Once Faith had properly reassured his father that he was alright they moved to another room. Turned out his breath had devoured the enchantments themselves causing the self-repair function to fail and leading to a few strange looks being thrown his way.
'Note to self, never breathe fire again.' Faith thought while Luna had decided to doze off in his shirt.
"Faith, are you listening?" Alzeor asked, unsure if Faith's mind was fully focused on the subject at hand.
"Yeah, I am." Faith replied not wanting to upset his father even if he wasn't really listening.
After coming to an agreement to put dragon breath training on hold for the foreseeable future, his Father had started delving into Runic theory, not something Faith particularly enjoyed about magic.
The language of Runes was the pure expression of magic in both vocal and written sense. When casting a spell: Runes were needed to establish a connection between you, your mana, and the element of your spell. The last part could be taken out with pure spells, but Runes were still needed for anyone to use magic.
Even if you did not speak the Runic language you still needed to envision the runes and their effects within your head, drawing a mental image for the magic to connect to.
'I can't believe how complex this is.' Faith thought as Alzeor rattled on about fire runes.
Being forced to use spells in the runic language came with its upsides and downsides. The downsides mainly consisted of you being completely restricted to what the Runes meant. If you cast a fireball spell from the basic rune combination it would always, no matter your mana, be the same.
This was in size, range, and speed; the only thing you had control of was the direction in which it was fired. This, of course, meant that in improvisation it lacked a lot. On the upside, as long as you remembered the runes it would always accomplish its desired effect no matter what.
"That's the key difference between Dragon's magic and magic of the other races, not including spirits, of course" - Alzeor noted getting to his point.
"While they are restricted in one aspect, all that's needed for a passable mage in their society is to have a good memory of spells and some comprehension of runes" - Alzeor said, peaking Faith's interest.
'So, you can count as a mage without actually researching magic, I suppose that makes sense. It can be a job or a career path depending on how much effort you put in' - Faith thought, reasoning that mages worked differently from what he thought.
In Faith's mind, all mages had to be magic crazy fanatics with hundreds of personally developed spells in their arsenal.
"This creates the divide between us because while we have it easier controlling and moving mana, it requires constant focus and precision, while anyone using the Runic language can simply recite something they've memorised" - Alzeor finished, listing off the downsides pure control over magic had.
'Well if Adra's right, all dragons have a major blessing from a god of magic which inhibits their ability to use the magic of others, so the Runic language — which is a symphony between all magic — is probably useless to me' - Faith reasoned.
Runes were shared between all magic no matter the type, so it made sense that dragons couldn't even use their own element in the runic language, not that any would need to.
Faith just sighed realizing that Runes weren't his path to creating proper spells or rather stealing them. Being exclusive to shadow magic which wasn't even a direct element was proving to be more of a pain by the day.
'Not to mention Adra said there were Eight Founding Dragons which implies that there are eight forms of magic… but that can't be right, maybe I should just ask Dad.' Faith thought, concluding that he could only ask his father.
The man in question was currently drawing out runes on what could be considered a whiteboard if you didn't count the fact that he wrote in fire magic while Faith was sitting comfortably in a cushy chair.
"Dad, do you know if there are more than 6 elements of magic?" Faith asked not beating around the bush, earning a pause from his Father.
"Well yes… technically there are 8 possible magic elements and that's only if you don't count innate magic like vampires blood magic." Alzeor had a strange look on his face.
"Oh?"
'I guess Adra was right.' Faith noted as well.
"You've seen spatial gates, so you know their abilities to bend space, that comes from spatial magic or rather spatial enchantments guided and enhanced by Runes. Why do you think runes for spatial magic would exist if there wasn't an element for it?"
Faith nodded at this since it made perfect sense, he himself had actually experienced a type of spatial bending when he stored things in his shadow space so it wasn't surprising.
"While space magic exists as an element, we don't count it because we can't use it. Elements like space or its counter-part time put too much pressure on a mortal body no matter the race so our bodies in return naturally inhibit that element." Alzeor continued earning more of Faith's nods.
'So like shadow space, we can't actually control space or time but we can indirectly affect them. Since runes for the space element exist through a third party object, we can still access the magic in a limited form' - Faith thought, realizing that runes were even more complicated then he'd thought.
"I wouldn't worry about it though, little one; the best thing for use dragons to do is to focus sharpening the blade rather than dreaming of wielding another." Alzeor said as he walked over and ruffed Faith's hair a bit
"Yes Dad, but understanding all foundations helps in building your own." Faith mumbled internally enjoying his father's warm hand.
'Stop being a tight ass.' Luna said waking up from her short nap.
'I'm not being a tight ass, I almost dying, opening my eyes to how weak I am and I'm trying to fix that.' Faith snapped back.
'You just sound grumpy.' Luna replied in kind.
'I'm not grumpy I'm motivated.' Faith said standing up from his seat feeling his second wind take hold.
"Dad can we move on to more practical stuff now?" Faith asked, wanting to try out his magic properly
"Sure I don't see why not, just leave dragon breathe out." Alzeor said reminding Faith not to use the thing that had made him so sad.
With the go-ahead Faith moved into the new reinforced glass room away from the labs and important research equipment.
For dragons, practical magic research was the more prominent means in breakthroughs unlike normal mages who would test and combine new and improved rune combinations to see what kind of power and spells they could create.
From a solid year of combat training , Faith knew well that good foundations were essential to progress so instead of going straight to new things, he spent 3 hours working out the kinks that came with his most basic ability: shadow bend.
His progress and newfound knowledge were pretty impressive. First, he found that there were actually 3 different types of shadows he could bend, and they all had a certain limitation. The first was pre-existing shadows which were the most limited but took the least mana to bend. They couldn't go more than 5 meters past their starting point and could only really stay as crude constructs.
'I mean, it makes sense since I'm not creating something. There are, of course, limits with what it can do.' Faith reasoned, while Luna cheered him on from inside his shirt.
The next type of shadows were the ones he created out of his own mana. All in all, their range around him was more than 2 meters but Faith knew they could be shot out so their actual range was as far as he could fire them. Unlike pre-existing shadows, they could be made into almost anything he imagined although the exact precision was still up to Faith's skill. He already had many ideas for spells he could weave up.
'It's just that I don't understand you.' He thought staring back at his own shadow.
It was strange, stranger than the previous two versions of shadows.
From what he could tell, it couldn't be controlled by shadow bend and didn't really serve any purpose.
'I still remember it moved a little when I used dragon breath on the minotaur but that doesn't really help.' Faith thought slightly stuck on his own shadow and just concluding to leave it for now.
Alzeor had been supervising the entire time and couldn't exactly help at all even if he wanted to. He didn't know the first thing about dark magic, let alone shadow magic, and Faith would have better progress alone then with his help.
'I feel like I'm slowly becoming a worse and worse parent by the second.' Alzeor sighed hoping his next child might be a fire dragon so he could finally properly teach them something.