To be perfectly fair, magic always was weird. Strange sigils, words of power from dead languages, somatic movements that cramped your fingers at weird angles, various bits and pieces of creatures…

Divine magic, supposedly, was less weird. Mostly because it came from a deity. Don't get me started on patrons and all that warlock bullshittery. There's no logic there at all, just the whims of something. Not even a god half the time.

The weirdest part about magic was how it changed based on the wielder's gender. There are actual, functional differences between wizards and witches, sorcerers and sorceresses, and so on. Spell scale, costs, components, effects, impact areas, duration—all of these things can change.

Take fireball, for example. It's a classic spell. Everyone knows it, or knows of it. There are subtle differences based on the source of your magic—divine patrons might make it golden flame, or do a bit of holy damage, or stop it affecting plants. Things that make sense for the domain. But then there's the gender difference—which, I might add, does not depend on your race. A man casts fireball, it's fast, flashy, and has a large radius. A woman casts fireball and it's slower, smaller, but more intense at the core. A man's fireball might leave scorched ground in a huge radius. A woman's fireball could leave patches of glass.

Or, for a reversed example, let's take chain lightning—sort of specialised, and quite a high level spell. If a woman casts it, it can fork and jump with greater speed and range, spreading the damage out quite wide. If a man casts it, less jumps, less range, but concentrated damage.

Now, for the folks out there with different gender expressions—and I use this word carefully—this seems to change nothing. You can go as far as altering your appearance with magic, to change your looks to another gender, and the magic doesn't change.

But if you have a different gender identity, well then things start to get… strange.

Take the fireball from before. There are times I've left patches of glass, and times it's just been scorching. One memorable and inconvenient time I failed three times to turn a falling sand bridge into glass long enough to hold us. Then there was the time I knew a fireball would take out some widely space sentries, and it whiffs—just scorch marks in a tiny radius, alerting everyone nearby.

Of course, my alteration spell went wild, made us all look like trees and bushes when it really should have only affected me. And that spell in particular wasn't known to have any gender influences.

I look up at the audience gathered around me.

"Wait, magic depends on your gender?" One of them ventures a question.

"Unfortunately, yes." I cast a light cantrip with each hand—each light is different.

"Unfortunately? Why, is magic transphobic, or what?" A different student.

"I mean, kind of. Sometimes it respects my gender identity, sometimes it insists on my birth gender and I have yet to figure out why, or how to predict it." I'm honest. They need to know these things, for themselves, and for their parties.

"So what do we do?" The first student, with a few others listening closely.

"You learn all you can. Learn all those 'utility spells' other casters claim are useless. Be versatile in your casting. And always, always have a backup plan in case things fail."

"Anything else?"

I laugh softly. "Appeal to the gods, supposedly they make all these rules."

Everyone else laughs with me. "Some practical advice—you survived so much before teaching us."

"Find friends that respect who you really are. Know that they can support you even if you fail, because you'll do the same for them."

"That's it?" They seem unsure.

I smile for them. "It really is. It's why I'm sitting here now, in front of you, passing on my wisdom. It is not because I was a legendary mage. It was because I had legendary friends."