Sophie worked through lunch trying to burn out the corruption from the dagger with no success, before she finally gave up, exhausted already even though it was only mid-day. She thanked Cali before heading to the bathhouse to soak for a while and then made her way back to the shrine.

Elowen was waiting for her in the courtyard, concern etched across her features, but she immediately perked up as Sophie returned. “How did it go?” she asked, as she followed Sophie into the shrine.

“It was okay.” Sophie made a beeline to the kitchen and immediately began making herself a sandwich. “I couldn’t do much. Apparently I have really poor mana control.”

Sophie dug through the cabinets to find some dried Magewort, staring at it reluctantly for a long moment before pulling it out of the cabinet and setting the tin on the counter. Then she set some water from earlier in the day to boil and ate her sandwich while waiting.

“I suppose that’s true,” Elowen said thoughtfully. “But you have so little of it to begin with…”

Sophie glared at her. And here Sophie had been sticking up for Elowen. “Apparently that’s all the more reason why I should focus on control.”

Elowen shrugged. “If you say so. It seems pointless to worry about mana control until you are a higher level. But I suppose it can’t hurt. Perhaps it’s just what you need!”

“So do you know how I would work on that?” Sophie asked when the water for her tea was finally ready.

“Why, of course!” Elowen replied. “Working with fire is one of the best ways to work on mana control, even if it’s not your primary element. Fire is so greedy that it’s difficult not to dump all of your mana into it. We could practice…” Elowen trailed off, and Sophie noticed her gaze land on the box of cakes. They had yet to open them after all of the commotion with the corrupted items yesterday.

“Oh I see how it is… You just want cake,” Sophie teased.

Elowen’s face turned pink, and while Sophie considered the mechanics of that with Elowen being a mostly translucent shrine spirit at all, Elowen spluttered several denials.

“It really is the best way to practice! You could also try meditation, but that’s just so boring!”

Sophie laughed. “I’m just teasing. Of course we can bring more of the cakes for you.”

Elowen pouted, but Sophie soldiered on. “In fact, I was just making some tea to boost my mana a bit, and then we can work on control this afternoon.”

Elowen looked somewhat placated at the explanation. She hovered around Sophie excitedly as Sophie finished her lunch and gulped down some nasty Magewort tea.

***

Sophie set up the little grill to burn the cakes on, just said she had the previous times. When she got the fire going this time, however, Elowen stopped her before she placed the cake in.

“With mana control, it’s all about using as little mana as possible. Ideally you’d only use the exact amount that you need,” Elowen explained. “When you push a bunch of mana all at once, most of it ends up burning off into the environment, or in the case of fire, the fire will grow larger and consume more of it. To work on control – push just enough mana into the fire so that it burns without growing. The fire should not change at all.”

It sounded reasonable enough, but Sophie looked at the fire with no small amount of skepticism. She remembered the awful pull of it. It seemed like the fire needed all of her mana. Or at least it thought so.

“Okay – I’ll give it a try.”

Sophie reached out to the fire with her mana, attempting to only send it a little, but the pull was too strong. She tried drawing back, but broke the connection accidentally instead of making it smaller. She tried a few more times, before finally giving up and pulling out a cake to burn.

She didn’t have much mana left to begin with today, and she did want to burn a cake for Elowen still. She placed the cake into the fire as she held the connection, pleased to find that it took her less mana to burn a cake than it had previously. She was even able to do one more before she felt too tired to go on.

Elowen seemed delighted by the cakes, encouraging Sophie to eat one as well, even though they had been a gift to Elowen. As Sophie bit into one of the delicious cakes, she mused that she didn’t learn all that much about mana control, but she was glad they had at least tried. Hopefully Sterling would have more to teach her tomorrow. Speaking of which…

“Do you remember the mage who visited us a few weeks ago? The one from the town?”

“The unspecialized? Of course I do!” Elowen sounded far more confident than Sophie really thought she should considering her track record...

“Well, he’s offered to work on mana control with me. I need to go back to Caulis tomorrow to meet with him.”

Elowen frowned at the news, but to Sophie’s surprise she nodded after a moment or two. “Okay,” she said, perhaps a little too easily. “You won’t be working with the corrupted items anymore?”

So that’s what this was about. Sophie shook her head. “Probably not for a little while. Not until my mana control is better, I suppose. It seems like I’ll need all the help I can get before learning purification.”

Elowen looked pleased at the news, and she waved her hand at the box of cakes beside them. “You should eat another one,” she offered. “I had two after all.”

Sophie laughed and picked up another cake to eat. After, she cleaned out the grill, and then they spent the rest of the afternoon and much of the evening reading some of the books Elowen had borrowed from the library.

***

Later the next morning after her usual rituals, Sophie found her way to The Cracked Coin. She had long since forgotten all about her original goal of trying all of the restaurants in Caulis, but coming back to this place reminded her. It made her recall the first time she learned about purification, thinking maybe it would be the way for her to earn some coin. Perhaps it still could be. Perhaps if she learned the skill well enough, she could get by – purifying items that people like Linden brought back from quests.

With that in mind, she pushed open the door to the tavern. It was not yet noon, but Sterling was already sitting at a table, leafing through a stack of papers. The same woman from before was working at the bar again, and she raised her hand in greeting. “It’s been a while! No ghosts at the shrine after all?” she asked.

Sophie laughed and shook her head. “Nope. No ghosts,” she confirmed.

Sophie was surprised the woman remembered her, but she supposed being a priestess was fairly memorable, at least in Caulis. She went to join Sterling at the table, but before she could sit down the other man stood up, picking up the papers as he went. “We can use one of the rooms in the back,” he explained, threading his way through the tables towards an employee door.

Sophie frowned over at the woman at the bar, convinced that Sterling was just being rude, but the woman smiled and called over to them. “Go ahead. I’ll make you some food.”

Sterling nodded, a small smile creasing the corner of his mouth as well. “Thanks, love.”

The endearment sounded strange coming from this prickly-seeming man, and at Sophie’s curious glance he shrugged. “My wife,” he explained. “Felicity. She owns The Cracked Coin. Well, I suppose we own it, but I am rather busy with other things.” He lifted up the stack of papers as if it was some sort of explanation in and of itself.

Sophie wasn’t sure if she was more surprised that Sterling was married or that the friendly bartender was his wife. Either way, it made a lot more sense why Sterling would want to meet at the tavern. “Do you live upstairs then?” Sophie asked, curious about the ways of the townfolk of Caulis.

Sterling nodded and opened a door to a small private room with a large table and chairs set up. “We do,” he said. “Here, we can use the staff meal room.”

He set his stack of papers down on one end of the table and went over to a cabinet to pull out some candlesticks. Sophie sat down at the table, watching him curiously as he worked.

After he set up the candlesticks, Sophie was delighted to see him light each one with mana. “You can use fire!” she exclaimed, perhaps a little too excited about the demonstration.

Sterling gave her a wry look. “Of course I can use fire. Most mages can do such a simple trick. It’s not that being unspecialized precludes me from using other elements.”

Well, Sophie couldn’t do it, but she supposed that wasn’t saying much in her current state. “Um, right.”

“We’ll practice using this,” Sterling explained, gesturing to the candles. “You’ll feed mana into the flame, careful to only channel as much as the flame can burn without causing it to flare up and melt the candle.”

Just as Elowen had explained. “I’ve done this before,” Sophie said, but she didn’t mention it had only been the previous night. “But it seems impossible. The flame keeps pulling at my mana, like it wants more.”

“Hmm, certain elements respond to will more than others do,” Sterling explained. “I, too, feel a tug at my mana when connecting to fire, but you must learn to resist it. It’s yet another aspect of mana control. You must be in charge of where your mana goes – you can’t let the element dictate it for you.”

Sophie frowned. That sounded reasonable enough, but in practice, it felt impossible.

“We’ll start with a different exercise then,” Sterling recommended. “First, connect with the fire, and rather than feed your mana into it, merely observe it. Resist the pull.”

He waved a hand at her. “You may begin.” And then immediately glanced back down at his paperwork. She was obviously dismissed.

She resisted the temptation to roll her eyes at him. He was helping her, after all, even if it didn’t seem like he had very much faith in her abilities. She didn’t have very much faith in her abilities either, if she was honest with herself. She had mostly been stumbling along, learning things piecemeal as she needed them, trying to work with her mana as much as she could in order to level up more quickly, hopeful that leveling up would somehow unlock more options for her. She hadn’t considered that maybe there was more to all of this mana stuff.

She decided to ignore Sterling, as much as he was already ignoring her, and focused on one of the candles instead. This flame was much smaller than the fire she had worked with before. Perhaps that would help.

She hesitantly reached out to it, trying to merely observe. She immediately felt the pull. Sure, this fire was smaller, but it was still hungry for her mana – it wanted to devour her mana and grow bigger, brighter –

She dropped the connection, sweat breaking out all over her body. Somehow observing was more difficult than channeling. Sterling didn’t even glance up, even though Sophie was sure he had to have noticed the mana fluctuations. She felt somewhat glad for his stony attitude – if he had continued to comment on her inability, she might not be able to continue. But he merely worked on his paperwork in silence.

So Sophie tried again.

And again.

And again…