Oftentimes, people living on the street just stop. Most everyone in that position feels the same emptiness Cass does to some degree and some of the more virtuous priests would preach against it. From what she understood, the Church believed that emotions were ruled by Gods and Devils. Good emotions would come from the Gods, and negative emotions from the Devils. This, they claimed, separates humans from animals.

The priests would expound verses and scripture, but often Cass was the only one to listen. She heard one priestess claim that while an evil man might be saved, animals cannot be redeemed. Thus, even feelings of fear and anger were better than feeling nothing at all. Cass had approached her afterwards and asked to learn more, this kind priestess had helped Cass learn to speak properly.

But the Church was wrong. Emptiness was better than terror and hatred, much preferable over having your heart try to break out of your chest just by sitting in a chair and waiting for someone to show up.

The room where Cass was to learn magic seemed a room like any other, she had no idea why there was a special location for it. But she did know that she was going to be alone with Hall for the lessons, and that those lessons might last the whole day. Cass was desperately trying to calm and focus herself, as each mistake would be punished worse than before. When Hall did enter, throwing the door open with his usual aggressive nature, Cass just about jumped out of her skin.

“I will admit,” Hall said without preamble or greeting as he looked at her. “You have surprised me. I did not expect a piece of trash off the street to be able to learn even the basics so quickly.”

Cass was stunned, was she being praised? By Hall?

“Perhaps teaching you won’t be a waste of my time after all.”

She was tentatively hopeful that these lessons would not be so bad, if she did well enough she might even be able to change how Hall thought of her…

“But if you do waste my time,” Hall continued. “I will show you just how terrifying magic can truly be.”

Cass shivered, she did not want to know what kind of torture would await her if she disappointed him.

“With that out of the way,” Hall dismissed his threat as if discussing the weather. “Let us begin to explain what magic is.”

Cass listened attentively to Hall as he spoke, if she was honest, the things he said were fascinating. The world was a system that was part of an even greater system and was itself composed of lesser systems. Each and every thing that existed, was connected and what people called ‘magic’ was using mana to alter these systems or build artificial ones to create a new result.

“Take, for example, the classic fireball.” Hall said, holding his hand palm up before him. “While converting mana to fire is possible, it is far easier to tweak the systems in the air to gather the energy and materials to form it.” Suddenly a ball of flame appeared in his hand, Cass found herself drawn to the display despite herself.

“Therefore, the power of a mage is determined by his understanding of the world around him, and the size of his mana pool.”

However, according to Hall, no one was quite sure what mana itself was, or even why only some people could use it. The capacity only occured in those with noble blood, but even among nobles it was a rare trait. Mages were certain that it was part of the natural system somewhere, and certain creatures in the world that used magic without sentience seemed to confirm that. But no one had yet devised a way to understand it.

To Cass’s shock, Hall seemed pleased with her attentiveness and understanding of what he was saying. She spent days learning about relationships between things, and she found herself enjoying it.

“My lord,” Cass had relaxed slightly, but still had to gather her courage to ask a question. “If everything is part of a system, and those systems are all interconnected, would that also include people?”

“Correct, in fact the collar on your neck is one of the results of such magic.” Hall answered, “However, magic that could be used to control a society is generally viewed as impossible. No matter how subtle the mage, no one has a mana pool large enough to control more than one or two people. And even that is generally a brute force endeavor, forcibly making them attend to the casters will, as opposed to magic that would use the system itself to have them willingly make the choices the caster wants.”

“Having said that, perhaps a practical example might be beneficial.” Cass knew that look on Hall’s face and instinctively tried to retreat back into the chair. “As you might expect, there are systems that make up the system of society. In other words, the systems that make up a human.”

Hall’s smile turned dark, “Those particular systems are my specialty. While I do admit it has been surprisingly pleasant to teach you, I was rather hoping to be able to test a new theory…”

Cass’s willpower broke, and she bolted for the door. But before she even touched the handle Hall commanded her to stop trying to escape. So Cass took the only other option available to her, and flung herself to the floor in front of Hall to beg.

Hall merely laughed at the crying, shaking, and desperate girl in front of him. “I will be gone for a week or two, you know. With those southern fools acting up again even apprentice mages are busy, but I wanted to make sure I gave you a parting gift to remember me by until I returned, so I thought I would give you a lecture on some of the systems in the human body.”

“For example,” Cass screamed as her body felt like it was burning, but there was no fire! She could feel the heat of flames and fire, but there was none! “Oddly, it turns out that the body determines temperature in two ways. There are parts that activate with cold and parts that activate with heat.”

He pinned the flailing Cass to the ground with his foot, laughing at her tears. “However, there is no way for it to tell that something is hot, not in a single function. Instead, when both the cold and the warm are activated together, it produces the feeling of ‘hot.’ Even though I say this is my specialty, to be honest I barely understand it. I am not entirely sure what these parts are or precisely how they work, but I did learn how to activate them, which led to a new discovery.”

The heat disappeared and was replaced with pain. Intense, incredible, pain all over her body. Cass felt her skin being flayed, her body stabbed and beaten, even her stomach and lungs were burning inside her! She threw up on the stone floor and tasted blood in her mouth, she had bitten her tongue without noticing it, because it to had been in pain from the beginning!

Then it ended, Cass couldn’t tell if she had been tortured for minutes or hours, time itself had bent to the pain. In reality, Hall had only applied the magic for around fifteen seconds, after all, he did not want to kill Cass.

“Hahaha,” Hall laughed heartily. “What a nice reaction! A good learner and capable of making such a pleasant face, I think I will enjoy this quite a bit! I will leave you some books to study, you have until I return to understand their contents, because if you don't…”

And with that Hall left the room, still chuckling. Cass herself could not move, her body was shaking so much that she could not use her arms to lift her up, and even if she did her legs would not support her. In the end, her guards had picked her up and carried her back to her room. As they laid her on the bed, she saw a stack of books waiting for her. Cass could read now, but slowly. There was absolutely no way she would be able to do as Hall had asked!