I once again sat in the comfy therapist chair. Today was the day of my examination and the day my affinity was supposed to be revealed.

Anna walked out from her kitchen and gave me a glass of water. “Why was your face contorting as I was walking in? You usually don’t make strange upbeat expressions.”

“Don’t worry I was just talking to myself.” Her eyes widened and she put her hands on my head.

“Did you finally break? Shit. I knew I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard.” After calmly removing her hands I shook my head.

“While I’m not broken, it is your fault. As I finished more of those logs I got used to narrating everything that happens inside my head. It became a habit.”

She scowled. “As long as you don’t say anything out loud. Anyway, besides the question of your sanity we have some business to attend to. Now there are only a few ways to determine your affinity, one of which is a natural awakening, another is having a senior mage guide your mana, while the last one is the most famous one." She gave a small drumroll. "It is... testing your reactions to different substances. As she said that she took out a long mahogany box. She removed a couple different spherical balls with a substance inside.

Anna closed the box. Curiously there were still some objects left inside. Noticing my gaze, Anna remarked, “Those are for later. Right now, I need to explain something to you. So… How do I explain this? Screw it. I am no teacher so this is the best explanation you are going to get. You know how you have been using that technique to gather mana? Don’t you wonder how that works?”

“No not particularly.”

She reached over and chopped me on my head. “Dumbass. Get your head out of your ass and learn about the world around you. Aren’t you a scientist?”

“Well… I am curious but I never felt motivated enough to find out. My future is no longer in my control so why should I care?”

Anna crossed her arms and looked at me with dissapointment. “Solare… you might not realize it but you have more power than you thought.”

“How is that? I am forced to attend magical school and become a good overpowered fireball-slinging tool for everyone else. What part of my life is in my control?”

“Everything. Don’t you realize that with your talent you could become powerful enough that no one can control you. Yes you will be used, but you can use others in turn. Don’t you realize you can theoretically become invincible? This is magic.”

Anna tilted her head back slightly and looked down at me. “It seems you have realized the truth of the world. Congrats on learning from my words of wisdom.”

I shook my head. “Thank you for ruining the magnificent image I just had in my mind. Can we go back to what you were saying before the lecture on morality?”

“Ok getting back on topic, I’m going to tell you how your mana technique works. You know how you can breathe and swallow and have all those reflexes without thinking about it?”

“Yeah, the involuntary processes are regulated in the brain stem, your hormones are secreted by your glands based off stimulus, and your reflexes are simply due to…”

“Yes yes thank you Dr. King,” Anna cut me off. “Back to magic, we didn’t realize this, but some people absorb mana passively. It's regulated without your knowledge similar to those described beforehand. A common phenomenon is that the more attractive, talented, or smart a person is the better their talent for magic. The mana absorbed disperses and changes your very person. Remember how I said life is unfair? Not only do people get more powerful, they become more attractive.”

“The method that was given to you in the document simply is a method where you can control yourself. It’s similar to how you can learn how to control your breathing. After mastering this you can move on to more advanced techniques. You don’t know it but right now all your mana is dispersed throughout your body. You need to concentrate and absorb it to one part of your body to advance futher, however more people will tell you about this in college. Right now, the reason why I am telling you this is because I want you to try focusing your mana to your hand. Hold these balls while doing so and if they have some reaction you have talent in absorbing that type of element.”

“Hey Anna. Why are elements a thing. If mana is energy, how are there elements to an energy?”

She smiled. “It seems the inner scientist is finally breaking out. Honestly people don’t know why mana has different elements. Some liken it to different properties that energy has but it still doesn’t answer the question why people can use this energy. Some people are saying that God let humans find mana, and this proves why evolution and everything is false, that this is all God’s plan. But just like energy, we humans classify the elements people can use into two categories. Kinetic Elements and Potential Elements. The kinetic elements are the classic fireball, lightning mages while potential elements focus less on might, but are still insanely powerful. Each person is shown to have a kinetic element and potential element. There are also some outliers because this classification system is obviously imperfect.” She re-opened the box and took out a sheet of paper. “This has the list of known elements. Like most science, there is many things we don’t know about.”

Taking it from her, I saw the list.

Kinetic

Potential

Special

Fire

Fortification

Life/Nature*

Water

Spirit/Soul/Consciousness/Illusion*

Death/Animation*

Earth

Magnetism

Summoning*

Air

Force*

Time**

Plasma**

Aura*

Creation**

Space*

Light/Darkness*

Destruction **

Atomic*

Healing*

Dark Matter/Dark Energy**

Electricity

Sound

Null*

Null**

I gave the list back to Anna. She looked at the list herself. “As you see there are a multitude of elements you need to be tested for. Like I said every single person has a kinetic and potential element with no exceptions. See at the end of the list we have a null element? Before, there was a girl who didn’t have a kinetic element and she was mistreated by everyone around her. She was recruited by a terrorist organization and it turns out she had the ability to cancel out the other elements. We now call it null element. It has no attacking power of its own but that terrorist organization turned that girl into the greatest assassin ever, letting her kill mages left and right. Anyways that was twenty years ago and doesn’t matter now. Most people also have some affinity with a couple other elements, although not as strong as the main elements. Usually even if you have an affinity with every single element, as there have been people in the past, you can only focus on a few because each element is mysterious and you can’t possible study all in your lifetime. You can see there are asterisks besides some of the elements. The elements with a single asterisk are ones which we have seen before at least once yet don’t know much about them. The ones with a double asterisk are ones that are theorized to exist yet we have no actual evidence of them existing. You’ll get an actual description of each element in college. There are also people who are better at manipulating different states of an element. Some can easily manipulate ice yet don't have much of an affinity for water. Now, in front of you are each of the kinetic elements. Do what I said earlier.”

Following her instructions, I got 4 spheres in my right hand and the other four in my left hand. I slowed down my breathing and concentrated. I sensed the energy around me, small particles I could collect and I noticed some small disturbances in the air. I directed the particles inside and outside to my hands. As more and more gathered, two of the small balls shined. One had a small flame, and the other had a mini tornado inside it. Smiling , Anna took the balls back. “It seems your main affinity is air and also have an affinity with fire with average talent in both. Honestly this is below average but it might be a blessing. You don’t have to worry about too many choices in the future. Here, let’s see what potential elements you resonate with.”

This time, hoping for a better result, I held the potential spheres in both hands together. I went through the same tedious process as the first time, sensing the energy and guiding it. Just like last time some of the spheres had a reaction. This time however, three spheres reacted instead of two. One glowed with a brilliant emerald shine, another had a clear brightness that was like glass, and the last one had turned completely opaque.

With a shocked expression, Anna grabbed the objects from my hand. “Wonderful! You should know Solare that the bigger the reaction the greater the talent! You have amazing talent in healing magic and in fortification, with an average talent in aura. You must realize one important fact. Most people have above average talent in one element and average talent in one or two more. You somehow have superior talent in two elements. You also have an amazing talent in gathering mana, with you unconsciously levelling to novice II. You would help greatly in…” She stood up abruptly. “I need to change! I'll drive you to the Coalition office so you can apply to your colleges.” She ran out of the room.

Anna came back, with new clothes and her hair tied up in a ponytail. Her fingers wrapped around my wrist as she pulled me out of my chair. “We should go immediately.” She led me out of the therapy room and out of the house. Her car was in her driveway and she shoved me into the backseat. She stepped into the driver seat and started the engine. While backing out of the driveway she said, “I just realized that I didn’t ask what universities you are applying to. I was so worried of just making you able to cope with magic that I didn’t bother with other stuff. What is your first choice?”

I put my legs up on the dash and leaned the seat back. Smirking, I said, “Why dear big sister, it’s the International School of Magic.”