Tel’am couldn’t believe it. His child had the potential to become a High Arcanist. This was truly insane. A superb Arcane affinity meant they could sign him up to the most prestigious academies without caring about money. Also, Edrie should have an easier time learning magic, unlike him, who had a rough time grasping the basics as a medium arcane user.

All a father wished for his children were their happiness and success. Now Edrie had the latter guaranteed. He still couldn’t believe it. His mind had a hard time processing it. Novela’s words still echoed in his mind, as if everything that happened was a dream. Superb affinity…

He walked alongside his son. Edrie tumbled a few times here and there, but Tel’am was always there to catch him. His son was unphased by the blessing he was granted. Happily hopping every odd tile in the ground, albeit with great difficulty.

It hadn’t happened more than half an hour before they reached home, Tel’am’s hands hadn’t stopped shaking.

“Come here, my child.” Liliana said once she noticed father and son entering the room.

Edrie rushed to her mother’s arms as she grabbed him and raised him in the air, to then end in a tight embrace.

“How did it go?” His wife asked him.

“Hmm…” Tel’am didn’t know how to approach this situation.

“Did it go that bad? Is our son elementless?” She was worried about the worst-case scenario. Elementless ellari were repudiated as a lower denizen, though they were almost as rare, if not more, as superb users. No mother would want that for her children.

“No, it is nothing like that, Lilin.” Tel’am responded, his tone lacking its typical strength, his mind still lost and confused.

“Then what is it? A low-mediocre affinity?” She commented even if she knew it was statistically impossible for ellari to have their best affinity as a measly low-mediocre. They either had a good affinity or none at all.

“Edrie…” Tel’am swallowed saliva, it was hard dropping such a bomb, but he said it either way. “Edrie is a double superb user.”

If one looked closely, it was impossible to differentiate the instant where Tel’am revealed the surprise. Liliana was, in every sense of the word, petrified. Such was the weight of the reveal, that she remained expressionless.

Time seemed to stop for Liliana as the cogs of her minds furiously collided, trying to achieve the solution of an unsolvable question. Their child had proven to be resourceful and wistful, the marks of a genius. Yet, the one thing he did not have control over, his natural talent, affected her the most.

Affinity was nothing more than a lottery in the wheel of fortune that was genetics. But that was only half of the equation. If mages were only limited by their physical body, there would have been hundreds of ellari-made chimeras walking down the street. In a way, that was what high-born were.

No. Elemental affinity was a mixture of genetics, magical development, and soul. A mage could practice their entire life to upgrade their affinity by one miserable step. Those were the unluckiest, as vast research had proved a median of two steps increases by magical development in a mage’s lifetime.

Genetics were easier. Any qualified biomancer could modify one’s body to permutate so as to achieve between half to a full step in the elemental ladder. They weren’t common, by any means, but it was certainly possible.

Soul was the ultimate barrier. Unmodifiable even for the wisest mystics and thaumaturges. The wall that separated commonplace mages with a true arcanist of legends, a wielder of all magic.

Edrie was born in the pinnacle of the strata. He couldn’t develop any further, but not by any means, was that a bad thing. Few cases have been registered on superb users, only two recent cases in Ferilyn, and one of them being the present High Arcanist. Such was the importance of one’s elemental affinity, especially at such outrageous levels.

“Lilin, are you there?” Tel’am questioned as he snapped his fingers next to Liliana’s face.

The mother blinked several times, clearing the fog in her mind. Only a few instants had passed, yet she was so overwhelmed by her reaction and expectation that she had stood there silently. She noticed little Edrie pulling her hair with a glint of worry in his eyes. Her son seemed far too intuitive sometimes.

“Umm, yeah sorry.” She said lost in her thoughts. “It is a lot to take in. Double superb affinity… Are you really sure about it?”

“I trust Novela’s experience on the matter. If she said that our son has such affinities, that is the truth.” Tel’am embraced Liliana to calm her, unintentionally trapping Edrie between both.

“Aah!” Edrie cooed so to reach for some air, raising his hands in the air as to escape from his mother’s bosoms.

“Oh, sorry little boy.” Tel’am patted him and removed Edrie from her mother’s unstable arms.

“Did you tell Novela to keep her mouth shut?” That was Liliana’s first instinct as she recovered, though more than preoccupation, that question was based on her natural hate towards the shopkeeper.

“I didn’t, I was also stunned by the revelation, but she knows better.” Tel’am explained. “I have seen her deal with worse situations. Trust her, Lilin. Novela knows what she’s dealing with.”

“I do not trust her.” Liliana and Novela’s backstory was a deep and thorny one. Her husband’s words weren’t enough to soothe her.

“Don’t worry.” He calmed her, caressing her long silk hair. “She wouldn’t put little Edrie in danger.”

Liliana’s eyes betrayed that thought, she nodded in acknowledgment, nevertheless.

“So, what we do now with Edrie?” Liliana changed the topic.

“Teach him, of course.” Tel’am stated as a matter of fact.

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“He cannot yet understand complex phrases, how do you mean to teach him?” She presented her doubts. “I’m still surprised that he’s even able to read. Sometimes I think that he just likes to skim over the words, instead of reading.”

“Improvising.” Tel’am with out-of-place confidence. “Higher affinity users tend to understand the flow of the magical arts almost instinctively. I am sure our smart boy will catch on quickly.” He looked at Edrie who stood by his arms. “This is a great opportunity to thrive early on. Controlling manaflows is what separates citizens from mages.”

“If you say so.” Liliana begrudgingly accepted.

Unlike her husband, she never really delved into the arcane, satisfied with having a happy simple life in the city. An amateur practician like Tel’am had control of his own manaflows, but it was a skill reached through decades of hard work.

But a superb user like Edrie, perhaps could reach such a milestone under ten years, able to cast spells in his childhood. She doubted that would be the case but would be thrilled to be proven wrong.

“Does that mean that he will work in the workshop with you?” The worried mother asked.

“The workshop? No.” The mage responded. “That’s a waste of time. From now on mana canalization will be a daily practice. With his gift, he should aim for higher positions. How does High Arcanist sound to you?”

Tel’am’s words worried Liliana, yet upon seeing the warming smile and the eyes with a spark of intellect on Edrie’s face, she thought that may even be possible.

Whatever my father was trying to teach me, I failed to grasp its meaning.

“Fear los tam’en si da’lor, ten fir ni le. Ot meri el’tan tun est le do rin sa’nor.” Father spoke.

My parents normally kept their phrases short and concise, as to make them comprehensible for a baby. So, it surprised me when father started doing weird gestures and lectured me even if I couldn’t make head or tails. I literally thought for a moment that he was talking a whole different language.

Father sighed in defeat, finally catching the memo. A baby can’t simply understand adult speak. Everything came from context. Which I had none currently. Earlier today my parents were between weirded out and excited, something to do with the soul wand the shopkeeper woman used on me. But I had yet to catch up to the specifics as they were pure machine guns loaded up with words.

What’s a machine gun?

Ugh, I felt once more the headaches. Like the River of the Damned was singing its deadly cacophony beside me.

Father pointed at the stone circle with an embedded crystal in the middle that he was holding. It was fairly similar to the one my baby crib’s flying platform was made of. Okay, that I could understand. Object permanence is an easy skill to obtain. What now?

Noticing that he got my attention, he pointed at the artifact once again, but now with more precision. He was marking the crystal specifically. Father repeated the orthodox gestures from before, but slower.

Still didn’t make sense to me, though. They seemed so arbitrary, as if he were making a wool ball without any wool. Then with his fingertips, he touched the inert grey crystal. As a matter of magic, the colorless object shone with a bright blue. It wasn’t blinding but there was a strange force to it. And I didn’t mean just the mystical force of magic, but a tangible pressure that made the crystal glow. Tangible yet invisible.

Let me get this straight. He waves his arms around and suddenly the non-fluorescent object illuminated. Was this magic? Scratch that. That was definitely magic. I have seen plenty of magical events in this year to not recognize magic when I see it.

“Som a nir.” Father invited me to try it and left the circlet in the ground.

As you wish, but I doubt anything will happen. I moved my arms sporadically while also trying to recreate the moves father made. When I felt it was long enough, I moved my left hand to touch the lightless crystal and… nothing happened.

Honestly, what did you expect? I looked my father with a face transmitting that message.

“Huh.” Father grunted and stood quite for a while in a pensive demeanor. Universal expressions made their appearance once again. That onomatopoeia of surprise was far more understandable than his five-minute rambling.

His face showed surprise, as if this act was instinctive and his son was unable to do something simple as this. Maybe it was. Elven culture and common sense have been deviated from the little memory I have.

I would feel bad if that was the case. I tried to do the same, with no avail either. Father recovered from his pondering and explained one again.

Without the use of words, he signalized the air around him and closed his eyes. He inhaled deeply, his stomach rising. And the exhalation was slow and constant. He touched his left arm with his right. His finger descended slowly, alike water dripping down his forearm. Then when it was close to the end, his left hand touched the crystal, which shone once again.

Hmm... Is he telling me that I have to flow something to the crystal? The idea sounds crazy, maybe I’m lacking context. I wonder if I could understand his message better if I had my previous knowledge, even if I know for a fact that magic is foreign to me.

I gave it another shot. Recreated his every moment, from the swaying of hands to the slow breathing. That didn’t mean I had a clue about what I was doing. I tried to be in his state of mind, like something was flowing down my arm other than blood. For an instant, I was isolated from the outside world, ignoring the presence of father. Then my fingertips touched the crystal.

And for my hard work I got… absolutely nothing. Not a surprise.

His explanation wasn’t intrinsic, I could only make visual clues that didn’t contribute much information. I even forced myself to remember, only to find the emptiness of my memories. Nullness white, lecherous void of a free space. My occasional attacks of remembrance were but a fading flash that made their presence whenever they wished. I was but an empty husk of knowledge.

Not really much of a difference from your common newborn, truth be told.

Tel’am was at a loss. Ellari were known for having loose mana the first years of their life, so a task like canalizing into a mana-sensitive object like the lamp should be fairly easy. Even more of a triviality if one took into account that Edrie was a superb arcane user.

He may not be a high-ellari, whose blood gave unfair advantages. But Edrie was still high in the elemental scale to have problems with this. Tel’am was conscious that his son wouldn’t understand the meaning behind his actions, but mana sensitivity and perception should be second nature for Edrie.

They took a break to eat, and Tel’am explained his thoughts to her wife.

“Tel’am, I already told you. He’s only a year old.” Lilin was a bit annoyed that her husband was pushing a baby so much. “If I cannot control mana well, how do you expect a child without magical knowledge to do so?”

Those words had struck Tel’am. Not because he was also angry, but because they spoke the truth. Edrie still had years before he even learned to talk (ignoring the random words he spewed from time to time), and he was making him do manaflows.

But then, he gave a look to Edrie. He wasn’t tired or sad, he was smiling and cheerful, as if he was welcoming more practice. Tel’am knew that his son loved reading, only once they’ve bought him a toy and he never used it. Instead, he picked up a book and made his mother read to him.

Tel’am recalled that day as one of an oddity. Edrie seemed to purposely avoid the toy as to specifically tell him to not buy him any more toys. That was his imagination of course, but Tel’am couldn’t deny there was a spec of truth behind the thought.

Then the idea hit him. How had been so stupid to not see the solution that lay before him? If speech or actions couldn’t make through Edrie’s brain, maybe books did.

He didn’t have to do a deep search on the market and libraries to know the result of his endeavor, though. It was clear that there weren’t any books made for children manaflows. There might be manuals for adults, but they were surely too complicated for Edrie.

So, he did the most obvious next step. He wrote a book. A short book filled with easy and short words and visually striking pictures. Tel’am admitted that he wasn’t an artist, and the drawings were a little scuffed, but that book was the result of a week’s labor. The perfect solution for his dilemma, suited for his scholar-like child.

One could consider it as a present for his one-year birthday as the days just so happened to coincide, even if that wasn’t the intention. Either way, Edrie welcomed the book with a smile. Tel’am knew for a fact after seeing his son’s smile that he couldn’t have given him a better present.