“Well, let’s start with how a mage normally goes about casting a spell.” Annie started.

Shadow had a sneaking suspicion that Annie had been holding off the explanation to drive her to practice harder. She really hadn’t needed to do that. Shadow was plenty motivated.

But it didn’t matter anymore, because the explanation was happening now.

Shadow was literally bouncing down the road as she listened. She was still tired from the run, but her excitement demanded movement.

“There are 4 steps. Visualization, shaping, activation, and casting. The first is just visualizing the spell’s runic array formation. People generally shorten this, just calling it ‘array’ or ‘formation’ for short. Once you have the array firmly visualized, you shape your mana to conform to the mental image you’re holding.

She smiled down at Shadow.

“Those first two steps are essentially what you’ve been practicing.”

Shadow nodded hastily. She’d figured that much out on her own.

Annie chuckled at Shadow’s continued bouncing.

“Activation is where things properly begin. You start to move your mana in the correct flow pattern for the array, shifting it through the runes. This activates the spell. You‘ll know it’s working because the spell will give you a sense of what you can do with it in your mind. The last step, casting, is simply willing the spell into existence. For example, take a simple light spell.”

Annie raised a hand, light blooming into existence around it. It looked very similar to when Annie was using a healing spell, barring a couple of main differences.

The linked runes circling Annie’s wrist (or, the spell’s runic array formation she supposed) were much simpler than she’d seen with other spells. There was also a sphere of light hovering above her hand, bright enough that Shadow couldn’t really look at it.

It dimmed a moment later, as soon as Annie noticed Shadow wincing.

“The spell lets me modify its expression using only my will, and I know how to do so because the spell imparted the understanding on me with its activation.”

Shadow watched as the ball grew and shrank, and then changed shapes into squares and stars. It was honestly pretty hard to make out details. It was like looking directly at light glare. There was no actual object that was glowing, it was just light, which made it really hard to focus on.

Annie stopped casting the spell.

Shadow was grinning ear to ear. This was so cool. She did file away some of the implications of what she’d been told in the back of her head. She couldn’t help but notice that the activation and casting phases sounded an awful lot like what happened whenever she shadow-ported anywhere. She didn’t think she was doing much in the way of visualization or shaping, but the way she used it had always been a bit instinctual. She’d have to experiment with that. Later.

“So, with the basics of spellcasting out of the way, let’s move onto mana ty—”

‘Can I cast a spell!?’ Shadow projected in front of Annie, facing her, hopping backward down the road.

Annie stopped walking for a second, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Well, I’d like to cover the fundamentals before—"

‘Pleeease?’ Shadow implored, shrinking down, and fixing Annie with her saddest, most pleading look.

Annie rolled her eyes and Jonas started laughing off to the side.

“… I suppose I may be able to teach you a basic one before we continue.”

Yes!

She was instantly off the ground, running around the group in circles, before hopping up and colliding with Annie in a big hug.

Annie staggered a bit, but just shook her head and chuckled, ruffling Shadow's ears.

Shadow broke off quickly, dropping back down and backing up to shadow-write again.

‘Can I cast the light spell? The array looked easier than your healing one! Do they have to move around my wrists?’

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Oh, right!

She hopped back up to two legs, she’d need her forepaws free for this. She reached them out in front of her, getting into a casting pose like she’d seen Annie take a few times.

The whole group was chuckling now, but she didn’t care.

She looked over at Annie again and shaped some more shadow text.

‘I’m ready!’

“Yes, I can see that,” Annie said with amusement. “Unfortunately, dark mana isn’t exactly the best when it comes to casting light spells, which you would know if you’d let me explain the elemental circle.”

Shadow drooped a little. She knew Annie had implied that back when she'd made the collar, but Shadow had hoped it'd be different for direct casting.

‘I can’t cast the light spell like you?’ she wrote, eyes imploring.

Annie shook her head.

“I’m afraid not, little one. You can, however, cast something very similar, even if it is on the other end of the spectrum. I’ll teach you how to cast darkness.”

Shadow squinted at her. Didn’t her mana already do that? She wrote out the thought.

Annie nodded at her.

“It does indeed, but that’s the only reason I can teach it to you. I'm not exactly versed in dark magic spells, being a light mage. In a way, I am indeed teaching you the light spell, but it becomes a darkness spell when cast with dark mana. What that spell actually does is express the basic nature of the mana that’s run through it, and offer significantly better versatility and efficiency than just using the mana itself. It also has a rather forgiving spell array, as far as the exactness of the runes are concerned.”

That actually sounded pretty interesting. She was also happy that she would, in fact, be learning one of Annie’s spells, even if it would do something different with her mana.

Annie took out her notebook and flipped to a page with a series of runes all linked together in an array, with arrows denoting the flow pattern of the mana and the places where all the runes were supposed to link up neatly denoted. Everything was labeled.

Clearly, Annie had pre-prepared this.

“Before you can cast it, you’ll need to memorize all the runes in the array, and their flow patterns. You’ll need to be able to visualize it exactly, from memory, for the spell to work.”

Annie held the book down where Shadow could see it more easily. Shadow noticed Annie was looking pretty interested too.

“Let me know when you’re done.”

Shadow gave it a once over, making sure she didn’t miss anything.

‘Done!’

Annie started grinning at her.

“Just like that, huh?” Annie asked, looking at her with a strange mixture of pride and excitement.

Shadow gave her a somewhat confused nod. That was kind of an odd question. Was there a different way to go about remembering something?

“Well, ready to give it a try?” Annie asked.

Shadow nodded vigorously and instantly found herself beaming again at the idea. She forced herself to calm down a bit so she could actually focus on her task rather than the vivid imaginings of herself looking awesome with runes and magic floating all around.

She noticed a trick in how the runes were supposed to be linked up, that she thought explained why Annie had them float around her wrists. They needed to be linked in a loop. That could be done on the ground, but she’d have to distort the runes to do it.

She paused for a second.

Well, she was still distorting the runes, but it was more like bending the metaphorical paper they were on, rather than changing the way they were written on said paper.

Was she wrong about that being the reason then?

Bah. I’ll think about it later. Time to try this!

She focused on her wrists, visualizing how the array should look.

Step one complete.

She pushed mana through her skin and scales, shaping it to form the array she’d just seen, linking them all up just like the picture had said to.

She stared at her wrist. The shadowy black runes floated there, pressed right up against her scales, wrapping around her forearm, just like she’d imagined them.

She tilted her head looking at it. Shaping the runes had been surprisingly easy. They were formed a lot better than her letters normally were on the ground.

Maybe because they’re so much closer to me?

Mana did get harder to control the farther away it was, but Annie always had her practice shaping out on the ground in front of her. Shadow had never made shapes right up against her body like this.

She shot Annie a suspicious glance, but her mom just kept watching with a smile.

Later. Step two is complete.

Shadow started to move the mana.

And then she suddenly knew. She knew just what she could do with this spell. It was like an intrinsic knowledge. It felt exactly like the instincts she felt when using her shadow-port, only the sensation was even clearer. That was very interesting.

…Step three. Done. Here I go.

She cast the spell, the activation letting her know exactly how to do it. A perfect sphere of darkness was suddenly floating directly in front of her paw. Almost perfect. Well, it was a little bit lumpy, but it was there!

She screeched a little bit. She couldn’t help it.

I did it! I’m casting a spell!

Wait. Could she…?

‘I’m casting a spell!’

Shadow used her new spell to generate the letters in mid-air, properly separated, angled so Annie should be able to make them out. It was actually pretty tough. Making the shadow letters themselves was far easier than shaping mana was, but she also had to keep the spell going, with all the visualization and focus that entailed. It was tricky to focus on both things at once.

Annie threw her arms in the air.

“Congratulations!” she exclaimed, laughing, looking at Shadow with a gaze filled with warmth.

Jonas had his eyebrows raised but was smiling and clapping for her too.

Kirrik looked gobsmacked. His face might be hard to read but the expression was pretty obvious.

“She… has never cast a spell before?” Kirrik whispered over to Jonas.

“Not a one,” Jonas responded, smirk on his face as he watched as Shadow started to run around willy-nilly, forming all kinds of different shapes in the air in front of her. She was letting out some sort of sound that fell somewhere between screeching and keening. It wasn’t the best sounding thing in the world, but she couldn’t help it. The sound was quite involuntary.

“Huh.” Kirrik responded. “I wonder what she’ll be doing in a year.”