Morgan leaned back in her chair, her legs resting on her desk as she flipped through a book on human biology. The... significantly more boring part of magic, this. Studying. She glanced over at her easel before shaking her head and going back to her reading, painting can wait until she's brushed up.

  That was when she heard a knock on the door, though Morgan wasn't entirely surprised. She knew she was walking by... just expected her to keep moving to her own room. "Come on in, Thalia!" she shouted, as she put the book away in her bookshelf using magic. If you have it, may as well use it, right?

  She spun herself around in her chair, planting her feet on the ground to stop spinning right as Thalia finished entering Morgan's room. "What can I do for you, Thalia?" Morgan asked with a smile.

  "I realized something while sitting in the living room and thinking. If magic is as easy as dumping magic into something and wanting a specific effect, why do you have all these books? They can't all be your personal interests, unless you care about everything from biology to physics, which... seems unlikely for you." Thalia asked, taking a seat on Morgan's bed.

  "Wha-? I could totally be interested in all of those! I mean, I'm not, but I could have been!" Morgan fake coughed to regain her composure. "Well. You're not wrong. Magic is much more complicated than I initially let on. Figured we'd start with the basics and work our way up... but if you're curious..."

  "I am! Tell me!" Thalia practically bounced off the bed with how eager to learn she was. Morgan smiled a bit, Thalia was always pretty happy to learn... once you get her interest, anyway.

  "Alright then. I wasn't lying when I said that magic is composed of causes and effects. And when doing simple magic, such as shields, you can get away with simplicity. Your shields will work perfectly fine without a better understanding of how to achieve the effect. That doesn't, however, mean that all magic can be used that simply." Morgan stopped for a moment to try thinking of the best way to explain what she means. "Let's say, for a moment, that you had a cut. Or like that burn you got this morning. Simply dumping magic into it and wishing for it to go away could work. Sometimes. Let me reiterate, sometimes. However, it quickly starts to fail once you get into things you can't intuitively think of how to fix. If you broke your leg, you need to know how the bone is supposed to go together."

  Thalia quickly tilted her head, "why is that important?"

  "Hmmm. It might be best to show you." On seeing Thalia's very worried face, Morgan quickly added "With a magical projection, not your body! Put together a new spell recently. The details of it are... complicated, involving light and a bunch of other things, but it will help me to illustrate."

  Morgan magically pulled her paintbrush over to her, and begin acting like she was painting in the air. Was this necessary? No, but she found having a physical act, in her case, painting what she was doing, helped her focus on her goal, especially with new or more complex spells. As she did, the image of a broken bone appeared in the air. "Okay, so you see this bone, right? Pretty broken?"

  Thalia nodded. "I mean, it's shattered in like three or four places, and you also made it split apart... It's very broken. Also REALLY creepy looking, Morgan."

  "Haha. Sorry, Thalia, but it'll help me illustrate what I mean. Now, if I simply dumped magic into this and told it 'fix the bone'..." Morgan used her brush to 'paint' the bone again, but rather than creating a properly mended bone, it's fused together in awkward places, as if each piece was simply attached to the nearest point without care for how the bone should go together. It almost looked like the bone from some monster, with how it was fused together unnaturally.

  "That is not a human bone, Morgan. Also, still really creepy. Creepier, now." Thalia pointed out, leading Morgan to sigh.

  "That is the point, Thalia. See how the pieces have all just fused together? It's even off-center the further down the bone you go. This is because I didn't specify how the bone is supposed to go together. How it's meant to heal. Magic has no mind, it has no knowledge of its own. Magic is fueled by your knowledge just as much by your will. It can achieve the impossible, yes, but that impossible can have negative effects if you don't guide it into achieving the possible." Morgan wiped away the bone from the air with a mock scrubbing motion with her free hand.

  "So this is why you have so many books here? To learn how to better control magic? To figure out what is and isn't possible so that you can achieve effects? But what about things that are impossible, but which you just want to do? Like... make a black hole with magic?" Thalia began firing off questions, her mind as curious as ever.

  "Yes, this is why I have so many books, to better control my magic and learn how to do more complicated tasks. In regards to the impossible... Yes, assuming you still know how to achieve the cause. However, depending on the scale, that very well may kill you. Magic is not... efficient, naturally. Knowledge lets me guide it. Make it efficient. Achieve my goals for as little expenditure of my own magical reserves as I can. Additionally, knowledge may let you replicate the effects of something in much simpler forms. Let's take the simple fireball. It is not actually composed of fire. None of us do that."

  "You don't??" Thalia quickly interjected, rather baffled. "It certainly FELT like fire!"

  Morgan giggled a bit and sent her paintbrush back before generating a ball of fire in her characteristic dark purple. "No. This is simply a ball of magical energy that mimics the effects of fire. It is hot, yes, it can set things on fire if I try hard enough... but it is purely composed of magic. This means it can be used in areas where fire can't survive, such as the vacuum of space, but also means it can not survive on its own without magic to fuel it."

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Thalia nodded. "So what about Heart's ice? I've seen her and Haruko sparring, and while his sword tends to pierce your shield just fine, Heart's ice seems to actually stop his sword sometimes."

  Morgan smiled a bit. "A good observation. See, Heart actually turns the air into ice. At least when fighting Haruko, anyway. See, we CAN use magic to create the actual thing, it is just much more expensive in terms of magical energy. Haruko's immunity to magic and ability to ignore it means he doesn't care about my fireballs or my shields, but it means Heart's ice works just fine. She uses magic to increase the moisture in the air, and then freeze it. She uses magic to slow them down, thus cooling them to the point they freeze. This is also why she can make her sword so cold it can freeze things on contact."

  "From what I have read, slowing down the molecular movement of something to freeze it is... rather energy intensive. Surely that's the case with magic too, right?"

  Morgan beamed an even bigger as Thalia started to get it. "It absolutely is! This is why we generally don't do it. Mimicking them is easy, actually achieving those effects is quite a bit more difficult. Thus knowledge to achieve them, and knowledge to figure out a way to replicate them more easily. Haruko's immunity to magic is quite unique to him, as far as I've ever read at least, and thus we need only use such methods with him."

  "...Last question. I had a thought... if I can heal someone's internal injury, like a broken bone... why can't I create an injury inside their body?" Thalia asked with a concerned expression.

  Morgan's smile dropped. It was not a topic she enjoyed discussing, because of the sheer implications of it... yet if Thalia is already questioning it... "Thalia. You must promise to NEVER even try to do such a thing."

  "What? Why?" Thalia asked, tilting her head again.

  "Because there is no defense against it. We all know this. Every mage knows it. We... have a bit of a collective agreement. Nobody uses that. Nobody discusses it. We act like it's not possible as far as normal people are concerned."

  "But why? It seems like it'd be a really good way to-"

  Morgan quickly cut her off. "That is exactly why we don't do it. Once someone starts doing it because of the convenience, others will follow. Many others. We manipulate things around the person, but harming the inside of their body... is strictly off limits. It is our own informal rule of war."

  "Why can't people know, though?"

  "Because while most of us here are mages... most of humanity is not. While there may be enough mages that you can meet one if you suffer an emergency medical condition... there are not enough of us to be able to beat everyone else if they decide we are too dangerous. We keep it secret so that we seem less dangerous than we are. For our own safety. I can become immune to all manner of bullets and artillery shells... but if someone launches a missile at me... I am dead. Especially if there's multiple. Similarly, if stranded on a planet.. I am stuck. I can teleport to an orbiting ship, yes, but I can't get from our home here to it's sister world. As far as the galaxy should know, we are magical artillery pieces that can counter each other. Healers. Doctors. Protectors. People who can counter each other. A fine balancing line."

  "So it's secret so that nobody tries to get rid of us? Yet... aren't most mages capable of massive destruction? Why should we be worried about normal people?" Thalia fiddled with her coat, clearly starting to regret not yet having taken it off inside. While the outside of the mansion was frozen, the inside was always quite warm. Morgan kept her room even warmer, let her relax in anything she liked without being uncomfortable. She hadn't entirely mastered regulating her own temperature yet...

  "Because most mages are not capable of mass destruction. Oh don't get me wrong, mages are quite powerful... but harming people with magic is easily among the most difficult ways of using magic. A shield, especially once you've learned how to gauge how much magic is needed, is much faster and much cheaper. Harmful magic is more difficult and more expensive, and thus you run out of magical energy much sooner. Not to mention, not everyone is strong enough to easily kill people with magic. In war, mages usually work together to achieve their destructive effects, and typically work to shield an army from conventional artillery and serve as field medics. As a family we're... somewhat unique for being so deadly with magic."

  "So the number of mages capable of being extremely destructive is even smaller than the already small pool of mages. That... seems odd. Wouldn't destroying be easier?"

  "In theory, yes. Yet... it isn't. Maybe it's because we haven't figured out a perfect attack and shields are just so cheap, but it isn't. I don't have all the answers, Thalia. Someday, maybe I will. Today? Today I do not. ...And if I ever start acting like I know everything about magic, smack me."

  Thalia giggled. "Okay, I will!" She then stood up. "I should get going, I am starting to bake..."

  Morgan smirked a bit. "Well then, don't let me keep you." She pulled her biology book back as her cousin left, the door strangely cracked open...

  "MORGAN!" Thalia yelled as a bucket of water fell on her as she opened the door fully.

  Morgan giggled to herself. "You said you were starting to bake, so have ice cold water!"

  "Not what I meant!" Thalia pouted and stamped her foot.

  Morgan laughed to herself and snapped. Was the snap necessary? Of course not, but Morgan quite enjoyed her theatrics, and if Thalia is dry either way... why not?

  "Thank you." Thalia said, quickly leaving before Morgan changed her mind.

  Morgan laughed somewhat and went back to reading, kicking her feet back onto her desk, going back to her studies. It was a nice reprieve, that. Let her catch up on her own basics, too. So much more to learn, though. Always more. If she's going to beat her Dad as the best mage around, she can't afford to get complacent.

  ...Even if she was afraid she could never be as good.