“So… you are telling me that the reason one of the instructors is out cold and only now waking up is because of those little stones you were collecting from the river?” Head asks the group standing in front of him.

They were back in the camp, it took them a while to clean up their casualty, to work out how to get out of the experimental area and then drag/carry Left Foot back to the training camp without any of the other trainees seeing them. In the end Reiva had to go and get Left Hand to carry Left Foot in while they were diverting attention with a very public reprimand.

Once that was over with, Head and the team went back into his pavilion for a lengthier debriefing.

Everyone apart from Alex turns to look at Andra for guidance on how to answer this question. Andra on the other hand was trying to catch Alex’s eye so he could take over as the “inventor” of the items. Maybe not the best way to lead but as she was learning, leading is about making mistakes and learning from them, so she would learn from this too.

Alex finally looked at Andra, nodded and met Head’s look, “Sir, that is so. I do not know why the stones acted so differently when Left Foot used them when compared to when I tried them in the river earlier.”

Head appraised Alex then looked at Andra and minutely shook his head as if telling her that what she did was not the way to go about being a leader. Properly reprimanded, Andra blushed and bowed her head promising not to throw a team mate under the carriage again.

Once he looked back at Alex he continued, “I believe I know why the affect of the stones by Left Foot was so much more “active” than when you tried it. And you should all learn from this too” he swept his eyes across the rest of the team who were paying very close attention now, “The reason there was a difference is due to his affinities.”

Alex was surprised, he didn’t think that would be the reason, he thought maybe it was an interaction between the oxygen in the air propagating the fireball further in the shockwave of the pressure wave. I guess it could still be that but I never considered affinities might have something to do with it.

“Do you know what affinities are?” Head looks at Reiva to prompt her to answer.

“Sir, I believe like the word’s meaning, it’s the ease with which one can perform a magic with its element. For example, a person with affinity in the 60s will be able to perform similar magic as someone with affinities in the 30s but with a lot less mana used.” Reiva attempts to explain her partial knowledge.

Head angles his head to the left as if considering and slowly nods. “Yes, that is part of it, but that’s very much a surface explanation. There is a deeper reason for the different and is also the reason for the difference in effect too.” He sweeps his eyes back to meet Alex’s and continues. “You see, what Trainee Reiva has said is indeed correct, someone with a higher affinity will find it easier to cast the same spells versus someone with a higher affinity but it is not a thing of talent but multiplication.”

Alex is stunned, multiplication and not talent? What does that mean? Can you be extremely knowledgeable and talented with an element and never have enough … what does it multiply anyway? Mana is mana… not like you can create something from nothing can you?

Head looks on and starts to smile slightly before smoothing his face again, be stern, be stern. “I see you are confused. I am sure you are thinking about mana as any student that just joined the Academy. That mana is a constant immutable substance that doesn’t change. “1 mana is 1 mana is 1 mana” right?” he enquires of the team with a glance.

Alex has a thoughtful look on his face, Stefan is confused by the conversation, Reiva is trying to understand but doesn’t quite get it; Andra is almost there trying to remember something her mother said on the subject years ago and Vale is looking on with boredom, he is going to be a Guardian and doesn’t need mana for anything.

Head sees all this and follows all their thoughts by the animation of their faces, “Wow we need to work on these kid’s poker faces some time before they joint he international society in the Academy…”

Head resets himself again to look at Alex, “So have you got an explanation for me yet? No? Okay, I will give you a clue. What is 1 mana and how do we measure it?” he asks Alex and sees the cogs start to turn as if a missing piece was finally slotted into the mechanism.

Alex has a look of wonder in his eyes and starts talking to think through his reasoning, “Well, I think what you mean by that is that what we see as a unit of 1 is a measurement done by the Admins and is mutable but it is only mutable once we can start converting neutral mana into elemental mana during puberty.” He pauses, looks up at the ceiling of the tent and continues. “From your clue I can surmise that the meaning of 1 is mutable. Do the affinities give you more mana of a specific type? Bu then wouldn’t your mana pool be all over the place, it wouldn’t be a single number any more but however many affinities you have.”

Head nods at that as if agreeing with his reasoning, “You are getting there, of course some of this is not understood by us either, as an example – why do we not have multiple mana pools when we develop to convert elemental mana. Let me give you another clue, someone as smart as you should be able to understand it. What is the difference between neutral mana and Elemental mana?”

Alex’s hears the clue and stops rubbing at his head, he sharply looks up and asks, “Can you tell me how high Left Foot’s air and fire affinities are?” Head seems to pause at this and considers. Eventually he replies “I can tell you that he has more than 40 in air and more then 50 in fire. I hope that is enough for you.”

Alex ponders this for a second then replies “I think I understand! Elemental Mana is more effective than neutral mana at the job of the element it is. So, fire mana is better at working with fire than neutral mana. I assume that once you start converting neutral mana into elemental mana you are no longer able to choose the mana type used? Path of least resistance if you know what I mean.”

Head keep looking at Alex silently wishing the trainee to continue and work it out for himself. “Then that means Left Foot had to use fire mana to charge the fire stone and air mana to charge the air stone. And if the effectiveness of elemental mana increases depending on the affinity then… From the viewed effects it must be 10 affinity to 1x increase. So 20 affinity would be 2x increase in efficiency…”

Head nods at that and interrupts, “Yes, if it was 10 to 10 or 10 to 100 then you would have destroyed the mountain with your little stone. Sorry for interrupting you, I think Vale was falling asleep and I needed a way to shock him awake there. Please continue.”

Everyone looks to their right to see Vale pale as a sheet from that little “shock”.

“Ahem, as I was saying,” Alex continues, “As the conversion rate is 10 affinity to 1x increase in efficiency then Left foot had more than 4 times efficiency with air and more than 5 times efficiency with fire. No wonder the effects were so different. So, the 30 of so mana pushed in at activation was the cause of the difference as the rest of the mana siphoned from the air wouldn’t be affected. That is still something I hadn’t considered.”

Head nods his head in affirmation, “That’s correct, there are some misconceptions in there that you need to work out yourself to become a better mage in the future and I won’t get into that now.” He continues while meeting the eyes of everyone else in the group. “I will let you use these stones for now as you have neutral mana but Alex, be aware that they will become useless later. You can’t alter the amount of mana needed to fracture the enchantment and release the energy stored but a real mage can change the amount of mana they feed into a spell to either produce a small fire ball the size of your fist, or if your affinity is high enough, a big fireball the size of a house.”

Alex nods his head, he had also considered this and many more things but his knowledge of runes is too small still, he didn’t even know about the storage or transfer runes before Wendy had to show him and its not like there are easily accessible books for this either.

Alex looks up again with another question, “Sir I originally wanted to use Light elemental runes instead of fire but I did not know them yet so I had to choose fire as an alternative. If its Light and wind could it still be useful in the future? It is supposed to be anti-personnel mass stun instead of an offensive attack.”

Head stops whatever he was thinking about and looked back at Alex, “Mass stun you say? How would light and sound do that? Wouldn’t you need to hit them with something to stun them? Like a rock to the head for example?”

Ahhh damn too smart for my own good, slowly, vaguely now tip toes around this.

“Well… Sir, I remember going to the crafting section of town and hearing those big mechanical hammers hitting anvils and if you get too close they make your ears ring and make you feel a little unsteady right? And have you ever had someone turn enchant lights on too quickly in a dark room? The way your eyes suddenly sting and make you try to close them to protect them?” Alex continues as he tries to judge Head’s reaction to his explanation. “Well after our fight with the Yeti I thought we needed a way to slow it down or stun it so we can get away next time instead of almost dying.”

Head nod at this reasoning and takes over, “So you thought if you combined the two affects you could create something cheap and easy to carry to help your team to get out of dangerous situations?”

Hearing this reasoning Alex starts nodding his head. Its as good of an explanation as any, I can’t tell them that I was trying to reproduce a flashbang, now could I?

“Yes sir, it was exactly that and I also thought they could be spread behind us as we ran away to catch the pursuer unawares. They glow like the sun when they are about to go off but they are still going to work even if the chaser knows about them right?”

“Okay I understand what happened now, I will talk to Left Foot about this and his behaviour after hearing your warnings. You don’t have to worry about him punishing you for this.” Head wrapped up on the debriefing. “Now please leave the pavilion, I have a report to write about this.”

All together the team replies with a hearty “Yes Sir”, they turn around and leave the pavilion with relieved expressions. They didn’t get punishment duty for any of it!