Jonathan

He woke up. Over the last few days had Jonathan a few Lesions, in etiquette as well as in law studies.

Today was a big day for him, he was so excited. They would test what elemental magic he had. How would this work? He did not know, but it surely was something special.

Or not, he heard that this was done all over the world, even in poor little villages, so it should not be expensive. But it also meant that the tools used were easy to work with, so that help could be trained fast and inexpensively.

So maybe it was not exciting at all, but it was magic.

“Calm down, Jonathan, calm down”, said Jonathan to himself. When someone knocked at his door, he could only barely contain his excitement, and, after he breathed deeply, he opened the door.

Tablos came into his room, looked at him and said: “This is a completely normal procedure, which will not hurt or do anything you will feel. I know you come from a world without magic and this is strange for you, as well that you might have a few fantasies how it will work, but ready yourself to be disappointed. Nothing much will happen, the most that can happen is excitement over your results.”

He grinned and went on to eat breakfast with Jonathan, after which they spoke a fair bit about Jonathan's world, the Archmage was especially impressed with the mention of gigantic, over 30-meter long flying metal tubes with wings. But these wings were not normal, no, they did not even move.

Jonathan was not really good at explaining how these so-called airplanes worked, but it also was not important.

After breakfast, the time for the test was near. As Jonathan entered the room where the test would commence, he saw a few people he recognized.

Gerard Wertin, his teacher in all things financially, the life mage, Heras Hager, his alchemy teacher Samuel Kyreikon and of course Elise and Mage Fizzlewood.

There also were a few persons he did not recognize. One of them introduced herself as Ione Geron, secretary of Heinrich Tablos. She would activate the testing device, an enchanted mirror, which was nowhere to be seen right now.

The other unknowns were not introduced, but Tablos did not seem happy to have them included, as well as Minister Gerard Wertin.

In fact, Wertin seemed angry at them being included and muttered to himself angrily, even if Jonathan could not make out what was being said.

After a short while and a few formalities, the secretary took a mirror from somewhere, Jonathan had not been attentive enough to see it.

The mirror was silver coloured, but there was no glass above it.

Jonathan surmised that it likely was a polished piece of iron or steel. The frame was relatively thick but had a few strange features. On one end of the rectangular frame was a small indention, large enough to fit a finger like a forefinger. On the long sides were two arrows, made out of a bronze coloured material, the rest of the frame was wooden. On the other end of the frame was another indention, but a larger one, in which a crystal was fit, likely a mana crystal.

After Ione Geron pushed onto the crystal, the mirror began to glow in a crescendo of colours. After a short while, this ended, and the mirror became normal again.

Then Jonathan was asked to put his forefinger into the free indention. A short while after he did this the mirror began to glow again, but now in white colour.

Slowly, ever so slowly coloured bars began to form, some small, some not so small. After a short while, Jonathan had difficulties to suppress a laugh, because what he saw was the formation of a simple bar chart.

Then it was over and a few symbols showed themselves. Geron explained that these Symbols were numbers and only because this specific testing device was used in the school and one could be certain to find someone who could read there, these were added.

She then explained that this, what was shown on this page where his core elemental affinities. But before he was told what exactly his affinities were, he learned that the numbers, going from one to one hundred meant how much mana he was forced to put into a spell to achieve a certain effect.

And this was all in relation to one hundred. So it was a pretty simple formula. Base cost of the spell multiplied with one hundred minus the affinity value (Base cost * (100 – Affinity value)).

This meant that these were simply percentage numbers.

But this was not set in stone. First, there were multiple ways to increase one's affinity, but one could also study a spell with a certain method, which would decrease the cost by a certain modifier, which could change under specific circumstances (Base cost * (100 – Affinity value) / Modifier).

The modifier could reach pretty high numbers, but, especially for beginner spells the returns of increasing the modifier diminished fast.

After this was out of the way, Geron explained what the bars meant.

Ten of the eleven bars shown meant the core affinities of elemental magic, the eleventh bar simply said how many affinities over ten he had in this type of magic.

Before he found out how many affinities he had and how good they were, he was told that an affinity over 30 generally was considered great and over 50 was practically unheard of.

The highest documented affinity and this happened after much training, was only 86, an Archmage, who specialized in this one element had this affinity after more than three centuries of life, which generally was the age a powerful mage could reach.

Also, another important information was, that while affinities could be measured precisely, mana could not. The base cost of spells, which had been mentioned was different for everybody. It was thought that it generally was similar, but even this was not certain. But finally, he got to know his affinities:

Elemental magic: 136 measurable (known affinities) over ten points

Water: 4

Earth: 24

Fire: 67

Wind: 45

Void: 100

Life: 7

Creation: 19

Destruction: 12

Existence: 2

Death: 13

These were shocking points, especially his void, fire and wind affinities.

But it was not over yet.

This testing device, designed by Tablos, could find out how good he would likely be in the other types of magic. Because not much was really known about them, it was a short breakdown.

To see this, Geron was forced to push one of the arrows, which, as Jonathan understood them, were used to navigate the testing device.

The affinities here were likely not universal, and, despite every page having only one bar on them, everything needed his own page for reasons Jonathan did not totally understand. Maybe to future proof the thing?

Irrelevant, after a few more waits he knew what his affinities in the other types of magic where:

Corruption: 58

Spiritual: 100

Pseudo-Elemental: 76

These were shocking high numbers, again, especially the spiritual affinity, for the others there were no real comparisons because they generally were not tested.

But Tablos found an explanation that was acceptable to all: “Maybe his high spiritual affinity, a special type of magic that priest should know well, comes from the strange summoning spell used. Maybe he connects him to his summoner similar to how a holy magic user is connected to a holy creature. To make this go as fluent as possible, the spell might use the void to give him a more powerful spiritual affinity and also chooses somebody who already has a high spiritual affinity.”

On this note, everyone left the room, besides Elise, Gerard Wertin, Heras Hager, the Archmage as well as Jonathan.