Keith was about to leave with Niyla, but Vaeryl stopped them. “Come on you two, don’t leave already.” He smilingly pointed at the group that was starting to gather around him. “Why don’t we all get to know each other better?”

Some of the students were already leaving and the others did nothing to stop them. They would see each other enough times the coming two years; they would have enough time to socialize later. A few of the children in the class gathered around Vaeryl, trying to become friends with him and get to know each other. It wasn’t common for them to interact with a prince, making them feel special for a moment.

After the others left, a few children were still in the classroom. Gathered around Vaeryl; including Keith and Niyla, were two young boys who looked almost identical, a guy with short, brown hair and a girl with a red dress. They chattered a little about where they all came from and what they wanted to achieve at the academy. Keith had been silent for some time, but eventually joined the conversation too. “What elemental classes will you be joining tomorrow?” He still didn’t feel like talking too much, but his curiosity won over. He thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get a little acquainted with his classmates. The twin brothers looked at Keith and voiced at the same time:

“Water…”

“Fire!”

The twin brother who silently said water looked to be a bit shy, while his twin brother was the complete opposite.

Vaeryl looked at them for a moment and then asked the whole group, “How do you think they will manage people with multiple affinities? Although it might be a lot smarter to focus more on one particular element, these classes should help form an idea of what element to choose. But what if the elemental classes are at the same time?”

The girl with the red dress, who turned out to be the granddaughter of Julian –the fire elemental grand spell caster judge, was able to answer his question. “Well, some of the elemental classes are at the same time, while some of them are a bit earlier or later. It depends on when the teachers have free time during the day. Some days you might be lucky, while other days you might be unlucky,” she explained with a smile.

Niyla, on hearing this, exclaimed, “Wow, you must know a lot about the academy! Do you want to become friends?”

The girl with the red dress laughed and nodded. They continued chatting for a while until they split up and went back to their respective dorms.

Vaeryl and Keith walked, enjoying how the sun rays were falling on their faces. “Hey,” Keith said, “It’s such a nice day, how about we go for another spar?”

“Again? We’re mages you know, we should be casting spells and stuff, not use swords!” Vaeryl jokingly laughed.

“Why shouldn’t we? We can’t even cast spells for another two years, we might as well get good at something else for now.”

“Well… alright. Heh, you’re just a sore loser, the score is still 5 to 3 in my favor!”

“Not for long!” Keith said with a determined smile.

They proceeded to spar, with Keith narrowingly defeating Vaeryl this time, bringing the score back to 5 – 4. They then strolled around for a bit, before going to bed.

On the morning of the next day, Keith woke up with vigor. He and Vaeryl went back to the classroom where they had received their lesson the previous day. “Hey everyone, calmly sit down please,” Red said when all 12 of them were present. This time they didn’t sit in a circle, but rather sat in a common order. Two people sat next to each other behind a table, while all the tables were orientated towards the front of the classroom. There were about two rows that each had three tables next to each other.

“Our first, but also one of the most important subjects, will be handled now, so please pay attention everyone! We will talk a little about meditation, which can help your mental control greatly. First off, I want to ask you all, what kinds of meditation are there?” Red voiced.

A few kids, including Vaeryl and Niyla raised up their hands. “Oh, not bad, alright, you there in the back.” Red pointed at a kid with short brown hair, who stayed to talk the previous day too.

“Well, I know about internal meditation!”

“Very good, there’s internal meditation, but there’s also external meditation. Although both are actually always internal, we still differentiate them with these names. Can anyone explain the difference?" Red kept trying to pull all the children in, this way they would remember everything better.

Vaeryl still had his hand raised and got a turn. “Internal meditation is about clearing your own mind by thinking of nothing, while external meditation is about clearing your mind by focusing on your surroundings.”

Red nodded and then took over, “Very good. These two are the only types of meditation that are used by mages. They’re both used to reach different goals. Internal meditation helps with casting and controlling spells, while external meditation will help with focusing and sensing mana around you.” He looked around for a bit and seeing that everyone understood what he was saying, he continued.

“There are several methods for each type and they are very important to train. Internal training, is to think of nothing. This is very hard, because the mind is always busy, but only when you can completely empty yourself, can you control your mind. The first method to achieve this, is to simply let all your thoughts go without paying attention to them. Even if you suddenly think of something, just let the thought go and think of nothing. This can take a very long time to get used to, but eventually you will all reap the benefits,” Red took a breath, before continuing with a solemn look. “Another method you can try, is to imagine a black hole that sucks in every thought that comes to you. Just keep imagining that all your thoughts are being drawn in and you will slowly feel that your mind is clearing up. When you try this, you will notice how many stray thoughts will hinder you. We practice this meditation to gain control over the mind, so that we don’t have to deal with random thoughts when we have to solely focus on casting spells!”

“How about external meditation?” A kid asked after hearing Red explain about internal meditation.

“I was just going to talk about that, don’t worry! External meditation is all about sitting somewhere and slowly trying to sense everything around you. Try to feel the heat of the sun, the liveliness of the animals around you, try to hear everything that is being said and done around you. External meditation is all about letting yourself become part of your surroundings. Eventually when you have formed your mana core, you might be able to start sensing the mana around you better, making it easier to convert it to elemental energy.”

Red continued explaining and tried to clear up some more misconceptions about meditation that the students had. After some time had passed, he finalized the lesson.

“Alright, your homework will be to meditate for one hour every day, starting from now! Your elemental classes will start after around an hour. Tomorrow we will speak a little about mana, class dismissed!”

The students slowly exited the building. They had already all been briefed about where and what time their elemental classes would start.

Keith split up with Vaeryl and Niyla, each moving to where their respective elements would be taught. Keith was pretty unfortunate, because today all three of his element classes were at the same time. He had to choose between lightning, darkness and fire classes, so he picked the one that he would probably be focusing mainly on. He walked towards his lightning elemental class, expecting to see a very small group.

Ice and lightning were the rarest elements, while light and darkness elements were also uncommon. During the class, Red also explained that the elemental classes will be available for both the first and second year students. The academy didn’t have enough high-level mages that were willing to teach 10- and 11-year-old children, so they had to share classes. This resulted in the classes sometimes being a bit too difficult for the 10-year-olds, and sometimes being too easy for the 11-year-olds.

When Keith arrived at the designated classroom, there were around four children already sitting in the front of the classroom. Keith seemed to be the last to arrive, because the teacher stood up the moment he arrived. “Alright everyone,” she begun. “My name is Elena and I’ll be teaching you about lightning magic!” She seemed to be in her late twenties and was wearing blue adventurer’s clothing, instead of the regular mage’s robe. “I have always learned better by being shown, instead of being told, so everyone, stand up!” She then smiled and walked out of the classroom, guiding all the students with her.

They walked towards one of the many practice fields behind the main building, where they sat down. Elena walked a little bit further away, having a safe distance between her students and herself. “We will discuss about the properties of the element during the whole year, so for now, let me just show you all!”

The moment she said that, the surroundings started to change a little. Keith felt that a huge power was starting to gather in the direction of Elena. Slowly some very small flashes of lightning appeared around Elena’s body. The flashes started to appear more frequent and each time a new flash would appear, the lightning would be a little bigger than the previous one. Her hair was slowly starting to float along with the intensity of the lightning that was increasing. After a while, it was almost like her whole body was constantly surrounded by lightning, making her seem like an ancient god.

“You are all very lucky and also unlucky to have gotten a lightning element affinity,” Elena said. When she looked back at the students, still being surrounded by lightning, her eyes seemed to have changed too. They had become a little bluer, with more depth to them. “The lightning element is actually known for having the fastest speed and the biggest destructive power! You can be faster than wind mages and more destructive than fire mages! There are only two disadvantages, we quickly run out of elemental power and it’s very hard to convert mana to lightning elemental energy!”

She then smiled and the next moment, all students –even the second-year students, gaped in awe. Elena had more or less jumped into the sky, where she hovered for a moment, but it happened so fast that it was almost like she teleported. She then twisted her body and struck out her hand towards the ground. The next moment, the intensity of lightning around her lessened dramatically, but the ground was no more. The patch of grass she hit, immediately burned away, showing the ground beneath it. The lightning had already impacted on the ground and discharged like the roots of a tree through the ground.

When Elena fell down from the sky, she discharged lightning some more to lessen the impact of her fall, but the discharge wasn’t as big as the previous one. “Hey, everyone, come over,” she waved towards the students. When they all arrived at the strike zone of Elena’s lightning, they couldn’t help but marvel. “Lightning isn’t only the best element, it’s also the most beautiful! Not only are the attack flashes gorgeous, even the impact zones turn into beautiful things.”

It turned out that all of the sand beneath the grass had turned into glass, creating a marvelous sight. “Lightning mages are generally the most feared among mages, except for mages who meet their own counters. They will try to dodge and run until you don’t have any elemental energy left, but it’s our job as lightning mages to defeat them before that!”

She then had the five students sit down around the patch of land she hit, cleverly motivating them while she started speaking about some of the more complicated parts to controlling lightning.