Derek woke early the next morning. He felt as if he had had an odd dream the night before. The aches from his training the day before were long gone. Only a new day to greet him and a simple breakfast with his mother before he ran down the mountain path to the smithy in town where he spent every morning since he was small.

When he was young he would just sit and watch the old smith work the forge. The smith never minded his presence so long as he was not underfoot. When he was six the smith offered to apprentice him in the mornings. Over the years the boy had become quite skilled under the guidance of his master. Ander Kennick was pleased with his second apprentice’s development. Ander’s only apprentice before Derek was his father Jared. He took great joy teaching these boys and treated Jared as his own son and Derek as his grandson. Jared’s death affected Ander deeply and he poured even more effort into teaching Derek.

To Ander, teaching Jared and Derek was more than passing on his craft. Ander was a disciple of the god of the forge and a high tier Rune Smith. Teaching these two was a service to his god and a cultivation of new disciples. Jared even received the blessing of the god of the forge before leaving to go questing.

Derek worked until late in the morning before taking his leave to go up to the castle yard for that day's training with the other clan youth. Before leaving he received pay from the old man. He had no idea how odd this was, that an apprentice would be paid by his master, but he knew how vital it was for his mother and grandmother that he receive this pay.

He ran from the smithy up to the castle yard. The lesson this time was on holy magic and was taught by his grandmother. The children learned how to mix order and light elements to create holy magic. They practiced this in the training yard until early afternoon before being dismissed to return to their homes for the day. Derek walked back up the path with his grandmother, Belany, and Hector.

When he arrived at the cottages he saw his mother and Alicia practicing water magic in the corner of the training yard and Ovid had him train his mounted and foot archery until dinner time. That evening he fell asleep once more in his mother’s lap while she lectured her pupil in magical theory. This was the rhythm of his life waking well before dawn to work the forge, participating in the clan training around noon, then training in the yard behind the cottages until late, before drifting to sleep to the sound of his mother teaching her apprentice at night.

He did not benefit from the wealth of his clan. It wasn’t particularly wealthy to begin with, with only the funds from the cedar grown and logged from the nearby slopes, a tribute from the local hegemons to deal with the demons, and some coin earned from pilgrims to the Shrine of the Sword. But he did benefit from the genius of his mother and her armsman. His schema was second to none and his weapons training could be compared to Ovid’s own at that age under the training of his old master.

Nevermind the promotion to his essence growth provided by his schema, the boy’s own dedication and willingness to work had enabled him to gain essence at a rate that could only be eclipsed by the gains from combat. His time in the forge working under his master and surrounded by a rich miasma of elemental essence had promoted his essence gain still further and improved his affinities.

His mother had supreme affinity in earth, water, fire, and air while his father had supreme affinity in order and light. Neither of them had particularly low affinities in any of the elements. So when Eona discovered Derek within her she had not been surprised to find that his affinities were quite exceptional, with supreme affinity in earth, air, order, and light, outstanding affinity in fire and water, and excellent affinity in chaos and dark element magic.

Over the years of nurture at home and working in the forge his affinities had grown. All but chaos and dark element were now at supreme affinity and those two were at outstanding affinity. Very few people could be said to have this strength of affinity at this age. It can be said that many bloodlines that practice selective breeding would be jealous of this kind of result.

Affinities have a direct effect on the strength of magic used. Affinity is ranked from negligible to supreme with the ratings ordered as negligible, poor, average, good, excellent, outstanding, and supreme. A person with negligible affinity will find it impossible to ever cast spells of that element prior to raising the affinity and in many cases there are great arcane and divine reasons a bloodline may find magic of that type is barred to them and no amount of effort may overcome this. For instance demons find order and light magic to be anathema to them.

A person with poor affinity with an element will find it very hard to cast spells of that element with the spells of that affinity typically being a level lower than those of an affinity that they are average in. Average affinity is when the affinity does not inhibit or enhance spellcasting. Excellent is when the affinity enables the caster to cast one level higher and Supreme is when they can cast at two levels higher. Good and Outstanding were added to the scale for those who are somewhere between Average, Excellent, and Supreme.

These ratings were created by those who create and study Status magic. Status magic has had arguably the same level of impact on human development as schema. If it wasn’t for status magic being used to judge comparative strength of people and monsters essence and its physical form, essentia, would have never been discovered and the use of schema to manipulate how essence gathers in the body would have never been pioneered.

That said, unlike essence accrual which can be judged easily due to the ease of measuring essence, affinity has been more subjective. The original scale had only included four ranks corresponding to the new ranks of negligible, poor, average, and excellent. Over time it was discovered that more ranks were necessary as people with supreme level affinity were discovered and vast numbers fell somewhere between the positive levels.

An entire field of study in magic is dedicated to the effort of improving affinity over the generations and Derek’s affinities would be considered a proof of the application of that field of study.

Little did he know that this growth was in large part due to his time in the forge. Ander’s rune forge was imbued with sprites of all eight affinities and simply working that forge would improve his affinities over time. The work in the forge did more than allow him to forge items. In a way it forged him as well. Though the boy lacked many things in his development that even those from his poor clan might casually expect, he had a wealth of resources that he didn’t even know about that others would have paid fortunes to possess themselves.

His constant training continued for several weeks until it was time to start preparing for the coming of age trials. That morning Derek was really excited and ready to show how strong he had gotten. This day coincided with his birthday and it was a full moon at that. How auspicious!

He ate a happy breakfast with his mother, his energy couldn’t help but put a smile on her face. He ran down to the forge and began casting blanks even before his master had come out. Ander was well pleased with his apprentice and gave the boy a small potion for his birthday.

“Here, take this,” he said gruffly to the boy.

“What is it master?” The boy’s eyes grew to the size of saucers when he saw the potion. He had consumed some potions through the years but had never possessed one of this quality himself. He had memorized the names of many. Particularly the ones that can recover the body. Those interested him the most as they could be used to heal his mother.

“It is wyvern’s blood. A potion that when imbibed by a human can cure ailments of the body and provide a permanent boost to the body attribute. This is my gift to you on your sixteenth birthday. In most cultures of this continent of Elanith you are considered a man now. So this birthday is your most important one.”

Hearing his master identify this precious potion, Derek started to tear up. He had read about wyvern’s blood long ago when searching for how to cure his mother’s ailment. He had dreamed that one day he would be able to acquire a vial of it many times, even going so far as to dream that one day he would slay a wyvern himself to acquire this potent medicine for his mother. In his heart, the thing he wanted the most in this world was a way to cure his mother’s illness and seeing this thing given freely by the old man he could not help but cry.

Seeing his apprentice cry in this way had an affect on Ander. Ander had been this boy’s master for ten years and this boy had played happily in the corner of his shop since he was an infant. Prior to that he had been this boy’s father’s master and watched that boy grow up in this shop as well. It would not be that far out of place for this old man to call Derek his grandson. He reached over and ruffled Derek’s hair. “Boy, you are my only living apprentice and an apprentice disciple of the god of the forge. This gift is the least I should give you for you coming of age. Remember, tonight is very important. It is your sixteenth birthday and a full moon. It will be the night of your dedication to the god of the forge. I have already spoken to your grandmother and mother about this. At nightfall bring them along with you to my shop.”

“OK, master.” The boy had already recovered as youths do. After leaving the forge he sprinted at high speed to the training yard in the castle. Today he would finally show the strength he had gained through all these years of training. No more hiding his power!

The trials were divided into four parts and all of the children of the clan that would turn sixteen in the six months prior and six months after this trial must participate. The first two parts of the trial, the Status check and the Holy magic comparison, would be handled today. The purpose of the first trial was to determine the Status of the child going into the trials. The second was to judge the power of the child’s holy magic. In a clan such as this Holy magic is their specialty and the most important metric for determining strength within the clan. These two tests will determine who the strongest of the children tested are to determine who has the right to participate in the third trial.

The third, the fighting competition, would be held at the winter solstice. This trial would be between the strongest contestants from before to determine who would lead the youths in the final trial. The final part would take place a few weeks after that. The final test was to go into the mountains as a team to hunt the few demons that had already appeared. Each youth must acquire one demon heart before returning to be considered to have passed the final trial of the Thorne clan coming of age trials.

Derek knew his strength and knew that he could easily perform well in these first two trials. In fact, he was certain that in the third trial there would be no one who could defeat him. He couldn’t wait to show the clan his strength and prove that he deserved a place among them. As he ran through the village to the castle he couldn’t help but laugh with joy. Today was turning out to be the best day in his life.