"So how does this particular machine work?" Jonathan asked Mr. Geiller, looking between the two metal plates that were flanking his head.

"Let me activate it." Mr. Geiller leaned down and did something near the base of the chair out of sight. "Now enliven your magic, and it will generate a baseline visualization."

Jonathan did so, and a small circle in the space in front of his face briefly flashed white, before fading into a swell of purple light in the bottom portion of the space where the circle had been with an amorphous blog of blue off toward the side that Mr. Geiller was standing.

"Thought so," said Mr. Geiller with satisfaction. "So what you're seeing there is a representation of the magic that you are currently working. Purple is your enlivened natural magic, which doesn't express as any effect. The blue you see here is indicating that there's a Seelie Court effect being channeled. You seeing that 'smoke' of yours?"

"Yeah, I can see smoke around you."

"Alright, let me try stepping out of sight." Mr. Geiller walked around behind Jonathan. The blue blob shifted to follow him, and then faded down to almost nothing. "There, you see? The visualization showed that once I left your sight, you dropped your self-induced illusion. Thing is, mensus isn't dependent on your vision; you should theoretically be able to sense exactly the same thing that you are visualizing as smoke even though I'm standing out of sight. Give it a shot. This is likely going to take repeated practice, but see if you can notice whatever sensation this smoke phenomenon is granting you as I move into and out of your view. The second thing you want to try and do is use the visualization to get control of your self-induced illusion so that you can trigger it when you want it and disable it when you don't." While he spoke, Mr. Geiller moved in a slow circle around Jonathan, and Jonathan watched the colors in front of him and tried to do as Mr. Geiller suggested.

So far, he wasn't noticing anything different. "This isn't working."

"I just told you it was going to take a while, boy. Now that the array is set for your height, I can show Abigail how to activate it, and you can practice without me, because frankly I have better things to do." He leaned down next to the chair and the lights cut off. "Alright, be careful not to jostle the array as you're getting out of the chair, and let's move on."

Mr. Geiller led Jonathan across the room to the array that looked like a shower. "Now this little beauty here works differently. Don't step on this one, you'll be standing off to the side here. This array is a stripped-down variant of a rupture chamber."

"That doesn't sound safe at all."

"Heh, well be that as it may. It's not rupturing you, though, it's rupturing magical effects. See, the limiting factor for normal human practitioners when it comes to creating magical effects is always their mensus. How you sense magic impacts your efficiency and speed, how much total magical energy you can shape from the five realms without exhausting yourself, and how quickly you recover after exhausting yourself. It's kind of like a muscle, although because it's a sense, training it isn't as straight-forward as strength training. The trick, then, is how do you measure those things in a standardized way? That's where rupture chambers come in. When you create a magical effect within a rupture chamber, it will rupture the effect as soon as you exceed a set amount of magical energy. By performing standardized effects and timing how long you are able to proceed prior to the rupture, it's possible to determine your effective limits. Now, I am not sure if this will be strictly applicable to you, Jonathan, because there's something weird going on with the way you manifest magical effects."

"I already know I'm something of an aberration, but what do you mean, specifically?"

"You wouldn't need anything from someone else to manifest magic, if you were a normal human. This whole 'smoke' thing that you've got going is perplexing, to say the least."

"Now that you mention it, that's true. I haven't had a chance to tell you, but I receive different results when I conjure food using a single person's smoke versus when I ask everyone what they want beforehand. Yesterday, I just told everyone to imagine their favorite sandwich, but I got identical eight sandwiches. When I asked them specifically what they wanted prior to conjuring food, though, I got separate dishes."

"Exactly; a normal human doesn't need anything beyond a rudimentary mensus, but you are clearly leveraging something else."

"Then how will this thing here help me at all?"

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"It might not. I just want to establish a baseline for you so that we can determine if increasing familiarity with your mensus influences your magical abilities the way it would for other people."

"Oh, that makes sense. So what do I do?"

Mr. Geiller held up a small dish with what appeared to be a small amount of salt in the bottom. "Since it sounds like the Gaian Wilds is what you are most familiar with, outside of your unconscious use of the Seelie Courts, I figured we should go with the standard Gaian Wilds measure. These are salt crystals. I want you to use magic to create more salt, focusing on growing them from the existing crystals rather than creating a specific amount wholesale."

"I'm—not sure if I can do that," said Jonathan.

"Then we'll discover that instead." Mr. Geiller placed the bowl of salt amid winding metal tubes that made up the array on the floor, then touched a spot near the base of the pole that was running up the wall, and adjusted a small dial nearby. "What do you need from me to perform magic?"

"Well, in this case I guess I just need you to focus on how much you want more salt crystals to grow."

"Very well. Begin whenever you're ready, but raise your hand when you start to actually channel magic." Mr. Geiller pulled out a device that looked like a pocket watch out of his pocket and watched Jonathan expectantly.

Jonathan gave him a dubious look, and then turned his attention to the salt. He enlivened his magic and raised his hand as he connected to the Infernal Abyss and Mr. Geiller's smoke rushed into him.

Trying to conjure something in an ongoing fashion was a somewhat unusual experience. Initially a bunch of salt just sprang up out of nowhere, but then Jonathan focused on it and it started slowly increasing. It wasn't a very good feeling, but in some ways it was better than the pain he felt when he conjured something all at once. More of an ongoing low burn as opposed to a sudden hit of pain. When the bowl was half full, there was a flash of light and a popping sound and his magic unexpectedly cut off. Jonathan staggered a little bit, but he wasn't feeling all that exhausted.

Mr. Geiller pressed a button on his watch—or Jonathan supposed it must be a stopwatch—and put it away before he pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil and a small scale from near the base of the contraption. He noted something on the paper, then carefully placed the bowl of salt on the scale and adjusted the counterweight until it was balanced. After he had an accurate reading, he pushed the scale and the bowl of salt back near the wall and wrote down the weight measurement on his paper. "Hmm, looks like you are about average. A little under-efficient, but far better numbers than I would expect of someone who has been practicing magic for a week."

"I guess that's…good?"

Mr. Geiller shrugged. "It's a baseline, what are you expecting? Now to the next test." He pointed over at the large metal plate that was just sitting on the floor. "This is a diagnostic containment array. Sit down in the center there." While Jonathan did that, Mr. Geiller fetched a stool that Jonathan hadn't noticed before from near one of the walls and placed it next to the big metal plate. He then lowered himself onto the stool with a groan and flipped up the portion of the plate immediately in front of him, folding it twice so that it ended up looking sort of like a letter "C" with the open side facing Jonathan.

"What's a diagnostic containment array?"

"It's an array that contains diagnostics." Did Mr. Geiller just make a joke? "It's based off a training tool that was developed recently in the Sezch Republic. You mentioned that you were worried about over-extending yourself, and this should help with that. Unfortunately, this isn't an array that Abigail can power. It requires active manipulation to work properly."

"That's great, but what exactly does it do?" said Jonathan.

"It maintains magical equilibrium in the space that it is containing, which means that if you try to create a magical effect while sitting there, nothing will happen. That in turn will allow you to safely discover how to get a feel for whether a magical effect is within your capabilities or not."

"Get a feel for it? That seems awfully unspecific."

Mr. Geiller shrugged. "Everyone's mensus is different. And yours appears to be especially different. Now, I want you to enliven your magic. We need to calibrate the containment array before we can proceed."

Jonathan did as Mr. Geiller asked, and the smoke appeared around the old man. Mr. Geiller started manipulating the controls that had been exposed when he folded the metal platform up. It looked like mainly knobs, but there were a few different places where he would touch a finger briefly, as well.

"Okay, let's make sure I haven't lost my touch," Mr. Geiller said, and pressed a portion of the controls.

The entire array made a humming noise that Jonathan could feel through the seat of his pants, and suddenly the smoke around Mr. Geiller disappeared, even though Jonathan could swear that he was still enlivening his magic. In his surprise, he stopped and the humming noise faded away. "Whoa, what?"

"For the initial calibration, I contained Seelie Courts magic," said Mr. Geiller. "I take it that smoke illusion you maintain unconsciously disappeared?"

"Yeah, it did. Wait, wouldn't this machine be a lot better for learning to use mensus without relying on the smoke illusion than that chair?"

"Yes, but like I said, I can't trust Abigail to use this array. In her hands, it could be quite dangerous. You can get the same results with the 'chair' as you called it. It will just take longer."

Surprise, surprise. Mr. Geiller didn't care about inconveniencing other people. Also, Jonathan wished he'd been told that the thing was potentially dangerous before planting himself in the middle of it.

Some of that hesitance must have shown on his face because Mr. Geiller scowled. "Don't be a baby. This is perfectly safe for me." He got a thoughtful look on his face, then shrugged. "Probably."

Screw you, too, Mr. Geiller. Screw you, too.