Illusory Shadows - A Guide to Mastering Illusion(Vol. 1)

Author: Unknown

Greetings pupils, and welcome to my book Illusory Shadows. In this book I hope I can teach you all there is to know about the history and power of illusion spells. So please, muffle up and take a seat.

To preface, one must understand that alteration magic and illusion magic are fundamentally the same, and principally different. Where alteration seeks to alter the physical side of the world, illusion magic seeks to alter it mentally. Alteration changes the physicality of a person or object. Illusion magic instead focuses on the spirit, latching onto the latent magical energies of the individual and seeks to change it. These are the core differences in these schools, and they can be easily confused without the proper information.

Those seeking to master illusion must therefore be open minded to mental change. In order to cast things like muffle, the user must be fully self-aware and concentrate on being discrete. The magic can then be focused into the feet, creating an aura that suctions all sound into a small void where sound cannot escape. Learning how to muffle is step one towards learning one of the most useful and sought after spells in all of Aetherius: invisibility. It is also one of the most difficult to master. Since this is only the beginner's guide, I will not try to explain this process to you. You must prepare your mind for it by learning the basics first.

Another useful beginning technique is mind alteration. These include calm, fury and fear spells. Even beginners can use these spells, but to what effect depends on the mental state of the user and the proficiency they have in illusion. In order to channel these spells properly, the user must focus solely on their emotional state; being entirely calm allows the latent magical energy to transfer to another person. One must do the same with rage and fear spells; these two practices are falling out of favour in recent years due to many mages going into fits of rage or fear induced hallucinations attempting these spells. It can be avoided by regularly meditating, allowing your body to balance your emotions.

The last lesson in this volume will be pertaining to silencing spells. Mages don't often have tools to help them survive if their connection up their own magicka pool is lost. The problem with silencing is that, even though beginners can use it, it can be harder to control the effect of the latent energy from affecting the user's own magicka pool. It requires the user to not actually focus on "silence", rather focus on magicka as a pool of energy, and focusing on blotting that energy out. However things can go very, very wrong. For starters, the user may experience their own magicka pool be silenced instead. The effect is more potent as well, due to the raw magicka not needing a medium to escape.

Mages who end up like this have been silent for anywhere between a few hours, to a few weeks, and in the worst cases of a mage not exerting the proper focus, their connection to Aetherius and magicka is cut off forever. This happens very rarely. Another symptom of misfiring a silence spell is speech. If the user focuses too hard on the "silence" aspect of it, the user may lose speech for an unknown amount of time.

These are only a few of the dangers involved in Illusion magic. The difficulty in mastering it is perhaps the biggest reason it is an ill-favored school of magic. I have more teachings on the school of illusion to come, but in the mean time, you should practice focusing your thoughts into your magicka, mediate and practice some basic illusion spells to get a basic grasp. Only then will you be ready for Volume 2, pupil, and I mean this for your own safely and mental state.