Repetition was the only thing that made his inner disturbances manageable. It had not made the relationship any more reasonable. Wizardry followed rules. Ordinarily, Yves learned a theory before he risked himself upon it. That was the sort of civilised sequence he could appreciate: method framed by initial cause and intended consequence. Of course, a spell could fail through faulty execution. A shard structure could collapse through lack of concentration. A calculated illusion could be flawless on parchment and still prove thoroughly impractical once the world contributed its own deviations.
But even if you failed; if you failed systematically, then failure had a grammar. It left something to examine. You could trace it back and pick it apart. You could trace it back, identify and isolate the flaw, amend the method, and, ideally, survive a second attempt with enough of yourself intact to appreciate the improvement.
But this?
This
had none of
that.
But this?
This
had none of
that.
This was wrong in every academic regard. It was wrong in the most intolerable way, because Yves did not even understand the fundamental laws that made the wrongness happen. The procedure had preceded the theory, and to this day, he had never been taught the logic behind any of it.
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