Aethernea : Soulbound [Book 1]

Episode 21 - Spellcrafting

Previously on Aethernea:  

Kiel and Elaru finish their distance test and end up having a small fight. After making up, they find a clearing in the outskirts of Ashar where they can practice magic. Elaru takes out a book that looks like a diary and starts scribbling in it and occasionally weaving a spell around her arm.

* * *

"What are you doing?"

Elaru abruptly stopped what she was doing and brought her eyes up to look at Kiel. It took her a few seconds to process what he had asked before answering: "Spellcrafting."

Spellcrafting is a process of creating new spells and spell patterns or customizing existing ones.

What is a spell? The books defined it as "a reality altering phenomena". But people usually disregarded definitions and went by their intuitive understanding. For them, a spell was the extension of themselves in the form of a moving pattern of light.

Both were right.

It was only when talking about spellcrafting that people made a distinction between a spell and a spell pattern. A spell pattern could be drawn on paper or anywhere else, but only if it was drawn with a dense enough mana would that spell pattern turn into a spell.

The spell pattern was the key to everything, the core of the spell. It defined and described the spell. Magic itself was a language defined by a large number of intricate rules and mysterious principles. And that spell pattern was a sentence written in that mysterious language.

That sentence was written with words – multiple spell fragments weaved together in a meaningful way to create a valid sentence. There existed words that could be used alone to form a sentence, and then there were others that held meaning only when combined with other words. One had to understand every word, grammar and rules of the language to form meaningful sentences.

Those words, those spell fragments, were the basic building blocks of magic.

Legends say that the first spell fragments were discovered by ancients by studying and dissecting the innate abilities of magical creatures and magic cast by the gods. It is said that mortals weave their mana into spells, but mana of the gods weaves itself. The gods possessed a divine will that caused spells to form by themselves and could cast all types of magic. It was actually quite rare for them to resort to using divine magic since most of the things could be accomplished by using the other three types of magic.

Gods didn't need to understand magic to do whatever they wished. Mortals, on the other hand, needed to know the rules, to have a detailed understanding of different aspects of many spell fragments, and even possess a large degree of creativity (if you know the language, it doesn't mean you can write heart touching poetry with it).

Mortals needed to spellcraft.

However, while there were many great mages that could spellcraft to a certain degree, master spellcrafters were as rare as phoenix feathers and qilin horns.

When Elaru declared that she was spellcrafting, Kiel felt naturally skeptical about it. He raised his eyebrow. "You can spellcraft?"

Elaru nodded leisurely as if it was not a big deal. "Yeah."

The corner of Kiel's mouth twitched. "How good are you?" I mean, how good can a person who received no education be?

She stroked her chin in thought before replying. "I've never met anyone better at it than me."

Kiel's skeptical look didn't lessen one bit. Did that mean that she was really good, or did that mean she didn't have the opportunity to meet anyone who was really good at it?