A month ago
“Mana affixes?” Arabella asks, lifting her tea and gently blowing over the surface of her steaming drink. “I am surprised that you would ask about them.”
We sit in her office, a heavy table between her sofa and my own. The lights in the room are strange today, a shade of pink that I haven’t seen before, casting the small room in contrasting shadows that seem deeper than would be normally possible.
“One of my abilities directly references them,” I remind her. I don’t touch the cup of tea that she has provided me, letting it smolder on the silver tray between us. I tried several times before to like her taste in tea, but it is just too bitter.
“That’s right,” she says. She takes a small sip and mulls over her thoughts, enjoying her drink and silence for a long moment. “I told you before that I am new to this work of teaching young magicians about how their abilities might work. In the area of affixes however, I am fairly fluent.
“There is not an incredible amount to say about them in general. Mana, in its most natural form, holds with it no aspect. It is a raw energy, the third state of energy. Where mana differs from its brothers, kinetic and physical energy, is that it can be influenced by the metaphysical iconographs that it interacts with.” I watch as Arabella notes the ignorance clear on my face. “Meaning tht mana takes on the aspects of the parts of the world it interacts with.
“Your dragonfire carries the aspect of fire with it, quite common for fire magic. If a fire were naturally existing and some magician or sorcerer added mana to the fire, that mana would become fire affixed, heightening the things that are correlated with fire by sentient beings, namely being hot and burning.”
“So magic fire is hot,” I say, summoning a bit into my hand. “I had figured that part out.”
Arabella shrugs, setting her cup down on the tray with a clink. “The principle is honestly that simple. Magic fire is hot, magically hot you could say. While the concept is simple, it fails to encapsulate the full capacity of what an affix is capable of. I once knew a magician that specialized in hot water as their main method of attack--”
“Hot water?” I scoff. “That sounds pretty ridiculous.”
“Isolated and without seeing its practical application, I might agree with you. Naturally, water can only become so hot before it begins to boil. If you were to suddenly pump an incredible amount of heat into water, you would get steam, not hot water. However, this magician was utilizing mana that was affixed towards water and heat, not steam, which would be entirely different. Employing the energy of magic in this way allowed this magician to produce torrents of water that were thousands of degrees in temperature, water that did not turn to steam, because the magic employed was not affixed to steam. Without ever seeing it, hot water might sound ludicrous, but after watching a Baeloth be melted to smoking bones in only a few moments from a stream of hot water, you begin to appreciate it.”
“Well, I don’t know what a Baeloth is,” I say.
“A big reptile, very big,” Arabella clarifies.
“Well, I’ve never seen a Baeloth,” I say, “but melting one in seconds with water does sound terrifying.”
“More impressive than anything,” Arabella says. “As a counterpoint, I have developed an affinity for ice affixed mana, which is made of frozen and water mana, frozen being composed of cold and solid mana. Affixes split into very small pieces if you allow them to. My ice can reach temperatures so low that it would be impossible without the recourse of magical energy. This is the power of affixes.”
“So affixes allow magic to do impossible things,” I summarize.
“It would all be impossible without magic,” Arabella says. “But yes, that is a way to look at it. Natively, each individual has only a few affixes for which they are suited. I am not current on the theory, but it has something to do with how the soul interacts with the dividing line between the realms of the divine and mundane. All people have some kind of leaning as far as affixes go, even those without any magical abilities to speak of. Part of the randomness that magicians may believe they experience when they first discover their essentia abilities comes from this leaning. As we know, there is no real randomness in the universe.”
That was something that I did in fact not know, but I keep my mouth shut about it. “The ability granted to me by my Emperor Conflux states that I am not limited in magical affixes,” I say.
“Truly, a remarkable ability,” Arabella says, leaning forward. “I know that it may not seem like much now, but if you manage to climb the ranks, not having that limitation will do wonders for you. For magicians, and this is especially true for those that rely solely upon magic for offense and defense like mages often do, there are bad matchups. Some magical affixes will directly trump others, almost as if they were designed to do so.
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“For instance, that magician that focused on incredibly hot water, could be defeated by a being of suitably powerful stone affixed mana. Heat and fire mana often has difficulty dealing with stone, though it is usually good at dealing with metal affixes. Just a strange quirk of the world. This will be different for you; I hope. Magicians tend to start dealing with their affixes once they reach the second rank, which I recommend for you to do as well. Trying to control and manipulate them at the first rank is so difficult that your time would be better spent elsewhere.
“Others will have to be satisfied with mastering their own native affixes and a handful of ones they do not have a clear affinity for. You, however, if I understand your ability correctly, will be free of that limitation. In the future, you will be able to grant any aspect you can master to your own magic. If you become proficient enough with doing that, there will be no weakness you cannot overcome.”
Dawn of the Third Day
Dawn in the forest is a funny thing. Despite the huge clearing that we have all pitched our camp in, the trees that surround us are so impossibly tall that the sun has long ago lit the sky cerulean by the time that the first sunbeams hit us. I slept only as long as was strictly necessary for me to complete my soul reinforcement, telling Galea to wake me up as soon as it was done. Without even thinking about it, I dumped all of my free points into Magic, and was satisfied when Galea delivered a new message to me afterward.
THRESHOLD REACHED! 200 MAGIC!!
Magic (1st Threshold): Reaching the first threshold in the Magic attribute has granted the magician’s own magic increased potency. If the magician’s Magic attribute significantly outclasses the Magic Defense attribute of a target, there is a chance for any magical resistance to be completely ignored. Additionally, passing this threshold grants a slight insight into magical affixes, helping the magician along their journey to true potency.
The message had been exactly what I had been hoping for, and I couldn’t help but smile to myself as I read through the words over and over. Passing the threshold in Recovery has allowed me a secondary effect because I am a Recovery specialist. I can’t help but wonder what that might be for a Magic specialist.
The sound is fairly muted in the camp, the light of the morning still not enough to get everyone up and on their feet. For the last few hours I have sat alone at the edge of the light, the Bane Crystal resting in the ground next to me. Since reaching that threshold earlier, I have felt something different coming off of the crystal, though I can’t rightfully place what it is that is different.
I hold before me a mote of dragonfire that shines with a brilliant green light, the counterpoint to the orange fire in my left hand. For hours I have tried to conjure the green fire myself, but I am unable to. The only way I can manage to get a hold of it is by pressing my naturally orange dragonfire to the crystal. The power of the crystal is what changes the affix in my dragonfire, I still can’t figure out how to do it on my own.
Holding the two different fires in my hands, I continue trying to pick up on the difference between the two. The best I can manage is that the green and orange fires have a different “taste” to them, though that isn’t really the right word for it.
Frustration continues to mount on me. Just trying out the green fire on some inanimate objects earlier made it clear how valuable it would be to master. I just can’t figure out how. Having Arabella teach me more about magical affixes would be excellent right about now.
I sigh, releasing the dragonfire to dissipate back into my mana pool rather than chuck it into the forest. The camp is moving now, those that are early risers already up and rousing the others. Lionel is one of the first awake, stirring a huge pot that he got from somewhere, tempting people out of sleep with the smell of breakfast.
There is tension in the camp as well. After Dovik’s proclamation of where it was we were all going today, I had Macille explain dungeons to me.
Macille admitted to never having gone into a dungeon before, but he seemed fairly knowledgeable about them. Dungeons come in two distinct flavors, naturally occurring and artificial.
Naturally occuring dungeons, the most prominent kind, form where there is an exceptionally thick presence of mana in the atmosphere. The Green Mountain back home could be thought of as a kind of dungeon. Due to the dense mana in the atmosphere, strong monsters spawn there often, making these places incredibly dangerous for people to go into. On the other hand, because there is an intense amount of mana, the natural treasures that can be found in these areas makes it worth the danger for some. The magical treasures that most adventurers are after being Runes of Attunement.
I had realized when Macille brought them up that they were also part of the prize for the competition that Arabella had put on back in Westgrove. The reason that these runes are so prized for magicians is obvious once you know what it is they do. Runes of Attunement are able to add permanent affixes to the abilities of magicians, making them one of the very few ways that a magician can permanently increase their power.
The existence of these runes attracts magicians to try their hand at entering these dungeons, leading to the second attraction of dungeons, gear from dead adventurers. Well equipped individuals often perish inside of dungeons, leaving the treasure of their equipment inside behind them. This attracts as many to venturing into the depths of dungeons as much as the naturally occurring treasures.
As for artificial dungeons, they tend to operate in much the same way as the naturally occurring ones, except that the magic in the area is made artificially dense by relics or spells. Macille informed me that the largest cities in Gale are technically artificial dungeons. Apparently, elves are able to passively absorb ambient mana, slowly making them more powerful over time, and many elven nobles go out of their way to increase the magical density of their cities. This, I discovered yesterday, is yet another area where elves are superior to us humans. It does kind of sting to learn about.
I notice Macille across the camp, speaking with Lionel, and put aside my thoughts. There is a lot that I need to think about still, and putting the Bane Crystal back in my inventory, I note that there is a lot left to learn and master. That can wait though, today I am going to try my hand at a dungeon for the first time. I just hope that there is something awesome to find inside.