“You can already cast basic charms from other affinities, yes?” Ivar asked.

Idelle nodded. “Not well honestly, but yes.”

“Good. These spells work differently anyway. First, take a baton again and try to block me.”

Dutifully, Idelle fell into a defensive stance.

Ivar explained further. “I’ll attack from either the left or the right, aiming at your shoulders. Block as fast as you can.” A second later, his wooden sword slapped into her shoulder with a thunk. She yelped.

“Again,” Ivar said.

A few more hits to her shoulders. She narrowed her eyes at him. He was definitely moving too fast for her, he knew she couldn’t keep up, right?”

“Good.” Ivar stepped back. “Now, tell me how you cast a charm like light.”

She hesitated, taking a moment to collect her thoughts at the sudden change in topic. “Um. First, I find the magic around me, then I reach out to it and visualize the change I want to occur.”

“Be more specific. What specifically do you visualize?”

“A glowing sphere of light.”

He nodded. “Very standard. But you’ll need to cast those kinds of imaginations aside for this. Instead, I want you to think about your body while it moves. Feel how heavy it is, find where your limit is when you move. Block me once more.”

Ohhh. She realized where this was going. She focused on his sword. A flicker of motion came a second later, and she moved to block it as fast as she could. Whap. Too slow. Could she go even faster? There was some variation to her reactions, but she was confident this was close to her best.

“Now. Reach out to the magic inside you, instead of around you. Will your body to be lighter. To be faster. So fast that it’s already arrived when you think of moving. Got it?”

She tried to imagine it. “I think so?”

His sword smacked into her shoulder again. “Not yet. Try again. Take a moment to focus, if you need it.”

She paused and closed her eyes. Focus. This was still just a type of magic like she’d already been practicing. Her body rippled in her perception. She wanted it to be lighter, faster…

Wait. She already knew what that felt like. She thought back to the march back from the hunt. The way everything had seemed almost imperceptibly slower and easier; like she’d taken off invisible weights. She was accustomed to it, by now, but she let herself focus back on that sensation. Ivar was right, it wasn’t visual at all, it was entirely physical. The only difference is that instead of imperceptible she wanted the biggest change she could muster.

She opened her eyes, meeting Ivar’s unblinking gaze. His sword snaked out in an instant, and the crack of wood on wood rang out around them. She thought she caught a flicker of surprise in his eyes.

“Not bad.” He stepped back and set the practice sword aside. “Congratulations, you’ve touched on the edge of body enhancement magic. Now go practice.”

Idelle looked at him awkwardly. “Um, right. Thanks, sir.” He gave her no response beyond a slight nod, and she quickly turned and scampered away. She supposed that not everyone was as detailed a teacher as Cecilia.

Either way, for now, she wanted to experiment further. The feeling of augmenting her speed with magic had been too familiar to ignore, and she felt certain that there WAS a connection with the changes to her body. Time to see if she could arrive at any further insights.

What to try first? Could she improve her strength more if she focused on that instead of speed? What about her vision, or hearing?

No, she was getting ahead of herself. She should make sure she could consistently cast the spell, first. How best to keep track? How about running, for now?

She set her practice sword in the grass, as a marker, and sprinted to it from the side of the building, trying to keep count as she did so. She frowned. No, she wasn’t confident in her ability to keep a consistent count.

Maybe it was best to just rely on her feeling here. It was distinctive enough, in her mind, and it wasn’t like she could time her speed in a fight.

She picked her sword back up, feeling the grain of the smooth wood against her hand, and gave it an experimental swing. It felt normal, not heavy but still with consequential heft to it. She let herself focus again. Again, she let herself open up to the magic around her. She noticed with a hint of pride that her magic-sight, at least, was coming easily now, if not exactly fast. Practice paying off.

Now, again, focus on her body. That was easy too. The magic ran through it with distracting intensity, and while she’d grown used to tuning it out in order to practice the charms Cecilia had taught her it churned through her veins and body with a chaotic potency that scared her sometimes.

But that was to her advantage, here. And it was her body, no one else’s. To enact her will was fundamental to its existence. What did she have to be afraid of?

She remembered the bird she’d seen the other day, drifting through the air like it was weightless. That’s what she was, weightless. Effortless. The only thing that could slow her down was the air itself around her.

She swung the wooden training sword. No, it was barely a swing. More like her sword had stretched in an instant across space before snapping into place like a whip. She felt it shudder as it arrived, the wood had flexed slightly from what must have been the force of the swing stopping.

A moment later, she felt a twinge of pain in her arms and grimaced. Ow. Maybe she had stopped it too fast. She found herself grinning regardless. That had been fast. Even faster than she’d been with Ivar, for sure. Maybe she did have a talent for magic, after all.

What else could she do? Could she test her strength on something?

Idelle’s eyes wandered the courtyard. She didn’t see anything suitable. Maybe some firewood? She could check in the kitchen by the cafeteria.

A minute later, she walked out of the kitchen with a dry branch some four to five centimeters thick, ignoring the strange look the cook shot her. The branch was perfect, too thick for her to break with her bare hands despite the brittleness but not so thick as to seem completely out of the question.

Now, how should she visualize this? Weightlessness wasn’t quite what she wanted here, she wanted brute strength. The kind that would smash through anything, and everything in its way.

An all too familiar image rose to her mind. A direwolf, charging her, smashing into her and knocking her to the ground with contemptuous ease even as she fought back. Her first — her enemy. Strong enough that she had been thrown into the ground with enough force to break ribs even by a glancing blow. She touched her side. Or at least, they’d certainly felt broken. She wasn’t anywhere near as eager to experiment with the way she seemed to heal fairly serious injuries in mere days.

Idelle shook her head. She should stay focused, she wouldn’t need to experiment with that any time soon. Or ever, if she could help it.

She took a deep breath, realizing her heart was pounding in her chest. This would be good. She could master her fear and anxiety over the memory, and turn it into her strength. Just like she’d beaten the wolf itself, and turned it into her strength. The thought pleased her, there was poetic justice to that.

Yeah. She would be the one who defined what her experiences meant to her, and she would be stronger for them.

She took another deep breath and reached out again for the magic cascading through her blood. She wasn’t the little girl this time, she was the wolf. She was the unstoppable force of nature that would smash through anything in front of it, even if it died in the process. Her strength was unceasing, indomitable, the world around her might as well be made of paper.

Idelle bent the dried-out old branch with both hands. It resisted only for a moment before snapping with a satisfying crack. She looked down at it, and another, wider, grin spread across her face. Had she seen her face in a mirror she would have thought it too wide, maybe, and a little too full of teeth for comfort. She wasn’t trying to look creepy, after all.

But fortunately, or unfortunately, there was no mirror and no one else happened to be in the corner to see it.

She started outside again, then paused and went back into the kitchen, handing the broken pieces of wood back over to the ever-more-confused cook. Then, humming a foreign-sounding little melody to herself, she trotted back out to the courtyard to experiment more. And probably practice after that, for all that this was coming easily to her she would need to train until it was second nature if she ever wanted to actually fight someone with it instead of just showing off.

Though maybe she wouldn’t need to fight with it, anyway. It seemed hard to imagine that she couldn’t succeed as a normal farmer or something with the ability to boost her strength like that. Surely there were lots of places it’d be handy.