After another day full of magical mistakes and asking Lucinda to help him choreograph the funny dance involved, Bobby finally managed to pull the gravity spell off. The effects of which were surprisingly dramatic. For a moment the magic was pulled from the air like a great river, all streaming into the glowing formation on the floor, then the formation began rotating.

  Bobby seemed immune to the effects, but Lucinda who’d been idly watching him suddenly collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been cut. One moment she was standing there quite bored, then she was slammed into the ground. Bobby tried to cut off the magic powering the spell, but it didn’t seem like he had that capability, he no longer seemed able to influence it.

  Panicked and unsure what to do as she got pressed more and more strongly into the ground he thrust his magic out to try and interrupt the spell. The spell which was spinning like an engine felt almost impossible to stop as it heavily resisted his efforts. But soon he was able to get through to it.

  For a moment it was an intense battle between his desperation and the spell's natural resistance, then the spell destabilised and shook itself apart, visible rings of compressed gravity magic shooting off in all directions. Bobby felt the last of his magic drain from his core as he ran over to Lucinda to check if she was okay.

  She seemed to not be injured, although she was clearly very shaken by the experience, in fact so was he, that had felt like a very close call. Breathing deeply he collapsed to his knees and two notifications came up.

  [Regeneration 22 → 23]

  [Authority 0 → 1]

  Bobby stared at the notification. I’ll need to get this a lot higher if I want to make sure my friends are safe around some of my spells.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Lucinda sat up and looked at him with wide eyes, “I thought you said you could control your spells?”

  “Sorry,” Bobby took a moment to organise his thoughts, “Not this one it seems, I didn’t know there would be an exception, the moment it activated, all of my control was cut off. I was very surprised, neither of my other spells were like this.”

  Bobby realised he’d been yapping at her for a bit too long and stopped talking.

  “I think I’ll keep my distance then until you’ve mastered it a bit better,” said Lucinda, quickly retreating into her Bastion.

  Bobby watched her go with a complicated expression. I’m not exactly giving her the best introduction to magic, he thought. In fact I’ve given her some really bad experiences with it, despite all the kindness she’s shown us by letting us stay in her home. He knew he needed to significantly improve his attitude towards her if he wanted a chance to have a relationship with her.

  Deciding he should probably leave her for some time on her own before following her in, he delved back into his mindspace, examining the details of the spell. He hadn’t been expecting to lose control of it in such a fashion. He soon found there was something he had overlooked, there seemed to be a categorisation to the spells that he hadn’t noticed before.

  After a bit more sifting around he managed to find a few more categories, enough to tell him what he was dealing with. Spells could either be fixed or dynamic, and then on top of those two options they could be transforming or preformed.

  Fixed spells didn’t have to be anchored in place, but tended to be, they could channel much larger amounts of magic, although once they were set going it was like rolling a boulder down a hill, very difficult to stop once it had gained momentum. Dynamic spells were the opposite, they allowed the user to alter their characteristics on the go as well as tending to be more mobile, although at the cost of being less powerful.

  Transforming spells started as a weave of some sort, but then evolved or grew like a planted seed, becoming something greater at the cost of a lot of energy. Preformed spells were the weave itself unchanged, they seemed to be far more efficient at using magic and Bobby could guess why they would be popular, even though they required more precision and time to cast.

  For the three spells he had currently managed to cast, he could place them quite easily into the categories. The orb of annihilation was a dynamic transforming spell, the magic filament was a dynamic preformed spell and the Gravity spell was a fixed transforming spell, even though it didn’t change much, the self propelled rotation meant it counted as a transforming one.

  Feeling enlightened at the new knowledge Bobby felt like he’d have a better grasp on how his spells would act. Remembering his core was empty he decided to finish early and went inside to find Lucinda. Perhaps I could try cooking her a meal as an apology?

  +++++

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