Dread Mage

"Hiraeth?" Sonder said, "Are you also a mage?"

The sprite was sitting on her shoulder. To Vell's surprise, he took surprisingly fast to the girl.

But it made sense, seemingly as Vell wasn't the most friendly person to be around, and Hiraeth must have been getting sick of being mostly alone in solitude inside Vell's bag.

"A mage? No, no, but I do dabble in magic sometimes," Hiraeth replied.

"Oh, and what words do you use?" She asked.

"Words?"

"Yes, like Vell uses, and I used to accidentally swallow your cube."

"Right, Dico Magic. Well, you see girl, incantations as such are only reversed to mages like Vellichor; the upper echelon. Others, like me, use runes or ingredients. Or if the magic is banal enough, a thought is all that is needed."

"...What is Dico Magic?" Sonder asked.

And Vell cut off the answer that Hiraeth would have given, to his relief.

Hiraeth didn't know a lot about it and didn't want to seem uneducated to Sonder, even if she was just a little girl.

"Dico Magic," Vell began. "Well, it's complicated."

"Why is it called that? 'Dico'?" She asked.

"Oh, that's simple. Because its first and foremost scholar was Sen Dicaeolo. It's technically not magic, though you can use mana to reinforce the power the words hold- Oh right, the words. I already told you, things like Jol or Coh all have meanings. They are literary the things they mean, if one understands the words beyond their literal meaning, one can command them, and use them in conjunction with other words."

"How does one figure them out?"

"I don't know. It's the oldest magic in the world but also the least understood. It's said that it's the language the gods spoke to create and influence the world. Maybe priests back in the day got divine visions or divine tellings of the words."

Sonder was taken aback.

"The language of the gods?"

"Well, that's one of the stories. They also say that all things have names, and the words are their true names. Like: Your real name may not be Sonder but if someone called out your real name, they could control you or summon you, seemingly out of thin air."

She didn't like that thought.

"Do you believe that?" She asked Vell.

"Eh, not really. I don't think any of those stories are true, but I'm just a natural skeptic."