I staggered out of the classroom two and a half hours later, leaning heavily against Liam even as he leaned against me. It had been one of the most painful lessons I’d ever gone through, leaving me utterly drained and aching. At the very least, he’d given each of us a protective token, guaranteeing us safe passage back to our rooms to recover. Now, the main challenge was doing so, I could barely walk and that was after half an hour of extra time to recover.

Still, I couldn’t really complain. He’d been right about the method’s efficacy. I’d noticeably improved over the course of the two hour lesson, able to even fight off a scaled back attack by the end. I had also become so much more familiar with the feel of my mana. The difference was incredible, like a nearsighted man putting on glasses for the first time.

Everything felt so much clearer and my mana responded to my commands with an ease that astounded me. It was the sort of improvement that would have taken me hundreds of grueling hours to achieve through ordinary methods. A few more sessions like that and I would be well on my way to achieving my goals.

Unfortunately, the Myrddin had shattered those hopes before he’d left. Not only did you need a master of the technique to practice like that, and he certainly wasn’t going to be coming in every week to help us out, it was also potentially dangerous if done too often. Even if I could find a willing mage to help me, he recommended against going through the exercise more than once a month at the very most.

Even that major benefit wasn’t the limit of what I’d gotten out of the session. It didn’t seem that the process was particularly straining for him, because he spent the entire two hours talking. He critiqued our technique, dispensed advice, and described in great detail mechanisms of mana control that I had never even seen mentioned in any of the books I’d consulted.

There was a reason Ivius Ambrosius was the Myrddin. He was powerful and knowledgeable to the extreme. Ambrosius was to his fellow archmages what an archmage was to a rank beginner.

I left Liam at his room, the way the Academy’s space warping worked, the upper year rooms were always closest to the entrance to student housing, despite the fact that students kept the same rooms from year to year. I managed to walk unsupported for several steps, pride more than anything pushing me forward, then gave in and used the wall the rest of the way.

I barely made it through the door before my legs gave out, and I slumped bonelessly onto the small welcome mat I’d brought with me back during my first year. That was before I’d realized inviting people back to my room wasn’t really something they did here. I smiled weakly as a sudden thought crossed my mind.

The only people other than me who had ever seen it were Mistletoe and Miranda, and I doubted either of them had appreciated my grandfather’s sense of humor. ‘Come on in, we don’t bite’. Two sets of stylized wolf jaws flanked the text. The mat had been a gift from my grandfather for one of my parent’s anniversaries. Since it hadn’t been inside the house, it had been one of the fews things that had survived.

I barely made it to bed; I knew I had things to do, but that could come later. Yes later. Work. Work later, sleep now…

Janna de’Floris, third of her name, heiress of house Floris, future justicar of the Gulivine Republic, scowled at the tangled mess of embroidery floss lying tauntingly on her desk. A muttered word and hand gesture later, the unholy abomination disappeared in a narrow jet of fire shot from her finger.

She watched it burn for several moments, the flames eagerly consuming her most recent failure, then leaned back and sighed heavily. She was out. Again. She hadn’t had any thread lying around, so she’d had to go ask one of her cousins, who she knew enjoyed embroidering in her spare time.

The first time, she’d just asked for four short pieces, just as was specified in the instructions. That had lasted all of ten minutes before it was hopelessly ruined. She’d tried untangling the mess she’d made, but that had only made things worse. The second time around, she’d asked for four times that, thinking that would be enough to get the hang of it. The pile of charcoal on her desk clearly said otherwise.

She didn’t want to go ask for more. That would mean explaining why she kept asking for it and she didn’t really want to admit that she’d spent the last four hours slamming her head against what looked like simple mana control exercises. She’d managed one of the internal exercises, it was tricky but fundamentally similar to something she’d practiced with a tutor.

The other three? Well, the charcoal on her desk and the wooden balls scattered all around the floor weren’t exactly a sign of her success. She didn’t even want to think about the other internal exercise, she’d had to dig out a reference book just to find the term’s he’d used in the instructions!

Janna hadn’t really been sure what she’d expected when she’d asked the quiet boy for help. They’d spoken before, he was unerringly polite to everyone and would speak if drawn into conversation, but he rarely engaged with anyone of his own accord. Before she’d started checking her homework answers with him, she doubted they’d exchanged more than fifty words in the past two years.

It had been something of a spontaneous decision. She’d spent all morning trying to construct the circulation, failing over and over as the magic stubbornly refused to flow. She’d heard he was pretty good at that sort of magic, he always asked questions related to it in class and had somehow gotten into one of the upper year lecture series on the topic.

He’d gotten so very serious all of a sudden, his typical polite smile replaced by a speculative frown as he’d considered her issues. She hadn’t really expected him to be able to help, it had been a longshot request, but it had only taken him a moment to figure out the problem and offer to help. She hadn’t expected him to be quite so… mercenary, she hadn’t really heard of him doing anything of the sort with anyone else, though maybe he just kept that sort of dealing on the down low.

Even after meeting with him again and working out the details, she hadn’t really known what to expect. The price he’d asked for had been somewhat strange, but not really much of an issue for her. All the plants he’d listed were quite affordable, so even if he’d wound up being unable to help, it wouldn’t have cost her much to try. She’d expected him to ask for something much more impressive, she was the de’Floris for the people’s sake, but she wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

She’d been quite angry when he didn’t show up for their first meeting. It was highly offensive and had made her think he’d overestimated himself and was frantically trying to figure out a way to get out of his vow. Still, she’d decided to humor him and let him try to redeem himself the next day. There would be no third, she’d decided, not if he proved that irresponsible.

That… hadn’t happened. His excuse had immediately taken the wind out of her sails, she’d only heard about it second hand but the terror in knowing she was just a few hallways away from a unrestrained demon had kept her awake for hours the night before. She’d tried to use something else to knock him off balance like her tutors had taught her, but that hadn’t worked out either.

She’d really thought they were together, what with how the Goodwitch girl always hung herself all over him. She was one of the only people he ever spent time with and they seemed so close, but apparently not.

The rest of the meeting had been… humbling to say the least. He was overwhelmingly skilled, to the point she wondered why people had thought he wouldn’t make it to his second year back in the day. He’d made her feel like a naughty child who hadn’t done her homework, talking down to her like she was a failure when she couldn’t match his expectations.

She wasn’t sure why she’d tried to defend her decisions to him, but she’d just felt so pathetic. ‘Is that really how people feel about pure mana exercises?’ he’d asked her, ‘Are you really content to scrabble in the dirt like a peasant?’ her mind translated.

It had been embarrassing to look so weak in front of a nobody like him. She was thankful the oath ensured he couldn’t tell anyone about what had happened. Avalon Academy was not a place to show weakness, and that was what had happened. She’d made herself look weak.

When he’d frankly told her that her hard earned skills were ‘abysmal’, she’d been ready to blow up on him. When he told her she just needed to practice more, she’d wanted to strangle that disappointed frown off his face. Everyone had already told her to keep practicing, that's why she’d asked him for help for all the people’s sake!

After that horrible session (And what had that uncomfortable probing magic he’d used when she was doing her internal exercise been? She’d never heard of anything like that.) she’d expected something more. Something special, a sign of why he was so much better than her.

And then he’d done just that, giving her detailed instructions for four exercises tailor made to help her with her issue. They were fiendishly tricky, but just barely doable with her current skill level. None of them were in any of the books she’d read, and she wasn’t sure if he’d come up with them on the spot or just knew so many off the top of his head that he had something for every situation.

She sighed again, mumbling rude things about unreasonably talented hunks that clashed severely with her little-girl look. Then she looked back at the table, consulting the meticulously hand written instructions she’d been given. She would take a break from the stupid string tying excersies and try the wooden balls again.

For giving her such devious things to work on, he was surprisingly considerate. In addition to the exercise, he’d even included simplified spell diagrams for transmuting the materials she would need for practice. There was one for both the string and the wooden balls, though she didn’t feel confident enough in her alchemy skill to try the string one. Was he intentionally mocking her lack of skill or did he really think she could just learn that sort of thing on the fly? Where had he found an alchemical circle designed to transmute wax into string in the first place!

Elpha Lifebane –archmage, scourge of the western reaches, and vanquisher of the ancient emerald dragon Kaldunn– hummed thoughtfully as she scanned the letter she had just received. She recognized the sender instantly, only one little girl would continue to call her aunty after all these years. The most surprising thing was that the girl was still alive, especially with all the crazy schemes Elpha kept helping her plan.

Elpha had thought that the last one would have for sure been the end for her. Boy had Galina been furious when the little darling had decided she wanted to attend Avalon. She’d spent weeks trying to get her stubborn spawn to see reason, but once an idea was planted in the girl’s head she clung onto it like a limpet. Honestly, Elpha was lucky Galina hadn’t realized who’d kicked off that particular desire. She’d never seen the self righteous witch look so murderous before.

Really though, how had that stupid brat managed to last almost three entire years at her alma matter? Back in her day, a girl like her would have been eaten alive and spat out in weeks! Kids these days, so soft. Even with her mother’s support, someone should have offed her by now, or better yet, tricked her into something with a nice soulbinding attached.

Still, this letter presented another opportunity. This boy, Orion, seemed like an interesting sort. Reading between the lines, he seemed talented and ruthless, an excellent combination in her opinion. She couldn’t strike at the girl directly, no matter how much she often wanted to when the brat was running around her castle breaking things. Galina would never let her get away with it. If she used a patsy though, particularly one that Brenda seemed so very fond of? That had potential.

She would write to some friends, see what they had to say about the boy. There were people who kept tabs on budding talents, so it wouldn’t be strange to ask about him. If things panned out, maybe she would drop by and visit. She had some gifts she needed to hand deliver anyway. They could wait a few years, but if she had a good reason she might as well drop by. Igor would probably get a kick out of some of the specimens she’d been working with recently. He’d always been her favorite professor after all.