It's midday at the Riverwood estate where Regal and Anne are currently walking somewhere.
"How exactly do you think one's affinities are tested?", Regal asked to the girl behind him.
"Hmm… trial and error?", Anne responded.
"Oh? How do you mean?"
Anne began to think of how she should word her answer.
"You create a magic circle for a spell for each element and the most powerful and efficient one is your affinity?", Anne said with a questioning tone.
"Perhaps you could do that, but it sounds rather long, doesn't it?", Regal responded with a smile, smug almost.
"Remember the orb you touched back at the royal palace? It was in the room with the appraiser.
That orb measures your quantity and quality of mana, it's quite useful for determining how suited one is to being a mage.", Regal explained while Anne nodded along.
"There's other orbs which work in a similar way, they analyse your body rather than your mana though"
"My body…?", Anne was confused by how that would work, but she also didn't understand how the regular mana orb worked either so it was hardly different.
"Correct, your body converts natural mana in the atmosphere into a certain element, it's like a filter in a sense but it only works well for certain elements.
It's believed that this filter is dependent on your personalily, and it probably is. Babies have been tested for elemental affinities before, but they were always weak, it needs to develop over time as one grows.
Then again, I think it's a bunch of rubbish. They say calm and collected people have the water element, but I don't think that's me at all.", Regal elaborated.
The final remark made Anne giggle which in turn made Regal realise he was talking nonsense.
"A-Ahem!
Anyway, there's also unique affinities that don't really fit into the typical elements.
Honestly it would be unlucky to not have an affinity for a regular element as it takes a lot of time to discover a unique affinity.
There's lucky people like Pamel who happened to be in the right place at the right time to discover his affinity."
'Though, it's not a bad thing to have a unique affinity', Regal thought as he looked at the nervous Anne. It looked as though she was worried that she might have a unique affinity, but they're quite rare.
"Ah! You also might have a body that's good with multiple elements, one will always be better than the other, but it will mean you have more spells available to you", Regal waved his hand around while talking.
"Do you have any other affinities master?", Anne curiously asked.
"Me…? Well, I have a pretty good affinity with wind and fire, but it can't be compared to my water affinity whatsoever. It's better to focus on your strengths…", Regal spoke with slight uncertainty.
'Right… I have other affinities as well, now that I've reached the 8th circle with my water magic, perhaps I should expand to my other affinities', Regal pondered.
They eventually reached a room where Regal stopped, "Wait in here for a moment, I'll need to get the orbs from the storage area".
Anne complied but she also wondered, 'Why doesn't he have a servant do it? He is a noble, right?'.
She entered the room and sat at the table near the entrance.
"UGH!", a grunt could be heard from the window next to her.
"Come on boy! That's hardly enough squats to get those legs hurting!", Kendrick was seen shouting at William.
"Agh! I didn't excercise before now, I swear 30 is the most I can do!", William could be seen shouting back almost with tears.
"Ridiculous, you managed 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups earlier! If you don't stop whining it's another 100 of each!", Kendrick reasoned.
'That's because you made the exact same promise for the other excercises!', perhaps there really was tears running down his face.
Anne started to feel rather thankful that her training wasn't anything like that… but knowing Regal's personality, maybe it wasn't that unlikely to happen in the future.
***
'Couldn't I have just sent a servant to do this?', Regal sighed as he was walking along with multiple orbs in a box being carried behind him with water.
He was too used to doing things himself in his regular journeys that he typically forgets he has servants other than just Pamel.
'I never had my elemental affinities checked after becoming a 6th circle mage, and now I'm an 8th circle… one of the only 8th circles in history at that.
I wonder if any of my affinities have changed?', Regal questioned to himself.
It's possible for affinities to change. No one knows how or why it occurs, but sometimes affinities get worse or better as time goes on.
Regal's body hasn't developed much over 36 years ever since he turned 18. But there was one particular change that he believed might have an affect on his affinities, the 8th circle.
Out of sheer curiousity, he stopped walking and brought the orbs closer to his person. He then one by one touched each of the orbs in the box.
"…"
***
Anne was waiting patiently while watching the others outside when the door suddenly opened.
"I've got the orbs, it's time measure your affinities", Regal stated after barging in.
Anne's eyes sparkled again, excited for another magical phenomena.
He placed the box on the table, and Anne looked over into the box and seemed confused.
"Some of these orbs seem to be glowing already", Anne said.
"Hm? Ah, perhaps there were some faulty ones, don't worry though, there will be a more noticeable shine when you show an affinity. The faint glow is irrelevant", Regal shrugged it off as he walked to the other side of the table.
"Now then, take the orbs out one by one and place them on the table.", Regal pointed at the box while speaking.
Anne nodded and started taking them out.
There were 6 orbs in total, 4 of them were the basic elements of fire, water, wind and earth. The final 2 were lightning and plasma. These were considered the most common affinities, lightning and plasma being slightly more rare but also very similar.
She took 2 orbs out, no reaction, maybe a slight glow in one of them. However the next orb she picked up shined very brightly in a vibrant blue colour.
Regal made a victory pose when he saw this, 'The water element!'.
Anne enjoyed the sight of the shining orb so much that she didn't notice her master acting strange.
"Hehe… this orb shining means you have an affinity for the water element, just like me.
It will shine brightly for a moment but the light will eventually fade, place it down by the others and continue with the rest", Regal ordered will grinning.
'That was a pretty strong shine, maybe water is her strongest affinity', Regal thought while waiting for her to continue.
Anne placed the orb onto the table, the moment she let go of it, the shine started to dissapear and it slowly transformed into a faint glow.
She picked up the next orb which also started to shine, but it was less than half as intense as the water orb. This orb was the earth element orb.
'Hmm… earth pairs best with water compared to the other natural elements. Water often has a way of changing the properties of objects created through earth magic, like absorbing the moisture to make it dry or adding moisture to make it heavy.', Regal analysed.
"It seems you have a slight affinity for earth magic, it could be useful to learn spells for the earth element while you have few magic circles to use. You will gain more options by doing so", Regal explained.
At this point Regal didn't expect any other elemental affinities, even having two of them as a potential mage is rare, it's typically rarer to have a very strong affinity with a particular element. It goes to show how talented Regal and Anne are.
"Well, continue with the rest", he waved his hand and Anne accordingly continued.
She picked out one of the last two orbs, the wind orb. No reaction.
After placing it down she continued for the final orb, the lightning element. There was a reaction, a very strong reaction in fact. The light shining from the lightning orb shone even brighter than the water element.
Rather than be shocked, Regal went into thinking, 'The lightning element… this is probably the strongest affinity I've seen with that element. I'll need to buy grimoire's related to it, this is not something I can personally teach in its entirety'.
Anne was certainly shocked in comparison, the light almost blinded her. She didn't expect an even brighter light to appear after touching the water orb.
"Well, now that that's over with, we better form your first circle.", Regal said rather blatantly. His initial excitement calmed down and now he was back in 'get on with it' mode.
Anne placed down the orb, and just like the water orb, the shine quickly dimmed into a faint glow.
She looked closely at the glow and noticed that the orbs that were originally glowing had stopped and now all that was left was the orbs that reacted to her.
'Isn't that glow the same as how some of the orbs looked at first?'
Anne decided to disregard it since it didn't matter either way, she moved from the table and followed Regal who started walking out of the room.
"Magic circles", Regal said.
Anne had a confused look as she watched her master blurt out a topic out of nowhere.
"One of the most basic principles of magic circles is that you can only summon a certain amount of them.
A 1st circle mage could summon one, a 2nd circle mage could summon two and I myself can summon 8.
This means that there's a limit to the circles you can create, therefore limiting your options in some scenarios. Most importantly, it means you will never achieve the most efficient spell by using multiple elements… normally that is.", Regal went on with his explanation unprompted.
"What I mean is that a single spell at a single point in time will be most powerful by using your strongest element.
But… if you are tactical, you could use different elements at different times, add the environment to the mix and a battle could be turned completely in your favour."
Anne maintained her attention to what Regal was saying, and she understood what he was getting at. Her particular strength in two elements isn't always a good thing, but if she's smart then it can be.
"How do you think a mage increases their number of magic circles?", Regal asked.
"Um… they need enough mana to fill up both their current and next circle?", Anne figured, it was a simple but reasonable idea.
"That's not entirely wrong. But think of this, if a mage at the 1st circle only needs a tenth of their mana to use a single circle, why can't they summon that one circle another nine times?", Regal reasoned. Naturally he knew the answer to his own question, but he was the type to let the pieces of the puzzle fit together themselves.
Anne was stuck. If a 1st circle mage needed to use all their mana just to summon that single circle, they could only use one spell, so they must have more than enough mana to summon the circle multiple times.
But if that's the case, why don't they?
After a moment or so of silence, Regal decided to give the answer.
"It's 'how much mana' you can output at a single point in time.", this answer suddenly caused something to click in Anne's head.
"The mana pathways…", Anne mumbled.
"You got it. When you start, only a certain amount of mana can travel through those narrow pathways, not only will a mage struggle to use multiple circles, it would be so slow that they'd die in any dangerous situation.", Regal explained.
"With that being said, we've passed the difficult step of awakening your mana pathways, now we just need you to create a magic circle"
'Let's see if what she said that day was really true', Regal smirked.