Excerpt from the third draft of An Earthling’s Guide to the Larger Universe

Affinity Classification: Basic Affinities

“Basic” affinities are the ones that are the most common for a new mage. For most worlds, these are: Fire, Water, Air, Earth (sometimes Stone or Sand), Metal, Wood (sometimes Plant), Flesh (sometimes Healing), Blood, and Bone. Light, Darkness, Ice, and Lightning are also known to be basic affinities on many worlds.

These are generally the “elements” you can see every day, all around you; that’s what makes them “basic”. They are not simple and they are not powerless. Some extremely powerful mages have only one or two “basic” Affinities that they have worked with until they are masters of the element.

They can be split to become even more specific (“specialized”) or combined to become “advanced” affinities. There are also a number of Affinities that are simply not on this list; those that aren’t on this list usually start at “advanced”, but it’s an arbitrary classification.

Many worlds have one or two common Affinities that aren’t on the “basic” list. So far, it’s obvious that Death and Undeath (they aren’t the same Affinity, though they’re related) are unusually common for Earth. Life, however, does not seem unusually common. Instead, Healing is unusually common; far more common than Flesh, Blood or Bone.

The current testing does not appear to catch the Technology Affinity, probably because the Tutorial is deliberately at a handcrafted technological level. I am expecting that Affinity to be common.

It’s still too early to say if any of the more esoteric Affinities will be common enough to be considered “basic” for Earth.

Serenity picked up the remnants of Aide’s purchases. They fit in one large box, now; the satellite TV dish was the largest remnant, but it wasn’t the only thing that Aide had wanted only part of.

After that, there wasn’t much to do. He sat and watched the cave for a few minutes, but that was incredibly boring. He only had a couple of hours left before dinner, anyway.

4:13 PM

Yeah, if he wanted to eat at the Settlement, he’d need to leave in a couple hours. Of course, if there wasn’t a way down for soldiers, he’d need to stay here. It was probably leftovers from dinner for him tonight; that would be better than MREs.

Serenity sighed. There wasn’t really enough space down here to work out, and he couldn’t shift form without disturbing Aide’s test. That didn’t leave him with many options.

Examining the portal magically might be a good distraction. He’d made good progress already at understanding the spellform and Affinity variations; all he needed to trace out was what signal it would send out. Or maybe when it would send a signal? If they weren’t all continuously detectable, that would explain why he’d seen relatively few portals.

He was pretty sure he hadn’t seen this one, now that he thought about it. The point near here was specifically labeled “Serenity,” wasn’t it? That meant the Settlement had some sort of signal. It was possible he saw that one only because it was his, though; ownership could have interesting effects. Investigating it was probably less useful than investigating the portal.

He added it to his list of things to look into anyway. Being able to find a city crystal at a distance would be useful. It would be useful even if it was only his own settlement; having a point of reference could be used for a number of things. He might even be able to use it to improve his own distance teleports once he started trying them.

He wasn’t skilled enough to try yet; not with his reduced mana pool on Earth. On another planet, maybe, but only if he knew the destination extremely well. Distance made everything harder.

Serenity opened up his mana sight and stared at the portal. This time, he wanted to examine the topology idea in more detail. It was closely related to both Spacetime and Liminality, but far closer to Liminality. How did topology result in a location here? What made the topology the same?

Liminality required edges and distinctions. That was the core of it.

Topology didn’t. Topology maintained what was there, but didn’t depend on shape. Distance and space were almost the opposite.

It was not a simple Affinity to use, but it was an interesting one. Serenity could see possibilities in it, but without a lot more study he knew he wouldn’t understand it well enough to actually use it. It should make some things that were normally very expensive much, much cheaper. It was hard to tell if portals was one of them, since this one was item-created and might be reinforced by the Voice.

It seemed likely that it was a better Affinity than SpaceTime for permanent portals. SpaceTime said by default that two locations were not the same, after all; a SpaceTime portal was making them next to each other. A topology portal might say that in some shape they were already close together. Establishing that link seemed likely to be expensive, but maintaining it might well be relatively cheap.

Serenity could see how it might work, but he was nowhere near ready to do it himself. That would take far more study to get the Concept high enough to have a chance at gaining the Affinity. He simply didn’t understand it even remotely well enough.

Serenity stepped back from the portal and rubbed his forehead. He’d learned something about topology and more about liminality, but he was no closer to being able to detect portals. It seemed like there ought to be something there, but something to do with how the topology was - made? Transformed? He wasn’t certain. What he was certain of was that he had a headache.

It was 5:52 PM. A bit early for a break, since he probably wouldn’t get dinner until after Doyle returned; he had more than an hour. Unfortunately, he needed a break.

“Hey, over here! This is the right direction, isn’t it?”

“Looks like it.”

Voices drifted in from one of the passageways near the portal. Serenity turned towards it, then called out. “I can hear you! You should be close!”

Sounds could echo a long way in a cave, but the fact that he could hear them meant there was a connection. If they could hear him, they’d know they were close as well.

Serenity watched the passage he’d heard the voices from. It was only seven minutes later when he finally saw the light they were using. “I can see your light. You’re just about here.” He made his way to the entrance to the cave to meet them.

Right after the light revealed Serenity, the person carrying it stopped and seemed to hop backwards. The second person turned to look. The words he spoke weren’t any of the options Serenity expected. “You have wings?”

Serenity moved his wings a bit self-consciously. “Yes. It’s more comfortable. Come on in, the portal’s this way.”

“You didn’t have wings up above.”

Serenity shook his head. “I can hide them. I usually do when I’m around people, they bother people and get in the way. But it’s more comfortable, so I had them out while I was down here. Would you like me to hide them?”

Neither of them answered immediately. Serenity took that to mean that they’d be more comfortable if he seemed more human. As he was thinking that, Aide commented.

Status Update: Pausing scan series

Serenity suppressed a chuckle at that before shifting as he left the light from the soldiers’ headlamps. Aide seemed to agree with him.

Status Update: Scan capability available. Resuming scan series

Serenity hadn’t been certain if the new technology would carry over to his human shape, but it seemed like it did. That was convenient, since he was confident there would be more people present soon. He was going to be spending more time in human shape than he preferred.

At least it was good practice.

The pair of soldiers exploring the cave system exchanged a glance, then one marked the wall while the other followed Serenity into the portal room. Once he saw the portal, he pulled out a phone and called the surface.

It didn’t take long to start getting soldiers down into the portal room. It turned out that the route only took about half an hour to walk, once they knew what it was. Only about twenty minutes of that was in the cave system itself.

Serenity was confident that wherever the exit was, it was reinforced just as well as what he could see over the top of the cave. That was where most people would probably gather, but Serenity was certain some would stay over the cave, especially scientists with larger equipment that wouldn’t fit in the cave.

By the time things were set up enough for Serenity to be comfortable leaving the area to head to Serenity Settlement, Aide’s initial scan series was done and it was well past dinner time.

Someone other than Doyle had clearly cooked. The goat was dry and stringy; it seemed closer to jerky than properly cooked meat. It still tasted surprisingly good to Serenity, but then he was very hungry; hungry enough that after finishing the food Doyle brought, he asked to have one of the MREs as well. It seemed that regenerating essence required fuel.

It was too bad the portal wasn’t on a ley line.

“Did you find anything out while you were down there? Looks like you didn’t use everything.” Dr. Mattingly greeted Serenity with a question as he finished up his second try at dinner.

“The portal’s based on topology. I think. It’s not what I expected to find; I’ve heard that a Space affinity is the most common for portals.” It was certainly what he’d used to teleport back on Tzintkra - well, SpaceTime, but they were strongly related. “I think that might be because of how long it’s supposed to stay active. If I’m reading it right, topology means it has a higher activation cost but lower maintenance cost. I don’t have a topology affinity, unfortunately.”

Dr. Mattingly seemed puzzled. “Topology Affinity? I thought Affinities were elements and stuff like that.”

“You can have an Affinity to anything.” Serenity usually used the Drunk Dragon as an example, but this time the tiny lizard Greenstick popped into Serenity’s thoughts and he smiled. “For example, a beastmaster might develop an Affinity to insects. That Affinity would make it easier to work with them and guide them, especially magically. The Concept would include things like proper care for them; I don’t have any like that so I’m not sure what else.”

What was the best way to explain? An example, maybe? Not the wind one; as impressive as it was, it was more an example of flexibility than different Affinities. They were here studying portals; Serenity couldn’t manage a portal, but he did know of two ways to teleport. Maybe that would work. He started building the pattern; it’d take longer than he liked, but a good example was worth the time.

No, he knew three ways if he counted his boots. He’d have to wait on the boots, though; he was in human form, after all.

“There are a lot of ways to do things. For example, I know a couple of ways to do a very short-range teleport. They’re both mana-hungry, but-” Serenity pushed mana flavored with his SpaceTime Affinity into the spellform and disappeared from in front of the scientist, reappearing behind her. “- they do both work. They work differently, though.”

She spun around, facing towards Serenity’s new location. She started to say something, but Serenity kept talking as he built the next spellform.

“That one was a Space-based teleport; I essentially told the universe to temporarily make the two locations the same, then changed which one of them I was standing in. I have some boots from the Tutorial that use a similar method; it’s the most common one I’m aware of. It’s very useful for short ranges, but at longer ranges I believe it has to be portals; I don’t really understand portals that well yet. An alternative, though, is something like-”

Serenity pushed Liminality-laced mana into the spellform. He felt it start to sing, waiting for him to cross the threshold he’d identified. Serenity walked forward and entered the pavilion tent he’d been sitting in before, knowing that it meant he’d disappear right in front of the doctor. “-this.” Serenity appeared, stepping out from the entrance to the pavilion tent immediately next to the one he’d entered. He’d deliberately chosen to exit within Dr. Mattingly’s range of vision. “That’s a different Affinity; it requires a threshold to teleport between. I can tell topology is sort of like that, but it’s not the same.”

Dr. Mattingly stared at him.

Serenity decided to indirectly ask for a response. “Topology is a specialized Affinity. It’s probably useful for a lot of things, but I’m not sure what they are.”

Dr. Mattingly continued staring; he overheard a mutter. Something about quantum effects?