Seven

Chapter Two

With Absinth washed and fed, with the laundry hung to dry, with the soup boiling over a hot fire, I finally sat down to my studies. A typical mage, or at least a mage with family money, would have left home at eighteen to the inner district of Praeditus, where most trained mages resided and worked. To join an apprenticeship with some great mage had always been my dream. Ma, though she denied it, was a great mage at some point in time, but she refused to give me practical training. She wouldn't even tell me about her past.

I yawned tiredly as I flipped through the page of a basic enchantment book. There was the Subvolo spell, which I had mastered quite easily. A spell to make clothes fold themselves. A spell to make china unbreakable. A spell to keep flowers in bloom for longer. All of these were simple, and useful spells, that made life a little easier for the common enchanter or enchantress, but most of them bored me. Enchantment came easily to me. It required little focus and very minimal effort on my part, and I desired more of a challenge.

Sighing, I glanced at the bookshelf that hung on the wall above my sewing machine. It needed dusting. I had been digging through the enchantment book for so long that I had neglected the other books. There were seven other thickly bound books on that shelf. There was the Great Book of Enchantment, bound in smooth brown leather, this issue was a reference to all kinds of enchantments from beginner to master. Sitting next to that was the Magna Tutela, a guide to the magic form of Abjuration. Abjuration was the lightest form of magic, it was protective, healing, and made for great defense. Lying on their sides were two other books. One was bound in a deep burgundy leather, the other was backed with slim pieces of wood. The thicker of the two volumes was the copy I desperately wanted to study: The Balancing of Elements, by the first mage, the greatest of them all, Primus. It was a book about the magic of Elementation and it's boundaries. Sitting on top of that book was a smaller book, titled simply: Transmutation.

Three other books sat atop that shelf, all three were ones Ma never so much as let me touch. Why she kept them in the cottage I never knew. She simply told me, "Better here than out in the world." I had written it off as one of her delusional ramblings.

There was the Book of Illusion, about master the magic of Illusion. There was the Oculatus Praeterea, about the magic of Divination and looking into the future. And there, at the very end of the shelf, bound in ink colored leather was the Libro Cantus, the book full of ancient and powerful spells of all kinds. These three books I knew only one thing about. They were full of dark magic.

Magic, by nature is formed by seven parts. These parts fall on a scale of light and dark. The darkest magics should never be used, this Ma drove into me more than anything else. Ma believed, however that even the light magics should be avoided. In her experience, whatever that was, magic caused only harm and destruction. From what little I knew of myself, and of history, I had to agree with her, but a part of me still yearned for magic, for something other than my reality.

These seven parts of Magic cannot be mixed without care. Most of them cannot be mixed at all, which is why most mages are only able to perform one kind of magic. The light magics are those of Abjuration, Enchantment, and Transmutation. The dark magics are those of Illusion, Divination, and cursed be, Necromage, the magic of death- specifically bringing the dead to life. In the middle of these light and dark magics sits one that is neither and both, Elementation. The elements are tricky bastards. Fire can destroy, burn, and kill, but it can also warm and bring light to dark situations. Water is necessary for life to go on, but a flood can drown many. Elementation is the neutral party in magic that bring balance to its force.

I flip through the pages of the enchantment book, pushing down the temptation to take down each of the books from that shelf and master as much as I could from their pages. I turn to a page with flowers decorating the margins. It is titled "Recludo," and beneath the title words read, a spell for undoing even the most powerful locks. I sigh and read over the spell instructions, this enchantment could come in handy at some point.