A week had passed since the Festival, Mary decided it was finally time to properly think about what was happening to her. Over the course of the last week she had subtly questioned her peers if they noticed anything strange about the dragon, but unlike her they noticed nothing other than its grandeur. By now she was pretty sure the dragon was actually an illusion, considering Mary started to feel the magic those around her used since about half a year ago, she could be reasonably confident she was right.

Hopefully being capable of sensing magic meant she could use it as well, definitely something she would try when she was alone, to not hurt those around her should she lose control.

Being cautious in nature, Mary decided it would be smart to question Nandelia about her knowledge of magic first.

At the start of the next lesson Mary asked if Nandelia could tell them something about magic.

“So you want to learn about magic, does anyone object to change this lesson’s topic?” Nobody spoke up.

“Very well then, magic, sadly I can't tell you too much about it as I'm no mage, but I'll try my best.” Nandelia said.

“There are several ways a magic user can use magic, there are wizards and witches, magicians in tune with the natural world, they use magic on the plants around them in a fairly large radius. They are not really useful on battlefields as plants don't move fast enough to catch anything even with magic. They are very useful as scouts for an army though, as they can easily conceal themselves with the nature around them, additionally they are effective at slowing down big armies as they influence plants to impede the enemies movements. Unlike all other magic users wizards and witches have an evolution path independent from their race, every wizard or witch who has evolved, evolved into a druid or dryad which only differ in looks based on their original race.

The most diverse magicians are mages using mana to cast spells of any type. Elementalists for example are a special type of mage that concentrates on one of the magic schools exclusively, optimizing its usage.

Some races, like the lizardfolk, can't cast spells in the traditional sense, but use their inborn mana like some monsters do, instinctually enhancing their strength and durability.

Sorcerers are kinda like mages, but with more potential as they can do everything a mage can but have exceptional talent in their born affinity as well as an inborn understanding, which increases with age. The pre invasion empire had a list of all known affinities, but every copy outside the palace was destroyed by Emperor Gallus to deny the knowledge to outsiders. I heard most institutions teaching magic have started their own list, but these are incomplete. The only knowledge from that list remaining is the fact that there are possibly infinite different affinities. Sorcerers mostly are the ones to develop new spells as they have understanding normal mages lack. Of course there are some professions not suited for combat as well, for example enchanters, essentially mages who don’t cast spells but add magic channels to objects to produce certain effects, or alchemists who mix plants to create potions which can help in many situations.

Pure clerics are a rare sight, as healing spells are one of the most complex schools of magic to master. While most mages learn simpler spells like mend bone, close minor wound or produce blood, cleric spells that are actually useful in combat and not painful or exhausting are so hard to learn most mages don’t bother. You have to know there is way more to magic than what i told you, but i sadly know nothing more specific.” While they still had lots of questions, Nandelia sadly couldn’t answer them as she had no magical training whatsoever.

With three years of age the children in the orphanage were allowed to explore it by themselves, so later that day Mary was sitting in a secluded corner of the courtyard wondering how to start exploring her magic abilities.

Considering she didn't know any spells she hoped she was a sorceress so she could invent her own. She would start with the easiest thing she could think of, creating a small light. Without further ado she willed the light a candle would make into being, at least that was what she hoped to accomplish. Instead nothing happened at all, she didn't feel anything as well. Not that she thought it would be that easy, but it would have been encouraging if at least something had happened. Here goes nothing she thought and again imagined the light that followed lightning a candle in her mind. Again nothing happened. After failing to produce any progress after a hour of repeating the same thing she had to admit that she wouldn’t get any results this way and would have to try another approach. Remembering Nandelia told them everyone used mana to do magic she went on and tried sensing an unknown energy in herself. As it turned out finding that energy wasn’t the problem as she had found it after an agonizingly long day of searching her body with her mind, unlike before she had somehow known she was on the right path and persisted through the frustration. Interestingly enough her ears seemed to be using some of her mana whenever someone saw her. Controlling or even moving mana proved to be a different matter altogether, as even after a week of trying her hardest to move a tiny bit of her mana, it proved to be elusive. Not wanting to be outdone by some stupid energy that was hers anyway, she continued the whole week.

Mary was frustrated beyond belief and decided a break would do her some good so she stood up and went to find her friends. She would have to cut her training time anyway as they were somehow always doing stupid things without her around.

One and a half years ago

Griel was happy, it had been a long road, coming as far as he was now and at times he had nearly been frustrated enough to give up. When the infamous Baron Falconbridge, had approached him and asked if he wanted to be an adventurer sponsored by him he had been delighted, thinking he would be able to fulfill his dream of becoming a mage. That had been why he had visited the adventurers guild the previous year. They told him, while he had quite the innate mana reserves, they didn't take in untrained mages. So after asking the Baron how he knew about him, he was told the guild saved every applicants data. The Baron had inquired them about potential mages and got sent his way. Satisfied with the response, he had answered the barons questions and obviously satisfied him, as the offer had been repeated. After accepting he was told to be at a building in the second district by sunrise next morning. He arrived there with two other humans and curiously three elves, as well as two dwarfs and two of the lizardfolk. The doors opened as soon as they were all present, and a butler welcomed them to the house and escorted them in a richly decorated study.

With nothing else to do while waiting they introduced each other, they were all quite pleasant to be around, especially the lizards were way less savage than they looked.

About an hour later the Baron came in, accompanied by a merchant, someone who was obviously a mage and a burly looking fellow who was probably some kind of melee fighter.

“Welcome, welcome, I'm happy to see everyone made it.” they were greeted.

“As you have surely guessed, you lot will be the team I plan to sponsor. Three of the four people accompanying me will be your trainers, while the Merchant will be your most important contact later on.”

“There were just three people with you.” one of the dwarfs said. On that the Baron laughed and pointed at a human that somehow had evaded their detecting until pointed at.

“Well Nolan here will be the trainer of the rangers.” He pointed at the knight. “Melton here will take over the physical aspect of the training the rest of you will have to do!” he pointed at the Mage, “Ebilius will take over your magical training.” After that they had been split in groups for the first part of their training, the elves and dwarfs accompanying the ranger, while the humans and lizardfolk accompanied the mage and knight.

Ten months later, he had been immensely frustrated, while at first he’d thought the knight’s training to be hellish and wondered why he as a mage had to train his body. He had been told if he would want to be worked out or not when a greater drake bore down on his party. He had never voiced a complaint against workout again. The mage’s training was way worse, while physically no challenge at all, had proven to be extremely exhausting and frustrating mentally. The workout proved to be a welcome distraction from that. The first months had been filled with trying to sense mana, one would think finding a powerful energy inside yourself was easy, but it wasn’t, after he had finally managed to do so four months later, he had been told he was one of the faster ones to find his mana.

It didn't get better afterwards, he had to manage to grasp his mana with his mind and then start forming and moving strands of mana that would eventually form runes. Ebilius told them finding mana had been the easy part, moving it reliably sometimes took up to two years to achieve. He was extremely pleased with himself, considering he had managed in just thirty months. The first time he had managed to move his mana he had been incredibly exhausted, just managing to get into his bunk before falling asleep for nearly a day. Obviously trying to control mana hadn't been his only activity all this time, as they had all been teached ways to fight monsters, as well as quite some magic theory in preparation for later. Now that he had achieved basic control over his mana he was really looking toward practicing actual magic. He would have to wait until the morning tough, as he had been told in no uncertain words should he ever try to cast spells without supervision at this point in his training, he could very well destroy his chances of becoming a mage.

Present

Mary was delighted, it may have taken the better part of two months, but she had finally managed to move a tiny strand of mana. Of course she could have been faster, but she noticed training manacontrol was really exhausting and playing with her friends proved to be relaxing, furthermore she had to keep them from doing stupid things. So before she tried anything, she would go and play a bit more as the mental exhaustion of actually moving mana was way above anything she had experienced so far.

Early the next morning Mary was back in her hiding spot and first tried replicating her feat from before to confirm she hadn't dreamt it, she did manage at her third attempt. Considering what magic could do, she decided it would be smart to increase her control until she was capable of extending a strand of mana in nine out of ten tries. She internally groaned at herself as it would surely take another two weeks to achieve that goal, yet she knew it was the smart thing to do.

One year ago

Griel was quite pleased with himself, after the initial problems of controlling his mana, he had made quite the progress. It would still take a while until he could perfectly control his mana, but he was already capable of casting most basic spells, it had been a problem at first, simultaneously holding onto his mana and willing it to take the runes required for the spells, but he had prevailed and was now at a point the adventurers guild considered his magical knowledge sufficient enough to allow joining them as a mage . He really envied sorcerers, just having to will their mana to do what they wanted and when within their affinity it would form the required runes itself. Of course sorcerers had other problems, for example their mana was more primal and because of that harder to control, so unless they had splendid control of their mana it was incredibly hard to form the runes required for even the most basic spells.

Once he and the others had achieved basic control over their mana, Griel and his team had had several new lessons like basic survival and most importantly they learned how to work as a team, as it just wouldn’t do to accidentally injure their teammates. Furthermore they had found out why they would need the merchant, he would be pointing them to the barons craftsmen so they could craft new gear from the materials Griels team supplied them.

The most fun part in the last months however had been learning to control Kekos, an adventurers best friend, these oversized lizards were used to transport the materials they got from the hunted monsters. Usually a party took, depending on what they were hunting, about two to five of them on a quest. The baron outfitted them with highly trained Kekos that only adventures of the upper ranks could afford normally. Kekos were an interesting species, as they were completely peaceful creatures yet their strength in addition to their size made them undesirable prey for most monsters. Tomorrow they would go and register at the adventurers guild as the conquest that made the baron and a some other nobles sponsor adventurers was about to begin and everyone had to start at the same day. Griel and his party had been told to come back for more training once they had some experience in monster hunting. Together they decided to advance to the middle ranks and then resume their training as they all wanted to do something more exciting than training for now.