Book of The Dead

Losing oneself to magick was such an easy process for Tyron. Perhaps he was addicted to it. There were all kinds of addicts in Kenmor; people unable to function without drink, or women, or gambling, or any number of things. Master Willhem could be thought of as an addict. If he weren’t able to work with cores and create, Tyron genuinely thought the old man would simply fade away.

There was something about the sigils, the arrays, the runes, the words, that Tyron found endlessly fascinating. There was nothing greater than time spent plumbing the possibilities, trying to build the same sigil array in new ways, rearranging a sequence to squeeze out any sort of gain.

Dove had often railed against those who believed spellcasting was akin to music, a blend of instinct and knowledge that produced something artful. To Dove, magick was construction, building, engineering. Was there something artful about a delicate and well-built structure? Certainly there was, but in the end the only thing that mattered was the function.

To Tyron, magick was even more fundamental than that. Magick was mathematics, magick was logic, language and sequence.

Every sequence could be formed dozens and dozens of ways, and each of those had advantages and disadvantages. Which one worked best for the particular purpose you had in mind? What trade-offs were you prepared to make? Which components most suited your purpose?

Whenever he learnt new sigils, there was always an extensive process of working backward through all of his most commonly used sequences and trying to construct something new that would perform the same role in a better, or at least different, way.

The way the sigils interacted with the words could change based on the context they were used as well. With the right sequence, it was possible to make one plus one equal three, but that came with drawbacks all of its own. There were infinite possibilities, and perhaps some mages believed it was their artistic expression to select the right ones, or to specialise in certain patterns, creating their own unique blend of magick.

To Tyron, that was almost offensively foolish. Specialise in certain patterns? Combine sequences based on feel? That wasn’t magick, that was clumsy and inefficient. He knew he was a gifted mage, although gifted may not have been the right word, but the choices of others were so confusing to him sometimes.

Why would you limit yourself to certain sequences? Learn all of them, then choose the best, most appropriate one. What need was there to focus on reliable patterns, when one could simply craft arrays using the tools available.