Chapter 13: Pages Quenching Thirst

Mages across the world and across time have asked the same question: how does one accurately measure the power of a mage?

There are some who would insist upon the most brutish of answers: that only the results of combat determine strength. But combat is rarely conducted as a controlled experiment, resulting in all manner of outside variables from environment to reinforcements. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, most desire to evaluate a mage’s strength prior to combat, thus rendering this answer entirely unsuitable for our purposes.

Others, of course, will point to the system of ranked seals that has gained such widespread acceptance, as it does accurately measure a mage’s mastery and learning. But this is an acknowledgment of strength, not a measurement of it. Most seals are granted by programs of study, which provide no better measurements than grades, or trials, which fail as a measure in the same way that combat fails.

No, the best measurement of a mage’s capabilities is and will likely always remain runic capacity, because it is derived from the fundamentals of magic instead of any secondary or cultural standard. One rune is the smallest unit of magic, no more and no less. An individual’s runic capacity cannot be misinterpreted, cannot be overcome by willpower, does not waver from day day to day, and grows only slowly, rendering it the bedrock of any analysis.

At this point there will no doubt be those who object that runic capacity is nothing but a foundation, the simplest of measurements and not necessarily the best. It is certainly true that an individual’s mana pool is an essential component of spellcraft, and one could even theorize a mage who had developed a high runic capacity but was unable to cast the spells they created due to stunted mana. But this is a fanciful hypothetical, and in practice one’s mana pool is generally a multiplier of their runic capacity, somewhat more or somewhat less depending on experience. Furthermore, mana pools can be more easily refilled, or strained beyond limits just as the body can be strained, so exact measurements are less useful.

Of course this is ultimately an important measure of strength, but at this point one must consider not just mana capacity, but efficiency. Prior to the glyphic revolution, spells were cast with much less efficiency, pegged at 100 thaums or more, with…

The book went on to talk at length about matters related to efficiency, referring to “untamed magic” and various technical units that she had never heard of, so Suria stopped reading there. She was already pleased with her progress in The Measure of a Mage. In the beginning the author’s meandering prose had seemed too abstract, but once she started on the exercises, she understood what he was getting at.

What the author was trying to argue, at great length, was that mages should focus on increasing their runic capacity, and fortunately he included concrete advice. Suria flipped back to the chapter of exercises, and now that she had relaxed for a while with reading, felt ready to start again.

She picked up one of her practice slates and set it on the bed beside her book, then took up her stylus carefully. The first rune was simple to press into the stone, like the beginning of any formation, but with the second rune she instead set it across the first, forming an X shape. When she pressed in she felt the first rune resist her, the trough in the stone filled with her own power.

Working on her own, having runes overlap one another had always felt wrong, but now she understood that she was simply feeling the conflict. That conflict wasn’t wrong any more than the strain of exercising the body was wrong. She could feel her mana being tested in a different way from when she simply tried to make more runes, which she was sure would bear fruit. The book hadn’t suggested that the crossed runes she created had any actual use, but they served as good training.

Once she had a headache and felt exhausted – no doubt the mana pool that the author discussed – Suria returned to her reading. Since she felt more strained than before, she decided to switch to one of her other books. She had basically been looking for an excuse, since she desperately wished she could read all four of them at once.

The Akrashic Taxonomy of Spellcraft was a dense tome that seemed to go into considerable detail, but fortunately the author was less verbose than the author of The Measure of a Mage. He said in plain language that the purpose of the book was to discuss different classifications of magic, and wasted no time laying out the eight fields that Darkmoon University used:

Evocation: All spells that project mana into the world directly.

Enchantment: Methods that imbue mana into physical materials.

Transmutation: Using magic to transform a mundane substance from one element to another.

Conjuring: All spells that create new matter, mundane elements or exotic summonings.

Perception: Using magic to create illusions, enhance the senses, or divine information.

Alchemy: All techniques involved with the recombination of magical substances.

Medicine: Using magic to heal the body or cure illness.

Naturalism: Study of magical plants, animals, minerals, and natural laws.

Of course no taxonomy can ever be perfect, necessitating the length of this book. Even the ancients complained that “Medicine” is a goal, not a method, that overlaps with all other fields, particularly Alchemy. But as old as this objection is, the fact remains that healing is such a complex art that it deserves focused study and can easily fill a department with courses.

Many nations use different systems. For example, in the old structure of the Shantic States, Alchemy is not a separate discipline, it is an expected part of other fields, particularly Enchantment, Medicine, and Transmutation. The most controversial piece of the Akrashic Consensus is granting Perception the status of a separate field, as it so frequently involves other disciplines. Yet spells that alter the mind directly are distinctly different from others, and handling information is a highly specialized task.

The ancients considered divination to be its own field, but based upon the work of Honorable Lord Yoncroft…

At that point the book got deeper into the arguments between scholars. Suria was actually eager to read all of it, to finally understand magic on a deeper level. She had known that people across the world used magic differently, even categorizing it differently, and wanted to learn everything she could.

For now, however, she returned to the statements of the eight fields. Each one of them was a discipline that could absorb an entire lifetime and could easily become a career. If she could earn even a single seal in a subject like Enchantment or Alchemy, she would be set for life in most towns. Of course, she hungered to learn even more, to cross the boundaries between disciplines and taste magic in its purest form.

In the short term, what she needed was to decide which fields she would pursue at Darkmoon University. She took it as a given that she would take a class in Medicine, but should she try to supplement it with Alchemy or Naturalism? Was she likely enough to run into trouble again that she should take a class that focused on Evocation, or could she pick up those spells on the side?

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That was exactly where the later chapters could be useful – as much as she wanted to read all the theory, she needed to understand what each of the fields would actually give her in as much detail as possible. Suria paged back to the introduction, considering where to start next.

“Are you still reading?” Maut-mai stared from her chair in disbelief.

“One tends to, in school,” Suria answered mildly.

“You would think there’d be more than enough of that once the term starts!”

“It doesn’t seem like there’s much going on around campus anyway.”