"What is the nature of Magic, venerable seer?" The young man asked, his robes dusty from long travels and mail shirt faintly grating against the grime which clung to it, as he leaned forward to deposit the small pouch of jingling coins upon the well-worn, oaken table.
From beneath their shield of wildly growing, white brows, the deep and penetrating stare of the seer's brown eyes met the traveler's emerald green, inquisitive look for a moment. Transfixed by their brief connection, the young Syl missed the movement of the pale hand that retrieved the payment, carrying it away into the unseen and shadowed folds of the clean but age-worn blue robes which enveloped the seated diviner.
"You ask this," the older man paused to resist another cough and to catch his breath, "as if there is only one form for Ai'shan'al to take." His following chuckle quickly shook loose the cough he had attempted to restrain.
The visitor's narrow brows furled, much to the old seer's amusement.
"I wonder why your woodland kin have sent you to me, sapling?"
The furled brows jerked upward in indignation at the choice of epithet; the Syl usually reserving it for those still too young to venture out into the broader world from their homeland. Before his breath was gathered for the building rebuke, the seer smiled disarmingly and patted the air with a hand both pale and withered with age...and scarred from burns that had cost him the tips of two fingers.
"Child," the seer sighed, his voice clear and gentle, "I live at the edge of your woods because I love your people and their vision of this world. I love their connection with nature and the patience that their...your...long life instills."
The scarred hand ceased to urge for quiet. All but one finger gently curled closed and the lone remaining digit came to rest pointing at the chair beside the standing Syl. The seer's mane of white hair shifted in the dim light, accentuating his head's nod that urged the candidate to sit.
"You have likely been sent to me because someone within your village saw or felt a glimmer of something in you..." the seer let the thought hang for a moment as the younger man took the offered seat. "Something that led them to believe you might have a gift that is not particularly common amongst your kin."
The seer's hand disappeared briefly into the folds of his rough, blue robe; returning with a shard of what might have been glass. It had uneven, rounded edges that clung desperately to grains of white sand, and a pearlescent strip of smoothness within the middle that the seer held up to his brown eyes and peered through.
"By the Five Powers..." the aging mage gasped, his hand momentarily shaking with excitement, bordering on fear. Within the narrow window that the shard provided, the hazy outline of the young Syl was almost lost to circling shapes that hung in the air, slowly orbiting him and bathing his image in nearly blinding, vivid colors.
"You have more than a gift, child." The scarred had gently lowered the shard to the table. The emerald eyes fixed him with a pleading need to understand what was happening.
"You have within you a power with which you will need to come to grips," the seer gulped his next breath and steadied himself, "and I may not be wise or learned enough to even explore the tip of it with you."
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Within the power known as Ai'shan'al, the power the commoners refer to simply as "magic," there are three known forms that are, so lesser or great extents, known to the mages, seers, and sages of the Knowing Races.
Traditional Magic - The magic used by the vast majority of mages and other magic-using people. This revolves around the casting of spells, referred to as "Painting" or "Drawing" the dweomer into existence, using the power that is believed to be ever-present in all parts of the world. This was the earliest form of magic, used by the first shamans in the developing peoples of the world, to attune themselves to nature and to share their energies with the flora, fauna, and world around them.
As time passed, what had once been secret teachings found their way into the hands of those seeking only power and control, the the first true mages emerged; harnessing the power that was within reach, but for their own uses rather than to build and strengthen a connection with the natural world. The Drawing of a spell may include verbal, material, and/or semantic elements, working in concert to form the energy that calls into being the desired results.
Elemental Magic - Little is known of this, as it is practiced by very few mages. This is believed to have been discovered at the tail end of the First Age, and sages insist that it is somehow a form of Traditional Magic that calls upon a different source. In scholarly circles, it has been called Gate Magic and Channeled Magic, as well, although the various mages guilds throughout the world refuse to accept that it is anything more than a barely controlled set of shortcuts to achieve the same results that their own, "highly refined arts" produce.
Freeflow Magic - In the middle of the Second Age, this form of Ai'shan'al was first encountered. At once a concentrated stream of power, like that tapped into in Traditional Magic, it seemed to shift and flow. Absent in most places, it might appear out of nowhere, raging like an unseen flood for a moment...or days...only to again disappear. Traditional Mages, attempting to use their spells where Freeflow Magic was present, found their spells could fail entirely, produce an effect very different than their intent, or even complete themselves in a fraction of the time normally required.