The response Holen gave was simple as it was profound. "The first arcane arts were spoken words." She paused for a short moment but not long enough to be interrupted before continuing on, turning her eyes to Alys who had mentioned spoken Spells. "You mentioned spoken Spells and though you aren't completely wrong you aren't fully right either."
She raised her pointer finger in front of her body and spoke a single word "light". As if the abide by her request a light the size of a pin head appeared above her finger for all to see. The 'spell' hadn't been spoken in any obscure language that the gods had given and as far as they could tell she had not weaved it the way that their spells usually worked by pushing mana through their body in specific patterns. She had simply called for light and it appeared.
"The first arcane arts were before the gods involved themselves with us in the form of blessing us with their own minor workings. The oldest records we have available talk about the arcane arts as nothing but spoken word, force of will and mana." To accentuate her point she spoke the word "fire" and they watched the small light turn into a flame the size of a candle flame.
"The trouble with this particular form of arcane arts and why it isn't taught anymore is that there is a large loss in efficacy and mana." She held up the small flame for them to take a close look. "This small flame is worth as much mana as this," she spoke the word 'flamme' and they watched as a ball of fire twice the size of her first formed in a moment.
"The loss itself is because rather than putting the mana through a pattern along with the chant you were just releasing a wave of mana into the atmosphere and pushing your will on it while using a word to solidify your own vision." She snuffed out both spells with a simple wave of her hand. "There were of course a few prodigies that learned to use this method in grand ways but the general masses couldn't"
"This is where the foundations of formation use started. Some of those prodigies wanted to share their knowledge but the process they used wasn't suitable to teach to the average person. So the answer was the creation of a written language to translate that power."
Rather than explaining in words she walked over to one of the tables where a pointer that held what appeared to be a simple stick of chalk sat. She grabbed the pointer, walked to the center of the raised platform and began writing. Due to their raised vantage point they were able to see a line of runes being drawn.
Once she was done she turned back to them. "Who here is able to translate this?" This time Andrew raised hand quickly, causing Holen to point in his direction. "It says something roughly like 'creation of blue flame'." To this he was given an approving nod. "That's good. There are several runic languages but only two are used commonly. They are simply known as 'New' and 'Old' runic script. This here is in the New Runic Script, which as you can likely imagine is the most commonly used as of about some two hundred years ago."
She quickly tapped on the text again and watched as the 'chalk' writing began to light up with a warm white light before a fist sized blue fireball formed, hovering in the air. "New Runic Script is just a cleaner version of Old Runic Script. It requires less mana for the same characters to work." With a sweep of her foot the writing was broken and with it the blue flame extinguished.
"The written runes are the pattern that create the spells effect. The problems are two fold. The first is that it requires special materials." She held up the pointer so that they could get a better look at the 'chalk' realizing that it was actually a small piece of some sort of white crystal rather than regular chalk. "Second, it requires a constant supply of mana, this is often a large burden on the caster as any of you who have used formations likely know. You can supplement the mana in some cases but many of these practices are rather frowned upon."
"Formations take runes a step further by use of geometry to allow for several resources to be used in a single casting. They also allow for a much more refined casting, using several lines of runes to narrow the scope of effect and direct mana in a more concise manner."
This time she spent several minutes drawing a pattern that looked like two diamonds crossing over each other symmetrically enclosed in a circle. Along the edges of both of the diamonds she wrote a number of runes, only leaving the intersection clear. She quickly reached into her pocket and pulled out several pieces of what looked like rough, red glass in the size of a small pebble. She placed it at the intersections where the diamond shapes crossed as well as where they met the circle before standing up from he slight crouch to ensure precision in her drawing.
"I won't bother asking you to translate. The fact is that the most efficient formations don't use fully formed sentences. They use geometry to align short and precise commands. The more complex the shapes used the more commands can be accommodated." Without explaining more she tapped on the pattern which began to light up like the runes had. The only difference being that the red 'glass' also light up with points of crimson light before it began to leak into the white lines, dying them red slowly.
Once the entire pattern lit up there there was a short flashes of bright red before a flame started to flicker from the center of the formation, stretching until it was a thin, long pole of flame. Then from the pillar of flame the fire itself seemed to spread out in branching patterns from the main pillar.
At the end rather than a simple flame Jien and his group were staring at a short tree made completely of bright red, flickering fire.