Chương 65: Chapter 66 - The First Week

By the time the final day before the weekend arrived, waking before sunrise, putting on his black Academy robes, and joining the stream of half-asleep students heading toward the Palace had already begun to feel strangely routine. The classes were useful, though not always in the ways Arien had expected. Years of experimentation had already taken him beyond the first-year curriculum in some areas, but they had also left enormous gaps in his knowledge.

Arien had learned magic by finding something interesting, poking at it until it reacted, and then working backward toward an explanation. The Academy started with the other way. Everything had names, categories, competing theories, and usually several warnings about what happened when students got it wrong. Arien found himself enjoying that far more than he had expected, even when the subject itself was painfully dull.

Most first-year lessons were taught not by Masters but by their assistants, many of whom looked young enough that Arien suspected they had only recently stopped sitting on the other side of the classroom. Theory of Mana was taught by an especially enthusiastic assistant who apparently considered uncertainty the greatest achievement of magical scholarship.

"There are currently seven major theories concerning the origin of mana," he had announced during their second lesson. Gilly's hand immediately shot up.

"Which one is correct?"

"We don't know," the assistant said, apparently delighted by the fact, after that he then spent most of the lesson explaining why. Arien found that strangely encouraging. He had grown up surrounded by people who treated mana as simply another fact of life. It existed because it existed. If generations of scholars still disagreed about the answer, then there were still questions in this world nobody had solved. Mana Discovery proved considerably less exciting.

Their instructor had begun by unrolling an enormous parchment diagram of the human body covered in hundreds of thin lines.

"By the end of the semester," she informed them, "you will know the names and locations of every major mana channel shown here." Bud looked from the diagram to Arien and back again.

"I've made a terrible mistake." Arien had almost agreed. Still, even that class had proved useful too. He had spent years sensing mana moving through his own body without knowing what half of those pathways were called, where mages believed they began and ended, or which channels were considered especially vulnerable to damage. Aspect Discovery quickly became his favorite class, though Assistant Litwick seemed to supervise it more than teach it.

He was the same young man who had been present during Arien's registration, and Arien had only recently learned that despite working directly beside several Masters, Litwick had not yet earned the title himself. Every lesson began with Litwick arriving with a stack of documents, dropping them on his desk, and activating the artifacts around the room.

"Sit comfortably," he told them during their first lesson.

"Do not manipulate the mana. Do not attempt to force anything. If you feel something unusual, observe it. That is all." Gilly raised her hand.

"What exactly are we supposed to feel?"

"If I tell you, you'll spend the entire lesson looking for exactly that," Litwick said.

"Close your eyes. If you notice something unusual, observe it. Don't try to force anything." Then he returned to his desk, opened the stack of documents he had brought with him, and began working. Arien had assumed there would be more to it. There wasn't. Once the artifacts activated, the corridor noise faded until even the creaking benches and rustling robes seemed distant. Arien's shoulders gradually relaxed, his breathing slowed, and through Mana Sense he noticed the mana in the room changing as well.

Their first session had been dedicated to Water. Arien opened his Mana Sense and immediately saw the difference. Water-aligned particles were far more abundant than usual. They floated between the benches, gathered around the artifacts, and moved through the room in slow currents that reminded him of sediment suspended beneath the surface of a river. He had never seen an environment so thoroughly saturated with a single Aspect. The next lessons followed much the same pattern.

Every so often, Litwick activated a different set of artifacts while the class sat in silence, eyes closed, everyone doing their best to look relaxed. Judging by the occasional frown, shifting shoulders, and students cracking an eye open to check whether anyone else was doing better, very few of them actually were. The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Arien, on the other hand, began looking forward to those hours.

Each Aspect changed the mana in the room in a different way, filling it with particles he rarely had the chance to observe in such concentration. He watched how they moved, compared one Aspect to another, and tried to connect those differences with whatever sensations the mana produced in him. He had not discovered any new Aspects, but the lessons were fascinating anyway. Several students had fallen asleep during every session so far.

Over the course of only a few days, Arien and the others had fallen into the habit of eating together. Gilly had joined him and Bud after their first day of classes, with Pori and Melli appearing soon afterward. By the third day, nobody bothered arranging anything. They simply ended up at the same table. The other day, during lunch, Gilly had started complaining about the morning's Fire session.

"I thought about everything I could. Campfires, furnaces, candles, burning buildings. Nothing."

"Maybe the Aspect was frightened by your enthusiasm," Arien said. She kicked him beneath the table, and he went back to his food. He hadn't told them what he experienced. There was no reason to. But he was beginning to understand why the Academy expected Aspect Discovery to take months or even years. The artifacts could remove distractions and saturate the room with aligned mana, but they could not discover a student's connection to an Aspect for them. Arien turned to Bud.

"What do you have tomorrow?" Fridays were different from the rest of the week. Instead of following the same timetable as Class 1D, each student had been assigned several courses based on their background, interests, and whatever they had discussed during registration. Bud unfolded his schedule beside his plate and smiled.

"Finally, something useful. Commerce, Accounting, Trade Law, Practical Negotiation. Subjects I actually know something about." Pori leaned over to look at the page.

"You actually sound excited about Accounting."

"I am." Bud folded the schedule again.

"What did they give you?"

"Estate Management and Diplomacy. Apparently the Academy wants my tutors to continue tormenting me from several hundred miles away."

"Maybe they sent instructions ahead," Melli said quietly. Pori gave her a wounded look.

"You're supposed to be on my side." Melli only smiled. Quiet enough that Arien sometimes forgot she was listening, she usually spoke only when she actually had something to add.

"What about you, Melli?" Arien asked.

"Philosophy and Ethics."

"That sounds peaceful," Bud said.

"I hope so." Nobody asked Gilly what she had been assigned. She had already told them several times.

"Do you think they'd let me add lance training to Horsemanship?" she asked suddenly.

"If I'm going to learn to ride properly, I might as well learn how to fight from horseback too." The others exchanged looks and, by silent agreement, decided not to encourage her.

"Apparently, Maserlise has already complained about the dormitory beds," Bud said a moment later. Arien looked up from his plate.

"Why do you know that?" Bud seemed genuinely confused by the question.

"Why wouldn't I?" He had mostly recovered from his fear that everyone except him was already an accomplished mage. The first week had contained enough theory for him to keep up comfortably, and with that particular disaster avoided, he had redirected his energy toward learning everything he could about everyone else. Pori made that considerably harder. The occasional detail suggested that her family was old, wealthy, and far more important than anything she volunteered directly, but she rarely spoke about herself.

Arien still wasn't sure why she preferred eating with them instead of the aristocratic students who already seemed to know her. Gilly had the opposite problem. Her father was a mage, and she seemed determined to compensate for every magical fact he had failed to teach her by questioning anyone who might know more. Between her enthusiasm and Bud's tendency to worry that everyone else was progressing faster, Arien had somehow become responsible for slowing one of them down and reassuring the other.

Their actual experience varied just as much. Arien and Melli were the only two who could manipulate mana with any real competence. Gilly and Pori had only recently assigned Mana Sense, while Bud still looked faintly amazed whenever an exercise worked. Arien found that strangely refreshing. He had spent so many years learning alone that he had almost forgotten what it was like to watch other people discover the same things for the first time.

The next day, Arien was walking alone along one of the gravel paths leading toward the main gate. He had just finished Healing Theory, and the class had been nothing like the others. Every other student had been at least several years older than him, which had earned Arien more than a few curious looks. As the instructor explained, most students did not begin formal Healing studies until they could manipulate mana reliably, understood basic anatomy, and had developed at least a few suitable spells.

Because of his first specialization in the Aspect of Life, Arien was an exception. While the others would not enter the Infirmary until the following semester, he was scheduled to begin practical work immediately. Apparently, there was little point in making someone capable of directly sensing and influencing injuries wait half a year simply because the curriculum had been designed around students without that advantage. The rest of the class would have to wait.

As their instructor put it, until they understood enough anatomy and healing magic to avoid "wandering uselessly among the patients". Arien had tried not to look too pleased. Now, with his morning classes finished, he followed the path toward the edge of campus. The Infirmary stood near the main gate, its upper floor already visible above the surrounding buildings. Arien adjusted the strap of his bag and quickened his pace. Today, he would finally meet the person responsible for guiding his progress at the Academy.

Lamaral Hetwin. One of the finest Healers in Wyndor, and, if even half the stories were true, a once-in-a-century talent in Life magic.