It seemed despite Ûndin’s declaration the night before that we would be perfectly safe in his city, he seemed pretty eager to kick us out the minute it was no longer considered rude to do so.

Eragon had gone off to the massive temple we had seen on the way into the city to learn more about the culture he had been adopted into while Orik continued to talk with Ûndin about plans for our departure.

For myself, I decided to check in with Arya to see what she would be doing since I imagined she wouldn’t be very busy at the moment.

I found the elf doing a light stretching routine in her room. I waited until she finished holding her latest pose before tapping on the door frame to announce myself.

“Good morning, Arya. Did you have plans for today?”

“Alexandria.” Arya greeted me with a nod. “I do not. I have visited this city several times in the past, so sightseeing has little appeal to me. We are also preparing to depart soon so I thought to just remain here.”

“Would you be up for a light spar? I have no idea what to do with myself right now and going out into the city is just asking for trouble.”

With any luck I might also figure out a hint to fix my spell’s misfire issues since just examining the spells by themselves hadn’t gotten me anywhere and a fight would be much more enjoyable than anything else I could entertain myself with for a single day.

“A spar, hm? Yes, I suppose I could join you for a little while.” Arya retrieved her saber from her belongings and had me follow her to a training room. She really knew her way around the hall. I guess she wasn’t kidding when she said she had been here several times before.

I projected a simple iron longsword and took my position opposite her. This was going to be for fun, no need to get fancy right out of the gate.

We stood perfectly still, then at same time, moved towards each other and the spar began.

-o-

We must have gone at it for a couple hours, yet both of us had barely broken a sweat.

I sidestepped around a slash and swung upwards with the spear I was currently using. Arya had decided to take advantage of my abilities to train against several different types of weapons. Not that she was unskilled at all. As evidenced by the elf ducking under my blow and gracefully cartwheeling away.

Normally I would have pursued her to keep up the pressure, but instead I backed off and settled into a stance. Across from me, Arya did the same.

“You want to go again?”

Arya shook her head. “I think that is enough for now. Though would you mind answering a few questions?”

“I guess not?”

“This magic of yours, we were supposed to speak more about it before the attack on Farthen Dûr. How are you able to create things from thin air?”

I was shocked for a second but I probably should have expected it at some point. Though to be honest I had forgotten she wanted to talk to me about my magic. She certainly had the time to ask before now but had never brought it up.

Still, no harm in talking about it I guess. “I don’t create things from ‘thin air’, what I do is create an object out of mana that mimics the properties of the real item.”

“Ah, so that is why you are seeking Rider’s blades, you can’t simply replicate the metal by itself.”

I waggled a hand back and forth. “Kinda, I could if I wanted to,” I formed an ingot of Brightsteel in my hand as proof, “but at its core it’s still my spell. If it broke for whatever reason then I’d have a much bigger problem. Especially for what I plan to use it for.“ A mana reactor becoming a bomb because the walls simply vanished? There were simpler ways to commit suicide.

“I see…” Arya mused. “But how are you able to cast such spells? Even our greatest magicians have declared creating objects like you have impossible, or at least require so much energy it might as well be.”

“I believe I told you the difference between a mage and an animancer?” I asked.

“Yes, one uses ‘mana’ and the other uses ‘life energy’, though I admit I am skeptical.”

“Skeptical?”

“Many claim to be different from other magicians, yet are very similar in the end. You are one of the few that seem to be truly unique.”

Oh, I see. She was getting confused about the base differences…

I Traced a piece of paper and a stick of charcoal so I could give her a visual guide and started explaining as I drew.

“From what I have seen the magicians you are familiar with draw power from three sources to create magic. No matter what, each magician will need to use their Mind, Body, and Soul to cast the spell they want.” I arranged each word in a triangle and connected them with a single line.

“Soul? I wouldn’t have believed you one to put faith in that nonsense.” Arya interrupted.

I traced a copy of Tobiume, one of the least stressful Zanpakuto I could summon with pleasantly little difficulty. I was healing pretty well from my fight with Aizen. I should be back to being able to use Noble Phantasms in a few more months. “Souls are very real. I have several weapons such as this one specifically designed to attack them.”

As I was talking something went wrong with Tobiume. The mana cost to keep the weapon stable skyrocketed, almost as if…

My eyes widened.

…almost as if I was suddenly being forced to provide energy the sword would naturally bring in from its environment. This world did not have massive amounts of Reishi in the background supporting its magic system! And all of my created spells had taken those Reshi levels into account when I made them, so the sudden lack of it would of course destabilize the spell.

I found the reason my magic wasn’t working like I expected it to!

Neither my Tracing or Bombardment magic assumed anything with Reishi so of course they weren’t affected, but I had specifically modeled Airwalk off of Reishi techniques. That was why it couldn’t support my weight! It was like trying to build a sandcastle in the ocean!

I was ecstatic but pushed those feelings aside for now. I was in the middle of a lesson.

“This is a Soul Cutter, or Zanpakuto in its native language. Its main purpose is to cut directly at the soul. While it’s perfectly decent as a normal sword, this will also cut immaterial things like Spirits.”

Arya remained doubtful. “Simply enchanted to cut Spirits then. That does not mean souls exist.”

“Fine, let's look at it this way then. Replace the word Soul with Experience. It’s the thing that lets master magicians say a spell and get a completely different result. Like saying water and manipulating a crystal or something. I know you want to argue and say that should fall under Mind, but in this case Mind refers to pure facts and knowledge.”

The elf still didn’t look convinced but said nothing. So I returned to my drawing and pointed at the corner marked Body.

“Animancers use the body to cast spells shaped by the Mind and fueled by the Soul.” I moved my finger to Soul. “Summoners use the Soul to connect to other beings like spirits to assist their casting, relying on their Mind and Body to control the things they connect to.” and finally to Mind. “Alchemists and the like use the Mind to determine how properties of things, or their Body, react to each other ,through the Soul, to determine their spell’s effect.”

Arya was a lot more receptive to my explanation when I didn’t decide to add in a bunch of mysticism. In fact she was paying rapt attention.

Of course most of this was dumbed down to the bare basics and was much more complicated in reality, but I didn’t want to spend all day explaining.

“As for mages, we cheat.”

I chuckled at Arya’s confusion and added another word to the diagram directly in the middle. Mana. Connected to Mind, Body, and Soul.

“Unlike magicians, mages do not use Mind, Body, and Soul to cast spells. We use them to affect Mana. This roundabout method means in general Mages are much less flexible than magicians, but can be much more powerful.”

“And because it is this Mana that forms the spell it is why you can form those blades, because you are not actually summoning the metal like a magician would, but simply forcing it into the properties of metal.”

Yep, she got it. I nodded in confirmation.

“That explanation answers several of my questions, but what -”

Whatever Arya was going to ask next was interrupted by a dwarf barging into the training room. It didn’t take me long to recognize Ûndin, the clan leader from last night.

By the scowl on his face, this wasn’t going to be pleasant.

“Something wrong?”

“The Az Sweldn rak Anhûin are agitating the citizens against you. I thought tradition and guestright would be enough to prevent them from acting out, but I was wrong. I fear the younger, more hotblooded ones in the city might be called to action if they spot you in the city. It shames me to admit my hospitality will surely be lacking, but I recommend you and Shadeslayer should remain in my halls until your departure.”

“I see,” Arya replied. “And where is Eragon now?”

“He is in Celbedeil learning from Gannel.”

“Then I will retrieve him.” She turned to me. “Alexandria, you should remain here. If they are stirring up the civilians there is no need to present them a target for their ire.”

I sighed at that because no matter how little I cared about what some random dwarves thought of me, causing a city-wide fight because I didn’t want to stay inside for a bit was too stupid to contemplate.

It looked like I would have to wait to explore another dwarven city. Shame.

“Yeah, I agree. Go on, I have a book I can entertain myself with…”

Arya nodded and glided out of the room leaving me alone with Ûndin.

“Do not worry, lady Lightbringer. You will be safe in the halls.” he attempted to comfort me.

In return I just gave him a sharp smile. “Oh no, I’m not worried at all. If the Tears make the mistake of acting against me…I’ll be sure it is the last mistake they make in their unfortunately short lives.”