I should've gotten a real job!

The day started like so many days. With a morose look at my bank balance and the dread feeling I was wasting my time.

When you tell people you're a magician the reactions always about the same three: "You must be smart", "Can you make me a love potion" and "You must be really rich".

Well. I certainly didn't feel smart, didn't want to go to jail and the only people making serious money from this stuff were the ones who'd been rejecting every application I'd sent out so far.

I sighed, my mood lifting a little as I rummaged through the cupboard, the herbaceous zing of Elmdew and Starberry leaves hit my nostrils.

I'd gathered both at the equinox nearly 3 months ago and almost forgotten about them after drying.

A real Witch would've been able to make them usable over the course of a few hours, but the Earth Mother and I hadn't ever been on the best of terms so I'd needed to go the long route of simply waiting for them to cure from leathery, toxic biomass into a fragrant tea on their own.

Humming I turned on my stove and weighed out exactly 8 grams of combined leaves before offering a brief benediction. I squinted, seeing the tiny motes of faith swirl on an unseen breeze before dispersing through the roof. Good. I might not be Gaia's favorite little girl but at least she was willing to accept the respects offered.

Small victories.

Water in one hand and a bread roll stuffed with butter, radish cream cheese and my dad's cured beef in the other I sat down at the heavyset table and slowly poured the water onto my tea in a circular motion, humming a blessing as the clouds around my mind slowly began to clear.

The liquid turned turned first blue, then purple, then an inky black with silvery stars twinkling in its depths. The rising steam drew itself into a lightening storm, crimson splotches appearing in the liquid wherever it struck.

The clouds shifted into an shower of fireworks, then the reaction stilled leaving a gently pulsing mauve liquid swirling in the cup.

Nailed it.

I took a cautious sip, citrusy pungence greeting me right before a profound feeling of *ruby* swept through my senses, followed by a rapid succession of cinnamon, *wind* and ochre-speckled *nostalgia*. 

I stared at my concoction, equal parts impressed by - and perturbed at - my success.

It wasn't often I'd gotten to dabble in Herblore or Alchemy but it'd be quiet rewarding to track down the recipe and its associated spells over the course of my research into the beginnings of magical practice for my presenta— I froze.

I'd be late. Real late. No transit at this hour and I knew for a fact I had neither the stomach nor the skill to fly like some picture book witch on a broom.

'Think, think... Through the fey's hedge is a terrible idea, if you hijack a summoning you'll be expelled, uuuh'.

I was close to just giving up and dealing with the consequences later before the most obvious solution struck me.

I grinned, finished my tea and quieted my mind, building the complex structure of golden-blue lines of another little something I'd discovered during research in my mind.

Some spells are impressions. Some are words. Some are situations engineered to convey a meaning so powerful the world itself follows it.

This one had all classic the makings of early proto-High Magic when it'd first branched from the practices of the Chaldean priest-kings by blending them with the Art of Binding an as of yet unnamed neighboring culture had brought in on their trade caravans. To them, the heavens and the earth were an interplay of harmonious Geometries and their spells reflected that. Their diagrams were built right within the mind - known to them as the Heavenly Ziggurath - to shape the raw untouched Quintessence underlaying creation through nothing but thought alone.

Elegant as the Working was, the reason for the decline of this kind of magic soon made itself known as a sort of searing brightness at the edge of my mind like a vortex of cosmic fire trying to pull me in. 

There'd been many names for it over the years- The One, the Central Fire, the Creator, It - and while millions thought to understand, harness or merge with it I knew that a second of letting myself perceive its persistent bone rattling keening wouldn't grant ascension but absolute annihilation as my sense of self would be ripped to shreds and splattered across the entire universe in an instant like a bug.

Slowly, painfully, I made myself turn away from the soul annihilating beauty at the back of my mind. Paradise came at a cost I simply couldn't even begin to comprehend the nature and extent of.

"I katab asmani, sarnosh mara faramush kon"

(Oh scribe of judgements, veil thy eyes and take thy pen from the record)

I scribed a series of sigils in front of me with my left hand, right pressed to my lips in a shushing gesture. This part was most certainly inauthentic to the original spell, being rooted in a Tyrian way-finding ritual I'd bought from a dubiously legal pawn shop a while ago. On its own it barely did anything if you weren't lost on a boat surrounded by mists but I had reason to believe it'd meld nicely with the rest.

Stilling my heart took a daunting amount of effort, but finally each beat came slower, each second stretched longer and the room began to shimmer and blur at the edges.

Thum—

I fixed the hall in my mind, letting myself forget where I was, my sense of self growing and fraying to touch all eventualities.

I was no longer a body. I was no longer a soul. I was a mere suggestion unmoored from anywhere and anytime.

"I" stepped forward.

The world lurched, a maelstrom of locations and people streaming by at the edge of my vision. This part of the journey was always the most difficult. One moment of failing to curate my awareness, one instance of letting my mind get drawn to any one thing and who knew where I'd end up.

The school.

The school.

Weathered hallways.

Students.

The scent of approximated lemon that seems to cling to everything.

You're there. 

Where else would you be?

You're just going to—

—mpp

My heart finished beating right as I rounded a corner and ran straight into the opposite wall. My stomach lurched. Not so much from nearly smashing my nose bloody as the *metaphysical* impact of violently skittering back into spacetime at a 90 degrees angle.

Hands. I had hands. Two of them. On both sides of my body. I wiggled my fingers, marveling at the fact how adorably limited they were, being apart of "me".

A second wave of nausea hit. It was as if existence itself had suddenly taken note of the way I'd tricked it and was narrowing its eyes at me in profound displeasure. Though of course there wasn't much of an "as if" about it — "Lugalbanda's Auspicious Arrival'' wasn't a translocation spell in any traditional sense of the word so much as multiple luck and divination spells grafted on top of each other until the weave of fate straight up lost track of you.

I ducked into an archway after realizing my unhinged appendage wriggling and stumbling gait had started to draw a crowd. 

In a place where the world itself knelt to one's will the ones who couldn't control themselves were a liability.

I made my way past the giant lecture halls where Astrologers, Artificers and Alchemists learned what passes for "useful" magical skills in their eyes and alighted at a worn set of stairs labelled "Contract Law (Celestial)".

"Just another day in paradise" I muttered, letting myself fall "forward" into a section of the school ever so slightly removed from consensus reality.

 The light shifted a few semitones, as if the sun outside had suddenly been reduced to a candle of guttering tallow. The air tasted not just dusty but *tired*, as if the elements themselves had begun to wear thin with age.

My initial awe at the sheer ingenuity required to anchor an entire wing of the University to this timeline had only been muted slightly upon learning it'd been done out of grim necessity for tax breaks and space considerations. Apparently dimensional backwaters didn't count towards total acreage so they'd decided to tuck the less glamorous parts of the faculty away where we wouldn't be sit around being poor in the presence of *real* magicians.

I sensed another presence before I heard her steps, slowing down to indicate I'd enjoy the company.

I snuck a brief glance to the side, Tonya catching my gaze and giving me a small but earnest smile.

As a true Witch her skin had already begun turning waxen, torquise pupils appearing slitted when you looked at them from just the right angle.

I'd always found it very attractive. Maybe that's why I'd never been chosen — Maybe the All-mother didn't want to enable my vanity. 

I let myself fall behind as we reached the door to the lecture hall, equal parts to adjust my clothes, bask in the sight of Tonya's nearly floor-length braids woven with multicolored scarves and for the simple reason that her hat was simply too big to allow two people to pass through next to each other.

It's been said that a witch's hat grows with her ego, but Tonya'd always been more on the demure side so I'd filed that under "rumors born from envy". Not that I didn't catch myself envying the hat from time to time but I'd always believed that if you can't change the circumstances you can at least change how you let them change you.

As the rest of the class filtered in I felt my heart sink; There was no way on earth anything I said would be interesting enough to be worth wasting their time with— my thoughts were interrupted as Professor Leng strode into the room, rapping his skull-topped staff three times to quiet the student body. 

"Good morning!"

His sonorous voice carried easily, though given the modest size of the room that seemed superfluous. I'd never quite gotten used to such a deep, full-bodied tone emanating from a form that looked like a gold and ruby-veined marble statue dressed in an ornate leather waist coat. I'd been surprised when he'd been extraordinarily forthcoming in venturing the full documentation on how he'd transferred his soul into the construct but none of us had the faintest idea how to even begin to make sense of it. Apparently "Okeke-Reinhardt Aetheration" and "Occluded Pneuma-vectoring" just wasn't quite within the realm we'd been treading in so far.

We answered with a much less enthusiastic greeting in turn. Blessedly he didn't believe in the humiliation ritual of yelling at us until we'd answer in a volume and instead called me up to the front for my presentation. 

Scanning the diagrams I had a sinking feeling I'd chosen a topic far away from my area of expertise.

'You have no expertise in anything, Lana, just be as confidently terrible as you can be ' I reminded myself, standing up straighter. Sure it was probably an incredibly unhealthy way to motivate oneself but I'd never claimed to be a role model. Best to leave that one to clerics.

Professor Leng nodded encouragingly, having no doubt picked up on my mood from both my smell and stance. 

I squared my shoulders, slowed my heart and let my gaze sweep across the audience in a confident, unhurried Arc.

"Magic is a story. A story of power, a story of loss, but above all a story of compromise and adaptation".

I let myself feel the rhythm of my own words, fear refining into focus.

"Do we honor the gods? Yes. Do we ally ourselves with greater powers? Of course. And yet—"

I held up my finger in a way I I'd practiced way too many times at home.

"A Magician always makes itself open opportunity, the exceptional, the way less travelled".

Internally I cackled hysterically, the sheer fraudulence of my display staggering in its absurdity. I supposed there was nothing be done about it now except push onward and forward.

"The Rationalist ask how. The cleric asks why. But the Mystic?"

I let the word hang for a few fluttering heartbeats.

"The mystic asks, why not?"

I let my gaze wander across the crowd. No laughter yet - a werew— shifter named Marianne that'd been banished from her tribe even nodded, shaggy white hair bobbing up and down - which renewed my fervor.

"We've forever adopted, borrowed, melded together what stood seemingly apart, learned what we could and discarded what we had to. For religion, heterodoxy is catastrophic. For us, it is survival. When two traditions merge, three new ones are born. Where they splinter, each one become stronger".

I opened my bag and withdrew a prism.

"Permission to cast, Sir?"

Professor Leng gave a curt nod.

I locked my fingers together in an archaic gesture and hummed, causing the prism to invert itself inward. The working though simple drained me considerably, a smell like moss and blood beginning to fill the hall.

"Not all magic draws from the same source, be it in terms of culture or energy. The first spells were prayers and even today many workings incorporate what we've come to call 'Theurgy' but it was only later we evolved to use 'magic' in the classic sense despite the gods not seeing fit to gift us with innate potentially of our own. These early spells drew on the caster's own life force. Its Elan, Breath, or whatever else people called it around the world. It is here we see the first true split occur — Blood magic seeks to increase and improve what can be done with a single casting, occasionally utilizing sacrifices for a more dramatic effect".

I tried to keep my voice even, though the veritable sinkhole the subject had revealed itself to be made that difficult.

"As the first cities arose and mankind became more specialized so magicians reached out for new sources of power. Please, prepare. This one might sting".

I pointed at the prism with two fingers pressed together, ever so slightly opening myself up to Source of all there is.

"[Splinter]"

The hall filled with gasps as the single word of Truespeech *yanked* at the ambient Quintessence like wool torn from a bramble of thorns, the warped construct falling into hundreds of rapidly spinning pieces.

"Rather than drawing power from ourselves these early magisters learned how to trace the lines of meaning holding together our world to the source, chancing upon the leftover unshaped stuff from which all things were spoken into being. We don't know what these early mages dubbed this power, but later it came to be known as Quintessence".