Shadow listened intently as Annie told her about the elemental aspects.

Each element had multiple aspects, but there tended to be two main ones. One of them was pretty obvious, just being the element itself. For example, fire mana let you cast spells that did things that related to fire. You could temporarily create more fire, or move heat around. Things along those lines. Pretty simple to understand.

The other main aspect was a little less obvious. They went like this: Fire’s other aspect was pushing, and water’s pulling. Metal’s aspect was separating, and wood’s merging. Air’s aspect was destruction, and earth’s creation.

The light and dark elements were weird. In addition to their obvious light and dark aspects, they also had pushing and creation for light, and pulling and destruction for dark.

So that meant they had three main aspects, with two of them borrowed from other elements. Only, rather than working on more physical things, like the other elements did, they tended to work on… metaphysical things? Stuff like thoughts and concepts.

It was a little confusing to think about. What did that mean exactly?

She was about to get an example. Shadow drifted along beside Annie, enraptured as she began to explain what it was her sleep spell was truly doing.

“The spell lets you create a mental state of sleeping and restfulness, and then push it onto your subject, effectively displacing their current mental state. It takes a good amount of effort and finesse, given that this new mental state needs to be able to override whatever their previous mental state was. The fact that it’s a spell rather helps with that, allowing you to just push in more mana to strengthen the effect, but you still need to constantly adjust it to keep them under. It’s quite mentally taxing, and much harder when something is actively fighting you.” Annie explained.

Shadow nodded along, pondering the implications of that.

‘So… If you can make something fall asleep by pushing the sleeping mental state on them…. could you do that with other states? Like, can you make creatures angry? Or calm?’ She questioned. There didn't seem to be any particular reason it had to just be sleeping.

Shadow wondered at that idea. She wasn’t sure why you’d want to make someone angry, but making someone calm could definitely be useful. She already realized why her making someone ‘too awake’ spell idea was wrong. That would definitely still fall under the preview of light magic, if she was understanding things correctly.

Annie’s face took on a tight smile.

“Not me personally. Doing those sorts of things does fall under the purview of light magic, but I don’t know the spells. These types of mind affecting spells, sleep included, are all restricted, and with good reason. I’ve been given special dispensation to learn and use the sleep spell given its usefulness for my work as a healer and researcher, but it does only that. Put things to sleep. All I can control is its application, not the state of mind being asserted. You’ve already seen how dangerous sleep can be when used aggressively.” She told Shadow, her tone serious.

Shadow considered that. It seemed odd to think of a spell that just made somebody calm as dangerous but… she could see it, now that the thought was in her head. She imagined a monster just standing there, unconcerned, as they hacked it apart.

She shivered. That almost seemed worse than just making it fall asleep and never wake up again.

“Well, are you ready to guess?” Annie asked.

Shadow perked up, her thoughts pulled off the grim hypothetical.

‘Yeah!’ she exclaimed, before realizing she hadn’t actually come up with anything yet.

‘Well… one minute! Let me think first…’ she grinned, a bit sheepish. She gathered her thoughts.

If light magic was about creation and pushing, where you made a mind state and pushed it at something, then it stood to reason you would be doing the opposite with dark magic. You would… pull out something’s state of mind, and destroy it?

That sounded rather violent, but perhaps would work out? She wondered what that would mean.

Shadow's thoughts went back to her theoretical calm monster, just standing there, no thoughts in its head, but she didn’t think that was quite right. Even if you weren't actively thinking specific thoughts, you were still aware of the world, and that seemed like a mind state to her.

What was your state when you really had no mind state? No thought at all?

Would that kill someone?

Shadow shook her head. That couldn't be it. Annie wouldn't describe a spell to kill someone as being similar to her sleep spell.

Maybe it also just put you to sleep? It could be the same effect, but with different methods.

Again, that still didn’t feel quite right. Dreams still seemed like a mind state. Perhaps sleeping without dreams?

Like getting knocked unconscious.

That seemed much more reasonable. Unconsciousness was also really similar to sleep, but not quite the same, which is what Annie said about the spell in the first place.

So… the spell would remove something’s state of mind, and destroy it, which would render the creature unconscious.

Shadow looked up at her mom, and was about to answer, when she had another thought.

Why, exactly, would destroying the mind state be necessary? Once it was out of the person, wouldn’t they be just as unconscious, whether or not it was destroyed? She supposed you would have to keep pulling more and more of the mind state out, to keep it unconscious as the creature's brain fought you. Maybe destroying it was just to keep from having too much of it? Whatever that meant.

She still wasn't sure how all this worked... but if you just… had their mind state floating around…

‘Can you read people’s minds with dark magic?’ Shadow asked, wide-eyed.

That sounded awesome!

Annie sighed, giving Shadow a tired smile.

“Of course, you would figure that out. Yes. Yes, you can, but that spell specifically is heavily restricted. More so than most others. That’s the kind of spell that could get you executed for knowing if you don’t have permission to know it. People don’t like the idea of someone looking at what they’re thinking, especially those in power.”

‘Oh…’ Shadow wrote, feeling dejected. The idea that she might be able to read people’s thoughts had been pretty cool.

Annie bent over and ruffled Shadow’s ears.

“Don’t look so down.” Annie told her. “You’ll have plenty of fun spells you can learn. No need to delve into the restricted ones. Now, back to the matter at hand. Did you come up with an idea about what the dark magic version of the sleep spell would be?” Annie asked with a smile.

Shadow looked up, giving a small smile back. It was hard to stay down for long when getting your ears ruffled. She shook her head and got her mind back on track.

‘Dark magic should be able to pull the mind state out of something, and destroy it, making the creature fall unconscious!’ Shadow explained, doing her best to seem confident in her answer.

‘Really, all you should need to do is take it out to make whatever it was unconscious, but… you have to destroy the mind state afterward, since you would end up with too many floating around if you didn't?’

Annie waggled her hand at Shadow in a ‘sort-of’ gesture.

“Right effect, but not quite how you go about it. I believe a dark mage’s knockout spell works by just destroying the mind state directly, rendering the creature unconscious that way. No need to pull the thoughts at all.”

Oh. She had thought… wait a second.

Shadow squinted at her mom.

‘You tricked me!’

Annie raised her eyebrows.

“Did I?” she asked.

‘Yeah! You said the sleep spell worked by creating a mind state, and then pushing it on something's mind, overriding whatever its real mind state was. The way light and dark were opposed made it seem like a dark magic version would have to do the opposite.’ Shadow asserted.

“That sounds more like an assumption you made rather than anything I tricked you about.” Annie shot back with a smirk.

‘Yeah… but…’ Shadow wrote, but trailed off, taking a moment to organize her thoughts.

Annie was right, it was an assumption she'd made.

Why is this bothering me?

She still felt like something was wrong. If a knockout spell could just destroy a mind-state while it was in the target’s head…

‘Why doesn’t sleep just create the sleeping mind state right in the creature’s head?’ Shadow asked.

That really was the crux of it. If you could just create and destroy these mind-states wherever, what was the point of pushing and pulling them around?

Annie smiled at her.

“Good question, and you’re correct. You can just create a state of mind directly in something's head… but there are two main issues with that method. The first is that it’s much harder and less effective to create a mind state directly within a working mind. You would have to concentrate on creating the new state, while simultaneously fighting against the creature’s mind trying to reassert itself. Easier to make it outside and push it in. You don’t run into that problem with the knockout spell. Destroying whatever a creature’s current mind state is does not take nearly as much finesse as creating a new one. The second ‘issue’ is simply... that is not what the sleep spell does. The version you can get, even if it is restricted, operates in the manner I told you. There is some variation in how it’s applied, but the fundamentals only operate in one way. The sleep spell creates the sleeping mind state, and pushes it onto the target. That’s how it goes.” Annie explained.

Shadow considered that answer. The first part made sense, she thought. The whole thing was still very abstract, what with the moving mind states around. She still had no real concept of what that would even look like, or feel like, she supposed. She probably wouldn't be actually seeing anything at all. This whole thing was a little less physical than she was used to.

The second part seemed like more society stuff. Still, she had to ask, even though she had a feeling she already knew the answer .

‘Couldn’t you just make a new sleep spell that wasn’t limited like that?’

Annie gave her a look, like she’d just asked another question with a complicated answer.

“Well… I’ll just say that yes, that is definitely possible, but doing development on new spells is another one of those restricted things. Most mages are only taught the spell arrays, and none of the underlying runic theory you'd need for spell development. That information is strictly guarded.”

Shadow frowned. That seemed stupid. That seemed even worse than not being allowed to use whatever new spell you came up with. It was like you couldn't even think about new spells at all.

‘How does anyone come up with new spells then?’ She asked.

“Well, people do get permission to learn, and those are the people who make most of the new spells,” Annie said.

‘How do you get permission to learn?’ Shadow continued.

Annie laughed.

“Planning on making some new spells, are you?” She asked with a grin.

Shadow shrugged, before giving a small nod. She really had no idea, but she didn’t like being restricted in what she was allowed to know. She wanted to know everything! She was feeling a little disheartened that this whole spellcasting business seemed to be filled with all kinds of things you needed permission to do or learn.

Annie sighed, looking up at the trees for a moment.

“You really just need to convince the people that can give you that permission, that you need to know. How you go about that is… messy. One way is to propose a project that would benefit your backer in some significant way, but there are many others.” She said knowingly.

Shadow looked at the ground glumly. She had a feeling her reason of ‘I really want to know!’ would not be terribly convincing.

She did perk up a bit as she scented fresh, moving water. It seemed they were getting close to the river.