The rest of the journey was thankfully uneventful. Percival stopped talking so much, apparently now intimidated somewhat by Vance's presence. He tried and failed to bring him around a few times, but what he'd seen had evidently shaken him, at least a little.

Vance supposed he could understand, not too long ago something like that would scare him witless as well. Mariah had purchased some apples off of Percival at some point and was munching on one when he turned to Vance. She seemed to scrutinize him for a second before she spoke, mouth still full of apple.

"Can you do a wind shift?"

Vance was paying half attention and his head sprang up. He shook it.

"No, haven't been able to do that yet. Why?"

"I'm trying to learn and can't figure it out." She raised her hands and gathered some ambient mana in front of her.

Vance spread out his mana sense to observe. She gathered quite a lot of ambient mana in one go. That was quite impressive in itself, there was certainly some natural talent there. He felt it swirl and begin to pick up speed, but only a small portion of the mana was responding to her pull, the rest followed limply like dead weight, dragging it down. The mana she was trailing wasn't particularly dense and it was difficult to pinpoint, could she see it?

After a moment of concentration, she let out the breath she'd been holding and released her will, letting the mana fade back into the ambience.

"Any ideas?" She asked, already sounding defeated.

"I'm no expert, but have you tried using less ambient mana at the start? It felt to me like you might have bit off more than your will can currently chew."

"Less? But Thomas uses-"

"I wouldn't compare yourself to him, he's a second year. He's way more advanced. I think you need to do what I did and start small."

"But it looks like I'm converting it all, it just won't stick!"

So she couldn't see the trailing ambient mana? Interesting.

"You're pulling a huge chunk of excess ambient mana with you when you perform the shift. Try with much, much less. I think you've got some real talent for working with ambient mana, but your will might not be keeping up yet."

After a few minutes of coaxing her down to smaller and smaller amounts, she eventually used a small enough chunk of mana to shift it over to the wind aspect. It floated above her hands for a few seconds, but she eventually lost it and it dissipated.

"Much better, well done."

She was looking at him with an odd expression. "How did you know...?"

"Weird mana sense, remember?"

"Right. Yeah."

Vance tried to mimic her and perform a wind shift, but he couldn't get the feeling quite right. Mariah watched him and realised that his mana control was absolutely extraordinary. The precision was incredible. It made her feel a little better that he didn't pull it off the first try, that'd be much too embarrassing.

He tried a few times, but each time he failed to produce anything close to the actual wind, occasionally he managed to get the mana to move kind of like the wind, but it would not transmute.

"No use, I don't have a solid enough grasp on the wind as a concept, I think."

Mariah nodded and said sympathetically. "Yeah, it's a tricky one. I think I resonate with the wind because I see myself in it. That sounds crazy when I say it out loud."

She trailed off for a second.

"Basically it's free and nobody can stop it no matter how hard they try. That's sort of what I like to think of myself as. Speaking of myself, I'm starting to think I smell after all this time on the road, please tell me your house has a bath."

"We have a massive trough."

"What?"

"Yep."

An hour or so later, they arrived at the outskirts of Wethermane. It wasn't a particularly large settlement and so even from out here they could see a fair way into the streets. It was quiet, but Mariah couldn't spot anything that seemed too suspicious.

Percival stopped the wagon and told the two of them that he was heading further south and that he hoped to see them when he came back through.

His words were clearly just pleasantries, the man couldn't wait to be further away from the fire breathing Arcanist.

After he'd departed, Mariah and Vance stood at the entrance to the village and made their way inside. Vance took in a deep breath. Sure enough, he could smell the familiar scent of his hometown, a mixture of the various stenches of farm animals and cut grass, beautiful.

Meanwhile, Mariah had her nose pegged with her fingers.

"What is that smell?!"

"Fertilizer. And pigs, mostly pigs."

"I'm going to hate it here."

Vance laughed and took the lead, he knew this place much better. He led her through the streets. It was very early morning and he could hear busy work going on behind some of the homes, but the streets were largely deserted.

Eventually, he stood in front of his old home. The smell and sounds weren't any different, but there was a sense of familiarity just in the way the soles of his feet sat atop the stones out here. He knew each one of them intimately.

His nerves slowly built up for a moment as he approached the door. It felt, to him, a lot like when he first spoke to Elijah. If he knocked on the door, he'd learn whether or not his brother was safe.

He knocked. He mused for a moment that it was odd that he'd knocked on his own door, shouldn't he just enter? Well, either way, he didn't bring a key.

"Marcus, I swear if it's you again I'm going to rub you on the stones until you start pissing granite."

Leon opened the door. He was looking straight forward with a scowl on his face. He saw a pretty young redheaded lady standing not too far from his door. He didn't recognise her, how odd. He heard a shuffle and lowered his eye line to the closer figure that had just flung itself at him. A big smile appeared on his face.

"What's it been, 2 months? Quitter."

"Shut up, I thought you were in danger out here!" Vance berated.

Leon clasped his brother in a huge bear hug, spun around and dragged him inside. He turned his head back to the young woman outside, who was standing there patiently.

"Well? Come in, then. You're more than welcome." Leon added.

Mariah scurried inside and closed the door behind her. She felt a tad awkward, but there was nothing to be done about it.

Leon put Vance down and grabbed him by both shoulders, looking him up and down.

"You look good. Did someone break your nose? It's got a little bend to it now. Makes you look tougher."

"Nothing major. Someone jumped me in the dorms, probably some noble prick." Vance put on his best tough-guy act. Mariah, who knew the full story, found it quite funny.

"I'm sure they'll get what's coming to them, you two look hungry, want some food? Took a visit to the butcher's shop yesterday, if you're interested."

It was at this point that Vance remembers that Mariah was here and scrambled to introduce her.

"Oh! Sorry! Mariah, this is my brother Leon. Leon, this is Mariah, she's a friend of mine from the college, she helped me get back here."

Leon was already making his way over the kitchen. He patted Vance on the shoulder as he went past and spoke loudly, with no measure of secrecy.

"Well done, kid. She's very pretty." He gave Mariah a little wink as he strolled past, then he started laughing and got to work.

Mariah turned bright red and went to say something, but Vance opted for the safer approach.

"Mariah, Ignore Leon. There's a bunch of spare clothes upstairs, and I was only kidding earlier, we do have a little bath if you want to use it. It's towards the back of the house, past the living room. It's a small room but it's workable."

She took the excuse and made herself scarce for a moment, disappearing upstairs to investigate.

Vance made his way into the kitchen and sat at the familiar table, looking at Leon.

"It's not like that, by the way."

"Mhmm." He replied as he began to dice onions. "Carrots?"

"Go for potatoes. Hey, don't change the subject."

"Roger that. You a wizard yet?"

"Arcanist" He corrected. "And sort of, yeah. Officially speaking, anyway."

Leon stopped chopping and turned to face him.

"Wait, really? You're not kidding? You actually pulled it off?"

"Yeah, I couldn't believe it either. I know magic, Leon. Admittedly I'm not great at it yet, bu-"

Before he could finish the sentence Leon had swept him up, chair and all and was spinning him around in the kitchen, he knocked the table over and Vance was pretty sure he'd smashed a handful of glassware in the process. He was laughing like a madman and jumping for joy, which was extremely uncomfortable for Vance, who was still in his chair. How strong was this guy, seriously?

Mariah responded quickly to the noise, having run down the stairs to peer around the corner, she saw the chaos and smiled, walking back upstairs and leaving them to their celebration.

"My little brother, the wizard."

"Arcanist."

"Yeah, whatever. Show me some magic, go on!" Leon put him down, sat on a chair opposite him and stared at him enthusiastically.

"Fine." Vance focused and spread out his mana sense. He pushed it hard, so he could get an idea of what was around him. The kitchen was largely as it had always been. Stone floor, wooden counters, shelves that tormented him as a child because he couldn't reach them and their secrets. A myriad of different ingredients strewn across the place, some on the floor now, thanks to Leon.

Then he settled on the small oven across the room. Essentially, it was a glorified clay kiln with a few metallic racks placed inside to hold food. Workable, but simple, fuelled by the simple wood fire. There was a little pot in there, Leon always had liked soup.

"Watch the oven," Vance said, a little smirk on his face, he didn't know too many tricks yet, but this one he'd done. Well, on a smaller scale. With candles.

Vance focused and gathered fire mana, he gathered quite a lot of it in his right hand and his core began to flare up. He beat it down. He gestured and pushed the mana gathered in his right hand towards the pile of firewood stacked at the bottom of the oven. He held the mana in place, then, through a force of will, locked the mana into its new fiery aspect and released his grip on its shape, it spread outwards, infecting the wood.

A few seconds later, the oven burst into roaring flames. Perhaps he'd put a tad too much mana behind that. Leon's chair went flying as he shot to his feet, eyes wide, staring at the oven.

"I knew you could do it! Wait until I tell Anne about this, she's going to lose her mind. Actually not just Anne, everyone in the village will!"

Leon composed himself over a few seconds after a few more excited yelps then returned to his regular cool, calm demeanour.

"Well, first thing's first. Let's see if magical flames make potatoes taste any better, shall we?"

Shortly thereafter, Mariah joined them in the kitchen. She'd changed into some of the remarkably boring spare clothes the two boys kept upstairs and her hair was glued to her face, fresh out of the bath. She sat down at the table, still a little flustered.

"So, Mariah, right? Vance tells me you're from the same college, you a wizard too? Should I call you a witch? Are you a sorceress?"

"Arcanist, Leon. For the millionth time."

"Fine. Be-est thou an Arcanist as well?" Leon said, exasperated.

Their banter put her a little at ease. "I'm in training, like Vance. Technically I'm not a full Arcanist yet because I don't have a core like Vance does, but I'm working on a wind core. It'll take a while but I have good help." She chirped out the phrase so quickly that Vance was sure he'd missed a word or two.

"A what now?" Leon asked, a smile on his face.

"Don't worry about it, Leon," Vance added. "Wizard stuff."

"Arcanist." Leon corrected.

Vance nearly flipped the table, but he hadn't been this happy in what felt like a really, really long time.