Only one road supplied Lok Magius -- the mages' academy -- with all its food, luxuries, and supplies.  The academy was situated on the east side of the mountain, on a slight pinnacle of rock, with only a narrow bridge connecting it to the mountain itself.  On the other side of the bridge from the academy, a number of towers of various types of rock stood as silent guardians to the bridge, each tower constructed of a different type of stone.  The dozen towers of different heights and thicknesses were the original mages' academy, until Lok Magius, the Fortress of Magic, had been finished by the dwarves of Rakore.  The road continued through the towers, and then turned south to wander along the south face of the mountain, slowly dropping, and occasionally switching back and forth to ease the grade of descent.

Several people lived in the older towers, and the guard kept one of them as a barracks.  A paddock around a short, squat tower held ox-sized beasts that lumbered on two legs, and whose huge, square heads held wide mouths.  The beasts used the tower as a barn, and the paddock of solid, well-fitted stone seemed barely adequate to hold the creatures, whose tails were thick, fat, and easily as long as a man was tall.  Dwarven guards tended to the beasts, yelling at them in the guttural dwarven tongue, and occasionally prodding one of them with a spear.

Other mages walked back and forth amongst the towers, apparently unconcerned with the war going on, far to the east.

The noon-day sun was bright, and from the south, but provided little warmth at their high elevation.  Though they hoped to reach their destination by sunset, Aegan had brought a pack with a sleeping roll, torches, tinder, food, and more.  Eriel, not to be out done by anothers' paranoia, also had a pack, although significantly smaller.  At Aegan's side was a long sword on a baldric; otherwise, the two had no weapons.

Above the two of them, in the clear afternoon sun, the snow-capped peak of Mount Rilan was a massive sentinel that guarded the huge forests that spread all the way to every horizons.

Eriel, full of bright cheer and her purple eyes sparkling in the sunlight, grinned in good humor.

Aegan seemed distracted and icy, however, and the elf maid's good cheer soon cooled as close to a mark went by.  Master P'Arkon, as soon as he had awoken in the infirmary, had locked himself in a tall tower of the academy and refused to come out for anyone.

After they had traveled in silence for a little ways along the cold, wind-swept road of stone blocks, Aegan broke the silence.  "Vhat is magic?"

They stepped to the side as five dwarves, all riding along the spine of one of the two-legged beasts, came up the the road.  The beast's huge maw looked to have been wide enough to swallow a man whole, but Aegan could tell from the set of the bridle and build of the jaw that the creature was an herbivore.  The beast passed them, and the dwarves merely nodded down to the two travelers as they went by.

Eriel's grin nearly split her face, and her eyes lit up.  "Well, that's a tricky question," the elf replied.  "How much do you know of magic?"

Aegan smiled at the pure joy in her face, and then turned thoughtful eyes back to the road, and then out to the forests far below them.  He thought for a moment, organizing his answer, and then replied, "I know that there are two different types of magic.  I know that vone type comes from within, and is a gift of the blood.  The other type, is something that is studied, and learned.  Vone born vith the gift can do both, but vone vithout the gift can only do the other."

The elf maid gave Aegan a side-long glance out of her big purple eyes, a smile on her lips.  She twitched one pointed ear, and said, "Correct.  You've just described the difference between a sorcerer, and a wizard.  Wizards have to study the magic, to cast it.  They memorize spell patterns that draw on the energies all around us, and then complete those patterns with simple words, gestures, or even little things that can fit in their hands."

Aegan glanced at her, studying her for a moment, and then nodded, his stride unbroken.

Eriel continued.  "Sorcerers draw their power from their blood, but its because that component of the blood is magical -- drawn from the magic of the creatures in their blood lines.  For instance, some sorcerers have an ancestor that was a dragon, or a demon, or even a fairy."

The smith scowled.  "How, or why, do people mate vith these creatures?"

Her mouth puckered.  "You, my friend, have certain prejudices that you are going to have to overcome."

He snorted.  "You cannot stop love."  He was silent for a long moment, and then said, "If people fall in love vith these creatures, then so be it.  If they are born of rape, then that happens, too.  Vhat I do not understand is how or vhy a dragon vould mate vith a woman?  Or a man, I suppose.  Aren't they huge?"

Eriel smirked, and said, "These creature are magical.  Like a dragon -- it has inherent magics.  It's more than some huge creature that flies in the sky; it's a cunning, thinking being that can draw upon its magic.  Dragons, and many of the magical creatures, are natural sorcerers."  She smirked at him, waiting for him to make the connection.

Aegan nodded to himself.  "That makes much more sense.  They can change the people, or alter themselves, or possibly impregnate them with magic."

She blinked, having never considered the last aspect, before.  Eriel nodded to herself, considering the possibilities.  She suddenly wondered if some mage or creature could do that to her, and almost put a hand to her belly.  The thought was...  chilling.  She shivered from the cold air off the mountain.

The two of them continued to stride down the road, as the occasional wagon-load of supplies or food trundled up to Lok Magius, or an empty wagon or patrol went back down the road.  Most of the patrols were mounted on the strange beasts the dwarves favored, and some of them had chain barding rolled up on the ends of their long, five-man saddles.  The dwarves themselves seemed alert and observant, watching to both sides of the road, and even behind themselves, as well as up, into the skies.

"Vhere does this... energy, for magic, come from?  The gods?" asked Aegan.

One side of Eriel's mouth twitched in wry humor.  "The magic that wizards use comes from energy that leaks through the barriers.  All around us exists a barrier, and on the other side of that barrier, lies all the Ethereal and all the other worlds the gods and the ancients have created."

"Ancients?"  He seemed genuinely curiously.

Intrigued, Eriel smiled reassuringly.  "There are others, other than gods, who have made worlds.  Some of the most powerful wizards, even, have made whole worlds of their own.  Often those worlds go on long after the wizards die, and so they continue to grow and develop."

She looked into the distance for a moment, as they made a switch-back.  As she continued on, she said, "Not all of the worlds border ours, simultaneously.  Not all of the barriers between the worlds are alike, either."

"How do you mean?"

"All worlds border an Ethereal, almost mist-like world where things are quite unlike here.  There is no gravity."  For a demonstration, she picked up a pebble, and tossed it down the road.  "In the Ethereal, that rock would have simply sailed on forever.  If my mind were strong enough, I could force it to return to me -- or fall up, or even fall down as it's supposed to."

Aegan's eyes were distant as he looked inward, and then his eyes glanced about, taking stock of the world around them.  "The Ethereal borders all vorlds, and all vorlds border the Ethereal; and the Ethereal is dominated by the mind.  It sounds like the soul, then, and not the mind, is the true power."

Eriel nodded.  "Very good!  The energy of the soul is what determines the ability of someone to shape the energies that leaks onto our world, from the Ethereal.  On the Ethereal, our minds can dictate things without the use of spells, but here, where the energy is weaker, we have to harness that energy, and..."  She smiled, "Beat it and forge with our minds, first, before getting results."

He grinned his appreciation of the smithing analogy.  "So I draw upon this energy, each time I make things grow cold?  My blood, draws this energy in, and transforms it, into cold?"

The lithe elf chuckled.  "Yes.  In a sense.  Although, really, cold is just an absence of heat."  She frowned in thought for a moment, and muttered to herself, "I might do my thesis in Ethereal Dynamics on you, because there's an energy problem if the cold is being drawn out of the air -- maybe into the Ethereal."

Aegan frowned, not quite understanding the unfamiliar words in the common tongue.

Eriel just smiled up at him.  "No worries."  More seriously, "The Ethereal supplies all of the energy necessary for magic to work, and on some worlds, the barrier is so strong that there's almost nothing available for magic.  On others, magic is very powerful.  Here, we have a happy medium."

The smith asked, "This... Ethereal energy.  Is it the same source of power for the Church?"

Eriel shook her head.  "Yes, and no.  The energy itself is, essentially, the same -- but it's not... forged, by anything of this world.  Those energies are forged and... beaten out, by the gods, and their servants."

Aegan frowned in confusion, and so Eriel explained:  "Mages deal with the raw energy of the Ethereal -- whatever leaks from the barrier.  Priests on the other hand have the spell-forms handed down to them by archons -- angels and other servants of the gods -- and then the priests unleash the completed spell-form.  That's how they can heal injuries, and... do other things."  She said the last in a sort of distant, haunted way.

The smith left the painful memory alone, and asked a different one.  "This means mages and priests are not so different from one another."

She shouldered her painful memory aside, though some of it remained in her elven eyes.  "Not so similar as you might think.  We mere mortals smith our spells rather poorly.  The gods, on the other hand, turn out some rather fine work.  They're not even considered spells, though the energies are from the same stock.  A priest's prayers, when answered by his god, are considerably potent."  She glanced at him, and said, "It's like the difference between a stone knife, and a knife of mithral."

He frowned.  "Then vhy even try, if the products are so inferior?  Vhy should a mage attempt to access such power?"

Eriel smiled at him.  She murmured something under her breath, her head bent down in determination as she came to a stop.  The air around her exploded with butterflies of blue and purple hues, and then continued to flutter around her in a beautiful whirlwind of beating wings, each catching the sun's light and refracting it.

Aegan was startled by the effect, but the effect to be one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen.  After she coyly watched the effect it had on him for a moment, she let the butterflies fly up into the sun, where they disappeared in its brilliant light -- their shadows growing tinier until they disappeared.

The ice mage was stunned into silence for a long time, as the wind rolled down the mountain with its cold shivers.

Eriel sweetly asked, "Is it so inferior?  Not a one of those 'butterflies' was real!  They were all illusions -- illusions crafted by my inferior mind."  She arched a delicate eyebrow at him, challenging him to dispute her claim, based off of his statement.

Aegan's face broke into a big smile, and he shook his head, chuckling.  He turned, and continued on down the road down the mountain.  He gestured for her to join him, and as she skipped up beside him, he asked her a question with a smile still on his face.  "How did you do that?"

The elf maiden in her blue and purple robes continued skipping beside him in short hops, and then settled into a walk with her knee-high brown hiking boots making no sounds on the paved rock of the road.  From a wide, brown leather belt at her waist, she pulled book only as large as one of Aegan's hands from...  Nowhere.  There wasn't a pouch hanging on the belt, but she pulled the book from the pouch, none-the-less.

Eriel held out the book to him with both hands, as though she were handling an ancient relic of immense value.  She said with some reservations, but resolute determination, "This is my spellbook.  Please be gentle with it."

Aegan stopped in the road, and gently placed his hands over hers, slowly taking the book from her.  He looked from it to her purple eyes, and then back to the book, studying it.  It was dyed in purples and blues to match her eyes and the skies above, leather-bound with beaten-copper reinforcement bands that were green from exposure.  The clasp on the copper binding was undone, and Aegan saw that there was a, odd-shaped key depression which was required to open the clasp.

"Open it," she said.

He reverently opened the book, finding inside extremely high-quality parchments, all bound together at the backing with heavy thread and strong glues.  The first few pages were all in a beautiful script he had come to recognize as elven.  There were places and pages where symbols that were not elven were written.  There were beautiful diagrams of things Aegan could not understand, and there were things written in the book that called to him -- and others that repulsed him.  He turned to a page about half-way through the book that had a sketchy, inked version of Eriel standing with butterflies circling about her.  Next to the image were the strange runes, linked together, and seeming to point to the image.

Eriel met his questioning eyes.  "Those words, there," and she pointed with a delicate elven finger, "Are the words to the spell I just cast."

The smith examined the runes carefully.  "So you say these vords, and the spell..."  He searched for the words.  "Forms the energy between the vorlds, into the butterfly illusion?"

"Yes, and no.  In order to cast that spell..."  She smiled.  "I'm having to think in terms the instructors use, and I'm not used to that."  She stood there for a moment, one leg out, and one hand on her delicate chin.  "I have to memorize all of this," and she waved at the words in the book.  "I don't say anything aloud, however, until I'm ready to cast the spell -- then I say the final words, and make the gestures, and spell-form completes.

"When I'm memorizing the spell, I'm drawing the energies into my mind, and wrapping them around my soul.  The words that you hear, and the gestures, and sometimes the material components -- those are just there to complete the spell-form's pattern, and cause the spell to go off."  She looked at him quizzically.  "That's a crude way to say it, but are you with me, so far?"

Aegan nodded.  "These runes, then, show you the words, and the gestures?  Or are they separate from the memorization -- from the forming of the spell pattern?"

She smiled gently at him.  "Again, yes and no.  The spell is written in several parts, and the writing itself has a spell bound to it.  You can't just throw down runes, and create a spell -- you have to craft a pattern into the runes as you write them, and they you can use them as a template of sorts to memorize the spell, later."

The smith frowned, staring at the book, thinking.

Eriel gently took the book, and put it back in her invisible pocket.  She strode off down the road, and he easily strode beside her.

Aegan said, "So, the spell-form -- the template -- for new spells is already vithin me, as a sorcerer?  I do not have to memorize these runes from a magical book, because I already have them, in a vay, vithin me?"

The illusionist beamed a smile at him.  "Very good!  The runes aren't within you, though.  Make sure you understand that.  It's just the spell-form is already within you.  Your blood sings with them, and you probably have a lot more within you.  Almost all life does, actually, but rarely is there the spell-form to release the magic.  That's one of those things critical for a sorcerer to develop his power.  Otherwise, he'd never be able to get the magic out of him."

He scowled.  "Vhy does not the Inquisition stamp out these spell-forms, or people vith them?  I mean, if that is all it takes to be a sorcerer, then vhy allow these spell forms to be in the...  public?"

Despite a layer of warming silk beneath her robes, Eriel shivered again, wondering if perhaps she would not have to pull her heavy cloak out of her pack.  The questions the young human was asking were astute!

She said aloud, "It's very difficult to determine what spell-forms are within a person.  Their soul is a bright source of energy and power -- much more powerful than any spell-form.  There is a way to see spell patterns, but it carefully avoids looking at souls; otherwise, it would be blinded by souls.  Thus, the Inquisition, thankfully, can never find out who carries the abilities for socerers within them."

He shook his head.  That there were energies -- and even entire worlds -- all around him, unseen, but present none-the-less, was a strange realization.  In a way, though, it fit in with the world-view that the Church espoused.  Each Worships' Day, he had gone to the temples with most everyone else.  The priests would heal members of the congregation on those days, and sometimes perform other spectacular acts.  And they had always said that the gods were always watching -- were always around them.  The priests also said that mages were all around them, hidden in plain sight, and that the common man must be ever vigilant for mages.

Unbidden, the Inquisition Prophecy came to mind.  Lo! The mages shall be silent for five centuries, lest the Dark God return. And in his return, he shall plunge the world into darkness for all time, bound by his minions and in death.

The Inquisition had been born from those words, spoken as they were by many voices all over the world.  Aegan knew that men of power could feel Prophecy, whenever it was spoken -- mages and priests alike had felt the Prophecy spoken all over Gaeleth.

The Dark God had, indeed, been reborn.  Ten years prior, the world had been plunged into darkness as a necromancer -- mage with control of the undead -- raised an army.  The necromancer had come from the west -- and most of the Church taught that that meant the necromancer had come from Rakore.  The necromancer had gone on to raise the Dark God in service to mortal man, and the world had trembled at the legions of undead unleashed in that act.

Luckily, the Chosen of the Sun God, Arpelos, was there.  The Chosen of the Sun God managed to slay the Dark God reborn, and his allies cut down the necromancer and many of his ill-conceived underlings.  In that victory, something miraculous had happened.  Instead of two tiny moons to give scant light, there was now a huge moon  that gave off a dim red light most nights -- not enough to ruin night vision, but enough to see by.

Aegan had begun to see a schism in the churches, when some of the priests taught that it was a punishment, scent to bath the night in blood, and show the world its folly for allowing a mage to walk the earth and gain dominion of the Dark God's rebirth.  Other priests taught that the new light, called Maroth, was a gift of the gods, and sent to give light during the lonely nights.  Of course, for two days out of the month, now, Maroth blocked the sun from rising, it's huge form blotting out even the sun's rays.

Aegan shook his head.  He knew not which of the two stories was true -- even if either one was true.  He was learning that many things that were taught as truth, were not.

The smith said simply, "I am ready to learn, now.  Teach me your truth."

Eriel met those brown eyes, and quailed within the depths of her soul, for there was something infinitely dangerous there within his eyes.  They were the eyes of someone who would change the world forever.  She blinked, realizing that the Prophecy had as much as said so.  She knew the Inquisition Prophecy as well as he.  For humans, the Prophecy had been almost twenty-five generations ago -- 500 years ago.  For her, it had occurred in her grandfather's lifetime.

She took a deep breath, and began to teach him magic as best she could.