Types of Magic
By Katya Maldonado
4 th Year, 3 rd Class
Chemawa Elementary School
Guachague, Chiapas State, Republic of Texico
There are eight different types of magic. Each person born with magic has an affinity for one or more types of magic. An affinity means that person can use that magic easier and doesn’t have to study it as much. You can always learn more types of magic because some jobs require more than one kind. It just takes hard work and determination.
All types of magic are based around what they do. A lot of it needs words and chants and sometimes even incense or special rocks and drawings. You can store magic energy in crystals, just not the ones at the mall cause they are junk. The best magic helps you get a job like Conjuration and Divination. You need those to be a Navigator. I will list the eight types of magic.
Abjuration: This is protection magic. It repels things like bugs, elements, bad magic, and makes shields. You can also help people resist things like bad magic and bullets and lasers.
Biomancy: This is healing magic and can make you look better. It also cures diseases and can help you regenerate lost parts like Geoff’s leg that he lost last year.
Conjuration: This magic brings things to you and lets you make food, water, and stuff. The best part of it is it eventually lets you use Gate magic so you can visit the Sky Hurricane and other Realities.
Divination: With this you learn how to find things, places, and people. This is the most important thing for a Navigator to learn. It doesn’t really tell the future like people think, just figures out chances of things happening.
Enchantment: This allows you to make magic items. You have to know the magic that you are inscribing onto an item, or you can’t do it. You can also charm people sometimes, but that’s bad and you can go to jail.
Evocation: Fireballs, lightning, magic rays, all the flashy stuff is here. You make energy appear from nowhere and use it to damage things and people.
Illusion: You can make fake things. Like images of yourself or a fake tree. Some good illusionists are great at making impossible things seem real. Sometimes you can make something scary, and the bad guys will run away.
Transmutation: You can make things out of other things. Like you can make a spear out of dirt or a building, or you can turn water into ice. You can also armor yourself with these things or turn yourself into it, but only on high magic worlds. If someone transmuted themselves here, they would probably just die.
Extra Credit:
Tech/Magic Ratio: This is the level of magic in a Reality. Erde is an 80/20 Reality Favoring technology. Magic works here but has a failure rate of over sixty percent. The Sky Hurricane has a 50/50 ratio meaning everything works there. So does Kondar and Rowrashaoh. It is what helped us all become friends. The evil Reality of Shénzhōu had a Ratio on 5/95 meaning our stuff broke most of the time. It also let those bad Sidhe to hide there until we used the Reality Bombs to shift it to 80/20 then the Storm League showed up and stopped them from being bad.
Low Magic: This is magic anyone can use. Like air coolers, fire starters, instant cleaners, water makers, and stuff like that. There is a word on the side you have to pronounce correctly, and you have to touch the crystals embedded in it. But anyone can use it. Even my sister who has no magic. It can be used even in realities with low magic, but they fail a lot, so you have to have backups and keep them away from electricity and cities.
Regular Magic: This is spells, small and big. You can only use them at full strength in Realities that have a 65/35 or better ratio. Still, they fail about 50 percent of the time. Which is weird cause they work all the time in the Sky Hurricane which is a 50/50 ratio.
High Magic: These are big spells that can protect cities and do things like plagues and make volcanoes. You can only use them when the Reality has a high Magic ratio, I researched it has to be 20/80 or so. This is what the bad Sidhe used all the time to make fortresses and bad weapons.
ArkaMakina: Guadalupe in the next class has a radio with it and it has an illusion crystal in it that plays the studio and videos in 3D. But she has to pour the fuel in it every week or it doesn’t work and starts to smell. I only read a little about this, but it’s supposed to work everywhere.
4 th Grade Report on Magic
Republic of Texico, March 10 th, 2186, ESC
Sky Hurricane, Near Erde
Neu Holgaard Town
February 11, 2187, ESC
Pan Mei Ming was playing at her house near the back. Dad and mom were cooking, and her cousins were waiting tables and hanging around being lazy. She would color in books, practice reading and writing and sometimes help set tables. This place was weird, they moved here from her old house when she turned four, and now she was four-and-a-half. The ‘and a half’ was very important. Other kids would say they were better than you if you were younger than them and had to listen to them. There were some kids around, but she was the only elf. Some kids said she was bad cause she was an elf, but she just thought they were mean and jealous ‘cause she had prettier ears and hair than they did.
This was a weird town. All the houses were different and stuck together on the sides. The streets were stone, and the town always had the color of gold like the sunset. The night was kinda there, but it was always like afternoon, which made her sleepy. She shared the bed with mom and dad, but it was always dark there so they could sleep better. They had a basement, but it was at a weird angle and was made out of metal and had funny writing in blocks all over. Dad kept the food there in a cooler that made her teeth ache.
A big restaurant served almost all meat in another part of town, and it smelled really good, but dad said they couldn’t go there because it was too expensive. And there was a place where there were rides and stuff. So she and her cousins went with mom and dad the first time they moved here. It was super fun, and they had little metal men all over the place that were always smiling and waving. Dad had scowled a bit and called them golems. On the other side of the town was a lake and a place with people in grey and black clothes. She was told to never go there like she was never to look off the edge of the island they lived on ‘cause she could fall and be lost forever. She had looked once and could see the clouds far below, and it was super scary.
Today, she had set the tables and put all the long forks and chopsticks out for the customers, making mom happy. Now she sat at a back table and practiced her magic. She was making little floating pictures like all the new people she saw. Dad said beast people were bad cause they beat up her home and made them move, but he always smiled and made food for them anyway. There were a lot of humans and other people that she had never seen before, like big ogres. The one she saw was like two dads tall and three across! He didn’t try to eat anyone either. He just ate his noodles and left. Her cousins said mean things about him, but he didn’t understand, and instead, she had gone over and patted him on the leg because they were being mean. He had patted her on the head and said that she was “a good kid” in the grunting language they all spoke.
She knew she was a good kid ‘cause she looked out for the house and had helped with cleaning up after new year two days ago. There were a lot of firecrackers, and everyone was smiling. Many people her dad knew had been there, and it was very busy. She understood all of them too, which was great. She had learned some of the other language from the other kids, but it was mostly mean words. She had gotten a red envelope this year, and it had little pigs made out of fire printed on it. She had copied them with her magic and had illusory little fire pigs running around the house that night. The next day she was sleepy but helped clean up all the paper and washed the golden cat statues out front, and put persimmons on a plate in front of them. She clapped her hands three times and bowed,
A fox girl was always stealing things from the restaurant, and her dad said she was a bad person, so stay away from her. He said fox people were tricky, and if you didn’t watch them, they would eat your liver. Liver was good when mom made it, but dad made it taste bad, so she didn’t want that. So if the fox girl wanted to eat a liver, she would give her some of dad’s ‘cause she didn’t want to eat that anyway. Too many onions and garlic, and they were raw! She was thinking about this when she spotted the red-furred girl in front of her house. She was wearing blue pants like a boy and a white shirt with some writing. She casually walked by and had stolen a persimmon from in front of one of the lucky golden cats.
Mei Ming jumped up and pointed at the fox girl and made a squeak, her ears sticking straight out from the sides of her head. The fox girl looked at her and flipped her tail at her walking off. She went to her cousin Ping, but he looked at her and the altar saying, “It doesn’t matter.” Xun just told her to go play and ignore it. She couldn’t! It was the persimmon she had offered today. The cat would be mad at her for letting the fox steal it. So she got a chopstick from the sink and followed that girl. She would scold her and make her return it or apologize to the cat. It was a good cat that her mom said would bring luck to her family, and she didn’t need it mad at her.
She ran out of the restaurant with her cousins, yelling at her half-heartedly. She ignored them and ran down the street, only catching the tip of the fox girl’s tail going down an alley. She ran after her and turned, sliding on the cobblestones and stopping at the alley. The girl opened a trashcan and tossed in the remains of the fruit. She ate it already! she thought in horror. Nooooo! Now I gotta make her come back and apologize! If you didn’t apologize, bad things would happen, and the bad demons would get you.
“Stop! Y-you bad fox!” she yelled as she ran as fast as her little legs would carry her.
The fox girl turned around and twitched her nose, her ears cocking slightly. “Vhat’re you saying, elf?” she said with a raised eyebrow. Again, the hard grunt language was made a little harder by the Devonali’s inability to pronounce certain sounds.
Finally getting to her, Mei Ming stopped and panted. Then, pointing her chopstick at the fox and in her best grunt language, Mei Ming said, “You steal! Say sorry!”
The fox looked at her and laughed. She Laughed! “Noooo. You people leave food out, and ve vill take it. You offered. Ve took. It’s simple logic.” She reached down and shoved Mei Ming’s head. “Go home, don’t follow, kid.”
Mei Ming turned red and began shouting in her language again. “You bad fox! You steal! Leave my family alone! I zap you!” She pointed her chopstick and tapped the energy inside herself, and pushed it through the chopstick. A little yellow light flew out and went out about an arm’s length before hitting the ground and making a little light.
The fox began laughing. She was laughing so much she held her belly and started crying. She had to lean against the alley to not fall over. Mei Ming started crying, and the fox came over to pat her on the head. “Hey, kid. You’re funny. Zat vas good. Ven you older look me up. I run zhe kids here. I’m Daciana.”
She sniffled as the fox girl patted her on the head. “I’m not funny. You say sorry to cat soon!” She looked at the fox proudly and wiped her tears on her long sleeves.
Daciana rolled her eyes and said, “Yeah, sure. So Vhat’s your name, kid?
The elf sniffled. “I’m Mei Ming and am four-and-a-half.”
The fox grinned and said, “Nice. I am twelve.” She twitched an ear at a soft noise from her earring and said, “I got a mark. Shez not too avare. You vatch me do my job I show you vhat is stealing and not just taking offering, shon gut?” She walked away, motioning for Mei Ming to follow.
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
The elf did. Well, maybe she would be a friend and not want to eat her liver. She didn’t call her a stupid bunny or other meaner things that some kids called elves. Well, her ears are more like a bunny than mine! So she followed Daciana down a few streets to unfamiliar places towards the center of town and the big street. They had made so many twists and turns that she had gotten turned around. Maybe the fox was going to eat her liver. She didn’t even have any on her!
Daciana stopped and said something into a little bracelet, and her earring made a noise. She motioned for Mei Ming to come over. She did and saw the main street, there were so many people and flags and pretty things in the windows. They all had different clothes from one another. Most looked like the people who came to eat at her house. There was this huge flower shop, and a pretty elf lady was standing there. She had long white hair in a big ponytail that reached the middle of her back and was looking at flowers. The elf lady was beautiful and had blue-purple eyes. She was wearing red pants, a long white shirt that covered her arms, and a short grey dress over the shirt and closed by a belt. She stopped and sniffed a flower, and her face colored like a cat. A golden cat with stripes!
“Ja, see? She is smelling zhe flowers. I’ll show you how easy zis is,” Daciana said, smiling and showing her teeth. She went to step out and felt a hand on hers. She looked down, and the elf kid was holding her hand and shaking her head.
“She is a elf like me and gold cat too. No steal two time from cat,” she struggled, having to think of each word. If only Daciana spoke like she did.
The fox shrugged. “Zat is no cat. Zat is a chump,” she pointed around the marketplace and Mei Ming saw a bunch of beast people around the area hanging out and watching. “Zhis is my family. Ve show you.” She glided out and ignored Mei Ming’s gasp of fright.
Daciana casually walked up and already had her hands in a man’s pocket, slipping his wallet into her own pants. She changed directions and walked near the flower shop. Mei Ming put her fists up to her mouth in fright and held her breath. Daciana moved like she would pass the cat-elf up, and then her left hand moved under the lady’s grey dress. She stole from her! She thought as her hand pulled back.
Then Daciana was up in the air staring face to face with the lady, held by her left wrist. She was very cat colored now and looked at the fox girl right in the eyes. Daciana tried to play it off cool and was surprised by what the lady said. Then the lady looked around at Daciana’s family and said something to her, putting her down. The fox girl got a sour look on her face and headed to another alley flipping her tail. The other beast people started leaving too. Oh no, what was Mei Ming going to do? She didn’t know the way back! Only Daciana knew how to get back. No! The golden cat must know too! She had to be a spirit of the statue. She had made Daciana apologize!
Mei Ming ran out from the alley through the crowd, only bumping into a few people. She ran up to the cat lady. She had pointed ears, too, so she knew she could be trusted. Her family had said so. “All elves are your friends,” she remembered her dad saying. She walked up and looked at the golden cat elf. Her skin went normal again, and she sniffed another flower. She can’t be bad, she likes flowers, and is an elf, and my family’s golden cat! She reached up and grabbed the lady’s hand gently. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Daciana with huge eyes waving her hands across her body in a “no” gesture and mouthing, “No! No! No!”
The lady looked down at her and turned cat colored again. “Hi, Auntie!” Mei Ming chirped. The lady blinked in surprise and then kneeled to her level.
“Hello,” she said in her own language. It had an accent, but it was what she spoke at home! “How can I help you?” she said in her husky accented voice. Mei Ming looked over at Daciana, and she was holding her face in her hand and shaking her head.
Mei Ming smiled up at the lady and said, “I’m Pan Mei Ming, Auntie! You know that ‘cause you are my golden cat, and you made Daciana apologize for stealing from you!”
The lady blinked and tilted her head, her ear pointing to Daciana. Her face was not showing any emotion like the golden cat statue. “Is that her name?” she asked. “Is she your friend?”
Daciana looked poleaxed at her name being given and then held back by two of her friends from coming over. A dog person and a bird person. “Yes! She is nice, but she needs to not steal. She is my friend! We met today, and she apologized to you, so you can take me home now.” She held her hands up to be carried.
The cat elf lady blinked and then looked away with her eyes unfocused for a moment. Finally, she looked back at Mei Ming, picked her up, and put her on her shoulders. “I’ll take you home now,” she said quietly and tilted her head. “Daciana will not be in trouble for kidnapping you. The police are informed and will call your family.”
“Yay! Go Golden Cat!!” Mei Ming called as she rode above the crowd on the tall lady’s shoulders, holding onto her chin and resting her own on the soft white ponytail. She waved at Daciana and her family as they walked off. The older girl seemed to have almost passed out and was held up by her family members.
###
Althea walked slowly as the Sidhe child chattered happily on her shoulders. She was following the glowing path on the ground that the Network mapping program overlaid in her vision. It was a small glowing line with arrows that moved forward as she did. The Network terminal data slates that people carried with them did much the same for unaugmented people, and the ones with cyber eyes had a similar experience to hers. The mapping program directions were provided by the local police force to her to return the child to her home. The central computers had Pan Mei Ming reported as kidnapped but had yet to send out any police to look for her as they were all busy at the port taking care of the smuggled guns they had found earlier. She had notified the police computers that a child had come to her and looked lost. In the few seconds it took to talk to the central database and identify her, she also reported that the girl had not been kidnapped, merely wandering away. She made no mention of the child’s friends. The computers had called her parents, saying the girl had been found and returned to them.
“Oh yes,” she answered Mei Ming. The girl was refreshing to listen to. The years she had spent in occupation of Shénzhōu were wearing on her, and most Sidhe stared at her with outright hatred. She had, after all, been part of the force that conquered their world. “Persimmons are very tasty. I would not refuse one.” Mei Ming clung to her face and rested on her head, her small shoes kicking her chest. It was a… good? Yes, it was a good feeling.
“Oooh, you are getting all catty again, Auntie,” Mei Ming said in the Sidhe dialect again. She leaned over to stare into Althea’s eyes, her mouth hugely smiling.
Althea’s cheeks turned red, and her cat coloring deepened, making the girl squeal with delight. “Err, this is how my emotions show,” she said lamely.
Mei Ming grabbed the sides of Althea’s mouth with her fingers and pulled to make her smile. “It’s easy, like this,” the child said.
Althea tried, and her large top and smaller bottom canines showed.
Mei Ming blinked and looked at her head from a few angles. “Well, you are a kitty, so it is a kitty smile. So practice!” she said.
They continued down a few streets, passing several ethnic restaurants and small hotels. The heavenly smells of Kondarian gyros and skewers made her nose twitch, as well as the strong garlic of Vernian French and Italian restaurants. Finally, there was the back entrance of the Navigator’s Guild, where budding psychics and magicians skilled in guiding the skyships through the Sky Hurricane trained and found jobs with the smaller tramp freighters. She didn’t like being around Navigators, they gave her the same vibe as that doctor, but at least they knew to stay out of her head. They were also necessary to keep the entire inter-Reality society going.
Just another block, and they would be at the girl’s home. They rounded another corner, and she blinked to see the fox girl, Daciana, and her gang waiting for her. If this had been live combat, she would be dead. Recriminating herself for getting distracted, she stared at them and opened her mouth to speak.
“Zats, far enouf, viofem lady,” Daciana said.
###
She was gonna get that part of the city blown up. Daciana knew it. The kid walked up to her mark and not only told the lady her name but also hopped on her shoulders and was given a ride back to her house. The Sidhe house used her and her gang to send notes to ships in the sky harbor, so they weren’t under suspicion by the military base. Sure, the Sidhe were bad, but these folks were ok. They were just trying to get people out of the occupied zones and into nice quiet lives. They were a little like the Federacy Recombs and herself.
Escaping the Federacy occupation zone on her home Reality of Devonal with a bunch of her friends and former slaves had been highly daring. Four years before she was born, hairless apes that she now knew as human beings invaded her world and tried to use their golems and war machines to take over. Her hometown of Sighisoara had been taken over and used as a stronghold for the area. They had had great successes and had taken large swaths of the countryside. The mages and knights of Erdély had tried to dislodge the humans and their machines since then and had fought them to a standstill. In the occupied zones, the humans controlled everything, enslaving the local populations and making them work the land like slaves. The areas outside of Federacy control were free from human influence as their machines often broke down.
They had brought in their own slaves, the partially human recombs, to teach the Devonalians how to serve their new Masters. This did not go according to plan as many of the recombs saw it as a chance to escape. She was born three years before things changed. Other humans from another Reality had arrived and negotiated a cease-fire between the Federacy forces and Devonal because yet another Reality of pointy-eared humans, the Sidhe, were trying to wipe out all life that didn’t look like them.
For her, she just knew everyone had been tired, and her parents had passed away of overwork when she was seven, just before the other humans negotiated peace. She had been made to go to the orphanage creche with many other kids who had lost their parents too, including recombs. They had all been made to work for their food as apparently that was a Federacy tradition. The only difference the truce had made was that she didn’t have to listen for the telltale bleating of a sheep that would signal the teleportation of a barrel of lit gunpowder into the town that would take out another house or guard tower. You apparently couldn’t teleport anything nonliving that wasn’t accompanied by an equal mass of living material.
Later that year, the Federacy humans had gotten extremely strict. They started handing out identity cards and ‘contracts’ that made them not slaves but serfs. They had to work off the debt to the Federacy for ‘feeding and housing’ them in their own land. There were still overseers of humans and her people that beat them and killed them if they tried to escape or stop work, so nothing really changed. She had gotten together with many kids from the orphanage, some of whom knew magic, and they had escaped through the tunnel systems in the old town. After a few weeks of being hunted, they boarded a flying ship crewed by bears and humans. They had taken her and her fellow escapees to the refugee camp on a floating island in the clouds.
Many of the kids had been adopted, but she and about eight others just didn’t want to be beholden to anyone else’s rules. So they stayed in the dwindling refugee camp doing odd jobs for people and running petty crime rackets. Sure, they got caught sometimes, but they were kids. Adults, even non-Federacy humans, forgave quickly. She had met a few elves that were culturally more like her people, but they were very stuck up. Most of the Sidhe, who were culturally more like the Imperial Japanese humans, could be stuck up, but only in public. Behind closed doors, they were pretty standard, just caring about family and friends and wanting to leave occupied zones. They had supplied her with some magical communication devices and fed them take-out bags from the back of the restaurant, all for running a few notes a month.
So, she had taken the persimmon this morning and eaten the fruit, palming the note hidden inside it. She was going to be headed to that big cruise ship in the sky harbor when the kid had come after her. She tried to get her to go away, but damn, she was so funny and cute. Looking back, it was a bad idea to drag her along to show she wasn’t ‘stealing’ from her family. So now Mei Ming was headed back to the restaurant with someone she was told could cause a major incident.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s a biofem and not an Anglian elf,” Henry had said. He was a Recomb dog person that had been modeled on a beagle. Long floppy ears and short demi muzzle were under his brown mop of hair.
“Man, are you sure?” Zobor had said. The bird Devonalian was about her height and colored blue-black and white stripes. “Cause if you’re sure, zat vould be like bad, really, really bad.” He nervously stroked his downy hair like feather mohawk and made a sour face with his beak. “Like zhey are zhe onez occupyin’ zhat Reality zhe kid is from.”
Daciana had blinked. “Vait? Zhat vasn’t a glamour on her? Zhe cat shit?” She had looked back at the elf girl and the back of the receding woman. “She looked like an elf, a tall one, Vut definitely an elf.” She twitched her ear and said into her bracelet, “Zomogyi, vat do viofems look like?”
Noise and squeaking reached her after a few seconds from the stud in her ear. “Oh Daciana,” a feminine voice had answered. Ruffling of what she knew were comics and coffee cups being pushed aside, and then the clicking of keys. “Oh yeah, biofems are kinda like androids, the fleshy kind not the robot kind. They look a little like tough elves. But they have claws and change into cat patterns and …. Holy shit they kick ass.” Music and screams played in the background as the young recomb cat girl watched a video. “Yeah, they are hella scary, boss.”
The fox girl clicked her tongue, “Tch. Zomogyi, if say a viofem valked into our legitimate vusiness partner’s restaurant with zheir kid vhat vould happen?”
There had been a stunned silence, “Um Ping would try to kill her with magic, and then the biofem would respond, and Xuefeng would get involved… and please don’t let that happen I really like them all, and Xun is too cute to die!!!” she had started to sound panicked.
Now, ten minutes later, she and most of her gang were blocking the street and staring at a tall, muscular elf lady that was supposedly a killing machine. Mei Ming was clinging to her head and trying to make her smile with her fingers on the sides of her mouth. Holy shit, she has fangs like one of us, she thought.
Collecting herself, she said, “Zats, far enouf, viofem lady.” She smiled and continued. “Zhat family is Sidhe, and you are vell, you know vhat you are. So ve can take Mei Ming zhe rest of zhe vay, and you go on to vhatever you vere doing.”
“I have to return the child to her parents,” the lady replied in her monotone voice. “I didn’t mention you to the police. You are not wanted for kidnapping, which the original call was for.”
Daciana rolled her eyes. “Ja, zhank you. Ve are appreciative of your generosity,” she said in mock politeness.
The woman stared at her, and Mei Ming waved from her perch on her head. “Hi, Daciana!”
She waved back to Mei Ming, “Hey, kiddo. I am gonna take you vack to your dad, ok?” She smiled at her reassuringly.
Mei Ming pouted, “No! Gold cat is taking me back! I was good!”
“Look, lady, you know zhey are Sidhe. Zhey fuckin hate your guts,” Daciana said with pleading eyes to Althea. “If you go zhere, zhe boy, he vill try to fight you.” She held her hands out. “Vhat vere you doing? Ve help you, just no fighting today and no vloodshed, shon gut?”
Before taking the pouting Mei Ming off her shoulders, the woman looked down in thought. The girl looked like she would cry, and the woman hugged her. “Gold cat! Why? Don’t leave me! Please! You’re my Friend!” Mei Ming started crying loudly.
The woman said something in the Sidhe language to the girl and then said a little louder in GmbH German. “I told her that I can’t be near my statue like this, or my magic will fade. So instead, I will always watch her from there.” Mei Ming looked a bit calmer but was still pouting. She was put on the ground and then turned to kiss the woman on the cheek before she ran to cling to Daciana’s leg.
Daciana made a little laugh, “Your magic vill fade, huh?” she nodded to the biofem, who nodded back.
“I am going to Fess-T-Burger to get a plushy of Festus,” the woman said suddenly and looked at the fox expectantly.
Blinking, Daciana rubbed Mei Ming’s head. “Benedek, Marko,” she said quietly, “Take zhe ‘Golden Cat’ to meet zhe o’zher cat on zhe island.” Two of her gang left the group to guide the woman through the alleys. She waved goodbye to Mei Ming and turned a corner.
Smiling, Daciana said, “Hey, Mei Ming, let’s go see your family, hey?” She rubbed her nose, feeling the tension leave. Massacre averted. I’m too old for this crap, and I’m only twelve.