The phoenix looked smugly at the two girls in front of him. Thought his powers had been awfully reduced, the thing the Will of the World couldn’t take was his memory. And his long life allowed him to try his hand at every known magic, and master quite a few of them. Even without the actual skills, he was still able to teach it.

“The first thing to understand about magic, is that there’s three type of it. The most commonly used is internal magic. It uses Spells, some magic skills, and Mana. It’s clearly the easiest magic to learn, since the Will of the World will help you with it. The second one is external magic, or manipulation magic. It involves some skills, and a little bit of Mana, but it mostly boils down to controlling an element, and bending it to your will. It lacks the internal magic raw power, but it’s a lot more flexible, and at higher levels, it can deal similar amounts of damage. The third type is ritual magic, or world magic, but I’m going to let that one out, since even the most basic practical use of it would require years of training. Just know that it basically substitute Mana, skills and everything else with a lot of ‘intent’.”

Sarah used the little gap in this flow of words to interrupt the bird.

“What kind of magic are you going to teach us?”

“Well, first of all, I can only teach you magic you already have an affinity for. You can practice magic with any level of affinity, but at least a little is required to get the feeling for it. If my senses are not wrong, both of you have a death affinity, so we’ll start with that, and we’ll work out the others later.

Close your eyes, and focus. Feel your heart. Feel the way it fills your body with blood with each beat, feel the way it’s keeping you alive. After some time, you should get a warm fuzzy sensation inside. Try to imagine it going out, leaving nothing behind. Do not worry about dying, I’ll use a healing wave as soon as you need it.”

That’s not really reassuring, stupid bird. Sarah stopped cursing in her mind to focus on the feeling he talked about. She slowly let herself fall into a deep meditation. Inside her heart was indeed something warm. But also something else, like a ball of blood that wouldn’t move. Honing her concentration, she tried to see it better. As soon as she ‘touched’ it with her mind, it started shaking lightly. She felt a warmth coming from it. Maybe if I could…

“YES! I did it!”

“Congratulations, you should have the ‘Death mastery skill’.”

“I also have the Life one!”

“Indeed, if you have the affinity for both, it’s a good idea to have them go up at the same time. It should counteract some of the side-effects.”

Sarah’s eyes shot open.

“What side-effects?”

The bird seemed suddenly embarrassed.

“Well, I forgot to tell it before, it’s hard to remember you don’t know anything. Mages are widely known for both their power, and their strange personality. The higher your affinity with an element, the more it influences your psyche. Thought you can’t say it changes you, it’s more you that are changing when understanding more of it. Really high level mages were always kind of weird.”

“In what way will it influences us.”

“There’s a lot of clichés, like ‘Fire mages are hot tempered with a short fuse’ and ‘Life mages are good and caring’, but it’s a load of Leviathan crap if you ask me. You can’t know what’s gonna happen before it does, because every mage has its own unique relationship with its element. Thought some tendencies can’t be denied.”

“In the case of death?”

“Well, Death mages tend to have very extreme opinions on the value of life, whether in one sense or the other. Their understanding of Death also make them a little less social than the other peoples, unless those can handle the intensity of their way of life.”

So it’s not gonna change us per itself, but our understanding of it might change our way of being.

“Can you use magic without upgrading your affinity?”

“You can. Your spells will always be weaker than what they could, and you probably won’t be able to use really high level spells, but you will still be able to use magic.”

Guess there’s no choice. But I’ll make sure not to let those affinities mess me up. Sarah fell back in meditation, mentally waving away the blue window that told her she had acquired the ‘Meditation’ skill, and focused on the feeling the phoenix told about. She had already forgotten about the strange other thing.

--------------------

About a week later, Sarah was woken up by her cellphone. A text message, from John.

“Pr Ming-We agreed to let us enter the temple he found on his parcel. We’ve got to be there by two PM.”

Perfect, maybe we’ll get some informations. And with some luck, it will make that damn bird training stop. Even though Sarah had always been a hardworking person, the training regimen imposed by the bird was insane. Apparently, it was something he made from parts of old heroes trainings, and that he tailored to them. Tailored my ass. After she had unlocked her death mastery, Giiru had made sure to cram as much spells as he could in their brains, and taught them the basic of magic manipulation. Then he divided their days between learning and practicing spells, some physical training, and real combat training, claiming that ‘Skills are useless if you don’t know how to use them’.

She was sore, tired and angry. Angry both at the bird for his insane expectations, at herself for failing to meet his standards, at Audrey for being far closer to it than her, at the bird for praising Audrey every second of the day, and at herself for letting it get to her. And also for being angry at Audrey, who was definitely innocent in that. She just had a lot more fighting experience than her. And she still doesn’t want to tell me where it comes from! I’m sure it’s something more than just ‘a lot of spars’.

Sarah decided that since she was awake, she could very well go over her status, since they changed a lot recently.

Sarah Lomrow

Liberator of gods

Global level

11

Truthseeker

8/20

Race

Human *!*

Affinities

Darkness 20%

Death 15%

Valkyrie

3/20

HP

883/883

MP

1308/1308

STR

148

INT

238

Luck

14

END

147

WIS

214

AGI

154

CHA

178

DEX

152

MEN

160

PER

212

Skills :

Level

Aïkido

4

Archery

6

Astronomy

2

Celtic language

3

Climbing

4

Dagger mastery

1

Darkness magic

3

Darkness mastery

3

Death magic

1

Death mastery

2

Decipher language

3

Drawing

2

Eagle's eye

2

Egyptian language

1

Empathy

2

Eyes of the Tomb explorer

3

Eyes of the Truthseeker

3

Geography

4

Germanic language

6

Hearth of the warrior

3

Hellenic language

3

History

7

Instinct of the Truthseeker

4

Latin language

6

Mana instinct

1

Mana sense

3

Mana sight

2

Meditation

3

Orientation

4

Riding

3

Speech

2

Staff mastery

1

Trade (Mason)

1

Trade (Painter)

2

Trade (Sculptor)

2

Unarmed combat mastery

5

Perks : Curious mind, Divine quest, Focused Mind, Gotta befriend them all, Oblivious, Touch of the Valkyrie

Titles : Liberator of gods, Tomb explorer, Library rat

It was clear that death magic would never be her strong point. Plus, darkness was so much more interesting. It allowed her to hide, to slow, to protect and everything else, while death was mostly killing people. Well the good point of that training is that I levelled up some times.

Sarah got up, and quickly dressed herself. I need to tell Audrey we’re going to enter the temple. And please gods, make it so there’s a clue there, so we can escape this training hell.

“If you insist…”