Hearken o feeble minded and voluminous masses, Ulesorin returns from his holiday to bring you wisdom of the like that you could never have even considered. For there is none in your world like Ulesorin the Green, none in my world either, with a singular exception, and so truly you are blessed by the presence of a wit unsurpassed.

My holiday was fine, thank you for asking, I took a brief sojourn from my tower to slay some ice-worms on the southern plains. They were very lost, and very susceptible to thunderbolts, so it was a short trip that nonetheless managed to extend out into a meandering tour through the vineyards between here and there, where I sampled some of the finest vintages on offer to a man who has been observed destroying creatures the size of mountains with only a few arcane words and a scowl. The service was excellent, apart from all the whimpering. I’d recommend the journey to anyone.

Anyway, to the question of the day.

***

Respected Ulesorin,

 

I regret to inform you that it was I that sent the message “How’s being a wizard going? Can you do any cool tricks?”. I’d like to sincerely apologize, I truly do not know what came over me & I am beginning to suspect I was under the influence of an amulet. 

When I sent you that message I was fairly new to wizardry & severely uninformed about the art, nevertheless I take full responsibility for my behavior. I want you to know that I have nothing but respect for your work & you have inspired me to pursue the arcane arts myself. 

There is one thing I would be delighted to ask you:

What is your prefered object for focusing magic? 

My personal favorite is the skull.

Regards,

S. the ashamed one

***

Shame. Yes. Shame is what you should feel, burning in the pit of your stomach like a too-swiftly-plucked-from-the-fire-potato. You who claim to have a desire to pursue the arcane, coming to a wizard of the highest order and demanding answers after having spoken so ill of me before.

And now, now you have opened the line of communication once more, and it is a simple thing to follow it back.

Cool tricks? Cool tricks?! 

Allow me the pleasure of showing you a cool trick, dear Ashamed One. 

Do you feel that, as you read these words? The enchantment woven into the parchment, transmitted through the interdimensional lightning to your machines of lightning and runescribed metal, it feels like nothing at first, like a cool breeze on the skin. 

It is almost a welcome feeling isn’t it? It is a warm day, and that gentle breeze soothes you.  And so you welcome it in, you open yourself up to the chill that now nestles in your bones, taking root in your marrow, turning it to ice. 

Now comes the trick, you see, because this spell is insidious not swift, you grow colder and colder as the curse spreads within you, but at first you discount it, you think it is your imagination, then you think it is nothing at all but a change in weather, you close the window and the door and wrap yourself in extra layers of wool that do nothing, because the cold does not radiate from without, but within. 

You shiver and quake and suffer and sob, with every tear slicing at your ducts as it forms a crystal of ice before it departs you. You have heard the phrase ‘blood runs cold’ but you never knew it could be real. Never knew that the terror within you could be something leaving red icicles dangling from your chin. And so in desperation to the shower, or perhaps the bath, if you are an old fashioned kind of person like me. Hot as you can make it, anything to fight the chill inside.

And when you submerge yourself, you shatter.

The curse was never meant to kill, herein lies the trick, the curse was meant to make you throw yourself into the only thing that can kill you now. 

If you had resisted your base urges you would have found your flesh hard enough to turn aside blades, your heartbeat so slow that no sickness could nestle within, but no, you feared, and you rushed into the very heat that was your annihilation.

So, in conclusion, my favoured focus for the casting of magic is inscription and writing. Scrolls, hidden messages and the like. Although I do have a rather nice mummy-arm wand that doubles as an excellent back-scratcher.

***

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*Disclaimer: All answers are provided for entertainment purposes only. It may not be in your best interests to follow advice provided by a 1794-year-old man who lives alone in a tower and claims to have magical powers.