It had been three days. Ferdinand had made an offer to her that would help her in many ways..

She had a desire to learn more about magic, that was something that she wanted to do since the moment she found out about it. She also made a promise to Argo to carry this hood with her as a favor to his daughter, she had no intention of not making good on that promise. She had a problem of having no direction in this world, she barely knew anyone, and no one would be willing to assist some random no-name traveler no matter their potential, So she needed to find one one.

So Ferdinand suggested this, send her to college. That seemed almost comical to her now that she thought about it, but it was essentially what he did. He offered to sponsor her to attend Cylas Mage College in the City of Trevias. It was the most renowned mage college in all of Legoria and was quite possibly the most exclusive in the civilized world.

It was well stocked on knowledge, and very low on oversight. Just being accepted to the college was such a mark of prestige that no chronicler or arcane master would question you. Let alone question your knowledge.

This made it the ideal choice above all others for her. No one would even be concerned with her reading basic and intermediate magic textbooks, they would assume it was part of the grand calculus that came with the position.

It was the absolute perfect plan.

In theory…

In practice, there were several flaws that she only realized once she arrived.

One of the many flaws she found because of her current situation.

She sat in a lavishly decorated room. There was a roaring fireplace in the corner of the room with a dedicated heath keeper constantly stoking the flames and adding more as needed. In the room were no less than three maids, two butlers, and a guard. All standing stock still waiting for a single command so that they might exercise their expertise. This was to be her future home.

When she agreed to this arrangement, she wasn’t aware to how ridiculously overdone everything would be. She heard “College” and thought “Dorm”, not “Royal housing”. But that is where she found herself so she needed to make due.

Another thing.

There were four other students besides herself. As she understood it, there were 3 nobles, and the son of a powerful merchant. It was still before the introduction event that the college had planned, which she also didn’t know about, so she hadn’t met them personally yet. But if her room was the average, then they would likely be the highest of high society.

Absentmindedly, Andromeda quietly whispered to herself that she was thirsty. In a moment there was a side table set in front of her chair, a pitched of ice cold water and a filled glass in front of her.

Though she was surprised, she took a drink of the glass and set it back down on the table. Within a heartbeat, she was being asked by the butler if it was to her taste, if she would prefer a different lemon be used, or if it was too cold. She said it was fine and as soon as she did the butler returned to his place next to the other and returned to silence.

She was afraid that took too deep a breath someone would crawl out of the walls with lavender just so her breath was more pleasant.

All of this? This was the first of her problems, this was too much.

While this would soon be her room, it was currently decorated as a sitting room, each student was assigned one to wait for the introductions.

Before she left, Ferdinand informed her of the general situation she would encounter. He either forgot to mention the particulars, or elected to not bring them up, but he did give her the gist.

She would arrive in the city obscured from the public, Reached the college she would be spirited from the streets inside, then brought to meet the most incredibly opulent version of a quartermaster that ever did exist. From there she would directed to a waiting room (where she was now) in preparation for the introduction event. Then when it was finally ready, she would be brought to a secret room where the four other students and herself would meet and greet. Once that was done, they would return to to their rooms and be allowed to properly settle in.

It was done like this because the college’s attendance was a closely guarded secret. The members of the college were considered to be the best and brightest. It would be trivially easy to cripple the continued development of the country if you had a convenient list of who got the incredibly exclusive college education.

That meant, however, that Andromeda had quite literally not seen a single bit of either the city, or the college except for this room, from the moment she entered the city limits. Spatially, she was completely lost. It didn’t help that she was stuck in a room with no windows.

If it was just these problems, she wouldn’t be all that bothered. After all it wasn’t like she was in a really stressful situation even if it wasn’t her preference. Waiting patiently in a comfortable chair with several people on call to her every need was nice no matter how out of place it felt.

But that was the thing, there was even more issues. To understand why, there was a bit of backstory required.

Back in Salsi, she accepted the offer from from Ferdinand. But there was a period of several days where she had to stay in town while the arrangements were being put in place.

At first it was fine, she just had to lounge around a high-end inn for a few days while paperwork was being done, but she was given a simple request to not use any magic, not even practicing her flow. This was because she couldn’t draw her attention to herself. She agreed, because of course, why wouldn’t she?

After a few days noticed something happening. A faint feeling of unwellness was descending on her. Her stomach soured and she lost most of her appetite, it started getting harder to fall asleep at night, and her mood was shaky to say the least.

It continued once the paperwork was done, she couldn’t draw attention to herself as she traveled to Trevias either. That meant she needed to continue avoiding magic, because it wasn’t difficult at all to track a person using magic, and if it was noticed that she was entering the city and the college after leaving from Salsi then it would be extremely simple to discover her identity.

That was not something that could be allowed to happen.

It took several hours by carriage to Trevias. Sitting idly like she had to in the cart only made the situation worse. The unwellness took a step beyond and manifested into a very slight pain in her chest.

This feeling was all to familiar to her. It was what she felt when she was in King’s Grove. When she was laying on a table, dying, because her own body was attacking her.

This had been the longest stretch of time between her using using magic. Up until now she had been using it multiple times a day, and on increasingly bigger subjects every time.

Before she left, she had reached a point where anything smaller than she was could be mended in nearly an instant. She could break a stick over her knee and mend it just as quickly. Anything bigger took exponentially more time. The largest thing she ever mended to this point (not including Milo’s leg) was an entire barn wall, and that took her several minutes.

This made her realize what was wrong with her. The mana inside of her was still killing her, but she was using it so quickly until now that it wasn’t in enough supply to start hurting, this is why she was surviving with just the lesser ring that Rhys had given her even after the necklace broke.

When she realized this, it had been 4 days since she had used magic.

It was now the morning of the next day, she had barely any sleep, and she had several more hours before she could use magic again. That was because there was ALSO a rule here against using magic, but only if you’re a non-student, and because the introductions were the official starting point for membership, that meant she needed to wait even longer.

She was sitting here in this closed off room, surrounded by several people she didn’t know, unable to get a sense of direction, with a pain in her chest that kept getting worse.

So yeah, you could say that she wasn’t doing too hot right now.

In an attempt to distract herself, she asked for her bag to be brought to her. It was placed in her hand and she fished out the first book that her hand landed on.

“Unstable Flows – The Manipulation of Natural Progress” by Emanual Del-Intani

This was one of the more advanced books she was going to start on before this whole situation got started back with the man at the farm. It was framed as a good next step. There was no time like the present so she opened it to the first page.

-----

The enterprising mage will be taught early that all mana flows from one place to another. It does indeed flow like water, but water is known for more than just its flow, it can be frozen, evaporated, and made stagnant as well, with all the implications that meant.

While it is important to always know the flow, influencing the flow was nearly as important. Certain simple disciplines like Divination, Mending, and Arcanism can work perfectly well without manipulating the flow, but other disciplines like Elemental Magic and Purification are predicated on manipulation of natural flows.

Each of the four manipulations, called “Reflexes”, change the flows in different ways.

The first of the reflexes is the analogy to freezing. This reflex is called “Refutei”.

Refutei is the act of stopping a flow in its tracks. In a sense you are freezing the flow all together. While this may seem like a strange thing to do, it has interesting effects on the flow and how it interacts with the world. Frozen flows are slowed to such a point that every moment it spends in the same place it’s interacting with the same material over and over.

When magic is used with frozen flows, it cause the intended effects to slow as well. Some modern magi have taken to calling this an “Over Time” effect, which while technically accurate, is not complete enough to cover the full breadth of its application. While in most cases it does indeed slow the effect of magic down to a duration over time, it can just easily apply a delayed reaction to a technique. Such as only activating after a few moments, this is important as some more advanced rituals need very specific timing to properly work.

The most basic form of magic that utilizes this principle is the previously mentioned “Purification”. Purification as a form relies on freezing the entire flow of a given subject, then slowly unfreezing it to find foreign substances. It does this by finding where things are flowing slower than normal, these pockets of slowness even among the slowed flow are almost exclusively impurities.

Once this information is gathered, the user is able to either remove or modify the foreign substance. Common applications for this is nullifying poison and sanitizing water.

While these are the most common applications, most forms of magic have subtle differences when working with frozen flows. A common example would be the closely related art of mending. Mending using a frozen flow causes the subject to instead repair over a period of time, even after the focus of the user is broken. Depending on how frozen the flow is, the rate of repair will slow, but the duration of the repair will rise.

If a subject would take a minute to repair with a normal flow, an almost entirely frozen flow would take hours to fully repair, but that same repairing effect would continue for days even after the repairs are complete.

-----

Andromeda was startled from her reading by one of the maids gently tapping her shoulder.

“The introductions will be happening soon milady, are there any preparations you would like to make?” She said. Andromeda blinked.

It felt like she only just picked the book up a few minutes ago. Had it already been a few hours? She looked up and saw that the too butlers and the guard had left the room, leaving just her and the maids.

“Not really, how long will it be until the introductions?” Andromeda asked.

“They will be held in exactly one hour Milady.” The maid said. Andromeda wanted to nip this “Milady” stuff in the bud earlier, but the staff assigned to her flatly refused. Saying that it was a sign of respect they wouldn’t disregard. So she just let them do a they wanted.

She got up and took another drink of the water she forgot about till now and stretched. She was still hurting, tired, and deeply uncomfortable, but the book took her mind off of all that long enough to give her a chance to force her way through the introductions.

Over the better part of the next hour, the maids helped make her look as presentable as they could without dressing her themselves. They untangled and straightened her hair, cleaned and pressed her most presentable clothes, and one even went as far as to fix the hem on her hood so that it wouldn’t stress and break more than it already had.

Once it was over, one maid went to the hall to gather the guards who would be her escort.

The now three guards, three maids, and the two butlers from before all paced behind her as she walked through the halls, the guards gave her instructions on how to navigate the twisting halls and how to reach her destination. After descending literally four floors, she was brought before two giant doors that split in the center. Calling them doors even felt like a disservice, they felt like the flood gates to a massive dam, holding back an entire ocean.

Two guards broke away from the group and pushed the two doors open, Andromeda was ushered through them and into wide open hall. Inside was a large crowd of people, men and women dressed in finery. Brilliant ball gowns and decorated coats from wall to wall.

She suddenly felt very under dressed, the room went dead silent when she entered. Every pair of eyes was set on her, scrutinizing every detail of her from head to toe. From the looks they gave her when they turned away, some were left wanting.

“Ah, Ms. Noelle, It’s a pleasure to finally have you join us.” A woman said walking toward her said. From the way she said that it seemed like she was in charge here.

“Glad to be here.” Andromeda said.

“I hope you found your sitting arrangements to your standards. Some students find it hard adjusting to such basic quarters, but we do our best.” The woman said.

“It was… Lovely.” Andromeda said. The woman laughed quietly and bowed.

“Apologies, I had neglected to introduce myself. I am High Master Evelin. I’m am in charge of festivities today while Headmaster Plact is recovering.” Evelin said. Recovering?

Why did she emphasize it like that?

“I see, I hope he has a quick recovery.” Andromeda said. When she said that, the blood drained from Evelin’s face.

“We all hope so, his well being is of the highest concern. Be assured that he is receiving the absolute best care available to us here at the college.” Evelin said.

Something was off about how this woman was talking. Not only this woman avoiding her gaze, she was placing emphasis on certain words. She seemed uncomfortable just talking to Andromeda.

“That’s good at least.” Andromeda said.

Evelin turned around and addressed the crowd.

“Welcome, one and all, to the College of Cylas! Tonight, we introduce five new students to our ranks. Each and every one had come to us to learn our ways and expand on them, this is the tradition of our college, for all 359 classes before them, and hopefully for every one to follow them. Come! Enjoy the food, find new friends among old and new classes alike, and don’t forget to give your sagely words of advice to our new blood. Just as one you were given by your predecessors.” She said.

With that, everyone held a glass aloft and cheered, then the room erupted into a raucous hum of activity. With every one finding something to do, ever person finding a partner to enjoy the night with.

That included Andromeda.

She was swarmed by people, a terrifying parallel to what happened Salsi transpired when she was bombarded by questions.

“Where did you practice until now?”

“What disciplines do you find the most enthralling?”

“Do you have any opinion on the state of affairs in the capital?”

They all asked over and over. Andromeda could feel the pain in her chest getting worse, but she had to push through until she was given permission to leave.

“Who was your teacher?”

“Do you have any interests outside of magic?”

“Who are your favorite philosophers?”

She tried her best to answer where she could, but she either lacked enough knowledge and experience to answer, or another question was heaped on her before she could answer the first

When she originally heard about the introductions, she wasn’t expecting to be coming to a ball, she was more expecting a small tea party or something. This was NOT something she was capable of pushing through.

Then the room became silent. Pure Silence.

Everyone around her stopped in their tracks and all turned toward the same point, then they spread apart and let the subject of their attention pass through.

It was a man, a few years older than her, his hair was gray and his face was serious. Though the words out of his mouth were technically polite, the way he said it felt like each letter was drenched in venom. Whoever he was, he was not pleased about her presence. Which made it weird that he approached her.

“Hello, I don’t believe we have been introduced before. Who are you.” He said. Right after he did, the sound in the room returned and everyone was faintly confused about what happened.

“Andromeda, what about you?” Andromeda said. The response seemed to catch the man off guard, but he recovered just as quickly and returned a snide smile.

“Grant Varloe, son of Count Gregerous Varloe. I wouldn’t be surprised that a country yokel would not know who I am.” He said.

This was an obvious bait. If it was made clear to her that only royals and the important were allowed in, then he would be told the same besides herself. He’s trying to establish dominance.

“Quick to assume I’m a yokel aint ya? Does a silver spoon give you telepathy too or are you just special?” She said. The quickest way to put this kind of behavior down was to turn their own tricks back on them. From the way that he scoffed, she could tell that she pushed a button.

“Telepathy? Hardly. Even a blind man could tell that you clearly do not belong here. So why do you sully our presence with yours?” He said. Really pushed a button. Going for the low blow like that meant he wasn’t expecting such a comeback. Luckily, she had a trump card.

“Only a blind man? Is your opinion of High Magister Ferdinand so low that you think he’s less than a blind man. Not to say a blind man can’t have some sense, seeing as how you have none.” Andromeda said. Arguments like this were something she was very well acquainted with, the art of a strong comeback is something you don’t forget no matter where you go.

In situations like this, there are really only two ways it can go down.

The first is that they will either back down, understanding that things can’t go farther without causing problems for themselves. The second was-

Grant swung wide and slapped Andromeda, full strength with such force that she was left seeing white.

…

The second was violence.

“Master Grant!” A man yelled from the crowd.

Andromeda steadied herself. She took a moment to figure out if she was still standing or not, the pain radiated from her cheek and spread to the rest of her body as flared old pain.

Grant bent down slightly and leaned in close to her.

“I will not be spoken to in such a way. Know your place.” He said.

The first thing you will be taught when learning to defend yourself is that your attacker will show you no respect.

Andromeda swung around and put her elbow into Grant’s conveniently close stomach. He yelps as the sound of the wind being knocked out if him. He stumbled backward trying to catch his breath.

The second is that your life is more important than whatever your opponent might consider “honorable”.

Andromeda stepped forward and delivered a punch to to Grant’s neck. He gripped his throat and stumbled back even farther, his eyes watered and he gasped for air.

The third is that you must eliminate the threat as quickly as possible. It’s not self defense if you prolong it.

Andromeda spun around again and swept his feet out from under him. Sending him falling to the ground with a harsh bounce.

The last thing you will learn, is that you never choose violence. You meet it, and you end it.