“It’s been four days, Tam.”

Tamaya glanced at her friend, who was gazing intently at the girl in the only bed in the room.

“There’s never been any adverse effects from a forced Awakening, Ari. This could just be an outlier.”

Ariel’s eyes shifted to her for a moment, then returned to her daughter.

“I’ve never heard of it going past three, and even those were extreme edge cases, you know that.”

“And you know that if anything was truly wrong with her, I would be able to tell. She’s fine, Ariel, it’s just a longer Awakening than normal.”

Tamaya stepped closer to the woman who still felt like a sister to her, “Come on, we should step out for a bit. You’re only getting yourself worked up watching her like this.”

Ariel’s hands clenched, and her eyes tightened. “I have to be there when she wakes, Tam. She’s all I have left of him.”

Tamaya sighed.

She was afraid that was the problem.

“I thought so. That night still haunts you, doesn’t it.”

It wasn’t a question.

Ariel collapsed into the chair by the bed, her eyes shut tight to hold back the tears.

“It hurts, Tamaya. All this time and I still wake up expecting him in bed next to me.”

Tamaya wrapped an arm around Ariel’s shoulder. “You haven’t really mourned him, have you? Motherhood may have kept you going, but being on Earth let you hide yourself from it.”

“I don’t know what to do, sometimes. She’s a joy to have around, but there are times when I look at her and can only see what I lost.”

Seeing the gentle approach fail to pull Ariel out of the mood that came over her, Tamaya did her best to inject a sharpness into her tone she didn’t really feel.

“You weren’t the only one to lose someone that night, Ariel. All that was left of my family was taken from me, at least you had her.”

Ariel looked stricken at that. That may have been too much, she thought to herself.

“Tamaya, I-”

She shushed Ariel.

“It’s okay. You get stuck in your head sometimes, and Roland isn’t here to pull you out. I understand. I’ll just have to pick up the slack.”

Ariel’s gaze softened, and a few tears escaped despite her clear best efforts.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

“A certain someone has an impressively low tolerance for bullies, if I recall correctly. I imagine that had something to do with it.”

Ariel chuckled a bit wetly. “I don’t know why he thought trying that on a healer of all things was a good idea. I didn’t even need to do anything, he was screwed anyway.”

“Yes, well, I will still remember that day for years to come.”

The two stayed like that for a while, as Tamaya finally decided to broach something she’d meant to say for the last few days.

“We had a memorial built for him shortly after you left. I thought you’d like to see it before Alex’s girl gets here.”

Ariel spent a few more moments watching Valerie before she responded. “Still playing the hermit, is he?”

Tamaya snorted. “Of course he is. You know full well the only reason he didn’t retreat to the woods immediately after we graduated was because of the three of us, and without Roland or you to hold things together, I guess he just felt it was time to go. Marian comes out from their little hideaway from time to time, so I know she’s taking care of him.”

“Well at least there’s that,” Ariel replied, then her eyes turned worried once more. “Tell it to me straight, Tam. Is there really nothing wrong with her?”

Tamaya could have responded immediately. She didn’t. Instead she approached Valerie and laid a hand on her head. Her mana flowed into the sleeping girl, following her will to find anything that would concern her. Nothing.

“She’s going to be fine, Ari. Now let’s go, she’ll wake when she’s ready, and not a moment sooner.”

**********************

“What happened to taking things lightly!?”

“You’re an impressively fast learner, Val. I had to up my game else you’d get bored.”

“I assure you I was in no danger of- shit!”

One of the knives Armsmaster has been throwing at me came too close to my head. I do my best to dodge, but end up overcompensating, losing my balance. I’m forced to throw myself to the ground to evade the next one, but I’m too slow getting back up.

Armsmaster’s last knife slams into my temple, and after a brief moment of pain, everything goes dark.

The last four days have been.... eye opening, to say the least.

I thought we’d start off with stances, or how to throw a punch or hold a sword properly, but apparently, I’m not ready for that yet.

No, first was how to fall without hurting myself, which was surprisingly involved.

Armsmaster was satisfied with my progress after the first day, and said the rest was just practice, so then we moved on to what she called ‘battlefield awareness’.

Which basically amounted to her throwing small balls at me while I did my best to not get hit without losing my form. Which would be fine, I can handle that.

Except for the fact that she can teleport, and the only warning I get when she appears behind me is a single heavy stomp.

Anyway, I got a handle on that by day two, and I thought now we would move on to something else, returning to this for practice at some point, but Armsmaster had other ideas.

And she didn’t tell me until after she started chucking knives at me.

She also hadn’t told me that I quite literally couldn’t die in the Armoury until after the first time I got hit.

The absolute fucking sadist.

I open my eyes once more, standing in the entrance to the training hall just to the side of the Armoury’s main room, and glare at the Armsmaster.

“This would be a lot easier if you didn’t insist on holding a conversation at the same time,” I growl at her.

Armsmaster responds with a shit-eating grin. “I’ve tried getting mages to keep their mouths shut for eons, Val. It doesn’t work. Far better you learn to talk and move at the same time, now, when it’s relatively safe, than get your ass handed to you because you got caught up in banter.”

“Doesn’t feel safe,” I mutter under my breath.

“Hmm?”

“I said I’m not really making much progress here. The knives are so small that half the time by the time I realise where they’re coming from it’s too late. Is there a point to this I’m not seeing?”

Armsmaster looks thoughtful for a moment.

“Well, I was going to keep this up for a few hours first, but ah, what the heck. Why not. Time to show you your first proper bit of magic.”

“Uh. Mom said I shouldn’t practice magic unsupervised.”

She feigns a hurt look my way.

“And I’m not adequate supervision? Val, I’m hurt.”

Oh. Right. With all the knives she’d been tossing at me I forgot she’s about as qualified as it gets to teach me basically anything.

“Right. Sorry, that was stupid.”

Armsmaster waves it away.

“Ah, it’s fine. Now, your Mom at least took the time to show you how to feel for your mana, yeah? Good. Here’s what we’re going to do. Every magic type is able to enhance the body in some way, though Physical Enhancement Affinity like what your old man had is obviously the best for it. Water focuses on flexibility, Fire strength and speed, Earth and Metal durability, so on and so forth. Each has different areas of focus, but they all bolster your general… physique. Stellar Affinity’s primary focus is speed, agility and reflexes, with a little to strength, but you're shit out of luck if you want to take a hit. You following?”

I nod.

“Okay. Then let’s get started. I want you to start pulling on your mana like your Mom showed you.”

“Alright.”

I close my eyes and imagine that field of stars again, the tiny points of light winking out one by one. The threads of starlight shifting through my body come back into focus.

I open my eyes again.

“Hmm. You’ll have to practice that without closing your eyes down the line, but that’s fine for now,” Armsmaster says. “Now you need to tug on the mana flowing through you. Get it to follow the beat of your heart, the blood in your veins. Bring it in sync with your breath.”

I do my best to follow her instructions, but it’s difficult. The mana is sluggish and heavy, and it feels like I’m trying to use a muscle I never have before. Eventually, it begins to shift.

Once I have a few threads in my mental grip, I pull them along through me like Armsmaster said. I make it pulse with every heartbeat, flow along my veins, swell and recede with every breath.

For several minutes I try to find the pattern I need it to follow, pushing a strange new mental muscle with a sense I’m not yet used to, and some of it slips out.

But then it finally clicks.

Instantly, my body surges with energy. I feel like I could leap entire buildings, like I could run three marathons in a row and still not tire. My vision feels sharper and more expansive, and while time doesn’t slow exactly, it does feel like things flow smoother from one moment to the next, and that might let me react quicker.

I’m not paying her complete attention, but I do still notice Armsmaster’s full body grimace.

“Oof. That control is… honestly not great. You are hemorrhaging mana, you’ll probably only be able to maintain this for a minute or two, even with S Grade stores, then you’re wiped. Ah well. Let’s see how you do now.”

With that, she vanishes from her spot, and only a flicker in the corner of my eye tells me where she’s gone.

I react much, much faster than before. Instantly, I whip around to see the knife headed my way, but instead of dodging, I try something else.

I catch it.

Armsmaster gives me an appraising look. “Okay. a little better than expected. Let’s step things up a notch then.”

She vanishes once more, this time reappearing to my right. But the moment I turn to repeat the catch, I hear a heavy stomp behind me.

Instincts built over the last few days kick in, and I abandon the catch to slide to the left whilst looking behind me.

She’s gone again.

Another flicker, and before I’ve fully turned she‘s managed to teleport to both sides of me, two knives tossed each time.

I duck into a roll, and the dance continues.

I quickly lose track of time, the constant moving around and searching for the next knife taking all that remains of my focus. Several times throughout, it feels like she’s in more than one place at once. I have no idea where she’s getting all these knives from, and they vanish a few moments after she throws them.

But finally, after endless seconds of dodging a constant barrage, my mana gives out, and I fall flat on my face.

It’s like everything turned dull. My vision feels blurry in comparison, and my body has become sluggish and slow. It takes a few moments to realise this is just what I always felt like before I used magic to boost my body.

But worst of all is the emptiness.

A pervasive absence fills me in a way I can’t quite explain, and even the star in my mind’s eye feels hollow and dim.

I hate it.

“Ugh,” I groan, face still on the floor, “what… is that?”

Dimly, I notice Armsmaster approaching from the side.

“The weakness is an unfortunate side effect of magically enhancing yourself, it’ll pass shortly. But that feeling of being empty, of something missing? Mana deprivation. It’ll take a few minutes for you to recover enough mana to feel somewhat normal again, and even then it’s best if you not touch your mana for the rest of the day. This will be your first time without any mana in you, so you shouldn’t over stress yourself just in case.”

I muster the effort to turn myself over to look at Armsmaster, who is crouched over me with a patient look on her face.

“This sucks. Why didn’t you warn me of this?”

She shrugs.

“It’s one of those lessons that sticks better if you experience it first, then I explain it.”

After a little while, the strange lethargy from my now weakened state combined with the mana deprivation begins to wane, and I get back on my feet. My body feels back to normal, though I still feel hollow inside.

“Please tell me that gets better.”

Armsmaster stands up as well. “It does. The first time is always the worst, from what I hear, though it’ll never truly stop happening.”

“Mmm.” I hum in response. I just stand there a bit, to center myself after that whole thing. “Did I really just do all that? It feels so surreal now.”

Armsmaster does a few stretches before she replies. Over the last few days I’ve come to learn that while she doesn’t exactly need to do it, she does enjoy the sensation.

“Yep. I wasn’t expecting the catch though, that was encouraging. Means you adapted well to the change and took advantage even when I put more force into my throws. Hopefully that will make up for your control in the short term.”

“Was it really that bad?”

Armsmaster looks a little reluctant.

“I could feel the leakage from across the room, Valerie. That’s- Look, it’s not the worst I’ve seen.”

“But?”

She turns away before answering. “But given the worst I’ve seen was someone actively doing everything he could wrong while still achieving what he set out to do, that doesn’t mean much.”

“Oh.”

My face falls at that. I knew I was new to the whole magic thing, but to hear my Guide say something like that was disheartening, to say the least.

Armsmaster sees my expression and panics slightly. “Woah, hey, it’s not the end of the world or anything. This is something we can fix. I’m no expert, but I know a few exercises that’ll help you figure out where you’re going wrong. At the very least, you’ll be at a point we can both be satisfied with by the time comes to attend Cardinal, alright?”

It’s funny how close she and I have become in so short a time. A few days ago, I wouldn’t have accepted her certainty that she could manage that kind of improvement. I would have followed along, given I have little better to do, but I wouldn’t have fully believed her. Now?

I give Armsmaster a hug and say, “Thank you for this. You’re putting in a lot for me and I haven’t been all that appreciative. So thank you.”

She pauses for a moment, before returning the hug. “Of course, kid. Happy to help.”

We stay like that for a minute or two before she pulls away and says, “Hey, why don’t I show you the weapons the Armoury has set out for you? You’ve got the foundations down well enough for now, should be fine to move on to the fun stuff.”

I admit I’m curious what they will look like. I vaguely recall her listing a few when we met, but that day was a bit much for me. I may have lost some details.

“I’d like that.”