of you, so you can reach out and have the magic grab something that’s ten feet away—” Professor Bayes demonstrated by snatching the phone from a student sitting a few rows down from me. “No electronics in class, please. Anyway, to continue, your body already knows how to repair itself, so magic can make you heal faster, without scars. I’m not going to demonstrate that one, unless you do it again.” That drew a few laughs from the students. They were starting to go quiet for real, caught up in Professor Bayes’ presentation.
“An important note—just because lower magic comes naturally to mages doesn’t mean training and skill aren’t important. To use an analogy, running comes naturally, but winning the race can take years of practice. Don’t neglect your Lower Magic courses, folks. The more physical techniques are heavily dependent on the mage’s raw power, but using them efficiently and precisely still requires training. How many of you have hurt yourself because you misjudged your strength, or tried to grab something at a distance and missed?” Many sheepish hands went up.
“Other techniques generally take at least as much skill as power, especially interfering with biological processes that are harder to instinctively conceptualize. An untrained healer can make their injury worse. Most forms of mind and emotion manipulation have never succeeded outside of theory.
“With that warning given,” Professor Bayes said, clapping her hands together, “we can move on to, what is higher magic? The short answer is, everything that isn’t lower magic. The long answer requires the semester-long class you’ve all signed up for.”
“As you’ve no doubt realized, lower magic is powerful and relatively straightforward, but it doesn’t even cover most of the magic you students are using in your everyday lives. Where do illusions fit in? Runes? Laundry spells? Can you use lower magic to go, ‘laundry is a thing my body does, and therefore magic is augmenting my laundry-doing ability’? Actually, you can, if you’re an overpowered masochist who doesn’t mind migraines for days, but the point is, even that mildly complex and abstract task becomes brain-frying if you rely on just lower magic. There are much better ways!”
“Think of it like math,” she said, pacing across the front of the classroom. “Even small children have a concept of one, two, and many. Plenty of primitive human tribes have thrived for thousands of years with just that. Higher magic is what happens when you stop being content with that.”
“You can count in your head. You can even do simple math problems in your head.” Professor Bayes demonstrated the analogy, cupping her hands together. She didn’t need words or gestures to form a tiny ball of crackling, sparking lightning.
“Counting aloud or on your fingers makes things easier. Zelogyv!” she declared, and the lightning flared in her hands, bright enough to leave us students blinking glowing afterimages from our vision.
“But, of course, nothing beats pen and paper. Here’s just one form of inscription magic…” Professor Bayes turned, pulling a piece of chalk from her giant hairdo. She began drawing on the floor with the speed of long practice, chalk dust puffing with each confident stroke: a circle, surrounded by intricate lines and symbols. Even with her speed, it took her several minutes to finish. Chatter began again among the students, but immediately went silent when she set down the chalk.
“Watch,” she said, straightening. She set her fluffy-slippered foot down at the outer edge of the circle, feeding it magic through that point of contact.
And the circle erupted. Bolts of lightning roared in a column upward from within the chalk lines, then wove together, crackling and twisting, until they coalesced into a single form. A geometrically perfect dodecahedron made of blinding light floated three feet off the ground, turning slowly.
The professor rummaged through her bathrobe pockets, muttering, “Now, for the next part… curses, where did I put it.” Finally, she shrugged, stripped off the bathrobe itself, and tossed it at the dodecahedron.
It vaporized. Nothing hit the ground but a few flakes of ash.
“So, that’s higher magic!” Professor Bayes said brightly to the clapping audience. “Believe me, it can do a lot more than the charms you use in day-to-day life, and we’re going to be exploring quite a lot of them in the weeks to come. No mage can survive in today’s world without it.” She took her foot away from the magic circle, allowing the dodecahedron to flicker and fade. “And on that note, let’s end our first class early. Please read