"-my? Amy? Are you there?"

"-Oh!" Amy jumped, a hand waving in front of her face, surprising her, "Sorry, what were you saying?"

"Daydreaming again?" Maria said, smirking at her from opposite the table. The two were sitting at an old bench near a small river that ran by the village. They were far enough from anyone else in the village that Amy was allowed to relax a bit, enjoying her time with her friend.

"Sorry, I just have a lot on my mind," Amy commented, blushing.

"Is it to do with that job you mentioned last time?"

"Yes, yes it is," Amy muttered, thankful for the excuse. It had been a few days since she'd started practising Illusory Bolt and she was making no progress on it at all. No variation on what she tried worked, the Spell unable to be casted. It was as if the accursed thing was refusing to be resurrected from its grave in the tower, content to stay dead to the magical world, forever.

"Mind telling me about it? I might be able to figure something out," Maria asked, tilting her head to the side, "Whenever I'm stuck on something, I usually end up missing something obvious that someone else always points out."

"I suppose..." Amy considered, trying to think of a way to word the 'job' without arousing suspicion, "Well, before I came to Triesen I joined a small guild with some fellow herbalists to help each other out, and one of them shared a problem they had, and said they'd give half a gold to whoever figured it out."

"Oh? That's a rich friend you have there!" Maria exclaimed, leaning closer.

"Don't I know it," Amy lied, thinking how her imaginary friend in this imaginary guild would describe the 'job', "They'd uncovered an odd recipe in his master's workshop that described the impossible. I won't try to explain the specifics, but it's as if their master had written down the cure for a common cold and somehow no one else knew about it. Everything he had learned told him that it was incorrect yet when he tried the recipe it partially worked. The steps where the concoction failed weren't even on the 'wrong' parts but could be blamed on his own skill and methods. So, he gave it to us, and stumped us all too."

"There's no chance the recipe was just incorrect then? It explains why his master never shared it as he could never get it to practically work."

"That's what I thought too until he started sharing evidence that the recipe might've actually been carried out. There were experiment notes with this potion in use. Some of the results of them even fit what a theoretical potion of the same effects would show!"

"And you haven't shared it with anyone else? Like some sort of senior guild or the person who taught you?"

"They'd either write it off as fake or confiscate it 'for my own good' and end up profiting off of it while I'm left buried in the sand." Amy grumbled, "The bloody Sp-potion is too damned infuriating! Ugh!"

Getting off from the bench, Amy stamped over to the side of the river, kicking a rock into it and throwing her arms up into the air. Tempted as she was to channel her frustration into a scream, it would not only be rude with Maria so close by, but the village might be able to hear it if she went all out like she planned. So caught up in the moment, she didn't notice Maria walking up to her from behind and grabbing her shoulders, forcing Amy to face her.

"Amy." Maria said, in an unusually serious tone.

"Y-yes?" Amy eeped out, too put off by her friend's strange attitude and ashamed to put together anything coherent.

"Take a break."

"What?"

"Do nothing for a few days. Stop trying to figure it out and take a damn break. Lord knows you need one, from the sounds of it. The more worked up over it you're going to get the more you'll struggle with it. Just, please, take it easy, okay?"

"...Okay." Amy sighed, crumpling in on herself.

"Good. Come on, let me take your mind off of it. You wanted to know about the date, didn't you?" Maria asked, walking back over to the bench.

"Oh yes, yes I did. How did it go?" Amy said, shooting back up and running over to catch up to Maria, listening intently.

"Well, it was a bit awkward but - I can't believe I'm saying this - I think he's kind of nice. He's a bit heavy-handed, as I expected, yet it was in a cute way-..."

* * *

Almost in reflex, when Amy returned home she reached for the book in her kitchen, layered under a Ward and Alarm Spell. No, Amy, Maria would be mad if she knew you were going back to practising almost immediately. Although she wanted to follow her friend's orders, she knew that she'd need to do something else to keep her mind off of it, and currently there was only two other interesting things in the house. One was too difficult or dangerous to investigate, and the other was pure wishful thinking. So, thinking sensibly for once, Amy chose to dream and began to look at the 'Familiar' Spell in the grimoire.

Out of the retrieved book, she began to compare the various Tiers of the Spell, trying to find a possible link and way to downgrade it to Tier 2. She saw some immediate similarities almost immediately. The Spell was like a massive circle split into quarters, facing the cardinal directions. The sectors weren't split equally, with the north and south sections being far bigger than the corresponding east and west ones. In between the splits in the circle were connecting spell lines, branching the gaps. It was as if two separate Spellforms had been stitched together, then combined with a mirror image of itself too.

Subsequent Tiers of the Spell didn't change the major shape of the Spellform much, only adding more channelling rings and more detail to the patterns within each section. It was here that she came to the inevitable conclusion that a downgrade was impossible. Amy could see no reasonable way she could manufacture a Spellform that is both simpler than the Tier 3 version and still retains the persistent patterns. Unless she miraculously became an Apprentice, Familiar was locked to her behind the wall that was Spell Tier 3.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Amy almost gave up there, returning to boredom until an idea came to her. Opening the other book back up, she searched through its pages, trying to find any sign of a Familiar Spell or similar. The book was almost entirely Illusion based, which made sense for how the introduction book described the Element, until she came to the back. Its pages mainly described very odd sounding Spells and techniques she had yet to read about but something gave her hope.

"...as you come to the end of this book, you should inquire with your Wizardly mentor for your final comprehension test before being allowed the next. For some hints of what's to come with the next book, you will begin to cover the Fae, both the Element and the beings of the same name, learning Spells that range from Familiar - which will guide you from now to the end of your Wizardly studies - to the advanced like Travel - to take you to where you wish to be - or to the even more obscure such as Donjon and Word Magicks.

Just remember. If Illusion was made to fool others, then Fae is even grander in scope. It was born to fool the world."

...I can't tell if this section answers more questions than it makes for me. At the very least, I now know Familiar is Fae-based, which was what I had thought. Besides that it seems Fae as an Element is definitely not what I thought it was. What sort of 'feeling' Element even makes a Spell called Travel? Or what ever the fuck Donjon is! And 'born'! Not 'made'? What is this Element? The only Elements I remember being 'born' are the Basic or planar Elements. Even the Esoteric ones were more 'made' than 'born'. How... how have I not heard of any of this? I should know this, everyone should know this. It should be taught. So, why is it not? Is it wrong? Unlikely. It's been erased, purposefully? Uncomfortably possible.

Stepping back from the pages, her eyes meandered over to the open grimoire, to the Spell printed on its pages. Familiar. Fae. And the power to 'fool the world'. If that wasn't an Element to rise to greatness with, then Amy didn't know anything that would. Analysing the Spellform and committing it to memory the best she could, she pored over what the Spell could do, trying to gather its purpose from what little Spellform knowledge she had. Predictably, she came up with nothing. The Spell was completely foreign and there was nothing she could do to understand it but cast it. Which was obviously not an option. Unless...

Fae was the one in that affinity test that shined the brightest. If I allow myself some optimism, then I do have a high affinity for it. Maybe even higher than my mediocre Light affinity. High enough that a Spell like Familiar, which sounds mostly Fae, could be cast easily enough, compared to other Spells anyways. And... It doesn't hurt to hope, to try.

With nothing to go off of but the brief description of Fae, Amy resolved herself, shaking off her nervousness. She gingerly grabbed the grimoire and a candle then walked out and around to the back of her cabin, to the cellar door. Carefully opening it and navigating down the old stone steps, she made her way to her small Spell testing area. It was barely bigger than her bedroom, with a couple of barrels in the corners that could act as targets, and mould growing in the corners. Carefully, Amy set the book and candle down on the floor, taking a step back, centring herself.

It was only for a few moments that she paused, to calm, before she set to it.

To fool the world. A trickster would love to do that. Yet, it didn't feel right. Fae was supposed to be grander than that, than Illusion. And Amy didn't even know if her visualisation was correct. So, she settled on a slight variation of her own Magecraft. The world was her audience, and she, the dancer on the stage of the universe. She didn't dance only for life, but something else; to entertain, to enchant, and to trick. A small shortcut here and there, a cutting of corners, a misstep, all were ignored as the audience, the world, came under her thumb.

It wasn't her intention to begin gathering mana but so enraptured with her own thoughts, she began her Magecraft unconsciously, the mana responding to her pleas. The spinning became the whirlpool, the dancer, the Mage, and Amy herself. Filtering itself through the lens of her being, the mana condensed, constraining itself to the vista she wished to paint with more than mere colour. To her dismay, Amy felt the mana begin to disappear as it entered into her self, becoming too miniscule to observe. She was barely restraining her panic when she noticed something almost imperceptible. The mana wasn't disappearing. It was concentrating. It had attuned itself to tightly with her being that it was like it didn't exist, only becoming noticeable when more inevitably poured in. Directly in the middle of her whirlpool of innate mana was a singular mote of infinitely dense power. Outshining everything else within her, it was like a piece of the divine had been gifted to her, its brilliance too much to contain. And, oddly enough, it was green. No, not green. To describe it as merely green would be a sin. It was primality, it was chaos, and it was an endless font of viridescence. Hope blossomed as she realised that the affinity test maybe hadn't been broken or wrong, and maybe her affinity truly was great enough to pull something so dense out of the Mana Ocean so swiftly and simply. Even though Amy still felt hopeful, she knew the difficulty that casting a Tier 3 Spell entailed. There was a reason only a few people came out of her School as Apprentices. It required more than mere talent. It necessitated a precise skill with the manipulation and creation of Spellforms that hadn't been needed yet as a Mageling. So, it was a good thing that Amy was the most well-practised Mageling in her entire School when it came to Spellcraft then.

Before her mind fully knew what it was doing, the dense mote of mana fled out of her body, rejecting its mortal confines, and came to rest upon her open palm. Along with it came a stream of her personal mana, organising itself into the Spellform of Familiar. By the nature of the Spell itself, the patterns inside of the sectors needed to be constructed first, before the rest. It came as a terrifying surprise then that when the pattern was completed, the mote of mana flew into the Spellform, incomplete. Amy braced herself for a disaster that never came, her gaze locked onto a sight she couldn't believe. The Spell was making itself. Almost eagerly, the Spellform's completion sped up at a rapid pace, sections of the Spell finishing construction before she could even catch them beginning. Almost as if someone else, someone far more skilled in Fae magic than her, a mere Mageling, was crafting the Spell too.

Phantom gusts of wind picked up around the Spell, its Spellform starting to rotate and spin, floating in the middle of the room. A deep sense of wrongness pervaded the air as an otherworldly power set its claws into the room, dragging itself towards the origin of the Spell, to its Mage, to Amy. Seeping in, a miasma of barely contained wrath infected Amy's mind as if she was communing with this entity, her thoughts suppressed by the grand communication with such a being. It was almost all too much when the Spellform finished itself, and something changed. The rattling of chains were all her mana sense could pick up as the entity's being was lessened, brought back down to the mortal world. Like the world had breathed a sigh of relief, the cellar returned to a mockery of how it was before, the entity's presence descending down into the Spell. Virid mana exploded as it flowed into the horrible form the entity would inhabit, physicality too puny to fully represent the heaviness that was this monster. That same monstrous presence surged, a voice building across the mana, speaking to Amy, on the floor, quivering, unaware how she had gotten there in the first place.

"Why in all of the Nine Hells did you wait this long to summon me again!" The impudent voice intoned, strangely more human and boyish than she expected from an otherworldly monstrosity.

The vessel for the entity finally complete, the shell of virid mana that had formed it broke away with a snap, revealing what terribleness Amy had inflicted upon the world.

Hovering in the centre of the cellar, was a very angry-looking, black cat.