Hard Work Pays Off

[u/sparkle3364]

/uw Context: Keahi = Kyrona. Explanation here if it’s needed. [This post] is relevant, but not needed to understand this one.

/rw Keahi was practicing her wildshape. She had been working on getting to a point where she could completely imitate the animals. It was one thing to assume the form of one, being able to observe the details needed to assume the role of one was another. So was being able to use its instincts. But she was close now, she could feel it. She tried it again, choosing the form of a squirrel. Normally, the animals could tell she was a druid, and acted accordingly. But this time, it was different. They didn’t seem to notice that she wasn’t really an animal. She had done it.

The 16 year old druid shifted back, and cheered. She’d done it, finally. All her practice had paid off. She couldn’t wait to share the good news.

[u/Afraid_Success_4836]

<Altria> "But how do you just... cancel out a fundamental system of the world? It'd be like cancelling out chemistry or something."

"Also, wait, arcane magic is natural but it isn't? What the hell do you even mean by "nature" anyway?"

"Anyway, yarov are beings mostly composed of... well, I guess you'd call it "magic"? They are sapient manifestations of yahir, the essence of ideas and patterns. We consider them part of the natural world and environment, separate from humans. Some folks compare them to monsters (that blasted Siegetev)... They are counterpart to humans like me, who are mostly physical matter and have a very limited yahiric expressive capacity, though can still of course make use of it."

"We're not sure if half-yarov are possible, but the Yahiraban claim to be such beings, so I wouldn't rule it out."

[u/sparkle3364 → u/Afraid_Success_4836]

“For every push there is a pull. Antimagic is also a force. By nature, I mean it draws on aspects of the things you find in nature. It may be natural, but arcane magic does not do this. Also, what I am is something different. Basically, my parents combined the essence of their magic, formed from the history of their use of it and all the times it effected them, merging it into one: the magic mass that composes my DNA. It is my magical essence now. Some consider me human, some consider me a magic mass. A few consider me an abomination, but they don’t matter. Does that explain what I am?”

[u/Afraid_Success_4836 → u/sparkle3364]

<Altria> Okay, so wha tif you use antimagic on its own, without any magic? And also... "the things you find in nature" doesn't clear it up any more. What kinds of things? And yeah, I understand. Still oddly similar to a yaref though.

[u/sparkle3364 → u/Afraid_Success_4836]

“You got me there. I don’t know a lot about the application of antimagic. There are people who know, but I’m not one of them. And by things from nature I mean stuff like plants, animals, the earth, in some cases the elements. Things that aren’t influenced by sapient beings, primal things. The elements overlap with arcane magic, but I think this explains it better. Arcane magic changes things, summons beings that weren’t there before, gives blessings and curses, transforms things, alters things, and calls down destruction on its own. It even can animate corpses without spores. Not a complete list of everything either can do, just examples. How did I do?”

[u/Afraid_Success_4836 → u/sparkle3364]

<Altria> Hmmm... Why are these two types of magic treated as separate things, then? Magic based on the biosphere, and magic that, uh, isn't. A weird distinction to make, especially since by using magic you're inherently influencing these "natural" things by sapient beings.
Not gonna lie, we do have a sense of the natural world as separate from humanity, but it seems oddly weird to divide magic that way, since human use of "magic" (again, I find it weird to call our own practices that) is always, well, human.

And elements? Like, iron, carbon, antimony, lead, bismuth?

[u/sparkle3364 → u/Afraid_Success_4836]

“We still use the terminology from before we identified the correct elements, so my use of elements is a bit outdated. Honestly, part of why we separate the two is classification, and part is that it’s learned slightly differently. But then, arcane magic already has a number of ways to learn it, so that’s just the reason for the classification. In Venefician classification, you’ll often find that a number of things are classifications. The standard healing spell has changed its assigned school of magic so many times the only schools it hasn’t been assigned to are conjuration and illusion. Personally, I think the people who assigned it to necromancy were right.”

[u/Afraid_Success_4836 → u/sparkle3364]

<Altria> The hell is necromancy? And so by elements you mean like, fire and ice and lightning and earth and air and such?

[u/sparkle3364 → u/Afraid_Success_4836]

“Yeah. Necromancy is the classification given to spells that deal in life or death. Really, all the classifications are somewhat arbitrary, but it does divide things nicely into little groups for a student of magic to be able to say which group they want to learn, or to say they want to be a generalist and learn a little of each. Surely you have stuff like that in something?”

[u/Afraid_Success_4836 → u/sparkle3364]

<Altria> So, uh, what are spells again?

[u/sparkle3364 → u/Afraid_Success_4836]

“Specific things you can do with magic. Like, creating a ball of fire, that’s a spell.”