Episode: 5.13

--- Ember ---

“Okay, so according to this thing there are multiple styles of spell craft, or ways to do magic.” She started, taking a moment to look up from her book as she and Aiden made their way back to the Devil’s Kiss bar, since apparently, he’d managed to grab everything he was looking for when he ditched her earlier.

“Yep.” Aiden confirmed from her side, having made sure he was standing between her and the road for the entire trip back to the bar, something he hadn’t bothered with on their way to either the Sanctuary station or the Deviant Market.

“And, your job involves actually dealing with Arcane too, right?”

“Uh, yeah…” Aiden admitted with just a touch of hesitation. “Why?”

“Well, which one do you think I should focus on figuring out.”

“While you should probably learn a little more theory before learning anything practical…” Aiden huffed on his (cancer stick) as he thought about his answer. “I’d have to suggest Sign-craft for when you actually start using magic.”

“Sign-craft, what’s that?” She asked, resisting the temptation to look through her book since she had a first-hand expert next to her, meaning she didn’t have to rely on the word of a book written over thirty years ago.

“Like your book probably told you,” Aiden started. “Arcane spell craft is divided into multiple ‘Crafts’ or methods of using magic, and while they all follow ‘Affinity’ rules, their strengths and weaknesses are different when actually casting.”

“Okay,” She nodded, having read most of that already. “but what is sign-craft?”

“Sign-craft, is… Well, it’s a bit tricky to get the hang of, but once you do, it’s probably one of the most stable spell-crafts out there.”

“So, it’s the ‘safe’ option?” She asked, mildly put off that the guy who repeatedly bragged about killing monsters for a living was telling her to take the safe route.

“Sort of,” Aiden admitted with a so-so gesture of his hand. “The way signs work is that each ‘sign’ represents a small piece of common spell code, then by chaining them together you get a proper formula. Now because they're made from a string of constants rather than variables…” He paused mid-sentence and looked at her. “They’ve already taught you what those are right?”

“Yes, I know basic algebra and science.” She answered in a dull tone, wondering when he’d quit underestimating her.

“Good,” Aiden nodded, either completely missing her attitude or flat-out ignoring it. (Probably the second…) “So, because it’s a string of constants rather than a bunch of controlled variables, it’s far easier to predict the spell outcome, and significantly harder to fuck it up due to miscarrying one of the components.”

“And if I do happen to fuck it up?” She asked, curious about how safe the ‘safe’ option really was when it came to magic.

Aiden thought about it for a moment and shrugged. “Even if you do fuck it up, the range of results will still be close enough to your intended effect that you should be able to figure out what went wrong.”

(So, sign-craft is the ‘safest’ option because it’s the most controlled or is it just that predictable?)

“What about the other crafts?” She asked, wanting an idea about her other options.

“Give me a second…” Aiden scratched at his neck as he thought about his answer.

“Well, there’s Will craft which has the most control and power, but the actual power costs are damn near obscene once you hit about… C rank, I think?” Aiden offered before shaking his head as he continued. “And that’s not even including the difficulty of actually memorizing the balance between your will and the spell formula you’re using… All in all, people rarely bother learning anything past a few levitation tricks in that craft.” He finished with a shrug.

(So, yeah, not very viable unless I have a ton of magic to throw around…)

That made her pause.

(Actually, how do I check how much magic power I have compared to others?)

“Next is Wand-craft, which has the greatest ease to learn and the lowest power costs.” Aiden continued, unaware of her musings. “The problem with this craft though, is that if you’re ever separated from your foci, you lose your ability to do magic. Which is why Wand-craft is considered more of a hobbyist style than anything, you know someone who uses magic more for around the house than for an actual professional reason.”

(So, a 'maybe' then?)

It wasn’t like she was planning on using magic professionally. Hell, if Aiden wasn’t offering her so much professional help, she might’ve even held off on learning about any of this stuff until she was back with her mom…

She shook her head before she could go down that train of thought, before once more focusing on what Aiden was telling her.

“Next is written craft, which is… arguably Enchanting turned Spell Craft?” Aiden admitted, flicking a bit of ash from his cigarette. “Though I have seen other crafts used in place of written as far as Enchanting goes, it’s just absurdly difficult to pull off.”

“Okay, and Enchanting is?”

Aiden gave her look before shaking his head. “Right, keep forgetting your new to everything in the Masquerade.”

(And what’s that supposed to mean?)

“So, let’s see… Enchanting is… well, it’s basically carving a spell into the magical signature of an object and having the spell trigger under the right circumstances.” Aiden explained, (kind of poorly) as he put out his cigarette on a nearby crosswalk light. “But because of this a lot of Arcane have to write out the spell formula before applying it to an object. Now written craft does the same thing, only instead of being applied to an object, it’s applied as an instantaneous effect to the world around you before burning out.”

“So, written is… temporary Enchanting?” She summarized, figuring it was easier to just assume Enchanting was the same thing from the few fantasy novels she’d read.

“Eh, close enough.” Aiden shrugged as if it didn’t matter, before continuing his verbal dissection of Arcane spell-craft. “The problem with written though, is that since you have to write the formula out it’s also the slowest to use unless you prepare everything in advance. Which in turn makes it the least versatile when you’re in a situation where you need magic right that second, though it is fairly common for Practitioners to use.”

“Practitioners?” She asked before remembering something. “Isn’t that what Ashe said you were?”

“Yeah, glad to see you’re paying attention.” Aiden nodded approvingly, before answering her main question. “You see Practitioners are people who know how to ‘use’ magic even if they can’t ‘produce’ it.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Right, so Arcane have this…” Aiden rolled his hand through the air trying to think of a word, “this ‘spark’ to them, that lets them generate and manipulate magic. Practitioners on the other hand, can’t generate magic, nor can they manipulate it as easily as an Arcane. Instead, what they do is learn the rules magic follows, and then manipulate those rules to make magic work for them.”

“So, doesn’t that mean anyone can use magic, if you’re just learning the rules and bending them?”

(That can’t be right…)

“Correct,” Aiden nodded. “Practitioners are technically not Deviants, because they are no different from a regular person than say a heart surgeon is. In fact, anyone who takes the time to learn it can become at least an D-rank Practitioner if they want.”

That... that brought her up short.

“Wait, but if anyone can learn it, why isn’t everyone practicing magic?” Because she felt very ripped off that throwing fireballs around could’ve been part of her school curriculum, and for whatever reason it wasn’t. (Which sucks!)

“No different from a regular person than say a heart surgeon.” Aiden repeated giving her a look. “Anyone can become a Practitioner if they want, it’s just difficult as hell to become a good Practitioner, and few people want to actually waste time on a difficult skill that they have no realistic use for, when they know they won’t be too good at it.”

“What about cops and stuff, shouldn’t they all know magic?” (They could do like a ‘magic safety’ class.)

“Practitioners usually fall under ‘forensic specialists’ on the police payroll, since they’re only needed for crimes where magic was used. No different than a ballistics specialist, really.” Aiden shrugged.

(That make’s sense, I guess…)

“Though, if there’s active use of magic, then they’re supposed to share the case with Sanctuary the same way they do with SWAT for non-Deviant cases, since Sanctuary has a fair number of Practitioners and Arcane both on payroll.” Aiden smirked as if something funny just occurred to him. “In fact, you met the former Lieutenant of the New Haven magic division earlier today.”

She thought about that for a moment before remembering the odd woman with white hair and red eyes from earlier.

(Right, that Ashe lady…)

“So, Practitioners are like… the forensic scientists of magic?” She asked, trying to work it out for herself.

Aiden tilted his hand in a so-so gesture. “As far as professions go… Practitioners usually work forensics, work for Sanctuary, function as magic lawyers, or operate as Hunters.”

“So… physical or theoretical law enforcement.”

“I guess?” Aiden shrugged, before waving it off as he got back onto his original topic. “Anyway, there are a few other styles, but they’re all more or less derivative of those four or an even more blatant variation of Enchanting. And between Will, Foci, Written, and Signs, Signs have the best balance between ease of use, power, cost, versatility, and dependability. Hence why I’d prefer you to learn it over the other ones.”

(That… makes sense… I guess he’s sold me on it.)

After a moment considering what he’d told her about the different styles of magic, something occurred to her. “You… know a lot about Arcane, I mean I know you’re a Practitioner, but you seem to know a lot on how Arcane specifically work.”

“It’s in my job description, hell, that’s why you asked me isn’t it?” Aiden shrugged, giving her a look. “When an Arcane fucks up I’m the guy stuck cleaning up the mess. So, learning everything I can about magic and any other subject people in my profession tend to run into, makes it all easier. And while I can’t teach you how to do true magic myself, I can at least teach you what not to do, and how to logically connect that with what you’re going to learn.”

Aiden paused for a moment before shaking his head and rubbing the back of his neck. “Well… if you want me to anyway…”

“Yeah, I-” She stopped herself, realizing what she was about to say, before thinking it over and figuring (why not?) “Yeah, I guess we could do that…”

After all, she was stuck with him for at least a month either way, so why not take advantage of that to figure out how the whole Masquerade thing works.

Aiden watched her for a moment, as if surprised she’d actually agreed, before nodding with a slight smile as he turned forward. “Cool.”