I shuffled into the dining hall with Yushin and over a thousand other first year students waiting for their grimoire.

For all that the basic food was terrible, the dining hall was beautiful, with a ceiling mural that depicted mages across the age of stars, high arched windows that overlooked the greenery on the campus lawn, as well as the ocean in the distance.

At the far end of the room, a large stage had been set up, with an elaborate ritual circle drawn atop it. The elven woman with her hair tied in a top knot who had been at my testing, as well as the bland looking man who was ranked as the headmaster of the third best mage academy on the planet stood atop the stage.

As we finished shuffling in, the elven woman spoke up.

“My name is professor Alydia, and this is our headmaster. Together, we will be facilitating the ritual to summon a grimoire. I am sure that most of you are excited, as you should be. But before we can begin, I will explain some critical information, and the headmaster has some words to share.”

“Thank you, professor,” the headmaster said. “For some of you, this will be the last time you see me. For others, you will see me at the end of your three year tenure here, when I hand you your official graduation seal.”

He looked around the room.

“Try to prove me wrong. Surpass the baseline competency, in order to join me in my advanced magic courses, or else push yourself to your limits in the most dangerous course on campus. Any of you can succeed. But only a few of you ever will. Alydia, why is this ritual so important to a mage?”

“Each person can only ever have the one grimoire, and each grimoire is entirely unique, bestowing its own affinity magic to the user,” professor Alydia said, picking up as the headmaster had requested. “If it is destroyed, it must be resummoned, at which point it will return intact as if it had never been destroyed.”

“Which we will not be fronting the cost for,” the headmaster interjected.

“Indeed,” professor Alydia continued. “So take care of it, as the summoning ritual is complex, and costs roughly ten thousand silver to complete.”

The headmaster raised his hand, and ether swirled around it, then materialized into a skinny book, one that looked more like a toddler’s picture book than a grimoire.

“This is my grimoire. It contains a single spell, and no others. My core affinity spell allows me a minor degree of command over tomatoes. I can move them at the same rate I could carry them, dice or slice them at the same rate as my knife skills, ripen them slightly faster, and keep them from spoiling for slightly longer… And little else. I tried for a time to ply unique solutions, such as relying on the acidity of a tomato to create acidic attacks, but even the innate flexibility afforded to affinity magic did not allow me. Magyk decreed that I was to start with as close to nothing as any mage can.”

He fixed us all with a serious gaze, and I shifted, paying more attention.

“Affinity magic is often a convenient, easy, and fast path to power, but it is not the end or beginning of you. Some of you may find an affinity magic that is lackluster. Perhaps one that you hate or fear. But it is only a single method, and not the best.”

He raised his hand, and a staff made of a rich, ruddy red wood banded with gold, topped with blue ether crystal easily the size of a grapefruit. In the center of the ether crystal was a pulsing, pure white heart. Rather than blood, the heart seemed to pump copper and brass colored sparks of magic into the wood and crystal, then back out again.

“Because with an affinity spell that could only be used for cooking, I rose to become the second most powerful combat mage in the world, capable of battling with dragons, trading blows with titans, and standing toe to toe with lesser gods. I run the third best school of magic in the world, set in the ninth most ether rich location on the planet, and crafted the single greatest staff in all of known history. Do not allow your affinity to blind you to other forms of power, nor to discourage you if it is not a viable route. An affinity is the start of spellcraft, not the end.”

The headmaster relaxed and patted professor Alydia on her shoulder.

“Shall we?”

“Of course, sir. Aaber, Melissa!”

I settled back to wait. Given that White Sands was what I used, I was going to be last, or close to it.

While I waited, my mind wandered to what sort of affinity magic I hoped for, and I recalled my conversation with Jackson and Yushin.

Water was still my number one choice, but after talking with Yushin and Jackson on the boat ride, I thought I had a few more interesting options.

A unique sort, like abyssal water, which could crush people with pressure, darkness, and water, would be even better than plain water. So would healing springs water, which could be used for offense, or to heal, as the affinity user wished. Or maybe–

“Shé, Yushin!”

I glanced over at Yushin, who took a deep breath, nodded, and then headed up on stage. I watched as she was handed something, then pressed her hand down. A moment later, light erupted from the ritual, and a book materialized.

Across a sea of people, even I had a hard time making out the exact details, but that wasn’t a problem when Yushin quickly returned to my side, flipping through the pages, her eyes alight with intensity.

“What did you get?” I whispered to her, and she flipped it back to its first page, where her name was written in the script of Hua-Long, followed by a string of characters.

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Assassin Magic Affinity.

I sucked in a deep breath. Depending on how complex that was to wield, and how exactly she could develop it, that would give her everything that she had wanted for stealth magic, while also granting her impressive offensive skill. I suspected that it would pair excellently with her bloodline too, regardless of if it was venom, poison, or water as she’d claimed.

She continued to flip through the spellbook, and I let her have a bit of privacy to examine it while I let my own thoughts to return to hypothetical water affinity variants that I could use.

There was one recorded instance of a water affinity that called on several water gods, allowing the person near complete general water manipulation, while also granting her the ability to freely call upon the servitors of ocean deities.

I was pretty neutral on the idea of deities, but I wasn’t against them, and something that strong would be more than worth it.

I shifted back and forth, until…

“White Sands, Emrys!”

I sucked in a breath as I walked up the platform and stepped into the complex ritual circle. Professor Alydia opened a small leather pouch, and poured a glimmering substance into one section.

I felt my eyes widen as the smell touched my nose, and I realized what it was. Powdered ether crystal. She was using ether crystal dust.

A tincture of myrrh was dotted around the circle, a mixture of threads of saffron that had been soaking in ether-infused water was poured into a silver chalice, and a brown liqour that smelled strong, sweet, and expensive was dripped onto a pile of kindling before being set alight.

Finally, I was handed a sharp, sterilized needle.

“Add a drop of blood into the blank space,” professor Alydia told me. I took a moment to relax, then pricked the pad of my thumb and squeezed out a drop. As I did, I begged Magyk and Etherius for a water affinity.

The moment the crimson drop touched the open space in the circle, it twisted into a runic shape – the same one that I used for my bloodmark spell, actually – and began to glow with ether.

There was a flash of light as the components for the spell were consumed, leaving an empty chalice, inscribed circle, and a book.

The book was decently thick, like a good-sized novel, and was bound in hardened leather, dyed the same cobalt blue as my ether pool. Gold ran over the surface, embossed into strange designs and a clasping lock, and it swirled into a spell circle surrounding a cloudy polished piece of moonstone the size of my palm. A silk band that served as a bookmark dangled down, with a golden key loosely tied to it.

I picked it up reverently, and both the headmaster and professor smiled. I unlocked the book, and opened its cover. The book creaked, its spine stiff and new.

On the inside cover, ‘Emrys of White Sands’ was printed in neat, blocky Ceyish lettering. Under my name was three words: Curse Magic Affinity.

I paused as, for a second, disappointment washed through me, then was replaced by excitement.

More esoteric affinities like curse magic were rare and tricky to deal with. While it might not have been as offensively or defensively powerful as water, it was still a good affinity.

More importantly, there was no way my family would see this coming. Why would they care about curse magic?

Normally, curses were just a handful of spells in the school of necromancy. Any priest with a good amount of power from a healing or cleansing god was enough to get rid of them, at least from the stories I’d read.

But with a curse affinity, I could cast far more flexibly and uniquely. I may be able to tap into deeper curses that weren’t so easy to cure, like the infamous lycanthropy.

Maybe I could even learn to curse any attempts they made to track me, throwing them off the scent.

I came back to reality as I heard professor Alydia asking me to step off stage. I did, then hurried to flip through the grimoire, checking over the chapter list. When I saw that the final three chapters before the blank pages for me to add spells began were labeled as ‘non-affinity spellcraft’, I had to suppress a triumphant laugh as I hurried back to Yushin and showed her.

“Interesting,” she said. “It seems we will have quite the team. Flame magic, assassin magic, and curse magic. I wonder who our fourth will be?”

I groaned at the mental reminder that we would have a fourth member of our group. Jackson was already hard to deal with when he got too preachy. Maybe they’d be like Yushin and be fairly relaxed? One could only hope.

“My hope is an earth or defense mage,” Yushin commented, and I paused, then nodded.

“That would round us out well.”

As soon as she lapsed into silence, I wasn't able to stop myself any longer.

I dove into the book, looking over its contents quickly, just to get an idea of what they held, rather than understand the magic itself.

The main spell, one they had called the core affinity spell, was complex. It bore the most resemblance to a cantrip, given it had no bounding circle, and yet, it was infinitely more complex, easily larger and more nuanced than any third circle spell I’d seen.

And it was flexible.

I could see four distinct applications for the spell, but I could also see how they could be interwoven. I didn’t know those four applications, given I was just skimming, but that seemed promising.

But the book went on, going over ways to extend the spell, make it stronger, make it more limited, and break it.

I paused when I saw that, and read a bit deeper. Limits and breaks were, apparently, two of the most important parts of my curse affinity.

Every curse needed a way it could be broken, with a simple timer being common, but more complex conditions being possible, though reading further started to go into the details of the spellforms and runes my affinity used.

But limits were equally important. The more limited the curse, the less ether it took, and the more I could pour into other parts of the spell. The text in my grimoire used the example of misfortune. By limiting the spell to only have misfortune related to dancing, you freed up a massive amount of power, which could be applied towards extending the curse’s duration.

There were a handful of example applications of the affinity spell formulae as well, but having only skimmed the book thus far, I couldn’t make heads or tails of them.

I kept flipping and skimming until I came into the other spells chapters. These were written out like a spell guide, detailing the exact magic that belonged to spellcraft, with precise ether flows, gestures, and words of power.

The spell array this chapter focused on had three concentric circles, which gave me a spark of excitement. I could add a new third circle spell to my repertoire!

Then I saw the name of the spell, and my heart plummeted into my stomach.

The spell would interact with my bloodline, which was the exact opposite of what I needed. I had to keep that suppressed, so my family couldn’t track me down. I’d kept it contained for so long that I wasn’t sure I could tap into it again.

I flipped to the next chapter in the grimoire. It was fourth circle, and another bloodline interacting. Same with the last chapter, which contained a fifth circle spell.

After that was a sea of blank pages for me to fill in with my own spells and notations.

I snapped the book shut and tamped down on my temper. I was not a spoiled child who would have a strop due to not getting everything I wanted. I was not going to act like the rest of my family.

Today was still amazing, even if the extra spells were more risk than help. I had a grimoire with a useful affinity, and was beginning classes in one of the greatest mage schools in the world in a scant few days. Like the headmaster had said, affinities weren’t everything, and the same was true of bloodlines. Once I was stronger, I could delve for new spells in the library.

I opened the book and dove back into reading.