Omitting the casting time, I fired some magic off toward the salamander. Then, at that moment, I understood—the theory behind magic, and how it all worked. My Water Blades didn’t damage a salamander at all, even if they managed to slice right through the guy, but Elen’s magic did the trick.
The reason was surprisingly simple. Casting magic wasn’t about acting upon your surroundings with a phenomenon—it was more like picturing something, then creating it in real life.
I was, in a way, launching a bolt of energy that had the effect of robbing the target of its heat. That bolt happened to take the form of an energy-sapping ice pillar, but it wasn’t the ice that made it work. It was the energy inside. Thus, it applied damage to a salamander, whose own energy took the form of heat and flame.