Now that she knew the stakes, with these Ghosts of Sorvel trying to hurt people, Elruin decided maybe she should accept some help from the twins in spite of Cali's warnings to the contrary. "Lady Juna? I think maybe I should see your music teacher, if that's not too much of a bother, please?" She wanted to work on her magic, and she had a magic violin she knew nothing about. It seemed like the best idea.

"No bother at all," Juna smiled her best smile and pretended not to notice Calenda clenching her fists. "I'll let her know, and you can have your first session in a few days. I warn you, though, she is a demanding teacher. Best I can name at her craft, but she expects nothing less than your best in return."

"I thought that's what you hated about her, dear sister?"

"No, not at all." Lady Juna turned her attention to her brother for just one moment. "What I hated is that she refused to understand that for all my talents, music simply is not one of them. But a Virtuoso like little Elruin should be an ideal match."

As the conversation was coming to a close, Elruin clasped her hands together. "Thank you again for your hospitality and help."

"Think nothing of it," Lady Juna said. "We all want the safety of our city and loved ones. One day, you'll contribute to both, and we'd be failures in our duty if we didn't do everything in our power to prepare you for that day."

Suggested Listening

Night in the city was beautiful and active. The stone paths of the city began to glow, creating a soft light that illuminated the entire city, or at least the parts anyone looked like they wanted to go. People went about their business on the streets, either socializing or working as if it was still the day. Through her lifesight, she spotted couple hiding behind a smaller wall, doing... the thing adults did that she thought was only meant to be done in bed. Only animals did it outside, to her knowledge.

Elruin had never considered that people would want to be out at night. Through her life, the sun was what guided her life, and the lives of her family. Be up at sunrise, to start your outdoor chores. Come in when the sun was high to eat, go to bed when the sun began to drop behind the wall. Being outside at night always meant something was wrong on the farm. Which brought her to the problem at hand, that everyone was talking, but not Cali.

Elruin kept her head down. "Are you mad at me? I know I said I wouldn't take Lady Juna's offer, but I want to be able to help."

"A little." Cali chose to look up, instead. "More than a little. I'm being stupid, trying to force my choices on you, earth mages are stubborn and water mages want to carve their own path, and I'm worse than most about both. It's your choice, and in the short run it's the smart choice, but I think it's an unwise one in the long run."

"I'll be careful," Elruin said.

"I hope that's enough." They spent the rest of the walk home in silence.

The next two days were a flurry of activity, with Elruin getting a crash course in what her curriculum would look like, though there wasn't much by way of control she could exert on the process. The administration of The College insisted that she spend her days learning basic magic, so that she would possess what they considered minimum skills to participate with the rest of the school once classes started again.

Other stuff, such as the purchase of supplies, became more complex. Clothes were more expensive than Elruin ever realized, and now she could appreciate why she never owned an outfit that wasn't handed down to her by her relatives. "Does it matter what I wear?"

"It shouldn't, but it does," Calenda said. "Oh, does it ever. Especially to the types that associate with the academies. Just be glad they're giving you the uniforms for free, not everyone gets that luxury."

"Oh," it all looked so expensive, but she didn't want to look bad to other people, either. "How will we afford anything good?"

"Well, there's always the sarite," Cali said. "I still say you're better off trading it for better suited shards, but there's always the coin market, it's just not as ideal."

"I want to keep them." She didn't know if or when they might be helpful, but they seemed more important than clothes.

"Well, they're yours to do do with as you please," Cali said. "But I'd trade them out at earliest opportunity, if I were you. Especially since I can't afford to buy you any expensive equipment, and it will be years before you can do it yourself."

Now that they were talking about it, Elruin recalled the offer Cali made the other day. "You could adopt me like you said before?"

"I... suppose that would solve the problem." When Calenda made that offer, she'd meant it more as speculation and an amateurish attempt at outplaying the twins at their own game. Now, with the young necromancer considering the idea in earnest, and it having failed at its intended purpose before it began, she was reminded of the other reason she didn't play these games; she was terrible at them. She wasn't about to tell Elruin about any of that, in part because of the same stupid pride that drove her to offer in the first place. "Not enough to afford the best, but enough to keep you taken care of."

"That sounds good." Now Elruin began to wonder how it worked. "Does that mean I call you Mother, now?"

This is why Time Mages can't go back in time. Everyone with that power has already gone back and murdered their past selves. "I'd prefer you keep calling me Cali, if you could. If you must tell someone our relationship, say I'm your Elder Sister."

Elruin's emotions couldn't be more opposite of Calenda's. She hugged the older mage and new adoptive sibling. "Thank you, you're the best Elder Sister ever! You saved me from the woods and got me nice clothes and a school! How can I ever repay you?"

Cali hesitated, then returned the hug with one arm around Elruin's lower back. "As I walk." Forget past-me. I'd find my Father, then I'd never have been born in the first place. Thinking about the complexities of time travel made for a viable short-term distraction. "Besides, half of that is me doing my job, and you did save my life, so I don't think you owe me anything."

Elruin squeezed harder, to which Cali just sighed and put her other hand on the girl's head.

Two more days of chaos was all it took for Elruin to take her first step inside her new dorm room at the school. She had her own room, without a roommate, thanks to being so much younger than all of the other students. To Elruin, the concept of having enough bedrooms that they could afford to have just two children to a room, let alone one, defied her imagination. It would have to remain imagination, too, since the walls were insulated to block her lifesight as well as everything else she knew.

Suggested Listening

"Good luck at school," Cali said. Now she gave Elruin a hug. "Do your best, study hard, and I'll be sure to visit any time I'm back in town and can spare the time."

"I promise," Elruin said. "Be careful while beating up the bad men." While it was possible for Elruin to stay at Cali's place, she didn't want to annoy Lyra any more than she had to, and as Cali said, it felt more like Rena's home than Cali's. So Elruin decided to stay at the school, where perhaps there was something other than cooked leaves for dinner.

Elruin's first week was pure disappointment, as she spent most of her days learning about simple magical structures that she never realized were unusual or special, like structuring the concept of the spell in her mind, then Revealing the spell, then casting it. It seemed that her tutor expected her to follow through a slow, boring process that took minutes while she talked, instead of the heartbeat and two notes that Elruin required.

Time and time again, she found herself encountering this problem, as teachers demanded she do a slow, annoying approach instead of her own, instinctive approach. It felt to her like they were trying to teach her how to take her first steps, even though she knew how to walk fine.

She felt like she learned more at the food hall, which they called a cafeteria. There, she could watch the other students show off the spells they learned in class, or talk about all the teachers she might meet while being trained at the school, or play at the same games that Cali talked about Lady Juna and Lord Garit playing. Compared to them, these students were mere children, but Elruin could still learn from them.

If most of them didn't avoid Elruin. Not too different from her family back home, none were mean to her, but all had their subtle ways of not including her in their conversations other than as a hanger-on. It didn't take long before she concluded she wasn't welcome.

It was only then than one of the girls sat next to her. She was tall, and the first thing to come to Elruin's mind was that she was very brown. With large eyes, long straight hair, and the darkest tan which Elruin had ever seen. "Greetings. My name is Lemia."

"Greetings, I am Elruin." She took the traditional submissive posture. "May I ask why you wish to speak to me?"

"You can treat me as an equal," Lemia said. "In fact, if you ask the people around here, I bet they'd say I should be subordinate to you."

Elruin couldn't figure out what she meant. "Why? Are you a slave?"

"No, nothing like that. I'm what they call aspectless, when they're being polite." Lemia waited until it became clear Elruin didn't know what that meant. "You know how everyone has an aspect? You're negation, most of the people around here are fire or earth, some even have two or three elements? Well, I have no aspect at all, yet can still use magic."

"I've never heard of that before."

"And I've never heard of a child who's more powerful than half the teachers before," Lemia said. "Not that the teachers here are all that strong, this school puts most of its emphasis on knowledge, not ability. Nobody here knows what to do with either of us, and I saw you at the library trying to make up for the teachers' failure. So I figure we can help each other out. I'll show you some of the tricks the faculty won't get around to showing you until a week before it's time to go on break. And maybe if I watch you, I can learn more about how to concentrate so much strength into one point."

Elruin hoped, if nothing else, that this would help her get real practice with her magic. She couldn't imagine Lemia would learn much from her in exchange, not compared to some of the mages Elruin had seen. If Lemia wanted to learn about concentrated power, she should go to the church and watch Lyra. "What magic can you do, if you don't have an aspect?"

Lemia shrugged, then twirled her fingers. A song gathered from nowhere, while she gathered fragments and wisps of energy that wafted through the hall, into a singular cohesive form within the cup of water she brought with her. There wasn't much in terms of real power there, but she'd never seen a song quite like before, with contradictory notes somehow holding in harmony.

"One of the quirks of my lack of bloodline," she said. "Because I don't have an aspect, it means I'm compatible with all of them. I can apply fundamental magic to manipulate any other type, at least a little. More resistant to magical attacks, too, and I can use any sarite, if I'm strong enough to handle it. It's not enough to make up for a lack of an element, most of the time, but I'm training to be an alchemist."

"Is that what you're doing, now?"

"Kinda. It's more like temporary enchanting," Lemia said. "The real stuff requires reagents, and once finished can last for years. This lasts until I stop concentrating on it. There, it's done. Go ahead and charge it with your energy. Fundamental power, if you please. I'm nowhere near strong enough to purify your necromantic element in real time."

Fundamental magic was most of what the teachers had been showing her, so she dipped into her power and allowed some to be released, absorbed by the water Lemia played with. Moments later the water began to glow.

"This would take an archmage decades of training to pull off, and then only one with the perfect set of elemental bloodlines. But for me it's easy." Lemia held up the cup, then drank the contents. Life energy surged through her, obvious to Elruin's sight. "A healing spell, powered by a necromancer." She shuddered as the magic continued to wash through her. "Maybe a little too strong, but nobody's going to complain that a potion works better than expected. I'll never be a combat mage, but as an alchemist, nobody can match my versatility."

"Does that mean you can make healing sarite for me?" Elruin asked. She did still have those crystals that Cali thought everybody wanted.

"I don't have that sort of skill," Lemia said. "Maybe some day, years from now, but I'm still a student like you."

The rest of the month went fast, with Elruin working hard to advance her skills with Lemia, while tolerating the instructors until they got around showing her how to use magic more to her talents. What combat training she did was limited to her own time, which she only did once to take a break and rest from all the studying. She knew, even though she was studying as a scholar, that she would need to be ready for the next time the bad men tried to attack her.

Perhaps that's why she focused on learning fire magic, once she found she had that option. All the frustration of teachers who ignored her insistence that she could, should, do more. While Cali and others fought bad men, she felt like she was stagnating. She poured all that anger and resentment out in one day she found to be alone in a secluded part of the park.

She would never forget how she overwhelmed the poor squirrel's mind, causing the poor animal to go insane and murder its mate and babies in their nest, before it tore out its own throat with its claws. True, she long lost count of all the rats she'd killed with her magic on the farm, but at least their deaths were clean and painless, not the blood-soaked massacre she inflicted. For that reason, she went back to studying so that she could control her magic better.

She even got training by real musicians to use her violin, which turned out to be more useful than she ever imagined. As she trained her art, she learned to use it to extend her spells across the area, joining her Revealed music with true music, deadly when combined with the new magic she was learning. If she ever fought morks again, she was confident the outcome would be horrific for them.

By the end of her short half of a semester, she was beginning to feel like a real mage who knew what she was doing, rather than a child who chased others around hoping they could tell her what to do.

That is when Calenda came to visit her for the first time since she left. She looked fine on the surface, but Elruin had improved her lifesight in the months since she last saw her, and it was obvious that the woman was injured, beyond what healing magic could easily mend. More than that was the marks that Elruin could only comprehend thanks to the training in fundamental magic that came from using so much magic that it was almost fatal. Past that, a song echoed through her body, with notes that were unlike any Elruin had ever heard before.

She almost didn't recognize her savior. "Cali?"

"Hey, Ell." Cali tried to force a smile. "I'm sorry to drop in like this, but I need you to come with me, to outside the walls. Please? I can't explain why."