(Jacob, 16)

"Where do you believe Alex and Niko traveled to yesterday?" I ask Lina as I sit across from her with my dinner. "The Sages seemed quite upset, and Jason seemed amused."

Whatever Niko and Alex did, it was something major, the way Niko was being scolded. We were shuffled out before we could actually hear it, but I caught something about 'stone curse' and 'stabbing your friends'.

"Niko was performing diplomatic relations with his neighbors," Lina tells me, and I raise an eyebrow. "I asked him during lunch."

"He was performing diplomatic relations with his neighbors," I say, and she nods. "Lina, we are talking about a man who can barely sit still when in a meeting with my father because his anxiety over messing up causes him to nearly faint. I find it hard to believe he left to perform-"

I cut off as a thought comes to me. Niko has been spending a lot of time with Jason, whose view of 'diplomatic relations' can be considered extreme. It can also be considered an excuse for certain things.

"Do you know what, specifically, he was doing?" I ask.

"He answered," she says. "That he was convincing them continuing to fight Mar was a very bright idea."

"A very bright idea?"

"I think it means something different in their culture," she says.

"It does," one of the normal members of Jason's training group sits beside me.

Nathan, another first-year student at the Royal Magic University. He has a green left eye and a brown right eye, and his aural sheath is green. A-Class at his university, I believe. I have never seen him interact with anyone much, and do not know much about him. Is he a noble or a commoner? What does his family do?

"In the northern kingdoms," he says. "The snow and ice that frequents it makes the area bright. The brighter it is, the more difficult to see it becomes. Going into an open space blanketed by snow on a sunny day can be both painful to your eyes and mind, and blinding as well. To them, 'bright' is the same as 'stupid'."

"That reminds me," Lina says. "You are Marran, are you not? Or at least, half-Marran?"

"Are you assuming this because of my eye?" He indicates his left eye. "This happens every now and then to people. The dual-color eyes is a rare condition. I have only heard of two other people with it, and neither attend our universities. Someone else with it may, but-"

"Does it not mean you have a Marran ancestor?" Lina asks. "And I thought I heard your papa was Marran."

"Lina," I give my sister a warning look. "Leave it. For all we know, it could be a four-greats grandpapa. I have heard of traits skipping several generations. I do find the dual-color eyes a fascinating thing, though. One of our servants at the palace has a brown right eye and blue left eye. Her mother came from one of the southern kingdoms. Do you expect you managed to make it into S-Class, Nathan?"

"Entry to S-Class is a much greater difficulty increase than entry into A-Class," he says. "I do not expect to have made it in."

"You did," Jason says, and we look at him. He is seated at the next table over, and is eating with Alex, Barry, Sarah, and one of the other members of his training group, in addition to Megan, one of Lina's guards. "Ah, right. I forgot to announce that, didn't I?"

"How could you know what he made it into?" I ask. "The results are not announced until the morning of the next examinations."

They announce it before the next examinations so that those who wish to try for a higher class may.

"I am a training instructor," Jason says. "Or, well, a training group head. Due to certain aspects of our group, I am entitled to know which classes you are all in, and received the results before we left for here. Almost everyone who was in B-Class and A-Class at either university made it in to S-Class. Alex made it in to B-Class, and that low only because of his academics. His skill was ranked at lower S-Class of a second-year in their second term."

"Jason," Alex looks at him in shock. "Did you receive the actual scores we received?"

"Yes," Jason answers. "As the head of the training group you are a member of, I am entitled to all progress reports, so that I may also help tailor your training within the group to help account for what you are weak in and to play up your strengths. Naturally, this includes the exams, which are the biggest progress report each term."

There is a collective groan in the room. Jason said that so plainly, I think he thought we all knew this. Especially Lina and me, who he likely assumed knew because we were Varilan royalty.

"As for the diplomatic relations," Jason says. "Niko paid a visit to the king of Sar, then the Sarran forts along their shared border. He was requesting that they stop attacking Mar, and it seems to have worked."

Jason knows exactly what Niko did, and he knows it was more than 'requesting' something.

"Alex," I turn my attention to him. "Are you well? Sage Elena mentioned something about Niko stabbing his friends."

"Could be worse," Alex says. "But I deserved what Niko did."

"You did not deserve to be stabbed."

"He did," Jason says. "Now go back to your own conversation, we're trying to talk here."

"You were the one who interjected into ours," I point out.

"You wish," Jason says. "Alex, you lost your aural sheath."

Alex turns his aural sheath back on, and I sigh, then begin eating my dinner. Niko attacked his neighbors, that is the only explanation for what happened.

As I eat, I remember Nathan's name. I saw his identification card when he showed it to Jason upon joining the training group. Nathan xan Barry xal Elmar. Elmar is a town near the border of Mar and Varil, on the Marran side. Specifically, it is the town where one Duke Barry lives.

I glance at Nathan, who is eating in silence, as I mull over what I just realized. Nathan is Marran nobility, but he seems to reject that side of him, if what he said with Lina acts as an indication. He seemed to dislike the idea of being associated with Mar.

Or is it his father he takes issue with?

My gaze travels past Nathan to the line for food, where Eden is finishing filling his tray.

"Eden!" I call out, and he looks over. "Come sit with us!"

"Jacob!" Lina exclaims softly. "You know it is not appropriate to call out like that."

"I know," I grin at her. "But we are not in a formal setting. How can we get people to treat us like friends when we continue to act formally with them, even in a casual setting during a training camp?"

She thinks on that as Eden walks over, then she blushes as she realizes I am correct.

"And yet," Eden sits on my other side. "You still won't use contractions, Jacob."

"You have to make an allowance for that," I tell him. "It takes time to change how one speaks-"

"Jacob," he says. "You're doing it again."

"Sorry," I feel my face heat up, just a little. "Have you seen Niko? He disappeared as soon as the rest period began. After his 'diplomatic negotiations', I was thinking he may have returned to Mar for something."

"He is," Eli, one of the Marran youth speaks up from another table. "Resting in his room. The training he went through today was designed to be just as harsh on him as it was on each of us, which means it had an increased difficulty."

"And so he needs to rest?"

"Yes," Eli answers. "He ran rather low on mana."

"We Magi have immense pools of it," I say. "It should not be easy for us to drop low on mana. Even the one of us with the least amount of mana could compare to an elder wyvern. Niko has the second-most."

"And yet recovery is not accelerate," Eli says. "And Niko has used quite a lot of mana lately, not just for our training. He performed a series of spells for his negotiations yesterday, as well as tapped into holy magics. It takes him around a week to recover to full mana from empty. Your naturally-high mana pools don't reflect in your recovery speeds."

"I'm actually the opposite," Jason says. "I have a high recovery speed and low natural mana pool."

"You have as much mana as a two-century-old dragon," I point out.

"He wasn't born with that," Sage Elizabeth approaches us. "He actually had a relatively low mana pool when he first started using magic, enough to do a few simple spells, then he was done."

"However," Sage Elena approaches. "Jason increased it rapidly. He has a natural affinity for mana growth rather than mana pool, which means that the more often he burns his full mana in a short time, the greater the increase to his mana pool. Samuel had him performing a complete empty three times a day. Three times each. At first. It became progressively more difficult to keep that up because of how great his mana pool was by the time he was ten."

Jason is constantly expending his mana right now in order to heal. A constant drain on one's mana pool also helps increase it, which means that by the time he finishes healing, he may have more mana than elder dragons if what Sage Elena says holds truth.

I look at Jason, realizing that others are, and find him giving us a mischievous grin.

"Like she said," he says. "I had very little when I was little!"

(Jason, 16)

Dinner was amusing, especially the faces of my students and friends when they realized that I was born with a naturally low mana pool. The same for when I was Alorovos, too, actually. My mama and papa were unimpressed with it, especially as seventh-sons were supposed to be prodigies when it came to magic.

Which I turned out to be, especially when my mana reached as much as a young silver dragon by the time I was only seven.

Now, I'm in my room, performing an enchantment on some clay as I mold it. Mostly to try to distract myself, but I give up on doing that and set the clay back on the tray. I use earth magic to keep the clay from sticking to me as well. Since I'm using the aural sheath, that's necessary. I'm only using it so the others don't question why I'm not, even though I'm technically a trainer. I am a part of the training group, after all.

The clay put away, I reach onto the nightstand and grab the dream stone Niko gave me. It was as gift from Lina for the first of the Twelve Honors. He was playing with it earlier, and gave it to me as soon as I returned from dinner.

It's the same one he used during the war.

I toss it into the air and catch it, doing that a few times as I debate on what to do with it. Niko wants me to decide if we destroy it or not. After my twelfth catch, I examine the stone, which is currently a perfect sphere, akin to a marble.

Holding it between my right thumb and index finger, I lift it up and examine it, then shape a spell with my mana, imbuing it into the stone, which I then toss up into the air. It fixes itself at the apex of its toss, remaining still.

Then, I gain access to all of its stored memories and knowledge. Every time it is reshaped, the memory used to shape it is stored within. It can be used to store not just memories, but knowledge as well. We put into it knowledge of some of our most powerful spells, the sort of which could easily cause chaos in the current state of the world.

What's bad is that there were three of these. If I weren't in the condition I'm in, I could easily track them down. When we stored the knowledge of those spells in these, it was… I don't remember why, actually. But I do know I sealed the dream stones away after while.

If I bound their hiding place as tightly as I remember, even a god would have died to break them out.

Accessing the knowledge of the stone, I skim through to determine which spells are in it. Based on my history lessons, I don't know of any incidents which used these spells. Even ordinary mages could use them, if they synced their magic together.

Frowning, I realize this isn't the one I put a certain spell into. It would take probably forty indigos to cast, but it would guarantee victory in any war. Chances are low that someone would have found it and known what it was, and how to access it.

However, the fact that even a god would die to have retrieved these makes me wary. They may have been split up at some point, but whoever originally had them no doubt knew how to access their information.

I pull out my comm plate and activate a certain sequence of runes.

"Yo, Boss!"

"Dragon Alpha," I say. "Open a gate to me. I'm tossing something through."

"Got it, Boss!"

A grey gate appears in my room, and I toss the dream stone through.

"Caught it, Boss!"

"Bring that to me," I tell him. "I'll wake up in a few minutes to do some stuff with it."

"Understood, Boss!" He says. "By the way, I found a little intruder. Should I burn it?"

"An intruder?" I ask. "A person?"

"Hrm… no," he says. "A baby dragon. He's not as beautiful as me, though."

"What's he doing right now?" I ask.

"He's watching the house."

"Just… put the stone by my pillow and leave it there," I tell him. "And send the baby dragon home, his papa is probably worried for him."

"Got it, Boss!"

I end the call and sigh again. The gate fades a moment later, and I shake my head. Before I can clean everything up, there's a knock at my door.

"Enter," I call.

The door opens, and Adam walks in. His magic is middle green bordering on upper green, now. He's rather talented, and may reach middle blue by the time he turns eighteen next summer. The eldest of the Magi, and the mortal form of the eldest Divine Beast.

By his expression, I know he's realized who we are.

"Jason," Adam says. "I had a strange dream last night, and as we practiced our stuff today, I realized what it meant."

"What was it?"

"Me," he answers. "Stretching my wings out through the cosmos of another universe, watching over all. Me, being reborn again and again. Me, watching as eleven more of our kind were created. I'm the Divine Phoenix, and I know you've no doubt remembered who you are."

"Yes," I smile. "I'm the Divine Dragon. So the eldest and the youngest are aware of who we are."

"Is there anyone else?" He asks.

"Niko knows," I answer. "Because of something he did as Benjamin that caused some memories to resurface. Jacob knows, but he doesn't remember. He'd figured it out based on clues. And now you."

"Alex doesn't know?" He seems surprised.

"Alex is close to the truth," I grin. "But so far off. He believes we've met the Divine Beasts, rather than we are the Divine Beasts. None of the other Magi have figured it out or are close to the truth."

"I see," he says. "Do you know why we're reincarnated into mortals?"

"Because I got pissed off," I say. "And the rest of you decided to help me deal with the situation."

He gives me a confused look, so I explain the purpose behind us becoming the Magi.

"Oh," he says. "That… okay. Thank you, Jason. I was just confused by this."

"That's understandable," I smile. "Your memories came back before you were grey in magical power, probably because of me reaching middle grey. Anyway, I'm rather tired, Adam, so I was getting ready to go to sleep."

"Alright," he looks at the tools on my bed, then gives me a disbelieving look. "Have a good night, Jason."

"Night, Adam," I say, and he leaves.

I start packing up the stuff I was messing with. Time to figure out what to do with the dream stone.

(Niko, 16)

When we enter the training room my group is assigned to for our first session of today, we find Jason sitting on the air. Nothing else, just the air. His grey aural sheath wraps around him gently, and he looks tired. Did he figure out what to do with the dream stone? I gave it to him last night after determining it was one of ours. Such a judgment is best left to Jason.

I had hoped to ask Jason during breakfast, but he had not joined us for it. According to Sage Elena, Jason ate before the rest of us woke up, then laid back down for another nap.

We move into position in the room, sitting on the floor. Whatever Jason has planned for our current session for today, he won't say it until after we have all sat.

Now that we are seated, we wait for Jason to begin our lesson. Right now, he's watching us, probably examining our aural sheaths so that he can inform us if they're uneven for some reason.

"Alright," Jason says. "Today, I am going to teach each of you how to fly. Except for Niko, he already knows how, something you all learned in the fight against the ice titan. When fighting a monster much larger than yourself, such as a titan, flight spells become a necessity for an easier battle. However, they aren't that easy to cast while sustaining other spells, which is one of the reason I've focused on having you each learn how to cast at least two or three spells simultaneously.

"We aren't going to go into full-flight right now," he says. "Mostly because of the windstorm going on outside. For now, each of you will focus on hovering, much as I am doing. As you'll notice, there is no bobbing to my flight, my hovering is perfectly still. This is without an anchor spell, such as what Niko did for the stone chair he created to recover on after casting his first larger curse during the fight against the ice titan."

"Niko," Jason says. "Would you hover for me?"

I shape my mana into the flight spell, then lift myself up to the same height Jason is hovering, around four feet in the air.

"As you can see," Jason indicates me. "Niko bobs just a little. This isn't the fault of the flight spell itself, but the mind of the mage casting it. His rises occur with every inhale he takes, and his drops occur with every exhale he makes. This is a common mistake made by beginners of the flight spell."

"Jason," I say. "You invented this spell. How could this be a common mistake?"

"My mamas and papas," he says. "Plus several of the Delvarkari, have been taught it. They all did the same thing as you. What's going on is that while focusing on the spell, you're also aware of your breath. This is common when someone becomes focused on something – becoming more aware of their own breathing. As a result, you're syncing the flight spell to the breathing. During the fight with the ice titan, the bobbing wasn't there, this is an issue with the hovering aspect itself. For some people, they will also subconsciously attempt to adjust their height to make up for the bobbing, which is what results in the bobbing."

That does not make sense to me.

Jason walks the rest of the group through casting the flight spell. Due to it being a high magic, it is more than just 'visualize yourself flying'. As they do that, I work on stopping the bobbing, which only takes me a few minutes to complete.

Because I succeeded in stopping the bobbing, Jason pulls out a box with the wooden training balls and hands it to me.

"Sustain your flight spell," he instructs me. "And your aural sheath while performing the usual training with these. Do as many as you can manage without bobbing."

"Yes, sir," I open up the box and pull out one of the balls, then manipulate it with air magics, spinning it one way while causing it to travel in a circle.

I add a second ball to the practice, then a third. That is my sustaining point, the point at which I can sustain all spells and not bob in my flight. It helps for me to sit, much like Jason is, so I do that as well. Tempted though I am to create a chair from earth magics, I know that is not part of the training and would partially defeat the purpose of it.

(Jacob, 16)

"Each of you," Sage Elena says. "Has the directions to create the potion I just demonstrated, as well as the ingredients. You may begin."

In the lesson with her for today, we are creating potions with the effect of warding off the cold when consumed. One of the ingredients is the blood of an ice titan, and considering how difficult titans are to slay, I cannot help but wonder how many times Sage Elena has created this potion.

We are using blood from the ice titan we slayed the other day. Niko gave approval for us to use its blood, and Jason bought the remains of the monster from him with the intent of us using various parts of it.

I grab one of the roots at my station and examine it. Is this the first root, or the second root? We have two different roots we are supposed to use, which enter into the mix at separate times. This one is blue and has a bluish tint to it, while the other is more yellow-brown. If I remember the demonstration correctly, then this is the first root.

After glancing at my fellow trainees, I confirm they are each using this one as well. I set it down and begin chopping with one of the knives present, dicing it as well as I can. Then, I separate it into several groups and grind each one into paste with a mortal and pestle. With that completed, I measure out two tablespoons of it, then scrape them out of the measuring spoon and into the pot, using water magic to remove every last bit of it.

For this, we each have a portable stove from Jeshema Magical Technologies, only these ones have better temperature controls than the ones for sale in the public market. Perfect for alchemy, as their heat is more steady and stable.

Steadier, more stable temperatures throughout the process make for more accurate creations.

The paste in the pot, I grind dried berries two at a time, using air magic to pull the powder out and onto the scale. The scale is a stone tablet with a metal one atop it, which gives us a measurement of the weight of the item placed on top of it.

Sage Elena showed them to us before she began her demonstration. It seems that Jason's previous life was on a world where such things existed. We still use balance scales. After Jason mentioned these to his papas and mamas, Sage Jared and Sage Alyssa created them with enchantments, which Sage Elena says took them only a few hours once they actually thought about it.

Much like with the alarm clocks, we are essentially their test subjects for use.

I know that such a measuring device has been attempted several times before, but I never expected them to be so small.

Returning to the task at hand, I finish measuring the powder of the dried berries, use air magic to move those into the pot, then look at the small bowl of blood of an ice titan, then at the instructions. Not yet. Next is some herbs, which I grind up, measure, and then add to the pot.

With a stirring stick, I mix the three ingredients together into a sort of paste, then measure out four cups of water and pour them in, then I turn on the stove, adjusting the temperature to the appropriate setting.

For twenty minutes, I stir the mixture, then I chop up the second root and measure out one tablespoon and add it to the pot. I stir it for a minute, then scoop out a powder from a bowl, measuring it on the scale. Once I have enough, I add it to the pot. The mixture has a greenish-brown coloration, which does not look appetizing at all.

I stir that for two more minutes, then I measure out a single cup of ice titan's blood and add that to the mix, turning it red with a brown tint to it. That looks even less appetizing. I turn the heat up, and continue to stir the mixture.

Much of the liquid evaporates, and once it has reduced down into the potion, I measure it out into two potion bottles, each holding a third of a cup of the slightly-thick liquid, each. That is all that remains of the mixture. While it might be thick, it is thin enough that it would not be a problem to drink.

Its flavor, on the other hand, will be something else entirely, and it smells somewhat pungent. The entire room does, filled with the smell of the potion.

With my potions finished, I cap the glass bottles with their stoppers, then write my name on the two strips of paper meant for that. I stick those papers onto it, then approach the front of the room and hand the potions to Sage Elena.

"Thank you, Jacob," she says. "Clean up your station, then you will have free time until the next session."

"Yes, Sage Elena," I return to my station, then get to work cleaning it up.

She refills what needs it between sessions, so I do not bother with that, instead cleaning the pot and measuring tools, as well as wiping things down. Tasha appears to have finished her potions already, so I move over to her, sitting beside her.

"How do you believe yours turned out?" I ask.

Sage Elena will inform us at the start of the session tomorrow how our potions were and what mistakes each of us made. Only after she does that does she demonstrate the potion for that session.

"I may have mixed up which order the ingredients were added," she admits. "Alchemy is not one of my strong suits."

"Nor one of mine," I admit. "I am never too certain if I am mixing it long enough, if I measured them properly, if I over-mixed them, over-cooked them, or something else. I was glad to make it into S-Class, it is the only one guaranteed to not perform alchemy on a regular basis, if ever."

"Indeed," she smiles. "That was a lovely comb you gave me this morning, Jacob. Was it custom-made?"

"Yes," I answer. "Mixing a hippogriff and a leviathan for the comb to represent both you and today, the Honor of the Leviathan, was the inspiration for it."

"It was nice," she gives me one of her radiant smiles.

Were it not against the rules of etiquette we must abide by, I would pull her in for a kiss right now. Instead, I settle for giving her a gentle one on the cheek, and she returns it. Sometimes, I wish we were ordinary folk, not royalty and nobility. Then, we would be free from the burdens we bear and from the rules of etiquette which govern us. Why is it so taboo to simply kiss when not in a 'romantic scene'?

Who on Midlaris came up with such an absurd notion in the first place?