Eyes closed against the bright lights, Olivia strained to tune out the murmured conversations, low humming of mantras, and the crackling, popping sounds of cantrips starting up and fizzling out. She was sitting at her table in the Spellcraft lab they’d moved to after the first day of courses. It was a wide room on the second sublevel of the main academy building with a low ceiling and lots of tables set up in clusters around the room's edges. Professor ap’Rall, Alyss, roamed the center of the room, giving pointers and observing as students tried to apply the lessons she’d given them over the last week and a half. At first, she’d wondered why they had such a wide-open noisy room when concentration was so critical. She’d come to the rather obvious conclusion that it was intentional—what good was magic if you couldn’t concentrate enough in the real world to use it?

Olivia finally managed to turn her inner eye inward and study her Core, tuning out the distractions in the lab. The familiar shape filled her vision, and she admired the white center of pure Energy surrounded by the swirling rings of her various attunements. It was beautiful and growing more so with each advancement she made to her Core. That wasn’t what she was doing at the moment, though. No, she was working on her first meta-element: arcfrost. Olivia had learned that her first spell creations were simplistic combinations or substitutions of attuned Energy. To make a meta-element, one must know the weave and be nimble enough with her mind to make it a reality. So far, Olivia hadn’t been able to do it. Gently, she tugged a thread of water-attuned Energy out of its ring, and, as she held it quivering near her Core, she pulled loose a thread of air-attuned Energy, drawing it up close to the other thread.

The first part of the weave was simple—she just had to make a basic pattern to shift the water Energy into ice and the air into electricity. She’d learned that each time she cast a spell, her Energy flowed out of her in a sort of schema that weaved it into actualization. When she cast Icy Shards, the spell automatically took her water-attuned Energy and twisted it into ice. Now that she was manually manipulating her Energy, she had to weave it herself, but it was a very simple pattern. Once she had her strands of ice and electricity, the hard part began; she had to make the arcfrost weave before pushing it through her pathways and into reality. She’d failed yesterday, which was the first time she’d tried practically applying the pattern. It was much more challenging to manipulate Energy threads than draw practice patterns on paper. She had the pattern in her mind, as solid as she could imagine the letters in the alphabet. Still, she struggled.

The tricky part was that she’d be halfway through the weave when the first threads started to unravel, and by the time she got to the end, the pattern would be half undone. Olivia was frustrated at first and almost threw her hands up; she either was doing something wrong or wasn’t meant to do it. Then something happened; on about her tenth try, she realized she’d gotten a little farther on the weave than the last time. What if it wasn’t a matter of her doing something wrong but not doing something fast enough? She’d come to that conclusion yesterday and then determined to repeat the weave as many times as she needed to until she got fast enough to complete it before it unraveled. And so, for nearly the full duration of her Spellcraft lab, she worked on that weave over and over. By the time someone jostled her shoulder to let her know time was up, she’d made good progress; she was more than two-thirds of the way to finishing the weave.

She cleared her mind and opened her eyes to see that it hadn’t been a cohort member to jostle her but Alyss herself. “Oh, thank you, Alyss. Is it time to go?”

“Yes, Olivia, good work today; I see what you’re doing, and I’m impressed, you know.” Her smile was true and warm, and Olivia felt the heat from it enter her own heart, and suddenly she was very glad to be in this classroom, learning from this woman. Her cohort had come a long way in the last few days, talking, joking, and being actual friends, which had helped Olivia’s sense of homesickness. Still, it was Alyss’s genuine warmth and desire to see Olivia do well that really touched her. She reminded Olivia of the best parts of her mother and her favorite teacher combined.

“Thank you, Alyss! I think I’m onto something! I can’t wait to show you what I come up with.” Olivia stood, slipping her text into her ring, and looked around for her cohort. She saw them lingering over by the door, Adaida looking back at her expectantly.

“I’m excited to see what you do, also, Olivia. Tell me, how close do you think you are to level ten?” Alyss moved sideways, surreptitiously putting herself between Olivia and her cohort.

“I think I’m still early into nine. I haven’t done anything to gain Energy since I leveled, though I have been cultivating my Core. Sange said that people can level slowly doing that also, so I’m really not sure.”

“Mmhmm, listen, Olivia, I think you have a good shot at gaining at least one or two of the awards for the opening competition. It’d be best if you didn’t level before then if no one has told you that already,” Olivia opened her mouth to say she knew that, but Alyss kept speaking, “Let’s save your project demonstration for my class until after the award, shall we? I’ll let you describe your process and give you a grade based on that. Let’s keep this between you and me for now, though, okay? That goes for your cohort, too.” Alyss looked at her until she nodded.

“Um, sure, that’s very nice of you, Alyss. I’ll make sure I work hard; I really do have a good plan for what I’m going to do; it’s just going to be a bit harder not to complete any of the stages before I try it out.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll keep that in mind when I’m considering the scores. Now hustle to your next class! See you tomorrow.” Alyss waved and stepped back, motioning for Olivia to pass in front of her.

“Bye, Alyss,” she said, walking quickly over to her waiting cohort.

“The flame was that about?” Rald asked as he shouldered open the door and walked through.

“She was talking to me about my project.”

“Really? Doing something wrong?” Veena asked, walking just in front of Olivia.

“No, not really; she was just checking my progress.” Olivia didn’t like being evasive with her friends, but she didn’t want to get in trouble with Alyss, so she settled on vagueness. “I think she just didn’t get a chance to talk to me during class because she has to spend so much time coaching Rald.” Everyone laughed at that, even Rald.

“Hey, I can’t help it if she’s got a thing for her favorite student.” He feigned bravado, but Olivia thought that she’d be able to see him blushing if not for his already bright red skin. Alyss really did spend a lot of time with him during class, but Olivia was more inclined to believe it was because he needed the extra help. She didn’t say that, though—more fun to tease him about an imagined crush.

Olivia was getting better and better at consciously cultivating variously attuned Energy rather than just blindly absorbing ambient Energy. Sange had been pleased when she’d isolated the fire-attuned Energy from the incense stick, but he’d pushed her to pull attuned Energy from water, a dense, flaky stone, and from a crystal he’d called a “charge-sphere.” When they arrived in his class that day, he’d sent them to their individual stations, and Olivia saw that her little “altar” had the charge-sphere and a bowl of water sitting on it. “Today, you will try to pull two streams of differently attuned Energy at once while you cultivate. Moreover, when they enter your pathways, I want you to braid them so they come to your core intertwined. Do you know why I’m asking you to do this?”

Olivia thought about the question, and when she considered braiding Energy streams, her mind drifted to the patterns she had to weave to create meta-elements. “To help me get faster at weaving meta-elements?”

“Exactly. Alyss told me about your project for her class. This will be a good exercise to help you not only cultivate but gain more and faster control of your Energy weaving. Take it seriously, and don’t waste your time in here—this ability will prove invaluable as you advance in the practice of magic.” Sange’s voice was uncharacteristically stern when he said the last statement, and it took Olivia a bit by surprise.

“Do you feel like I’ve been wasting my time?”

“Oh, no, not you, Olivia. I just worry because I’ve spoken to other Cultivation Mentors. Some students are progressing very quickly, and I feel the strain of wanting you all to be competitive.”

“Well, I want to work hard, and I try, but I’m also worried about leveling. If I cultivate too much, won’t I hit level ten before the challenge is over? Alyss thinks I need to be careful not to level before the awards are given out.”

“Yes, that’s a concern, but that’s also why I’m not giving you dense Energy artifacts to use for cultivation. This is just plain water, and the charge-sphere is a very weak one. Also, when I force you to focus on only a few of your affinities, it slows down your cultivation immensely. Still, it improves your ability, and when we start pushing for growth, you’re going to take off. Trust me, Olivia.”

“I do trust you, Sange. Don’t worry; I’m not slacking off.” Olivia sat down and assumed her lotus position, and Sange nodded, moving to speak with Veena. Olivia had gathered that growth or “leveling” at the academy was accomplished through innovation and cultivation—they weren’t going to be fighting and killing each other for Energy. She was a little worried about holding back her progress in order to avoid leveling before the first month passed. Still, if she could believe Alyss and Sange, the knowledge and practice they were giving her would allow for some exponential gains as soon as she stopped holding back. With that in mind, she bent to the task that Sange had given her.

It was a very different kind of difficult to take two strands of differently attuned Energy from outside her body and pull them into her pathways while trying to braid them. She had no problem pulling the threads out of the sources, directing them into her Core with her cultivation drill. However, bending them to her will as they entered the pathway through her palm was an order of magnitude more difficult than doing the same from Energy that was already in her Core. Was this Energy less pliable because it came from outside her? She struggled, bending the threads with sheer concentration, and, as beads of sweat broke out on her forehead, she finally got them to twist together. She continued the twisting motion, pulling the threads into her pathway millimeter by millimeter in her mind’s eye.

When Olivia finally pulled the braided thread through to her Core, she was drenched in sweat, though she didn’t realize it yet. Her entire being was wrapped up in the arduous task of keeping the Energy moving slowly as she twisted it together. When it reached her Core, she was faced with a new problem—unwinding the braid so the differently attuned rings of Energy around her Core could receive the individual threads. Ever so carefully, she pulled the braid apart and allowed the rings to siphon off their threads, and then she opened her eyes, faint and a bit dizzy. Sange was standing in front of her, smiling. “Take a break; you’ve earned it.”