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    Ria blew gently on her closed fist. This had been part of the fun when she 
first saw it, that cute little touch of stage magic. She prompted her little 
audience to come closer with her other hand (being very careful not to hurt 
anyone). Ria Luto, adventurer, mage, former city girl, loved kids. They were 
just so cute. But it was more than that, it was like reliving a past she never 
had, that she couldn't remember.
    But Ria remembered this little trick, and she knew how much she had loved 
it when she first saw it, "Okay, now you blow on it too, okay?" A little puff 
of breath went over her hand. "Good, now let's see what we have here..."
    "Wow! It's so pretty!"
    And it was. Ria had opened her hand to reveal a slowly twisting and 
swirling shape of light, stray particles of the soft glow floating about it. 
The light started to take shape, 'sprouting' to become a small glowing tulip on 
her hand. Ria was proud of this, she had spent days perfecting it after her 
teacher had first impressed her with the same trick back in her Academy days. 
The little girl in front of Ria giggled in delight as the petals of little 
flower opened and released a soft ball of glowing pollen. The girl playfully 
passed her hand through the flower, trying to grab it, but her hand passed 
through the flower like it was a wisp of fog. She let out another melodic 
giggle.
    And a voice behind her laughed brightly too. That was Gran, Ria's 
companion, on their journey that has no destination, no end. He was a bit older 
than Ria, and weilded a large Knight style blade (though he didn't really like 
talking about it). Ria smiled too, it was nice to make people happy.
    "So, little girl, what's the problem?"
    The girl sniffled again, remembering why she was crying in the first place, 
"The boys are makin' fun of me b'cuz I wanna go explore the Rim and go outside 
the village. They say that only boys should go fight and that it's too 
dangerous f' girls. It's not fair!"
    "Have you ever heard of the Magic Academy?"
    The little girl shook her head.
    "Well it's a place where smart young girls like you go, and some boys too, 
and they learn how to do Magic and go out and explore, with Knights like Gran 
here," she gestured at her friend, but the girl seemed not to notice "Or you 
could even be a Knight like Gran here, right Gran?"
    Gran smiled widely, he liked kids too, "Of course! You can one of the brave 
Knights from the fairy tales, protecting the innocent, and beating up the bad 
guys!"
    "Like those boys?" the girl asked innocently, wiping her face with the 
sleeve of her shirt. Ria and Gran chuckled.
    "Well maybe, we'll see. Anyways, you go back and tell them that if they 
ever pick on you again, miss Ria and uncle Gran here will beat them up, okay? 
And uncle Gran is a real live Knight!"
    "Okay!" the girl said brightly, turning and waving before skipping off back 
to the town square.


    "How come I'm 'uncle' and you're only 'miss'? It makes me sound so old."
    "Because you are so old."
    "Am not."
    "Sure, besides, I don't want her to think we're married."
    "You didn't mind letting her think that I'm a 'real live Knight', even 
though I'm clearly not."
    "Only a sorta-Knight, right? But that doesn't sound as impressive, does 
it?"
    "Yeah, but I really hope those boys who were picking on her aren't actually 
big guys with even bigger swords who don't like 'real live Knights'."
    "Sure, you could take 'em"
    "You're right, but I don't want to get dirty. So how'd'ja do that back 
there?"
    "What, the girl? You know by now that I'm good with kids, don't you?"
    "No, the thing with the flower, was it Magic?"
    "Of course it was. Well sorta. It was 'pure Magic'"
    "Ummm, what?"
    "Don't they teach you anything in school? Gawd, no wonder there aren't many 
female Knights; who'd wanna be as stupid as you guys?"
    "Hey!"
    "Anyways, wanna learn about Magic? Here's the crash course version."


    "Magic, in it's purest form, is all around us. We wading in tonnes of the 
stuff every second. It comes from life itself they say, though no one's really 
figured that one out yet." Ria waved her hand.
    "See this light? This is pure Magic. It has no practical use right now, 
it's just a bunch of pretty light. This is the clay of the Mage world, the 
salt, the grain. It's the very basis of all Magic. Well, almost all magic, but 
I'll get into that in a second. It's movable, I can throw it about and stuff, 
that's where fireballs come from. Learning Magic is all about controlling the 
stuff. See, if I wanted throw a fireball, I'd put it into a ball and launch it. 
If I wanted to create a shield, I put some around me."
    "But you just said it's only light" Gran piped in
    "Yes, but you see, the second I say a little chant... " and Ria began to 
mumble a quick burst of sharp syllables "this happens", and the ball of light 
in her hand exploded into flames.
    "The Pure Magic is 'formatted' into another type of energy. The fire is 
created by the Pure Magic. Other stuff you can do is like move objects, which 
makes wind; chill things, which makes ice, and create lightning and stuff. The 
trick is to know how and when to use the Pure and the chants. The combination 
of Pure Magic handling and chanting is the idea behind Basis Magic. It's the 
most common type of magic, but really really cool things can be done with it. I 
had this friend, Rhym, back in the Academy who showed me how to make a dragon 
out of fire, I really wish you could see it. It's the type I specialize in."
    Gran was visually thinkng about the whole speach.
    "But what if two people chant at once?"
    "No big deal, the Pure Magic only responds to the user's 'wavelength', 
which has some spiritual term I forget. Either way, I can't 'activate' someone 
else's Pure Magic spell. There are special cases where you can make 'unowned' 
Pure Magic, but that is used mainly for the tournaments.
    "One more question"
    "Sure"
    "Is that it?"
    "You wish."


    "What else is there?" Gran asked. He had learned a bit of this stuff in 
class before, but never really paid attention. The teacher was really really 
boring, and there were a fair share of cute girls in his class. This was mostly 
new to him, and he was grateful for the teacher. Still, he really didn't see 
much of magic beyond fireballs and such.
    "You probably think that Magic's all about fireballs and stuff, right?" Ria 
chimed in. The two knew each other far too well.
    "Well, er... no... there's uhhh..."
    "Don't try, you were pretty much right. When I said there's more, I didn't 
mean there was anything drastically different. It's all about _how_ you throw 
that fireball. You see, the normal fireball is a ball of Pure Magic, set on 
fire by a chant. Simple enough. But there's other forms of Magic as well. These 
are Tome Magic, Symbol Magic, Harmony Magic, and Card Magic. There's more, but 
these are the main kinds taught at the academy.
    "Tome is pretty straight forward. Remember how I told you that with proper 
training you can do all sorts of really cool stuff with Basis, like stuff that 
looks like dragons and stuff? You can do that without all work with Tome Magic. 
Tomes, which are magic books and scrolls or things, have intricate and very 
hard to read spells. People train all their life to read these things. The 
payoff is that you can do something complicated like a fire dragon with only 
one chant, with just some Pure, without having to shape it or anything like 
that. The problem is that they're hard to read, take a long time to cast, and 
each Tome needs to be read off of. Memorizing them doesn't work, because the 
Tome itself acts as a catalyst for the Magic. In short, a student in Tome with 
very little actual experience can do something as good as an experienced Basis 
user, but it takes a long time, and is a bit harder to control.
    "Symbol magic involves drawing magic circles, just like the fairy tales. 
Supposedly each circle contains a different spell or something. You hafta draw 
these things just right to get the spell to work, or else it won't fire, or 
worse, it could backfire. After a circle is drawn, whether it's in the dirt, or 
in ink on a wall, or even on someone else, you throw some Pure at it, and it'll 
fire the spell. Once again, these things are tuned to wavelengths so you can't 
fire someone else's spell. They're faster than Tome, and provide similar 
effects, but you need to be pretty creative, in more ways than one, to use it 
properlly. Some Symbol Mages use special brushes and ink which can apply to any 
surface, or can be invisible to the enemy. I had a friend, Chataime, who used 
to draw tiny water circles on the drinking fountains and hide in a corner to 
wait for someone to drink. She'd fire it and whoever it was got a facefull of 
water. She got such a huge kick out of that.
     "Song Magic was mostly used by the Elves. The idea is that since there's 
always Pure Magic in the air, and music is simply moving air, if you get the 
right tone, you should be able to stimulate the Pure. Doing this in the right 
order creates songs which fire spells. It's really cool to listen to a really 
good Harmony Mage in action. Of course, you need special training, not to 
mention special instruments to be able to affect the Pure in the air, otherwise 
all sorts of musicians would be setting shooting stuff all over the place. The 
Harmony Mages tend to use flutes, harps, lutes and guitars and stuff like that, 
though they say you can do this with any enchanted instruments.
     "And finally Card Magic. This is also awesome to watch in action. The Mage 
carries a bunch of cards on them, and controls them like they would Pure. You 
know, fly them around and stuff. They do this using a very small amount of Pure 
because the cards are already enchanted. Each card corresponds with a spell, 
and they throw a very small bit of pure at it to fire. Cards are pretty cool, 
because hey allow for some of the stuff available to Basis, but without a lot 
less Pure to use. Gathering Pure is pretty tiring, you know. Using the example 
of the fire dragon again, a Card Mage would gather a bunch of fire cards and 
line them up in a certain way, and hit the first one with Pure. The reaction 
would set them all on fire. One of the downsides is that it's really hard to 
use, and that only Basis style spells can be used. Another is that cards cannot 
be used twice. Another is that you're only supposed to carry a certain number 
of cards on your person, otherwise the ammount of enchantment in the cards can 
be dangerous to the body.
     "Two of the elements that aren't covered by Basis are Light and Dark. 
Light Magic is somehow turning Pure into a dangerous energy without first 
changing it into an element. It's very very powerful, but can only be used by a 
handfull of people for some reason. Dark Magic is even weirder, and they say 
it's also supposed to be very powerful, if it exists at all. No one has ever 
see it being done.
     "Of course, there's other types of Magic too. Some say that psionics and 
psychokinesis can draw their roots from magic as well. Psionics is a type of 
energy that's not unlike Pure, bt for some reason is quite dangerous. No one 
really knows why. Telekinesis is supposedly the manipulation of Pure to lift 
and move other objects. Out in the East Rim there's also Magic, but it's very 
different. They don't draw Pure from the environment. Somehow they concentrate 
and draw Magic from within _themselves_ to use. It's supposedly pretty powerful 
too. Healing Magic, which stimulates the body to heal itself is studied by 
Clerics; I can do a bit of that."
      "Good enough for me" Gran mumbled as he rubbed his arm.-