World of Laws and Magic

The club room wasn't all that spectacular, contrary to what Nick thought it would be like. The room was actually the size of a normal high school classroom, about half the size of one of the academy's lecture halls. There were desks and chairs placed at seemingly random points in the room, there was a large whiteboard at one end of the room with some Vatleese written on it and finally there was a wooden door leading to another room. There was no one in this room so Nick went to the other door and knocked. Nick heard some shuffling on the other side and three seconds later a middle aged man came out of the room with a young woman following behind him. The Man appeared to be white and had messy looking brown hair; he was wearing a pair of dress pants, dress shoes and a sweater vest. The young woman was fairly pretty and had bright, long, green hair; she was wearing a blue buttoned-up long sleeve shirt with a black skirt that reached down to her knees.

(I don't know if I'm just being too observant, but is it weird that her skirt's zipper is only half way up and her shirt is clearly wrinkled from being tucked but was now not tucked, while he missed a loop with his belt and has what seems to be lipstick on his lab coat's collar? The woman is wearing pink lipstick and that does seem to be the same color of the stain on his lab coat....none of my business.)

"Hello, my Name is Nick Capitol, a first year and I am interested in joining the spell creation club, can you walk me through the requirements?"

The middle aged man rubbed his head a little bit before replying:

"My name is Norman Foster and I am the instructor of the spell creation club as well as one of the academy's potion masters. There is no special requirement to join, since you've told me your intention, I will fill out the paperwork later. Each week you will have to complete a set of tasks given by me to maintain your membership but to be honest this club doesn't do much activities and only has two members besides you."

Norman pointed at the woman with green hair and said:

"This is Lana Parsely and she is a second year and a spell enthusiast. Your other club mate is Derek Drake, another second year but he isn't here today. Now, this club's mission is to study and create useful spells. If you have already been to the magical archives office, you should know how expensive spells are and how much they can probably be sold for."

Nick was confused.

"If spell making is that lucrative, then why does this club only have two members?"

Norman scratched his head again and gave an awkward laugh:

"Ha, ha. That is because spell making is difficult, dangerous, timely and it is not a guarantee that once you make a spell anyone will by it. Lana here has made a few spells but since they are just variations of what is already on the market, she hasn't been able to sell any. As for Derek, he's made a few excellent spells but doesn't need to sell them because he has the support of a wealthy family that is looking to recruit him. Spell making is an important field but without the support of an organization, persons tend to leave it alone in favor of less dangerous and just as profitable work. The upside about the field though is, just like potion making, if you are very good and can make unique creations you can probably become a billionaire within a few years but to be honest most professional spell makers die from accidents with their research before that happens. So...what will it be kid, still want to be a spell maker?"

Nick thought about what Norman said.

(Even if it's dangerous, I might as well give it a try, after all, I'm too poor to buy the academy's spells and I don't have anyone's support.)

"Yes, I want to be a spell maker. I have a question though, you said you were a potion master, what does that have to do with spell making?"

Norman's eyes became sharp as he looked at Nick almost looking like he was implying that Nick had asked a very stupid question.

"Young man, it seems that your knowledge is lacking. Potions are spells in essence. A spell is a collection of laws that create a specific magical outcome while potions are liquids produced by materials that contain certain laws that are combined by the potion maker to create certain effects. There are many wonderful or dangerous effects that can only be created with potion making. You could say that potion making is a specialization of spell making."

Nick felt enlightened. Lana, who had been standing beside Norman since the beginning decided to speak:

"Spell making is one of the major economic activities in magic society although there are only a relative few successful spell makers. I'm studying to be the best. You better work as hard as me and Derek."

(Work hard, huh?)

Nick looked again at her half done zipper and as if feeling his stare, Lana got flustered and quickly pulled the zipper all the way up. Nick decided to ignore her.

"Teacher Norman could you please get me started on how to make a magic spell."

"Well...you don't seem to have formed your mindscape yet because I feel no magic energy coming from you so you won't be able to make anything complex or cast any spells with your own magic but I can get you started on something simple. Go and wipe the whiteboard for me while I look for something in the other room. Oh, and stop saying 'magic spell', that's redundant, spells can only be done using magic, it's like saying 'wet water'."

After saying that, Norman went into the other room, Lana went to a desk and took out her phone, not paying any attention to Nick and Nick went to the white board, picked up the eraser and cleaned the board.

(I guess this counts as a 'task'.)

When Nick was finished, Norman came out with a box of what looked like old fashioned papyrus paper and placed them on a desk. He called Nick over and started speaking:

"Okay, these are called 'magic scrolls', I know, I know, they don't look like scrolls but that's just what we call them. Since you don't have a mindscape yet you'll have to learn to create spells using these. The spells written out on these scrolls are initiated by a generic set of laws that are activated by tearing the paper apart or if you were the one that wrote the spell in Valteese, by holding it and willing the spell to cast."

Norman tore one of the scrolls and a loud screech could be heard in the room.

"That was the spell 'Swarm Calling'. If we weren't in the academy right now that screech would have attracted a swarm of locusts to us. Hmmm...I should do one with a more evident effect."

Norman tore another scroll and one of the desks beside him turned to ash instantly. Nick was amazed.

"The advantage of scrolls is that they allow someone to use magic in the atmosphere to cast spells. The downside is that the spells are usually far less effective than those cast by a Magician and if you write your unique laws on the scrolls there will be a chance that your spells will be stolen and analyzed, making you easier to deal with. Anyway I'll give you a few harmless ones with their descriptions to look over. When you come another day you can ask questions. Oh, you do know Valteese, right? I'm asking because you can't write spells without knowing Valteese."

Nick nodded his head and said:

"Yes, I know Valteese, but barely."

"Well...I suppose that's good enough to analyze the spells on the scrolls, just don't try to alter them. Oh, here is some blank papers to practice with. Remember this part is the generic laws having to do with initiating the spell."

Norman pointed to a paragraph written in Valteese. Nick thanked Norman and promised to return another day. He made his way to the bookstore where he purchased a Valteese dictionary and copied the book he got from the library. It was all technically free since stuff like this was covered by his scholarship. Nick made his way to the library where he returned the book on Valteese and obtained a book on meditation. After some words of encouragement from the librarian, Nick went to his dorm room. It was now 6 pm so Nick went to the cafeteria and had a meal before coming back. Nick sat down to analyze the scrolls he had been given. Honestly, they just looked like old pieces of paper with writing on them but Nick had already seen their value. Nick looked at one with a spell called 'Blue Paint'. The description he got from Norman stated that this spell would instantly paint whatever the caster wanted blue.

(Doesn't seem very useful. Is that what Norman really meant by 'harmless'?)

Nick decided to spend the night translating the spell into English from Valteese to see what wording constituted a spell. After four hours Nick was finished translating the spell.

(Hmmm...this is a spell? This is just describing what the word blue and paint means as well as what it means to paint some thing. It also details some ideas involved in painting such as paint brush strokes, blending, contrast, etc. It also has small diagrams of what constitutes a fully painted object and what does not. This is weird...this spell almost takes on the structure of a 'math proof'. There are definitions, what could be called axioms - meaning things that are assumed to be true at all times, explanations of what has to be true if the expected result is obtained and even diagrams to justify the result.)

After thinking about it, Nick got a crazy idea.

(What if.....)

Nick turned on his laptop and looked for one of his geometry text books. He looked up a chapter on transformations and found a proof on dilation, which is the concept of stretching or shrinking a shape by a constant factor. Nick decided to reword the proof in a manner like 'Blue Paint'. The proof was for the theory that any regular shape could be shrunk by a constant factor. Nick wrote down definitions, axioms, explanations on the process of dilation and even included a diagram, all supporting that an object could be shrunk down by half uniformly. Even though he was tired, Nick spent the next six hours translating the proof into Valteese with his new dictionary and with the help of the information from the book he copied at the bookstore. When he was done, he took a red inked pen and wrote down the proof on one of the special papers Norman had given him along with the generic paragraph that appears on all the scrolls. One hour later Nick had a finished new scroll in his hands.

"Let's hope I don't mess something up, especially myself."

The time was now 5 am. Nick looked at the rug in front of his room door and then at the scroll in his hands. Nick focused, trying to will the scroll to activate. After 10 seconds of trying, the words on the scroll lit up and then disappeared in sequence.

(Huh? Did it work?)

Nick looked at the rug and after waiting one minute and seeing nothing happening, he gave up hope.

"Guess I was wrong. I should have known that writing magical laws wasn't that easy."

Suddenly, Nick heard a steaming sound coming from his rug. He looked closely enough to actually see something like steam coming from the rug and then the rug visibly started shrinking. After ten seconds, the rug was half the size it was before.

Nick stared with his eyes opened wide.

"Holy shit!"