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Sweat.

That was what made a great mage. Rikard's father was [i]not[/i] a great mage. Had he been born a Hunghorasz instead of an Ambrus, he likely would have been an embarrassment to his storied bloodlines. This was not a problem that Rikard suffered from. He put in the work.

It was 3:30 in the Hours of Dami and he stood perched atop the parapets of Fieldgate Tower, a pencil clenched between his teeth, flipping through a booklet. Then, he found it and began writing: 

[i][color=0072bc]Tellos 23, DZ55: Revised Hypothesis [s]11[/s] 12

This isn't Atomic magic, not exactly. There's no direct heat and the radiation doesn't seem to be destructive. The phenomenon should fall under magnetic, firmly, I believe. Current working idea is that the rays act similarly to that thermal spell. They excite matter and cause rapid movement of its constituent parts. This naturally generates frictive motion and, hence, heat. [/color][/i]

The rays, however, didn't appear to have unlimited range or power. Depending on how much he poured into them, they could pierce perhaps a few inches. Why, then, were the inner reaches of larger things often hot? Rikard wasn't sure. [i][color=a187be]A mystery is just a question that doesn't have an answer... yet,[/color][/i] the young thaumaturge reminded himself. [i][color=a187be]Soon it will, though. I'll bust this one open too.[/color][/i] He hadn't been idle. He'd been actively experimenting, inventing, reinventing, refining, and revising theories and techniques. It was likely just a form of heat transfer, but he had to be diligent. Everything - [i]everything[/i] - in the known universe had a mechanism, and it was his job, as a mage and a scientist, to find those and bring them to light. While it was true that there were many who were content to treat magic as some inexplicable force that simply [i]worked[/i] because the gods said so, they were lazy and, when they spouted such gaff as if it were fact, they became something quite a bit worse: in a word, morons. No matter how high their RAS levels, they would never achieve all that much with magic. Hence, [i]sweat[/i]. He'd scarcely known the ancient Paradigm - that colossal figure of magic with whom he shared an ancestry and a resemblance - but one of their couple of meetings had led to a conversation and the primacy of relentless observation and experimentation, the necessity of constant [i]learning[/i] had been branded into a then eleven-year-old Rikard.

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So, he stood here, high above most of the city, thaumaturgical robes fluttering in the nighttime breeze, and drew with an almost maniacal intensity from the energies about him, building an immense charge, controlling it, intensifying it, splitting it! The steeple of this old church had the unique misfortune of being constructed with a hollow metallic cap and, through previous experimentation and deductive reasoning, Rikard had correctly recognized that metal seemed to have the ability to deflect these unusual rays. 

[color=a187be][i]Sorry, Shune, but I'm doing this for SCIENCE[/i][/color], the youth thought. [color=a187be][i]Of all the Pentad, I suppose you'd understand most.[/i][/color] In this case, the steeple would serve to capture and contain the rays, bouncing them back towards the target. It was, in this instance, a rather nice pastry that Ayla had baked, but it had gone cold and was not near as tasty as it was when warm. Stuffing his pencil once more into a pocket, Rikard placed the dessert into its improvised cooking chamber through a ventilation hole. His watch was wound. His manas pulsed with electrical energies. He turned a small dial, depressed a button, and thrust his hands at the hole, releasing the waves that he had been practicing. [color=a187be][i]One Hugo Hunghorasz, Two Hugo Hunghorasz, Three Hugo Hunghorasz...[/i][/color] he kept time manually as well. He could compare. He could work on his accuracy. For twenty whole seconds, Rikard Ambrus acted as a conduit, pummelling the pastry with his energetic waves. Then, as he was finishing up nineteen, his watch let out a buzz and he stopped. From inside the metallic oven wafted a delectable smell. He reached out to touch the pastry and found it was [i]quite[/i] hot. He counted again, to ten, and grabbed it. [i][color=a187be]Moment of truth,[/color][/i] he bolstered himself. He bit in and it tasted... quite edible, actually. It was even tasty: perhaps a touch soggy, but tasty nonetheless. The boy sat, cross-legged on the roof, and scarfed down the rest of the treat, dusting off his hands and clothes. He grinned uncontrollably and, for a moment considered standing again and shouting something like [color=0072bc]"Victory!"[/color] from his perch. People... probably wouldn't appreciate that, though. He settled for taking out his notebook and pencil and concluding his earlier entry.

[color=0072bc][i]At the risk of sounding utterly unscientific: fuck yes! It worked...[/i][/color]