Vance and James were sat in the living room of the McKinley household. It had been a few hours since it was decided that Vance would be joining them as a guest for the foreseeable future and they'd wasted no time in getting to practice.

James was in the process of teasing his water mana into shapes, trying to emulate solid objects. James had always found that the hardest part of shaping water mana was preventing it from "dripping". More often than not, he found himself losing a small amount of his gathered mana in this way and Vance was using his mana sense to try and help him zone in on the problem.

Vance held a globule of water about half the size of James' in the air not far from his face. He shaped it into a sphere and it rotated gently in the air, not a drop fell to the ground.

"It's hardly fair, you were enlightened." James flung an arm upwards in the direction of Vance's water sphere, frustrated.

"True, but I still have to control it with my will. It seems to me like your water mana is dripping because you're trying to pull all of the water into a point from the centre to make the sphere, rather than surrounding it with your will."

Vance found this process was surprisingly useful for him, perhaps even more so than it was for James. It gave him an excuse to go over his pre-existing techniques with a fine-toothed comb.

"You mean like a cage? or a bubble? Wait, can you sense wills, too?"

"No, but I can tell that the concentration of water mana you have there is greater at the centre, closer to the pulling force your will is creating. Essentially, the force you're exerting on the edges is much too low to make it cohesive. You'll either have to pull inwards much, much harder or create a sort of mould from your will instead. I'm doing the latter. It feels similar to transference."

Malcolm delivered Vance's things to the house from his college dorm halfway into their practice. The boys were so focused on their tasks that neither of them noticed. James was trying different shapes, coaxing his will into very specific moulds as Vance suggested.

Vance found this particular task pretty simple after all of this time. He decided that his mana sense gave him a definite advantage, the feedback he received from the mana he was working with was precise and almost tactile, whereas James had to rely only on sight.

"Speaking of your mana sense, do you think I could learn to do that too? Could be useful."

"Honestly? I have no idea. I've been told that it might be because I did it before I opened my will that I was able to do it at all, but I can fill you in on the process if you want to try."

Vance proceeded to tell James of the two years that he spent in a sort of meditative introspection, followed by his attempts at sensory deprivation, which ultimately succeeded.

"2 years, eh? Wow, that's dedication. Colour me impressed. I think I'll give the long-form introspection a miss for a while, but the other thing sounds fun."

"I wouldn't exactly call it fun. It's certainly interesting. I'll see if I can get some of the plants I used for it when I get a chance, we can try it."

"Sounds good." James gave Vance a vocal thumbs up with his change of tone then switched gears to focus on his control training once again. It was pretty normal for Arcanists to work on their control like this, but Vance's special skills made the process much faster. Having someone around who could tell you the minutia of your mistakes quickly made a world of difference.

Vance's primary function in James' practice was to help him figure out whether or not the changes he made were actually having the desired effect on the internal structures of the mana he was working with. Together, the two fine-tuned some of James' basic shapes and he made fairly significant progress.

For his part, James returned the favour by teaching Vance about some of the constructs he'd learned over his first year. As it would turn out, James could perform fire, water, wind and metal shifts which gave him a fair amount of overlap with Vance's current skill set.

Largely, Vance learned that in their first year, students learned a myriad of simple, generic constructs that can be used as part of the creation of more complex ones. James went over basic constructs for moving, balancing, storing and releasing mana.

Vance had some experience with similar constructs but it was nice to get a few less specific examples, he'd need these fundamentals if he ever wanted to come up with his own constructs in the future. He found picking them up was quite simple when he compared them to the fire latticed enhancement construct that he'd been practising recently.

Before they knew it, the evening had arrived. Nathaniel had taken a short break early on the day, spending a few hours catching up on sleep before he rushed out of the house like a hurricane for the second time in twenty-four hours.

Over the course of the day, several deliveries were made to the house. Vance felt another mixed flush of embarrassment and elation when he realised that a lot of them were for him. It would seem that Nathaniel was true to his word and expedient in executing his plans.

Vance found that they'd arranged for him to be brought several new sets of clothing as well as a set of school supplies. Vance was grateful, of course, but he quickly realised that "school supplies" mostly amounted to books.

Fortunately for him, Maddison had offered to read him the contents of said books whenever the two of them had spare time and James had offered to demonstrate any of the constructs depicted in the books whenever he had the capability to do so.

Vance was beginning to love it here already. Of course, he'd prefer if he could take care of all of these things himself, but he wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

By the time night had come Vance had organized all of his new possessions and had retired to his room. It had taken some convincing on Maddison's part to get the boys to stop their practice. She was fairly certain if she hadn't interfered, they'd have sat in the living room working on fire shaping all night.

Vance was surprised to feel that his will, despite being used consistently for practice throughout most of the day, was largely good as new. Taking measure of himself, he thought that perhaps pushing himself the day prior might've actually been a good thing, somehow. Nevertheless, he didn't feel like repeating the process until he knew more.

He spent the early hours of the night working on his dual mana shifts. More and more commonly he was beginning to maintain two shifts for a handful of seconds before they lost substance. Now, he was working on extending how long he could maintain that state of split focus.

He was beginning to appreciate the difficulty of achieving a second mana core. Here he was, struggling to maintain dual control for a few seconds when it could take hours to assimilate a new core properly. It gave him an even deeper respect for expert Arcanists, there truly wasn't a substitute for hard work.

Except perhaps for this enlightenment thing he'd discovered, though that seemed only to help with aspect shifting.

Vance briefly considered practising a little external compression but decided against it while inside the household, he'd want to head out into the open before trying that, to be safe.

Instead, he practised his shifts, idly spinning various forms of mana above his palms, soaking in the feelings that came with them. When get moved on to the metal shift, he found himself subconsciously grasping at the necklace he was wearing, at the tiny silver coin. He felt a mixture of sadness, pride, comfort and nostalgia at its touch.

He took that a signal that it was time for bed.

Over the next few days, the McKinley household saw very little of its master, Nathaniel. James and Vance almost exclusively spent their time practising together as they got into something of a rhythm. Very quickly, they'd learned that the college was a bit of a mess at the moment. Apparently, the masters had gotten involved in "something big" and classes were suspended for the time being.

It was three days later that the rest of Vance's friends made their way over to the McKinley household. He learned quickly that they'd tried to visit a few days ago but Nathaniel was insistent on visiting the households of any potential visitors before they get anywhere near his estate. It had taken him a few days to find the time to perform his checks.

Thomas, Brad and Mariah joined Vance and James in the McKinley families grounds, behind the home. It was only now that Vance was discovering that they had an enormous walled garden back here.

Naturally, Mariah was the first one to throw a haymaker.

"Will you stop nearly getting yourself killed already, please?" She delivered an absolutely devastating pinch-push-twist manoeuvre on Vance's unsuspecting arm as she spoke.

"Ah! Message received! Sorry!" He chuckled his way through rubbing his new war wound, eliciting a light group giggle. Vance waited a second then added. "You're not going to believe when we tell you-"

"We already know." Thomas interrupted. "Nathaniel is telling any Arcanists that will listen. He's pretty riled up about the whole thing."

"Do you blame him?" Brad said with a shrug.

"Hardly. With a demon on the loose, I'm surprised the empire hasn't burned the city to the ground yet," Mariah contributed this statement in her usual way too cheery tone. Like a lot of things she said, this was quite out of place. She was answered by about four or five masculine grunts of assent.

"Still, hard to believe the whole Duncan and Leslie thing, though. The dude was a dick, but that's messed up. How do you feel about all of that, Vance?" Thomas asked.

"Honestly? I'm still pretty pissed off at him. But, from what I can gather, dark mana can make you do pretty much anything. You guys don't have to worry about me going on a crusade for revenge or anything, but I'd like to give him a piece of my mind sometime."

"Seems fair to me." Brad nodded along.

Thomas slapped a hand on Vance's shoulder. "Good thinking. Bad idea to keep that sort of bad blood in the air at a time like this. Besides, I hear Duncan's beside himself. He'll probably come to apologise to you at some point, anyway."

"That'll be weird," Vance replied.

"Better than having an enemy," Brad said as if to correct Vance.

"True." James wagged his finger approvingly at the large man.

"What do you guys think I should do about it?" Vance asked to the forum.

It was quiet for a minute before Thomas was the one to reply. Being the oldest, the group deferred to him.

"My opinion? Now that the Sellanion family is in a weak position and free of this strange influence, give them a chance to make the first move in making amends. If you're then seen to be the one acting graciously towards them in a time of weakness despite their wrongdoings, you'll be heralded for your magnanimity. Considering you've thrown your lot in with the McKinleys, it would do well for your reputation as a whole, you're going to have to start thinking like a noble sometimes, Vance."

"But I'm not part of a noble family..."

"Correct, but you're the next best thing. You're under the wing of one. Functionally speaking, there's no difference."

"So, I just let them apologise, then that's it? I've got to admit, I would like to see at least some justice."

"No, of course not. If they follow tradition, they'll offer some sort of sincere apology, it'll be a personal thing, probably a visit. Then, traditionally, you'll receive a gift in line with the severity of their misdoings. This could be anything from something like money all the way to land if the offence was severe enough. Then, lastly, the family in the wrong will often appear of their own volition to admit their crimes to the city lord. That's when you get involved."

"And my involvement is...?"

"Leniency. Ordinarily, this sort of thing is very rare and only ever happens if a family is caught red-handed doing something they shouldn't have. In those scenarios, the offended party is given the option to ask the city lord for leniency, lessening the punishment given to the offender. This is why it's traditional to give a gift, it's a bribe. Of course, you can just as easily ask for a whipping or something once you reach that stage, but it's more than a little frowned upon. There's this sort of unspoken agreement..."

"Don't have me whipped now and I won't have you whipped when I catch you later down the line?" Vance asked.

"Precisely."

"This is all assuming that Duncan will come forward of his own accord to kick all of this off," James chimed in.

"True, but from what I hear he's been trying to convince Nathaniel to let him visit here since the first night. I expect he's trying to do precisely that."

"How do you know that, Thomas?" Mariah cocked her head.

Thomas tapped his nose. "Sorry, working with the college on something, can't talk about it."

"You've got to be kidding me, you won't even tell us?!" Mariah looked outraged. "Fine, be all mysterious. Bloody second years."

"Take it up with Noelle." He shrugged at her.

As they started to argue about that, Vance let his mana sense wander around him, feeling his way through the garden. His attention was grabbed by something he sensed nearby on Mariah. Without thinking too much, he just asked.

"Hey Mariah, I sense something new on you, what's that?"

She was immediately distracted from her pouting match with Thomas and lit up like a bonfire.

"Oh, right! I meant to show you all, my dad got me a present."

She pulled a little bell attached to the end of a chain out from under her shirt. She gave it a little shake and it tinkled gently in the wind.

"It's a locator construct that my dad made now that I can do a wind shift. He said it was a reward, but really it's for him. If I put a little wind mana into it, it'll amplify it and send it to a predetermined spot, specifically, my house. There's a receiver construct in there that'll be able to point in my direction. Well, the location of the bell. Neat, huh?" She pulled up Vance's hand and gently dropped the little construct into his palm for him to inspect.

"That's seriously useful," Vance commented, twirling the little bell in his hand.

Vance inspected the construct. He sensed what appeared to an enhancement construct, he recognised that much, but it was tuned to wind, not fire. The rest of the construct was entirely lost on him. The immense complexity of this thing was mindboggling.

"Your father must be one hell of an Arcanist. This is crazy."

"He's incredible," Mariah announced, proudly. She didn't seem to want to elaborate, but the pride was certainly genuine.

"Oh!" Thomas exclaimed, suddenly sitting up. Everyone turned to face him.

"That reminds me, I was supposed to tell you all, evaluations are happening as soon as the masters are done with their big project, get prepared."

An explosion of expletives and exasperation ran through the other members of the group. Then, in true Vance fashion, he interrupted them with a question.

"...Evaluations?"

"Oh, you're going to love these. They're right up your alley." James shook Vance as he spoke.

Vance didn't like something about the way James said that.

Suddenly, he felt a tad nervous.