While Mindi led me into the room, Tindi continued down the hallway. Given that I would be learning magic from Mindi, I didn’t see a reason to ask where Tindi might be going. “Go ahead and sit on the floor.” Mindi started as she sat cross-legged in front of me. “Let me get some of the basic information out of the way and correct some of the misconceptions you travelers seem to have about magic. Anyone and everyone can use magic.”
As I sat down, I opened my mouth to protest her statement because it couldn’t be true. If it was then I wouldn’t have had to buy the ability from the point store. She held up a hand to stop me, “Everyone has the ability,” she stressed the word as her eyes connected with mine. “The issue everyone has with magic has to deal with is their affinity and available training.”
I thought back to what options the shop had offered and her explanation made some sense. After all, why would magic be any different than any other skill? With enough training, even a monkey can communicate with sign language. Then again, there are those who, no matter the amount of training they got, would never be able to play an instrument or perform surgery. Maybe that was what she meant by affinity. But why guess when I could simply ask. “What do you mean by affinity?”
“Good question,” she nodded as three orbs of different elements formed in front of her. “Affinity has to do with how close someone is to an element. For me, I have a minor affinity for water and fire and a moderate affinity for earth. This is made visible when I cast a spell like this. Each of these orbs are crafted using the same amount of mana yet, as you can see, each is different in size with the stone being the largest. Just don’t ask me to cast anything using any of the other elements.”
That was one way for the game developers to allow anyone to use any element while not letting any one element grow overpowered. Likely each player was given a flat affinity percent for each element that affected how much mana it cost to cast each spell using that element. No more spamming fireballs at early levels if your affinity for fire was low. Though, that begged the question, what were my affinities?
With a wave of her hand, the balls of magic fell apart. Flames snuffed out, water splashed to the ground, and stone smacked into the wooden floor. “Now, I am curious about your affinities but we will have to wait until Tindi gets… ah there she is.” The sound of the door opening behind me had me twisting in place to check out who it was.
Sure enough, Tindi walked through. A small crystal orb was clasped in both hands as she kicked the door closed. “Got the Affinity Testing Orb.” Mindi reached forward to take it from Tindi as she moved to sit next to the two of us. I scooted over to give her room to sit without forcing her to be too close to either of us.
“This crystal is one of the perks of joining a guild, even those that do the bare minimum have supervised access to it.” With a wave of her hand, the stone ball changed. It almost seemed to melt as it changed from an orb to a bowl. The sight made me excited to try magic. To see if I could do something similar.
With the bowl finished, Mindi placed the orb into it. It fit perfectly as if the bowl was made to hold it, which it kind of was. Taking the opportunity, I ask two of the questions floating around in my mind. “How does one use the orb and why is it important enough that everyone wants to use it?”
“As its name suggests, it is used to test a person's affinity with every element,” Mindi spoke as she placed her fingers on either side of the orb. “All a person needs to do is push their mana into it and…” Suddenly, six small lights started to spin around the center of the crystal. Two-thirds of which were barely visible. The sapphire and crimson colored orbs looked to be about a millimeter across and were close enough for their lights to mix a tiny bit. But they are not what caught my eye. What caught my eye was the dime-sized orb the color of fresh mud.
As Mindi pulled her fingers back, each of the lights faded slowly until the crystal returned to its previous clear state. “Those were my affinities. Pitiful for a mage but pretty decent for where I grew up.”
Tindi reached forward, seemingly copying Mindi’s actions but nothing happened. “As you can see, I have no real affinity. This doesn’t mean I can't use magic just that it isn’t worth my time.”
“Doesn’t that limit you? As an adventurer I mean.”
Tindi shrugged, “Sure, but I was never into that magic stuff. But punching things, that is what I am good at.”
“You use magic.” Mindi’s comment and eye roll caught my attention.
“When?”
“Body enhancement magic.”
“Nope.”
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“Did you think you could keep up with the damn elf on your own?”
“It’s called being skilled.”
“No, that’s called being delusional. The guy is multiple times your level. You know as well as I do that…”
It sounded as if this was an argument that they had had before. Tindi lifted a hand, cutting Mindi’s rant off. “We are getting off topic.”
“Fine but we both know I am right.”
“Keep imagining things.”
“Where was I?” Mindi asked in a huff. She didn’t wait for an answer before continuing. “Ah yes, so each orb is expensive to create. So much so that only high-tier nobles and large guilds would be able to afford one. Luckily, this guild is one of them. Don’t ask why.”
I had to roll my eyes at her comment to not ask. It was obvious that the content writers and developers couldn’t come up with a good reason and just omitted it. They could have just said that it was because it was a starter town and moved on. “But how do I use it?”
“Just pour your…” Mindi starts before immediately realizing what she was about to say. “Ok, I forgot you have no clue how to do that. Ummm…close your eyes.” I followed her instructions. “Take a deep breath in through your nose. Good. Hold it. Now, out through your mouth. Again, but slower this time.”
It took me a few seconds to realize that she was trying to put me into a meditative state. Something I hadn’t done in quite a bit of time. In fact, not since one of my more eccentric friends had dragged me to one of her ‘cleansing ceremonies’. The entire experience was weird.
While the memory of the event was not one I wanted to recall, the knowledge it had given me was enough to allow me to quickly drop into the required state. “Good. Now mentally trace your body and find the energy buried inside. Energy that was dormant until the system rudely woke it up. Tossing it out of its slumber like my mother used to when I didn’t get up on time.”
As soon as she said that, I nearly burst into laughter. While I managed to do little more than smirk, I did fall out of my meditative state. With an annoyed grumble, I once again focused. Forcing my mind to clear and drop back into a meditative trance.
The moment I managed it, I mentally scanned over my body. To feel my way down each limb and system as I look for any trace of this so-called energy. After a while, it felt as though I could practically see my body and each system, yet the mysterious energy was missing.
Either it was well hidden, or I was doing something wrong. Again and again, I tried. Eventually, I had to admit that I wouldn’t find what I was looking for this way. I had to either try something else or admit that I was lost. Given that I didn’t want to seem like I needed my hand held through everything, I mentally backed up and replayed her words as I looked for some other way of interpreting them.
Yeah, it didn’t feel like there was any hidden meaning to her words. So my issue had to do with how I was searching. I had gone over every part of my body slowly. Hands, arms, chest, etcetera. There were only two ways I hadn’t used to look over my body. Macroscopically or microscopically. Close as hell or as a whole.
Did I want to take the time to go over each tiny section of my body? Hell no. That would take forever. Instead, I would try and take it piece by piece. To work my way down. The first scan yielded, drumroll please, nothing. On top of that, while I didn’t expect it to work, I found yet more nothingness when I looked over my entire body all at once. I was left with working my way down orr giving in and asking for held.
Mentally moving to my pinky, I started to scan over it again and again. My focus narrowed with each scan until I could get no closer. Once there, I maintained that level of focus and moved on to the next finger. The scan from one to another before finally moving onto the palm. It slowly worked its way up my arm and into my chest.
And like that, I found it. A spherical lump of densely packed energy sat behind my heart. In the same spot that I had felt the fire solidify. An event that I should have recalled yet hadn’t until now.
I could feel the energy as it licked at the inside of the ball. The warm sensation reminded me of a gas fireplace my parents had when I was a little kid. As I mentally probed the gold ball-sized lump of energy, it felt like it probed back. It was almost as if we were having a conversation, except we didn’t exchange words. We just, understood what the other had to say.
Suddenly, without warning, the ball of energy exploded in every direction. The energy rapidly traveled through my body. Waves lapped their way down each arm and leg as they did god knows what. “Good!” Mindi’s voice and clap were so sudden and unexpected that it broke me out of my trance.
As both of my eyes snapped open I noticed that the area directly around me was slightly brighter than the rest of the room. It was almost as if there was light radiating from me. Given that my skin looked like a lava lamp with red and yellow colors traveling up and down it, I was pretty sure I was a living nightlight. The light worried me. I couldn’t very well go into the world with a body imitating a glowstick.
While my eyes and mind were occupied with the feelings, power, and potential issues, one of the girls grabbed my hands. She deposited them on something smooth and cold as my head snapped from looking at my arm. As soon as both palms were flat on the orb, mana flowed out of me and into the crystal.
Six lights appeared just as they had for Mindi, though the proportions were quite different. The largest of which was a deep crimson that one could mistake for blood. It was more than twice the size of the next largest. At a centimeter across, the next largest light was a white color, though it seemed to be dotted with black spots. Given that the nearest sphere of light was pitch black, I chalked it up to the two visually overlapping. The other elements were also visible, if just barely, with their own colors. Mud brown, sapphire, and misty white.
As I looked up at Mindi to see her reaction to my affinities, my vision tunneled down. Spots rapidly appeared and disappeared until the world was engulfed. The second to last thing I heard was a soft bell chime followed by Mindi’s voice as she spoke to someone else. “Damn decent affinities. Also seems to have some natural ability to resist mana exhaustion. He should have passed out the moment he released his mana and drained his pool.”