Birds Of A Feather, Chapter 2.5

2.5

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What was magic?

A myth, according to most younger species. A charlatan’s tricks. A liar’s words. A science not yet understood.

The Enlightened eld knew better than that. Where the children saw a reality whose laws were etched in stone, and any possible deviation from them being only a case of misunderstanding either what they were seeing or what they had thought to be the writing, the old knew well that reality was infinitely stranger than it seemed.

Magic was real. So too, however, were a dozen different esoteric powers and forces of varied origins and varied capabilities.

Psychic powers? Also real. The mind was not limited to the body. Consciousness was more than an emergent property based on the interactions of neurons.

Souls? Yep- and no, this technically didn’t have anything to do with either of the former two.

Life energy? Yes, that too is different. So too are dozens of different Planetary Energies, from Aether’s Light, to Ili Agar Nalima’s Aeion, and even... Phaaze’s Great Poison.

One should also not discount interdimensionality, otherworldliness, the eldritch, atemporality, or a dozen other subjects of similar natures. All of which operate in different formats, under different rules, and have different limitations despite achieving similar end results.

The overlap between them, and sufficiently advanced technology on top of all of that, was... considerable. Like a Venn diagram made up of twenty circles but each of those circles only has maybe one or two percent of it that isn’t overlapping with something else. There was basically nothing that you could do with one of these powers that wasn’t shared with at least one other power.

Discarding your body and existing as an entity formed purely by your own will? The Alimbics did it through psionics. Some Chozo did it through meditating so hard that they ascended to a higher plane of existence. My Chozo half personally knew four different people who’d all done similar, one through Magic, one through Life Energy, one through becoming a Deity (No, this wasn’t Magic, psionics, or spiritualism), and one by becoming a nexus of dimensional energies after an accident involving multiple intersecting planar portals.

Where was I going with this?

Well, both parts of me were nerds, and so I thought that it was important to be clear in the distinctions... Even if there weren’t that many of them.

Back to the original question, though, Magic is a primal force, originating from before chaos ordered itself and birthed the infinite possibilities of existence. It flowed, invisible and nearly intangible, throughout reality. In some places, this flow was stronger, and in some places, it was weaker.

For most of the galaxy, it was nearly inconsequential. Every now and then, though, there was a world that was stepped in magic, saturated with power and potential, and as always, potential was inevitably realised.

What was Magic capable of? A lot. There were theoretically no upper limits, but as always, practice was more complicated.

With preparation and knowledge, one only needed to look at the Bryyonians as an example of what could be done.

Unlike most, their people had explored Magic before developing technologically. When technology became ascendant, the Lords of Science and the Primal Traditionalists eventually came into conflict after the two couldn’t reconcile.

Bryyo had once been a beautiful world. By the time the conflict ended, it had been tidal-locked, and only hanging on by a thread. The Primals, technically speaking, had won that conflict, though mostly in the form of making the Lords of Science lose first.

They had once been contemporaries to the Chozo. That half of me would rate them as ‘Pretty good, but not all the way there yet’, which was a truly ringing endorsement.

You could still find the remnants of the latter on Bryyo.

The walking mountains they called Colossi had been a sight to see- before the Primals destroyed them all, that is.

How did one do Magic?

Fundamentally, Magic is the act of manipulating that primal force, flowing through the universe. There were a dozen broad categories describing each individual form of that manipulation, but those were just categories created by people, not actual differences between forms of Magic.

Achieving this manipulation is the difficult part. Magic flowed through beings, yes, but it wasn’t actually a part of them. The only reason it was possible in the first place was that when Magic flowed through things, it took on the nature of those things. As it passed through you, it came out flavoured like you.

The first step to learning magic is to be able to grasp that flow. It was easier for some than it was for others. For the Chozo, some of our innate abilities, the Morph Ball transformation in particular, were close enough to the process that we had a leg-up.

Others had a hell of a time.

By itself, the amount of power that flows in is... basically nothing, really. About the only thing it’s good for is that it provides a base of energy to do what Magic does best.

Transform.

Magic was born of that old, primal chaos. Shifting Magic into something else, and shifting other things into Magic, was a pretty easy act.

Not everything was equally compatible. Things that were already ‘mystical’ in nature were more efficient than, say, thermal or electrical energy. The energies of life were the most compatible.

Most students will quickly figure out that they can therefore use their own vital energies to cast small workings. Most students will then very quickly figure out that doing anything truly fun requires a lot more than what you can give without causing problems for yourself.

That’s where people find their workarounds. Magic is at its most effective when one can draw from the environment, and the connections that link all things in the world together.

This... just wasn’t an option for me, though.

My environment was metaphysically and literally toxic in every way that mattered. I was not being metaphorical when I said that the city’s misery taints it. If I tried to draw on the energies of the city, then I would end up absorbing some of that taint by proxy, which, since it was so negative, would have deleterious effects on me.

It wouldn’t be that bad, at first, but one of those effects is that it messes with your self-control. That was a feedback loop that you did not want to get into.

Even if it didn’t, it still wouldn’t be worth it. Fueling Magic with tainted power makes it almost certain that something, somewhere, is going to not work the way that it’s intended to, and there were too many things that could go wrong for me to try.

So until the tree cleans up the local ambience, I was left with nothing to rely on other than myself.

I could work with that.

I breathed in, tasting the cool and crisp air. In my hands, I held a small piece of amethyst, the purple crystal shaped like a long hexagonal prism. It was a perfect crystal, utterly uniform in colour, shape, clarity, and cut. I’d had the nanofactories assemble it a few minutes ago.

Some might assume that its artificial origins would preclude it for use in magic. Those people were wrong. What made something magically significant wasn’t its origins, it was whether or not that something had magic in it.

I reached inwards, marshalling my Lifeforce with a moment of effort. The biological lines on my skin lit, though it was fainter than even when I’d been preparing to Shinespark.

I raised a hand, and the very tips of my talons began to glow with internal blue light.

Then I aligned my Lifeforce with the Magic that flowed from me, and that light shifted from blue to something that looked like purple, but was just a tad too strange to be pinned down into that so easily.

I twisted my hand and the light trailed from my talons, seemingly etched into the air. I felt the drain on my Lifeforce, but at the moment it was meagre and slow. This was just preparation, after all, not a true working.

From my talons, a circle of scintillating light formed quickly. I let go of the amethyst in my other hand, and it hunt there, hovering in the centre of the circle

That was just one of the things that magic did. There was no real reason for it to be floating. I certainly wasn’t trying to halt gravity or anything. It floated because it was the focus of what I was preparing, and that fact alone was enough to defy the laws of physics

I concentrated, and the light from every talon except the one on my pointer finger faded. I tucked them all in, and then continued my work, drawing a line upwards before adding another circle around the original one.

A fun fact? Magic Circles were a very real thing, and just about every single species in existence all independently came to that conclusion, even when they didn’t think Magic was real. Even when they vehemently denied the very existence of Magic, there would always be some ‘fictional’ depictions that would show it.

A true cosmic joke, that.

It took me a little under two minutes to complete the circle. The twin circles themselves were the ‘base’ of it, and after that, I started adding in glyphs, pictographic depictions of the most common rules of magical phenomena. Spokes connected the circles, dividing the glyphs into segments and forming a boundary that separated the inside from the outside.

The inside became an instant dead zone, untouched by any phenomena outside. The only exception was my own power, which passed through the boundary by virtue of being exactly the same as the boundary.

I pulled my talon back, light briefly ceasing to trail, before pressing it against the amethyst crystal itself.

I closed my eyes as I got to work on the next part. The flow of my Lifeforce strengthened, and the drain became noticeable.

I marshalled all the power that I was creating, and focused it into gemstone, then I split that concentration into streams, thinning them further and further, until they were tiny strings.

That hard part came next. I had to imbue those strings with ideas, purpose, intent. Then I had to weave them together, and anchor them properly.

Foundation was the first thing I started with. A necessity, for anything you intended to build upon later. Focus came next, and then Storage, followed by Binding.

It was difficult work, with this planet’s slow flow of Magic. It demanded concentration, and the singleminded focus on purpose. The first string was the hardest, though, because Foundation is a complex concept to build from scratch.

One string. Two. Tie them together, wrap them around each other. Add a third, then a fourth, and wrap those two around each other before combining the wrapped strings.

That’s what gave stability to Magic, and stopped it from just decaying back into chaos. It’s what made enchantment as a field so complex, and evocation so easy.

With the first strings in place, though, I draw on their concept and imprint it rather than create new ones. Four became eight, then sixteen, then thirty two, and then even more as I continued combining them.

Focus went on top. It was thinner, narrow, and much less complicated. I fitted Storage in at the same time, and then connected all three with threads of Binding. Little links, but oh so very important.

When it was all ready, I opened the floodgates, and let the power pour.

The threads drank greedily, gaining strength and stability. I gave them as much as I could handle, before I let go of my Lifeforce and Magic both.

The exertion hit like a kick to the gut, sudden, sharp, and unpleasant. I caught the crystal as it fell, and drew in a deep breath of air, holding it for a moment before breathing out slowly, allowing myself to slump in my chair as I rested.

It wasn’t a physical effort, but it may as well have been for how hard it hit me.

It took a minute or two before my breathing settled. I got up then, rising to my feet with just a smidgen less grace than I normally managed. A quick drink of water righted me, and I looked at the crystal for a moment.

It looked exactly the same as it had before all of this.

In absolute darkness, it might shine with the tiniest flickers of light.

Still, there was power in it now. If I did that another... sixty or so times, it’ll even be useful. I’ll do it once a day at most, to keep the drain to a minimum.

It would take time and effort, but that was fine. I wasn’t using Magic because it was easy, I was using it because it was easier than achieving what I wanted purely through technology. A very important distinction, that.

One day, this seed that I was planting would sprout, and I would reap the results of my efforts.

Then we can get to some fun stuff.