Shadow in the Water

Chapter 7

According to the author, verbal spells are created by a combination of imagination, willpower, magical energy, and the sound pattern of the words; all languages could carry magical intent, although certain languages have been found more effective than others in producing a strong outcome. The most common language families used for casting spells today are  Celtic, Scandinavian, Romantic and Sino-Tibetan languages. I would be learning Gaelic with this book. I learned that failing to pronounce a word correctly, or to imagine the effect clearly enough, could result in the spell failing, or going haywire. The end of the chapter introduced simple, single word spells for the reader to practice, the first of which was a protection spell that would conjure a spherical shield around the caster.

"The first spell any sensible mage should learn is a protection spell. Try practicing applying your magic to the word, 'dìon,' pronounced "dee-yon." If you find yourself having trouble, imagine that the word begins at the center of your being, rather than in your throat. Begin the word in your core of magic, then push it through your vocal chords and out of your mouth."

I sat back, closed by eyes, and took a deep breath. I brought myself back to that flowing, glittering warm place inside of me and imagined that the word itself was spelled out of the energy. I tried to push it, but only succeeded in losing the shape of the word back into the shifting mass. Frowning, I tried again in a different way. Since my magic seemed to act like water, perhaps attempting to control the natural flow of the energy through my body would help it maintain its shape? I visualized the word again and this time it held its shape, but rushed up faster than I expected it to, like a geyser. I tried to form the right sounds as it jumped out of my mouth, leaving a strange sweet and tangy flavor it its wake, but I choked on it and felt a burning in my nostrils that caused me to sneeze. 

Worried, I looked around the room to see if anything had happened from my mistake. Everything appeared to be fine, save for the lingering tingle in my throat and nose. "Okay," I breathed. "I need to slow it down."

I tried it again, this time pretending as if there was a small valve that I allowed to open just wide enough to let the energy-word slip through before closing again. It traveled the same path as it did before, this time with much less pressure behind it, and allowed me to speak the word as it exited my lips. 

"Dìon." 

A soft glow appeared behind my closed eyelids. When I opened them, I saw the same warm crimson glow that I'd pictured so clearly in my mind, except it was surrounding me like a transparent bubble. Parts of it was thinner than others, giving it a mottled tie-dye appearance. A short moment later, it faded completely. I jumped out of my chair with an excited squeak. It may not have lasted very long, but for a brief time I had been surrounded by a protection spell that I'd conjured all by myself. It was in no way a lasting effect, nor would it protect me from anything more than a fly, but... I did it!

I practiced that single spell for about fifteen minutes, and it seemed to grow more stable the more I practiced. It felt like working out a muscle I didn't know I had, strange and freeing at the same time. I experimented with other methods, testing out the differences between the amount of magic I let out of the "valve," and leaving the valve open a little bit to try to feed the spell a continuous stream of magic. I found that if I left the valve closed and stopped focusing on the shield that it faded away, but if I left the valve open and stopped concentrating on the shield, it stayed solid with little focus needed.

Since the rest of this chapter held verbal spell examples, I decided to move on to the chapter about runes to try out one of those next. I skipped over the history of them for now and went right to the information about how they worked. I learned that runes can be written, carved, or even traced in temporary substances like dirt or sand. It didn't matter how the symbol was created, so long as it could hold its shape, because if the shape of the rune was distorted, the spell attached to it would end.  In order to cast the spell as opposed to simply drawing the symbol, the caster needed to focus their magic through whatever utensil they were using to create the symbol for the duration of the symbol's creation. If there was a weak spot in the creation of the symbol, it would cause weak spots in the spell.