Fate smiles upon you. Healing shall be yours.

After receiving the healing school of magic, her first thought was, ‘That will be difficult to level.’ She needed to be able to use an aspect to gain synchronization. Hurting herself on purpose was not an option she wanted to pursue. Perhaps she could learn how to use a sword and heal her practice injuries.

The mindscape for healing magic plopped her down just outside of a hospital. Off to one side, a short older lady was waving at her. She had a wrinkled face, snow-white hair, and no teeth. The woman could have been her great-grandmother. Violet slowly approached her and couldn’t help but smile.

“Greetings grandmother, are you here to test me?”

“Indeed I am, come sit, and I will show you what you need to do to get your first aspect provisionally.”

On the table in front of her, there were two sheets of paper. Her objective was simple. She needed to point out what was different about each picture on the pieces of paper. There were a total of ten differences that she was to circle with the pen provided.

When Violet located the differences, Granny said, “Congratulations, you have earned the provisional usage of Analyze.”

Four sets of potted plants materialized on the table in front of Violet. Her new mission was to use her Analyze aspect to identify the differences between the plants. Each set had one healthy plant and one that was deformed, dying, or unique. Violet was provided with paper to note a minimum of five differences per pair of plants.

Using Analyze for the first time helped to calm her worries about this test. She could see an x-ray image of what she was focusing on. For this difficulty, the differences in the plants were relatively simple for her to identify. Analyze allowed her to zoom in to view multiple layers. It also set a sense she didn’t know she had when she inspected the diseased plant. Her mind gave her a vague idea of how to treat this plant to make it healthy.

After going over every pair three times, she let Granny know she was finished with the test. Rather than collecting the sheets of paper from her, the old lady just smiled and waved as Violet was removed from the healing mindscape.

Congratulations, you have received the aspect for Analyze with synchronization starting at 11%.

To return for more aspects, you must have a total of 8% synchronization for Healing.

Violet looked up at Avery and smiled, saying, “Looks like our worst-case scenario happened. I received the healing school of magic. Analyze was my first aspect, so at least I will be able to get a second aspect in healing before I am forced to find people to heal.”

“It is probably for the best, dearie. You need to start making connections in Kasmaya.”

“If it is ok with you, I would like to stay until I have reached Tier two with Spatial magic and have a handle on Divination. It scares me to think someone may start hunting me if I use that aspect.”

“Honey, you can stay as long as you like.”

It was surprisingly easy for her to gain synchronization for Analyze. There was no danger involved in its use, and she received experience for every new person or plant she inspected. With the ease in which she gained synchronization, she was able to gain another aspect for healing before spatial magic.

The aspect she received was for Lesser Heal. Avery had quite a bit of knowledge about healing magic. It was a well-respected school of magic that everybody wanted to have access to.

“Healing magic is quite rare, my dear. Nobody in their right mind would hunt and kill healers. They are naturally rare. Because of this rarity, extensive studies have been done to learn what makes a healer tick.”

“What conclusions were made from that research?”

Chuckling a little bit, Avery replied, “Absolutely nothing. Healers come in all personality types, and it does not run in a specific bloodline that they could find. When war caused the loss of several healers, there were no increases in mage births with healing magic in the following years. The rarity of the healing class will open many doors for you.”

As the chicks grew, she could tell Avery had something on her mind. Her mentor was often seen staring off into space. On one such occasion, Violet asked, “What is bothering you, Avery?”

“There is no easy way for me to say this. When my babies have grown to the point where they can fly for a few hours straight, my family and I will need to leave. There is a pilgrimage all of our young must undertake to understand our heritage better. We cannot bring you along.”

“How long do you expect to be gone?”

“It will likely take several years.”

“I see. Is there a way to leave me access to the crystal?”

“Dearie, that thing is ancient and already cracked. I will not leave it unprotected. My children will need the use of that stone. You will need to find another crystal or wait until we return.”

“How long do you think we have until you need to leave?” Violet asked, trying to keep the tears from her eyes. She was mourning the loss of a friend more than the loss of the crystal. It was Avery’s way of pushing her out of the nest and forcing her to make connections in Kasmaya.

“I’d reckon they are about two months away from being able to make the journey.”

The following two months were spent focusing mainly on spatial magic. Avery was willing to delay their trip until Violet had Divination at 100% synchronization, but it turned out a delay was not needed. Divination was surprisingly easy to level. It was easiest and less mana intensive for her to glimpse into the history of an object. An object was not required to view the past, but it helped.

Thankfully, to invoke her Divination aspect, she needed to try consciously. She tested this by thinking about how much she wished to know the history of her dress. Hoping for information was not enough. She needed to concentrate and mentally allocate how much mana she wanted to use while scrying.

When she jumped through all of the hoops needed to activate Divination on her dress, she had allocated too much mana to the endeavor. She received a vision of all of the people involved in making her dress. Everyone was in the scrying, from the person who harvested the cotton to her mother sewing the finished product. It was interesting to view the entire process from cotton boll spinning to weaving, and finally to sewing.

It was jarring to use Divination. For Violet, several minutes had gone by, but in the real world, only a heartbeat of time had passed. If she spent time ‘in the real world’ in contemplation after seeing something, more details would be remembered. She wished she could use this away from the safety of Avery’s wards. Being able to enter an ancient site and see things as they were made her inner archeologist giddy.

Violet had only tried to glimpse the future a few times with her Divination aspect. Every time she used it, she would get a confusing mess of possible futures. Her poor dress had several places where different holes could appear. Most of the holes looked from wear and tear, but one unfortunate possible fate had a circular arrow hole appear on her stomach stained with blood. She had no way of knowing how any of the possible futures would occur and that scared her.

It was a tear-filled departure when they were ready for Rasmus to drop her off in Lindow. She had gotten close to Avery over the almost two years of training. It felt like she had been training in the aviary for much longer.

“Be sure to send us updates with the messenger birds, dearie. If you are ever in need of help, send off one of your illusionary fireworks, and someone from the aviary will see.”

“I will. But you must do the same. I want to hear what names the chicks are given. It still seems odd that they will be granted a name instead of you and Rasmus giving them one.”

“Names have power, dearie. Our kind needs to discover their name through the completion of a trial. Enough about that. I will miss you, young one.”

The ride to Lindow felt colder than usual. They had waited until the start of the new year before leaving. It would help Violet fit into society better as all students started the new year with different teachers. Violet would have two weeks with her mother as a tutor on what she had missed in school.

She was lucky that a lot of her ‘common sense’ knowledge crossed over to be helpful in this world. Things like math, basic science, and language studies would not be an issue for her. Her mother was going to be tutoring her in Kasmayan history, magic lore, and etiquette. She was not looking forward to etiquette, but if she wanted to join the magic school in town, she needed to learn how to act around nobility.

Most of the nobility had magical training as anyone could learn how to use modern magic. Not everyone had the inborn aptitude for magic, and most lacked the drive to learn spells the hard way.

Being born with a magical mark was extremely rare and meant someone had access to ancient magic. In Kasmaya, there had been no known commoner births with the mark for decades. For the time being, Violet decided to keep her marks a secret and do damage control with anything her parents may have said about her magic.