Catherine hadn’t followed up on her threats, or at the very least, no one had arrested or tried to abduct Alan in the following days. His paranoia had abated slowly, over the course of several weeks, where nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Well, one thing wasn’t quite back to normal; Drake had been scowling at Alan more often than not, lately. Alan could hazard a guess as to why, but he had had very little interaction with Catherine after the library incident, so it didn’t seem all that simple.

As for Catherine, she was back to her usual self, ignoring everyone else while reading in one of her books. Alan had actually taken an interest in the book, it looked like some sort of advanced manual in the school of lightning, but he had no plans of trying to get access to it. He would have as little interaction with Catherine as possible, if he could help it. He still felt shivers down his spine remembering the feral grin on her face when she had him cornered.

On a brighter note, Marissa was finally having some progress in her temperature control exercises. The day she had finally broken through the first barrier had her as happy and energetic as he had ever seen her, and he even got a big kiss on the cheek for all the help he had given. She quickly ran off back home to share her great discovery with the rest of her family, and had been very eager to tell all her friends in class as well. The pride was clearly visible in her gleam as she demonstrated heating up her hands to her friends, and they were very impressed at this first step towards becoming a mage. Even Drake’s offhand comment that Marissa couldn’t possible expect to become a mage because of her lackluster bloodline, went completely unnoticed by the little bundle of energy.

Alan had been reading up on his own manual from the school of fire, especially about manifesting mana as fire. From his previous understanding, three things were needed for anything to burn; oxygen, any flammable material, and enough heat to start the reaction. He understood that he could create the necessary heat, and that he could utilize the oxygen in the air, but that still left where the flammable material would come from. He had seen first hand, in the fight between Ignos and the Illustrious Sisters, both fire and water appearing out of seemingly thin air, so he knew that it was somehow possible. But he had no idea how this happened. Was it some kind of innate property of mana, that in addition to affecting the world around it, it could also turn into actual materials, thus making it seem like they appeared out of nothing?

Asking his teacher had given him some insight. Aquillus stated that mana was the fuel used in all magical interactions, and it could fuel fire as well as it could fuel wind, and it could create certain materials out of nothing, though that was mostly limited to water. Or, more precisely, creating anything else than water was exceedingly difficult, and thus often well kept personal or family secrets. When Alan asked what kind of flammable material was created when using fire spells, Aquillus just stared at him confused. “Fire is fire, it doesn’t matter what is burning, the fire is the same”. And that was the end of that conversation.

What Alan learned later on, quickly disproved Aquillus’ theory about all fire being equal. Apparently, it was completely normal for different fire mages to have different color on their fire spells. It was the typical orange of a wooden fire that was the norm, but some mages had apparently been inspired by other materials burning, and thus ended up with alternatives. Aquillus summed it up as mages using different thought patterns to create their fire spells, and thus the color changed, but the fire was still fire. Alan wasn’t listening much anymore, choosing instead to extrapolate from his latest revelation.

Mana could turn into materials in the real world, even though it seemed more like a mental resource than a physical one. That changed everything, or at least a lot of things. When he used mana to control temperature in his hands, he focused on the end result, the change in temperature directly, but never on the flow and distribution of mana in his body. In order to manifest his mana outside of his body, he couldn’t focus on an effect he wanted to happen, but he had to focus on directing the mana itself outside of his body and then change it to do what he wanted.

As he went back to his usual hand exercises, he tried to control the temperature by limiting the flow of mana from his core to his hands, instead of focusing on a specific target temperature. The first few tries had him singing a few fingers as he overdid it, but soon he could feel a certain stream through his limbs, originating from somewhere around his heart, flowing out to the fingers he was heating. He could limit the stream as he wanted, but he couldn’t increase it beyond a certain threshold, for now. Possibly because he had a mental block that tried to avoid frying his fingers, but also probably because he had a very limited supply of mana at the moment.

When Alan tried to direct the mana outside his index finger, he felt it push against a boundary of some kind. It didn’t want to leave, but he didn’t give it a choice. The mana finally tore through the boundary at the tip of his finger, but the moment it left his body he lost control of it.

“Aha, I see you’ve accomplished the second step on the road to magic. Naturally, you are doing it all wrong, but we’ll see what we can do to correct that.” Aquilles exclaimed, probably triggered by Alan’ s small experiment.

“Now, what you just did was releasing pure mana out into your surroundings, an act which is completely safe, it might surprise you to hear. There is ambient mana all around us at all times, though how much there is varies from place to place. The reason you just lost control of that mana you released, is that you sent it outside of your sphere of influence. Well, it’s not a sphere right now, but at some point it will be, hopefully. You probably felt something akin to pushing your mana through your skin, slightly breaking the skin in the process. This is because of a natural barrier that all mana users have, which follows the outer skin of your body in most cases. The difference between an internal mana user, like a knight, and an external mana user, like myself, is that I have extended my zone of influence to cover a significant area around myself, instead of just my own body. Otherwise there isn’t all that much of a difference, except for the size of the mana pool available. Any mana user could in theory create fire inside their own body, with the right thought pattern, but you can guess why most people decide not to try that out. Extending your influence and conjuring fire outside of your body, however, is not as easy as it sounds like. It takes both a natural talent for mana manipulation, years of practice and patience, and truly separates the lackluster from the capable. Now that you have finally showed some real potential, it’s time to start working on extending that natural barrier. There are several interesting exercises for this specific purpose, and we will use my personal preference called mana bombardment. Now sit still, and try to fight back against the invading mana.”

Before Alan could muster any kind of response, he felt something akin to light punches landing all over his body. They didn’t penetrate more than perhaps a millimeter into his skin, but that outer millimeter hurt surprisingly much. He had no idea how to fight back, however, so he just tried to cover his body with his hands, which as expected had no effect whatsoever.

“By fighting back, I didn’t mean cower like an infant, Alexander. I expect more from you. Use your mana to strengthen your natural boundary, and push back every time it is pushed in. We will continue until you are completely out of mana, which also helps build your mana pool, so this exercise really is hitting several birds with one fireball.”

Alan had no response this time either, but managed to pull himself together enough to start distributing mana on the outer edge of his skin around his entire body. It was nothing more than a thin film, but it helped a lot against the intrusions. It annoyed him that this clearly took next to no effort on Aquillus’s side, while he expended every ounce of strength he had trying to fight back, but he couldn’t deny that it felt like he achieved something every time he pushed back against the foreign mana attacking him. It was only a modicum of change, but he could actually feel the boundary stretching from the repeated back and forth fighting over control.

Out of nowhere, a blinding headache hit him, and he collapsed out of the chair and onto the floor, completely exhausted. The attacks stopped soon after, but not before getting a few good hits in, as if just to show him that he had utterly and completely lost the fight.

“What you are feeling right now is what we call mana exhaustion, though it is also often referred to as mana drain, mana loss, etc. In any case, it is not dangerous, merely a brief setback.” Aquillus explained, seemingly satisfied that he had pushed Alan so hard in such a short amount of time. “You should be back on your feet in an hour or two, but you should avoid using any more mana until you’ve gotten a good night’s sleep. Now, I expect you to continue pract……….” Aquillus’ voice faded from Alans mind as he fell into a deep sleep.

He woke up again in his own bed, and it seemed to be almost noon. Thankfully, there was no headache that woke him up, and he didn’t seem sore or tired from the practices the day before. His father had probably expected these kind of sessions when he planned them for Saturdays. Alan took some time to circulate mana through his body, pushing against the boundary he could feel close to the surface of his skin. Close to… It had moved! It was slightly above his skin now, at least in most places. It wasn’t far away by any measure, but enough that he could feel a difference. If he could keep getting results like that, he would tolerate a few more sessions. But the sessions would only be every Saturday, what would he do in the meantime? He barely remembered Aquillus mentioning practice of some kind, but couldn’t for the life of him remember what exercises the old guy was talking about.

I suppose, if it’s like a stretchable membrane, I could just exert a small pressure on it continuously, and hopefully it will adapt in time. Alan decided to try out his theory, but found that he didn’t have enough mana in his body to create the surplus pressure he was hoping for. He settled for a thin film of mana similarly to the exercise the day before, and tried to create a small uniform pressure on the entire boundary at once. It worked, sort of, but there didn’t seem to be much, if any, immediate effect. Alan decided to keep the pressure up for as long as he could, as an experiment for the day.

The experiment ended up lasting for the entire week, to Alans surprise. He guessed that when there was no fighting back and forth for ground, then the mana would act much like gravity acts on stationary objects, doing no work when no movement happened. His theory was that he was expending energy on any new ground the mana gained, but that the growth was so small that his mana generation was higher than the expenditure. He also tried to increase the pressure during the week, but had to relent when he started piercing the boundary at random locations instead of pushing it outwards. All in all, the effect from the training wasn’t all that apparent, but considering he could keep it up all the time, it was felt quite efficient.

At his next session with Aquillus, the mage wasn’t overly impressed with his progress, but didn’t complain either, which was a big plus in Alan’s book. They began straight away, and after something close to half an hour, Alan was spent. He held out quite a bit longer than last time, and was in general quite happy with his overall progress. They quickly settled into a routine, where Alan would practice his boundary control by trying to expand it on his own, and Aquillus would beat him into submission without a drop of sweat appearing on his forehead in every session.

Alan tried his best to teach Marissa the same things that Aquillus taught him, but it was made a lot more difficult from the fact that he couldn’t bombard her with mana himself. Alan had deduced that the reason behind that was that Aquillus’ sphere of mana influence probably encompassed the entire room they had their sessions in, and that he could therefore control the mana to hit all around Alan at the same time. If that was correct, Alan could theoretically bombard a small part of Marissa’s skin, if he held his hands in close proximity to her, but he didn’t have the slightest idea what the mana barrage actually was, and was scared that he would accidentally hurt her.

Marissa didn’t achieve anything related to expanding her natural barrier, but she did get better at temperature manipulation. Alan was very clear on teaching her about how important the stability of her core temperature was, and that she must never try to change it unless she was about to freeze to death. For once, she looked seriously at him while nodding at his explanations, and promised never to practice on anything else than her hands and feet.

School proceeded as usual, though Alan didn’t give the lessons as much attention as the lecturers probably deserved. He felt privileged to be able to attend the classes specifically set up for nobles, with experienced lecturers and frequently important guest lecturers. But it just wasn’t all that interesting to him. He had always been a man of science and technology, so history, religion, politics and many other subjects that were taught just didn’t stick in his mind. Worst of all were the lessons of formal etiquette of the court and in the presence of the King. Luckily, he could tune most of it out while focusing on his work on the natural mana barrier. He was far from the only one not paying much attention, and that seemed to be perfectly okay with several of the lecturers, as they probably viewed teaching as punishment of some sort. Alan definitely had viewed it as punishment on the few occasions when he, as a professor, was forced to substitute in any course that wasn’t natural sciences.

The other reason that had Alan distracted lately, was the fact that he had now pushed his barrier far enough out to try out his control of electrical charges again, but his mind was still wrestling with the promise he had made to his father. He had no idea what Alexar would do if he discovered Alan practicing “lightning” magic again. He might just accept it, though the thought seemed more like wishful thinking than a real possibility to Alan. He would probably call off the one on one sessions with Aquillus as punishment, potentially going as far as actively hindering him from applying to the academy. But could Alan really afford to wait until he left home to start practicing? He struggled with the question for a long time before he finally made his decision.

When spring arrived, Alan had managed to push his natural barrier about half a meter outside of his body. Aquillus still hadn’t started with any other exercises, apparently content with continuing the mana bombardment for a good while longer. Alan had asked Marissa if she might be interested in taking their usual practice to one of the green parks in the vicinity, instead of their normal spot on the balcony in the Moltus residence. Marissa had happily agreed, and had immediately suggested Rosewoods. It was a bit of a walk, and conveniently took them past a baker that Marissa was on good terms with, and she managed to acquire two sweet rolls to bring with them.

They took some time wandering through the park before Marissa located a nice and secluded spot they could claim for the evening. Surrounded by trees and bushes, Alan felt a natural calm settle over him, protected from the otherwise noisy city. Marissa sat down next to a tree, offering Alan one of the sweet rolls before happily chomping away at the other.

“Disch ish really naische”, she began to say, taking a pause to clear her mouth before proceeding with a big smile, “we should do this every time!”

“You just want to have sweet rolls for every session, don’t you?” Alan looked over meaningfully at Marissa. She didn’t answer him, just continued eating with a slightly embarrassed expression. “...Marissa, I need to ask you for a big favor,” Alan began the sentence slowly, uncertain on how he should proceed and how she would react.

She gave him a big smile and responded without delay, “I’ll do it! You’ve helped me so much with my magic, so of course I’ll help you too!”

“You haven’t even heard what I’m asking yet.. You can’t just blindly promise things like that…” Alan said, slightly overbearing, before he caught himself in the act, and pushed away his fatherly instincts. “Anyways, I need you to keep a secret for me. I want to practice a certain type of magic, but my father won’t allow it. So, in order to practice, I’ll need to do it out here, but then I also need you to come with me, so that I have an excuse to be out here. Otherwise, I fear my father would become suspicious, and have me followed or something..”

Marissa’s expression fell, and her voice carried some uncertainty when she finally answered. “He’s not gonna be angry with me if he finds out I’ve been keeping secrets, is he?”. The question took Alan aback, and he took a few seconds to compose himself. “He’s not gonna be angry with you, I’m pretty sure, but he will be very angry with me, if he ever finds out.”

“...Okay, I’ll do it. I already promised I would. But please, don’t let him find out, please?” Marissa was shaking slightly at the end of her sentence, but Alan didn’t understand why. Her eyes held something in them, it looked like fear to Alan, and he immediately berated himself for forcing her into this.

“I’m sorry, Marissa, are you okay? You don’t have to do this, you know, we can find some other arrangement instead. I’m sure Ja-”

“No, I said I’ll do it, and I will!” Her voice was harder now, having clearly repressed her previous emotions. “And everything is fine. Can we start with the practice now?”

“Okay, sure, … err, yes, let’s start” Alan decided to let the issue slide for now.

He took out the pieces of scrap metal he had bought from a blacksmith on his way home from school a few days ago, and arranged them in a small circle on the ground. Marissa meanwhile crossed her legs and started meditating, holding her palms up, and apparently concentrating hard on her task. Alan held his hand over the center of the ring, close enough that all metal pieces were inside his mana influence boundary. He had discovered that he had an innate feeling about everything inside the boundary, and could differentiate between objects. He had also managed to change the temperature around him to a certain degree, but hadn’t worked too hard on that aspect yet. Now, it was time to go back to the prickly sensation he had gotten from the build up of static charges.

It came to him surprisingly easy, like picking up a bike after not having ridden one for years. He was very careful to only amass charges inside the metal pieces, which were all touching other pieces in the ring beneath is hands. Once he felt like he had built up enough of a charge, he started slowly circulating it through all the pieces. He felt resistance where the metal touched other metal pieces, but the resistance was low enough that creating a steady flow of electric charges was possible without too much effort. He could also manipulate the number of charges circulating, and the speed at which they moved, and he noticed that both of them proportionally increased mana requirements.

When Alan stopped circulating the charges, he realised that he at some point had closed his eyes, and was astounded by the fact that he could still “see” the metal pieces through his sense and control of mana. When he opened his eyes again, he noticed that Marissa had completely forgotten about her own practice, and was staring intently at the metal pieces. Once she realised that he had stopped doing whatever it was that he was doing, she looked disappointed at him.

“Why isn’t anything happening? Weren’t you trying to do something?” She asked, with some curiosity mixed into the disappointment.

“What did you think was gonna happen?” Alan asked expectantly, with a wry smile.

“I don’t know! Something, anything, at least not nothing,” Marissa answered. “Come on, try again! I wanna see real magic!”

A short laughter escaped Alan as he rearranged the pieces, removing a few to make a smaller circle, and putting a small metal piece in the center, not connected to anything. “Let’s see if we can make anything happen now, ‘ey?”

Marissa leaned forward, trying to device the meaning behind the design. “It’s an eye! Is it meant to see things from afar? Or is it a wheel? Does it move? It looks like a really shoddy wheel though…”

Alan didn’t humor her with a response, but instead got back to circulating charges through the ring. He couldn’t immediately feel anything different, so he tried upping the amps and increasing the speed. Suddenly, Alan noticed a small movement in the center piece, it wasn’t lying completely flat anymore, but was finally orienting itself in the magnetic field he was creating. He heard a small gasp coming from Marissa, but ignored it for now, focusing on increasing the amount of charges and the speed at which they were moving yet again. The centerpiece had now oriented itself completely, and was vibrating slightly from the forces acting on it. Alan suddenly flipped the direction the charges were moving, and that sent the centerpiece flying up a short distance into the air, before falling down again.

“It jumped!” Marissa exclaimed, happily looking up at Alan once he opened his eyes again.

“That’s soo coool! Is it air magic? Did you use wind to throw it? I thought you were practicing fire magic? Please teach me too, please please pleeease?” Marissa was back to her bubbling self, full of energy, curiosity and wonder for everything new, and it let Alan lower his shoulders a bit about the previous scare she gave him.

“No, it’s not wind magic. It’s called magnetism, although what I was manipulating right now was an electric charge which I circled around the ring. When charges move, they create a magnetic field, and since they moved in a circle they created a magnetic field vertical to the ground. In the center of the circle. Iron is a magnetic material, and as such, will orient itself along the magnetic field, and when I changed the direction the charges were going, the iron piece tried to reorient itself very fast, but the different poles were in fields of different strengths, and so the piece fired off up into the air instead of just turning around.”

Marissa was, understandably, completely lost, and it showed very clearly on her face. Alan had completely forgotten that electricity and magnetism were completely foreign subjects in this world, and even if they hadn’t been, he had somehow expected an 11 year old child to understand high school physics.

“Ehh.. I used lightning magic in the circle to make the metal piece in the center jump.”

“But I didn’t see any lightning magic? Was it invisible?” Marissa asked, her face back to her curious expression.

“Yes, it was invisible in a way. It was inside the metal pieces, so it couldn't be seen from the outside.”

“Hmmm.. That sounds complicated. I’m not sure I want you to try to teach that to me, it seems even more difficult than the temperature meditation thingy.” Marissa had a look of internal struggling, before she settled on it being better not to learn it.

“I think it is quite a bit more difficult, yes. Now, let’s try something a bit different.” Alan said, rearranging the metal pieces once again. This time he made two parallel lines, with two metal pieces crossing on top of both lines near the center of the lines. Again, Alan started circulating charges through the crossing pieces, and also through the short bits of lines between them. He slowly increased the velocity and charge until the top pieces started sliding along the metal lines, away from each other. He continued until the fell off of each end, satisfied with the small test.

“That was pretty boring, they moved really slow, and just fell off the edges.” Marissa said disappointedly.

“Well, they were meant to. If I had moved them any faster, I might have moved the lines by accident as well. It is an important proof of concept though, and I have some ideas for what I can do about it later.” Alan couldn’t stop a small grin from spreading over his face. If he could build a small, portable railgun, he could have an ace up his sleeve in any unexpected fight, so to speak. The moment the consequences of firing such a weapon at anyone surfaced, he immediately regretted his earlier thoughts. It would be a violent and messy affair, potentially very dangerous to bystanders, and completely useless as a deterrent, since no one would recognize it as a weapon at all. But he needed an edge in case anyone came after him, and this was something he could actually do, right now, with some simple equipment.

In case anyone comes after me… Am I being too paranoid here? So far, nobody had shown any intention of doing just that. This part of the city was also recognized as relatively safe, being in the noble district with the extra patrols and such. Alan put his thoughts away for the time being, deciding that he could revisit this issue later.

“Let’s focus on your progress now, Marissa,” he said, looking expectantly at the curious girl that had completely forgotten about her own exercises.

“..but I wanna see moooore,” she complained, before finally sitting back against her tree with a small “humpf” escaping her lips.

They worked on her mediation and control for most of the rest of the lesson, but Alan still circulated charges through the metal as an idle exercise that didn’t take too much concentration.