-GONG, GONG-

Gilliam woke like he was tased to the spine again, the sudden jolt, the high heart rate, the heart trying to beat its way through his chest.

He longed to the day he was more used to this, he’s fine with being startled a bit but this is just torture... Knowing that people can get used to all kinds of things, back home people lived next to train tracks and managed to sleep through their apartments shaking, so... hopefully soon.

Well... He was awake now, the adrenaline alone would keep him going for a while so sleeping again was never going to happen even if he wanted to. However, today he absolutely didn’t want to!

Getting dressed in record time, he again brought his notebook, refilled the ink pen and when everything was ready he left for breakfast.

There were almost no students in the hallway at this point, the young youth tended to use as much rest time as possible, the ‘just five more minutes’ turning into half an hour does explain at least one reason why there is a second bell to kickstart breakfast...

Gilliam got to the mess hall rather swiftly, partly because of the lack of traffic, but also the fact that he was speed walking. If yesterday was any indication of what today might be, it was going to be a good day. Yesterday was incredibly educational as well as fun, and that was somewhat random after a teacher just decided to trade knowledge. This round there is a specialist pre-dedicated to him. Sure this might feel different for the teacher but Gilliam was too high on the thought of what he could learn that he didn’t actually consider that at the moment.

Without realising it he was already sitting at a table with some breakfast, he first sort of ‘came to’ once he had taken the fist bite of the piece of bread he had taken with him. Seems like his subconscious lacked protein as there was at least 80% meat on his plate. Gilliam considered going to swap out a few things but in the end it didn’t matter at the moment; the brain gets what it wants today.

As soon as he was done eating, well before the third bell, he started moving to the room that Angela listed. 5-1-4, should not be hard to find. Entering the central heptagon room he took to the left, past the door leading into the Air field, as well as the door into Wing 4 and the one into the Earth field. The next door led into Wing 5, taking that door he came into a familiar hallway. There was almost nobody here, mostly some servants cleaning and preparing the location for the students, a few fellow students but mainly the cleaning staff.

Entering the fourth room on the first floor he found two things, one startling him a bit.

First the room was a simple classroom, quite similar to the one that he spent with Jial yesterday, just smaller. It had only eight desks, some cupboards and drawers along the walls and the teachers desk with the blackboard behind it. Made sense that if Gilliam were to occupy a room on his own that they would pick a smaller room.

Now, the thing that startled him was the winged lizard on the teachers desk... It was absolutely not a dragon, but an actual lizard, dark green and blue scales all over, looking like a variant of a monitor lizard back on Earth, its body looked to be around 60cm (~2ft) to the start of his tail, and its tail just as long. Now the wings were feathery, much like a bird or an angel, they looked big enough to let him fly but it just looked like someone had glued them to his shoulder area. The fact that the lizard moved not only itself but also its wings independently as it turned to face Gilliam, was the main reason the wings even felt real and not just placed on as some weird costume. Next to it stood a cup of what seemed to be coffee, at least something black but it smelled coffee-like.

It used its tail to push a letter towards Gilliam, it was simply a folded piece of paper with his name lazily written on it in blocky letters. In fact it was written wrong once as GIRLIAM, and the correct L was just written over the R harder and thicker to compensate.

Though this was most likely someone’s familiar it felt weird having this large lizard staring at him unsupervised loose in a classroom. The paper was pushed towards Gilliam with its tail before it just let go of keeping its weight up, slapped down on the desk and went to sleep.

Taking the letter at full arms length he opened it, the penmanship was sloppy, almost like it was someone's hastily scribbled notes.

It read that “I”, referring to the writer, would come down soon, “I” just had to do something first.

It was signed by a ‘Detia’.

Ok, that made sense, the teacher had to do something important and sent a familiar with a note so Gilliam would know, not a bad idea. To pass the time Gilliam started reviewing his notes of the spells he wanted to test out that he started on yesterday, he needed to put actual effort into these as he wanted them to be proper.

Though Gilliam was doing something he found incredibly interesting, the fact that this was meant to just pass the time as he waited for someone made him very aware of the passing of time. A few minutes turned to ten, ten minutes turned to 30, 30 minutes turned to an hour.

This something must have been important, he was wondering if he should leave and go ask for him or her. He had no idea if Detia was a male or female name, but he wanted to find the lizard’s master.

Though as soon as he wondered this the door opened slowly and a young woman came into view. This woman looked to be in her early 20ies, quite slender under her dark red robe, she had messy and unwashed black hair, cola-bottle bottom glasses, the really thick kinds where you wonder if she can even see light without them. The dark lines under her eyes almost hinted that she had never slept, ever. She looked like a destroyed mess. She felt like either someone who has studied for two weeks and slept an hour, or a nerd that stays up every and all night playing games. The only properly distinct feature of her is that she has purple eyes and a staff that was literally a broom handle with a bright red gem on the end...

She entered, closing the door behind her and shuffled over to the desk and slumped down in the chair with her full weight.

Gilliam wanted to speak to her but as he drew breath she lifted a feeling in the ‘shush’ motion before she looked at the lizard.

“Bob, coffee.”

The lizard lifted its head towards her, then towards the cup of cold coffee on the desk, then looked back to her before going back to sleep.

“Oh, you wondrous good boy...” she muttered a praise for the lizard as she took the cup towards herself. Holding the cup for a few seconds it started to let off steam and the coffee aroma started spreading out again. Just by holding the cup she had heated it?

Gilliam was getting interested.

She drank the whole cup in one go... It was steaming, though.. Wasn’t that hot?

Gilliam was sporting an uncertain and confused face for a few seconds but she seemed fine as she placed the cup back on the little plate it came with.

“Now... I’m Deti--a” her introduction was interrupted by a small burp but she continued speaking through it.

Gilliam couldn’t hold back his laughter. She smiled in response but her eyes looked dead inside, she was not mentally here yet.

A few waves and gentle Hello’s yet from Gilliam got no response. In the end he decided to take matters into his own hands and clap once, really loudly.

This booted her out of whatever trance she was in and she looked at him with a mixture of surprise, almost fear and confusion.

“Good morning, I am Gilliam and you are an hour late.” Crushing all the important factors into one sentence Gilliam decided to get it all in there in the possible few seconds she might be awake.

“Ah, yes, oh.. I mean.. Err... I... what... wait..”

She started fumbling around the desk, lifting the lizard's tail, checking her pockets for something until she in the end had a realisation moment with her finger in the air. “I prepared for this!” she whisper-shouted to herself as she went to one of the drawers and took out a book before handing it to Gilliam.

Gilliam chuckled a few times through her fumbling moment but received the book from her.

“An introduction to advanced level Unstructured magic?” he asked her as he just read the cover. The book was thin, had probably just 40 pages or something, a second glance showed that the author was Detia of Helvan Shores Academy.

“Yes, read that, wake me when you’re done?” she smiled with a questioning tone, almost like asking for permission.

Gilliam’s face had turned deadpan flat, his whole existence just asked the question ‘you what now?’.

“Aren’t you supposed to teach me this stuff?” he asked, almost feeling cheated without considering her situation.

“Yeah, but that sounds like effort... Can’t you read the book and I can answer any questions once you are done?” she smiled only with her mouth, her eyes and the rest of her face was probably in some far away happy place where sleep was a constant thing.

Gilliam pondered for a few seconds, perhaps he should try and find a trigger in her like with Jial? He didn’t seem to want to give Gilliam the effort until he was shown to know the magical runes. Perhaps if he could trigger some interest in this woman as well she might.. Well.. wake up?

“I already know the basic introduction spells, why should I read an introduction book when a teacher is just here?” though there wasn’t much flattery in that sentence, it was halfway hinting towards the master being better than the written documents.

She just smiled a weirdly vacant derpy smile and laid her head down on the desk, unless she was faking it she seemed to fall asleep in seconds.

Gilliam was somewhat put off by this. He was fine with rudeness and lack of common sense, hell he was probably the odd one in this world but this was just straight up rude and disrespectful.

The book wasn’t that long but he had to read it before she was to teach him? Fine, have it your way, he decided to skim it so he at least has the basic understanding of things before waking her. These books could have some good info that he might not know already, and if she’s an expert and she wrote this book it should at least have something.

Wait, hold on... An introduction to advanced... This was not an introduction book, this was a next level book... Written by an expert...

Gilliam was still a bit miffed at the treatment, but the more he pondered about it the more his curiosity wanted to at least see what’s in the book before he woke her.

Opening the book it was... actually pretty well written, the words were proper and no misspellings, it seemed like she got at least this one written properly.

However, as soon as Gilliam started reading he was hooked. It was not as good as proper teachings from an engaged teacher, but oddly enough this worked. The book was formulated in a way that the writer is speaking to the reader, taking up a lazy way of handling the introduction to the student... Letting her lazy for a while.

She wasn't kidding when she said that she planned for this... Gilliam was not sure if he wanted to be annoyed, sad or impressed.

Well, there was no need to let this possibility slip, he was not sure how easy certain books are to get hold of so he might as well take advantage of things.

He kept reading!

The book explained the basics of what Unstructured magic is. In short, it’s magic without a magic circle. Why was this important? Because Structured magic needed runes, circles, perhaps a foci and a lot of remembering.

Unstructured magic ignores all of that and lets you do whatever you want. It was still bound to your elements, and it had some hard drawbacks.

First, it is like a mana hungry wolf. The mana costs of an Unstructured spell compared to a Structured spell doing the same thing was at the very least tenfold. The Structured spells also had the possibility of letting the magic circle help you with focusing, like the Light spell that most students learn first. Where most students won’t be able to have two or three lights Unstructured by the end of their first year, the simplest of mage can have four, five or more lights relatively easily. At least easier than the stress that Gilliam went through yesterday with the seven orbs, that started getting complicated from the third one onward.

Second, unless you have a very vivid and strong imagination, Unstructured magic would become problematic for you, since Structured spells need a concept or code of sorts in your mind you can often just read up on things and learn it. Unstructured magic requires everything to be in your mind, you need to consider where force is being put, how it is being put, what kind of conversion, element... and so on. A simple telekinesis spell can be considered as extending your hands telekinetically. This means that using both hands will be much better, if you want something to hover you might need more hands to support everything, in here lies the problem with your mental state.

Structured spells can have control, power and other ‘cheating’ aiding structures built into the circle handling some or most of this for you.

But, what Unstructured magic makes up for it is versatility. A Structured spell aims to do a single outcome, sure swapping some runes can aid this but you still need to make the circle, focus and do all this yadda yadda to get a single preplanned result. Unstructured spells lets you change the spell each cast, or even during the effect.

Using the telekinesis concept, if you need more support just manifest more support, if you don’t need all of the support just cut it down to save mana and effort. The same in a Structured spell would need not only a re-cast but changing of the magic circle and its runes.

Another good example of Structured vs Unstructured is the lack of ‘feel’ in Structured magic.

Take picking a lock, something you should never do without good cause, the book warned. You can create a Structured spell that twists the lock, that tries all combinations, lifts the pins, tries again, feels for the click and so on.

Unstructured magic lets you just flood mana in the lock and feel every single part it can touch, letting you feel around. In this example a Structured spell created but someone who really knows how to unlock a lock type, would be faster than the Unstructured variant. But the Unstructured variant doesn’t have you remember magic circles or things like that. There is also the thing that a Structured spell would work for a specific kind of lock, one with pins and tumbles needs one, another of the ‘old timey lock’ needs another as they are fundamentally different.

So, in short Unstructured magic has incredibly high versatility but shit mana management. So specialists or people planning to use Unstructured spells a lot would need a massive boundary. Another positive is that if you can imagine it, it can probably work, there is no pre-planning needed, you just think of it and funnel energy into the idea.

If you want versatility in ‘one spell’, sick of remembering tons of magical circles and runes? Unstructured is the way to go.

Putting the book down for a moment Gilliam had to ponder things.

First, this felt like brute-forcing magic, it was probably used to test spell concepts before it was turned into a spell circle. In modern terms a magic circle and Structured spell was akin to a macro. You can type it all out every time and it will work, versatility allows you to change code snippets as you write them, but that’s cumbersome and absolutely not without effort.

A Structured spell has all of this pre-written, and sure you can do some small modifiers with secondary input, but this requires a different kind of memorization and though it’s more efficient it’s not versatile. At least not compared.

Gilliam could see why Detia would like Unstructured magic... If she’s as lazy as it seems then this was a god sent to her and her lifestyle. Having a vivid imagination is probably oddly normal in a world where magic, which relies on imagination and mental fortitude, was normal.

The end parts of the book turned into a super biassed explanation on why you should master Unstructured magic and expand your Boundary. How remembering things is for nerds and proper mages... Gilliam lost a bit of interest at that part. The factual parts of the book were really interesting. Detia as the author calling other people nerds was a bit funny and weird, given her appearance screamed ‘I’m a nerd’ and how she hit most of the tropes of them back home.

In the end he had read the book, he skipped lunch and ignored the gongs giving him a heart attack as per normal. The weird part is that Detia seemed to just sleep through it, as did her lizard.. Bob.. was it?

Just learning this was interesting enough that food became a bit secondary, he also ate a hearty breakfast and had yet to cast much magic today so he was still plenty fine on energy.

“Detia.” Gilliam started, trying to wake her for the next lesson, he had read the book after all.

“Hey, Detia!” he raised his voice a bit trying to have her snap out of it.

Detia lifted her head suddenly, and it seemed like some part of her brain reacted. Her eyes were tired, her face blank and her whole being hinted that she was not mentally present yet.

Gilliam decided to be a bit mean, but only because it was needed.

He placed the book on the desk a bit harder than needed, making sure it landed flat in a loud slap. This startled her something hard and she found herself sitting upright with a surprised and slightly panicked expression.

“What.. who... I... wh.. Oh.. Gil.. Mr. Gibson... How’s it going.” she smiled fakely at the end, like before. It also seemed like she tried to reel in some semblance of control in her frantic statement, even naming Gilliam by his first name, which seems that the teachers didn’t want to do at this place.

“Good morning, teacher.” Gilliam couldn’t stop himself from a small grin, it seems that his plan somewhat worked. “I have read your book. It was interesting but I can’t say that this feels like I’m being tutored.”

His voice was a bit annoyed. Though the book was incredibly interesting this still feels like he was kind of lied to. Not that he had gotten on paper that he was getting private tutors but if this was going to happen anyway he could just have gotten the book and gone somewhere else to read.

“Oh.. Err... Well, that’s good!” she complimented, almost seeming that she wanted it to take longer, much, much longer.

“To be honest, I’m a bit irritated that I was given a dedicated teacher and then just given a book, but the contents is actually interesting, it also explains a lot why I had problems with using certain spells when I tried to train getting to the academy.”

Perhaps getting right on track with problems, or at least something within the topic of her expertise might wake her up, usually one perks up when something super interesting happens.

She lifted an eyebrow seeming at least a tiny bit interested. “Go on.” Her voice was hinting and inquisitive, before it was bored and ‘let’s get this over with’ toned.

“Well, I learned all the starting spells in the book, the Unstructured testing spells. I found telekinesis to be the most fun one. I threw sticks, I threw rocks, I lobbed boulders although the latter drained me harshly. I found out that I could shoot pebbles at supersonic speeds and, well. It was fun and dandy.”

Emphasising his vocal examples with his hands he mimics some of the movement he did to make things work back during his testing.

“However, I found out that when I tried to hunt with telekinesis the birds resisted, they were able to just get out of it. From your book I think that’s due to two things. I used only one hand, and my mental image was not properly. I had the strength but not the proper picture or resolve to go through with it.”

Though all of this was voiced as facts and a realisation, there was still the undertone of a question, seeking validation or rejection of his statement.

She seemed to process things a bit slowly, but ended up with a real smile this time and a slow nod.

“That’s good, very good. It sounds like you are realising at least something from the book alone... I suppose I... need to train you directly then...”

Though it was a good statement she seemed to rather want to go to bed and forget sentient life.

“That would be very nice, yes.” Gilliam could not help but agree, he had learned a lot from the book alone but it was still not the same. He wanted proper teaching and get on the track of mastering this concept.

Although he was far from a master in Structured magic, he felt that he had a better grasp on that than Unstructured.

She let out a long and groaning sigh.

“Fine, but we’re not doing this again tomorrow.”

She slapped her cheeks and seemed to get into proper awake mode.

“FIRST!-” she shouted loud enough to wake up Bob, though after taking a look around he just went back to sleep. “-We will do some tests, find out where you are.”

Focusing properly on Gilliam she continued in the same sentence. “Jial told me you managed seven Unstructured lights, that’s good but I need to know more about your Boundary and Core. Let’s go play with fire!”

That sentence was both exciting and terrifying to Gilliam, he really wanted to play with fire but there was a reason he had not done so yet.

“Bob, hey bob!” She picked up the lizard and shook him a bit. He woke up with the laziest eyes Gilliam had ever seen on a lizard.

“Go find Aeris, we need teleportation!” She put Bob back on the desk and wrote something on a piece of paper she tore from a notebook she had with her. Handing this to Bob she lifted him up and tossed him towards an open window.

The lizard managed to use this lifting aid to great effect and took flight for the window, slapping against the stone wall with the sound of a dead fish he was still high enough up that he could grab the frame. Climbing out the window he jumped and flew off.

Detia didn’t even pay this any mind, she had started packing her stuff into a bag much like the one Gilliam had with him. And without any more words she just left.

Gilliam assumed that the need for a teleporter, playing with fire and her packing her things all hinted that they were going somewhere. Getting his notes, his books and the Unstructured training book he jogged after her, putting it all in his back as he was moving to catch up to the oddly fast sleepy woman.

She led him into the central room, skipped five doors and exited into the Aether field, where she speed-walked over to the teleportation embarking and arrival rooms. Promptly sitting down near one of the walls in the shade, she seemed oddly content.

“Now, we can relax as we wait for her, we should get at least a few minutes of MOTHER OF F--!”

In the middle of her sentence a young girl, looking 10-12 years old, quite petite, long hair reaching her hips and the brightest smile just showed up. She was carrying Bob.

This startled the daylights out of Detia as she clearly expected to get some rest.

“Hello!!” she shouted announcing her presence only after Detia had reacted.

“Good gods, Aeris... I told you to not do that... My heart can’t take it.” Detia commanded as she was reluctantly getting to her feet.

“Yes, but that’s not fun.” Aeris smiled in return. And great, if she was a teleporter and a trickster it sounded like a horrible mix...

“Nolis said I could go with you, but I need to come back in a few hours at most.” She listed the orders given and frankly, jokes aside sounded like a good girl.

“Yeah, that shouldn’t be a problem. I’m not imagining more than an hour or two.” Turning to Gilliam she finally introduced the young girl. “This is Aeris, Aeris Carter, don’t get her young age and small body trick you, she’s one of the best teleporters I have seen.”

This didn’t put things into context for Gilliam, if Detia had not seen any other teleporters then anyone is the best. But she was a teacher so this should mean something.

“Well, as long as you don’t disintegrate us I’ll be happy.” Gilliam said as he squatted down to greet the little girl properly.

Her badge was a Silver disk with a weird symbol on it. It looked like a standing person with several circles along his body downwards. He supposed that it was a teleportation symbol. The silver disk stated that she was second year, school wise she was actually Gilliam’s superior, something he found very amusing.

“Oh, that’s harder than you think, so don’t worry.” she smiled in return, seeming to possibly know how to do just that... Which was also kind of terrifying.

Turning to Detia she took the next step of the conversation on her own. “So, where are we going?”

Detia had finally properly gotten up and had her stuff properly on her, Bob was sitting on her shoulder like some weird draped skin.

“To the mountain training grounds.”

Aeris just smiled and held out both her hands, one to Detia and one to Gilliam. Detia took her hand right away but Gilliam only took it once Aeris had turned to look at him expectantly.

A second or so after grabbing her hand there was a massively bright flash, as his eyes fixed themselves, something that went much faster had this been just normal lights, he could see that the scene had changed drastically.

He was in a valley of sorts, there were rocks, scorch marks, craters and complete mayhem. It’s almost like someone just took explosives and flames to a quarry. There was even a small lake far down there in the rough center of this valley, some 100m (~330ft) further down than him.

To be honest this was a perfect place to play with fire, nothing to catch on fire, in the mountains apparently and hopefully far away from things.

“Now, let’s see what you can do. Unstructured, fire, your biggest fireball, remember to imagine properly, use all your mana and just go nuts!” she commanded, pointing at the sky almost like she was challenging it.

It was odd that she was this fired up about this when not 10 minutes ago she wanted to sleep her life away.

And, though this was a tall order it was actually perfect for him. He wanted to know his limits, what he could do and just where he’s placed on the mana pool side of things. Angela did mention that his Boundary was large but... just how large is ‘large’.

“We’ll go over there.” Detia mentioned as she pointed in the mountains somewhere. She took Aeris’ hand right after and in the blink of an eye they were gone.

Seems like she has been around fire mages before, according to her pin she had access to Fire, water and Air. So she probably knew fire quite well.

Well, it was time to see what he was capable of doing.

Starting with calming his mind, he wanted to do this right, he inhaled and exhaled in a deep sigh of sorts, doing his best to guide all of his mana towards his hand.

In his mind he saw the power of the sun stream into his palms, crunched down into a fireball he wanted this to burn, to do some damage. In general he wanted to collect fire energy and send it flying into the water down there and explode. But the image had to be vivid. He put more and more detail on it before he properly started. The biggest fire thing he could consider were the massive suns he had heard of online in the scientific videos he had seen, so why not use that as a benchmark just... smaller.

His hand was starting to gather energy, he pointed the palm towards the lake, his hand looked like he already held a sphere of something. Energy built up more and more, he wanted to put all in it before he sent it flying. The energy started manifesting as a mirage of sorts, flickering and bending light like above fires, his other hand was needed to have something to gather the energy between. Then it ignited and became a fireball, still the size of an orange. Gilliam kept feeding it energy. It grew larger and larger the more he fueled the fire, every now and then he stopped feeding it with energy to use his mind-hands to crush it smaller, then feeding it again.

He repeated this process over and over, again and again until the fire started turning blue, the fire started screaming a high pitch whine rather than the normal fire you’re used to. For some reason this didn’t burn Gilliam but the ground around him started to show the effect of the radiant heat, the few plants or grass tufts that had managed to grow, wilted in the heat and burst into tiny flames before poofing into ash.

The bright light from this orb rivalled staring into the sun on a good day, Gilliam was nearing the end of his current mana reserves, he wanted to have enough to send this thing flying so he didn’t drop it at his feet.

Having reached the point of critical mass, where the fact of just keeping this thing stable between his hands was taking a massive toll on his concentration, this was as good a time as any.

Turning both his hands towards the lake far down in the hole of the quarry, he used a sizable chunk of energy to magically shoot the fireball down there. The fireball was screaming a loud high pitch whine that followed the sphere as it was booted down at great speed towards the water.

It took a second to reach the water, but it had started evaporating it before it got that close. As it was about to make contact there was a massive cloud of steam as it evaporated its way through the water until it hit something solid, this was the trigger after all.

The following explosion was unprecedented. First it blinded anyone looking at it, the resulting explosion emptied the quarry of water, the shockwave would punch you in the face from quite the distance. This knocked Gilliam over without effort at all. The crater was severely deepened and there was more than one side of rocks that started flying, tumbling and avalanche’ing their way wherever they wanted to go.

It was raining rocks, water, debris and the whole place was in chaos.

Gilliam couldn’t properly see what was going on, he was dumb enough to look at the explosion. But he felt a hand on him and suddenly, after a bright light the sound of everything falling was gone.

In stead he heard Detia’s voice, loud, angry, full of questions and ordering. “Gilliam, what the fuck was that?!”

“A fireball.” Gilliam replied, still not able to properly see more than shadows around the massive bright spot in the middle of his view.

“I almost gave it my all, it was my first fireball, after all.” he smiled in her direction.