The air over Celosia was controlled, but Dwergbank had one of several coveted landing spaces in the city, right on their own roof. Taylor waited under a sky that threatened snow but never delivered. After an hour, he spotted the first sign: a white blotch beneath the cloud cover in the east. The blotch grew and grew, until it resolved into a pair of impressive wings with a horse suspended between them. A tiny rider sat on the horse's back, barely visible from the ground.

As the pegasus approached, Taylor realized that the rider wasn't small. Rather, the horse was absurdly large, bigger than any common draft horse. The mount circled over the bank, losing altitude until it was slightly higher than the roof, almost running along the nearby rooftops. It banked toward Dwergbank and flared its wings for the final deceleration and touchdown. Taylor could feel the difference in his feet as the building's structure accepted two tons of magical horseflesh. The creature didn't clop-clop so much as thud-thud its way across the roof to the loading zone nearest to Taylor. The rider, a perfectly normal-sized human woman, perched her flying goggles on her head and groaned. She produced a stairway from her inventory and dismounted as if she were going lame from arthritis, one step at a time, while holding on to the railing, then hobbled in Taylor's direction, the final leg of a burdensome journey. She stopped at the line between the "loading zone" and the "receiving zone".

"Please tell me you are Taylor, once known as Bilius d'Mourne."

"I am."

The porter convulsed, squeezed her entire body, and Taylor's long-lost satchel popped out of her inventory and thudded to the ground, heavier than the pegasus. She stood up straight, hands in the small of her back, and groaned again.

"By all the mighty! I've moved mansions that weighed less!"

Class activity thrummed through the Porter, but Taylor was too excited to care. He lifted the satchel easily, mourned the cut strap, and opened the main compartment. Mobile workbench. Tool boxes. Treasure boxes. Research box. Books and more books. The Art and Practice of Magic in nine volumes. Myths of Strength. The Arcaic poetry Ophelia had gifted him. Dwarven histories. Beastkin anatomy. Stacks of reading material he had missed, craved for weeks!

The second pocket mostly contained entwood and crystalized antler. He had utterly forgotten he owned a sailboat, of all things! But there it was, neatly stowed, waiting for him. And he had a massive lake at his disposal …

Taylor hugged the satchel to his chest and squeezed his eyes shut, so happy he could barely keep from dancing.

A second package dropped next to him: a box full of mail. It looked like everyone he'd been writing to had written him back. Another reason to be happy.

"That's some enchantment you've got there." She rolled her neck and worked her shoulders.

"A man has to protect his books," said Taylor, eyes still shut with joy.

"Sure he does. Sign here." She shoved a clipboard at him and gave him a strange look while he signed. She took the top sheet as soon as he was done. "And here, for the mail."

As soon as he was done signing, Taylor stored his temporary bag and the box of mail into his satchel and jumped off the roof. Technically, "airspace" didn't start until sixty feet from the ground, and he wanted to get to his hotel without waiting on bridge traffic.

On the outside, the Regional Inn was a dingy structure best avoided, sandwiched between apartments in a predominantly arcaic neighborhood that looked poor, but wasn't. On the inside, Taylor rented an entire suite nicer than his room at the Malachite. The staff were more helpful, and spirit companions were welcome. Even the crêpes were better. More importantly, Taylor felt at home surrounded by arcaic people. For one thing, they were less likely to attack him randomly.

He almost unpacked his divine figures first and set up his shrine — it had been weeks since he talked to the gods — but he prioritized a few books to entertain his friends and the box of mail. Jalil played his pontus with a dampener, to keep from bothering the neighbors, while the other three spirits lounged around the suite, reading and eating room service.

Taylor tackled his correspondence, starting with the most recent letter each person had sent. Kasper was excited about his trip. Maestro Nelis wrote to ask if the winter event was still happening. Ophelia was in Temer and invited him to stop by. Curator Jane was busy unraveling a network of petty graft among farm suppliers owned by the Augbergs.

His fellow researchers were making progress.

Where do you get such unique materials? Don't tell us! At least not in writing.

We've been running tests on magicians with dual mana types, exposing them to materials with the same attributes. We found something interesting: dual-attribute materials react very strongly to someone who also has both properties. We've always assumed that if a person had a weak water/air mana combination, they were a weak magician.

But, if you give that magician a stalk of songthorn (thank you for that very much, by the way), the flowers will sing their little heads off for the right magician. But here's the interesting part: you can't account for their reaction as the sum of the magician's two weak elements. Not even close. The whole is several times greater than the sum of its parts.

Hendrika asked, What if there is another, unknown attribute between the two? But, as we worked our way through testing all the dual-attribute magicians we could find (read, all who were willing to admit they were "weak" magicians), we discovered plenty of them were lopsided. Their air mana would be twice as strong as their water mana, for example.

And that led us to a new theory. What if there are no discrete attributes? Perhaps, what we think of as mana attributes are merely points on a continuum of mana possibilities? Air mana blends into water mana as yellow blends into green by minute degrees. All those stories you hear about magicians who start out disadvantaged by weak, dual-attribute mana but turn into powerful wizards could be bunk. They were never disadvantaged in the first place, except by other people's expectations. It makes you wonder how many promising careers were never begun.

Looked at this way, it is easy to trace the correct sequence of attributes in a line. Earth, Water, Air, Fire, Light, Force, Healing, etc.. I've included a variety of graphs, but our research would benefit from a deeper sample.

There is a significant hole in this theory: it does not explain the cases where someone with strong water magic, for example, also exhibits very weak healing magic. You see this up and down the continuum, always with the same pairs or trios of attributes, and we don't know why. Hendrika suggested a corkscrew arrangement, where the continuum climbs like a staircase, with the step for water directly above the step for healing. That explains the frequent pairs, but not the rarer trios.

PS: I'm enclosing a funny material you might like, something very rare but not exactly valuable. More of a curiosity. The seller calls it a "monster detector", but it's just a mineral that lights up near mana beasts. One good curio deserves another, don't you think?

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Taylor found the box belonging to the letter and opened it. Inside was a large quartz crystal with a phantom crystal inside it. It was a phenomenon he didn't see much, but it happened when a large crystal had defined layers with different levels of impurities. He was about to examine it closer, but it lit up so bright it practically blinded him.

Taylor shut the box, and the light died down.

He opened the box and, after a heartbeat or two, the crystal lit up.

He turned on Riverstone, and the crystal went dark.

He turned off Riverstone, and the crystal lit.

With a trembling hand, Taylor reached for his mask (there had been no reason to wear it in the company of his spirits) and covered his face.

The crystal dimmed, but did not completely go out. A faint light lingered.

He held the crystal next to different areas of his body. When he put it next to his ear, it got brighter. It wasn't interested in his hands, feet, or torso. It only cared about his face.

Briefly, he wondered if he could get rid of the curse entirely by skinning his own face and regrowing it. That might be worth a try, but only after running more tests. The problem would be the ears.

"Saria?"

"Yes?"

"Do I seem like a monster to you?"

"No, Taylor! You're not at all like a monster." Saria looked up from a copy of Spirit Realm, Spirit People that she had been reading and laughing at. "What brought this on?"

Jalil stopped playing. "You're more like a mana beast." He started plucking octaves on his strings.

"Definitely mana beast," added Tanya, "when your mask is off."

He shot to his feet. They were only telling him this now?

"And, none of you mind?"

"Why would we?" Premi was splayed on a bed in her feathered dwarf form. "There's not much difference between mana beasts and spirits. We're," she waved one feathered arm vaguely around at the ceiling, "existential cousins. Sometimes you find a nice one and can tame it."

Jalil's plucking fingers accelerated on his strings. "Great spirits usually keep a few around."

He'd been circling the answer for months, round and round, trying to extend his mana sensing for spirits and the divine. But he hadn't pushed far enough. He needed to go higher. Or lower, depending on which direction was up. Only to have the answer mailed to him, then delayed in the post because he was effectively in hiding.

He gripped the quartz with white knuckled frustration as too many thoughts jammed together so tightly he couldn't unpack them. He literally had the answer in his hand. He was right. It was a mana problem. But it was a type of mana he couldn't sense. He needed a rock to tell him what his curse was.

"All right, mister, time for a break." Calm hands pried the crystal from him, put his mask on, and pressed his satchel into his hands. "We're all going out to eat greasy street food and watch a show. There's something called Girls Girls Girls down the street."

Taylor went along dumbly, letting his friends drag him to food carts, some of them worse than others, and an hour-long raucous dance revue that wouldn't be age-appropriate for several more years. The fun of it was watching Tanya's slow realization that there weren't any men to go with these women, and tender romance would not be blooming on stage. Mainly, the girls knew creative ways to dance that showed off their underwear.

It was dark when the show let out, and they picked their way toward the hotel, shoulder-to-shoulder with the after-after-work crowd finding their various ways home. The street was packed with carriages transporting well-dressed humans who came to this part of the city for entertainment but wouldn't be caught dead spending the night. His friends chatted and laughed about the show, the wide variety of undergarments displayed, and agreed with Tanya that it could have used more men.

The chill air had promised winter all day, and it finally delivered. Scattered, downy flakes drifted by, lit by street lights, carried along by the cold wind funneled between buildings, and then lifted up again. The flakes that touched him stole away the fever of close-packed crowds and woke his skin. It was a taste, a tease, of the season to come, a come-hither flash of winter's underskirt.

Back at the hotel, he paused before writing. He didn't like leaning on Curator Jane for footwork, but she was the best person for the job. When people called him a monster, he always took it as just name-calling. Now, he thought there might be more to it.

Dear Meltissa,

I'm in Celosia, getting mail again, and I recovered my satchel. I can't say I've worked out everything with the church just yet, but we're going to meet about it and see what happens. But that's a worry for another day.

I need your help with something. I need you to look up Cadmius, the paladin who attacked me, and see how he's doing. He got tagged with Oathbreaker, even though it wasn't his oath he broke. He lost his class and his job. Maybe he collects the amputated hands of innocents and deserves what he got. Or, maybe, he's a nice guy who made a very bad mistake. I'd like to know which.

This isn't purely altruism. Ask him about the incident. What did he think at the time? Does he still think that? Very importantly, does he have Monster Sense or Mana Sense skills or something similar? If so, what's their range? How can they be blocked? Are they more effective with some monsters than others? I need to know whatever he knows about his relevant skills. That would be a huge help.

A long time ago, we talked about the day I was born, and you said a midwife was involved. I'd like you to send whatever information you have on her, even if it's vague. Maybe I can sneak in and out of Rossignol without The Dread Furbag noticing.

Be careful out there. Call me if you need me. Don't die.

Taylor

He had put this off for a long time. He kept telling himself he needed to get stronger, wasn't independent enough to make the journey, or he had to avoid Rossignol Court at all costs. That was all true, but he had another reason to hesitate. If the midwife had answers, they were likely to be the unpleasant kind. He wasn't sure he wanted to know.

How likely was it that Bilius d'Moune just happened to be both cursed and brain-dead right when the gods needed a vessel for their hand-picked soul? Not very. The thought had been sneaking up on him for a long time that his curse had a purpose. It wasn't hard to guess why — he needed only to look at the results. It isolated him from humans and drove him into the company of arcaics and spirits.

But if that were all true, then why put him in a human body? That was a harder question. He doubted the midwife could answer that one, and he knew the gods never would.

He wrote a second, much shorter letter to his research partners. Their next scheduled meeting by mirror was ten days away, so a letter should arrive a few days earlier than that. He was too excited not to write.

Hendrika and Varda,

Fantastic work. It's the kind of theory that's so simple, nobody thinks of it for a thousand years. I think we're on to something.

Also, harmonics. If you liken mana to sound instead of light, then resonance at multiples of two and three makes sense. We still don't know what attributes are – we're just inventing a better way to describe them – but this is progress.

Satisfied with the state of his correspondence, he put the letters aside for tomorrow's post.

Months ago, he had tried to make a new magic system based on Langtree's deeply flawed model of attributes. Now he had a new model to base his system on. Taylor pulled a small work table, tools, and tempered silver from his satchel and arranged his long-missed workspace.

If it worked, the system would be a minimal one focused on analyzing mana. It might not sound like much, but it could become a uniquely powerful tool. He laid out a clean sheet of paper and sharpened a drafting quill.

He was about to pry open the secrets of this world with a few simple tools, creatively applied. It was his favorite game.

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