"The world is ford by a plethora of building blocks, called ’Elents.’ The science of working with those Elents to change the world according to our will is called magic. Therefore, what magic can do is limited to what those elents can do. Anything else is in the realm of fairy tales."
That is the official narrative about magic that the Royal Academy drills into every single student. Actually, it’s the narrative repeated by all magic schools throughout the human realms.
To do magic is to work with the foundational elents of the world to change it according to your will.
You can create and manipulate fire, water, electricity, and other elents, but never destroy them directly. The only way to counter a spell is to oppose its effect using other elents.
Like using an earth shield to protect you from the explosion of a fireball.
Ti magic? Space magic? Nope.
Creating poison with magic? Nope.
Healing? Nope, as well.
Healing is an ’art’ that so priests of the Church are able to do by channeling the goddess’ power through so sacred artifacts. It’s their exclusive prerogative.
And the goddess’ blessings are an ’art’ that is not included within the concept of ’magic.’
They are often called Blessings, instead of spells, arias, or magic.
Well, at least that’s what they want you to believe in. The reality is actually very different from that.
According to the teachings from the Royal Academy, the Primary Elents of fire, water, air, and earth are the basic materials of the world, and all the composite elents are fusions of them under certain proportions and rules.
For example, lightning is born from fire and air, while fusing fire and earth gives lava.
That way, there are virtually infinite composite elents, because there are virtually infinite ways of combining them.
But that narrative doesn’t stand much to scrutiny. My favorite example is ice magic.
In the narrative, the ice elent is air plus water. But that’s far from all the story.
As I learned pretty early, the ice elent is a misleading na. It would be, at best, a ’cooling elent,’ but naming it that wouldn’t have the sa impact.
But, if we are to be technical, the so-called ice elent is actually a reverse fire elent, because it works by taking away the heat of sothing.
And then you add water only so you can have the ice shards that are water that was cooled down to the freezing point.
But they can’t say that, because it would go against the ’you can’t destroy elent’ narrative pushed by the Church.
I tried to put that argunt up during class a couple of tis, with different magic teachers, but they simply refused to listen, and one was outright angry at .
In any case, being able to blast people left and right with fireballs, lightning bolts, and ice spears is nice and all, but... it misses on the core of magic, to .
"Magic is the art and science of causing change to happen in accordance with one’s will."
Those are the wise words of an Earth’s sage that guide to this day. Magic is about causing change to happen. And it is about will. But, most importantly, it’s both an art and a science.
It exists to convey feelings, not only to blast people to smithereens. It’s more than a weapon: it’s a transformative experience.
And that’s one of the reasons that I refuse to conform to the narrative of magic being limited to elentalism.
To begin with, their view about the elents is plainly wrong, as any person with a moderately decent bachelor’s degree in any area could tell.
Lightning is not the fusion of air and fire. Fire is simply combustion, and air is any gases that happen to be floating around in gaseous form.
No, what they call the ’lightning’ elent is actually a powerful discharge of electrons moving in a line from one point in space to the other.
In other words, it is less an elent and more of a reaction, or an interaction between elents.
You can go around every one of the Composite Elents and see the sa, over and over again. Elentalism is but one narrative about the shape of magic.
Magic works with concepts and syntax. Elental magic is one form—or rather, one structure—of those concepts in an understandable and actionable form.
The four ’primary’ elents are more than their material form.
Fire is not simply the literal flas. It’s more than that; it’s the concept of initiative, will, and vitality.
In the sa way, water is the concept of shelter, care, emotions, and mothering. Air is the concept of reason, intellect, and change. And Earth is the concept of materiality, stability, and groundedness.
The mont you look at them in that way, a whole new toolbox is born for you to use with your aria. And a lot of fun—I an, unexpected—stuff starts happening.
And then we co to the three so-called Cosmic Elents. Light, Spirit, and Dark. Well, none of them is an elent in the strict sense of the term in any way.
Light is not light at all; it’s the pure concept of creation. Any form of creation falls within the concept of Light. And it includes healing magic as the recreation of the health that was lost.
Dark works in the sa way; it’s the pure concept of destruction. And it also includes healing magic, as in ’destructing’ the wounds or illness.
And then Spirit... is just an umbrella term for any magic that deals with life itself.
Well, at least that’s my conclusion after the three years of survival in the Barrens plus the five years of research in the Academy.
I’ve written it all down, but of course I won’t leave my notebooks in any place where they could be found and used against by the Church.
I stored them in a new magic system I developed all by myself, following so nudges by Lovelace.
If I were to treat my spatial magic as an elent, like everyone else seems to do with any magic, what would be the na of the elent? Space? Sounds weird, doesn’t it?
In any case, that’s how I’m storing my notebooks. In a little pocket dinsion I created that is only big enough to store a few items. It’s barely bigger than a normal hiking backpack.
And I’m the only one who can access it, because the opening is tied to my own consciousness.
Because, in the end, that’s what I found those strands of space to be. At least, it’s my working theory for now. They are conceptual ties that bring places together through aning.
It’s hard to explain in words, so it’s better to give an example. Here I have a comb that was made and gifted to by Yaci. So it has a conceptual thread of aning that leads directly to her.
So, in a conceptual space, it’s like the two points are actually glued together. Like a wormhole in theoretical physics.
The thread is not a wormhole by itself; it’s just a concept of a link. But that’s the beauty of magic. I can build over that concept of a link and use it to open a gate directly to where she is, like the one that I used to take my notebooks from their pocket dinsion a few monts ago.
This is it. I finally did it!
I have spatial magic and teleportation!!! Suck that one, Church!!!
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