“The nature of magic, you ask ? Why would you want to know that !!? Are you planning to waste sixty years of your life trying to understand this thing ? Dear god. What are you, a student of professor Vardt ? ...Yes, I imagine that much. Only Anton and his bunch would try to play scientists and philosophers and look for “the secrets of mana”. Pfah ! The guy used to be a decent mage, frying and freezing armies and cities, and look at him ! Now he only waves around his theories about magic and his stories about child prodigies on remote crap-holes he calls islands. So why don't you go and ask HIM instead of wasting my lunchtime !

-rant, Hector Talir, headmaster of the Academy”

* * *

Erin

Azcheron and Erin left for Quarras the next day. The villagers gave them food and supplies as thanks, more than they needed, in fact.

The trip to Quarras was about a week's worth of walking. As neither of them had a horse, and since they didn't want to burden the villagers any more by asking for one of their already sparse mounts, they had no choice.

They didn't mind, this would give them more time to get to know each other. Erin took a liking to the boy and felt indebted to him, and Azcheron had seemingly already decided she was interesting since he saw her fight.

* * *

Nightfall had already occurred and they had just lit a fire. Since Azcheron could use fire magic, they only needed wood. They were sitting next to the flames, waiting for the meat to roast.

“I've been wondering since the battle, but don't you ever use incantations or spell constructs ?” Erin asked, thinking about how he ignited the fire without chanting.

“Oh. I rarely need to. I learned a few spell formulas but I'm much more comfortable with normal mana manipulation.” Azcheron opened his palm and mana gathered around it. He made the air swirl and spawned a few sparks to demonstrate.

“You're using raw mana ? I'm not very knowledgable about magic, but isn't it supposed to be hard to do it the way you do ?”

“So you already know about it. Indeed, it does require years and years of practise to be able to do it freely. Well, I've been doing it since a was a small child so that's that. I've basically been taught how to twist, shape, convert, compress and whatnot the mana around me since I was born.”

That's impressive. That must have demanded a lot of talent and hard-work.

She prided herself in her swords skills earned through sweat and blood, but magic appeared way more difficult to her.

Azcheron continued. “So most of the time, things like chants and catalysts are unneeded clutches to me. And I also almost never have to draw directly into my own mana pool.”

She knew that there was basically two ways to cast magic. You either used raw mana, which you'd find in your body (your mana pool) or in the environment, or you used structured mana, which was obtained after converting raw mana with a chant, a catalyst or some sort other tool.

Using unrefined mana was ultimately faster and allowed for much more flexibility, but it took a long time of practise, and concentration to get it right – and if done badly it would be extremely inefficient, and a waste of energy. That's why most mages learned how to use pre-constructed magic before everything else. This way they would get familiar with the inner-workings of a spell and then try to reproduce it with raw mana.

The mana from your own pool was much more easier to work with, but its quantity was often very limited. The accessible mana differed for everyone but it was a precious resource regardless. That's why people would rather preserve it for the most complex and delicate spells.

A mage with a good affinity with natural mana could be deadly in a forest or others places with thick mana atmosphere, because he'd hardly run out of fuel for his magic.

“Aren't you incredibly powerful then ?” Erin asked as she realized the extend of his might.

“Hahaha ! Well, yes ? But honestly, that's about it. There are a lot of spells out there that I don't know how to cast or that are simply too difficult, and surely even more that I've never heard of.”

She nodded. She knew that while Azcheron could use healing magic, which depended a lot on mana manipulation, he had not a perfect control over it. Mastery of raw mana wasn't worth the dedication if you didn't know what to do with it. Knowledge and understanding of spells was another hurdle that came with it.

“Still, where did you learn all that ? I don't know of any places that train children in magic to this extent.”

“It's a tradition of some sort in my clan. But since we live pretty much isolated from the world, not many people know about us and in return there's much we're ignorant about.”

Erin pondered in silence what she discovered. The crackling fire made her remember the food roasting.

She grimaced. The meat was burned.

* * *

Azcheron

Azcheron was in a merry mood. Erin had been asking him many things the past days and he was quite happy to indulge in her questions.

At some point, they discussed about the categorization of spells and types of magic they knew of.

“I think it's a common misconception in magic schools,” he explained. “At least from my point of view, you can't just separate spells in categories that easily. Everything is more connected than it seems.”

“But don't some applications of mana turn out to be quite different from regular spell-casting ? Take illusion magic for example. It has nothing to do with a fireball or an enchantment.”

“You'd be surprised. Illusion magic works almost the same way as purely offensive magic. Both are all about influencing the physics of the world in a specific area.”

“How so ?”

“Most mages don't really care about that so that's why it's not widely known, but to cast a fire spell, you need three things : heat, fuel and air. These are in fact the things necessary for lighting a regular fire, and mana is just providing the missing elements. In the same way, ice magic is all about freezing an already existing liquid. Most of the time it's water from the air or a river but it can be anything. Even blood. But you never, ever, create ice out of nowhere. In deserts and such places, I think ice magic would be highly inefficient, not because if would quickly melt, but because you would hardly be able to materialize it.”

He paused to make sure she was following.

“Then, that's the same thing for every single spell. You just use mana to force a phenomenon. You change temperature, create movement or convert matter. Mana can act as fuel for your fire and you can produce heat with it, or inversely, cool down and freeze water. By the way, that's where manipulating raw mana freely becomes interesting, because you get to really understand what happens instead of dumbly reciting a chant that does everything by itself without you really knowing why it works.”

“And it gives you more possibilities and flexibility when you create a spell.”

“Exactly. Then what about illusion magic ? Well, it comes down to stimulating and tricking the target's senses. And the best way to do that is by manipulating mana to induce specific sensations. You have to twist particles and physics in a precise way and in a precise area – around the target's body – to create smell or to alter someone's vision for instance. That would be really hard to do without a chant and even I can't do it... But I'm fairly sure that's how it works.”

Azcheron hesitated to mention the illusion artefact that the bandits had been using in the forest, but he realized he completely forgot about it after finding it. He still had no idea about how it worked nor what it did specifically, so he kept silent about it.

“I suppose healing arts work in the same way ?” Erin asked, apparently having already caught on.

“More or less, yes. It's even more difficult, however. You have to basically recreate organic matter, such as muscle tissues, bones and veins, from almost nothing. But that's the trick, you can't do that with nothing as a resource. Most of the time you'll have to use air, dust and blood as a basis for the new materials. I can't even begin to tell you how annoying this is. Converting matter is an extremely slow, convoluted and unrewarding process. Everything has to be perfectly planned in minute details, and it's very easy to mess up. It takes an awful lot of concentration and time. Most often than not it's so long that the patient dies before you're finished. And you have to know what you're doing. I couldn't heal nerves and eyes injuries for instance, because I don't know how any of it works. But in the end, setting aside the astronomical amount of work and knowledge required for healing magic, it works the same way as the others spells.”

Azcheron felt somehow proud at the moment. He wasn't boasting, he gave an honest explanation, but as he talked he realized that healing magic sounded seriously impressive. And he could use it. Hopefully it didn't look like he was bragging. In any case, Erin seemed to be even more admiring of his talents now. She must have been thinking about the exhausting efforts it took to heal her wounded body. He did spend something like two hours of continuous mana manipulation on her most critical injuries, after all.

Hah ! Don't you dare worrying about that, he reassured her in his mind. I did it because I wanted to !

“Mmh. I see how it all comes from one main idea now. Cheating the natural laws of the world, that's quite scary. There should be tons of things a mage with advanced scientific understanding could do... Actually, the people who designed some of those spells must have been monsters of knowledge ! And that means said knowledge is either kept hidden or has been lost with time... ”

“Exciting, right ? But ! Back to the erroneous distinctions between magic types. Did you know that enchantments and curses were actually the same thing ?”

“Eh ?”

“What does an enchanter do after all ? He casts spells with long or permanent durations. Most of the time, said spells are passive ones and are only slightly affecting the nature of something or someone. And that's it. When I use Manasprint or any other self-enhancing spell, I just alter for a period of time my body's constitution and perhaps the environment around me, like air density and resistance.”

Erin nodded. “And an enchanted sword is just a blade with magically enhanced hardness or with a lighting spell engraved to it, with duration as a goal.”

“So what's stopping me from magically dulling a sword or messing with someone's body with the exact same method ?” Azcheron questioned with a daring grin.

“Ah, I see where this is going. Curses are the same thing, but with negative and detrimental effects.”

“That's the gist of it.”

“So it's all about perspective. I guess there are some cases where the border between enchantment and curse depends on the person and the situation.” Erin thought for a moment. “Like if I were to cast a spell that'd make me permanently immune to pain. It'd be a useful enchantment in a fight but anywhere else it'd be like a curse since I wouldn't ever feel anything anymore. You could almost say that illusion spells are like curses then.”

She catches on quickly. Did she really say she didn't understand much about magic ?

“Did your clan teach you that ? They must be at the fore-front of scientific and magical research.”

“No, I owe it to my friend. He's a professor at the Academy. Well, everything I told you is basically his theory about the nature of magic. He's the man who instructed me on science and healing magic.”

“Ah, is he the one you wrote a letter to ?”

“That's him. Since I'm coming there sooner that he thinks, I wanted to warn him of my arrival.”

“Warn him you say...” She chuckled. “Are you planning to cause an uproar ?”

Yes !

“Why, I would never.”

* * *

Just like that, almost a week passed. It was now dawn, they were about to start packing up their stuff. They made camp on a hill and from here they could see the walls of Quarras in the distance. They should be able to arrive to their destination before the end of the day.

Before resuming their advance, Erin took a moment to check and clean her cicatrising injuries and change her bandages.

“Do you need help ?” Azcheron inquired.

He could do all the cleaning, cauterizing and stitching with magic. That wasn't healing per-se, but most magicians learned how to do this basic stuff even before trying their luck with the healing arts. That was even more of a given for spellblades and any warrior in general who could use a bit of magic.

“I'll be okay, thanks. I learned how to dress wounds and keep them from getting infected.”

“Did you pick that up during your time with the mercenaries ?”

“... No, that was before then. I had already decided on what kind of life I'd live and I sucked at magic, so knowing first-aid and a few tricks was a must.”

Mmh ? So she did try to learn magic... he thought. She didn't look like she wanted to talk about it so he didn't pry.

“Here, all done. We should get going.”

It was an uneventful week overall. All they did was walking and talking. They didn't encounter any brigands or beasts. They passed a few travellers going in the opposite direction, but they barely greeted each other and simply warned them about the recent bandit attack.

As they walked, the tall walls of grey stone appeared rougher and sturdier with every step. They could see guards patrolling the walls and keeping watch at the gates. Beyond the walls, a few buildings boasting enough heigh could be seen, a castle among them.

Finally, they arrived at Quarras.