It’s been a while.

I don’t feel fine.

I’ve been battered with a series of tests.

Cat-boy? More like lab-rat!

At least we’re done, but to briefly describe my pain:

I had my blood drawn

I had hair plucked from me

I was poked and prodded by various strange devices

I had to sit in a vat of mysterious fluid fully submerged, but somehow I could breathe in the substance, but my lungs felt like I was breathing in fire.

She also attempted to use certain devices on me, but they seemed to require some control of magic, of which I had none.

I was continuously rotated in some type of machine similar to an MRI I think, which happened for about an hour.

I was soooo dizzy after that, I was fine after being given some type of concoction, but maybe I should have declined in case my body reacted poorly? I’ll try to take that into account next time I’m given something.

The effect of the “potion” felt similar to the truth serum that Alver and Ellie gave to me, It cleared my mind, but I wasn’t compelled to do anything.

Once my mind was clear, Alberta started going through the data with me, starting with some hair and blood that she put into various liquids.

“Your blood has very odd reactions to this” she said while pointing to a particular grayish blue tainted liquid. She then continues, “Normally it reacts strongly with either a completely black or blue color to organic material, blue meaning that said material is alive, black being that it is organic but dead. This points to the idea that your life reacts differently to substances than I or anyone else does, that or you are dying as we speak.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I decide to ask her a question on said liquid, “What color is it before adding parts of me?”

She responded with a “It’s both, it has a slow shift from black to blue over many hours, oscillating between them. Over time it will either solidify into black or blue, at which point it will have expired. It is also rendered unusable for the same purpose after giving it some life to work with.”

We spent a little more time going over various different results from her experiments. All she could find out was that I reacted differently to almost every single test than would be expected, usually an average of expected results.

But then we got to the MRI-like scans from earlier, she started to explain what the different lines would mean, but then stopped and grabbed some similar scans from different people.

She asks a question, although not directed specifically to me, “What?”

I decide to ask her “What’s wrong?” and she turns to look at me and then hands me my scans and then scans from others. Is there no doctor patient confidentiality in this world?

I look at the scans and a bit of recognition probably goes through my eyes as I stare.

The scans look somewhat similar to the different swirls and things that I see around me, but in a different way.

My scan, instead of looking like the more concrete lines that run through the other scans, is more fluid, transitioning from darkness to more bluish spots.

The “normal” scans don’t transition like that, there are very jagged lines that almost look like veins, but when I look closer, I realize that it’s all one continuous line that loops back.

There is a little bleed from the lines to the darkness, but not as nearly as much as I have.

The different normal scans also vary in their brightness, ranging from almost completely dull to an almost bright blue.

“What do you see?” she asks me inquisitively.

I reply “I don’t know, I don’t know what these are even, I’ve only a vague recognition of these patterns. I only know that something about me is off.”

She looks at me and then asks “Recognition, where? Have you seen magic scans before? You don’t seem very familiar with the concept.”

She then decides to elaborate on what the scans are, apparently they are a scan of your magic capacity and ability. The brightness shows how much magic you can channel, the machine works by beaming magic into you and seeing how much magic you retain over a period of time, like how much seeps out. It’s not perfect, as some may retain a lot of magic for a longer period of time, or contain a lot of it, but then release it quickly. But this device is generally right in its detection of magic capacity. She also went into how magic was more easily channeled by those with less jagged magic, but greater control outside the body required more intricate magic “viens”.

She also told me how she was absolutely stumped on what the scans meant for me, whether or not this was good or bad she wasn’t sure, she had two main theories:

Either, my veins would be so fluid that I’d have no magic control, and all magic would just go in and out of me barely controlled, the most I could hope with this would be being a battery.

Or, my veins would mean that I have perfect magic control, meaning I would be quite powerful and could channel specific patterns in my veins that wouldn’t be possible in other people.

I would prefer the second one, as that would be a lot more useful.

She takes me back into the hallway, where Malfer greets me with a new cloak, this one has a hood, but he assures me that I don’t need my hood up, I assume something to do with magic, but he doesn’t elaborate and just smiles at me.

After Malfer talks to Alberta a bit about what she found, he takes me to leave the herbalist’s/doctor and scientist’s shop.