December Prompted Fiction: Heliopath's World collection: Introducing Kieran: 561 words

[k_a_webb]

Written for forgottenspirits' prompt: ice mages.

When a mage reached blue level, the point at which they could begin working with ice, most had already found their calling. Some didn't bother to get to a higher level, just to say they could, when they already knew what they were best at, but there were those who saw level as being more important than knowledge. Brown was hard to reach, due to the withdrawal symptoms, and it was often seen as a stepping stone to the highest levels, so there were a lot of mages who made the choice to reach blue before going back to focus on their favourite area.

 

Kieran had watched many of his colleagues totally miss the wonders of working with ice, because they had found the magic they connected with most, which meant they never even noticed the different ways of working with water magic. Ice was one. The other was steam magic, but he'd never quite connected with that the way he had ice. With a hand he sculpted the ice creature he was working on. He'd never found a book on the ways of working with ice, so he was slowly creating his own. It meant he spent a lot of time experimenting with other magics too.

Yellow level magics worked well. Healing magic kept in ice always sold well at Kieran's shop, because they could be kept for a long time. Those who hadn't shopped with him before always asked how quickly the ice would melt, as they had no understanding of what ice magic could do, so they didn't know that it would last indefinitely in the right circumstances. If kept in direct sunlight in the middle of summer a piece of ice created with magic could last just over an hour. He'd timed it, and then checked it three times, because he wanted to be sure.

It was hard for Kieran to believe that he really was the only ice mage to ever live, but mages had never been very good at keeping detailed records. He could look up the number of blue level mages at any point in history, because that was what mattered, and not what speciality the mage had chosen for himself. There had been a lot of blue level mages at during on period, about four hundred years before, so he'd researched each of them, looking to see if one of them might have been an ice mage. Soon he knew he would have to turn to using past sight, even though he didn't really want to.

Using his powers to look into the past had always made Kieran feel nauseous, and often he had found himself needing a couple of days sleeping to feel anywhere near normal. It didn't affect anyone else he knew that way, but some magics did affect the mage who used it differently to others. That was why it had taken him nearly three years to get past yellow level, even though he was a competant healer and had found empathy to be one of the easiest things for him to do. Fortuntaely he had a friend who helped him create past sight ice, which gave non-mages a chance to see one point in their life or the life of someone they were related to by blood, and it was one of the most expensive things he sold.

© K A Jones 2011

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. This entry was originally posted at http://kajones-writing.dreamwidth.org/51875.html. It currently has comments.

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[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the magical theory in this story. More would be welcome.

>>Healing magic kept in ice always sold well at Kieran's shop, because they could be kept for a long time.<<

Subject/verb disagreement. I suggest changing "they" to "it" above, or else adding "items" after "magic."

>>There had been a lot of blue level mages at during on period<<

?? "at during on" ...? I'm not sure what you meant here.

>>Fortuntaely he had a friend who helped him create past sight ice<<

That should say "Fortunately" above.

Wow, what a nifty use for ice magic!