Riordan blushed at Frankie’s commentary. The concept of medical magic wasn’t foreign or anything. Riordan had just never considered it relevant to him in any way. Nor had he really thought about what he could actually do with all these damn new affinities.

“Being a shifter is an affinity, not just a physical condition,” Frankie continued her explanation, “Yes, shifters aren’t the best at active casting, but our affinity is made up of spirit and life. Which means healing magic is within the things we can do. With enough practice and dedication anyway. It’s a bit easier as a shaman to tap that life mana.”

Riordan blinked, trying to grapple with that. He’d spent his whole life in the very mode Frankie was complaining about. Shifter was just something he was born as, not something he did. Not magic. Not like spells and being a caster and all that mage stuff. What had it mattered that life was one the composite factors for the shifter affinity?

“Furthermore,” Frankie continued, as if she hadn’t already rearranged Riordan’s thinking, “You have more than the shifter affinity now. Spirit magic can be used for healing, if you work with an appropriate spirit. Death magic can be used in some healing methods as well, especially destructive healing like removing tumors. Plus you have the blood affinity, which is death and life. You might not directly have the life affinity, which is the most commonly used healing affinity, but you have two composites including it and life mana in both wells.”

Riordan had gone past stunned straight to flummoxed. Sure, he’d known all those facts intellectually, but he’d never really processed what they meant. Even if he didn’t go into medical magic, Riordan was suddenly aware that his magical gifts now covered a very wide net. Most people only had one, maybe two affinities. The truly talented might have three. No one seemed to be born with four affinities, though people stumbled through events and changes that got them there at various points in history.

Now Riordan was among those myths and legends. He’d done the impossible. His potential was… staggering to consider. Currently, he could barely touch magic, so he might be forgiven for having not realized it, but now that fact was sinking in. Riordan was a mage. Sure, for a shifter, that culturally meant he was a shaman, but shaman usually only had shifter and spirit affinities. Riordan, if he embraced the death and blood inside him, could do what a normal shaman could not.

No wonder Riordan made the agents twitchy. The mages weren’t underestimating his potential, corruption or not.

“I need to think about this,” Riordan told Frankie softly. “You’ve given me a lot to think about and I…”

He shook his head. How did he express the way his world and self identity had just shifted? Shifter to shaman was hard enough, but shifter to shaman with the potential of a legendary mage? That was literally mind-boggling.

Frankie understood. She tapped one thin finger on the arm of her chair decisively. “Good. It may seem like you are doing nothing but sitting and thinking currently, but it is necessary. An apprentice’s foundation and paradigm, their whole approach to magic and what it means to them, often determines their potential as a mage. It is possible to change a paradigm later, but the change is as catastrophic to identity as you are currently feeling. Better to take this seriously now, eh?”

Riordan snorted. That was a bit of an understatement. He might not feel like an apprentice yet, but he really needed to remember that in terms of being a shaman, he really was one. “I’m getting a better sense for how much I don’t know anyway.”

“True wisdom, that,” Frankie laughed, standing. She gestured for Riordan to follow her into her primary work room. “Most apprentices are too young to understand, having never experienced such major upheavals in their lives. You have a rare opportunity to decide who you are going to be, what sort of legacy you wish to leave, while already having enough experience to know what the world is actually like. Do not waste it. You are young and have a long life ahead of you.”

Having lived among non-magical humanity for so long, Riordan seldom thought of himself as young. He felt another perspective shift inside him, no longer seeing the sixty odd years he’d lived but the potential one hundred and forty more to go. And yes, he’d be more likely to reach that upper age now, assuming nothing killed him first, because magically strong shifters aged slower.

“Fuuucck,” Riordan breathed out, running his hands through his hair.

Frankie just laughed at him. Riordan shot her a glare.

“Suck it up, boy,” Frankie told him. “You are doing fine.” She pointed at a corner of the shielded workspace. “Grab a cushion and I want you to sit there and think for a while. Meditate if you can. Circulate your magic or just get a feel for yourself. Just hold what we’ve talked about in mind while you do it. It’ll make for cleaner foundations.”

“Way I’m feeling right now,” Riordan muttered, “I’d be building with mud.”

Frankie smacked his arm. “Sometimes you have to kick up some silt to get things to settle right.”

“Is that so.”

“It is. Now sit, boy.”

Anyone else and Riordan would have been offended, hackles up and growling, to be ordered so irreverently. Frankie could get away with it though because she treated life as a whole the same way and he could see the twinkle of humor in her dark eyes.

So Riordan plopped his ass down on one of Frankie’s cushions and tried to get comfortable. He had a hell of a lot of thinking to do.

A muddy river really felt like an apt analogy at the moment. Many things Riordan didn’t think about had been kicked up from the bottom of his mind, muddying up his thoughts, but once it settled, he had a feeling things would be more secure and clear. So long as he actually thought about it instead of just ignoring it.

Fuck, Riordan hated how hard it was to force himself to face these thoughts. He was used to pulling shit out of his head, ruminating on it but making no decisions, and then tucking it away again, like a burr in a saddle blanket, making him buck. He couldn’t wallow anymore. He couldn’t let himself be stuck in the regrets of the past or the anxieties of the future.

Riordan had to make decisions in the present and then do something about it.

So, paradigm and plans. The paradigm was clearer than Riordan expected, even if he wasn’t entirely sure how to accomplish what he wanted. When he’d been casting magic in the spirit realm, Riordan had nothing to guide him but instincts and hope. Doing that showed Riordan that his imagination was smaller than his potential. Limiting his spells to what he could think of and define seemed wasteful.

The side effects of such magic were reckless though, so Riordan needed a middle ground between absolutely freeform magic and rigidly delineated spells. Apparently, that was conditional casting. He needed to be able to find a way to attach conditions to his spells. To define that it couldn’t affect more than those people or that no one could die or that the effects couldn’t last longer than some time or condition. Hell, that last one might be a huge benefit, if he made all effects of his magic fade after a certain time.

The trick would be learning how to set up conditions and doing it in such a way that Riordan could mix and match them without making his spells too cumbersome to use.

Oh, and he also needed to learn how to make effects happen reliably in the first place. He’d managed surprisingly well for knowing next to nothing about practical casting, but he’d done it by using the spirit realm’s reactive nature and by using herb and stone anchors to guide his effects.

Riordan could keep doing herbal casting, but that limited him just as much as any other codified spell. Worse actually, since it meant needing physical objects. He didn’t mind using them, but he also didn’t want to rely on them.

What he really wanted was to learn how to impose intention on the energy of the world and have it do what he wanted. So basically, learning how to cast like he had in the spirit realm, but on the physical plane. Magic was less reactive here, which meant less side effects but also more effort to make primary effects occur. He’d have to hone his will and instincts pretty sharp to shove reality to his whims.

Riordan thought he could handle making reality his bitch though, at least on a small scale.

What he wanted reality to do for him was still up in the air. Still, the idea that Frankie had planted of doing medical magic sat in Riordan’s mind, fragile as a sprouting seed. Riordan had always lived by doing harm in the name of the greater good. Someone had to, because the existence of free will meant that sometimes evil existed and had to be stopped. However, once Riordan failed to confirm the greater good part, he just did harm.

The idea of healing instead of harming appealed to Riordan’s wounded soul. He didn’t fully trust himself not to fall into old patterns if he went out as a warrior of justice again. Riordan lacked the spirit to lead and the discernment for the righteousness of others. No, let some wiser person take that path.

Healing though… Riordan was sure it was possible to harm through healing. Nothing was without moral quandaries. Healing helped more often than harmed on the whole, however, and Riordan craved that with a longing that shocked him. He was tired of hurting people.

Riordan was even tired of hurting himself. He’d done his penance, surely. Riordan had fucked up. Hard. He’d deserved to be exiled. But now he needed to do something to make up for it and exile or death wasn’t the answer. Riordan needed to do more than just not harming anything. He needed to add something good or necessary to the world.

He groaned, leaning back against the wall. The whole concept honestly embarrassed him. What sort of ego was needed to think he was some grand savior? He was just himself. No number of affinities or rare abilities changed that. They just meant he had to suck it up and do his best anyway, even knowing he was going to fuck this up repeatedly along the way.

Living really was harder than dying.

Still, Riordan felt… hopeful. He had this vision of himself now, being some sort of doctor or medical or whatever the hell medical professional--he clearly had some serious non-magical education needed there if he went this route--casting spells that helped people, learning and teaching about the positive aspects of death magic, and occasionally helping clean up after harmful death mages.

He could have a pack again, belonging to something more than just himself. Riordan missed the sense of comradery that came with being a pack. The pack of ghosts had fulfilled that for Riordan briefly and he’d fallen into being a shaman so naturally as a result. Because they had needed Riordan.

Riordan wanted to be needed again.

So it was messy. Life was messy. Riordan was alive, so it only made sense that he was messy too. But his vision was clearer than it had been in ages. He wasn’t just running away from who he was. Now he could start running towards who he wanted to become.

Having purpose, seeing that possible future, was more than enough to begin with.