The Essence of Elemental Magic

By Sovent Ladrigoff

The purpose of this book is to give an intuitive understanding of magic for those who know nothing of it. As there are four different schools of magic (Arcane, Druidic, Health, and Summoning), as well as many branches of each, there are various ways to tackle the complex subject matter of the mystical arts. Therefore, this book will focus on a branch of Arcane magic known as Elemental Magic, which is the “magic” of seemingly creating fire, water, wind, or rock where there was none before. Since Arcane Magic is most widely used by Mages, we will use Mage terminology rather than that of Druids, Healers, or Summoners.

Before you can begin using magic, you have to understand exactly what magic is, from an academic standpoint.

There are three ways to harness energy for your own use: Consumption, Manipulation, and Transfer. Energy Consumption is nothing special, as anything you do consumes your energy, and this is the default way that everyone uses energy. Energy Manipulation, otherwise known as Cultivation, involves using various techniques to condense energy into your body, allowing you to forcefully expel it in a certain way that varies based on how you stored it. Finally, Energy Transfer, which is universally known as “Magic,” entails the careful transfer of energy from one place to another, using a medium called mana. We will now expand on the basic concepts of Energy Transfer.

With very few exceptions that we will not go into in this book, any consumption, manipulation, or transfer of energy always follows the Conservation of Energy. Therefore, to harness one type of energy in some way, whether it be through Cultivation or Magic, one needs to give up another type of energy. For Arcane Magic in general, the way this works is through a magical Focus. Though some powerful and experienced Mages could use their own mind as a Focus, novices generally need a mana-imbued object as one. A Focus is a dual-purpose object. One, a Focus is able to slowly absorb and store energy beyond the Mage’s minimal bodily energy reserves. Two, due to its high mana density, it can easily facilitate the transfer of energy from itself, or the Mage’s body, to another point in space. The effective transfer of energy is proportional to the inverse square of the distance, similar to the laws of gravitation and electricity, because the mana absorbs more of your energy the farther it leaves your Focus. However, the proportionality constant is a function of the mana density of the volume that the energy is being transferred through, instead of being a fundamental constant of nature.

As you can see, the mystical wonders of “Magic” is nothing more than a wonderfully complex, yet fundamentally simple interplay between energy, mana, and various techniques that could lead to wide-ranging results. Therefore, for the rest of this book we will be tackling the mathematical derivations for the basic elemental applications of Energy Transfer as well as the qualitative theory behind what is known as “Elemental Magic”!

…

One good thing about spending a vast portion of my entire life reading books and cultivating my love to learn is that I could both read and understand books faster than most people and in one sitting. After reading through the entirety of The Essence of Elemental Magic, I realized that I have been missing out! This was quite possibly the most interesting topic I have ever had the pleasure of reading in my entire life, and there was no way I could have found anything like this in my local library. I felt giddy knowing that I, though through a horrible turn of events, had the opportunity to gain highly censored knowledge that could only generally be found within wealthy circles, and also in a part of the palace which would have seemed forgotten had I not seen some servants walking around.

If I wanted to read through all this entire bookshelf before, I didn’t know how to describe my feelings in words at this moment.

I got up, locked the door to make sure no servant would even accidentally come in here since they don’t seem to anyway, and started reading another book from the shelf, this one titled Mana Theory: An Introduction, which detailed the physical characteristics of mana and its origins. According to this book, mana was just fixed, condensed energy in space that was too “stubborn” to be harnessed but very useful as a medium to transfer other types of energy through it, keeping it intact until it reaches its goal. Mages would have to use their Focus to direct their energy through the mana and set a particular goal.

And just like this I read through a few more books, almost as if I was back in my local library, reading book after book after book without a care in the world. Only, these books are heavily censored and very few people actually get to read them. Also, I do care now...

I need to know why my entire hometown was obliterated and I need to fight back. Whoever is guilty made a big mistake by not killing me. Though… why? Why did they leave me alive? I groaned at the mystery that still makes no sense to me. But all that is for later, I thought. For now, I will be leaving this room as a wielder of magic, even if it takes me through the entire rotten food supply here to do so, I resolved.

After a few more books, my brain started overloading at the information-rich books, so I found some pieces of paper along with a pencil and started jotting down a crude summary of everything I’ve read so far, confident that this simple action would help me retain all my knowledge for later use when I would actually attempt to use magic with the knowledge that I’ve gained through all these books.

While I was tremendously excited at the prospects of actually wielding magic like a Mage, the hyper-logical part of my brain assured me that if someone with access to an entire bookshelf of highly secret books on magic, literally inside a Mage’s old lair, could not learn to use magic, then who could? Obviously people had to discover these things as well, in the beginning, so some people must have found some of these ideas without any books or external help.

“If they could do it without any help at all, then I have no excuse to not figure it out with all these books at my disposal -- books that people would kill for,” I told myself.

…

About three weeks later, after reading through the last book on the shelf, Enchanting Runes with Arcane Magic, I finished my notes with the last of my available knowledge.

Wow, my notes are long enough to create another book! I laughed, flipping through my good one hundred pages of notes. Luckily, the previous owner of this room had enough leftover rotten food to last me this amount of time with some wise food rationing. I didn’t leave the room a single time. Not even when I heard what was probably a servant walk by my room. It seems that the servants come in here for a monthly cleaning. Luckily, even though my door was locked, the servant didn’t even try to open it. I assume that the servants don’t bother cleaning this room for some reason; maybe they know the owner isn’t coming back or something. On that topic though, I was rummaging through some of the boxes in the back of the room and I found a crumpled up letter to a “Dabiva” who seemed to be the Mage whose hospitality I was now abusing. The letter was relatively short, but I got the idea of exactly what happened after reading through it, which I postponed until I finished reading all the books to prevent further distractions.

“My Dear Dabiva,

I send this letter to warn you of the impending disaster stemming from the eastern mountain regions of Vokh. I have managed, through certain means that you surely know, to uncover a terrible secret hidden beneath the mountains. Since you are so close to Vokh, I knew I had to let you know. I implore you to join me on my quest to stop this disaster from ever occurring. I am sorry for not being able to be more clear on the particular details, due to fear of compromise, but I promise to tell you everything as soon as we are able to talk. However, believe me when I say that the fate of the entire Hoxwelton Empire rests on our shoulders now. We are the only ones who can save our nation. Imagine what rewards we would get if we succeed! Please write back to me as soon as you get this. I know you told me last time that you were done with this kind of life, but please, just think of what’s on the line and come back. Just one more time.

Love,

Jokhen”

After reading that letter, I took a deep breath and wiped some sweat off my brow.

Whew, that went from some kind of official message straight to a personal life drama! I don’t even want to know, I thought. Ironically, however, I actually understood what this Jokhen was talking about, since the clue about “disaster stemming from the eastern mountain regions of Vokh” told me all I needed to know. Basically, about seventy years ago, there was an ancient golden dragon that left its lair deep below the mountains there and went on a rampage against the Hoxwelton Empire. According to legend, the brave heroes who faced the dragon head on were obliterated, and the dragon curiously stopped its rampage after eating the Emperor and flying off to the north past the Erulan Sea.

That always made me think that dragons were sentient, but popular belief would disagree with me, I thought, Regardless, I assume that Dabiva… Galamon, probably, caved and went alongside Jokhen to fight the dragon. Well, we all know how that turned out, I sighed, looking around Dabiva’s room and admiring her life’s work, now knowing what happened to her. Shaking my head, I cleared my throat and said, “Dabiva Galamon, if your soul is out there listening to me right now, then I want you to know something: I will be making full use of your life’s work to eventually kill some of your descendants.”

After laughing my head off at my own dark joke, I realized that I hadn’t laughed like that since I first woke up in my burning house. And then I realized that the first thing that made me laugh in pure unfiltered joy was not thinking about peaceful times with my family, creating new tools in the cell to survive, or even finding a box filled with so many gold coins that I doubted anyone had back in my hometown, but my own joke about murdering people. After brooding a bit at my pathetic self, I decided that humor exists to make people laugh and it would be a crime to feel bad about jokes, no matter how dark they are. I thought back to the irony of my current situation and laughed the night away.