A Real Magic Lesson

 “So, this bag; how did you make it?” Charlotte asked bluntly. “Is the thread a special material or something?”

“Uh, no, it's just thread... I just stitched it into the right rune like my book showed. I had to figure out how to overlap them properly and that took a while, but I managed to figure it out.”

“Okay... just show it to me,” Charlotte finally requested, visibly stumped and annoyed. She waited as Clair fetched the bag and handed it to her. “This... there are complex enchantments on this bag, but if you didn't use any special materials, I don't understand how it would function,” she muttered, turning the bag around, upside down, shaking it a bit. “This is... wait, this design... it's channelling magic around and around in a feedback loop, isn't it?” she laughed like she had found the missing piece to a puzzle.

“Well yeah, otherwise it just sort of fizzles out,” Clair shrugged, the concept familiar and fundamental to her at this point. “I mean, it took a few years of practice before I got my first one to work, just a single simple one, but eventually I did. Regidor's books were confusing and I couldn't read when I first found th-”

“Wait!” Charlotte cut her off, fumbling the bag and barely catching it. “What did you just say there?”

“...That I couldn't read when I first found-”

“No no! Before. About the books!” Charlotte clarified, looking up at her anxiously.

“...That they were written by a wizard named Regidor?” she answered slowly, uncertain if that was the right answer.

“Well then... There's a name I haven't heard in a while,” she said, letting out a low whistle. “He used to live not too far from here, in a remote tower that he would get away to.”

“Yes!” Clair perked up. “We actually-”

“But I don't get what he was messing with here, with these runes?” she kept talking, cutting Clair off as she reminisced in her own little world. “He once mentioned the concept in passing, as a hypothetical, but I didn't think there was much to it. But here, like you said... I see!” She jumped to her feet with speed that surprised Clair. “The runes! It's all about the shape and overlap, mimicking the alchemic composition to create their polar attunement, and fixing it a cycling pattern to conserve energy so that it can run for magnitudes longer than regular enchantments...” she rattled off the explanation to herself. “...But the precision that this would require is seems so fine, each east ring has to be completely different in shape, not like a general substitute you can use in a potion. Not the mention the west ring being so deeply mixed in... this could change how magic is done, granted the skill it requires is likely far above a beginner.”

Clair sat and stared blankly, an uncomfortable smile on her face as she failed to grasp any of what Charlotte was talking about.

The woman turned back to Clair, pointing at a specific overlap in the design. “This here, this overlap between the 2nd degree east and the 7th degree west rune; how did you stabilize these without the 11th degree east rune interfering and breaking it down?” she quickly asked, leaning in more as Clair reflexively leaned back.

“I-I just... I just followed the books,” Clair stammered. “There were so many and it took a long time to figure them out, but I found that they, just... worked together?” she answered, unsure what Charlotte was asking about and second guessing her own work.

“Yes, but the requirement for this... Ah, you activated it here, right?” she asked, indicating to exactly where Clair had placed her thumbs.

“Yes, that's right, that spot there. How did you know?” she responded, surprised by how quickly Charlotte was understanding what felt to Clair like her life work.

“Well, anywhere else and the 2nd would overtake the 11th, but here is the shortest contact point for the 3rd to go between them, smoothing out any chance of interference,” she said with a soft smile. “Plus... he always had fat thumbs, so it's a bit of a giveaway.”

Clair couldn't hold back the small laugh at that unexpected comment.

“Didn't you notice his journals were such a big print? He has, well, not stubby, but thick fingers,” Charlotte continued, encouraged. She reached in, suspecting by now what the bag held, and pulled out a book. “Ah, yes, this is his style. All technical, no grace,” she chuckled as she flipped through it lightly. Clair knew it closely, the book on simple two circle runes, probably the 5th of the 13 that he wrote if she had to speculate, based on how the books progressed in complexity.

“...That's not to say that he didn't see the art in magic; only a true artist could create something like this,” she mused, “but he always saw things differently; even had his own weird terminology for stuff...” She turned back to Clair, pointing at one of the simpler designs that she had been able to create, a small rune that made fire. “This here, a 3rd degree north rune, overlaid with a 1st degree east rune... should light something on fire if I had to guess...” she mused, scanning the page of writing until she saw she was right. “Ah-ha, yes, that explains it,” she smiled.

“Um, miss Charlotte...” Clair hesitated to interrupt but felt very out of the conversation on her own bag and books. “I don't really understand what you mean; east and west? And degrees?”

Charlotte frown, closing the book and putting it back in the bag before setting it down on the floor. “Put your hand here,” she instructed, holding up her own, fingers slightly spread. Clair nodded, putting her own hand palm to palm with the old woman. “Feel this... do you know what it is?” she asked. Clair waited, starting to feel a tingle, an energy similar to her own.

“...That's magic, right?” she asked, certain she was right.

“Correct. And now?”

The sensation shifted, buzzing against her now, tingling like she was holding something prickly just without the pain.

“Magic still... but different, somehow?” she answered, slower and less certain, her previous rhetorical question replaced with a more sincere one,

“It is,” Charlotte nodded. “And now...?”

The sensation changed once again, growing colder and feeling like it was trying to repel her hand slightly.

“...Magic still... but how are you doing that?” she asked, confused what was going on.

“Come here, child, into my work room,” she stood and started walking, waving at Clair to follow. Clair gave a quick glance over to the goblins and saw Measles seemed fine just watching over Mumps as he slept, his chest rising and falling evenly. She turned back to the work room door and headed inside. Charlotte was already walking back and forth, holding two identical cups.

“Here, hold this,” Charlotte said, handing her the first cup and setting the second aside. There was a light purple liquid in it with an intricately cut crisscross of wood floating on top. “Put your finger in, and I want you to think of a cloud as you let out a little bit of magic.”

Clair nodded, silently dipping her finger into the cool liquid and pushing the wooden lattice just under the surface. She concentrated, slowly letting out a trickle of magic from her finger. The liquid bubbled, keeping cool but slowly letting off a coloured vapour that smelt sweet with a prickly tinge.

“Perfect! Now, do it again,” Charlotte praised her, taking the cup and replacing it with an identical one; same colour liquid and same floating wooden lattice as the first.

Clair smiled, eagerly taking it and dipping a finger in. She imagined a cloud, puffy and purply-pink, letting the magic flow. The liquid seemed to bubble and stir slightly but there was no vapour. Clair huffed slightly, pushing harder, letting more and more magic flow as the liquid merely bubbled and stirred and heated.

“Ouch!” she yelped as the heat of it finally burned her finger, sticking it straight into her mouth. It was sweet, lacking the prickly scent the first had.

“Normally you don't want to stick unknown liquids into your mouth but that was only berry juice,” Charlotte told her, a smirk on her face as she looked at her student. “Can you tell me what went wrong that time?”

“I... I don't know! I did the exact same thing as before but it just burned me.”

“You let out more power and heated it up more, that's what burned you. See, this cup just has berry juice in it with some lemon. The first had a hint of ginger. Had you known that you would have been able to do this,” she continued, sticking her finger into the cup. The liquid immediately calmed, turning blue then a deep red. She took the cup out of Clair's hand and drank it in a hearty swing, letting out a content sigh as she licked her lips. “Now, as much as magic is about materials, it is also about intentions. You imagined a cloud both times. The first time the magic flowed easily and interacted properly, creating the vapour. The second time, your will conflicted with the materials, resulting in nothing but heat, only a little bubbling. The strongest magic can override the materials to an extent, but still doesn't have the full effect. Ginger is a south pole material while lemon is north-east. Do you see what I mean?”

“I... I think so?” Clair slowly answered, her interest in learning overcoming her snubbed pride at clearly being set up to fail. “...Your magic, sort of... knew what to do and did it?”

“Heh, more or less. When you use magic, you know what it wants to do. Sometimes it fails, sometimes it succeeds, but each time it has been harder for you because your runes, are, well... very complicated and require precision. But that influence appears to have dulled your will. It is purely subconscious but with training can be controlled. Watch.” Charlotte took the second cup and poured more juice into it, adding some more squeezed lemon to it in front of Clair. She stuck her thumb in, barely touching the floating wood, and furled her brow, grunting slightly as the juice boiled and warmed, slowly letting off a tiny bit of vapour. She tugged out her thumb and sighed contently. “See, it shouldn't have done that; that was pure willpower and focusing on channelling my magic with a southern pole.”

Clair raised her eyes in surprise at the display, now fully grasping what she was seeing. “So, you forced your subconscious to make your magic do something you knew it shouldn't? And that worked by substituting the... south pole that lacked?”

“Exactly! Most folks that can channel their magic a specific way can only use one pole at a time, rarely ever two. That's what I was doing when we touched hands; first pure raw magic, then I channelled different poles. It's not my speciality though and we usually make up for this by materials that are naturally attuned to other poles, allowing them to overlap and create more complex effects. At a certain point, you can just let pure, unpolarized magic flow, the materials taking care of the pole attunement. However, your magic the second time was barely southern, just focused on willing it to do what you want. It's a practised skill, balancing both a forceful will with actual power attuned to that pole.”

“So... south pole evaporates things? And what is the wooden floaty thing for?” Clair asked, the significance of the small lattice bugging her.

Charlotte hesitated, appearing to search for the right words. “It appears that you learned to use complex magic with a lack of any fundamentals,” she eventually said with a sigh. “Regidor always had his own way of doing things, and this book appear to be for his own personal usage. I've looked through some of his books in the past and they are horrendous at explaining things; it's a wonder you learned anything at all from them,” she grumbled.

“I'm sure you've noticed that different runes you create have different effects, but all of them fall into one of four categories. We refer to these as north, south, east, and west,” she clarified, Clair's head spinning to keep up. “So, to break it down in simple explanations, not knowing what he said about all of them, your bag has three east pole runes and one west. The first three are all to transform and suspend the objects inside while the final just reinforces the overall structure in its state to keep it whole. ...Uh, think of it like this: north pole magic builds up and creates while south pole breaks things down and destroys. East magic transforms and transfers energy while west magic reinforces and strengthens objects.” She stopped, letting Clair process all of that.

“The wood in the cup, by the way, is oak, same as my paddle,” she continued on to the second question, after a pause, now that the foundation for a proper explanation was given. “It's naturally east pole attuned and helps distribute magic, letting me channel the flow more consistently; perfect for beginners, too.”

“Okay... that makes sense. He used each of the four types in the books but didn't really explain them too well.”

“Figures; those definitely look like his research journals. They aren't for teaching or instructing. And he always was rigid with direct contact magic, so I'm not surprised he would never mention will or poles or anything like that in them,” she sighed. “Honestly, I'm no teacher, and neither is he. It's a wonder you could make heads or tails of any of it.”

“I, uh, thank you?” Clair awkwardly smiled, not sure if that was a compliment. “It was really the only books we had there.”

“Yes, yes, at the goblin commune; Measles told me about it while you were asleep.”

“Yes, at the- what?” Clair turned and looked up at her, head tilted to the side in confusion.

“Oh, it's quite alright, nothing to be embarrassed about; some humans keep them as slaves, the reverse is only nature. I didn't realize there was a tribe so close to Regidor's old tower though. I wonder if I should be keeping an eye out...” Charlotte mused, a bit tied up in her own concerns.

“I... yes, sorry,” Clair said tersely, confused now at why there was clearly something going on with their story, but she decided to trust whatever Measles had been up to. “I- we... escaped the goblin commune and are trying to find Regidor. To thank him, of course,” she quickly added, blushing slightly at the thought of meeting him.

“Well, if you want to go meet him, he's probably still in the capital,” she said with a shrug. “Haven't seen him in years but he's probably doing his research on something... not that he ever told me it seems...” she grumbled, glancing at the stack of books.

“Well...” Clair started, wanting to defend him. What can I even say though? I don't even really know him, she thought, shrinking back a bit. “...not everyone's story is so obvious,” she finally spoke up, still annoyed at the story Measles had come up with for her. “I mean, maybe you should see him. You could even come with us and then teach me magic on the way and-”

“Woah woah woah!” Charlotte cut her off with a raised hand. “Don't be getting ahead of yourself. I'm no teacher; I told you that already. We're just having a chat about magic to make up for your ignorance, nothing more.” Her reprimand was stern and Clair shrank back even more. “...Listen, I don't mean to tell you to leave here with nothing useful. The closest town is about a day's walk southeast of here. The road runs along the edge of the forest and you can take it south to the town. They can help direct you from there,” she told her, trying to keep the directions simple. “I'll give you more than enough food and water for the way and some money to help. Don't talk to any travellers until you reach the town, okay?”

Clair nodded, trying to take all of that in. “Okay... I think I get all of that,” she answered. “And, Charlotte... thank you. I didn't mean to be pushy.”

“No no, nothing to it; I just have my work here and can't leave for a while. But I can't afford to have the three of you sticking around either,” she slowly said. “But you're not the most trouble I've had out here, so that wasn't so bad to have you around. Rest for the night and head out in the morning, though you'll likely have to make camp overnight. The three of you can share the bed if you want; I have some work to do anyways.”

“I... that would be nice. Thank you,” Clair smiled. “And just between you and me, I think you're a great teacher.”

“Heh, I appreciate the flattery... but I'm staying here still,” she huffed, annoyed, but Clair just barely saw her pleased grin as she turned away grumbling.