James Galloway - The Tower of Sorcery

"Why do you have to build up power, when it's already there?" he asked.

"How do you mean?"

"You say that you build up power inside you, then it leaves you and then goes where you tell it to go. Then you weave that power together and form a spell. Why not just try to weave it together over there in the first place? That way, you don't have to draw anything in."

"A thought, but it will not quite work, dear one. When I weave together flows somewhere else, I'm trying to affect the magic over there with the magical power I have inside me. In effect, I'm pushing a line of blocks, trying to get the end block to fall off the edge of a table. By pushing at this end, I can make the block on the far end fall off the table. The Weave measures the power I have inside me against the weave I'm trying to build, and if it is enough, I can push out that energy and weave it together to do what I want it to do. I cannot push any more power into the Weave than what I currently hold, so, to again put it in terms of water, the water I carry in a bucket cannot fill up a barrel. If the weave I am trying to build requires a barrel of water, it will not work. If it only requires a bucket, it will work. If it only requires a glass of water, and I try to fill it with a bucket of water-"

"It overflows."

She shook her head. "It never gets the chance to overflow. Because the weave is triggered once it has enough power and I weave it together, the excess energy has nothing to do, and it is disspated through the Weave. The proper term is that it is absorbed by the Weave."

"So…to stay on the water, it's like filling a glass over a waterfall," he said. "The water that flows over the glass just drops back into the stream."

"Precisely," she said with an approving nod. "You do suffer a bit of a backlash, because that power partially rebounds back into you. It is not pleasant, so you learn quickly not to try to put more magic into a weave than it can safely hold."

"Safely?"

She chuckled. "Yes. If you charge a weave's flows without weaving them together and allowing them to expend the energy you charge into them, they can release that energy in totally random ways. It is called a wildstrike, and the effects can be spectacular. The power of the Weave itself can blow through a ruptured flow, like a torrent of water blasting from a hole in a dam. That is one of the reasons this room is so bare. And these walls are sufficiently reinforced by magical wards and physical buttressing."

"And that's the danger you warned me about," he surmised.

"One of them, yes," she said. "Toying with Sorcery without experience or guidance can be deadly.

"You seem to understand the generalities of weaving flows, but there are some restrictions of which you must be aware. There are only three true strictures when it comes to weaving flows, Tarrin," she said. "Firstly, you cannot weave where you cannot see. That is our range. While you can weave some flows without seeing what you are doing, and indeed there are many that must be woven inside objects, where you cannot see what you do, but you cannot direct them at anyone or anything unless you can see it. You cannot weave flows trying to paralyze someone on the far side of a closed door, nor can you weave in the dark unless you can see your target's location. You do not necessarily have to see his face or form, but you must be able to see enough of him to know where he is. But no matter what, you cannot create flows at great distances, whether you know someone is there or not. The reason for this is complex, but it comes down to perspective. Since you are 'seeing' the flows woven together, it means that flows that are exceptionally tiny are impossible to create. People at great distances appear tiny, so to affect them from such a distance means that, in relation, you are trying to weave flows in a tight space."

"In other words, Dolanna, accuracy is dictated by distance. The farther away a target is, the harder it is to hit it. And once something is outside of bowshot, you just can't get anything there. It always falls short."

"More or less, though it is a bit more complex than that," she agreed. "Secondly. Flows exist in a state of partial independence from the Weave, and from other flows from different sphere, but they actively merge with flows of the same sphere. Once they are drawn from a strand, you cannot use other flows to try to affect them without considrable danger. In effect, you cannot mop up water with more water. There are indirect ways to do this, however. You can unravel another Sorcerer's weaving by trying to control his flows directly, or attack the Sorcerer directly with Sorcery to make him stop, or attempt to cut that Sorcerer off from the Weave, but you could not send flows out to untie his flows. If you do, the like flows simply merge, you get a tangled mess, and it often explodes as a wildstrike. Thirdly. Because the flows cannot affect flows, and like flows merge and disrupt themselves, that means that we cannot weave flows upon ourselves. When we are weaving, we are living extensions of the Weave, but we are only filled with certain flows, and the flows of the weave we are creating interfere with the power of the flows we are holding inside. We cannot heal ourselves, or weave any weaves that would affect ourselves. The flows merely enter us, touch the power within of the same sphere, then rush out down the flow and go back to the strand. We lose the power from inside, which takes away our ability to push it against the weave, and then it simply fizzles out. Fortunately, any attempt to weave flows on ourselves simply fizzle, and do not form wildstrikes. That prohibition starts at your skin and goes inward. It also means that you cannot weave any weaves against or for another Sorcerer who is actively in contact with the Weave. But mind you, that means those weaves that affect the Sorcerer's body directly. Sorcerer's Fire can burn a Sorcerer just as quickly as it can burn anyone else, because it is an external effect that comes into contact with that Sorcerer."

"What would happen if you try? Wouldn't it kind of ruin his spell?"

Dolanna smile broadly. "Yes and no," she told him. "The energy you are exerting against him is pushing towards him. Once it comes into contact with him, it comes down to who is stronger. If the attacker is more powerful than the target, he can reverse the energy of the flow and drain off any energy inside him, or he can pump power into the victim, exceed his ability to hold it, and force him to release his touch on the Weave in order to avoid being Consumed. If the target is more powerful, then he can block off that flow, literally drawing in so strongly that the attacker cannot overcome the force. Or he can simply allow the attacker to feed him that power without drawing in. If the target can hold more than the attacker, then the attacker could never force the target to let go of the Weave. Either form weakens the target's ability to weave flows, for he must dedicate a portion of his attention and his power to controlling the attacker's energy, but it cannot stop him."

"Then why can't a Sorcerer do weaves on himself?" he pressed. "All he has to do is resist his own attempt to drain, or feed off of the power he's trying to push into himself."

"Ah, but in both instances, there is a catch," she told him. "If you try to feed off of the power you channel into yourself, then what happens when you stop drawing from the Weave?"

"You-ohh," he said. "You cut off your own power, and then your spell fizzles."

"Precisely. No matter how you try to balance the feeding with the restraining, they will always cancel one another."

"What if you only try to feed off of a little of your energy?"

"What indeed? You should already know the answer, dear one."

He thought about it a long moment. "I guess you can't," he said. "If you try to feed off of only a portion of the energy, you're working harder to feed yourself a little bit of power that you get back. So you have to make it stronger, which makes you have to cut back on drawing power, but you can't do that, because if you do you lose that power to make weaves. You could never put enough power into it to make it work."