Chapter 4

As I came back to consciousness the next morning there was no sense of transition, no crawling up through confusion and cobwebs I was just asleep one moment and awake the next.

The first thing that was immediately obvious to me was that my ceiling was dirty. I always slept on my back as I couldn't sleep any other way so when I had opened my eyes I immediately saw the ceiling and how dirty it was.

After a moment I looked about my room and noticed it looked pretty much the same as before yet completely different. Now I began to notice subtle nuances of colour I had never previously noticed. Shades of colour looked distinctly different and I realised as I looked about that I was remembering more, it was an odd realisation but usually when you look away from something it's difficult to picture it in your mind again and the image quickly fades, not at all dissimilar to how a dream fades as you wake in the morning.

Now however when I looked away from something I was still able to recall it in my mind. I tested myself by looking at something for a split second then looking away and seeing it again in my mind. I was unable to recreate the exact shades of colour or a perfectly clear picture I usually saw but I was able to remember the positions of all the coloured tiles of the Rubik's cube on my desk easily.

As I looked about I realised that I felt pretty good too. I didn't feel lethargic or half awake, I was on hundred percent awake and there was a noticeable feel of goodness throughout my body. My mind also felt very sharp this morning. I felt as if I was noticeably smarter somehow, the good feeling combined with my new sharp memory and improved senses made me feel much more capable.

Feeling like a challenge I grabbed the Rubik's cube from my desk, which I could just about reach from my bed without losing the duvet, to test myself. I studied the sides of the Rubik's cube and again I could easily remember where each colour tile was, which was a pretty impressive feat as there were nine tiles on each face and six faces which made for fifty-four positions to remember.

I began to randomly turn the cube trying to get certain colours to line up. I found I was able to quickly locate colours and decide to move them, almost as if my brain were a little faster or more focused on the task at hand but I couldn't make more than one face correctly so I sat down to think.

I had thought that there was a significant improvement on my mental capabilities and felt like I should be able to do this but I wasn't having much luck. After a few minutes I realised that I was just randomly trying to make a face then do the rest of the cube and I was fairly certain that wasn't possible so I needed to adjust my thinking a little in order to make use of my new and improved mind.

I studies the cube intently for a while and thought about the different kinds of moves I knew I could do, which tiles I could easily swap and which ones I couldn't and found that a new method was starting to take form in my mind. I didn't magically know which was to turn the cube to finish it, that would have taken most the fun away from it, but I felt like I knew what I had to do in which order and how I could do that.

Having thought the problem through I went about rearranging the puzzle cube and in no time had all the edge pieces where I wanted them and now just had to make the corner pieces match up. Looking at all the corners I noted which ones were in the right place and which ones were in the wrong place and after a while it was obvious to me which ones I would have to move first. I began solving the cube with enthusiasm and in less than a minute and with no more than twenty turns I had a cube with solid colour on each face.

I did an embarrassing little victory dance which made my bed creak noisily and made me furtively glance about to check no-one was nearby to have seen it.

Deciding to test myself again I rearranged the cube randomly with my eyes closed until I was satisfied that it must have been very messed up when I opened my eyes again. I studies the cube intently for a few minutes and though I could see that doing it the way I had the first time would solve the cube I could also remember every twist and turn I had made and knew I could do that in reverse.

Refusing to give into temptation I used my other method and got the edge pieces in place and then solved the corners and this time it took me less time, probably no more than fifty turns. I knew that professionals claimed to be able to solve a cube in less than twenty turns by using an extremely efficient algorithm they had learned but I was impressed with myself none the less.

Pleased with my ability to solve a Rubik's cube I tried to think of other things I could try with my new better memory and head for planning ahead. How would my new visually oriented memory help me with other tasks? I'd always been a lousy chess player, perhaps that might be different now?

Deciding to try it out I hopped out of bed and sat in front of my desk and shook my mouse to wake the computer. As I did so I noticed several things; one, the lights weren't on but I could see, two, the radiator wasn't hot but I wasn't cold either, three, the house was very quiet and four I'd been using my new improved senses without conscious thought.

I glanced at the time on my computer and saw that it was only four in the morning, so I was up early then, not surprising my father had mentioned a decreased need for sleep and this was clearly that.

The lack of cold bore more thinking about, there was a noticeable difference between the warmth of the bed and the warmth of the room in general but it wasn't cold to my skin which my room usually was. (The only downside I could see to living in the cellar.) 'Perhaps quarter demons had an immunity to cold?' I wondered. I dismissed this, if anything demons would be immune to fire but perhaps their affinity to fire meant they didn't feel the cold as much? I remembered reading the twilights books and the werewolves running hotter than most ordinary people, so perhaps it was like that, I had an affinity to fire and so I was hotter and thus less effected by cold or I was heating up the room with just my body heat.

The second option seemed a little far out but not impossible so I figured I'd have to find out which it was. I realised that when I thought I was using all my improved senses I was wrong. I was using my normal five but I wasn't using my ability to sense magic.

I decided to try sense magic again and see if I could see any effects around me which might explain it. It took a moment to get the sense on but once it was I realised that I wouldn't be turning it off again soon, it took no effort to maintain and it gave me a view of the entire room that didn't conflict with my vision at all and could be very useful.

I examined the air around my body and my body itself and found that all the small red wisps, of what I had put down to be fire magic, that were within five feet of me would brighten and instead of drifting about with the white on their own would dance about my skin in beautiful patterns.

It seemed then that I had some kind of innate attractiveness or magnetism to fire magic. This could be a problem if people noticed that the air near to me was always warmer than anywhere else. I tried to focus on the fire magic in the air going to as it was before but I had a disappointing result, nothing happened.

I began to think about what could be causing this, if I was producing some kind of magnetic field that strengthened fire could I perhaps reign it in? I focused on compressing the field to only a foot away from my skin and had much more success but all the 'wisps', as I had begun to think of them followed the field in and actually got bigger, I noticed that the air around me was now toasty warm, a comfortable sensation but also a very noticeable one.

I imagined the field going back to how it was before and it slowly expanded again and the wisps began to shrink once more until they were about the size they were before but I noticed there were almost twice as many. It seemed that I had actually caused them to replicate somehow.

I focused instead on pushing the field outwards figuring that if smaller made them more powerful then larger would weaken them perhaps. Instead they began to grow again and started swirling about me more energetically but on larger orbits. Letting it go back to resting again I began to really think.

It seemed that no matter what I focused on I made the wisps stronger, something that made me fear heating the room until something caught fire. Perhaps it wasn't the size of the field that mattered but the energy I put into it then? How could I reduce that energy? After I had no new ideas I sighed and gave up when I caught sight of the Grimoire.

"Duh." I said aloud while smacking my forehead.

This had two very noticeable effects, one my head exploded in pain and I realised my voice sounded different somehow. As the pain began to recede I thought about my voice.

"What is happening to my voice?" I asked no-one in particular.

Again I noticed that it was different but not in any noticeable way. It wasn't deeper I don't think, nor higher and I was speaking English, something I checked by swearing a little in the other languages I was now magically proficient in. My voice just seemed to have a richer tone to it, almost as if it were layered with magic somehow?

I grabbed the Grimoire and quickly began searching for effects of the 'Magical Trait Awakener' but all I found was a short passage saying it awakened all magical traits in one night of sleep. I sat stumped for a minute before remembering that my traits would be listed under Demonic traits.

I flicked to the right page and looked down the list of traits whilst thinking that I really should have checked these before awakening all my traits.

There was no part specifically for quarter demons but there were the traits of my father and grandfather listed and it stood to reason I would have the same traits but less powerful or less a few. The list was quite extensive and in no particular order.

"Limited ability for telekinesis, improved balance, fireproof skin, natural resistance to mind magics, ability to control ambient fire magic, reduced need for sleep, improved sensory memory, extremely heightened senses, ability to hover, radically increased strength, increase in speed and reflexes, tougher skin, preference to night/dark, greater elemental link with earth/death/fire magics, gift of tongues, mesmerism, mind reading, aura sight, teleportation, walking on water, wilting of all nearby life, magical senses and exponentially larger magical reserves."

I whistled after re-reading the list.

"That is some list of powers." I murmured softly.

Some of the powers had a little star by it and a key showed that those were ones my father couldn't do, these included; Flying, Telekinesis, Wilting effect, Teleportation and gift of tongues. Though the last had a note that he could speak several languages but not all like the true gift of tongues.

I looked through the definitions written by my grandfather and father for some of the ones which weren't exactly obvious. The mesmerism effect was described as a subtle undertone in the voice which could only be heard by powerful Mages and made everything the user said more believable and even allowed them to hypnotise people when used correctly and this was finished with a note to check out the mind school for more information on Hypnotism and Mesmerism.