Monstrous Visage. The Spell that Amy had initially envisioned to be much... tamer than it ended up being. The working was aggressive, intending to influence and terrify, and as such went beyond the constraints of normal Elemental Illusion. Felin hadn't even commented on the extra Element's inclusion either, and since she doubted he missed it, he likely approved of it, despite his warnings. Elemental Fae. A planar Esoteric Element; the one she had the highest affinity for, the highest one Felin had ever seen in a normal human. It hadn't been a surprise then that the Element had slipped it's way into her Spell, to make her Illusion a bit more Real, to fool reality to horrifying consequences. Because, thinking back on it, those children definitely didn't run away due to being scared normally. The Fae had made the Spell magically horrifying. Monstrous.

And Amy had no idea how to replicate it.

She couldn't practise her magic on Felin's orders, so she was left with only half the picture. The runes; what she had come to call the half-Spellform that the mana had imbued onto her. They were a mess of jagged lines, oscillating in and out, seeming almost like a spiky ball, with a strange smooth shape near the top. What's the name of that sea creature? It reminds me of it. I vaguely remember reading about it in a book or two. Urchin? Something like that.

And this Spellform - well not that it can be called one - violates every principle I've ever been taught about Spellform design. The jagged turns alone would make my Spells teacher faint. Mana attracts onto mana. Every 'turn' has to be a curve, otherwise the mana catches on a harsh corner and concentrates there instead of flowing freely. And that's for ninety degree or less turns. Not these almost full one-eighty ones. That is for Spellforms though, and these runes don't seem to actually need mana to run through them physically - or is magically the right word? Metaphysically? - so the mana-flow rules probably don't apply too much here. So what's the point of them?

I could ask Felin, but that feels... cheap. And he didn't feel the need to teach me about them beforehand either. Something to figure out then. After this though, what's there to do? Not that I've never done nothing and rested in bed all day before, but I want to do something. I feel energised after my ascension - isn't that a word and a half - and my mind's restless. Maybe this is why all Mages are a bit cranky. Especially if this restlessness gets worse at higher Tiers, assuming it scales with the enhancement that is. Or that the restlessness isn't something unrelated. Eh. I'll assume so for now.

Maybe a plan? There's a lot to do now that I'm an Apprentice, beyond my own magic. Could help sort out my thoughts, and maybe even think about some new Spells to learn; or make. You know what, sure, let's make a plan, Amy decided, looking around for her things and finding it on the windowsill. Thanking Felin for his thoughtfulness, Amy grabbed her notebook and pencil from her bag, and began to write about what came to mind.

To do:

- Study Monstrous Visage's runes

- Ask Felin about learning Unknowable

- Register my new Tier (doubt I'd be able to in Triesen)

- Request another transfer (don't remember if I did last time)

- Investigate the totally-not-a-plague illness going around

- Investigate the Tower ruins

- Sort out my contract with Felin

- Ask Felin about Fae magic (Word Magick?)

- Send a letter to family

- REMEMBER to ask family if Jacob knows about magic

- Send a birthday letter to Jacob

- Find a gift for Jacob (what does he even like at his age?)

- Request

Amy paused as she was writing the last thing, falling into thought. Do I want to visit my family? I love them but... I think I'd just be bitter, seeing them again after so long. I don't want Jacob's first proper impression of his big sister beyond what he had as a toddler to be bad. And my parents might take it the wrong way too. Especially Dad. I'll definitely visit them, some day, but not anytime soon. If I ever escape this hellhole, then I'll probably give myself a couple months break at least.

- Request Look into leaving Triesen (holidays?)

- Think about new ideas for Spells (why stop at this one?)

Unable to think of anything more, Amy turned over the page and began a new list; this time, ordered.

Plan:

1. Study Monstrous Visage's runes

2. Think about new Spell ideas

3. Ask Felin about Fae & Unknowable magic

4. Ask Felin about the Tower

5. Investigate Tower if Felin agrees

6. Make letters to family; birthday for Jacob; ask about magic knowledge

7. Investigate the plague going around

8. Look into holiday requests or the like

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

9. Request a transfer

10. Update Tier at Mage registry

That should be all. I can always update it anyways. I probably don't need to ask about the contract thinking about it, so I've left that out. Felin said we'd figure it out as we go along, and leaving it open-ended is probably for the best if anything happens between us. Don't want to be forced to travel with Felin all the time if I end up hating him. Unlikely, but worth thinking about. Let's get to the runes then.

Turning over to a new spread of pages entirely, Amy began to sketch out what she had imagined in the mana. There were gaps in places where her mind couldn't place certain lines properly, or sections that she simply couldn't recall, but it only took a minute or so to get it all down precisely. It differed in some places to the one that had been first imprinted upon her, but simply having it in a more visual medium is more useful than trying to decipher it all through thought. As she studied the rune to no avail, Amy was almost tempted to try out one of the new abilities she had as an Apprentice and direct a stream of mana to her brain to empower it. Sadly, Felin had said no mana use and he'd likely sense it if she did. Still, there was something kicking around in the back of her mind, trying and failing to remind herself of something.

Okay, Amy, let's work this out. What do you know of workings in general? Felin said that they're 'pleas' to the mana. Not a command, like Spells, but a plea. What's different between them? There's the structure of a Spellform; specific Spellcraft for each different Spell; and probably a lot more that I'm struggling to think of. But there's something fundamental that I feel like I'm glossing over. I'm looking at it from the Spell's point of view, how a working is different to it. So what about from a working's perspective? What's different about a Spell? What I've said before still counts, but there has to be more than this, otherwise workings would be no different to Cantrips and might as well have no difference. Cantrips are commands to the mana without a Spellform, the only type of 'Spell' you can cast at Aspirant, since you have no personal mana to construct a Spellform out of. You use Magecraft to attune the mana to an Element, and then, sort of, will it outwards in an uncontrolled mess and hope it works. Workings also attune mana though, so maybe I'm looking into a dead end trail. There doesn't seem to be any difference between a Cantrip and working, literally or figuratively. They're the same concept at heart, just willing mana outwards to do...

Concepts. Oh. Felin literally said it, when he was first describing them. Workings don't use Elements, they use Concepts. Elements are merely the foundation that workings build upon. The mana Concepts are where all the 'work' is done. You ask the mana, in a sense, to take your Concept and support and shape it into something more. The rune is the mana's answer to your plea for help. It's a guide. Not to Spells. But to the Concepts. Other races don't always use Spellforms like humans, elves for example using song, so why would the mana constrain itself to that medium? It wouldn't. Mana yearns for connection, as I experienced so recently. It always bridges things, to bring forth wonders out of nothing, connecting us with itself to do so. Elements then are the foundation for those acts of diplomacy, the acts of connection, so that there's common ground for the mana to converse with us upon. Concepts are our contribution to the talks, and the mana responds in turn with the runes. Mages then take these runes, and shape them into something the mana can actually use. Whether that be rigid Spellforms, enchanting songs, or otherwise.

Runes aren't meant to be instructions, or commands like Spellforms, they're acts of inspiration.

And the next step is to shape the inspiration into a Spell, like the mana did to our Concepts. And... Goddammit, I'm pretty sure Felin said all of this already too, back in our original talk. I was just too ignorant and unable to comprehend it. Frustrating, but at least I'm on the right track now. Concepts. The 'Monstrous' part of my working is definitely present in those spiky parts. They're supposed to be unnatural and strange, to horrify and to enchant in the wrong ways. The 'Visage' aspect is different though. It should be present in all the parts of the working, unlike the 'Monstrous' Concept, I feel like. That circular form is definitely a part of the 'Visage' too. Why, though? What parts of the rune screams about a 'Visage'? The circular aspect is related by virtue of elimination, but does it relate to the spiky parts too? Unless...

As Amy shifted her head to different perspectives, trying to find something that relates, she saw it. It could've been a reach. But it felt right. The curved spikes? Their horrid jaggedness, curling around? They didn't make a circle. They made a smile. And the smooth circular shape at the top? It was like an eye. The whole rune was a face. A horrible distorted face, sure, but a face nonetheless. A visage, corrupted by her anger and frustration. That's where she had to start with the Spellform. Not with the jagged lines that couldn't work in reality, but the idea of a face.

Well, at least it feels like I've gotten somewhere. I can't really experiment without mana though, as I can't test my Spellform ideas as I go. I could go over more Spell ideas too, but at the end of the day, they're just that: ideas. I can't cast workings to try and see if they're viable, not just because I'm not allowed to use mana either. Casting some of my ideas in my bed would just be disastrous. And... Now that I'm thinking about it, there's one last thing I've left out of my plan. The loss. If it bothers me too much, I'll ask Felin about it, yet I want to figure it out on my own, just like I did with the runes. Maybe he knows I know about it too and he's leaving it to me like before. Unlikely, but not outside the realm of possibility.

Let's see then. I only felt the 'loss' on the last step, when the excess mana integrated with me when it couldn't enhance anything else more than it already had. What would I lose if I was enhanced then? In my ascension, mana was, and is, all about connection, connecting with everything it could. It makes sense then that it wouldn't just connect with itself, that which was in my brain, my eyes, and my mana pool, but with my self also. Nothing about that suggests I'd lose something though.

Let's take it back to the basics, like I did with workings. Mana communicates via the foundations of the Elements, and starts from Concepts. The Mage provides the Concepts, which the mana transforms into a rune. The Mage then transforms the rune in a similar way to a Spellform, which is given to the mana to make a Spell. So what happens with Mage Tiers then? A Mage doesn't offer up a Concept, they offer up their own body. The mana then transforms that body into... something. A medium perhaps? It breaks down a bit there but I'll continue with the metaphor anyways. This 'medium' is given back to the Mage for them to shape. They command the change into structure; that of mind enhancement, or mana sense. Finally, the Mage communicates this structure, so the mana can cast a 'Spell'. To finish the enhancement. The only stage that's ambiguous enough that there could be some sort of 'loss' is in that second stage, what the mana does to the body. Except, if so, that 'loss' shouldn't have been felt at the end but at the very start. Where the Mage is interacting with the body, to bring-...

That's what it's doing in the second stage. It's taking the body, the Mage, as a Concept, and transforming it into a 'rune', an inspiration for what's to come next. It's the mana's offer. A 'medium' of change. Mana can't interact with anything physical without a 'medium', that being a Spell in most cases, where possibility is brought forth into reality. The mana then is interacting not with my actual body in ascension, but with my body's Concept. Then how does this change my body in reality? I know that there can be a trickle-down into reality from a Concept, like what Felin described with Unknowable murders, but this seems too... small, to cause such a major change akin to the erasures.

Why would the mana's interaction with my body's Concept cause a loss? Why would this loss even exist as a trickle-down change? Unless, Amy considered, eyes going wide in almost immediate realisation.

"He said 'I took in so much'," Amy whispered, quiet as a mouse. "Why would that matter? Felin said my body had fully adapted to all its changes. Why then would I be not allowed to use mana? Why would the amount of mana I take in be a cause for concern? Why would ancient Mages go insane for enhancing their body first before their mind? Why did Felin say that my idea of Mage Tiers as an 'adaptation' was along the lines of, but not, the truth? Why would mana interacting with your self as a Concept cause a change in reality?"

Shaking slightly, Amy raised her head from where she was staring into her notebook intensely to look at Felin, floating in the doorway, his eyes squinted, unsure.

"Why would all of this happen? Mana can't affect reality without mana itself, or a Spell," Amy reiterated, alarmed. "To bring forth reality from possibility. That's what I was first taught mana to be. Nothing has ever told me otherwise. Mage Tiers are indeed an adaptation. Not to the deadliness of magic, however.

"Mage Tiers are an adaptation to possibility. To become more than your reality. To manifest more possibilities. And the only way someone could do that is if...

"Felin? Why am I turning into mana?"

"Ah," Felin blurted, seeming guilty. "Well, you found out quicker than I expected."