Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from July, 2025

Cold Blood, part III

Of all the magic spells someone can learn - of all the tricks and enchantments - there is none as sought-after as immortality. To some, it is the brass ring of magical practice. The end goal of a lifetime of dedication to arcane study. We all blame Merlin for that. Ever since that guy set unrealistic expectations, others have tried desperately to emulate his success. Life-extension spells are typically among the first that practitioners try after spotting their earliest grey hair or unexpected crow’s foot. Sometimes they work. Each practitioner has an internal pool of energy used to power their spells. The most common spells that extend life do so by taking energy from that pool, so you find yourself unable to cast spells without instantly dropping dead of old age. Or worse; the pool simply drains away in the background without you noticing, and you drop dead as a withered corpse that even your family wouldn’t recognise. But sometime in the 1930s, a young Korean practitioner from a mou...

Cold Blood, part II

Ireland has more magical practitioners per capita than any other country in Europe, and nobody is one hundred percent sure why this is. It may be genetic, though nobody has yet identified the gene for spellcasting. It might also be the country’s historical links to the Spirit Realms, which still manifest as gateways and - unfortunately - incursions. Or it could simply be our position at the edge of the continent. As it flows about the place, magic sometimes likes to find and follow the edges of things, like an electrical current. This may also be why incursions tend to happen at the coast, at the summits of hills, or the bottoms of valleys. I shook Buckley’s hand, wondering if he’d recognise me, but I didn’t see a glimmer in his eyes. My mind raced back over our previous meeting. I definitely had a different glamour at the time, and I was not sure if I had given him my real name. Wasn’t I using a phoney Garda ID? Did it matter? My Garda ID is under my actual name. “A pleasure to meet y...