Faye was absolutely shattered, mentally and physically. Despite the desire to curl up into a ball and go to sleep, she was sitting with her back straight and her eyes closed. She rested her hands lightly on her knees as she crossed her legs.

She took a deep breath in.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

She held the breath for a moment, then slowly, breathed out through the nose.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Repeating that process, forcibly controlling her breathing, made her beating heart slow and her limbs stop their energetic wobble.

That was so awesome!

All she had needed to do was point a hand and mentally nudge something internally that she instinctively knew would activate the spell. Then the flames would conjure from thin air and slam into whatever she was pointing at.

Roughly. She still missed a lot.

She mentally cursed. She was trying to empty her thoughts. But all she could think about was the fire sprouting from her hands and smacking into the trees, bushes, and ground of the forest. She was grinning again, when had that happened?

What am I aiming for, now that the Guild are working with me rather than against me?

She wasn't sure yet. The Administrator had suggested a few paths forward, but Faye hadn't yet decided which one she wanted to take.

“Faye?” Arran called.

She waited a moment, then turned toward where he was standing with the others.

“Yes?” she asked. Her eyes were still closed and she started another calming breath.

“Are you okay?”

She simply nodded, completing her cycle.

“I’m meditating.”

“Yes. Uh, why?”

“It probably helps,” she replied. “I figure I should meditate now if I use magic.”

“Meditate?”

She couldn’t hear what else he was saying so she blocked it out a little anyway. She had truly no idea if meditation was something she would need to do, but after draining her mana through the repeated use of the Fire Dart spell, she had felt a headache threatening.

Calmly breathing was holding it at bay.

Therefore, meditation worked.

Or something like that.

A few minutes later, feeling better, she slowly stood up and stretched out her arms and legs. Arran and the others were watching, and she grinned.

“I feel better,” she said. “So, excellent! Fire Dart is so much fun.”

Taveon nodded. “That was remarkably quick uptake, Faye, I must say. I was expecting it to take much longer than that. I’m afraid that I don’t really have any other spells prepared for you.”

Faye nodded, disappointed. “That’s alright. Say, how many spells can I learn? As many as I get my hands on? Is there a limit to what I can memorise, or do I have to select the spells I use each day?”

Gavan frowned. “No, not at all. Why would you need to select spells each day?”

“Just something from a game,” she replied. “That’s good, then. I was never much one for preparing like that. Much preferred sorcery. So, how many spells can I learn?”

Gavan shared a glance with Taveon, who subtly shrugged his shoulders.

“I have no idea what the difference is, either,” he said with a smile. “As for how many you learn. There is theoretically a limit. The main problem is getting your hands on the scrolls in the first place, however. You may have noticed that people are often reluctant to share knowledge… that trait is far, far worse in mages. When knowledge is quite literally power, people can go to extreme efforts to never share what they know with other people.”

Faye looked between them. “So, you’re telling me that in a world with magic… only the incredibly rich have access to it?”

They all nodded.

“How is this still a problem in a place like this?” she said. “You have magic! You should have cured all disease, solved world hunger, eliminated all droughts, achieved world peace… it’s all possible when you can do literal magic, isn’t it?”

“People are still inherently selfish,” Taveon said, with a small shrug. “There are places in the world that have solved some of those big issues on a very small scale. Cities that are filled with very healthy citizens, or realms that never run out of food… but historically, those operations are difficult to manage across a whole continent, let alone the whole world.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I expected it to be pretty much the same as home. We haven’t solved any of those things yet either, despite some people having more money than God.”

“That’s a strange image,” Arran said. “But magic doesn’t instantly change things. Spells that can do such grand things would require an insanely high level of skill and mana. Pretty much impossible at low levels.”

"And most people spend the majority of their life as crested or adept,” Taveon said. “There are the rare few that go further. Of course, some people change their minds later in life.”

Faye smiled. “Every path is different, what matters is where you go, not how you got there.”

Taveon smiled back, he nodded. “Exactly. Well put.”

“Okay, so that’s all well and good…” Faye said, “but now I’m out of mana, how long will it take me to get back to full?”

“Well, I have some potions,” Taveon said, pulling his backpack open again, “which means your practise can carry on.”

“Hold on, Schoolmaster. Faye had an awful reaction to the last potion she used.”

Faye remembered that sensation. It was the worst parts of being drunk with none of the fun ones.

“She did?” Taveon asked. His hand was still inside the bag. “What kind of a reaction?”

“It sent me loopy. About as badly as when that healer used a spell that gave me a thousand volts of energy running through my body.”

“What kind of potion?” he asked next, frowning a little.

“A cooling potion,” Arran supplied. “It was standard, and we had it checked. There was nothing wrong with it.”

Faye looked over in surprise. She hadn’t realised they had checked the potion for faults.

“Hmm. Interesting.” Taveon took his hand out, empty. “It might be best we leave the potions out of the practise for now, then, Faye. I will have to investigate this more. Is it a quirk of your origin, or a unique situation for you alone?”

“What if it was only that one potion?” she asked. “Would it not make more sense to try again and see what happens?”

“No,” Arran said, shaking his head. “Mana poisoning isn’t something to play around with. Whilst I haven’t heard or seen a potion like that one making anyone manasick before that day, it seemed clear to us that you had been exposed to too much.”

“Oh, indeed,” Taveon interjected. “If that was the case, we must be careful. Your natural reserves will only fill at a rate that your body can handle, unless you purposefully put yourself in an area of high ambient mana.”

“There are none nearby,” Gavan said, “she will be fine.”

“Except for the hot room in the Guild,” Arran said. “I think that’s where the overdose started.”

“Mana sight or sense will give her a tool to protect herself,” Gavan added. “She should begin learning.”

Taveon nodded. “Indeed. Of course, it is not a simple skill to learn. Especially without the class bonus. For now, Faye, concentrate on your internal senses as you cast your spells. What does the magic do to your body, your surroundings, when you cast? If you can start to get a feeling for that, you may pick up something for the system to recognise as a mana sense.”

“As for your mana stores,” Arran said, “you will have a small pool at fifth level. Conventional wisdom is that willpower governs how much mana you have access to. As you level, you’ll gain more. You should be able to feel when it’s filled again.”

Faye tried to mentally prod around inside for the mana pool that he was talking about, there had been a sensation of something new inside when she had been throwing the spells out. Strange that she hadn’t felt it before that, but she supposed that actually using the mana instead of letting it sit there dormant was a quick way to identify it.

“It might take a few hours to get you back to full. It won’t happen too quickly, at your level.”

“Hmm, maybe four hours,” Gavan suggested.

“That’s perfect, we can go eat. Taveon, will you join us?” Arran asked. “Faye makes the best lunches.”

“Oh, I guess I’m cooking for us, then?” she said, rolling her eyes. But Arran and Gavan’s faces were comically heartbroken at the suggestion she wouldn’t, so she relented.

After feeding the adventurers, and regaling Ailith with her magical exploits, Faye had taken the opportunity to run up to the Guild Hall and walk in and out of the training room. It was the quickest way to get clean that she knew.

She had kept her trousers and practice gambeson on, which was nothing much more than a padded shirt. Despite getting her own training sword back from the Administrator, she really didn’t want to cart around the blade when it was blunt. For now, she would stick with the wooden blade and her new enchanted dagger. She ran her hand over the handles of both weapons.

Faye couldn’t help but grin when she thought of the faces most guards held when she passed them in the streets now. They clearly felt like they should still be saying something, but they had obviously been told that Faye was now a combat classed uncrested, rather than some unclassed urchin wandering around with a weapon she shouldn’t have had.

Wandering into the main hall, where the majority of the Guild’s work seemed to get done, Faye looked around for Maggie.

It seemed that the town’s biggest employer was the Guild, which made sense from what the others had told her, but there were many more assistants and what seemed to be office workers in the Guild than there were true adventurers, despite all of them being part of the Adventurer’s Guild.

The other Adventurer parties were away from the town and had been practically the whole time Faye had been here. The teams were on rotation, each one spending a certain portion of the year in the surrounding areas before coming back to Lóthaven to recuperate and deal with local issues.

Local issues like the mission board here in the lobby, on which members of the town were allowed to post notices, for a nominal fee.

Faye wandered over to it. The primer that Taveon had given her had helped her learn some of the sounds of the local alphabet, but for whatever reason the system was still giving no help with written language.

“Hey Faye,” Maggie said.

“Oh, hey Maggie.”

“I don’t think there’s anything for a solo adventurer under level ten on the board today.”

Faye gave Maggie a look, but then she thought about it. “Does that mean there are sometimes jobs for someone in my position?”

“Very rarely. Honestly, it’s usually when a specific class is in need. The posts are so specific that basically only whoever the poster had in mind can do it.”

“Ah, that’s a shame.”

“Most uncrested don’t have to rely on only themselves, though.”

“Anything comes up for someone who can swing a sword or cast Fire Dart, you let me know, okay?”

“Oh, congratulations! You learnt your first spell!”

Faye grinned along with her friend. It was still a strange thing to hear, but she was giddy with excitement.

“I then spent the next few minutes throwing darts at all of the trees in the area whilst the boys watched. I think they might have been laughing at me, but I don’t care at all!”

Maggie laughed, “I don’t blame you. I did the same thing with my first spell. I have Mana Bolt, a non-aspected projection of mana that is fast and accurate. My mam always told me that Fire Darts are too uncertain.”

“They do tend to veer wildly sometimes. Gavan said that goes away with practise, but if you don’t have the time to constantly practise like he does, then choosing something more reliable from the start is a good idea,” Faye said. “I approve. Oh, and hey, Taveon said that he can inscribe spells from other people, too. Would I be able to volunteer your time to get my hands on Mana Bolt?”

“Oh, that’s a great idea, yeah.”

“Great, well, he’s still at the house with the others so come find us when you get off work.”

“You have an odd way of phrasing things, but I somehow always know what you mean,” Maggie said, shaking her head. “It’s very strange.”

“Try being able to hear that you’re speaking words you swear you don’t know.”

“No, thanks, I’ll leave that to you. I’ll come by the house later.”

For the evening meal that night, Faye convinced the adventurers to spend some additional money on great cuts of meat — that she sent Arran to fetch — and she cooked a batch of kebabs. With chunky portions of vegetables alongside the meat, the group were ecstatic at the novel way of eating.

“This reminds me of a street food they have in Nan Kerah,” Taveon said, holding the skewer up, “but some of theirs were roasted insects.”

“Don’t tell us you tried them?”

“Of course I did! My friend told me it was a grave dishonour on his grandmother if I did not.”

The others groaned.

“It wasn’t until the next day that he told me he had made that up, naturally.” Taveon chuckled. “I got him back by throwing up on his shoes. They didn’t sit right with me.”

“What would you say is the weirdest thing you eat here?” Faye asked.

The others thought about it.

“There is this one dish that is prepared from near-fermented fish,” Ailith said. “More common on the coasts, but they try bringing it inland every so often. We normal folk tell them to shove off with their sick jokes.”

“Some of the more exotic monster meats are… strange,” Arran said. “You’ve never tasted the worst until you try a slice of meat from an animal with a poison affinity. It made me hear colours.”

“What about from your home, Faye?” Maggie asked carefully, as if even mentioning it was wrong.

“From my homeland,” she said, “that would be haggis. Probably the one most talked about. Traditionally made by putting a sheep’s heart, liver, and lungs inside its stomach with some other things and boiling it.”

The others nodded at that, with Ailith saying, “Ah, we call that teidéut. It’s tasty.”

“Oh, gross, you eat that?” Faye exclaimed. “I have to be honest; I’ve never actually eaten it. It’s a dish by my country’s northern neighbours, and, well… it’s complicated, but they like their haggis and it never really crossed the border.”

“That’s cheating!” Maggie said, pointing an empty skewer at Faye. “You said from your homeland!”

“My homeland is four countries in one, it’s not my fault our leaders were weird about it centuries ago.”

“Faye, how did you get them to char like this?” Arran asked as he bit into another skewer.

“Oh, that was easy, Fire Dart! Got to get my practise in where I can.”

That night, Faye sat on the ground outside. The training courtyard was enclosed from prying eyes but had no roof, so it was freezing cold, but Faye wanted to try to understand her spell and mana a little more before she went back inside.

When she gave the mental command for the spell, there was some kind of an internal switch being flicked. When that happened, a small portion of the mana she could feel gathered somewhere inside her midriff was separated and moved somewhere.

But, with some practice, Faye managed to get the spell to pause just before the cast. In those few seconds where it obeyed her command to wait, she felt the mana vibrating around her hand. The moment she mentally let go, the mana would combust into the Fire Dart and scorch away through the air.

Each cast of the Fire Dart spell used only a small portion of her mana, but as Arran had said, her overall pool was much smaller than any true mage. Swordfighters didn’t get any bonuses to mana or magic at all.

She was just fortunate that the class hadn’t disabled her Magic attribute, like some of the more common classes. She would have been so annoyed. A class at level five doesn't restrict you permanently, from what the others were saying, but if it stopped you practising what you needed to before level ten... it was almost the same thing, wasn't it? But as she played with the mana in her belly, mentally nudging it this way and that, she realised that her path had widened so much from that one day, a single action.

Learning magic was supposed to be tough. Her current class had no growth toward the magical stats, but that didn't matter. From what the Administrator had told Faye, there was a comfortable life to be had if she dedicated herself to helping the Guild.

Of course, that means completely forgiving them for being total bastards when I first got here.

Faye remained in the courtyard for a while longer, even after her mana had run out. The feeling of energy and excitement that she had been running on for the past day was definitely running out. Healer Kyrk’s spell had jolted her out of a darkness… but it was creeping back in.

Despite the elation of learning magic, thinking through her different paths forward and the endless possibilities laid out in this world for someone like her, she felt the same cold, dark fingers on the edges of her mind. The weight that she thought had gone slowly, subtly shifted onto her shoulders once more.

I don’t know what the hell you are, but you’re alien and wrong.

I’m going to burn you out. This isn’t me. I beat my darkness years ago.

I will not go back to that.

You will not make me go down that path.