As Amy approached the village, her explanation on splitting quieted down, stopping when she saw the first person walking past. There were scarcely a few people this early in the morning, which only made Amy wonder why the children were even up and allowed out at this time of day. Felin kept surprisingly quiet as she headed towards the local butcher's shop, and, unable to see him, she could almost forget he was even there if it wasn't for the weight. How does that even work? Does the Spell include some sort of 'weight' as a Concept? It's supposed to be all mana but- Ah, there's the first one.
Amy caught the stare of someone piercing into her as she walked by, noticing her unwanted presence. The comfort of her jacket felt especially welcome in that moment, as she wrapped it further around herself for protection. For the rest of the journey, she kept her head down, blissfully unaware of if any more people noticed her, only facing back up when she was at the door to the butcher's. It was on the smaller side compared to the village's other butchers but the meat always tasted better than the other two, better in quality versus the others' quantity. The butcher was an ageing, portly man who usually worked the till, with his apprentice procuring the meats. It had been almost ten years since the butcher took on his apprentice and he still refused to let his job go, yet it seemed neither of the two minded their arrangement. Only outsiders who hadn't gotten to know the pair very well would've assumed disagreement, although nowadays Amy might as well have been counted among the outsiders too.
With both the butcher and Amy unwilling to stay in each other's presence for long, she was in and out of the store in a little under a minute, the flat cut of venison neatly wrapped up in paper and twine, stored in a paper bag she had bought there too. As she was leaving she caught the eye of the apprentice through a window, glaring at her in undisguised contempt. Feeling guilty, as always, Amy wrapped herself closer and carried on her way. I don't think I'll be able to go to the mayor's today. I wouldn't be able to stand the looks.
"So that's how they treat you, eh?" Felin whispered, his low, purring voice even closer to her face than before, "If I was any good at it I'd try and pry into their brains and teach them a lesson."
"Felin!" Amy scolded, hushed and trying to be inconspicuous, "You can't say that."
"You may not see it this way, my Mageling, but not only are you my best shot at finally learning something after all these years about his disappearance but I've taken you on as an apprentice, although a Mage Tier too early," Felin said, loudly yet no one noticed somehow, "To allow them to disrespect you is to disrespect me also. And I'm the last thing you want to disrespect."
"Still, Felin, these are just normal people," Amy whispered, half giving up on being quiet and considering allowing them to add 'crazy' to her image in the rumour mill too, "If you knew what they did..."
"And do you tell me what they know and I don't?" Felin asked, a hint of shame crossing her face, "There's this one scum in my... home I've had locked up for a millennia. It took only a single revolting word out of his mouth for me to chain him up in Magicks and force him to dance for me, for all of eternity.
"Though, considering his lack of improvement in his dancing lately, that eternity might get a lot shorter!" Felin cackled, with his Mageling apprentice barely resisting the urge to stare at his invisible form on her shoulder, sheer horror clouding her expression.
"Are... are you joking?" Amy said, hurrying along faster than before.
"Of course not, young Mageling, I'm a fae! I embody all that is Fae, both the good and the horrid. And do you know what? I don't regret a second of imprisoning him. He was complete and utter scum. And dancing infinity away is certainly not the worst a fae can inflict on a mortal; you could even argue that I was merciful! He got his wish of eternal life, only he's spending it in a way he'd certainly protest to if he were capable of doing so."
"That's still... terrifying, Felin." Amy said, approaching the herbalist's storefront. It was cosy and small in all the right ways, and the herbs were better than anything she could pick herself. Only, the possibility of purchasing the herbs was entirely dependent on the mood of the herbalist in question. If she was feeling particularly spiteful, like the herbalist had been lately, she'd refuse to sell a thing.
"This is what it means to contract with a being like myself, young Mageling. Don't get lost in the whimsy of discovery and magic and forget exactly what I am." Felin pointed out, taking almost perverse enjoyment at seeing her reactions.
When Amy entered the shop, pale and a bit shaky at seeing a side to the alien monstrosity sitting on her shoulder that she hadn't even guessed at before, the look on the herbalist's face was almost identical to that of the butcher's apprentice, only undisguised and unashamed at letting her know what she thought about Amy face-to-face. Her interaction with the woman was even shorter than the butcher's, the herbalist not even trying to pretend she didn't hate her, Amy passing over the coin for the right herbs in seconds. All in all, she was in that shop for not even twenty seconds, leaving as quickly as she had entered. No words needed to be conversed, as Amy always bought the same things, and any words that would be spoken wouldn't be anything kind. Amy stuffed the pre-wrapped herbs in her paper bag as she left, hoping that Felin didn't do anything he had described to the herbalist as she walked off. If that was his reaction to the apprentice, she could only imagine the one he'd have to this.
"At least she treated you better than that coward," Felin said, shifting in place.
"What?" Amy exclaimed, attracting some looks from those passing by.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
"She had the courage to let you know how she thought of you to your face. Far better than how the butcher played you, hiding until the right moment to secure a good deal. You probably didn't even notice how he ripped you off either!"
"What do you mean?" Amy asked, looking back to her bag as she made her way back home.
"You couldn't see what the apprentice was doing but he purposefully grabbed the worst and fattiest cut he could for you. And when the butcher inspected it before wrapping it, he smiled!"
"Oh." Amy mumbled, head somehow even further down than before.
"Bah! At least the herbalist sold to you without discrimination. She gave you what she would sell to anyone else, even if she hated you to bits."
"Sometimes she doesn't sell to me either though..." Amy said, worried she'd sound petulant at complaining.
"Admittedly, that's a mark against her. Still better than the butcher." Felin said, moving as if nodding in agreement with himself.
"Now that I'm thinking about it..." Amy contemplated, recalling how lately her meals with meat were fattier than usual, "That's frustrating. He's still the only one who sells good meat too. And I can't hunt on my own, can I?"
"Can't you?" Felin asked, leaning in close, "You said it yourself. Your Schooling trained you like a War Mage, not a Mageling. Most of your repertoire is probably geared towards offence, which is more than enough to hunt some beasts on your own. An Illusion Spell or two can help camouflage you or mask your scent and footsteps and soon you'll be out-hunting the village's best hunters!"
"I suppose I can..." Amy realised, thinking the possibility over. Nothing hurts giving it a shot. I probably won't stop buying from the butcher, but if he continues to sell me bad meats? What's the harm in me getting my own and saving some coin?
"When we get home I'll teach you a certain application of Lesser Illusion that can act as camouflage. With some clever Spellcrafting you can manipulate the Spellform into a new Spell that's called Illusory Cover. Still Tier 2, and probably a bit hard for someone who just learned to cast Lesser Illusion, but doable. You can still do the simpler version with regular Lesser Illusion for now."
"I'll have to see about the difficulty, but I'm not against learning to do both," Amy agreed, speaking more freely as she neared her cabin, not seeing anyone else on the path she walked, "What's the trick to using just Lesser Illusion then?"
"With only Lesser Illusion you need to project a sphere around yourself, but adjusting it to what seems at first an inverse of the Spell. Instead of projecting an image, you're 'absorbing' one, taking the light coming in from one end of the Spell sphere and tunnelling it through to the other side. Of course this causes some distortion in your invisibility, but to a normal animal? You'd be practically invisible."
"Why's it not an inverse then?" Amy questioned, opening her front door and putting down the bag.
"Because your still projecting an image, except your no longer making one out of pure Illusion mana," Felin instructed, his invisibility falling off of him like a blanket once the door had closed, "Your mana is taking the image from one side and projecting it to the other. It's far more cost efficient than Lesser Illusion but when using the Spell for long periods of time it ends up taking up more mana to maintain."
"Is it because it's continuous?" Amy postulated, unwrapping the venison and noting the abnormal amounts of fat on it.
"Correct. With normal Lesser Illusion, in the mana you're only having to make the image 'once' if you don't make any adjustments, even if it's up for a long time. The mana of the Magick persists and continues projecting what you instructed it to.
"With this altered form, you don't have to use as much ambient mana since you're not making an image at all, but your environment is infinitely more detailed than anything a Lesser Illusion can project. So, even if the cost is lower at the start, the longer your project the image for, the more the Spell is actively doing, keeping up the environment's appearance to a high enough degree that it doesn't look too fake."
"I imagine the Illusory Cover Spell circumvents this somehow then?" Amy said, packing her well-trimmed herbs away after wrapping the cut back up.
"By making some small changes to the Spellform, you can make the Spell 'imprint' rather than 'project'. It takes the last recognised 'input' image and remembers it, projecting it out the other way like the adjusted Lesser Illusion. Only it saves mana by not projecting it constantly, using the same trick normal Lesser Illusion does, only using mana when it detects adjustments in the imprinted image."
"My gut reaction to that tells me that shouldn't work. To have some sort of memory effect you'd need to make a lot more than some 'small' changes to the Spellform."
"That's where Esoteric Illusion is far superior to Advanced Illusion," Felin said, acting as if he hadn't said something completely absurd and mind-blowing.
"What the Hell do you mean?" Amy shouted, both her preconceptions about Illusion completely destroyed. You're telling me that the Wizards knew about Advanced Illusion but still called their Esoteric Element by the same name? After my 'Mind but misnamed' theory was debunked, I had thought they just called it that to make sense of something that cannot be properly Conceptually summarised. So they picked the closest thing. Though I suppose that theory ended up being smashed apart and altered as well so it's not too surprising...
"What do you- Ah, I see the point of confusion. I'm assuming this is the first time you've come across dual-typed Elements?"
"What."
"I assumed correctly, then. Another dual-typed Element you might've heard about is Mind. However, Advanced Mind is as useless to Mages as mana is to mundanes. Way too complicated to be useful. Essentially, when Concepts are multi-faceted enough in a certain way that they can be completely described using two separate viewpoints, they can be described as split Elements. When Elements are split along different Elemental types, they're called dual-typed. Illusion is one of these.
"Advanced Illusion which you might've come across, though likely not as often as Esoteric, is constructed via the consideration of Light, Dark, and Shadow, and the confluence they form. Those Spells actually make their Illusions, projected using tricks with light. Esoteric Illusion, which is the more useful and broader Element, is about imprinting something Fake upon reality well enough that it is viewed as Real by others. One is about convincing reality that something is Real, and the other is about using reality to make something decidedly not Real."
"I... I think I'm getting that," Amy muttered, "Only there's something tripping me up at the middle of what you said."
"Yes?"
"What do you mean when you say that Esoteric Illusion is more common than Advanced?"
"Excuse me? Have you not been casting Illusion Spells with me? This can't be that unusual." Felin scoffed, a vaguely concerned look in his eyes.
"I had literally never heard of Esoteric Illusion before picking up that book in the Tower. Never. I looked it up, in a public Spell listing there was no such thing as even a Bolt using Esoteric Illusion. Only one using Advanced Illusion."
"Excuse me?"