opened.
Then closed.
Then it opened again.
"What did it say?"
Nolan glanced at the beaver, who was looking up at him with what could only be described as a shit-eating grin.
"It's better if you didn't know."
"Nolan."
"Trust me on this one."
Lyris narrowed her eyes at him but let it go.
For now.
'You rat bastard you almost got me killed.' Staring death daggers at the beaver Nolan makes sure to teach him a lesson later.
The beaver caught his glare and responded with a slow, deliberate shrug.
"What? I said she was pretty. That's a compliment."
'You did NOT just say 'big honkers' is a compliment.'
The beaver turned away, clearly done with the conversation, and started examining its claws like it had better things to do.
'I swear to god if this thing isn't useful I'm punting it straight off the island!''