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“Letting of magic,” Kalos clarified, “from the Lustra. The wilds. Our magic doesn’t work like temple magic, you see. Plenty of us end up in temples, passing as regular mages, but we’re something other. We have to…” He made a frustrated sound. “Sorry, I’m not a man of words.”
He looked around at Cassia’s pots of evergreens. “Well, it’s like being a Hesperine. We need blood. Lustra mages need the wilds. One of the difficulties of being a Hesperine Lustra mage is that I need both. My power is at its best when I’m in the wilderness. But that isn’t enough for the first awakening of your magic. You need a letting site.”
Cassia felt so much more encouraged than she had mere hours ago. They were finally learning something that could truly get her closer to her goal. She could taste it within reach.
Excitement seemed to vibrate out of Lio. “This suggests that Lustra mages draw on a power source greater than themselves. So unlike temple mages, who pull from their innate affinities within, Lustra mages must have an innate channeling ability instead.”
Kalos’s tone was hushed, reverent. “The Silvicultrixes were the ones who could withstand channeling the most power. They were the priestess-queens of the letting sites. If there’s any truth to the old stories heart hunters still tell around the campfire…those sorceresses were like nothing we can imagine in this epoch.”
“If what they channel is nature itself…then...” Lio fell silent for an instant. When he spoke again, his words were full of wonder. “We’ve found the lost paradigm of magic.”
“This sounds like an important discovery,” Cassia said.
“Let me show you.” Reaching around her, he lifted his hands, tracing light and color in the air in front of them with his long, elegant fingers. “There are three known paradigms of magic, each one following its own rules and affecting related aspects of reality.”
He conjured the illusion of a deep blue sphere that rotated before her eyes. “Manteia is sorcery, such as mind magic or necromancy. It affects that which you cannot see and touch, including thought, emotion, and life force—in other words, the spirit phase.”
With a twist of his wrist, he spun a whorl of red-gold into another sphere. It hovered opposite the blue one.
Solia said, “Mageia is magery, the paradigm of magic that affects the natural phase, which is the physical world. All elemental magics fall into this paradigm—fire, water, and stone, for example.”
“I see,” Cassia said. “Hence thelemancer but pyromagus.”
“What did I tell you?” Lio said near her ear. “You remember everything you hear.”
He flicked his fingers back and forth, and a trail of arcane symbols and Divine script ran between the spheres. “Mageia and manteia are opposites, yet operate on the same principle: resonance.”
Cassia studied the patterns and connections between them. “So manteia resonates with spirit, and mageia with nature?”
“Precisely! Affinities are simply specific resonances with, for example, the mind or fire.” He raised his palm, and a purple sphere manifested to form a third body in mystical orbit. “This is progonaia, ancestral magic. It is not based on resonance, but on channeling.”
“Channeling from the spirit phase,” said Cassia.
“Yes.” Lio traced symbols and letters to connect the blue and purple spheres. “Do you see what’s missing?”
“There is no paradigm that channels the natural phase,” Cassia concluded.
He took her hand in his and held her palm up in the empty air. Then green spell light rose from their joined hands. The paths of connection with mageia and progonaia twisted into place like a new vine.
“Hulaia.” He rested his face against hers. “That is what it should be called, after the Hulaic Epochs, the time before recorded history when magic was untamed. We have found the lost paradigm. It was Lustra magic all along.”
Her skin pebbled, and a chill of excitement went down her spine. She was no scholar, but in that moment, seeing intangible mysteries drawn in Hesperine spell light, she could feel it. Something great and old had finally been unveiled. Within her.
Lio gave an elated laugh. “This is the answer to a mystery that has gone unsolved by mages and scholars since before the Great Temple Epoch, when the organized study of magic began.”
Cassia shook her head. “That’s thousands of years.”
“Lustra magic is older than that,” Kalos said, “and we’ve kept our secrets.”
Lio sat back. “Kalos, if you prefer for me not to commit these arcane secrets to paper…” It sounded as if he had to drag his words out of himself. “…as much as it pains me, I will honor your silence. This need never enter the canon of magical theory in the libraries of Orthros.”
“I don’t mind what you write, as long as you keep my name out of it. It’s Cassia’s magic, too. I dare say you two will have many great things to contribute to Hesperines’ magical knowledge in the centuries to come.”
“In that case…Goddess bless! We may be the first to write a treatise on the Hulaic paradigm.”
Cassia was still staring at Lio’s diagram. “But what about blood magic? To which paradigm does it belong?”
“Ah.” Lio pricked his finger on his fang and conjured a crimson sphere. It sank into the center of the diagram, sending out tendrils that snaked to the other four lights. “It is called haima. Is it a blend of mageia and manteia? Or the fifth paradigm? Those questions remain unanswered. Perhaps one night, we will find the answers for them, too.”
