“The bird is your familiar.” The headmaster stated. She did sound quite shocked.

“And don't you dare try to deny it, we both know how easy to verify that is, in fact I already did!”

“And how did you get to that conclusion?” She asked, she would have to fix that after all, sure the headmaster was old and experienced, but she still should need more time to get to the idea of checking something like that.

“Because of your father, he told me to inspect your bird and has yet to lie to me, so with nothing really out of the ordinary, except a very large mana pool, its speciality had to be its behavior, and there are only a few ways to make an animal behave as different as yours, one of which being the familiar bond. I have no clue how you managed that, normally it takes up to three years for an animal to have enough trust in a human to open up for a familiar bond!”

“He was enjoying to be near me!”

“You don't have to tell me, the meeting of a mage and his familiar is something only the mage needs to know! What I need to know though, is how you managed to spot them and what role did your bird have in it?”

“He saw them and warned me!”

“And just because your bird warned you of something you set up a trap for these mercs, without knowing what followed you?”

“Of course, he warned me of sentient hunters that couldn't be lost!”

The headmaster didn't look satisfied, but she seemed fine with the answer for now. Mary felt a tug at her arm, where she saw Taimanu looking a her with puppy eyes, something quite ironic considering she was a cat.

“You already have a familiar, I want one too, but my father told me to wait.” She pouted.

“Why were you allowed to get one?”

“I didn't know I was binding him as my familiar, it just happened, I rescued him while doing my first ranger test, and a few months later he trusted me enough to be my familiar!

Of course, when his mana opened up to me I had no clue what was happening. My mana was attracted in ways I didn't know back then, so I just went with it out of curiosity."

The headmaster shook her head, looked at her quizzingly once again and then said.

“With that unpleasant conversation out of the way let's return to the group, I will accompany you back to the academy.

Don't worry, we will thoroughly interrogate them to find out who hired them!”

“No need to bother with that.” Mary said.

“What do mean by that?”

“There is only one noble I know of that would be stupid enough to think he can get away with this. He recently lost all his social standing in the empire because some of his secret activities were exposed to the noble population of the capita by my father so he has sufficient motivation as well. That noble really brings the worst out of my father, I didn't even know he had a vindictive streak until I saw the two of them dealing with each other.

Though I also have to say it's understandable, I met the guy one time and he really is one unpleasant fellow!”

“Now who do you think it is?”

“Viscount Snaketon.”

“I know that one, when we refused his son because he lacked the talent to join he personally came visiting to give me a part of his mind. Thought throwing around his rank would actually get him anywhere.”

A day later they arrived back at the academy. The townsfolk was buzzing with excitement when they saw them return with twenty prisoners after the headmaster shot off to somewhere the previous day. They delivered their prisoners to the towns small prison and proceeded to the academy.

They were awaited by a crowd of students, that found out about their arrival. The headmaster forbid them to disclose any details, a badly veiled warning in her harsh words.

She had known there was no way they would be able to keep everything under wraps, but decided nobody needed to know the finer details, like the intended target of the attack.

Mary was really looking forwards to sleeping in a real bed again, the one part about adventuring she really disliked!

She promised to herself she would find a way to take a bed along on her travels once she was fully grown up.

While flying would help a great deal as long as she stayed in civilized territory, she had plans to explore the middle of the continent as she felt a deep fascination since the first time she had heard of it.

Over the last years her mana pool had increased enough for her to fly for twenty minutes, nothing she would be able to use to reliably travel anyways.

These thoughts were for later though, as they had to finish their quest first. After arriving at the central tower, they went to one of the clerks.

“We completed our latest quest!”

“What did you have to do?” The woman asked.

“We hunted a Calyc!” With the last word, she took the fur out of her backpack and carefully placed it on the desk in front of her.

After inspecting it, the receptionist looked up again.

“That's some top quality fur, new adventurers like you lot usually take a lot longer for that quest only to deliver worse results. How did you manage to kill it without damaging the fur?” That was no secret, so Mary told her.

“That's quite ingenious. If you lot would had over your guild cards I can update them.” The clerk cast a spell on each of their cards, it was a really simple one and she was able to cast it herself, sadly she couldn't skip grinding quests by updating the card herself as her manasignature wasn't authorised to do so and the card would turn invalid if she did.

“There you go, I have been informed of the extra excitement on your way back. If you manage to not reveal any details as a group, you will get another completed mission for it.”

After finishing their business in the guild, they went into one of the restaurants in the city, celebrating their survival and the completion of their first decently complicated quest.

While the food wasn't as good as the stuff her father’s cooks could create, it was significantly better than the food the academy had to offer.

They had one day for adventuring left, and decided to do a few easy quests tomorrow. Next monday, school would resume for them. Mondays were quite slow, with only two subjects to learn.

In the morning, Mary had to go to advanced mana control. After lunch she would have sorcery training. There were only two weeks left as a group, afterwards they would go on with personal training, so her mondays would be even better.

After a hearty lunch, they all went their separate ways. Mary, Taimanu and Dehla went to the training fields and started another sparring session with the lynxkin watching them fight.

An hour later she and Taimanu went in the academy’s park. She had promised her to properly introduce her to Starshadow and was going to fulfill that promise now. They set down in a small clearing between some hedgerows. Mary cast a spell that would mask any sound they made and called Starshadow down to them.

This time, she allowed him to land like he normally did after learning air magic.

It always looked impressive when he came falling down and only slowing down long after normal birds would.

By the look in the lnyxkin’s eyes, Mary judged she was duly impressed.

“How did he do that? I have never seen a bird slow down so fast!”

“I taught him several spells, he is able to fly like no other falcon. The one he used to land increases the density of the air below his wings. The spell enables him to slow down or turn faster when he is flying. Teaching it was quite difficult as it is quite dangerous if the increased density isn't evenly distributed below his wings, it’s quite possible he would crash!”

“What did you teach him first then?”

“An easy spell that is derived from flying with airmagic, it just increases the speed the air flows below his wings, allowing him to fly faster with little use of mana! The spells I taught him enable him to fly way more efficient, that's the reason he is able to stay in the air for the whole day.”

“When I have my familiar I will teach him magic too!”

“When your familiar opens his mana for you, make sure to keep it under control!”

“Why?”

“I didn't tell the headmaster, but forming our bond took an hour because I slowed it down, as you may know your mana mixes with that of your familiar, but the faster that happens the less uniform it gets, so if you keep control and slow down you will be able to use your familiar as a second pair of eyes! That's how I saw the mercs as well, I always have a second pair of eyes in the sky above me!”

“I can't imagine how that must be, I would be really confused if I had to process two pairs of eyes at the same time!”

“It was at first, but I got used to it quite fast!”

“You mean to tell me the apparent sluggishness of a familiar bond is artificial as the mana isn't mixed properly?”

“Yep! Normal people can't see through their familiar’s eyes because the quality of the bond limits the amount of information that can be transferred, I was able to teach him magic because I could transfer enough information to him to make casting magic to supply his flying instinctive!”

“I’ll make sure to keep that in mind. Do you mind if I watch you teaching him something?”

“Not at all, if you wish I could start right now.”

“That would be great, what do you want to teach him next?”

“I think his mobility in the air is good enough now, I was going to teach him some lighting!”

“How long will that take?”

“It should take about two months, I’ll start with a simple spell that coats his feet in lighting so he can stun his prey.”

“Thank you very much!” Mary grinned at her.

“You know you’ve been making good progress, you rarely do any of your monologues in the last days.”

“I know, I have been getting better, my father will be so proud once he hears about it. It's all thanks to you, you are always calm and that rubs off on me. My people’s minds always age slower than our bodys, it’s in our nature, we are very excitable in the first ten years of life.”

“I’m glad to be of help!”

Three days later, Mary was bored out of her mind, while most of the topics in the academy were at least decently interesting, magic theory proved to be the biggest disappointment. Of course rationally she knew she shouldn't have expected anything, not everyone had a mom knowing advanced magic theory.

While they were researching the difference of the bond she and Starshadow shared as well as finding three dimensional runes her mom started educating her in it.

If she was honest with herself going to the academy wasn't really necessary for her, there was probably nothing the teachers could teach her that her mother couldn't, she was a leading researcher in magic after all.

Normally she distracted herself by watching Starshadow hunt in the surroundings, but today's topic was so boring she started to slump in her chair as well.

Suddenly the teacher stood in front of her, an angry scowl on his face.

“Am I boring you my lady?” He asked with no small amount of venom in his voice.

“Yes.” She decided denying the obvious wasn't worth it.

“Is that so, care to enlighten me why?”

“Sure, I already know all the stuff you teach.” That took the wind out of his sails, obviously not the answer he expected.

"Stay here after the class!" He commanded and continued with his lesson.

Another hour later, the lesson was finally over and Mary stayed behind for the private scolding the teacher was sure to give her.

“So, how come you know everything I teach? That's not someone of your age should know!”

“You know my mother?”

He nodded.

“I helped her with some of her research and she taught me the stuff you teach years ago, so I can reasonably help her.”

“Is that so?”

“Yep after I was adopted I wanted to know everything there was to know, at first I think she just wanted to be nice without really hoping for any reasonable help. I figure she thought I would get bored soon enough and stop by myself. That didn't happen, I really wanted to know everything and still want. so she started teaching me in earnest, seeing I could really help her!”

“Just so we are on the same page, when you are talking about helping your mother do research, you mean helping Diane Falconbridge?”

“The one and only!” The teacher had a thoughtful look on his face.

“I have a proposal for you then, I will design a test containing all the topics I will teach this year, if you manage to pass it with more than eighty percent of the questions answered correct I will make sure you get promoted to the advanced class. If you fail you start paying real attention to my class! Do you agree?”

“YES!” She shouted out excited, anything to not waste her time on basic lessons like the one she just had.