Magic

Merrill lay on the ground with his hands resting behind his head. His feet, divested of shoes, kicked idly into the air. The soft grass ticked at his skin where his clothing didn't quite cover and the wind moved in swirling eddies, rustling his hair.

The young man cocked his head to the side and listened, something he had been forced to do more and more in lieu of sight. What he could not see, he strove to hear. And never had the whispering of the wind been more literal. It was there, a voice, words, information, carried on the breeze. Yet it was too faint to understand. Or perhaps he just didn't know how to listen.

Undaunted, he continued to try and catch the whispered voice of the wind. Even if there was barely a hint of a hint of something there – the susurration faint enough that he half-thought it a figment of his over-stressed mind – he decided kept an ear open, so to speak.

Who knows, maybe it held the secrets he desired. Why had he been brought here? Where was here? And how did he leave?

He wouldn't hold his breath waiting for an answer, but neither would he discard any possible avenues before they were thoroughly explored. It was just good sense.

As was the project Merrill was currently undertaking. His current predicament may be mired in the strange and unknown, but that didn't mean the fundamental rules of being lost in the wilderness didn't apply.

Water, food and shelter.

If he couldn't figure out how to address those three needs, he was in for a bad time. A short time, likely, but a bad one nonetheless.

Water was most immediate need as well as the easiest to address, on the surface, that is. He may not be able to see it at the moment, but he could still hear the quiet babbling of the brook that wound somewhere in the distance. Getting to it would be a fairly awkward, likely involving a thorough re-acquaintance of his face to the ground, but it was doable. The trouble was that he didn't – not for a single solitary second – trust the water here.

He may be a bit of an asocial shut-in at times, but he was certainly no fool.

He needed to figure out a way to boil the water before he drank it. Not literally of course, his concerns not stemming from fear of bacteria or the like. No, his regard was more of a conceptual nature. He had no idea what kind of mystical baggage the water carried, and had no desire to find out through first hand testing.

As it were, Merrill's fount of mystical know-how provided three main methods with which he might accomplish his goal. Which of them might fit the bill wasn't immediately obvious. Unfortunately, that meant his eyes would have their turn, as much as he loathed it. How could he find a solution if he didn't know what the problem was?

He wished he were overreacting, but his spirit-intuition was quite adamant that he would need to use his eyes sooner or later. The thought of keeping them sealed away permanently sent a feeling of dread into the pit of his stomach – like he would be making a major mistake.

Merrill turned onto his side with a sigh. Traps, hurdles and questions around every which corner. What a mess.

One step at a time, he reminded himself with a huff. For now, he reviewed the three paths available to him – placing divination to the side for now.

First was ritual magic, a field with a wide array of applications and a great deal of complexity. However, ritual magic essentially boiled down to borrowing power through material sacrifice and symbolic weight.

The ritual itself served to bridge the gap between the supplicant and the supplier, which could range from gods, to locations of power, to the very person performing the ritual themselves – as odd as that seemed on first glance. In fact, as long as a proper connection was established and accepted on both ends, there were few limits to what this branch of mysticism could accomplish.

It was a truly multi-faced tool, but one with a rather high material cost. As a Mystery Pryer, Merrill could brute force some material and symbolic requirements with the weight of his spirituality, but those methods only went so far before it would – at best – destabilize the ritual. At worst, trying to cut corners could call down the ire of whom or whatever he was trying to beseech.

Next was astrology, the study of the celestial bodies and their effect on affairs both mystical and mundane. It was perhaps – from a cursory glance – the field that most piqued his interest.

Astrology, at least the part relevant to Merrill at the moment, was rooted in the idea that every person was a universe unto themselves.

To wield astrology as a means to power, you must accept that humans come out of the universe, not into it – as common vernacular might insist – and are thus an intrinsic part of the whole, no greater or lesser than any other. Ironically, it was exactly that type of axiom that prevented those versed in mystical side of the world from properly utilizing the art. Indeed, how can any sane being believe themselves to be fundamentally equal to the divine – not to mention the myriad celestial bodies that made up the known cosmos?

However, once that hurdle was overcome, a world of possibilities opened up.

Lower levels of the art served to trick the Body of Heart and Mind into blurring the line between oneself and the greater universe. Was one a body in the universe or was their body the universe itself? This conceptual diffusion allowed users to connect themselves to specific parts of the local cosmos and sympathetically draw on their power.

An example, especially relevant to his own situation, would be calling on the aspects of Saturn associated with agriculture and the digestive track to quell hunger and provide sustenance.

Even so, the universe was incredibly dangerous, more so to the ignorant and overconfident, and calling upon the wrong celestial body could be disastrous beyond belief.

It seemed that there was no reaching for power without the risk of madness and death.

Last and certainly least to Merrill was witchcraft. He didn't want to touch the practice with a ten foot pole. It was at best a sword without a hilt and would more likely than not lead to his eventual ruin – or so it seemed from the knowledge he'd been given.

Yeah, thanks but no thanks. He was much too inexperienced to safely navigate the field and would leave it as an absolute last resort.

At it's core, witchcraft was the art of linking a concept or idea to your soul, thereby giving the wielder power over that domain. The concept or idea – more commonly referred to as a color – could be any number of things. They might be good, bad or anything in between. The color of love, the color of hate, the color of fire, the color of ice – as long as the concept was strictly defined it could be used to enact change in both the wielder and the world around them.

The efficacy of witchcraft was a bit of a sliding scale from the extremely subtle to strength that rivaled beyonder abilities in and of themselves. Where it fell on that scale was a matter of choice.

The deeper you allowed your color to seep into your soul, the greater depth of power you could bring to bear – only matched by how much power the color might wield over you in turn. It was a constant risk – a gamble with one's soul, sanity and life on the line.

The kind of power witchcraft offered wasn't a free meal to be grabbed at without repercussion. There was the real possibility of accidentally drawing the attention of a great being if a practitioner's color fell under their domain. A deplorable ending by any definition of the word.

The best avenue to avoid such a fate was embodiment: embodying your color in both action and thought can help the practitioner avoid notice in most cases by essentially camouflaging oneself into the wider domain of a great being.

Yet, even that was not without danger. Embody your chosen concept without restraint and you may stray into obsession. On the other hand, acting contrary to your color can lead to backlash and corruption. A practitioner with the color of healing might deliberately harm others just so they can heal them later. Or perhaps they may come to believe that the only worthwhile cure for the sick and injured was death.

Merrill's inherited knowledge hinted that there were ways to ameliorate the dangers of witchcraft, however nothing specific was provided besides the assurance that it did indeed exist.

Merrill massaged his temple in exasperation. His new mystical understanding was quite frankly exhausting to ponder. Which begged the question, how would it feel to actually use it?

He supposed he would soon find out.