Chapter 36 - Answers

”Mr Tablos, what can we do with Elise? We cannot let her lie here, especially because she is unconscious. Where can we get medical help for her?”

Tablos thought for a moment and then decided to answer: ”The good news is that I am an Archmage. While not a focus of my training, it is a requirement for every Archmage to have basic medical skills. I have already checked her, and she is fine. The big question now is why she became unconscious. I already have an idea about what has happened to cause this, but please reiterate what you did to cause the explosion of pure magical energy."

"if you wish so, Mr Tablos, I will do so. While you began realizing that this was going nowhere, I was bored and tried again. I finally realized that I was able to grab the magic, at least theoretical, but there was a strange, unnatural feeling resistance against this. So I decided to try to overpower it. That worked, even if it was not easy. Not easy at all. Because of the force I used, ...”

The Archmage interrupted Jonathan: ”This is enough. I am pretty sure I know what happened, now. Damn, I could have, no I should have realized it earlier. Especially because I studied the damn spell. The summoner cannot control the summons magic, but the magic of the summon can be blocked by the summoner. It is one of the very few ways she can exert her power over you in a real and realistic way. While you are bound to her location, the distance involved is mind-boggling, to say the least. But I digress. So the way the summoner controls if you are able to use magic or not is quite simple. She can decide to either allow it and then it is allowed until she disallows it. Of course, the other way around works the same. So what happened? It is one of two things. Either that you cannot use magic is the default setting of that part of the summoning spell, or Elise forbid you magic unconsciously. I assume it is the first, because if it were that easy, she would have reversed, because, in the end, she wanted you cast something as she became tired of that charade. So it is the default option, and she never managed to change it.”

”But I was able to overpower it. With the right training, I likely would be able to cast magic somewhat normally, even if I am not allowed to use it at the time.”

Tablos laughed: ”You are not totally wrong, but also not totally right. First off, let us answer the question of how you where able to overpower the spell. The thing is, it tries to restrict your magic. But it also needs your magic, to keep the spell going without major problems, and even if that were not the case, you need a bit of magic in your body to protect yourself. One of the worst ways to die for a mage is total mana exhaustion. It is not pretty, that is all I will say about that. So it must leave some magic in a usable state. So you are not totally unable to cast, but most of your magic is unaccessible to you. Did you understand this?”

”Yes, I think I did. But what happened to Elise?”

”Oh, that is simple. You triggered a strange safety in the spell, no idea why it is in there. But I also do not understand most of the spell, so there is that. Let's wait for her to wake up, shall we?”

”If we must.”