I awoke to a knock on the door.

It was Iguana coming to get me for my early morning chats. I dressed as quickly as I could and opened the door, but said nothing to each other until we were in the library. None of what we said was small talk as he started asking me questions about what we had talked about the day before, which was a lot. He said nothing about my pay, which was the one thing I was looking forward to in our meeting.

When we finished our hour, I went back to my room for the morning meal. As I had skipped the evening meal yesterday, I was starving and wanted more. Arty offered me a little of hers, which I took.

Nothing much happened until it was time to leave where I quickly made my way to the fields.

As I looked over the field, I realized that it had been days since I had not had sore muscles. My combat training the day before had not been bad, so I wasn’t as sore as I could be. It was the two hours of archery that had worn me out, especially my arms.

When it was time to start my training I found out, to my relief, that I would mainly work on endurance exercises today. It also looked like that for the first few weeks we would switch between strength type training and endurance-type training until our bodies toughened up. Only then would we start the real training and use practice weapons.

The training today had been much worse than yesterday. While we had done little that required strength, the amount of running we did was enough to make a few of the children in my group vomit. One even passed out. The other groups of children looked at our group with some pity, but mostly relief that they were not being driven as hard as we were.

By the time it was time to leave, all but the toughest of the boys were sitting or laying on the ground breathing heavily. Even the ones still standing were too tired to take pride in this. Sadly, I was one laying down, and I almost didn't leave the field in time to make it to my next class on time.

When I entered the Temple of Magic I saw that I was not the only one rushing to not be late to class. If it were not because I had been looking forward, no, excited to go to my magic class I would have had no problem being late.

I quickly entered Pie Can's room. I had been expecting it to be filled up just the same as my knowledge class but I saw that there were only a little more than half as many children as had the other class. I wondered how many of them weren't Melche born. Since Pie Can was a Candrar and not a Melche, I imagine it was quite a few.

I soon sat on the end of a row a few rows back from the front. I had also lucked out by finding a seat with no one sitting immediately next to me.

Pie Can started the class.

“Children,” He said with an air of importance he had probably perfected over the years. “Today will be the start of a very important journey. Not only will your knowledge of magic help with the safety of all those in Flaern, but it will also bring great opportunities to you. I implore you to take your studies seriously and work your hardest to become great mages.”

Pie Can paused, looked over the entire class, and then continued. “Before we start, can anyone tell me what the different types of magic are?”

A child in front of me responded fist. “Summoning!” Pie Can nodded, and then pointed to another child, who said, “Fire!” Various students answered with things like the elements, heat transfer, and light magic, among other things.

After he was satisfied with the children's answers, Pie Can walked to a large box sitting just left of his desk and brought it to a table that had been placed in front of the students.

“What I am about to show and teach you is very important.” He opened the box and pulled out a small crystal orb. It was identical to the crystals over the doors in the girl's dorm and Helnion's lamp.

“Can anyone tell me what this is?” He asked holding it out to the class. After a moment of silence of Pie Can pointed to someone behind me.

He called out the student's name. “It is a magic crystal.”

“Correct.” Said Pie Can. “Now, can someone else tell me what it does?”

I had no idea what the thing was or what it did.

Pie Can pointed to a child on my row and called their name. “It eats your magic power?” The child said uncertainly.

“In a sense, but what does it do after it has taken your power?” Pie Can didn't call on anyone and continued, “There are many kinds of Magic crystals. For now, we will focus on this kind. It is impossible to tell what kind of crystal it is until you release your magical power into it.” The orb in Pie Can's hand lit up with a bright blue light.

“This particular one is, as you can see, is a light crystal. Since it is safe, we will use this to teach you how to control your magical energy. Specifically, how to turn it on and off when you will it and how much you put into it.”

Pie Can motioned to the box again and said, “I want each child to come down and get an orb. We will start with the back row first.”

There were four rows in the room, each with enough room to hold five children. I was on the third row but there were only three children on the back row so I'd only have to wait a little before I could get mine and thankfully the line to the box moved quickly as most of the children eagerly grabbed one of the small crystal orbs.

I soon found myself in the line's front, looking into the box, but before I reached into it Pie Can spoke. “Tell me, children. Have you noticed that the color of each person gives from their orbs is different?” He motioned to the few children that had already lit their orbs, albeit unsteadily, and indeed they were all different. One child made the orb glow a deep red and another a pale green.

“I will now use this time to explain this,” Pie Can continued, “While it is not known if the colors have any meaning many people believe it to be linked to their deity. This is not true.” He looked at me, “For example, take Salis here. Since she is a Terran and not linked to any deity, one would think she would not have any color connected to a Deity. As the color of her magic is purple, one would think to connect her to Dugin or maybe Sorris.”

Dugin's color being blue and Sorris' color Red.

“Also my color is blue, but I am associated with Candrar as my Deity. If we were to go by the color of my Deity, my magic color would be gray, if that is even possible.”

I noticed that he said my color would be purple. How did he know? I hadn't even picked up an orb yet.

So I asked, “How do you know what my color is?”

Pie Can smiled and reached for my hair. I stepped away from him when he did. Seeing that he had reached for my hair, I realized something. The end of my hair was purple.

Before I said anything I heard a child say, “Her hair is purple on the end!”

I heard another child say, “Is her hair like the crystal?”

Pie Can cleared his throat to get our attention and said, “I see some of you are observant. Her hair is indeed showing the color of her magic power. Since her hair does not have any color in it, it does not cover the color of her magic power up as with someone with brown or black hair. What is also interesting is that the magic power only shows at the tips of the hair, so if Salis here cut her hair the tips would still be purple even though it was white in that spot before we cut it.”

I looked at my hair. I had grown so used to its color that I had thought nothing of it. But to think the purple wasn't the color of my hair but the color of my magic. I wondered if it was possible to change your magic color.

Now that Pie Can seemed to have finished talking for the moment, I picked up my crystal orb. I looked at it as I walked back to my desk. To me, it just seemed like a normal piece of crystal or even glass, but as I looked at it I thought I saw something. I looked harder at it, but I soon decided it must be my imagination.

When all the children had retrieved their crystal and had sat down at their desks, Pie Can spoke up again. “I see that only a few of you have lit up your crystal. For those of you that have I would like you to keep practicing as I can see you still are having trouble keeping a constant flow of your magical power. As for the rest of you, I will now give you all the advice can, though it is different for every person.”

Pie Can picked up his crystal again and held it up. When it radiated the bright blue light again he said, “For me I imagine the power leaving my body, going up my arm, through my hand, and into the orb. You do not have to worry about putting any form to your power as the crystal will do this for you. Later you will learn to do it without the crystal, but for now this is the best way to learn control.”

When Pie Can stopped speaking, I noticed that a few more students had lit up their orbs. All of them were different colors. Seeing this made me turn to my crystal. I wish Pie Can hadn't told me what mine would be as it took away from the surprise, but there was still the hope that he was wrong.

I looked at my orb for a moment longer, wondering what I should do to light it up. I started easy and imagined some power coming from me to the orb glowing in front of me. It worked. In front of me sat a glowing crystal orb. It had been that easy, but as soon as I stopped thinking about it glowing it stopped. How annoying. I didn't want to have to keep thinking about keeping something glowing. I wanted to get it to glow and then be able to keep it glowing while doing something else.

Pie Can spoke again. This time he told about the different techniques that he said he found others had used when they were first learning. I didn't really listen to him and instead stared at my orb and tried to think of ways to keep it lit without me having to keep my attention on it.

A few minutes passed before Pie Can spoke again, “Now that most of you have lit your orbs, I will go over how to control how much power you put into it.” He held up his orb and lit it up again. This time he changed the brightness of the light.

“As you can see by adjusting the amount of power I put into the orb, I can increase or decrease the brightness. You may think this will be hard, but it is not. While how you do it varies as much as how you focus your magical power it is easier. For example, imagine a river. When you are using your full ability your river is full and raging. While when you are using less power it is like a gentle stream, flowing peacefully.”

Over the next few minutes Pie Can went around the room helping students. As he went around the amount of students that could control the intensity of their light increased. I couldn't. No matter what I did, the light never changed its brightness, although I got good at turning it on and off.

At one point I had gotten so tired of trying to control the intensity of my magical power I just started turning the orb on and off as fast as I could. By the time Pie Can came to me I had gotten good enough at it, I figured I could act as a strobe light and open a dance club.

“What are you doing over here, child?” Pie Can asked me when he stopped behind me.

I shrugged.

“Light up your orb.” Pie Can told me. I did. “Good, now I want you to try to change its brightness.”

“I can't,” I told him.

“Nonsense child. I have noticed that you have been changing its brightness, albeit slowly.”

When Pie Can said this, and I realized that the lighted orb I was looking at now was a little brighter.

“Do you need any help?” Pie Can asked.

I shoved my pride and said, “Yes.”

For a few minutes Pie Can asked me questions about how I lit the orb and then asked about what I had tried to do to control it. He soon told me to try his suggestions and then went on to the next student.

I had been staring at the orb for a while when the brightness suddenly dropped. I had been trying to make it brighter at that moment but thought maybe I had the process reversed. So I tried to lower the brightness but nothing happened. So I then tried what I was doing when it had dimmed to see if I could repeat it. Nothing still happened.

By this time most of the other children were easily turning their orbs on and off and lowering and raising the brightness. I saw some of them glance at me and point while giving me looks of ridicule. This didn't bother me because I wasn't the only one still having problems. One child still hadn't even lit up his orb. He sat in his seat crying.

Suddenly my orb flashed. It was so bright that I had to look away. My mind had been wandering, so I wasn't sure what had happened exactly, but I didn't care what had happened since none of the other children had been this bright, so it showed that I probably had more power than they did. While I could not look directly at the orb, I still willed it to get brighter. I wanted to see how bright I could get it.

This thought was short-lived however as the brightness suddenly died to almost nothing. Now that I could see, I saw that everyone in the room was looking at me. Some had their mouths open. Pie Can was smiling. I don't know how or what I did, and it irritated me. What was I doing that was making it go so bright and then go dim?

“You finally did it child,” said Pie Can as he stood behind me again. “You finally found out your control. And what power at that. I have never had a student with that much power, although this is expected of a Terran.” I had never expected that Pie Can could get excited. He had seemed to me to be one of those teachers that didn't care about much. “Will you do it again, child?”

I shook my head and said, “I don't know what I did.” Then the thought occurred to me. Was it one of those things where I have to get angry or happy or whatever to increase my power? I hoped not. Not only would that be annoying but also possibly extremely cliche.

Pie Can frowned a little at hearing me say I didn't know and said, “You will eventually find your way, child.” He pointed to the child that had yet to turn on his orb. “It is often the ones that have the hardest time that shine brightly.”

Or not shine at all. I thought as Pie Can left.

When I looked back at my orb, I saw that it was now barely glowing. In an instant, I realized two things. One was that I had looked away from the orb and kept it shining. The second was that since it was so dim now, I could see through the crystal better. I saw tiny cracks throughout the crystal where there had been none before.

For the next few minutes, I tried adjusting my emotions to see if that was what I had to do. As I was one not to show any emotions, I knew it would not be easy, except for either boredom or irritation. Since I was already pretty irritated at myself for not being able to figure this out, I already had a start.

Getting irritated didn't work, so I tried thinking happy thoughts. Not only did that not work, I also found that I couldn't fly either.

Did tying Pali up while he was sleeping count as a happy thought? Or even leaving Porra-Kel? Sadly, I didn't have many happy thoughts of Calorin and my memories of Earth had been put into storage and covered in dust since I didn't like to touch them.

While I was thinking about what emotion to trigger next, I felt a burning sensation in my arm. I had had my eyes closed but I could still tell that there was a dazzling light coming from my orb. Because of this I didn't open my eyes. I didn't want to blind myself.

The burning in my arm grew worse the longer I held the bright light in my hand. I had also felt the orb heat up and then vibrate. I suddenly felt that I should cut off my flow of magical power before I hurt myself.

I didn't have time. The light suddenly grew brighter and then exploded. I felt stings all over my face and arms as the pieces of the orb flew all over the room. I was happy now that I had kept my eyes closed even though I felt no stings on my eyelids.

After a moment I opened my eyes and looked around. I had several small cuts up and down both of my arms, all of which had crystal shards sticking out. My right hand, the one I had been holding the orb with, had several larger cuts and pieces of crystal sticking out but didn't look as bad as I thought it was going to. There wasn't a mirror in the room so I couldn't see my face, but I imagine there were probably a few cuts there.

All around me I noticed crying. Since there had been no one next to me, the collateral damage from the crystal shattering probably wasn't as bad as it could have been. I could see little spots of blood forming on the back of the child in front of me and along the arm and side of the face of the child to my left. The rest of the children near me didn't look bad with maybe one or two others with cuts.

“What happened child?” said a flustered Pie Can, who had come running as quickly as he could. “Are you hurt badly?” Pie Can then looked at me closely. “Your face isn't too bad but your arms and especially your hand will need attention.”

I had gotten the pain in my hand under control when I started doing it. I had been looking at the crystal shards in my hand. I wondered if they would still light up. I tried. They did. The shards stuck in my hand shone brightly, I even lit all of them up at once to my surprise. I even tried lighting them up in different patterns.

“What are you doing child,” said Pie Can, who had moved to the child to my left.

“Practicing.”

Before Pie Can could reply, the door to the room opened. In walked a woman carrying a large box.

“What happened, Professor Pae? I could hear the explosion in the advanced magic class.”

“This child,” he pointed to me, “shattered an orb.”

The woman gasped, “I might expect something from the advanced students, but…” she paused and looked at me again. “The Terran child? Now it makes sense. I guess this means they are as strong as I have heard.”

When the woman, probably the school nurse, reached me she gave me a quick look over. When she was done she picked up my right hand. I stopped lighting the crystal shards so she could have a better look.

She looked at me and said, “Your hand is not as bad as it looks, although it will hurt to use it for a while. The rest of the cuts are all minor though I will have to remove the shards.” She then reached into her box and pulled out some tweezers.

I wondered if they had healing magic. I hadn't heard of any and no one had mentioned it earlier when Pie Can was going over the different magic. It would explain why they had gotten so excited when I told them I would sell them my medical knowledge.

“It looks like you have everything under control,” Pie Can said to the nurse, “So if you do not mind I will resume class.” When the nurse nodded, he walked to the front of the room. “Children, I know not all of you have recovered from the event earlier but we will move on with class, regardless.” He paused, “How many of you have heard of mind manipulation magic?”

Only a few children raised their hands.

“I know now may seem a strange time to bring this up, but some of you will be thankful for it,” He paused again, “How many of you are still have trouble lighting your orb or controlling your magic output?” A few students, including me with my left uninjured hand, raised their hands. I didn't like where this was going. “We have found that if a child is having trouble learning these things, then it is helpful for someone more experienced to help. Unfortunately, verbal help only goes so far. When verbal instructions fail mind manipulation is the only other way.”

Pie Can pointed to a girl on the first row that had raised her hand. “Come, child.” She stood up and walked timidly to Pie Can. “This will not take long. Do not be afraid. I will do nothing to hurt or embarrass you.”

The girl nodded.

Pie Can and the girl just stood there. In what seemed like less than a minute the orb the girl was holding, lit. Also, it only took a few more seconds for the orb to go brighter and then dim before going out.

“Did you feel what happened child?” said Pie Can to the now smiling girl. She nodded and then lit the orb again and adjusted its brightness. “Good,” said Pie Can and then motion for her to sit back down.

For the next few minutes Pie Can called the children down who had been having trouble. Each time it only took a minute or less to give results and have the children reproduce them. Despite seeing how well this worked, I hoped that I wouldn't end up doing it. Maybe he would skip me because of my injuries? Too bad the nurse had already moved to one of the other children. That would've been a good excuse.

While I was sitting there, praying for class to break for noon meal before he got to me and was called down. Even though I hated the thought of someone going into my head, I walked to Pie Can. I stood in front of him and the staring students. I decided then that I would do all I could to keep him out of my mind until it was time to leave. I knew it was stupid to refuse help like this, but I would rather not learn magic than to let someone into my head.

Soon I felt it. Like fingers touching my head, searching. I pushed them away. Pie Can spoke, “Child, do not resist. I will only do what I need to help you and nothing else.” As soon as he had finished speaking I felt the fingers again. I pushed them away. Pie Can's eyes furrowed a little and then I felt the fingers again, only stronger. I pushed them away again, albeit with more difficulty.

For the next while, I don't know how long, Pie Can and I fought. Each time he attacked harder, and I pushed back even harder. I was surprised at how well I was doing against him, though he probably wasn't trying as hard as he could. Almost confirming this was the slight smile that had formed on his lips, as if showing he was playing with me and enjoying it.

We had fought for a little longer when I could no longer push him away. It had come to where I could only block, and I was slowly losing ground. The further back I got pushed, the more I could feel him probe my mind.

When I had first given some ground to him he began speaking to me. I am impressed, child. Your mental strength is great. I have never had the privilege of doing this with a Terran before, but I have read that their mental abilities, unlike their magical abilities, are very much the same as we people of Calorin.

I soon saw the smile disappear from Pie Can's face and knew it probably meant he was about to get serious. As soon as the thought passed through my mind, my mental barrier was pushed back savagely. Thankfully, it hadn't collapsed, but I also felt that he hadn't tried to collapse it and had only pushed enough to get to where he wanted.

Now that Pie Can was where he wanted to be, I felt him giving my mind suggestions. What surprised me was that he was not going through my memories but something that I thought was what controlled magical power. Sure enough, I soon saw the orb in my hand light up though the brightness didn't change. Whatever he had done had put a frown on his face.

I am sorry, child. I cannot help you, Pie Can said sadly. I have only read about things like this, but you will never be able to control your magical power.

I was stunned. I wouldn't be able to control my magic power? I guess the thing they said about all Terrans having a defect was true? While most had obvious physical defects, mine must be the inability to control my magical power? I guess on the bright side I could still use magic, just with less freedom than others.

I dropped my mental barrier. Does this mean I won't be learning magic? I thought, hoping Pie Can heard.

No, child. Pie Can replied. You will still be taught everything that does not rely on magic control, but that will limit what I can teach you.

I looked at my bandaged hand and thought; I guess this also means I will not be training with orbs anymore.

Not necessarily. There are more expensive higher grades of crystal that should be able to withstand your power. Unfortunately, you will have to buy those yourself, but I hear you will not be in wont of money.

When I felt Pie Can's presence in my mind disappear, I went back to my seat. I sat there until it was time to leave for noon meal, thinking about what I would do now that I knew my magic abilities were severely limited. I guess I would invest in some orbs.