A Rational Magic || ONC2022

Nineteen || Faerie (And Family) Is Complicated

"Is he going to be alright? Are they going to be alright?" I ask almost as soon as Mr Wystan steps away from the couch he's placed Holly on. Kat is on a table, which has been cleared very hastily of a lot of junk, and I'm sitting on a very uncomfortable chair. "Why's it affected both of them? I don't get it — and why was it hurting me?"

There's old-looking burn scars all across my arms now, and I don't really get why they look like I was in a fire several years ago and received a shedload of third-degree burns.

"I think I know the answers, but I do have to ask," the man says slowly. "Did you breathe anything in before this started?"

"Yeah. Oh, is it like a special kind of poison?"

"Sort of. I imagine it was ziasel, or what Kat and Holly would call 'void fungus'. Well, Holly would. Kat might know the scientific name..."

"What does ziasel do?"

"It's a fungus that grows in Tralor. Different part of Faerie, Kat won't have told you about it. And you don't want to know about it." Mr Wystan frowned for a moment, giving his son a strange look. "It's toxic to fairies and only fairies in a specific way, targeting their magic."

"So that's why Holly passed out?"

"Quite possibly."

"Okay... so why was Kat affected? He's not got magic, right? And why did I get affected? I'm not a fairy."

"How old are you?"

"I turned twelve in May."

"Alright. So you probably know Newton's laws of motion."

"Of course!" I couldn't say I enjoyed science if I didn't know these things. "An object that is moving will keep moving and an object that is not moving will keep not moving until a force acts upon it. Uh, the heavier an object is, the more force is needed to move it. And for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."

"Excellent," he said with a nod. "It's the third law, of course, that this concerns."

"About the equal and opposite reactions? Is that how magic works?"

"Not... really. It's when something is used against magic that isn't magic itself."

"So... I don't get this."

"Do you understand the concept of a power vacuum?"

"Not really."

"Alright. Well, when someone in a place of power has lost control of something and no one has replaced them, people rush in to take control of that thing."

"Alright..."

"Imagine magic circuits — the things that allow us to use magic — as the person that lost the 'control', which is our magic."

"Ah! And then the magic needs somewhere to go, but because the magic circuits are blocked off in a way, so it tries to find somewhere else to go." I pause, still not quite sure about what was going on. "So what does that have to do with me and Kat?"

"You don't have magic circuits, Anya," Mr Wystan explains. "Katriel does, but they're heavily damaged. He won't be able to handle what magic this has given him — especially not when you consider those burns it gave you."

"Hold on, any magic that's been stolen by this ziasel has been forced into Kat? And he... what?"

"His magic circuits exist, because he is a fairy. But they're not right, if you want to put it simply. All knotted and such, I imagine. But since the magic couldn't find anything in you, not that it should have expected to, it decided to cling desperately to Kat instead."