Meditation had never been Riordan’s thing, not really, but he was getting some serious crash courses in its importance to active mages. Kwaku, his last pack’s shaman, had taught all of the team how to do the simple breathing meditations that enhanced magical regeneration, but now Riordan was trying something different.

As much as he hated going somewhere shared to do something so private, Riordan settled himself into a corner of the shielded stone workspace in Frankie’s magical workroom. The closest Riordan had to a personal workspace was a stone prayer labyrinth in the spirit realm, located in a certain tree’s glade. That space was literally created for Riordan, but there was no way in fuck Riordan was experimenting there, not with how reactive the spirit realm could be. At least here in Frankie’s workroom, any magical spillover would be contained if he fucked something up.

Besides, Riordan had been squeaking through his time since gaining the spirit affinity by brute forcing his castings, something the spirit realm facilitated at the cost of unexpected side effects. If he ever wanted a hope of getting real control over his magic, Riordan needed to spend time working on his foundations here in the physical realm.

He felt stiff and awkward sitting on the ground, the floor hard against his butt even through one of Frankie’s many cushions. His mind wandered, catching on noises and sensations and thoughts and basically anything that wasn’t what he was supposed to be doing. How the hell did shaman do this without falling asleep? Or murdering someone? Sitting still was making Riordan irritated, in no small part because he was so bad at it.

Riordan growled, falling out of the proper seated stance to lean back against the wall. He brought his knees up before him and braced his elbows against them, arms loosely crossed at the wrist. He let his head thump back against the wall and closed his eyes with a sigh.

It was damn easy to mentally grumble about it being him, but that was unfair. Just because he wasn’t naturally suited to the discipline of the role didn’t excuse Riordan. He had the affinities; he needed to learn to use them. Preferably before anyone else got hurt.

Drawing in a deep breath, Riordan let it out in a sigh, releasing some of the angry tension in his body. For now, he just let himself drift, thoughts flowing through his mind without sticking for once. He let himself just be present and aware.

The hair felt warm against his skin, a faint breeze ruffling the hairs on his arms even inside this room. The breeze smelled of sun-baked grass, pine, and dust. Crickets chirped and birds called in the distance. Closer, Riordan could hear members of the Sleeping Bear pack going about the business of ordinary life. Absently, Riordan rubbed a finger over the thick material of his pants, focusing on texture and remembering the trek through the muddy creek earlier in the day.

He felt tired, but strangely peaceful. For this brief moment of time on this sunny afternoon, no one demanded anything of Riordan. Well, except himself. He was always pushing himself to destruction, wanting to see how far he could go. Or maybe seeking that moment when he finally hit his absolute limit, where he broke enough that he couldn’t go on, because at least then he had to take the rest offered to him.

Memories of the land beyond the Veil surfaced. Death was a place of peace and rest for those who could accept it. He’d belonged there, sheltered by the gift of Phenalope’s dissolution and the silver tattoo it left. Some parts of Riordan longed for that peaceful oblivion. Or peaceful non-oblivion. He sensed that both were options if one went far enough beyond the Veil that separated life and death.

Of course, there were also the turbulent dead that clustered at the boundary, hungering for the lives they lost and spreading death in their quest for life. He could feel their anger and regret and grief too, all parts of death or parts of life.

Suddenly, Riordan’s perception slipped, falling deep inside of himself. With great effort, Riordan managed not to startle or flail about, afraid of knocking himself out this state. Normally, when he looked inward to his magic, Riordan desperately tried to grasp his magic and make it do something, but this time, Riordan just observed.

Every breath Riordan took drew in ambient magic from the world, random mixes of all affinities that worked at cross purposes to orderly effects. The magic also flowed in and out through his whole skin, a slow natural exchange of energies by magical diffusion. Once ambient energy entered the body though, it was drawn through the magical vessels of the body down to the magical core of the person, located in their lower belly.

There wasn’t a physical organ to match the location of the core, at least none that anyone had ever identified, but it was present nonetheless. In a normal person, the core was a single object. Riordan’s had been a dense plain sphere. It took in the ambient magic funneled to it and filtered it into usable magic. The magic a person couldn’t use was breathed back out again while their affinity magic was fed into their well.

Now though, Riordan’s core was two separate spheres orbiting around the point where his original core once sat. The ambient energy funneled to that point and then arced between the different spheres, passing energy back and forth in a complex web. Inside each sphere was a hole or a tunnel, leading… elsewhere. One fed energy to and from the spirit realm. The other reached beyond the Veil.

Riordan hadn’t realized it before that moment, but it meant that he was drawing in energy from more than just his physical location at all times. He hadn’t been able to use his magic enough to know for sure, but that would likely increase his regeneration rates.

His current core was wildly chaotic. Riordan’s magical vessels didn’t feed into the core directly because it was split, instead making an energy field that the cores both fed from. Riordan could feel the tangle of magic flowing at cross-purposes there, wasting a lot of its potential. If he couldn’t get that sorted out, it would likely reduce his ability to draw in ambient magic.

So his regeneration was probably a wash at the moment, one thing boosting it and another reducing it. Okay, good to know.

From the cores, the filtered magic flowed upward into Riordan’s wells while the waste products, the unusable affinities, were put back into the magical vessels of the body and expelled with the exhale.

The well was a mage’s storage for processed mana. The more one used their magic and then regenerated it, the more the well grew. Mages were often jealous of shifters because the passive effects of the shifter affinity meant they constantly used magic, even if only on a low level, resulting in large wells from a younger age. Plus, since shifters lived longer too, an old shifter could have a very large well indeed.

That meant that even though Riordan’s well had been split in half, both wells were at least a decent size. What worried him was the fact that one well was already just a bit deeper than the other.

When the greater spirit split Riordan’s core and well, it created parallel systems. One core handled his affinities for spirit and shifter. The other handled the affinities for death and blood. Therefore, his shifter passive abilities were only drawing from one of his wells.

It wasn’t a problem yet, but Riordan couldn’t imagine that it would be good for him if one of his wells vastly outgrew the other. He’d never heard of anyone having a dual system before, though Riordan was beginning to suspect this wasn’t the first time it had happened to someone. This kind of major change likely either resulted in death or legends though. Riordan lacked the information to find either the failures or the successes and sort them out from the fictions surrounding them.

Riordan was either going to have to learn how to use death magic regularly enough to keep that well growing in pace or how to shut off his passive shifter abilities.

The second option made Riordan cringe. Suppressing his shifter abilities felt like trying to breathe while wrapped in iron bands. Everything was too hard and too tight and too fragile. He didn’t think he’d be able to bear it mentally for long.

This realization underscored what Riordan was already dimly aware of. From now on, Riordan was a death mage.

His well being depended on it, even if it hadn’t already been clear that Riordan had a moral responsibility to use his bizarrely obtained gifts for the greater good. It was theoretically possible to replicate what Riordan had done to himself, but the specific elements that needed to be in place were difficult to align, especially since it was unclear which elements were the ones that actually made his transformation possible.

Would the tree spirit be able to do this to other people now? Would it take some sort of priming of the subject, such as channeling a stupid amount of death magic? Would it take an open portal to the Veil or could the spirit do that part on their own now?

Those questions lacked easy answers, meaning Riordan wasn’t likely to be any less unique any time soon.

His wells were nearly as turbulent as his cores, though it was harder to tell when both wells were currently full. Riordan had hardly taken time to explore his well properly after he gained his spirit affinity, which meant he was used to the way his magic performed with only a single affinity.

With a single affinity, all the filtered magic was aligned to the same purpose. This made it more harmonious with itself. Riordan didn’t have enough experience to know if the new turbulent state was due to multiple affinities or due to changes to his cores and how magic fed into the wells.

At least his new affinities were compatible inside each well. Shifter was a composite of spirit and life and therefore played fairly well with the main spirit affinity. And blood was the composite of death and life, meaning it worked with death the same way.

Absent-mindedly, Riordan wondered what the composite affinity of spirit and death would be. He remembered the hungry dead and the changes to the tree as it became a greater spirit influenced by death. Ugh. Nothing good, that was for sure.

He returned to the task at hand. Casting was difficult because Riordan could connect to his wells consistently to draw forth magic, but the unsettled condition of his magical system couldn’t be helping matters. In fact, the way the magic roiled explained why Riordan sometimes thought he had a grip on a spell, only to have it break apart before he could cast.

Fuck, that meant he had to see about settling his magic on top of training himself to new habits of casting.

Nothing worth doing ever seemed easy. Riordan sighed. He better get to work then.

He drew in a breath and tried to consciously guide the magic through his vessels. The flow needed to pulse with his breaths and heartbeats, spinning the magic tighter. The vessels needed to be wider and smoother, directing the flow without impeding it. And when it reached his core, it needed to split evenly and flow into each core, and then the waste products from each core needed to flow into the other core before being expelled for maximum efficiency.

Just trying to hold that image and flow for a single cycle left Riordan sweating and panting. He braced himself against the wall and breathed again. Hard work was something he understood. Pain was his coin. After everything he’d been through already, this wouldn’t be the thing that broke him. He guided the magic through another cycle.

His body shook now. Riordan took a few normal breaths, letting the reaction pass, and then began again. The outside world faded as Riordan applied himself to the work of fixing his magic.