Guildmaster O’Bannon’s expression wavered in his shock. “You could do that?” he gasped in disbelief.

I shook my head. “Not yet. It’s something we’re working on, and it’s not something you can impose on someone else, if that is what you are thinking. The person actually has to set their Stars alight, one by one, to accomplish it. You end up with Typeless Stars full of unaligned Mana, which you can feed into your other Galaxies.

“If you try to impose it on someone, you’re just going to set their Stars on fire all at once, which basically will just kill them outright.” I made an exploding gesture with my hands, and he winced despite himself

His face hardened as he thought it over. “So, do this or die?” he conjectured grimly.

“That was our problem. The Synod would seize on this procedure and start trying to impose it on every Dark Magic wielder.”

He nodded in emphatic agreement, not having any trust in the Synod’s impartiality. “Huh.” He thought about it. “Lady Fae, my gut feeling says having the option is not bad, especially if what you’re saying is true. Being able to give up Dark Magic, and getting something that substantial back for it, is pretty impressive. I’m just... not sure I could give up one of my Elements like that, especially one as powerful as Shadow,” he admitted candidly.

“Yeah, that’s what we think most established mages will say. Having more staying power in your other Elements is probably not worth giving up the versatility of another Element to most people, even if they know it’s harmful. They’ll just consider their individual contributions small, and promise themselves to use it as little as possible, while actually not changing anything.”

My smile was knowing, and he couldn’t help but grin sheepishly in response. “That’s a pretty realistic view of the world,” he agreed with another nod.

“How about White Mana Zones that can Burn off background Dark Magic?”

His expression changed again. “Huh.” He rolled that over in his mind. “Okay, that’s kind of a blanket area denial and a keep-out sign to any Dark Mage, but it won’t affect other Elements... kind of like establishing a Domain somewhere?”

“White Mana Zones make it difficult to Cast ANY kind of magic. But what this would be doing is burning off all the Dark Magic that’s being brought into the world, in effect getting rid of the Dark Influence using your Dark Magic is generating.”

“Ohhhhh...” He rolled that around in his mind. “That’s what those White Mana Zones you have over in Michigan are all about.” He glanced at the Spellhouse again. “And that’s why you don’t have them up here...”

“Ideally, you’d just want to set them up over places where Dark Mana congregates, Purify it, and nobody cares since they are kind of isolated. Graveyards, bogs, junkyards...”

His eyes flashed. “The Boonies?” he asked shortly.

“No, but nearby. The fact is that there’s a lot of Dark Magic used and death generated there, but just about everything is processed and eaten, be it by us or them, and that reduces a lot of the casual growth. The biggest contributor is Humans using Dark Magic, not the amount of killing. Killing is as natural as eating. Dark Magic only comes when you start bringing death back here, not when you kill.”

“Will this have any realistic effect on using Dark Magic?” he asked directly.

“No, actually.” My gaze was complicated. “Dark Magic is pulled right out of the Underworld if you can’t grab it locally, supplied by the Dark Lords there. There’s effectively an unlimited supply of it. If you enter an area with no Dark Magic, you can still bring the stuff in. The only thing Burning it does is reduce and roll back the growing Influence of the Dark Lords on the planet.”

“Effectively allowing Dark Magic users to continue the process without thought of the consequences, because it’s being taken care of by others,” he nodded cynically, following the line of reasoning. “The only ones opposed would be the Dark Lords themselves, I imagine?” He shuddered despite himself.

“They might act through agents to try to stop the process, which, if they do, only shows that it’s the right thing to do.” I dropped my voice slightly as I continued, “And the Beasts won’t interfere at all, of course.”

He couldn’t argue that line of reasoning, either. “If I remember the reports on those White Zones of yours, it is extremely hard to Cast spells there. Wouldn’t that create a huge defensive hole hereabouts?”

“It means you would have to defend using non-magical means... just like the Aquatics would have to attack without using magic.” I directed my eyes tellingly to Briggs, who was standing there looking ominous not far away, and had that big cannon of a Shotgun in a sling on his back.

He got it in a second. “Those new weapons your KIA company is using,” he murmured. “They’re designed to fight in those no-Casting Zones!”

“If we have toys and the enemy does not have toys, guess who happens to do better? I’m sure you’ve been receiving observation reports on what we’ve been testing out there.”

“I have,” he confirmed shamelessly. “They can be murderously effective, especially against the weaker creatures. Still, there seem to be some limitations?...” he trailed off.

“Powerful magical creatures tend to be extremely resistant to physical damage that can’t bypass or ignore their defenses. There are limits to what we can do... but what it does give is another way for lower-power mages to contribute and hit above their weight, while not affecting Mages and up all that much.” Well, if you didn’t count sniping them from a thousand yards away with a nihilor bullet...

“Chewing up the chaff faster leaves more time and magic to focus on the tougher stuff,” he nodded, seeing where that was going. “And sometimes there is just a damn lot of chaff...”

“The big limitation is the ammunition. We can go through bullets much, much faster than we can make them. Even moreso for the good bullets, and the better Bullets!”

He nodded again. “Quality is so damn expensive at times,” he agreed. “So, you aren’t going to be making Spellhouses for Dark Magic at all,” he repeated for clarity and I just nodded. “And you’re going to be able to Awaken others to any or all of the other Elements.” He looked away, thinking. “That’s... actually a pretty good way to go about it? Granted, it’s not much impediment if you can get the Dark Magicks to Mage or Archmage Level, where the magic is much more flexible, but at the lower Levels... if you can pick and choose an Element with versatility and power versus one that doesn’t have it, you’d go for the former...”

“If Dark Magic users whine about not getting new spells, they can come up with them themselves, no skin off my nose,” I agreed serenely. “As long as the White Magic Zones aren’t erected atop places where people are actively Casting, it’s not discrimination, either.”

“Could they be used as a prison?” he asked reasonably, automatically going down the roads of abuse.

“To the extent they interfere with spellcasting, yes. Long-term, you’re just asking for inventive solutions to bring down the very obvious Towers providing the whole effect, and your wardens aren’t going to be any better off than those they’ve incarcerated. Although I suppose having them bring in Mana to be purified could be used as a form of ‘pay for food’,” I added whimsically.

He grunted in amusement despite himself. “The rumors that you’ve got Spells for the Adept Level?” he asked calmly, not pushing, but definitely curious to know.

“In the process. Definitely not a complete set.” He thought about that and what it meant for the Novice Level, and nodded slowly. “Before you ask... no, no Mage spells. Such things are much, much harder to decipher with traditional methods, and the complexity of the interactions between all those Stars is extremely irritating.”

“There’s a reason the base spells have endured for so many years,” O’Bannon sighed. “Do you feel that it is something you can crack? And why would it be so important?”

“Hmm. Well, it is about efficiency and power, in the end. The current set of Spells are designed to restrict our power, not to express it, Master O’Bannon. It is one of the things that allows us to be so flexible with later spells. There is just a tremendous amount of wasted power that can be thrown around to do specific things. Take a Skyflame Funeral, for instance.”

I whipped up the Constellation of the Mage Fire spell around myself in Holo, startling him with the speed and ease with which it came up, even if there was no Fire Mana filling it. This naturally attracted attention, conversation falling off among the many Water Mages to watch me, wondering what I was doing.

“So, what we have here is Seven Starmaps of Seven Startrails of Seven Stars, forming the widely accepted Constellation of Fire, which in its most basic form calls down a rain of fire from the sky to cover a massive area in flames.” A translucent display of the spell, complete with hapless Aquatics running around in despair beneath it, fell on a section of the Boonies, making those looking on swear in wonder at the detail of the illusion.

“What all spells have in common is that they have a starting point and an ending point. It does not matter how powerful you are, they have a beginning and an end. But, what happens in the middle can vary so much!”

The Constellation unspun from a pattern of six around six around one as I began to fill up the Startrails, going from a hexagonal format to a linear one as the magic flowed through it. Startled, O’Bannon stepped back to look at what had turned from a beautiful geometric display of magic to a rather awkward showing of a single long interconnected line that definitely didn’t follow a straight path, veering all over the place as it progressed on its way.

“So, this is the path the magic makes, adjusting for turning circular to straight. Does that look like a very efficient course for magic?” I asked him as he studied the line and its zigging and zagging all over the place.

“I cannot say that it does,” he admitted, others looking on nodding at the sight.

I drew a line between the start of the spell and the ending... and then I slammed the Stars down into that straight line.

He muttered something as he saw the line of the ‘perfect spell’ extending out to easily twice the distance of the seemingly random spell.

I then drew a sphere out there at the end, and then a cone that encompassed the entirety of the fluctuations of the spell about the extended line. It was pretty broad, all things told, as a couple of the early veerings covered a lot of area.

“I’m not at all sure of the implications of this?” O’Bannon asked, studying the thing intently.

“Would it surprise you to learn that the cone there encompasses exactly 6.8055% of the sphere’s area?” 49/720, as it were, the number of Startrails manifested and possible.

“I assume that is important?” he asked, frowning.

I nodded again, and another larger cone manifested around the first one. “This is the cone that represents how much farther you can push the spell, and the variants that might manifest within the spell. This represents exactly one-sixth the area of the sphere.” The maximum possible variations of all those possible for a spell ending in Lightning Stars, of course!... “Every single custom Mage-class spell in existence fits within such a cone.”

I began to yaw the line of connected Stars around wildly within the sphere, but they all stayed within that cone of potential.

“Here is what happens when you advance all the Stars to Second Tier.”

The straight line and first spell split off, as the Stars grew brighter, and the spell itself grew stronger, part of its yawing flattening and extending the spell closer to the limit of the sphere. Notably, the end point was in a different location. I pointed at it. “Note that line of the spell has shifted, and so the form of the spell has changed as a result. The closer it is to the original line, the closer it is to the lower Tier, simply with more power.

“Here is the Third Tier.” Stars grew brighter, swept more in line, and the line and spell extended further towards the sphere, but moved further away from the previous two spells... but still within the initial arc of the first spell, amusingly enough.