It felt odd, Theo mused, to go from moving at vaguely the same speed for the entirety of his life, to being able to easily outrun a horse overnight.

Even weirder, to be able to jump over trees and fling himself through the air. Last night, after he had finally managed to steady himself, he made it back to The Pub in ten minutes! Admittedly, half that time had been trying to avoid crashing into things and apologising for surprising passers-by, but he made it. He was still getting used to things, but he made it.

Even now, as he slowed down to show the guards at the inner ring wall his token from Sparrow (and while he had never tried it, Theo would bet that they would let him through anyway because they recognised him by now), he was still marvelling at how freeing it all was. To feel the wind whipping by your ears, tousling your hair, to know that you are entirely in control and able to move anywhere and everywhere you wished to go.

As soon as he made it past the gate, Theo rushed out and legged it in the direction of the College District. All the mansions blurred past him, as he focused solely on making it there (and not bumping into anyone on the way).

He ran past a couple holding hands as they leisurely walked by, and yelled out an apology as the slipstream rushed into them and made them almost stumble. A group of young women in pastel dresses blocked the way, so he decided to jump over them instead of waiting. Theo felt his hair float away from his head, as he reached the apex and started to fall, past the group now desperately craning their necks and turning around to witness his stunt. He landed, winced as he felt something rip in his right shoe under his foot, and ran until he made it to the courtyard of the College of Song, where the performance circle was occurring, and an amused Sparrow and unimpressed Marie stood.

“We received two complaints between last night and today, regarding someone causing havoc at high speeds. Described as a tall man, wearing peasant garb.” Marie intoned, in a way that was somehow devoid of inflection yet perfectly communicated her disdain.

These complaints were about him, Theo realised. He flushed at that realisation, and then flushed harder and fought down a smile when he realised they called him a man.

“Let’s talk more inside. Today we’re not going to the park.” Said Sparrow, as Marie led them both inside, through the reception, into a small side room. She half-heartedly gestured at the room and left, all the while glaring at Sparrow, who had no response but to smile even harder.

“I should have seen that coming, but I’m glad you had your fun.” Sparrow chuckled. Theo rubbed the back of his neck, and Sparrow laughed harder. “Don’t sweat it, it’s something most people do once they hit a certain threshold, but they usually get taught how to control it before they’re that strong. Unfortunately, that does mean no more casually running fast in populated areas. Especially in the central districts.”

Theo’s face fell, but nodded. Sparrow patted him on the shoulder. “Now, I know it can be painful to go back to a normal speed when you understand just how fast you can go. But it is important, not only for the sake of peeved nobles, but also to hide what we are capable of. If people underestimate your speed, then you have a lot more versatility and flexibility when it comes to every aspect of combat and missions and escaping.” Sparrow said. They paused, and looking over their shoulder at the door, held their hand up to their mouth and stage-whispered to Theo.

“Walking doesn’t have to go back to being painfully normal – like I said, I want you to practice infusion until you can maintain it whenever you are awake and conscious. That includes walking.” With that, Sparrow let go of Theo’s shoulder, and then motioned with their head to follow them through the door. “Trust me, you will get the opportunity to run around soon enough. Follow me.”

Theo followed as Sparrow as they walked past what he assumed was Maria, head buried under a stack of paperwork tall enough to be a castle wall around her. They walked out the front, and Theo dimly recognised that the performer at the centre of the circle was one of the ones he saw on his first day in the College District, three weeks ago.

They exited the College of Song’s courtyard, moving to their right, towards the College of War, and the sound of impacts and ringing metal started to crescendo as they neared. Looking closer, he noticed that there were some students running laps and doing general exercise, and Theo noticed that there weren’t many running as fast as he was able to already.

“Besides the fact that mobility isn’t the focus of most warriors, what you can do is far beyond the capabilities of most warriors. You’ll see at the Intra-College Tournament. Another reason to hide what you can do – can’t let you be poached and wasted by the College of War.” Sparrow mused, as they entered the courtyard and, carefully and politely moving past all the combat and exercise, made their way into the reception of the College of War.

The first thing Theo noticed was the weapons. Weapons of every size and kind were placed in brackets on bare wooden walls, shining and well-oiled and well-taken care of.

The second thing he noticed was the fact that there was, frankly nothing else besides the weapons. No nice seats, just bare wooden walls, weapons and a wooden desk piled high with paperwork. It seemed some things were constant across the Colleges.

The person at the desk was the third thing Theo noticed. Stony-faced, with a shaved head, he immediately had the feeling that this man was just at home (if not more) on a battlefield covered in blood as he was doing paperwork. Sparrow walked up to them.

“Grant! I’m going to need to use all your obstacle courses.” Sparrow shouted, good-naturedly, as they walked up to Grant with a swagger before placing their elbow on the desk and leaning over. Grant looked up once to see it was Sparrow, and as professionally as possible (although Theo felt like he had managed to roll his eyes without actually doing so) returned to his paperwork.

“The Dancing Wind. Your project for the year?” He asked, not looking up again from his paperwork. Sparrow nodded, and Theo wondered just how well-known this habit of his mentor’s was. “Well, as term ended a few weeks ago and it’s break, the obstacle courses are empty.” Grant paused, raising his head to take a look at Theo while both his hands were writing on separate piece of paper. His gaze was unreadable. Theo thought that he would do great at a casino. “You sure you want all the courses booked out?” Sparrow nodded.

“Yes, I’ll pay the booking fee for all of them. Put it on my tab.” Grant nodded, and his right hand returned to writing while his left rummaged around a desk, and pulled out four sets of keys, each attached to a small buckler.

“You know the way.” Grant grunted, and properly resumed his paperwork, paying them no more attention at all.

“Well, come along.” Sparrow beckoned Theo to follow, as they made their way through corridors filled with more and more racks of weapons. Sparrow whistled and played around with the keys, twirling them and throwing them from hand to hand. They passed a few armour stands, and then some racks of weights, and Sparrow eventually came to a stop outside a room.

Walking through after Sparrow, Theo stopped in his tracks, to take it all in. In the centre of the room, there was a massive, labyrinthine structure of metal poles and ladders and platforms. Around it, a running track. The walls were uneven bricks, and some were painted red, others yellow, others black.

Scattered through the centre labyrinth, there were ten red flags. The painted uneven bricks all formed a respective path, that each held a single red flag.

“Right, I want you to bring me back every red flag in this room. You have until I get bored. Go!” And with that, Sparrow sat down to watch.

Theo took a moment to truly appreciate the size and scope of this room. The central labyrinth was as tall as five of him stacked one on top of the other, and the walls were even higher. It would take a while to scale them, and to reach through the labyrinth to grab all the flags tied to poles and platforms. But, Theo realised with a grin, he didn’t have to climb them the slow way. Remembering the way his clothes had voiced their complaints earlier, he took off his shoes before he began.

With an exploratory hop, Theo sprinted to the walls, and jumped as high as he could manage. He made it about a third of the way up the wall, and considered how to go about this as he fell back down. Eyeing the red bricks first, he jumped again, grabbed the closest red bricks, and was pleasantly surprised at how good the grip was. His feet also found bricks, and he tried to make sure that they also only touched other red bricks. Then, using both his arms and his legs, he pulled on the bricks, launching himself up a fair chunk of the way up, and he repeated that a few more times to reach his first flag. Theo carefully grabbed it while holding onto the wall, then looked down.

He jumped. And nothing happened as he landed (besides a loud thud). Looking down and inspecting his legs, he found nothing wrong at all. Grinning, he looked at the yellow path.

This one had a similar number of bricks to the red path, but instead of being straightforward and linear, it veered left and right. Theo wished he could say it was a repeat of the red path but with more diagonal jumps instead of straight ones, but he missed the jumps a few times. Eventually, he got it down, and moved onto the black path.

Which was like the red path, but there were much fewer bricks. Moving up was fine. Making sure he only grabbed black bricks was not, and he had to try three times to get the flag.

Looking at the labyrinth, and how some of the flags were nestled inside, Theo decided to jump on top and work his way down. On his first jump, he didn’t manage to grab anything, and smashed ribs-first into a bar. Winded, it was difficult for him not to slip back down to the ground. After a moment of cycling Striding Wind to ease the slowly growing ache, and Endless Song to put some air back into his lungs, Theo cautiously managed to grab the bar, and jumped again.

Only to smash his shin against another pole. After this, he decided to slow down, and move from pole to pole, grabbing each and making his way across. Accounting for recovery time and injury, it wasn’t that much slower, as his enhanced speed still applied to how he swung himself across.

Reaching the top of the labyrinth, Theo looked down to see Sparrow intently watching him. It was odd, seeing someone so larger-than-life be so small in his vision. Theo grabbed the flag that represented the apex, manoeuvred over to a platform that held another flag, and made his way down into the complex. Here, there was no room to jump, but with things to grab in every direction, it wasn’t as difficult as Theo expected to clamber his way past every flag.

Eventually, Theo made his way back down to Sparrow, and handed him the flags, before collapsing on the ground. It had only been a few days since he last collapsed from fatigue, but in the intervening time he’d gained so much strength with Striding Wind that it felt really odd, yet comforting. Theo realised that he’d missed pushing himself like this. A reasonable (but distressingly small) part of him was concerned about that response.

“That’ll do. I hope you can see that even though you now have a lot of strength, without skill and practice that won’t amount to much.” Sparrow said to his prone body, before gently prodding him with their foot. “Now, recover with your internal magic and get ready. This was only the first of the four courses I want to cover today.”

Theo groaned, savouring the feeling of the ground for a moment longer.