While following along in the journey of the ever insolent Alix Deminal, you may recall that she holds a deep animosity for a certain famed figure. She blames this person for her father's execution and she has taken an oath to herself that she would expose her for the thief and washed-up spellcaster she is!
The name of that person is Ponali Yenders. One of the many children of the Yenders family, the bloodline of none other than the legendary hero that saved the world from the Ancient Disaster. For years, the Yenders family has held a dominant role in every era of history and that hasn't changed during the Era of Innovation.
You see, when Ponali was young she was discovered to have great talent in Mage-craft and thus began her climb as a mage. By the time that she was only 15 years old she'd made a name for herself as a powerful mage.
This would have been enough for most people but not Ponali. She'd grown bored, tired of the workings of mage-craft and of being hailed as a genius of this generation for something that she'd just happened to discover she had talent in. She wanted something more...personal.
A real feat worthy of the name Yenders!
That was around the time that she'd decided to invest her talents in sorcery which was an unusual choice due to sorcery's known weakness and the specification of its application. Sorcery could not be inherited nor passed down though its theories could be taught.
Of course, a person could never replicate the spell of another as sorcery was a very personal art of spellcasting. And even when spell were made they needed to be first tested and analyzed to understand how they worked and wouldn't even be that powerful in the end.
It was, in all honesty, quite the heedless and sad excuse of a spellcasting art. Ponali, however, saw these flaws and decided that they made the craft worth her time!
A genius like her would be able to take something seemingly weak and make it powerful!
She started reading through theory books and magical law whilst she was in school expanding her knowledge more than anyone could've expected. It was madness to the outside observer! She was attempting to abandon all of her years of dedication in mage-craft to pursue sorcery.
Yet to her it wasn't madness! It was her first step on the path that she was meant to take!
At least, that's how she thought until she actually attempted sorcery.
After two full years of dedicated study fueled by passion and pure dedication, she decided that it was time for her to put her ideas into action. It should've been simple enough, she had combined theories, concepts, and laws in her mind that created spells that no one would have been able to comprehend, truly sorcery at its finest!
...but she couldn't use them.
She tried to focus her Lis into the Spell Pen to write the spell, but no matter how hard she just couldn't! She didn't understand.
Sorcery was seen as one of the lesser of spellcasting so a genius like her should have no issue with mastering it! So why couldn't she begin the most simple components of sorcery and imbue her pen with Lis!?
Ponali went through a period of mania after that. She couldn't believe that she had failed, no that her failure seemed inevitable from the start. If she couldn't be a sorcerer this late in life then would she even have been able to become one had she started younger?
It was all, some sort of cruel fate of the god Daligo. The god of Talent yet also the god the leads the Domain of Trickery. A trick is exactly what this was. Making her talented in mag- craft when sorcery was her true dream path was his cruel joke on her.
Ponali fell off for a bit after that. People started talking about how she squandered her talents by chasing that weak form of magic and that had she stayed committed to mage-craft then she could've become an equal to Eustace Gram the current Century Mage!
She agreed with those people but it was far too late now. She'd focused so much on sorcery that it began interfering with her mage-craft and now she was unable to form a single spell without it going unstable. That was until the Century Mage himself appeared before her offering to help her recover her former skills. She was confused by the man's sudden intrusion but came to learn that he was doing this out of some sort of debt to her father.
With, no other place to turn Ponali accepts Eustace's offer and begins practicing mage-craft again under his tutelage. She spent the next four years in training with the man, regaining her lost skills and improving upon others. She still didn't find much enjoyment in the practice but something about taking lessons from a once in a century genius gave her a newfound respect for it.
Though she was still in pain over her failure to become a sorceress. That was until the day of the Innovation Conference came about. In today's time this is about thirty years ago. The conference before the one in which tragedy struck.
During this conference, a 21 year old Ponali Yenders demonstrated that she'd made it to the 5th-Grade of Magecraft placing her as a top class mage. Having regained her admiration from the people Ponali began to enjoy the rest of the magic showcase when something very interesting happened. A man walked onto the stage with an idea that many had thought about but none had ever truly attempted.
This man wanted to form a group that could create a long-distance teleportation spell. The crowd was immediately enthralled. For ages people dreamed of making a transference spell on such a scale. It would connect the currently disconnected land of Pesin to the rest of the world much easier allowing for more trade and other diplomatic relations. And that was just a single possible use of its creation.
The man began to go on about the potential of this project and how the world as they knew it would change from this one creation. Everyone, including Ponali, was hooked. At least they were until the man mentioned that the spell would need to be created through sorcery.
People were outraged. Why sorcery? That complex form of spellcasting that doesn't even guarantee results for your effort! It made no sense! Especially seeing as a sorcery spell could only be activated by a single person so that would mean the spell would only be usable to a single selfish sorcerer!
The crowd jeered. This man was a swindler! The man took a moment to calm the crowd down and began to explain himself. He understood the concerns of the people but would not be detered. He mentioned how mage spells are always temporary, mystics create nothing but illusions, and patron magic is fully under the restrictions of the god that gifted it.
Sorcery was the only way to have a spell like this work by that logic. He understood the biggest boulder blocking his stream was that only one person could activate the spell, but he was certain that with the help of a team they could find a solution to the issue and allow the stream to flow freely! He begged for the people to give him a chance but none of them would give him the time of day anymore. This all was sounding more and more impossible.
"I believe that I can be of service to your group." The crowd turned in shock as Ponali announced her willingness to join. The man perked up after seeing that someone was willing to take a chance on his ambitious plan. He accepted Ponali's help without a single shred of hesitation.
When later asked why she agreed to help Ponali told the media that, "Life is about being ambitious. Had my ancestor and his party members been afraid to face the impossible then none of us would be here today. It is important that we, especially those of us gathered within this innovative age, continue to let our ambitions grow into a tall tree. As if you do not water the seed it will never burst forth from the ground and become a part of the forest that is creativity!"
Her words inspired others. These words became the benchmark of the Era of Innovation! They inspired others to no longer run or hide from their ambitions. As if they too were to believe that the impossible was unachievable then growth would never come! Ponali's participation in the project created a chain reaction of nations, kingdoms, and empires sending over their most talented sorcery minds to help with the formation of the spell.
One such mind being Breine Deminal. A once unknown man that became famous world wide for his many advancements during the making of the teleportation spell. It was he and Ponali Yenders together that managed to find a solution to the issue of single person use. Taking a note from Witchcraft's book and forming a spell circle with multiple activation points.
The circle could then be designated to a specified mana type instead of a particular mana signature allowing multiple people to use it as long as they had the required mana affinity. It only worked on large-scale spells like the teleportation spell but that was all it needed to work for as far as they were concerned.
Breine and Ponali worked closely together for years until they had a disagreement on how the spell should be directly created.
And you know the rest of the story from there. The two decide to work on separate variations of the same spell planning to put both to the test during the Innovation Conference. During this time they each garnered their own supporters and doubters with Ponali have significantly more support and Breine more doubt.
Eventually the Innovation Conference came and it was almost the day of the live test. Ponali was nervous but also excited! She finally had a chance to prove that her years spent studying sorcery hadn't been useless. That was the real reason she'd taken part in this project after all. To prove that she hadn't made the wrong choice back then, a very selfish reason she knew but she didn't care.
She needed this.
Ponali was up late preforming her final check on the spell that she'd been working on for years at this point. She was confident that it would work, until a single seed of doubt was planted in her mind. A man, one that she'd been working with during the project, approached her that night and informed her that the spell that she made wouldn't work.
She was obviously offended that this man whose name she couldn't even remember was daring to say that her spell was faulty. Then the man began to break down the issues with her spell, the things that she'd overlooked, the problems that she thought to be insignificant in the long run. Hearing the man out made Ponali realize that he was making sense. She had massively overlooked problem after problem prioritizing efficiency over safety.
Her spell was going to fail.
No, but that couldn't be!
If her spell failed then she'd be a laughing stock. She'd once again have been proven that sorcery was not her path to the public. All because she'd overlooked a few minor issues! It hurt more when she remembered that Breine told her countless times that her spell was too dangerous but she refused to listen! The reason that they'd made separate spells in the first place was because he doubted her methods!
It was his fault! At that moment, Ponali, in a moment of weakness accepted an offer from the man that exposed her failure. He offered to "fix" her spell and save her face with the trade off being that Breine Deminal gets the original. Ponali was confused as to why this was so important to the man but he didn't say and asked if she would accept the deal.
Desperate to save face Ponali accepted.
The next day's proceedings came. In a moment of clarity, Ponali tried to stop Briene from activating the spell but that only served to make things worse when one of the Princes of Pesin stepped in to act as the test subject.
An act that would set forth a domino of events that would eventually lead to Alix's hatred of Ponali.
As she, cause the death of a great sorcerer, all to save face.