The study of magic is not for the frail or meek. I am learning a great deal as apprentice to Val Maxis and there is a great deal more to master. Because I had not received any formal training before, I did not know that the arcanum is comprised of five elements which make up the world: wind, earth, water, fire, and darkness. Arcane spell casting is the manipulation of these things, which I taught myself to navigate by touch. Now I am learning to navigate with all my senses, with charts and apparatus, with formulas and design.
Those basic, arcane elements, I now know, also correspond to the mind, body, spirit, energy, and entropy of all creation. To read a man’s thoughts is to perceive wind. To call down lightning requires evocation of fire and darkness. An illusion like invisibility might fuse all the elements depending on whether one wishes to avoid detection by sight, sound, essence, thoughts, arcanum, or divine energy. The complexity of the elements involved and the nature of their binding determines the difficulty of the spell. A novice, like the children that come to the tower, are capable of one or two out of hundreds of possible configurations. A master, such as Val Maxis, can perform nearly all. My self-study put me somewhere in the vicinity of three dozen unique arrangements.
I also came to understand that it is possible for someone to be specially attuned to an element. So much so that it can eclipse other elements. My favored element is darkness, and I apparently have no affinity to fire. This is both a boon and a curse. While I am capable of entropic bindings that are otherwise beyond my skill level, I am outright incapable of doing something as trivial as lighting a candle. This knowledge, while bitter, is knowledge all the same. With it I can learn to overcome my weaknesses and put my advantages to better use.
The most important thing I have learned so far is that, in order to harness arcanum, one needs to gather it and apply one’s will to shape it. Yet there is a flow to it that has eluded me until now. As a boy, when I had first focused my will and drawn upon the currents of arcana, I gathered it my body. It was painful—especially that first time—and taxing. Sustained casting will fatigue even the hardiest wizard. Val Maxis taught me a better way. To use my body as a conduit, as I had been, requires a great deal of strength. A wise man like myself knows there is a limit to strength alone. In the realms of hand-to-hand combat, the Monks of Nagris are renowned for their feats of power and dexterity. Rather than setting one’s stance, mustering all one’s strength, and then striking, the monks are said to flow from one movement to the next, drawing on the momentum of the whole to execute each move with peerless potency. Apparently it is the same with magic. Drawing arcanum from a state of flow and forcing it to rest in one’s body before applying new force in a new direction is possible, but does not take advantage of its natural momentum.
I can now direct the arcana rather than corral it. This one piece of the puzzle is the reason for my leap from initiate to near expert levels. It also constitutes the bulk of my reeducation. The decades I have spent training my mind and body to act as a conduit for arcana gave me great fortitude, but bad form. I spend all my free time retraining myself.
A lesson I’ve learned more easily in my time here is that Val Maxis and I are not compatible. His idea of shaping minds involves a certain amount of indoctrination. All his pupils, save for me, are veritable clones of their master. Little Val Maxises everywhere. They do not question his wisdom, authority, or motives. I question them all. He is clever enough to notice. I am stubborn enough to continue.
I reflect upon our most recent disagreement. I was to create a Familiar; an infusion of arcana into an animal host. Once invested in this way, the creature is irrevocably linked to its master and has a variety of uses. I chose not to use one of the vessels prepared for me. Instead, I modified the spell to infuse my owl and leave its mind intact. The infusion gives my owl many advantages, such as heightened intelligence, a more robust constitution, and a means to share senses between us. With continued augmentation and attunement to the arcane, it may eventually be able to cast spells on my behalf or speak.
My owl has been with me for eighteen years. Caught as a fledgling, I trained it to obey my commands and remain nearby but I never demanded that it be my pet. It had merely been my symbol of station to the lizardmen tribe I attended; what they called a shaman. So, the owl takes care of itself and is largely free to do as it pleases. Since leaving Solmienya, it has even more freedom and will sometimes be gone for a day or two as is its want. I do not want a pet, nor do I want another thing following me around. It’s a liability. But, since the owl has been my companion so long already and I have no intention to change that arrangement, it seemed logical to enhance our relationship.
Val Maxis thinks that a Familiar is a tool simply to serve its master’s will, and so a vessel with an empty mind is superior. He does not see the value I do in letting an owl be an owl. Yet another example of how I am not content to do as I am told in all matters arcane.
Rote memorization will simply not satisfy! I must understand thoroughly, intrinsically. Why can’t wind replace earth in a spell of paralyzation? Certainly a man who believes he cannot move is just as effective as actually disrupting his movements. Can water and fire be used to mimic the effects of the divine magics bestowed by gods on their priests and clerics? Is that not essentially what is occurring, only through an extraplanar medium? How is it that a man cannot make this himself with the tools before him? How is necromancy different than golemancing? Or resurrection? Why are some souls able to return yet others are beyond reach?
This last one is a particularly sensitive subject for me. Resurrection is to defy Ner Ngal. Yet I hunger for knowledge and nothing is off limits. I must confront all existence if I am to understand it. And when I understand it, I can control it.
The Wordbearer Chronicles is a dark fantasy web series with new passages on Tuesdays.
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