Alexar didn’t find a teacher for Alan right away, but somehow managed to get his hands on a secret technique of manifesting magic from a prominent house of fire mages. He never explained the costs involved, and Alan never asked, too afraid to know the price his father had been willing to part with just for Alan’s sake, all based on a lie. The manual itself had several different methods of manifesting the first seeds of fire magic, and Alan had started with one very similar to what he had originally been working on. The goal was to increase the temperature on the surface of his hands, through a combination of meditation and thought pattern exercises.

It was tedious work, sitting still for hours trying to clear out any stray thoughts, but the thought pattern to follow actually made some sense to Alan. The manual stated that he had to envision his hands moving gently back and forth, and then very slowly increase the speed of the motion in his mind. The amplitude of the motion should be as small as possible, and with the increasing speed, the movement would slowly change into rapid shaking. Alan realised this was very close to the way thermal energy was described in science, and used his knowledge to focus on the random motion of every tiny part of his hand rather than a unified movement of the hand itself.

Through a lot of practice, and more meditation than he had ever thought of doing before in his life, he finally managed to catch a sensation of increasing temperature in his hands. From there on, the control of body temperature soon followed, albeit slowly and in small steps.

It was almost a year after he first manifested his “lightning” mana, when he first told Marissa about his achievement of controlling the temperature on his hands, and told her it was the first manifestation of his mana. A lie that hurt him, but he had promised his father both to never use lightning magic, and never tell anyone that he could. He intended to keep the promises for as long as he could, but would inevitably break them in the name of science, or so he justified it.

Marissa had been absolutely ecstatic, and having paid so little attention in class, she quickly went about to get the attention of everyone in the room, and then proceeded to pronounced Alan as the first mage of the class, better than anyone else. After that followed a slightly embarrassing explanation stating that he was in fact not a mage, not even close, and that it still was very doubtful that he could ever become one, considering the enormous requirements involved. Marissa never showed a hint of remorse or embarrassment however, just pure joy that one of her friends had been the first to manifest magic out of everyone in class. Alan could swear she did the entire thing on purpose, just to see him embarrassed for once.

Her announcement had apparently sparked some healthy competition however, and soon the only topic that was discussed between lessons was a single question; who would manifest their magic next?

Marissa had naturally begged Alan for help, promising gold and glory in return for teaching her how he did it, and he had no chance at all to refuse the begging eyes of the little redhead.

That was how they found themselves sitting on the balcony, in Alan’s favorite spot for meditating, him relaxed and enjoying the calm breeze, and her in a stressed and impatient mood, waiting for something to happen.

“Uuuuugggghhh, it doesn’t wooooork”, Marissa said for the 9th time in the last hour. “Are you sure this is what the manual said? What about holding hands over candlelights, or dipping them in freezing water? Or are you just tricking me because you know I’ll be a better fire mage than you, and you’re already jealous?”

A smile plastered itself on Alans face, his meditation doing wonders for his patience. “I’m pretty sure this is what the manual said, yes. But you are very welcome to go plunge your hands into some cold water if you want. You never know what might work.”

Marissa immediately jumped up on her feet, and ran into the house to find some water. She came back again soon enough, and this time she managed to completely break his meditational state as well, by throwing water in his face.

“Haha! I did it! I just cast a water spell on you!” Marissa exclaimed triumphantly, parading around while doing fancy hand movements which sent drops here and there. Why not indulge her a little, she’s been working hard, Alan thought.

“Fear me, little one, for I am an expert in aerial magic, and my wind blades can cut through three pieces of stacked paper at once!” Alan shouted, and with his own set of fancy hand movements he hunted Marissa through the house. Laughter and happy yelling echoed throughout the neighbourhood for most of that afternoon.

Although the sessions with Marissa had shown little progress so far, Alan had made a lot of progress on his own. He had gotten enough control that he could consciously control his body temperature at any time, though he was still quite confused as to where the energy went whenever he cooled himself. He had also been very careful not to change his core temperature by any significant amount, as he knew only a few degrees could be very problematic.

His father had finally found a fire mage named Aquillus, who was willing to teach Alan the very basics, and they now met once a week for additional education. To Alan’s surprise, the mage wasn’t willing to start working on manifesting mana outside of his body yet, instead directing all efforts to temperature control on the top layer of his skin. Aquillus had required Alan to be able to keep his hand inside the flames of a small fire pit for an entire minute while not being burned, before he was willing to teach anything more. In order to manage that, he had to have control of the temperature in the outer layer of skin independent of the temperature in the environment, which turned out to be surprisingly difficult to master. It didn’t directly involve heating or cooling, which Alan had gotten better at lately, but finding out the exact frequency that he had to imagine his hands vibrating on. He could just keep cooling them, but that might give him frostbite if he wasn’t careful, and while being distracted by the flames, he didn’t really manage to differentiate between too hot and too cold. It was all very disorienting.

The rest of the school days passed in a blur, and Alan often found himself more focused on controlling the temperature in his hands than following the lectures. Marissa, of course, used meditation as an excuse to sleep through lectures, so he couldn’t look to her for help with the lessons either. He somehow still made it through the tests, but his results were often significantly weaker than he’d like. How Marissa managed to answer anything correctly on the tests was a complete mystery to Alan.

As the summer passed and fall was closing in, the time had soon come for another competition in the arena games. Alan had no wish to be there, and Naida didn’t push him on the issue this time around. Jack’s team had apparently won last year, and were the favorites for this year’s competition as well, though Jack seemed fairly subdued on the matter. Alan supposed last year’s incident had put a damper on Jack’s enthusiasm for the fights, which was all for the better in Alan’s mind.

“So, anyone ready for the games tomorrow? I’ve heard Ignos are rumored to be even more brutal this year, it should be fun.”

The question took Alan by surprise, and he quickly turned to find a smug looking Drake, sweeping his gaze over the classroom. Drake Gilden came from a High Noble lineage, and his father Maximillian Gilden sat on the King’s counsel, Alan remembered. He didn’t really like the boy, but supposed his aloofness and self-important behaviour was more or less unavoidable with his sheltered upbringing in the highly influential family. Marissa, who up until now had been in the midst of a heated discussion about which of the King’s knights was the most handsome with a few other girls, immediately fell silent upon the question being asked out loud.

“What, are you all scared of a little savagery in the arena? I’ve even heard rumours the Illustrious Sisters have finally found a replacement for the useless idiot they-” Alan was about to speak up, when a feminime voice cut off Drake’s further comments

“Give it up, Drake, we’re not interested in your petty attempts at riling us up. If you want to go, then go, don’t pull us down into your barbaric ways.” The voice belonged to Catherine Storm, another High Noble who usually didn’t interact too much with the rest of the class. Drake scowled towards her, but made no further comments before leaving the classroom and slamming the door shut after himself. If Catherine took notice of his anger or not, Alan could not say, as she casually went back to her book as if there was no more to say on the subject.

Marissa had managed to shake it off as well, rejoining the discussion and valiantly defending her choice of champion for the handsomeness contest, some knight named Roland Corbane, apparently. Alan mentally thanked Catherine for dealing with Drake, and went back to his magical training method of heating and cooling his hands.

The arena games were set to start off on Friday afternoon, and in order to help Marissa avoid being reminded too much of the horrors of last year’s games, Alan and Jack had planned some voluntary work in the shop of Jack’s father, Braum Stowner. He was a relatively wealthy merchant, thus he had a decently sized shop in the mercantile quarters of the city, called The Adventurous Spirit. It might not be the best idea for friday afternoon fun for kids, but sorting through the wares was quite educational, and Alan relished the chance to learn more about common items and prices in a world that didn’t match his old one at all. Marissa did not relish the chance, not at all. On the bright side, she had found a rather beautiful necklace and was acting out a scene together with Elianna, where they were queens of different nations that had just met and were exchanging wondrous gifts in the name of peace and… glory, apparently. ..And now they were ordering around their knight in partially shining armor, which Jack had hesitantly put on at their behest. Alan hadn’t seen the prices on the items that were now part of the play, and kept his distance for plausible deniability should they manage to break anything valuable. At the very least, they were all having a blast of a friday afternoon, and who was he to stop their fun.

After a few months of practice, Alan had finally passed Aquillus’ test. It was still scary to put his hand into the flames, but with his control he could now avoid any kind of damage to his hands. That didn’t stop them from turning black from the soot though, or make his clothes fire-resistant, which he remembered just in time to remove his jacket before the test commenced. He had been practicing on a candle light at home, which in theory was the same exercise, but in practice was a lot less scary.

After successfully keeping his hand a comfortable temperature inside the fire, and not freaking out at what he was doing, he actually found that he could feel the flames lick around his hand, an almost comfortable feeling, as long as he ignored the innate fear of fire.

Aquillus was thrilled with his progress, and quickly started him on the exercises meant to teach external mana control. The theory was very similar, instead of imagining his own hands vibrating, he had to imagine the very air around him vibrating instead. The tricky part was actually affecting the air around him. There was apparently a large difference between affecting something inside your body, versus affecting something outside your body, which made no sense to Alan, but that didn’t dissuade him from trying. He felt like his scientific understanding should be like a cheat-sheet in this, but as much as it helped him understand what exactly he wanted to do, it didn’t help him at all in understanding how to do it. He got a few tips about using his mana in his fingertips and trying to increase temperature on both his finger and the fingers immediate surroundings at the same time, letting the mana seep out of his finger to affect the surrounding air. Then he was sent off home, to work on his own for the next week.

He didn’t manage in the first week. And not in the second either. The entire first month was a tense battle for Alan, so focused on his task that he actually failed a test in history class, about recent conflicts between the Kingdom and the Syrodin empire. That finally brought him out of his obsession, and he decided to spend a week catching up on subjects he had fallen behind in, instead of focusing on the magic.

Alan spent some time in the school library that week, reading up on conflicts between the Syrodin Empire and the Kingdom of Patrenor, and the varying reasons pointed out as the cause of the conflicts. Usually resources, he concluded, though a few of the authors meant that ideological differences were a triggering factor in several of the more brutal armed conflicts.

“Are you finally done staring at your fingers now? Did you accomplish anything else than them getting longer as a result of natural growth?”

Alan looked up towards the source of the sarcastic comments, to find Catherine standing there with a curious face. Perhaps not sarcastic, Alan corrected his earlier impression, merely confused.

“No, I’m not done, but I’m taking a break for now. The goal was to manifest my mana externally, but I haven’t accomplished much, you are correct in that assumption.”

“How old are you again? What kind of kid spends weeks trying to manifest mana instead of running around having fun like kids are meant to?”

“I could ask you the same, aren’t you barely older than me?” Alan took in the features of the girl in front of him. She was taller than him, though not by much. She had long brown hair, collected in a ponytail which made her look more mature, but her lithe figure hinted at growth still to come. “I’m gonna guess 13? Perhaps even 14? You can’t be 15 yet, can you?” Alan guessed, based on her immediate appearance.

“I’m 13, yes, a good guess, but I at least have a good reason for acting above my age. You do not, as far as I’m aware.” Catherine said with a suspicious tone at the end.

This was starting to feel a bit like an interrogation to Alan, and he didn’t like where it was going so far.

“Look, I’m just a kid who’s mental age is a bit ahead of his physical age, no reason to start an inquisition here. Why don’t we table that discussion for now, and go back to our respective reading choices”.

“An inquisition, huh? Funny choice of words, as that might be more relevant than you’d think… You’re not possessed by any chance, are you?” Catherine was actually starting to frighten Alan a bit now. He wasn’t possessing this body, was he? They hadn’t covered anything like that in the lessons so far, and Alan hadn’t even heard about it before now, but they had magic in this world. Having spirits possess people didn’t seem too far fetched, considering where he came from…

“Did that hit a nerve? The proverbial head of the nail? I know inquisitions don’t actually deal with possessed people, and you should too, that’s the exorcists’ territory after all. Still… it might be for the best to contact the church and have them take a look at you, don’t you think” Catherine said with a dangerous smile. Something in her voice told Alan she wasn’t being serious, but the entire conversation was steering into potentially very dangerous territory.

“Why do you have a good reason to act above your own age?” Alan tried deflecting, but it was also something that picked his curiosity.

“Because my father is Magnus Storm, of course. You do know that self enhancing lightning magic increases the speed of thought processes and general mental acuity, right? Or perhaps you don’t, it’s not like the school of lightning is an often broached subject in class. Anyways, my father is a lightning mage, and I am going to be one too, some day.” Catherine said dreamily, staring out the window. “Actually, my father is not a lightning mage, he is the lightning mage. So, there’s my reason. Are you going to tell me that you’re working on becoming a lightning mage too? Because first of all, I wouldn’t believe you, and secondly, it would be the stupidest thing you could possibly do, if you don’t have an experienced teacher. And as far as I’m aware, there’s only one around, and he’s already taken on his only pupil.” Catherine said with a wide grin.

“So,” the grin on her face turning almost feral, “why do you act like you’re way older than you look?”

Alan took this as his cue to leave, getting up and brushing past Catherine as fast as his legs could carry him. She didn’t follow him, or make any attempts at stopping him, which only served to fuel his fears, for some inexplicable reason. She just stood there with her sinister smile, like she had just found an interesting animal she could tear apart to learn more about. Alan didn’t actually think she tore apart animals on her spare time, but it seemed like a relevant connection in that instant.

On his way back home, he finally started appreciating his mother’s sermons on how dangerous the world was. If Catherine decided to go tell the church that he might be possessed, he honestly had no idea what would happen. Would they care? Probably, she was the daughter of a very influential and highly respected mage. Would they interrogate him? Possibly. Would they find anything? Impossible to say. Would the guards or the King care about what was happening? Probably not. His best bet was to either placate Catherine and make sure she wouldn’t do anything to him, or learn how to defend himself well enough that the church was not a threat. Which meant becoming a respected mage, which was still years away, if he could even get accepted to the academy. This world was truly a lot more dangerous than it appeared at first glance. Time to get back home and continue practicing.