After breakfast, Miranda walked me to my first class, Advanced Body Alteration 1 with Professor Yana, then headed off on her own to do some studying. Despite how interesting I found the material, the class itself had been rather boring the past two weeks. We hadn’t really done much of anything outside of review and watching the last few students demonstrate their competence in the necessary spells to the professor.

I spent a few minutes before we began chatting idly with Janna. Like me, she’d already proven herself capable of casting all the spells needed to graduate weeks ago, and we were both just preparing for the written exam on Thursday. I was very glad that I’d gotten those requirements out of the way before my ritual, as I needed to reestablish my shifter’s body before I could cast any of those spells again or else I risked utterly ruining my new enhancements, and that was something I really didn’t have time for right now.

Janna seemed to be in a very good mood. Not only was she apparently doing better than usual in all of her classes, something she cheerfully thanked me for, but the Avalon portal was also going to be within a day’s travel of her family estate over the winter holiday and she was very excited to spend time with them instead of staying at the Academy.

Class was as dull as I’d expected it to be. Professor Yana quickly ran through the structure of Thursday’s exam, answered some questions, and then one by one called up the last few students who had yet to demonstrate all of the class’s required spells.

Most of them didn’t have any trouble with the rudimentary spellwork, but three students were left nearly in tears when their attempts were deemed insufficient. One girl did break down into wracking sobs when the Professor told them they would have one last attempt on Thursday before the exam or she would fail them for the course.

It was rather sad, the same way seeing a pitiful three-legged dog whining on the edge of the street was sad. It was pathetic; she had only managed one of the nearly a dozen required spells and hadn’t even attempted the ones that required a shifter’s body. I had no idea how she’d managed to make it to third year, but there was no way she was going to master the rest of them in that short a period of time.

Judging from the way the boy sitting behind her was eyeing her, I had a feeling she wasn’t going to have to worry about that for much longer. Perhaps if there was slightly less attention on me right now, I might have tried something myself, but it wasn’t like she was anything particularly special anyway.

I said goodbye to Janna, remorsefully declining her offer to do some last minute studying together for the exam with her and a few of our classmates. It felt like she took my refusal gracefully; I was pretty sure she hadn’t expected me to say yes and had simply offered out of courtesy.

I paused, feeling a twinge of something in the back of my mind. Where had that come from? For a moment, Janna’s usual smile had felt so very open and clear. Then the moment passed and I shook my head. Still, something prompted me not to end the exchange there like I normally would have. “I appreciate the offer though,” I told her with a small smile, “another time, just the two of us perhaps. Some time next week?”

“I’d like that,” Janna told me.

We exchanged a few more pleasantries and then Miranda, who had arrived a few minutes after class ended, and I headed back down to my room. I had so much I needed to do and a rapidly dwindling amount of time to do it.

I spent the next few hours meditating and running through some of the least mana-intensive mana control exercises I knew. Though I wasn’t a specialist in the field, everything I’d read and learned in class told me that the worst was behind me now. In theory, I could just wait a few weeks and everything should return to normal, but I didn’t have time for that. I had two practical exams in the next three days and needed to be in casting shape tomorrow, not at the end of the month.

As I slowly stretched my mana control ‘muscles’, I focused most of my attention on my mana core and slowly absorbing ambient mana into it. There were two ways for a mage to regenerate their mana, passively and actively.

Mana was a byproduct of the soul’s interaction with the world, something Professor Zim had likened to the heat produced by friction when you rubbed your hands together. As a mage grew in power, their soul became stronger and that interaction became more obvious, which was why an experienced mage could regenerate and store much more mana than a relative beginner like me. As long as you had formed something resembling a mana core, it would naturally catch and store this energy, thus passively regenerating your reserves.

However, that friction was not the only place one could pull mana from. The world was full of ambient mana, the byproduct of millenia of mages and magical creatures pushing their mana into the world. With practice, this mana could be gathered, assimilated, and then drawn into the core to increase the rate of regeneration. It was a slow and difficult process, but it was also the only way I had a chance of filling my reserves by tomorrow’s practical exam for Evocation Fundamentals.

Thankfully, Avalon was filled with ambient mana, the concentration of it much higher than in most parts of the world. There was no risk of me draining the air fully and rendering my room a manaless desert, the pocket dimension was so packed with mana that I could do this for my entire life and never make a dent.

By the time Rea gently shook me out of my meditative trance, my core was nearly half-full and I was genuinely pleased by my progress towards regaining my spellcasting. I hadn’t tried casting anything yet, but I was pretty sure I could manage to form a second-circle spell matrix as long as I was careful and worked slowly.

There was a smile on my face when I met Miranda outside my room and I told her to pass along to Lea that I would try to meet with her today after classes. Miranda had told me earlier that my friend was apparently getting worried about me despite Miranda’s best efforts to keep her occupied, and I was pretty sure I could spare half an hour to reassure her.

With Miranda at my side, I grabbed a very brief bite to eat and then hurried to my last non-exam class with Professor Shrike. Unfortunately, my good mood did not last much longer than that. I was just laying out my things when my least favorite person at the Academy came into the room.

“Orion!” Brenda half-shrieked as rushed over to sit beside me, her voice as loud and whiny as ever. I could barely stop myself from pushing her away when she wrapped her clammy hands around one of my own and pressed herself into my side. “I heard you were attacked last week!” she exclaimed, “And then you missed our date this weekend! Are you okay, darling? Did they hurt you? I was so worried about you!”

“I’m fine, sorry for worrying you dear,” I said softly, hoping to make her lower her own voice as well. “I was just finishing up an important project and got caught up with things,” I lied easily, “I’ll make it up to you. We can spend some time together this weekend. Maybe once the portal moves we can go out to a nice restaurant in Gulivine, see a play, watch the sunset…” I trailed off, carefully freeing my arm and wrapping it around her shoulders.

Brenda sighed and leaned her head back against my shoulder. “I’d like that.” Then her eyes narrowed and she scowled at me. I was pretty sure it was supposed to look like a glare, but I couldn’t take the expression seriously on Brenda’s face, no matter how good her makeup was. It took all my willpower not to laugh at the sight. “But you better never do something like that to me, get it? I was really worried about you.”

“I won’t.” Screwing my eyes tightly shut, I leaned down and brushed my lips across her forehead. “I love you Brenda. Sorry for worrying you.” I hated her. I hated her so much, but I couldn’t let it show.

When I opened my eyes, there was a bright red blush on Brenda’s pale cheeks and she was looking down towards the ground. “I forgive you.”

I clenched the hand hidden by my side into a fist. “I’m glad.” I couldn’t wait to be done with Brenda. Perhaps I would not be free of her fully for a long time, but she would be so much more agreeable to be around. Every time I looked at her, all I could see was Lea’s broken, violated body. Maybe in a few months Lea would enjoy returning the favor. My forced smile turned a fraction more genuine. Now that was lovely scene to picture

My eyes flickered towards the front of the classroom, where Professor Shrike was still busily shuffling through a stack of papers behind his podium.

“How are your exams going, beautiful? You had one yesterday, right?” If I was remembering correctly, that would have been one of her divination classes, the only field of magic I knew for a fact Brenda was quite good at. Academics could sometimes be a sore subject for Brenda, she was rather bad at most magic, but the stupid girl loved bragging about that whenever she had the slightest reason too.

It looked like I’d made a good choice. Brenda’s face lit up and she sat up straighter, turning to face me fully. “Yeah, Intermediate Scrying. It went amazing, I found all the targets way faster than anyone else did. Professor Fovea hid a bunch of little tokens out in the city and we needed to make a list of where she put them and then what order she hid them in. It was a bit tricky without some of my equipment, but nothing I couldn’t manage anyway!”

“That's wonderful, I knew you’d do well! I don’t think I could do something like that half as well. Maybe you could show me some tricks. I keep meaning to take divination classes, but they never fit my schedule.”

“Thanks Orion! I’d love to, you’ve helped me so much in my other classes it would be only fair.”

“So tell me a bit more about this exam. You said the Professor hid these tokens up in the city, right? Did you see anything interesting while you were looking for them?”

Without much more prompting, Brenda launched into a detailed account of the exam that I dutifully listened to and committed to memory. Honestly I wasn’t that interested, but Brenda would expect me to remember every detail she’d told me and it was better than actually having to interact with her. Or well, it was at first. There was only so much of her voice I could stand to listen to before I wanted to rip my ears out of my head.

Her story was thankfully cut short a few minutes later when Professor Shrike started the class. She promised to tell me more about it when we met up this weekend, so that was something to look forward to. Ugh. That was the first thing I was going to change when I had the chance. In the future, my Brenda would be silent unless absolutely necessary. It would make spending time with her so much more tolerable.

After class, I managed to deftly extract myself from Brenda’s embrace after only two attempts, far too much practice making the necessary movements and apologies nearly instinctive by now. There was no Miranda to meet me this time, she was in class and the walk between Professor Shrike’s classroom and the ritual room Professor Williams was using today was rather short so I hoped it wouldn’t be an issue.

Honestly it was probably a good thing. After what happened with Lea, I really didn’t like the looks Brenda sometimes gave my succubus slave. I’d tried to make it clear to Brenda that I considered Miranda a close friend, but in no way a romantic prospect. I didn’t know what had made her order a hit on Lea, nor how she’d even found out about my childhood friend, but I still wanted to minimize how often Brenda saw Miranda and I together. Just another reason to deal with her as soon as possible, as if I didn’t have enough of those already. Ugh.