Vanessa Delrose, fifth rank mage with a foundation built on Dubois Blood Magic, sat patiently in the smoky air of her office, taking slow drags from a freshly wrapped cigarette. Spread out in front of her were an assortment of papers that at one point were contained within a manila folder.

  Sure, she could have pulled up each of the files on the computer monitor that sat idle on her desk, but a flair for the dramatic and an appreciation for the tactile that all powerful mages seemed to have demanded that she utilize the rather large stack of papers. After all, it's not often that a sloppy, and potentially fatal, mistake is so cleanly handled by someone outside of her organization.

  A standard mage will pay the price for their power in money, time, effort, mental acuity, and in some cases pain and exotic materials. However, they all also pay a steep meta-physical price for their abilities. Lucky breaks, easy coincidences, situations that seem to solve themselves without any input on their behalf, and all other small mundane magics that normal people seem to have the luxury of experiencing happen less and less often to the more and more powerful. Naturally, this is all speculation and completely unproven, but who are you to know? Needless to say, good fortune is not something that someone in the Delrose business can ever count on.

  It couldn't have been just dumb luck. I'm not alive by dumb luck. I've cast too many charms, too many wards, too many spells that alter my fate in too many ways. There's an explanation here, I just need to put the pieces together.

  Picking up the file that covered the young mage's history, Vanessa re-read everything that her consigliere had dug up on him in the last week.

  Sans the ever unlikely appearance of the golden lady herself, how exactly did the prodigal heir of the misfortunate tech moguls conveniently appear at the exact time Vanessa needed his help? His past is interesting, in a Greek tragedy sort of way.

  Born to two loving parents who would go onto revolutionize microprocessors, parents die at the ripe age of four, adopted by his Uncle who raises him as his own whilst the rest of the family fights for the company and cuts him out of the picture entirely. Found to have zero talent in the engineering field but an incredible knack for the arcane, the only mage in the family actually, yet whilst attending a magical university an accident forces him to drop out and join the work force. Still, pushes through and breaks into the second rank as a natural practitioner, whose experience and achievement lands him a sales job selling Magical Experiment Insurance to amateur mages.

  A past remarkable in its normality. Zero criminal connections, zero record, the closest tie this kid has to the underworld is his third cousin does consulting work for a front that the White Caps out of New Chicago run.

  His daily schedule was just as mind-bendingly normal. Wake up, go either to the gym or directly to work, return home. Rarely if ever do they go out and do something, let alone a few blocks away in the middle of the night in the back alleyways of Old Berlin. So why? Why was a second rank spatial mage exactly where Vanessa needed him to be? Was he contacted by someone? If so, who would pay him to help her? The spell he used to heal her chest was obviously only for emergencies, given that he was a spatial mage and it cost him his own flesh and blood. But all that does is raise more questions.

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  How did he configure a healing spell in the span of moments? He's a spatial mage, not only did he demonstrate that in front of my very eyes, but he was one of three spatial majors in BMU. Unless he has a second foundation that's related to healing magic? Theoretically possible. But if he had a dual affinity, especially one such as spatial magic and healing magic, then it would be documented somewhere.

  Everyone in the world typically has an equal aptitude for all types of magic. However, in rare cases, a person will have an increased aptitude for a certain type of magic or a certain type of field, commonly called an affinity. For some higher end magics, spatial magic and healing magic for instance, an affinity for mana is required. The mana cost and strain on the network being simply too much for the average practitioner, unless a rank four was content struggling to cast spells that a rank one with a spatial affinity would cast easily.

  No. If he had a dual affinity, he wouldn't ask for more power, and he certainly wouldn't accept a book on shadow magic. But if that's the case, he's either insane enough to try brand new magic on a random stranger who he saw being attacked, or he had a spell prepared for a situation just like that. On one hand, if he's just crazy, I can use that. On the more likely hand, he's hiding something.

  Of course, she could pressure, interrogate, or elicit the information out of the paranoid man. Hell, she could probably pay him for it, but that idea didn't sit right in Vanessa's mind. Why act so confident? Was it truly all a bluff like she assumed? He had to be hiding something. Plotting something.

  So, a trap was laid. Or rather, a piece of bait was placed out.

  A gift from Vanessa, clearly marked with her initial, not included in their original deal. A promise of greater power, if he continues to play nice. He's obviously going to take it. Who in their right mind would pass up an instant rise to the next rung on the proverbial ladder? But the moment he did, that's all it would take.

  People sold themselves all the time. Piece by piece. It wouldn't take much after that taste. A favor here, an odd job there. One of two things was about to happen to the Delrose drug empire. Either one of the two known spatial mages in Old Berlin would fall under her thumb and become a loyal subject. Or he'll rat on whatever organization forced him to be there that night, and that loose end would be tied up nicely. It would be convenient if he willingly came under her, especially if he develops a spell to warp groups of people, but either way the moment he takes the bait, he becomes a known variable.

  Now all Vanessa had to do was what she did best.

  Patiently wait.

  Placing the file back on her desk, Vanessa stood up and stretched her aching muscles.

  Swiping her hand lazily, a trickle of blood brushed all of the pages back neatly into the manila folder, then delicately carried it into her open and waiting drawer. Personal business aside, it was time for a meeting. A war was brewing, and after an attempt on her life, she needed to take a bit of a more active role.