Cursed

Seeing this, on the fourth day Morthalion reached down and tore away a part of his own shadow, from which he formed himself a blade of darkness, slim as a leaf and sharper than the frost. Wielding it, he struck off the god’s foot, then before the two could be reunited Morthalion burnt the foot in black fire until it crumbled to ash. Again and again Morthalion struck, cutting and burning feet, legs, arms, head, and finally body. At last only one part of the god remained: a single paw.

Morthalion could not destroy the paw and instead bound it up with a white thread, enspelling it so that all should forget the monkey god’s name, and thus his power could never be restored. But the monkey god’s spirit lived on within the paw, and survives to this day, filled with hate for the race that destroyed him.

The passage ended. I flipped to the end, but the monkey’s paw wasn’t mentioned again. I closed the book and picked up the next.

—of wish-granting items, little needs to be said. Their powers are generally overrated and greatly inferior to those of True Mages, who—

I rolled my eyes and tossed the book aside. The next one, titled Encyclopaedia Arcana, was thicker and the writing denser.

Wish magic, or desire magic, works quite differently. It magnifies the power of speech: Rather than the words being a trigger, it is the speaking of the wish itself that rewrites reality.

Stories abound of carelessly or ambiguously worded wishes causing disaster; these legends, unfortunately, have a firm basis in fact. While wish magic will not misinterpret or “twist” a wish, neither will it take into account context or intention, and phrasing is absolutely crucial. Clear, simple sentences are best; convoluted wording often results in too weak a “lens” for the magic to focus through, and vague wishes bring totally unpredictable results. Many mages blame such results upon malicious intelligence on the part of the granting power, but this is inaccurate. Wish magic is essentially neutral. It grants only what is asked; nothing more and nothing less.

There is a qualification, however. Most sources of wish magic have individual prohibitions against wishing for a certain outcome, a common example being the taking of a life. Should the user attempt a forbidden wish, the magic will fail to take effect or rebound upon the wisher. There is usually no way of discovering such limitations except through trial and error, making such experimentation a highly dangerous process.