Maybe there was something to be said about brute force. For some reason, maybe because it had been a bit of a sink-or-swim situation, the boy I had originally thrown into the Astral River had attained the best connection with his element. The difference wasn’t major, nothing that was overly obvious, but it was there, a confidence or maybe calling it a certainty would be better. As if he knew his magic would see him through, allowing him to wield it with far greater ease than those I had shepherded into the Astral River, giving them a mental reference frame so they could find their element before helping them back out. While I didn’t think it would grant him a huge advantage in the short term, I could see him reach greater heights than the rest. Or maybe he’d get himself killed, that was always an option, both on the Arcane Path and in general. The Arcane Path just had a few extra pitfalls, moments where you could kill yourself if you weren’t careful.

After all, there had been more than one moment on Mundus when my own arcane powers had almost managed to kill me, and they even succeeded once, though indirectly. It was a good thing that Lady Hecate was incredibly patient when it came to experimenting with Her power and the connection I felt to Her and to Luna. Otherwise, she might have struck me down, just as Fenris had when I intruded into His realm. It made me wonder if, back then, Lady Hecate had been the one to keep me from suffering the penalties normally associated with dying while using the Avatar.

Which made me wonder, had those penalties carried over to the legacies? And why had they been part of the capsule-system in the first place, was it only to discourage the Travellers from going wild and wilfully destroying Mundus? To give death consequences without preventing us Travellers from being reckless while learning our powers?

I wasn’t sure, but it was an interesting question. I highly doubted the Gods had added the feature to their capsules simply for the fun of it, so there had to be a reason. Granted, the reason might be something arcane, some tithe of power needed to keep things running smoothly, but I wasn’t sure. Maybe I should have tried harder to find the second capsule in our hometown, the one used by Connie, as mine had been buried under rubble. While I had considered trying to dig it up, remembering the fairly flimsy construction of it made me doubt that it would have been worth the time and effort.

Something to keep in mind for the future, find a capsule and study it. It might reveal some of the system’s secrets, though somehow I doubted it would be that easy. If nothing else, these capsules had to be incredible works of either Arcane or Divine artifice, likely a combination.

Shaking off these thoughts, I focused on my latest student, yet another teenager. Somehow, the concentration of prospective spellcasters was the highest for people between twelve and twenty years old, at least in this place. Maybe that shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, during those years the mind was mature enough to handle the power but flexible enough to grow into a completely new direction, so gaining magical powers would be the easiest. Or, maybe, it was merely a coincidence, I still didn’t have an idea how the system defined the arcane traits people gained, were they something inherent to the person, even before the change or was it something else?

And if so, did I change something about myself when creating my Avatar in the capsule or did the capsule somehow manage to read what I was always supposed to be? Thinking back, I always preferred the cold, at least moderate cold, to the heat of summer and was never one to enjoy the sunlight too much. But I also loved heights, but that wasn’t really reflected in my magical make-up, nor could I imagine anything about who I used to be that would indicate an affinity for Blood Magic.

And yet, I gained all those traits during the creation of my Avatar, to say nothing of traits like the one that increased my inherent Astral Power, the one that increased my regeneration or the magical hair trait that granted me an additional storage of Astral Power in my hair. All those were arcane in nature, but I couldn’t really imagine that they had been part of who I was before. Maybe the hair, as I had always been quite proud of that, but otherwise? I couldn’t really see it.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Maybe I should invest some time to investigate and study the traits different people have been assigned. Or granted, however that might work. Maybe interview the people about their character and patterns prior to the change, try correlating the findings with the list of traits. The problem there would, obviously, be one of objectivity, I couldn’t really claim that I could view my own personality objectively, I had no doubt that other people would describe the fundamental parts of my character differently from the way I would describe them, so how could I know what the system deemed ‘true’? It likely used far different metrics from those of us subjective humans, metrics I doubted anyone could readily understand.

The biggest problem with that idea was quite an obvious one. I didn’t like interacting with people in the first place, why would I want to start a project that was nothing but interacting with them, for hours on end, getting to know them, listening to them and trying to understand them by only using their own descriptions? Given how few people remained, I doubted there were many who had enough close friends remaining to amalgamate a variety of subjective opinions into an objective image of their personality. That could only work by gathering the testimony of dozens, from different social strata and in different relation to the person in question, because, as the saying goes, if you want to learn about someone’s character, find out how they treat those underneath them.

I didn’t even need to consider whether I wanted to do that. Sure, I’d love the information but actually going out and getting it? Not in this life, nor in the next.

Opening my eyes, I looked at the girl who had been with the boy earlier in the day. Sonja, her name was, if I recalled correctly from the introductions at the start of my lessons, she might be the solution to my problem. I was self-aware enough that trying to perform such a study myself was far outside my wheelhouse, but having somebody else conduct it? That, I could do and maybe Sonja was exactly the person I could use for this. She had shown initiative earlier, had demonstrated an assured lack of tact or maybe had simply gone with the flow of her companion, either way, she had been reckless enough to disturb my sleep. That alone showed she had enough courage to ask people about their most intimate and important information, even if some of those people might just kill her for it.

“Sonja, I have a task for you,” I told her, “In exchange for performing that task, I will teach you as much about magic in general and your specific elements as I can while we are here. That might not be enough to turn you into an archmage of any kind, but it would turn your Wind Magic into a potent weapon, especially if I help you gain Fire as a complementary element, or maybe water. Either would likely increase your versatility or power by a good margin. Or I could give you some basic instruction when it comes to using the bow, a weapon that has incredible synergy with Wind Magic, adding weight to it the magic normally lacks.” I paused, letting her consider my offer. “What do you say?” I prodded when she didn’t answer fast enough for my liking.

“It sounds great, but what is that task?” she asked, making me blink for a second before mentally going over my words, realising that I had forgotten to tell her.

Shaking my head, I explained to her what I had in mind, how I wanted to learn about people, their character and behavioural pattern prior to the change, if possible also as seen by outside observers, and what traits the system had ultimately assigned to them.

Now, it was Sonja’s turn to frown as she thought about my request and after a few moments, she asked for clarification.

“Why do you need to know all that?” she asked, with a bit of suspicion in her voice.

“Understanding, child. I seek to understand the world, there is a reason why I have invested a lot of effort to learn the magic of different elements, it’s not because I have talent in all of them. It’s because I want to understand this new reality we found ourselves in, I want to understand the system and how it interprets things. To lay bare the inner workings of this world, so I can pluck the strings and twist the cogs,” I grinned at that idea, my smile maybe a little manic, but it was a dream.

“That’s a long-term goal, but what better way to understand something than to gather information when that ‘something’ is at its most volatile?” I asked rhetorically, allowing her the time to think about my task. If she wouldn’t help me, somebody else would. There was always somebody wanting to make a deal for power.