Magic

There are people with poor talent and there are those with true gift, but all of them know instinctively how to use **Magic**. For the inhabitants of the Forsaken Lands, it's as simple as breathing. Magic in the Forsaken Lands is said to be *intuitive, but not easy*.

During her lecture , Grallu asks Ikaris the following questions; *Is it easy for a baby to breathe the first time? Is it easy to eat solid food when you have no teeth? To walk when you only know how to crawl on all fours?* What these three examples have in common is that any baby in the Forsaken Lands will eventually make it, even if he or she is a little slower than the others. Because people need Magic as much as they need to drink or breathe.

## Usage

To use Magic, you must simply connect your mind with your **Divine Spark**. This is where most fail, for ordinary people have a Spark so tiny that they can barely feel its presence while sleeping or in deep meditation. Conversely, those born more talented have a much larger Divine Spark, easier to perceive and tap into, but that also means their lifespan is by default shorter, as their light shines brighter. Neia is fair.

Additionally, if a person have no talents, they should be able to live 50 or 60 years like the other natives. If their talent is high like Malia, they might even live for several centuries. In fact, according to Malia, 50-60 years is already an optimistic figure. Usually, most of the natives die of disease or other causes long before that. In Malia's tribe, Grallu is the oldest person in the village at 46. The second oldest person is only 34 years old.

The Spark alone is not enough to cast a spell, there are two other essential keys: The Body and the Spirit. They are also called the **Life** and **Soul Sparks**. The Body provides the energy, the Spirit creates the intention and establishes the link with the Spark, which then grants our will. If your body is strong and trained, you will never lack energy. If your Spirit is strong, your awareness is sharp, and you clearly visualize your intention and the price you are willing to pay, then your connection with your Spark will be profound and your magic will be enhanced. If your Spark feels closer or brighter, then your magic will also be more powerful. Give a strong Body a weak Spirit and a weak Spark, and its magic will fail or the result will be shallow. If the spell succeeds, being drained of all strength and ending up in a coma after lighting a candle is the least to expect and by far the most auspicious. If the wish is too ambitious and expressed in the wrong way, your body will lose all its vitality and die of cardiac arrest before it achieves its goal. An individual with a weak body and a strong mind will not fare much better. Reaching out to one's Spark, even if it is tiny, will be easier. A better ability to visualize, a heightened emotional state, etc. will greatly amplify the power of your spells, allowing you to perhaps light a small fire instead of the candle in the previous example, but your body will also be exhausted and the recovery period will be much longer.

The Spark also grows each time it is used. It will then feel closer to the individual and sensing it and attuning to it will become easier. But to expand even a little bit, a human with ordinary physical and mental abilities would have to deplete himself of all his stamina dozens, even hundreds of times to feel any difference. Alas, the larger the Spark, the brighter it glows. The corrosion it inflicts on your body and soul will only become greater. Even if you devote every spell you cast to extending your lifespan or better resisting the corrosion wrought by your Spark, without outstanding talent a person can still end up wrinkled like Grallu at 46, looking like a 500 year old mummy.

## Factors of a Spell

* **Visualization**: visualization and understanding are important. As an example, for a spell like **Black Veil** if a person can visualize it clearly, the spell will be more powerful and true to their expectations. To increase the synchronization with their Divine Spark and get the best possible output, a sorcerer's wish must be clear, their visualization perfect, but above all realistic. The better their knowledge of what they want to accomplish, the better their chances of success. However, despite their poor understanding of the spells they cast, the natives of the Forsaken Lands were still able to perform magic. Somehow, if they had the will, their Divine Spark was still able to grant their wishes. This is what is known as the Principle of Sacrifice. Additionally, distance did not affect the success or energy cost of a spell. It did, however, affect visualization and accuracy. The human brain was simply not wired to visualize large numbers or vast distances. Even if given the exact coordinates of a target thousands of kilometers away, a regular human would be unable to clearly picture such a location in his mind.
* **Intent:** intent is also just as important. In the case of the Black Veil Spell, if a person's Spark interprets their wish as everything the person sees must become black, it can literally be understood as anything in that person's field of vision will become a black object forever, similar to pouring a can of permanent black paint on them. Therefore, one must always keep in mind, at least subconsciously, an idea of how long their spell should last or they will die. As a rule, it is better to avoid absolute wishes such as *I want to be strong*, and instead prefer *I want to be stronger*, or *I would like to become stronger*. A person's intent also plays a pivotal role in the Principle of Sacrifice.
* **Emotion:** emotional charge, emotions, feelings and moods also affect the power of a person's spells. Strong anger, blissful serenity, passionate desire, or overwhelming fear can all multiply the power of their spells at the right time. When explaining this concept to Ikaris and Ellie, Malia told them a story of a young sorcerer who dreamed of shooting fireballs to reduce his enemies to ashes. He was consumed by his desire for revenge and when he met one of his hated enemies he launched a fireball at him that was much more powerful than the others. This power was due to the sheer intensity of his emotions. An explosive cocktail of anger, resentment and hatred, as well as a will to destroy everything, increased the power of his spell tenfold. He defeated his enemy and went back to training. But something had changed. When he cast his fireballs, he could not recreate the flame power of his previous fight. Not being a fool, he immediately found the cause. He was no longer angry. He tried to rekindle that anger and then cast the Fireball spell again. The result was immediate. The spell was several times more powerful. He began to practice, trying to hold on to that emotional state for better performance, and very quickly getting into that angry state became easier and easier. His fireballs and even his other offensive spells advanced rapidly and within a few years he became a formidable sorcerer. The enemies that had once sparked his anger had long since been wiped out, but he was still angry. He didn't realize it yet, but he had become a temperamental person, prone to get angry and seek revenge by resorting to violence. In the end, he became a bloodthirsty thug, unable to return to a normal life. This story is the typical journey of what is called in the Forsaken Lands as a **Sorcerer of Destruction**. The **Order of Destruction** is one of the Confederation's six major Wizarding Orders and about five to ten percent of the continent's Sorcerers fall into this category. Some have taken this path by accident, but many make this choice with a clear conscience. To become stronger and progress faster, they deliberately choose to cultivate this kind of personality. Eventually, their personalities become so stereotypical that they even get nicknames like **Sorcerer of Anger**, **Sorcerer of Vengeance**, **Sorcerer of Hate**, **Sorcerer of Fear** and so on. Becoming a Sorcerer of Anger is not so bad, but Sorcerers of Fear are pitiful existences. Terror gives them wings, but the rest of the time they live in a constant state of anxiety, jumping up in fright at the slightest creak of a door.

## Principles

* **Optimization:** is the principle responsible for the creation of a Secondary Spark. When an individual first cast a spell, they are making a wish, but the magic is flowing through their body. Even though it is a fleeting moment, their body undergoes both short-term and long-term transformations. For example, they may use their Divine Spark to wish to run faster in order to outrun an enemy, which if repeated often will result in a Secondary Spark, or a Skill that they might name **Enhanced Speed** or **Speed Boost**. It will allow them to cast that spell more easily, more quickly, more efficiently for a lower cost. Basically, their main Divine Spark is their magic power in general. It grows slowly as they use it. A Secondary Spark is the same thing, but it is formed when they cast the same spell often. This is what the Confederation call the **Principle Optimization**.
* **Transcendence:** after some time, usually several months or years, holders of a Secondary Spark will also come to realize that they run faster even when they are not using magic. This is what the Confederation calls the **Principle of Transcendence**.
* **Sacrifice:**

## Spell progression

A spell's progression consists of it's duration, efficacy, and other factors that strengthen it. For the Confederation's standards, 5% increase was considered for their prodigies who had been trained in all sorts of disciplines such as meditation, visualization, martial arts, archery, etc. Basically, anything that favored the development of mental faculties essential to a sorcerer such as concentration, self-control, etc. And that was for the non-humans with a stronger Soul from birth. For pure humans it was usually closer to 1 or 2%. According to Malia, one or two percent improvement is already commendable, and it would earn a Sorcerer a place in any Confederation academy. In this regard however, Ikaris can be considered as an outlier, as his second **Black Veil** lasted twice as long as the first, translating to a whopping 100% increase despite being a pure human and having no prior training. This is largely influenced by his Soul Strength which was valued at 100 points right from the beginning. An abnormally high value for someone with no proper knowledge about magic and a low level. This absurdly high Soul Strength is also what caused Ikaris' monstrous visualization capabilities, a factor that greatly affects the success of a spell.

## Energy consumption

As Ikaris had noticed very quickly, the energy used during a spell was limited. Otherwise, he would have lost all his fat long ago. Although he was rather skinny, he wasn't skeletal like an anorexic either. His attributes had also increased and he also had his theory about it. Every time he cast a spell it was like condensing an intense workout into one short second. The amount of lactic acid in his body was so high that it could kill him. Basically, the spell drained energy from every cell in the body at once, but in the end it was like trying to lift a 500kg barbell. If the sorcerer does not possess sufficient energy or stamina, they would end up on the floor with no strength left. But casting a spell was different from lifting weights. The whole body was being put under strain, but only its' stamina was being sapped. So it was like doing an intense workout without actually working out. The stimulation was the same, at least in terms of cardio, but the muscles weren't as badly damaged. As long as the sorcerer ate properly and took adequate breaks, it was the ultimate training regimen. Distance, however, is a factor that did not affect the success or energy cost of a spell.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Chapter 4
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Chapter 5
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Chapter 15
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Chapter 11
5. ↑ Chapter 12
6. ↑ Chapter 13
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Chapter 14