Lilia's Tale

Chapter 5: Water's Owner

As Father was explaining to me how magic exactly worked, I could feel my patience wear thin as I waited to be able to finally try it. His explanation was as followed:

Inside of every living thing, is something akin to blood vessels. It is called "Magic Circuits". These circuits are the foundation for a lot of magic-based occurrences. Inside of these magic circuits are something called "Magicules", which are what he called the "fundamental particle of magic". They are what transforms to manifest the spell. Magic circuits are similar to a reservoir of magicules, inside of the creature's body, and are dependant on the creature in itself. Some people have smaller magic circuits, some others have larger ones, and the larger it is, the more magic can be used before you have used up your magic capabilities. Magic circuits refill over time, generally taking a day or two to refill from completely empty to completely full, no matter the circuit size.

Magicules are, as said, what manifest to create magic. They are present in everything, animate or inanimate, solid liquid or gaseous. They are like dust that are scattered inside of any matter. Magic circuits are capable of absorbing the magicules in the air to replenish the living creature's magic capacity, and solids are capable of rejecting magicules into the air.

He then explained the magic itself rather than how it worked. There are 6 types of magic: Summoning, Elemental, Holy, Demonic, Blood and Alchemic magic.

Summoning is, as its name implies, the art of summoning into our world sentient creatures made entirely of magicules. As such, they are bound to the Summoner's will and can receive direct as well as indirect orders, carrying them out like a real creature.

Elemental magic is magic that implies the usage of the four elements: Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind magic. It allows to manifest any one of these four elements in many different forms out of magicules, or even combine different elements to create different types of magic. The example he gave and showed me was that by combining fire and wind magic, he was capable of creating lightning.

Holy magic was, to my understanding, almost identical to what I would regularly call "light magic". It used the magicules inside the caster's body to alter the working of the magicules in the air, allowing them to perform many different tasks that would normally be almost impossible, such as healing, curing, or even analyzing the magic circuit of other creatures.

Demonic magic was basically dark magic. It functions similarly to holy magic, but instead of changing the fundamental particles in the air, instead changing the particles in a creature's body. Those create the effect of curses and other poison-like effects, but can also inflict simple effects such as temporary blindness, or inducing sleep.

Blood magic was quite complicated to me. He talked about using your own magicules and bursting them throughout one's body. I wasn't sure exactly what it meant, but I figured it was some kind of body enhancing magic, which would make sense due to its name. However, he also talked about transformation magic being part of this type, with it being the transformation of your body's structure using magicules, even going as far as to transform yourself entirely. The third subtype he talked about was sacrificial magic. He explained it was the usage of magicules other than those in your magic circuits in order to use spells, whether it be transforming your own blood and life force into magicules, or using those present in matter.

Lastly was Alchemic magic. From his explanation, it seemed similar to summoning, but instead of summoning sentient creatures, it was to summon inanimate objects, such as equipment, out of magicules. He also talked briefly about runic magic as being an art more than a magic. It consists in applying magic runes to an already existing object in order to give it magical properties.

Finally, he explained that "affinities" are simply how powerful the magic you can use is. The higher your affinity is in a certain type, the stronger the magic you will invoke of that type will be. How exactly it works, he wasn't sure, but he said it had to do with the magic circuits shaping the magicules into a very specific type that determines the affinity. As such, it is what dictates how much magicules you can use at once, where magic circuits dictate how much you can hold.