I awoke to a familiar but unpleasant smell. Moving a bit, I found myself laying on something incredibly soft, a welcome change to the ground and bunks at the camp. I sat up and checked my surroundings and found I was inside Porcu’s residence. The goat in question was working on something across the room. He raised a glass container and eyed it, catching me getting up.

“Good, you’re awake. You almost put Kiszo into an early grave. She couldn’t wake you and had to carry you back to the village on her back. She was quite distraught over you.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think anything would have happened when I made the selection. How long have I been out?”

“You’ve been under my care for almost three days now. Kiszo said it took two to carry you here. So about five days. I thought you might be in a coma or brain dead. Nothing I used could wake you.”

“Thank you for taking care of me, Porcu. I’m extremely famished. Do you perhaps have anything I could eat?”

Porcu pointed towards the same stone chest; he grabbed the fish he slapped me with and returned to work. I pulled out a few bags before finding something that looked edible and dug in. As I ate the dried fish, I tried to find any changes to my body. The only thing I could find was an odd-shaped leaf with an odd rune I didn’t know. It was like a tattoo had been drawn on the left side of my chest.

“Porcu, did you draw something on me while I was unconscious? What is this?” I asked, holding my shirt up.”

Seeing my chest, the goat’s eyes grew wide before rushing over to my side and swiftly helping me remove my shirt. The Goat studied the leaf for a moment before speaking. “This is remarkable. Kiszo said you choose to unlock ‘Affinitiy Compatibility,’ yes? I’m sure you haven’t constructed a spell yet. Yet you already have a Magic Stigmata beginning to form on your chest. Unfortunately, I haven’t a clue what school of magic this rune belongs to,” he said and tapped the rune.

“What is a Stigmata?”

“Stigmata are a sign or a display of one’s power. I know of the three common ones a person can develop. You have magic; these begin as a leaf, grow into a flower, and then into a tree if you’ve developed your magic high enough. Then you have the physical version, which begins as a geometric pattern and grows into a more complex pattern as it grows.

There is also the Artifice Stigmata that resembles something from the profession you’ve unlocked. I knew very little of this variant, but some of the miners have a pickaxe-shaped Stigmata.

Let me show you mine to explain better.” He pulled the side of his pants down to reveal a flower with three large petals, each sporting a rune I didn’t understand. Two of his petals were white and one green.

“As you can see on my Stigmata, I have two Tier 1 and a single Tier 2. The white, like Bone Cores, represents the first rank and the green second. Watch when I use mana.”

He did something, and his eyes glowed for a moment. Then, I could see the green petal around one rune glow slightly on his leg. “I have the affinities for Air, Dream, and Life. The rune in my green petal is the representation for Life.”

“The colors, I assume, follow the same rankings as the cores?”

“You’re correct. When you cast a spell, if your body has an affinity to that magic, it will grow your Stigmata. If I were fortunate enough to have any more affinities, my Stigmata would grow another petal or change entirely based on some unknown cosmic law.

The Stigmata’s color change based on the highest level or tier of a spell you can cast. If I were able to learn or figure out how to construct a Tier 3 Life spell, my life petal would go from green to blue.”

“Wait. So you can learn any kind of magic even if you don’t have an affinity for it?”

“Oh yes, anyone can learn magic if they have enough mana and the ability to construct a working spell and then cast that spell. The problem is most weren’t born with the capacity to store mana in large enough quantities to cast anything over a Tier 1 spell.”

“So, how do I go about learning magic spells and unlocking my affinities?”

Porcu turned around, went over to one of his many bookcases, and scanned the shelves. He pulled a book and tossed it over to me a moment later. “You can keep it, I have other copies, but if you can return it after you’ve finished, I would appreciate it. We use these to teach basic spells to the younglings if they get a magic-based class.”

I opened the book and frowned. “Well, isn’t that a cosmic joke? I can’t read it.”

Porcu began to full belly laugh before telling me he’d be right back and left. He returned a bit later and tossed me a yellow book with a green gem at its center. I began to leaf through the book, and the symbols began floating off its pages and into my mind. It finished with no pressure or pain on my mind a moment later.

[ System Notification ]

Written Common Trait Learned

I began to leaf through the first book, and now I could understand the words. “Thank you, I can read it now. Where did this book come from?”

“The village’s Chief keeps them. I’m going to need that back. I kinda took it without telling him.”

I handed him back the magical reading book, and he left again. I began reading what was called the Magic Primer book. The first few pages explained how magic users pulled in the ambient mana from the world and stored it inside their bodies. The user would use that mana to construct a spell within their mind and unleash the construct outside their body.

The first example was a fireball and had a diagram for its construct. The diagram showed three what the book called nodes. The two outside nodes showed curved arrows pointing clockwise. Below the text explained how to construct a simple Tier 1 Fireball in your mind. You pictured two nodes of fire mana rotating around a center unmoving node of fire mana.

The next page showed the diagram for a Tier 1 Ice Lance. This one was three horizontal nodes of stationary ice mana in a line. The third page showed a Tier 1 Knockback spell. It was three vertical nodes of air mana with arrows showing them all moving forward.

The fourth page explained magic casting was all about the intent and your understanding of that school of magic. The same spells could be recreated differently and with different intent and end up as the same spell when released by different users. The next page explained these three spells should be mastered before preceding.

I got up just as Porcu came back inside. “Is there a place I can practice the first three spells?”

“Already? Have you practiced forming the construct in your head without releasing it?”

“No? The book didn’t say anything like that.”

“You may be correct. Go outside and try to imagine the constructs in your mind. When a spell is correct, you will feel something like a mental click, as if the spell fell into place or just feels right. You can then erase or let go of the construct in your mind without releasing it. We teach our younglings to do this until they don’t even have to make the construct manually, creating itself like muscle memory. Then you can start casting spells until you knock yourself out.”

“Thank you for everything, Porcu. If Kiszo comes back, tell her I’ll be outside the main gate.”

He said he would inform her, and I was off. I walked through the center of the village towards the main gate when I felt a hand slip into mine and began holding it. I looked over and then down at the young feline-avian youngling from the other morning.

“Umm, hello?”

“Hello!”

“What are you doing?”

“Going for a walk with you. You looked lonely.”

“Thank you? I was heading outside to practice my magic.”

“Oh! Can I come? I never get to go outside anymore to see my flower friends. The older kids don’t take me with them when they get to go outside anymore.”

“I guess if the guards say it’s ok. What’s your name, by the way?”

“My name is Beema,” she said as she did a cute little curtsy.”

I bowed to her, “Nice to meet you, Beema. I’m Zeal. I hope this isn’t rude, but I’ve been wondering about this for a few days now. Why do all the kids sleep in the same building?”

“Oh, they don’t. Just the kids with dead parents.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t. I don’t remember my parents and the village has taken great care of me. I just wish the older kids would play with me more,” she said as she looked away from me. I could see she was sad and lonely.

At the gate, the guards agreed Beema could come with me, but I wasn’t to go far and keep an eye on her. Beema brought me halfway to the tree line, where a large stone sat near a perfectly round bed of colorful flowers. I told Beema to stay near me and call out if she saw anything out of place.

I watched her run around and pick small flowers for a bit before I closed my eyes and began to imagine three balls or nodes of fire mana to form inside my mindscape. Once I had them visualized, I spun the two outside balls around the center in a clockwise rotation.

I felt nothing click. Opening my eyes, the visualization vanished. I watched Beema now sitting in the patch of wildflowers, casually talking to them as if they were speaking back to her. I didn’t say anything. I had an imaginary friend as well back at the orphanage.

I closed my eyes once again and repeated the visualizations, nothing. I then tried it with the ice and air spells. Again nothing.

“She says don’t picture fire mana, as you have don’t have a concept of mana from were you from. She says picture the heat or flame. She also says intentions are everything for magic. I don’t quite understand anything she says, honestly,” Beema said, shrugging and began giggling.

“Who are you talking to, Beema? I don’t see anyone here with us.”

“The people who live in the flowers. No one else can see them, and the other kids say I’m lying when I tell them. Even the adults don’t believe me,” she said as she raised her hand as if a bird was resting atop of it to her ear and giggled again.”

I’ve seen odder things since I’ve arrived here. I got up and carefully sat outside the ring of flowers. I stared at the variety of flowers around Beena but could not see anything outside of them moving in the breeze. I wondered if maybe the kid was hearing or seeing things, but maybe she could see something I couldn’t. I could quickly test this. “Beema, could you ask your friend, If they could kindly land on my hand?”

“You have to be gentle! They are very fragile.”

She spoke towards the flowers, “You can show him. He’s been nothing but pleasant to me. Even pats my head like Kiszo.”

I held out my palm and waited. Nothing, I was about to ask Beema again when I began to feel points of pressure upon my palm. “Hello?” I said in surprise.

Silence greeted me. “I can feel something resting on my hand, but I can not hear or see what is there, Beema. I believe that you’re talking to someone. I just wish I could talk to them too.

I felt the pressure leave my hand, and a moment later, I felt something like a raindrop hit the end of my nose before a box popped up.

[ System Notification ]

Fae Touched Trait Granted

In front of me, not more than a half meter away, a twelve-centimeter flower began to materialize. I could make out a smiling face and then hands that were resting on what should be her hips. The creature was all white with vivid pink streaks at the center of what I would call petals.

“Hello, Outworlder. We thank you for bringing Beema to visit us. It has been such a long since we’ve spoken to our young future Druid,” said the flower.

“I have so many questions.”