“So,” Ranvir said, rubbing his hands together with a clap, “Let’s check my affinities?”

Kasos laughed as he got up from his chair. “No, you’ve already strained your soul’s capacity for the day.”

“Oh,” Ranvir replied, slumping down in his chair. “Then when?”

Kasos gave him a long look. “I want to say in a few months when you’re recovered enough to retake your foreign power, but I doubt you’ll wait that long. Two weeks, but I will be there to monitor.”

Ranvir nodded excitedly.

Amalia sat Ranvir down across a small table in one of Ione’s smaller rooms. To Ranvir’s eyes, it looked like a storage closet that had been re-purposed at some point, though quite a while ago. An old circular stain from a bucket had ground itself permanently into the floor in one corner and he could see where they’d removed shelves from the wall for extra storage.

More recent light fixtures had also been installed, though a bit of rust was starting to stain the iron, making him think it had been a few years, perhaps due to the humid nature of Limclea.

The table in the center was pushed against the back wall and almost too small to comfortably sit two people opposite each other. The item that took up most of the surface area alleviated the issue a bit since you weren’t required to seat yourself too close.

The device was made of bronze and iron and featured two valleys for his forearms and bars at the end to grab onto, as well as two slots in the center between the dips.

As Amalia sat down, she withdrew her hand from the pouch she’d brought along, revealing a pyramid of red stone, as well as a thin triangle of a deep black rock that seemed to drink the light around it.

Ranvir paused. It didn’t actually react to the light at all; it was his tether-sense it was drawing in. The sensation just made him feel like it was drawing on the light. Amalia slid the red pyramid tip down into the first slot with a click. When she seated the black triangle, the object buzzed once and an energetic static filled Ranvir’s magic senses.

“What’s happening?” He asked, looking at the table warily.

“The affinity reader is warming up,” Amalia said. “The tane helps handle the stress of the mana coursing through it, so the metal doesn’t have to. It’s not perfect, but it extends the longevity. The fyla is binds the ambient mana to the item. You’ll find they are used a lot.”

Ranvir nodded, still glancing at the affinity reader with distrust. The sensation was dying down, and it hadn’t buzzed since. “And this is absolutely necessary?”

“You could pay out of your ass for a diviner to come and take a look.”

Ranvir glanced at Kasos, who nodded. “They are very expensive.”

Sighing, the young man sat down at the table, looking at Amalia across from him. “Grab the bars here, then I will lock the braces in place and we can get started.”

Ranvir laid his arms in the valley and grabbed on as instructed. As Amalia put the copper braces and locked them into place, he cleared his throat and glanced around, the odd pings of electric nervous blue energy going off inside him. The sensation felt weird after so long without. To find that it was tied with his spirit didn’t really surprise him, to be honest. There was some—

The reader buzzed again, this time lingering in the handles. A smirk slid onto Amalia’s face across from him as he tried to let go of the handles and found his hands unresponsive.

“What?” Ranvir looked to Kasos before returning his gaze to the sentinel. “What’s going on? Why are you smil— Ah!” A pinprick of pain flashed through Ranvir’s forearms in a flash of white, burning out as fast as it appeared. “What the—“ he choked off before another ping rushed into him.

“Relax,” Kasos said, giving Amalia a lightly berating glance, “She’s just messing with you. The machine is testing your affinities by withdrawing tiny amounts of ambient mana and testing your response to it. It will then tattoo the answers onto your forearm.”

“Tattoo?” Ranvir’s voice pitched up as he looked from between them. He’d seen a few people traveling through Eriene which had the things, he’d never seen one before then, though he’d heard of similar things down South back home. “What, no…” he trailed off, narrowing his eyes to glare at Kasos. The old man didn’t have any marks on his forearm, nor did Amalia, Ione, or Elpir.

Kasos chuckled deeply, his entire torso bobbing up and down as another zip moved through Ranvir, causing what remained of the muscles in his arm to twitch. Amalia was laughing as well.

“So, how long does this take?” Ranvir asked, “Usually, at least?”

“Testing for the basic affinities usually takes around five minutes,” Amalia slapped a hand down on the center of the reader. “But this monstrosity can also check most of the major combinations.”

“Major combinations?” Ranvir asked, “Like steam and mud?”

Amalia nodded and looked to Kasos, “How much does he know about basic and combined elements?”

“I don’t know.”

“Api’s balls, what have you been doing with him, then?”

“Hey, don’t blame me!” Kasos crossed his arms. “Did you see him when I arrived here? He’d wasted away. The boy needed more physiological reconstitution than technical education, okay?”

“You were probably talking about some spirit shit again, weren’t you?”

Kasos put a hand to his chest and let out a sound as if he’d been stabbed. “I can’t believe you. Me? You really think I would waste the boy’s time like that? Especially when the cause of his injury was spirit related? Oh, I must be such a fool.”

“Can we get back on topic, please?” Ranvir asked, another twinge running up his forearms. “I’ve been studying in my own time.”

“So it’s you who left the library in such a mess?” Amalia asked. “Alright then, spill. Let’s hear what you’ve learned.”

Ranvir licked his lips. “Eight basic mana types which compose all other types. Fire, Water, Air, Stone, Light, Shadow, Ether, and Necrotic,” Amalia nodded along, so he continued. “Together, they can combine into other types of mana, like tree mana or magma mana.”

Amalia raised a finger, “Sort of—“ Ranvir yelled as his forearms lit on fire and a searing started in his chest. Instinctively, he delved into his soul, following the pain. Entering his Fundament, Ranvir found a trail of purple space flickering up from the egg still resting there, awaiting the creation of the required space.

The young student left his soul gasping for breath as the pain abated so suddenly it yanked him out with it. He opened his eyes to find Kasos holding Amalia back from where she’d been reaching for the affinity reader.

“That was the reader testing your space affinity,” Kasos said. “It’s not designed to be used by people already trained with an element, so your affinity is higher than it should ever feasibly be, except perhaps for the sekethi’s nature related elements. There won’t be such a huge reaction again.”

Ranvir slowly got his breath under control as he shook his head repeatedly, feeling his hair cling to his forehead. “That was… Uncomfortable.”

“You scared the shit out of me,” Amalia said, sitting down slowly and breathing with intention. “Let’s… Do you need a break or should we get back on topic?” Ranvir just nodded for her to go on. “The eight basic elements don’t combine into new types of mana. There are only ever eight types of mana—“

“Some scholars even claim there’s only one,” Kasos interrupted.

Amalia rolled her eyes, “Common convention says there are eight, which combine to affect stuff they don’t usually would react with, or conjure as.”

“How do you make space mana?” Ranvir asked, furrowing his brow.

“We don’t know,” Kasos said. “That’s the biggest detractor for there only being eight basic types. There are too many elements that can’t easily be broken down into their component types. Sure you can pick apart metal mana into constituent parts of stone and fire, but the Hestian Plane’s folk who use metal mana that’s a purely focused version of stone says otherwise.”

Ranvir looked down at his elbows and frowned in thought. He dismissed their arguments as hearsay rather than research and looked to the core of the idea. “So the answer, for now, is that maybe there are more than eight types, but also maybe not? But why is that important to recognize?” he answered before any of the others could. “Ability combinations. Synergies, right? It’s important to recognize that there are many small levers you can pull when it comes to elements in order to facilitate proper synergy between Abilities.”

“Uh,” Amalia said, “That makes sense, I guess.” she didn’t quite phrase it as a question, but the glance at Kasos closed the gap.

“What do you know about Abilities?” Kasos asked.

Ranvir blew out a long breath. “There are about as many of them as grains of sand in a desert, but synergy makes them truly shine. I read a story that spoke of a sentinel,” he nodded to Amalia, “who could never get his synergies right. If made his ability with one, then it would fall out with the other—“

“Until, in a drunk stupor, he changed from water- to river mana and woke up to find all three of Abilities in full synergy,” Amalia finished for him.

“My story claims it was in a bet against one of his friends, I think,” Ranvir replied. “But that’s true?”

“Elements and Abilities are finicky at the best of times, though some mad people claim there’s a pattern to it,” Kasos said with a nod.

As it turned out, Ranvir’s affinities were much as expected. His space affinity was literally off the charts, with obsidian and ice coming in as incredibly distant seconds and thirds. It looked to him like he had no ability with any element outside of space, but Kasos assured him that his other numbers were more normal when space was removed from the equation.

What surprised them all was that his affinities fell incredibly strongly in line with his heritage as a foreigner. The closer any element was to one of the six Vednar elements, the closer to normal the numbers were.

He’d been pretty set on picking stone as his Amanaris element and seeing how closely aligned with obsidian’s number it was relieved of some doubt, though the absurd number of his space affinity suggested that affinity rose with practice.