La Réunion was first colonized by the French Republic around 1880. At the time, the foremost threat for a French colony in the Indian Ocean was France’s colonial rivals; the Netherlands, Germany, and Britain. A single town, called Le Port (The Harbor in French) was established and fortified with a Vauban-model Fortress.

Extract from History of the Last Men, by Tanaka Inagi, First Librarian of La Réunion

The manufactorium of Saint-Denis was a squat building. More accurately, its entrance was as most of the manufactorium itself, underground. The Overseer’s office, Damien’s destination, was only half-interred and benefited from the daylight. That compromise between safety and comfort had been the subject of tumultuous negotiations between the Overseer of the manufactorium, Roland de Hautlieu and the four Colonels of High Command in charge of the Human armed forces on La Réunion. As a Lightning Master-Enchanter, he invented the variants of Lightning Weapon and Glyph of Shattering Bolt that were used to enchant the mass-produced lances arming the NOM Militia, as well as a commonly-used stable variant of Dancing Lights to light up the houses and streets during the nights.

“Come in, kid.” A shout stopped Damien mid knock.

He entered and saw the infamously ill-tempered Old Roland. He really wasn’t as fearsome as his reputation, although he was without a doubt old. His face looked like a white old prune, with dark holes for eyes and a nose that’d been broken at least thrice. He still had a few unruly white hairs, which were known to stand up and emit statics when he was really mad. The popular belief in town, reinforced by his temperament, physical appearance, abilities and affinities, both elemental and for the craft of magical items from mundane or low-level magical materials, was that he had at least one Dwarven ancestor.

“How are your cog-results? I asked for the report, but I’ve yet to see it… Lazy bureaucrats...”

Damien reddened. "My cognitive examination was delayed. You may have heard that I burned myself during the Awakening, Sir ? Doctor Ferrand asked to postpone it to allow for more exact results."

“You managed to cause one of my Awakening Stones to overheat to that point, huh? I heard it was cracked, I’ll see about repairing it… And just after a high-level Ice Evoker used it? You do know that that probably saved your hands, right? You probably Awakened to some extra-hot variation of Fire… My stones were not made to take that much punishment.”

Damien gulped at the thought. He hadn’t thought that Julia’s Awakening had mitigated the heat produced by his own. He would have to thank her later. Maybe toast her during their parent's next lunch together ? No, that would be ridiculous... He refocused himself on the ongoing conversation.

“I wondered if you could help me with my School, sir. I was told to not attempt my first spell without supervision from a professional, and there’s no Master Enchanter among the Educational staff...”

“Yes, yes, I’m the island’s best Enchanter, blah, blah… Drop that, will you? Every kid tries flattery these days… As La Réunion’s Master-Enchanter, I don’t really get to refuse kids with good Awakenings, ya know? The law basically says that if you’re good enough, I have to tutor you, or I’ll get in trouble with the other old farts from the Council”

Everything was going as Damien had hoped. Roland, for all his boasting and his awful temper, was the best possible Tutor for an Enchanter. The tutoring system called for children, mages or otherwise, to seek out a professional in the domain they intended to study and ask them for basic instruction. Senior Mages were expected to accept high-potential mages for tutoring, while less gifted pupils would look for Mages with timetables not quite as full. Having Awakened with two elements and a tier 2 Sigil qualified him, but he was afraid the old Enchanter would cite the unknown qualities of his elements and his belated cognitive assessment to delay the winter holidays’ tutoring sessions by a week.

They relocated to the manufactorium’s experimenting hall, a clean, wide room with a ground made out of white soil to ease the inscription of Mandala, and whose structure was reinforced with Force Walls. It only contained a pair of chairs and a few plates of various materials probably destined to testing.

“Alright then. My first spell…”

“Before that”, the Enchanter stopped him. “You need to get how Enchanted items work. Here.”

He threw him something that Damien first took for a stick, before recognizing it as a militia lance… Although…

“Where is the LDM slot, sir?”

Low-Density Mana crystals were used to empower Magical Items made for NoMs. As their users could not fuel magical manifestations themselves, they had to be fuelled by crystallised mana. In the case of the lance, the LDM slot was normally used to fuel a Lightning variant of Elemental Weapon that electrified the head of the lance. Another sealed compartment housed a single High-Density Mana crystal which could fuel ten castings of Shatter Bolt, a ranged spell meant for the subjugation of armored opponents. The lack of an LDM slot would make use of the lance impossible for a NOM.

“You’re it, boy. You know the Incantations for Imbue?”

Damien shrugged. Imbue was, in theory, an enchantment spell, but as a cantrip, a spell consisting of a single Major Incantation, any mage could use it. “In theory, yes”

“Good. Just pour Mana in the Mandala, this isn’t an Elementally-locked Elemental Weapon. It’s more Mana-consuming than my Militia version, but depending on the Element it can be more potent. And don’t even think about circulating both of your Elements in the Mandala at the same time. It’ll break in no time, and you’ll get your first backlash.”

Damien nodded, took the lance, and concentrated. He theoretically knew what to do: First, circulate his mana through one of his Elemental gates. Then, have the elemental mana enter, at a steady and slow flow, into the lance’s inscribed mandala. The advantage of an Enchanter in this was that he could, if he was confident enough, slightly modify said mandala without physically retouching it. In this case, he altered its rate of mana absorption.

He began, at random, with the shiniest of his Elemental Gates at the very lowest possible rate of circulation. The lance’s metallic head disappeared, hidden by a Sun’s glow. Then, one of the incendiary safety protocols posters on the wall ironically ignited. Damien immediately stopped channeling. “Sorry, sir!”

“Huh.” The Enchanter threw a glass of water on the poster, stopping it from becoming a self-fulfilling Prophecy. “Some kind of Radiance Element, but with augmented heat… Interesting. Are you tapping smack between Radiance and Fire proper? Not suited for Inscribed Enchantments, frankly. Maybe good for trap glyphs? Let’s see how the other looks.”

Damien repeated the process. However, while the elementally charged mana left the gate, he felt suddenly tired. The lance’s head began to glower in menacing, red veins of inconstant light. It was hot, but rapidly cooling.

“Hrm. Try touching the wooden panel, see what that does”

Damien immediately obeyed. When the lance touched the wood, the weariness he’d felt before began to lighten. As for the lance’s head, it was a glowing mass of red, crisscrossing lines of light, and the wood panel was already crumbling to ashes.

“Try the lead, now”

Two minutes later, they were standing in front of a molten plate of solid steel, and Roland told Damien to stop his channeling, marveling at the fact that he was not yet Out Of Mana.

“You were a bit pale at the beginning. Negative drain?”

The question was loaded. If humanity was always happy to try and understand how to use each element, the Negative quasi-Elements, Ash, Dust, Salt, and Void were known to be altogether less than conducive to the good health of their wielders, the Negative components gnawing at the unfortunate soul's Astral Bodies at every channeling unlessthey found corrective measures to stop the phenomenon.

“Probably, sir. The effects were mitigated when there was something to fuel it… I think it’s some sort of ember, sir. Maybe an element opposed to that radiant-fire hybrid?”

“As good a guess as any. We’ll know more after you’ve gone through the cog-chamber. Probably.”

“Probably, sir?”

“Stop with the sirs, kid. And yes, probably. It’s not as if that old pile of magitech’s just coming out of the manufactorium, and I’m no magitech engineer anyways. Before the Tide, we were supposed to get a specialist every two or three years for maintenance. ‘Side, it’s not like it was ever able to tell you exactly how your mana-mix’s like. I’ve seen it read a limestone and an Earth mage as more or less the same, never-mind the Positive motes in the limestone!”

“So, what do I do in the meantime?” Damien asked hopefully.

“Well, you’ll get your roommate tomorrow. From the day after that to the end of the Holidays, I’ll tutor you every day, two hours's all I can manage… Ah, and forget Sunday. We’ll begin with the basics of mandala tracing first, and then we might be able to do a few things about remote imbuing. Train up on basic imbuing with household magic items until you’re OOM, then meditate. You just have to pull out the LDMs and fuel them yourself. It’ll stretch your mana base, you’ll be happy to have begun doing that early.”

Damien bade farewell to Roland, who was grumbling about having to write up a report. He left the building, then returned home.