Shadow casting was the simplest of magics and yet, as Jaye fumbled her eleventh attempt at it, she began to suspect that the human’s claims at simply being “superior to the Mongels” might be annoyingly true.

“We can pick this up tomorrow if you would like,” Shadow said. “Today has not been especially easy for you we imagine and sleep can be a wonderful restorative.”

“No. Let me try again,” Jaye said, her fingers tingling with misspent magic.

“Let us see your hands,” Shadow said and took Jaye’s hands in his own. 

Shadow’s touch was warm and soft though the surprising part of it was that there was any touch at all. Jaye distinctly remembered her hand passing through Shadows when they first met. Inside the witch’s hut though the rules seemed to be different.

“We don’t like the redness at the tips of your index fingers,” Shadow said, the frown in his voice clear despite the lack of other features to convey it.

“I’m okay. It’s just a little tingly. You said to let you know if it started hurting, it’s not yet,” Jaye said.

“Very well, but we will be resuming this tomorrow regardless, presuming you remain inclined to, so worry not over much about any progress we do or do not make before you’ve rested,” Shadow said, releasing her hands and stepping back.

“I don’t get why it’s not working though?” Jaye began to twist her fingers through the basic gestures of the spell.

“A moment then,” Shadow said. “Let’s examine things from a different angle. What do you recall of the spell’s details? The issue may not be in what you are doing, but something we have not explained properly.”

Jay sat back and let her hands drop into her lap. The practice room had all sorts of ornate carvings on the walls which beckoned for her attention but she dropped her head and stared at the hands she was beginning to consider ‘useless’.

“The spell begins with the Words. The Words establish a channel between the caster and the Aether,” Jaye said reciting the instruction she’d been playing over and over in her head with each attempt.

“And the gestures?”

“The gestures come third,” Jaye said. That one was slightly aggravating because she wanted to get right into working the magic, but Shadow had been right that skipping steps led directly to failure. “Before gestures, we breath, to draw in the Awakened Aether and make it a part of ourselves. Wait, do you breath?”

“No,” Shadow said. “The process is similar for us though, breath is simply a tangible method of guiding the influx of Awakened Aether into oneself and retaining an awareness of its presence.”

“So you don’t need to do the gestures either then?” Jaye asked, curious about how Shadow was able to work magic at all.

“Neither Words, nor Breath, nor Gestures are required, but forgoing them requires considerable practice, and in some cases special attunements,” Shadow said. “For instance…”

With neither words, nor breath, nor gestures from Shadow, the lights in the practice room began to spin and swirl, leaping forth from the Continual Candles which adorned the walls and dancing in the area like a ballroom populated by tiny tongues of flame.

“We have, obviously, a particular relationship with light and its sources, so tricks like that are naturally easier to us. There will be similar effects which you will find easier to grasp than others.” Shadow gestured, purely for dramatic effect, as the swirling lights all settled back into their proper holders.

“This is supposed to be easy though, isn’t it?” Jaye asked.

“The instruction book seems to think so. It is why, in part, we thought you might be able to carry us beyond the borders of the forest,” Shadow said. “Perhaps that is where the fault lies though? All educators have their own biases, and it would not be hard to believe the authors of this work failed to consider it might ever have an  audience other than humans.”

“But you’ve worked it out, right? So it can’t be good just for humans, can it?” Jaye asked, not certain which answer she preferred.

“We are…we may be a unique case,” Shadow said. “To begin with, we have had rather a large amount of time to spend on study and refinement. To be quite honest, it took us roughly five years to cast our first spell.”

“I thought the book was supposed to teach you how to cast one of the simple spells in a day?” Jaye asked.

“That is the claim it makes, but in our case, we were not even certain we were meant to be capable of casting spells,” Shadow said.

“And you kept trying?”

“It’s no sign of great virtue,” Shadow cautioned. “To begin with, we had very little else to do. Also, from the moment we were called back to the world, or perhaps even before, we have been fascinated with all forms of magic.”

“Is it going to take me five years then?” Jaye asked, certain that it would not be worth spending five years to learn how to cast a little baby spell.

“You are quite a bit closer to what the instruction manuals have in mind than we were, though…” Shadow said, and looked away as though to find another manual

Notably, there were no manuals in the room, or any other books at all. As a Practice chamber, the decorations on the wall were intended to contain any magic effects which got out of hand. That would preserve the contents of the rest of the hut, but things left within the chamber did not enjoy the same guarantee of safety.

“Though what?” Jaye asked, sensing she was not going to like the answer.

And she wasn’t.

“There are some manuals which claim the Nature Blessed, such as yourself, are incapable of casting spells using ‘human methods’. They are, of course, quite incorrect, but there may be some added hurdles you will need to overcome. Or the tomes may simply be pointing us in the wrong direction?”

“How do you know they’re wrong? The Hunters had all kinds of magic that we didn’t,” Jaye said, sick at even mentioning them again.

“All writing is done for an audience,” Shadow said. “The instruction manuals we’ve found so far have all been written by human authors for a human audience. Some are more thorough than others, but none of the ones we’ve turned up seem to have much awareness of history.”

“History? Did things used to be different?” Jaye tried to remember the tales her people had told. There’d been a variety of Nature Blessed in the Refuge and each had their own traditions and tales. ‘Rootlings’ they’d called the stories because they were the roots to what came before and they nourished the communities to keep them together even when they were apart. None of the ones Jaye could remember though spoke of human magics.

“Things have been different, and they will be different, it’s the promise time makes to us all,” Shadow said. “In this specific case though, what the authors seem to be missing, or more likely willfully ignoring, is the fact that there have been several Archmages who were Nature Blessed. Several who were other species than human too.”

“But then that means we can cast like they do?” It was yet another thing to be angry about but Jaye’s plate of anger inducing issues was so overfull that another entry had little added impact.

“Can? Yes. Perhaps. We have only read about such casters though, so we can only speak to the effects which were attributed to them and the titles granted. It is possible that they followed a different path to their prowess than the human Archmages did.”

“But if there is a path, then how could they…” Jaye wanted to say ‘hide it from us’ but the answer was to plain to be worth the words.

The Mongrel-born were too useful to be given the idea that they could be the equal of humans.

“I believe some have,” Shadow said. “There are some works the Witch collected before she left which suggested a growing sentiment against the treatment of the Nature Blessed in the Free Dukedoms of the Holy Towers. We gather from your condition however that matters have not improved overly much?”

“No. Nothing’s changed,” Jaye said. “We either live in Refuges, or the Hunter’s snatch us up.”

“Hunters? And Refuges? Those, you may be interested to learn, are perhaps new additions. From the volumes we have found on the treatment of the Nature Blessed, there would not have been a need for Hunters as the Nature Blessed were hobbled, either physically, or magically, or both, to remain in service to the house which owned them.”

“They can still own us. And they can still track us. Unless we’re in a Refuge,” Jaye said. “The Hunters look for the Refuges, and they collect any branded people who get loose when a village is destroyed.”

“When a village is…do you mean to say that villages are routinely destroyed?” Shadow asked.

“They get built back up,” Jaye said. “Sometimes the monsters get them though.”

“Monsters? Have the Holy Towers fallen?” Shadow couldn’t look astounded but he was certainly capable of making it clear when he was.

“No? I don’t think so? That’s where the Dukes and Duchesses live right?”

“That was the case. The rulers were of secondary significant however, or at least they used to be. The primary purpose of the Towers was the suppression of incursions, both from invading armies and other realms. Also rebellions we suppose, though the only records of those showed the ones which had an impact were supported by outside agents.”

“Outside?”

“Neighboring lands. The Kingdom of Walls, the Baronies of the Tempest Seas, and the others. We are uncertain of course where such political entities stand today. Alliances and animosities can change greatly over the course of a century.”

“What were they like?”

“Different, and the same, people are largely people throughout the world, though each group will have important differences from each other.”

“All with humans?”

“Not at all. The history books speak of more species of people than you can imagine. We have longed to see some in fact – the Quiet Walkers seem similar to ourself, and we may be able to learn quite a bit from them.”

“But for that I need to be able to cast you right?”

“It needn’t be your burden to bear, but if it proves within your capabilities, it would be much simpler than the alternatives,” Shadow said.

“Let’s try again then,” Jaye said, drawing in a breath and centering herself.

“Perhaps a change in form this time,” Shadow said. “Begin with the Breath.”

“But the order matters doesn’t it?” Jaye asked. Her worst attempt had been when she’s tried to move directly to the gestures and that was where the residual sting in her fingers had come from.

“It does, and we are guessing that might be what is wrong,” Shadow said. “The Words begin a connection to the Aether for a human, but the Nature Blessed do not need Words to call upon their magics, do they?”

“No. Tauren are strong all the time, and I can change without saying anything.” Jaye was tempted to shift to her bird form but hesitated. Anything that spent her strength felt unwise under the circumstances.

“As we imagined it would be,” Shadow said. “We posit that you already hold a connection to the Aether and the Words are simply tangling things by establishing a conflicting one. We may be entirely wrong about that, but see if simply breathing and performing the gestures is sufficient. You may be able to awaken the Aether merely through your natural connection to it.”

Jaye liked that idea and closed her eyes to find the right moment to begin.

Breathe.

In and out.

Slow.

Deliberate.

Mindful.

Was there magic in her breath? She didn’t think so, she did it all the time after all. The human steps made sense. The Words called the magic into the caster.

But she already had magic.

Breathe.

She thought about what it felt like to shift. The sparkle in her nerves. The fluidity of her body. The shift in perspective.

That was it.

She breathed out.

It was about her perspective. She was always breathing, and she was always in touch in her magic. Drawing in the world’s magic only required that she be still for a moment and feel it.

She breathed in and felt a stream of Awakened Aether follow her breath, filling her and overflowing from her hands.

With rapid twitches, she moved her hands through the gestures to shape the spell before the magic ran away from her control completely.

It didn’t work.

Not exactly.

She’d found the right hand and body positions but the spell wasn’t fully constrained. Worse, this was the most magic she’d managed to gather so far and if it went wild she was definitely going to get burned.

But she didn’t have any gestures left to control it with.

Speak.

And she did.

She still had the Words and so she used them. Defining with intent and sound what she wanted the magic to do.

“Shadows Rise.”

And they did.