Secondary Magic Training

GRACE UNDER FIRE

Sorano walked into the forest, stretching lazily as she looked around the path she had once walked along nearly every day. Before they had left for Tetsukazu, she and Hoshi had lived in a wooden cabin in the East Forest, having not enough money to rent out a place in Fairy Hills. It had been a much more luxurious place back then, and didn’t really fit their needs, anyways. Nowadays, she did have an apartment in the dorms, but spent most of her nights sleeping on the office couch – it was easier than walking back and forth all the time. Even so, she did occasionally miss the calm and quiet of their forest home, but she was back again with a different purpose. Rina, the older mage whom she’d worked with on a previous job wanted to learn solid script, and there wasn’t any reason to say no. Sorano knew that many stronger mages in guilds would have several mentees who they would tutor in magic and fighting, and she herself had mentored Corliss for a brief amount of time before the girl had disappeared. However, this would be the first time she ever taught someone her own magic. Trying to think back to when Speculo had taught her mirror magic, she considered how she should go about this process with Rina.

Rina was a nature-based requip mage, so she doubted the girl had much experience with magics as conceptual as letter magic. Requip was a straightforward magic meant for battle, and from what she’d seen from Hoshi, nature magic was something that depended highly on a strong will and love for nature. Focus was an important part in casting spells with the exceed, but solid script would require a different type of focus. Seeing Rina there, she waved cordially, glancing at the research books she’d brought along. Solid script was in fact a quite common magic among smaller mages, those who didn’t have as much capacity as professional mages did due to the easiness to adapt to the casting routines and to come up with small, simple spells, so there were plenty of books out there about it. However, was solid script really the best choice for Rina? Letter magic came in all shapes and forms, just like requip magic, and all stemmed from a similar root.

They would walk on into the East Forest, settling down in a sunny clearing. The air still held some slight winter chill, but it was warming up nicely. “So you want to learn letter magic, right?” Sorano took one of the books Rina held, a guide on the family of magics. “First, let’s take a look at the more theoretical stuff: What sort of magic do you think would fit your needs the best?”

She pointed at the first magic with a finger. “Runic magic. This magic takes longer to cast due to the complicated symbols needed, but have powerful and long-lasting effects. They’re great for duration attacks, protection spells, or causing effects upon your enemies.” Flipping a page, she gestured at something else. “Solid script, which is what I use, is a sort of creation magic as well, able to create things through writing words to describe them, then using visualization and confidence to produce your desired results. It’s easy to learn and cast basic spells with, but getting into the advanced aspects which include writing in very specific details of a spell or very detailed visualization and conceptualization – even design, can be difficult to do in a short period of time.” Another page turn. “Oriental letter magic is similar to solid script, but involves writing out pre-set spells in oriental lettering. It doesn’t require visualization or design like solid script, but it is harder to memorize the spells if you don’t speak Oriental. There is also less variety, as spells are difficult to customize.”

“Written hex magic is an interesting one as well – this one is a holder magic that involves a magically imbued pad of paper. If you write a word on it, instead of having to visualize or put down details, the pad does that for you and all you have to do is throw the sheet of paper to cast a spell.” Turning to the last page in the section, she pointed at the last standard letter magic. “And this is Oratory, something different from the rest in the sense that you don’t have to write, but speak instead. It’s sort of an illusory spell. You speak certain rhymes or chants to cast spells, or speak in a certain way to paint an illusion for your enemies. Good for people who are good at memorization or are very articulate.”

Sorano closed the book with a soft sigh. She’d tried most of them before, and even used slight aspects of Oratory in her own magic. They had their own advantages – each and every one of them, but she had settled down long ago with solid script. That would not be changing anytime soon. Original letter magics could be created as well, but usually they required basic knowledge of some standard letter magic before they could be developed.

GRACE UNDER FIRE

Solid script, huh? That would have to be it, then. They settled down in the clearing, and Sorano considered what a good spell to start off with would be. Something simple that Rina was familiar with would probably work best, right? Carefully, she flicked her fingers through the air, writing out the word “flower” in neat, clean print. Following her fingers, the words formed in a sort of ghostly shape, transparent and barely visible to the naked eye. Pressing her magic into the wispy letters, they squeezed together, turning green and white and yellow before a simple daisy was formed between Sorano’s fingers.

“There. In my mind, when I visualized a flower, the first thing that appeared was a daisy. As such, I focused on it, and pushed my magical energy into the word according to this image of a daisy, and it appeared. It might take a little longer at first, but it should be easy enough after a few tries." She dropped the daisy, watching as it disintegrated softly on the grass below them. “It might be difficult at first to manifest a perfect flower – most people aren’t used to imagining something in such great detail, and it might turn out feeling wrong, or smelling wrong, or even looking kind of wrong. To create the right effect, you have to keep in mind the texture and feel of it, as well as the smell and even taste of it to make the flower as real as possible.”

The letter mage manifested a flower again, except this time she handed it to Rina. “See? This one looks like a daisy, but when you touch it, it feels too dry and too brittle, because I didn’t visualize t properly. How about you try it?”

GRACE UNDER FIRE

The letter mage watched as Rina wrote through the air, attempting to form the same spell that she herself had cast. Carefully, the words condensed themselves into a flowery shape, forming a cheery tulip. On the outside, it looked great, as was to be expected from a mage that worked primarily with flower-based magic, but she raised an eyebrow when she took a whiff of the bacon-like odor. Interesting things Rina must have thought of to produce such an odd scent.

A blabbering flow of apologies left Rina’s mouth as she anxiously hurried to try again, but Sorano waved it off. “Don’t apologize to me, okay? This is a magic that you’re working on for yourself, not me. If you must apologize, do so to yourself.” It was what Anna had told her many times before when she herself had been learning the magic, gasping when a shard of ice melted almost instantly into frigid water that coated the spring grasses with frost.

Once more, Rina wrote the word, and concentrated it into a flower shape, taking longer than the time before. Slowly, a rose came into shape, smelling and feeling and looking exactly like its natural twins. “Nice job. You’ve got the basics of solid script down already. However, for a professional mage, there is much more to learn than basic hedge witch techniques such as this."

Now, Sorano wrote the word flower again, but she put in the image of thorns and wrapping vines, dripping bright petals with teeth-like edges, and cast it outwards, releasing a net of thorny poisonous vines and flowers that draped over the ground before her. Quickly, she waved her hand to get rid of it before it could do much damage, and turned to look at Rina. “See, with a simple word like flower, you can come up with all different types of ideas for a spell to be used in combat or support. It does require more magical energy to sustain it, but it is infinitely more useful than a simple creation spell like the one you just did. Perhaps you could try weaponizing this?”

GRACE UNDER FIRE

Sorano watched with narrowed eyes as Rina concentrated on one of the wooden dummies, carving the letters through the air at what, to the letter mage, was an agonizingly slow pace. Letter mages would naturally grow to become extremely skilled at writing and reading at incredibly fast paces, but she had to understand that Rina was still only a beginner. As the word formed in the air, they would disintegrate into sharp-edged petals that flew at the dummy. As they dissipated quickly, Sorano inspected the scratches they made. It seemed pretty good, honestly. She herself, as a mere twelve year-old at the time of learning had taken far longer to get to this level. It had been her first ever magic, and had required lessons on how to utilize ethernanos and her first origin in the first place. Rina, as a far more experienced mage seemed to be picking it up at a very brisk pace.

“Nice job. However, you will not have the time to slowly trace out letters and concentrate images and words into spells on the battlefield, right? One of the hardest parts of learning the magic is to learn to do these spells one after another, coming up with phrases and images on the spot to solidify. So…”

Reaching into one of the mirrored panels on her skirt, Sorano extracted a thin tome, handing it to the nature mage. “See this book?” She opened it to reveal a story about a man who turned into a tree, one filled with intricate words of description and imagery. “A good drill for practice is to take an entire book, and write out every single word as a spell without preparation beforehand. This will increase your ability to make stronger and more permanent spells, as well as casting them faster.”

Demonstrating, Sorano took the tome, tracing the words on her leg as she sat down on the grass, the words springing up around her one after another. After a few seconds, a bright magic circle had formed around her as she wrote, flipping pages within mere seconds. As a minute passed, she reached the end of the book. By now, the air around her was filled with letters, words that slowly combined to form the figure of a man, one with wooden limbs that resembled that of a tree’s branches. Closing his eyes, he slowly solidified into a tree before their eyes, roots stretching into the ground and arms falling into branches.

“The spell does not need to be offensive or supportive in any way, as this is merely a drill. However, it would be best to practice until you can cast a charging spell like this in only a minute or so.”