General rules of magic

Magic is extremely cool, and it was, of course, my first focus when getting into Sérannie. They told me I would never be able to master it, but I wasn't going to let little details like that stop me!

— Isabelle

Isabelle

Isabelle is a young French woman who was brought through a magical portal to Sérannie, hit with translation magic, and told to help the Séranniens beat their Dark Lord. Only, once the questing party triumphed, she was forced back to the normal world. She is rather bitter about that.

While looking for a way to go back, she writes journal entries about her time in Sérannie to not forget what happened and to prepare for her return, illustrating her notebook by sticking postits with emojis scribbles, drawing, or printing photos.

How magic works

A mental exercise

Practising magic is entirely a mental exercise. You'd think that it would make it accessible to everyone, but that's completely the contrary!

To practise magic, you need to mentally visualise extremely complicated geometrical and runic diagrams and to push your magic through them to give it the right shape. Unfortunately, when I say those diagrams are complex, it's not a hyperbole!

Keeping all the details in mind is impossible for the average person, no matter how good your visual memory or imagination is. In fact, the incredibly high level of focus required is near impossible to reach if you haven't trained from childhood and form the right neuronal connections for it.

The only good point from this is that it's not so much your individual power level that is important to practise magic as the strength of your focus and the complexity of the diagrams you can design and visualise at the same time. There is nobody going around and pretending to be all superior just because they were born with higher levels of magic—not that this kind of people truly needs yet another excuse to act high and mighty...

Magical diagram by Ralf Kunze on Pixabay

Learning magic

And anyway, all of this means that high-level education and training starting in early childhood are required if you hope to ever fully master magic. And of course, the consequence of this is that master mages are mostly nobles or other highly privilege individuals. Yet again.

Obviously, most people who are successful later in life and rise beyond their original social situation will still try to master magic anyway, just like I did as soon as I joined Sérannie. And I'm the living proof that it's indeed possible to do so.

But it's incredibly difficult and demands a time and dedication that few people can afford. And anyway, we'll never reach the same level of ease and skills as we would have had with a proper early education.

Still, I'm not letting those smug assholes demoralise me! Being able to throw a fireball at the head of anyone annoying is consolation enough!

Babies by Rawpixel on DepositPhotos

Artefacts

To get around those difficulties, people in the fantasy world have invented magical artefacts bearing the same diagrams as they use when practising magic directly. Those artefacts can be used by anyone and either be fueld by the magic of the environment (passive artefact) or the magic of the wearer (active artefact). The downsides to them are 1) the lesser control they give over the magic, 2) their lack of adaptability, 3) the leakage of magical power that occurs while using them, and 4) the possibility of having the artefact taken away or getting taken away from it.
Still, artefacts are far more preferable for a number of applications. You'd never want to have to gather the necessary focus to use magic every time you want light in your own house, do you?

On the other hand, because magic is associated with nobility, it's become such a social symbol that it's exactly what some people do, no matter how annoying and cumbersome it is.

Same with actual nobles, with many priding themselves on their skills so much that they would do everything to avoid ever having to use a magical artefact instead, even for extremely difficult and delicate spells. If you witness any of that, you better act super impressed and avoid pointing out the complete waste of time they're imposing on everyone.

The dragon magical statuette by AmélieIS

Sensing

Sensing magic is something everyone can do, but people's magic sensitivity depends on training and what kind of environments they've been exposed to. I have a very high sensitivity since I grew up with no magic at all around me and any of it now feels like a sore thumb. No training and learning to pay attention to small details for me: I couldn't ignore it even if I wanted to!

This is all nice and useful when I want to study spells and magical artefacts to reverse engineer them. But it's bloody annoying when surrounding with powerful magics all the time!

Like, say, during battles.

That makes it super hard to focus on anything, even what my other senses are telling me! And if being blind and death to all danger in the middle of a battlefield was not enough, if the magical level reaches a high enough threshold, then it even becomes physically painful!

And you can well imagine the reactions of those spoilt nobles to all of that... If they cannot feel it, then, of course, it doesn't exist!

Magical sensing by Levi XU on Unsplash

Examples of specific types of magic

• Prophecy: to feel magical currents and what is going on in the world at the moment and deliver prophecies in the form of songs based on that.

• Translation magic: to put images in the mind of people according to what they're hearing.

• Illusion magic: to make incredibly realistic holograms, but especially to make things and people appear different from what they are.

• Herbology: to work magic on plants to help them grow, and to affect the soil to bring nutrient to the surface or get rid of bad molecules.

• Animal training: to communicate with animals by putting images in their mind.

• Long distance communication: to project your mind away from you and get into contact with another person. Then you project thoughts towards them. In theory, most mages can do it for very short distances (within a few metres to a few hundred metres), but increasing distances make it more challenging and energy consuming.
  And such communications are not exactly secure, as they can be intercepted by anyone just reaching with their own mind. Not to mention that most mages think themselves above being "mere carrier pigeons" and refuse to be used to transmit messages, no matter how dire the situation. All of this is exactly why our communications with the king and his army were limited during the Quest to kill the Dark Lord despite us having the ability to contact them at any moment.
  

• Fireballs! The best type of magic ever. The magical diagrams for this are fascinating and go into a lot of complicated thermodynamics, and you really need to understand all of it before being able to make a magical fire. It's even worse if the only fuel you want to use is air! In the end though, the cool factor makes it all worth it—the perfect illustration of how magic works in the fantasy world
  

Illusion magic

Plant magic by Shutterbug on Pixabay

Combustion by Mariiapulido on Wikimedia Commons