"Affinity imbuement," professor Silverbark said, striding down through the practice mats, looking over everyone. "An extremely useful technique. Does anyone here have an artifice affinity?"

One person with neon green hair and eyes that were void black, who smelled of chocolate and death, raised their hand, and professor Silverbark nodded to them.

"If you would like to skip this lesson, you are welcome to, as your affinity allows you to largely bypass the process. That said, I'd recommend you stay around. Many artificers wind up creating tools using this process that assist in their creation."

They nodded and remained seated, so professor Silverbark continued speaking.

"The basics of affinity imbuement are remarkably simple: lay out your core affinity spell, as well as any affinity modifications that you have, as a part of a ritual circle, using roughly a hundred silver of powdered ether crystal dust. Bind it with the imbuement spell, place the object you wish to imbue into the center, and cast the same modification of the core affinity spell. The magic will complete and bind to the object within the circle, granting it the power of the spell. Within that simplicity is a great deal of variance, however."

As he spoke, a spell rose into the air and began to draw itself out on the board. It was a first circle spell, but it was clearly a ritual, and it was very strange. Normally, first circle spells had spellwork on the interior of the circle, with more bleeding off the outside. This one had the spellforms on the outside of the ring, but the interior was entirely empty.

"This is known as the affinity channel, and it is the cheapest method of creating affinity imbued objects. The object gains no special properties of its own, but the spell activates when ether is channeled through the object. For those of you who participated in the faerie fire fight over the summer, you should be somewhat familiar with the idea. Ether goes in, it produces a specific effect. "

He flicked his hand and pulled a wooden rod from his locker, then pointed it up into the air. Purple-reddish light, faerie fire, erupted from it, and he put it away an instant later.

"What if someone puts their full, unaltered affinity in it?" Kybar asked. "Like, what if I were to put my force affinity spell in, instead of shaping it to create a force ball or beam or something like that? Would they gain the flexibility of an affinity."

"Alas, no. The creation of affinity imbued items is somewhat dependent on the item and the affinity – artifice affinities tend to bend these rules – but generally no. The more possibilities someone wishes to input onto the item, the more it strains the item. Most mundane materials like wood or fabric can take on a single application of the affinity spell. Stronger materials like steel might be able to take on a second. Certain magically enhanced materials, like the bones of an ancient dragon, can take on more. Applying an entire affinity, however? That's adding infinite possibilities."

"Even if it's a terrible affinity, like the Erudite's?" one of the students asked, and professor Silverbark grinned and nodded.

"An excellent example, thank you Laura. Let's take the headmaster's affinity. He is intrinsically limited by the affinity so that he can only move tomatoes at the speed at which he could physically carry them. But he still has an infinite number of ways he could carry them. Up, down, left, right, up-left, so on and so forth. Imbuing his entire affinity doesn't mean imbuing a specific pattern to move tomatoes. It means imbuing an infinite variety of directions. And that's only looking at directions. What about the ability to keep them ripe, or make them go off? The ability to dice them? Each of those presents more infinities to account for. The same is true of flame manipulation. A flame affinity spell that conjures a ball of fire and hurls it in a specific orientation is only one thing. The full flame affinity has an infinite number of shapes, directions, patterns, intensities, and more."

"If you had a material that was infinitely durable, could it take on an affinity?" someone asked. I thought it was the same one who had been insistently asking questions about splitting ether pools in the first year.

"Theoretically, yes. Practically, we don't know. Even the sun will burn out one day."

"But what if someone had an affinity for making things infinitely tough?" the student asked, and professor Silverbark closed his eyes. "Or what if someone had an affinity for allowing them to imbue other people's affinities into objects without stressing the object? Or what if–"

"As I said last year, there are as many hypothetical situations as you can reasonably come up with, but they don't matter," professor Silverbark said. "If you have an affinity that interacts with this spell in a strange way, then by all means use it. Artificers can and do alter the rules every day. That does not devalue general rules. But for hypothetical questions, I can only give hypothetical answers that would need to be tested, and that can't be tested. You can likely figure out those answers yourself. If someone has an affinity to change things in a specific way, then it will change it in that way."

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The man huffed and turned away, while professor Silverbark just sighed and turned back to the board. He erased the three parts of the spell that seemed designed to let energy flow in, and replaced one of them with a circle that looked like a place components would go. He put another strange symbol in another spot, one that I didn't recognize, and put the channel back in the third. Then he tapped the first one, where components were meant to go.

"This configuration allows for an item to have internal ether storage, in the form of ether crystal that is saturated with your personal ether. The more you place in, the larger the reservoir of power that the item will have is. If all three of the nodes are ether storage, it can allow for truly massive reserves of ether, as they're multiplicative, not additive, but it will lack any method of recharging. Potent, but single use."

He tapped the second one, the strange symbol I didn't recognize.

"This is for ambient ether absorption. When it is alone, the spell will run entirely off ambient ether. That works fine in areas like this city with an abundance of ether, but in areas with low or no power, the imbued spell will weaken or fail entirely, as it lacks any sort of channel, or reserve. But more importantly, when combined with ether storage, it will passively recharge the storage, instead of passively powering the enchantment."

He then tapped the channeled section that he had already shown us.

"We have discussed how this would work alone. When combined with an ether storage, it allows you to channel ether into the item in order to recharge it. When combined with ambient ether absorption, it allows you to add your personal power on top of the ambient power, supercharging it. All three together allows you to create a reserve of ether to power the device, which charges based off ambient ether, and can have power channeled into it in order to restore its reserve."

He turned and erased one more section, then replaced it with something new that intersected strangely with the flow of power to the empty space in the center of the spell.

"Finally, there's this. What you saw before was known as the always active position. It's used commonly in devices that need to be, well, always active. This is known as the switch. It allows you to enable or disable the flow of ether to the affinity magic with a simple spark of ether, song, or other form of power. That does make it less useful for people who have no power of their own, but it is a good way to add flexibility to an item."

He clapped and waved his hand, and papers appeared before all of us.

"Your assignment is to draw out diagrams on paper for each of the unique permutations, using your affinity, and write a sentence or two explaining uses for them. If I had the money, I'd give each of you the ether crystal to create all of the different items, but as is, I can only recommend you set aside money and form something useful for yourself, or to sell. Even without an artifice affinity, there can be good money for people with affinities like force when it comes to creating imbued armor spells, or what have you."

I shot a meaningful look at Salem, since his psychic affinity seemed like it fit solidly into that category. He nodded and leaned over to me.

"Could make a' good bit from the student market!"

I nodded my agreement, having almost forgotten about the existence of the market, then settled down to work on the designs for my own affinity. I found it easiest to first design the spells that were single use, as they were similar to the spellglyphs I was already familiar with, shortly followed by channels and then things with a reserve. The hardest one for me to figure out a reasonable design for was actually the one that purely relied on ambient ether, as I couldn't figure out how to balance the scale of effect I wanted with an unreliable power source.

The class ended before most people had completed the assignment, and Salem, Kybar, and I all headed to the dining hall to work together, before heading to the campus greens. With the sun starting to set, we worked by moon and weirlight until we had finished, and Kybar headed off for a fraternity meeting. I hadn't even been aware that there were fraternities on the campus, nor did I really care to join one, but I filed the information away just in case.

With the full moon rising into the sky, I pulled out the bags of components and began to pour them onto the grass, forming them into the ritual array, while Salem watched curiously. I bit my lip as I mentally rehearsed the shield spell a few times. I had already done this successfully fourteen nights in a row, there was no reason to think that I was going to fail now, but I still felt that I was going to mess something up.

I stepped into the circle and flicked my hands, conjuring a shield, then dismissing it and conjuring a second. As I conjured a third, I poured every last drop of my dragonfire into it, hopeful that as the spell locked onto the final shield and transformed it into the buckler, the overcharged power would stick around. Unfortunately, as the ritual swept up, connecting to the final shield, my fire simply fell away. The shield compressed, and I felt power reach into my spirit, forming a construct within my ether pool, a connection to the abjuration magic.

The construct hovered before me, invisible to my eyes, but I could still feel where it was through the connection. It was about the size of a dinner plate, and I willed it to move, only for nothing to happen. I pushed at it with my ether, and this time it did move, shifting along the course like detritus swept up in a river. I frowned and set it spinning around me, then pulsed up and down, getting a feel for how to move it. Once I was done, I turned to Salem.

"Fire off a spell at me, I need to test this."

"I dinnae wanna hurt ya', but fine," he grumbled, then lifted his wand. An arc of wind sliced from it, and I shifted the buckler to intercept. The wind blade crashed against the shield, and I nodded.

"Again!"

We spent a while testing the shield. Like professor Caeruleum had said, it was a bit stronger than a shield spell, but it covered a far smaller area. Reforming it was simple and not too expensive on ether, though it did take a moment of focus, so I wasn't sure I wanted to try it mid-fight. Channeling dragonfire into the buckler's construct did make it explode in toughness, more than capable of stopping any of Salem's spells, though he didn't have anything particularly hard hitting. Eventually, we ran out of tests to run, and turned in for the rest of the night.

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