CHAPTER 23

Will had a million questions on his mind. To start with, he had no idea what she’d meant when she said his primary element was shadows or something. Will asked Anna what she meant by shadow magic.

“You see Will, the thing you have to understand about magic is that it’s unique to every person. Just like no two people may imagine something in the exact same way, no two mages would perform magic that is exactly identical. However, based on innate affinities, we can categorize magic into 2 broad categories.

The first one is physical magic. This involves the manipulation of the three physical elements ie, water, earth and air. A mage can have a natural affinity to one of the elements. For example, my primary affinity is manipulation of water”.

Will remembered how Anna had controlled water to heal Messenia.

“Does that mean you can only control water?”.

“No, If I wanted, I could control any element or perform any type of magic. But the amount of energy I’d expend to manipulate other elements would be much higher. Sometimes, the energy required for some other elemental magic becomes so high that it would be practically impossible for me to do it. Even though my primary affinity is water, I can perform earth manipulation up to a reasonable level”.

“So, physical magic is the manipulation of water, earth and air. What about shadow magic?”

Will asked.

“Shadow magic is in the next category of magic known as creation magic. Light magic and shadow magic falls into this category. They’re called creation magic because they represent the very essence of creation itself ie, energy and matter. Light magic is the manipulation of pure energy while shadow magic allows the creation of matter and life. The combination of both represents the creation of everything around us”.

“Can you show me shadow magic?” Will was a little excited to see what his primary affinity looked like.

Anna grimaced at this request “Sorry Will, I’d love to show you but I’m really terrible at shadow magic. I can’t perform shadow magic properly even at the best of conditions. Actually, the night you got transformed, I was trying to perform shadow magic and even at the ideal time I couldn’t do it. I even drew a lot of power from you that night and yet my spell failed”.

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“Do you know anyone who can do shadow magic?”.

“I’m afraid not. It’s generally difficult for physical magic manipulators to perform creation magic. Shadow magic users are really rare and even among creation magic users, the majority are light magic users. Your primary element is pretty rare among mages Will”.

Will looked a bit disappointed at this “Don’t worry I can still teach you the basics of using shadow magic and I have a few books on shadow magic. I’m looking for more books and once you’ve mastered the basics, we can try and look for someone who’s an expert in shadow magic.” Anna said with a smile.

Anna gave Will 3 books from the shelf in her study. The first one was titled ‘A beginner's guide to magic’ , the second one was ‘Mental and physical energy manipulation’ and the last one was ‘Fundamentals of shadow magic’. Anna told him to start with the beginners guide and then on to energy manipulation and finally read the book on shadow magic.Anna also said that she was going out and would be back by tomorrow.

Will went back to his room and got started on the books. ‘A beginner's guide to magic was a small book that contained many pictures and illustrations. This reminded him of children’s books. ‘I guess mages usually read this book at a much earlier age’ thought Will.

The book essentially described how magic was the manipulation of different energies. In order to perform magic, first you needed to summon up the physical energy within your body, then you needed to draw upon your mental energy on how the magic would bring about the change needed around yourself. The final step was combining these two and pushing it outward into the world. While this was enough for most spells, some advanced magic required summoning energy from the nature around you as well.

The second book was about mental and physical energy manipulation. It contained tips on how to accumulate physical and mental energy with caution against not drawing excess energy as this can lead to consequences ranging from dizziness, nosebleeds all the way up to death.

As Will perused the book further, physical energy seemed like something similar to exercise or sword fighting. The more you did it, the more adept you would become until it would essentially become second nature to you, like muscle memory.

The mental energy was the more imaginative part of the magic, where you have to visualize yourself and your surroundings and the changes that you intended to bring about using the magic. Will had always imagined that he would need to recite spells in strange languages to be able to perform magic, but it seemed like all you needed was a good imagination and practice.

It was getting late by the time Will finished the book on mental and physical energy manipulation. Will decided to go for a bath and had some dinner with Caitlin for company before moving on to the final book. This book gave a brief description of creation magic identical to what Anna had told him earlier. The book went on to describe shadow magic and how it’s users will be able to create matter and life. Unlike physical magic which manipulated existing matter, shadow magic users were able to create matter and life.

Creating raw matter was easier while creating life seemed a lot more complicated. The more complicated the organism was, the harder the magic would become. The book’s author also noted that no one in recorded mage history had ever created life with consciousness similar to humans. The other important distinction of shadow magic was that it didn’t require continuous magical energy supply to sustain it. As an example, the author compared air manipulation with shadow magic.

A mage producing a vortex of air would need to supply it continuously with his/her energy for it to be maintained, but a shadow mage creating a fish didn’t need to keep up a continuous supply of magic. Once the fish was created, it could survive as long as it had clean water and food.

Will had fantastical visions of lady Mildred being torn to pieces by an army of beasts he’d summoned as he drifted off to sleep with the book in his hands.