Chapter 4: (M)Age Thirteen
At the age of thirteen, Kir became a mage. Technically, he'd always been able to do magic. As a baby, when he cried, he'd also emitted magic in ways that made loose objects rattle and fly about the room. For his test, however, he needed to demonstrate the basic beginner spells, and then the strongest spell he could cast. And he had to be thirteen. Qualitatively he was already Brigit's apprentice, but she was a stickler for the rules when it suited her.
Long before, he'd climbed very carefully up the ladder of Brigit's small library to get at a basic magic book that was stored on the top shelf. From it he learned how to circulate mana through his meridians to keep them growing... and little else. He quickly discovered using words didn't help him at all, and then he spent the next ten years asking Brigit to teach him, only to be perpetually stuck in basic lessons with Darlae.
Eventually, his parents figured out he was practicing in secret, and as long as he didn't get in trouble, they were content to let him.
Magic in this world was associated with three levels of learning. The first and most basic was incantation magic, where one would use words to shape the imagination of the desired effect, feeding mana into it to empower the spell. Eventually, simply naming an attack would allow one to quickly cast, albeit with a lower ceiling on power. Abbreviated casting was considered the most valuable for warriors.
The second was wordless casting, which meant being able to cast without saying the words out loud. One simply had to circulate them through one's head. Casters who achieved this and abbreviated casting could execute spells so quickly they appeared simultaneous; with a cost in mana to match. It was at this stage that mages and witches were taught to pull magic from the world as well as themselves since wordless casting was less likely to be interrupted to disastrous effect.
The third was called pure concept or visualization casting. If one cast spells regularly enough, one could simply imagine them into existence, typically based on the experiences gained from the previous two levels of learning.
If one had knowledge of the desired effects, all three levels could be enhanced.
Kir had a cheat though.
In his head was a visualization bank of two decades of collected human visual media from across three centuries of the form, and the science of a world not held back by quick and easy access to magical power.