The Other Black Book (more worldbuilding)

 You know how great, powerful wizards are depicted as old men with great flowing beards? There's a reason for that, and it's not just because they've had their whole lives to learn stuff. Magic isn't something you can learn. It's in your bones. No, old magicians are always wise and powerful because only wise and powerful magicians grow old. Its a dangerous game we play.

The literature gets it wrong though, at least partially. Old magicians aren't always the powerful ones. Powerful magicians get cocky, make mistakes. It isn't weakness of magic that gets you, it's weakness of mind. Sloppy thinking. Overconfidence. Arrogance. Greed. Carelessness. You must act cautiously, but without hesitation. Always have another way out. Or three, or five, or ten if you're really nervous. The magician who relies on his magic will find it fails him when he needs it most.

 

Patience, calmness, clarity; these must be your watchwords. Frustration does not befit a magician. It is the nature of our art to act unpredictably, doing different things at different times. You must be prepared for as many outcomes as possible, yet no matter how prepared you are do not deceive yourself by thinking you cannot be surprised. You would do well to think of magic as a living, sentient, insubordinate thing that will do your bidding but turn to bite you given the least slack in the reigns.

 

Dr Solum, prolific writer on magic and irksome acquaintance of mine, has in several of worked dismissed the ideas of "white" and "black" magic as the product of narrowminded attempts to force magic into artificial categories of good and evil. Solum is generally wise, though presumptuous, therefore while his numerous works have troubled me somewhat this is the only point on which I have felt the need to write a rebuttal. The good doctor is naive; he knows a great deal about magic but has never met it personally. Magic is not merely an instrument of the magician; it has a strange, mad mind of its own with its own whims and desires and contempts. Black magic is very real. I have [remainder of manuscript obliterated]

- fragments of an unpublished manuscript titled The Other Black Book, by Melody


Trying to get a number of characters involved in this, since they contradict one another on a few important points.  Probably still more to come, might well be inexhaustible XD