Chương 68: Chapter 69 - Study Group

A month into the semester, Arien's dorm room had somehow stopped belonging to just him and Bud. On the final afternoon of the weekend, five people had managed to squeeze themselves into a space designed for two. Pori sat cross-legged near the foot of Arien's bed with several sheets of notes spread around her. Bud occupied the chair beside her, leaning over one of them as they argued quietly about magical crystals.

Mel had claimed the remaining stretch of mattress, a ceramic bowl balanced carefully in her lap while a sphere of water trembled above one palm. Gilly had found no room at all and sat on the floor beside Arien's desk, watching the small flame above his hand with such concentration that he was beginning to wonder whether blinking had become optional for her. Arien tried to ignore all of them. The flame flickered as he adjusted the flow of mana feeding it.

He steadied it, reached for the half-finished homework beside his elbow, and immediately lost the thread of what he had been reading when Bud spoke again.

"No, that makes no sense. A second-rank Fire crystal doesn't lose value at the same rate as Water."

"I didn't say value," Pori replied.

"I said mana retention."

"They're related."

"Not in the way you're using them." Arien stared at his notes for several seconds before quietly giving up. Their Theory of Mana assignment concerned the rate at which magical crystals lost stored mana depending on both their rank and the Aspect involved. It had sounded fascinating when the instructor introduced it.

Unfortunately, Bud and Pori had somehow turned a first-year essay into a discussion involving market fluctuations, mining regions, storage methods, and three separate factors Arien was fairly certain had never appeared in their textbook. Pori knowing more than the lesson required was hardly surprising. Her family had provided tutors for most of her childhood. Bud, however, was turning out to know far more about magical commerce than Arien had expected.

He glanced toward his roommate just as the boy began explaining why merchants paid considerably more for certain crystals even when their nominal capacity was almost identical. Apparently years of being prepared for the family business had left him with far more specialized knowledge than Arien had realized. Another splash came from the bed. Mel grimaced as most of the water fell back into the bowl and the rest landed on Arien's blanket. He decided to pretend he hadn't noticed.

She had been practicing the same exercise for nearly half an hour, repeatedly stretching the floating sphere into crude shapes before losing control and starting again. Gilly kept shifting her attention between Mel's water and Arien's flame, apparently unwilling to miss either. Of everyone in their little group, she was handling her lack of an Aspect the worst.

Two students from their class had discovered their first Aspects during the previous week, and the mood among everyone still waiting had changed almost overnight. Conversations that had once revolved around classes and teachers increasingly became comparisons of progress. Who could sense mana more clearly? Who had felt something during Aspect Discovery? Who was falling behind? A few nights earlier, Arien had woken to quiet, uneven breathing from the other bed. He had kept his eyes closed and said nothing.

He still wasn't entirely certain Bud had been crying, but the boy's red eyes the following morning had made pretending otherwise difficult. It was easy to forget how young the first-years actually were. Many had spent years preparing for the Academy, and some already spoke about rankings and future Professions with the seriousness of adults despite being only eight, nine, or ten.

Erador's months were thirty-five days long, with an additional day added every five years, but the difference was not large enough to make their ages feel meaningfully different from the ones Arien remembered from Earth. That was why he had invited Bud to watch him practice Fire in the first place. The idea had seemed harmless enough: Bud could train Mana Sense while being exposed to Fire-aligned mana, hopefully improving his chances of discovering the Aspect himself.

His roommate had reacted as though Arien had offered him a legendary artifact and promised to repay the favor a hundredfold. Arien should have asked for silence instead. Within several days, Gilly had learned about their sessions, and Pori and Mel appeared not long afterward, offended that nobody had invited them. Arien let them in, and before long everyone, including Bud, had silently decided that his room was their regular meeting place.

The flame above Arien's palm wavered as a small pulse of mana brushed against it.

"Gilly."

"I only wanted to check something."

"You could have asked first."

"I wanted to see if you'd notice." He sighed and returned his attention to the spell. He probably should have put an end to the gatherings weeks ago. They were terrible for focused practice. Someone was always talking, asking questions, spilling something, or dragging him into a conversation he had been deliberately trying to ignore. And yet he never actually told them to leave. Part of it was admittedly useful.

Pori and Bud casually discussed things Arien would never have encountered growing up, as Gilly liked to describe it,"far away from civilization." The others had quickly adopted the phrase for seemingly every settlement outside Wayhold. Mostly, though, he simply enjoyed having them here. He had spent years surrounded by people he cared about, but to his family he had always been the unusually serious younger brother who asked strange questions and disappeared for hours to experiment with magic.

He could hardly have discussed mana or spellcraft with his sisters. Here, he was simply Arien. The provincial boy who knew far too little about ordinary mage society, and apparently owned the room everyone had decided to invade.

"Arien, do you think there'll be separate classes next semester for people who have already discovered specific Aspects?" Pori's question pulled him away from the flame. Arien blinked and looked toward the bed. At some point, the discussion between her and Bud had apparently moved on from magical crystals entirely.

"When did we start talking about next semester?" Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

"About five minutes ago," Bud said.

"Ah." Gilly snorted. Arien shifted his attention back to the flame hovering above his palm.

"Probably not. Even if everyone discovers an Aspect by then, I'd expect them to keep focusing on Mana Manipulation first. There isn't much point teaching advanced magic if half the class can barely control mana yet."

"Says the person who can keep Fire floating over his hand for hours," Gilly muttered. The little flame reflected in her eyes as she stared at it from her place on the floor.

"Trust me, it took countless hours of practice to get this far, and it's still just a tiny flame."

"My father says foundations are the most important part of learning magic," she said.

"Once your control is good enough, every spell afterward becomes easier."

"That sounds about right." Gilly's mouth tightened.

"Not much use having good foundations when I don't even have an Aspect." From beside Pori, Bud gave a humorless laugh.

"At least you can manipulate mana. I only managed to assign Mana Sense last week." Arien suppressed a sigh. The same argument had surfaced in one form or another almost every time they gathered recently. Gilly envied Mel because she had discovered Water. Bud envied Gilly because she could already manipulate mana. Mel seemed convinced everyone else was progressing faster than she was despite being the one with an Aspect. No wonder Arien had kept quiet about having Life Aspect.

He could only imagine Gilly's reaction if she learned how many he had actually discovered. Before either of them could begin explaining why their particular situation was obviously the worst, Pori spoke up.

"Apparently Prince Cedrick discovered a third Aspect." Gilly's head snapped toward her so quickly that the flame was forgotten.

"Really? What is it? Earth? Death? Lightning? Darkness?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"He hasn't announced it yet. Supposedly he said everyone would see once he assigns it and starts using it in combat." Gilly slumped back against the side of the bed.

"Of course he has three."

"You say that as though he personally did it to annoy you," Pori said.

"He probably did." That earned a quiet laugh from Mel. Arien smiled, then frowned as something occurred to him.

"Is discovering a third Aspect really that unusual?" The others went quiet, and even Bud stopped shuffling his papers. Mel lost control of her water sphere, splashing several drops across Pori's notes. Arien looked between them.

"What?" Gilly was staring at Arien as though he had just asked why people bothered eating, while Pori wiped a drop of water from the parchment with her sleeve and looked at him carefully.

"Arien, how many Aspects do you think an average mage discovers?" He hesitated. Apparently this was another one of those things everyone else had learned before reaching the Academy.

"I didn't think there was a fixed limit. I assumed discovering an Aspect depended mostly on understanding it, with some simply being much harder than others." Gilly buried her face in both hands.

"Idiot."

"Gilly," Pori warned.

"But how can he not know something like this?" Gilly protested, lowering her hands.

"He can keep Fire stable while doing homework, but somehow he doesn't know the first thing everyone learns about Aspects. That's not fair."

"I grew up far away from civilization, remember?" Arien reminded her.

"You're never going to let me forget saying that, are you?"

"Absolutely not." That finally pulled the hint of a smile from her.

"There isn't a hard limit, as far as anyone knows. Most mages discover at least one Aspect eventually. Two is fairly normal. Three is harder, but still realistic for someone talented enough to graduate from the Academy."

"And four?"

"Four is rare. Very rare." Arien stared at the flame above his hand. He had already discovered six. His Trait immediately came to mind. It had always been the most obvious explanation for how strangely easily new Aspects seemed to reveal themselves to him. His knowledge from Earth might help him understand certain forces, and years of obsessively examining mana probably played a part as well, but neither seemed enough to explain the difference on its own.

Still, discovering an Aspect and actually developing it were two very different things. Skill slots were limited, and every Aspect he chose to pursue would compete with other Skills for space, not to mention the time and effort required to improve it. Having six available gave him options, not six paths he could realistically master at once. Even so, if four Aspects were already rare enough to make a mage stand out, six was becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss as simple luck.

He wanted to ask whether anyone had ever studied why discovering additional Aspects became harder, but that question could lead somewhere he wasn't ready to follow in front of the others.

"Arien?" Bud's voice pulled him from his thoughts. Arien looked up and found the others watching him. Gilly pointed at the flame still hovering above his palm.

"You don't even know how rare four Aspects are, but you can do that while barely paying attention."

"I practiced a lot."

"That doesn't make it less annoying."

"Gilly, will you give it a rest?" Pori said. The sharpness in her voice caught Gilly off guard.

"What?"

"You keep comparing yourself to everyone." Pori set the rescued essay aside.

"To Arien. To Mel. To whoever discovered an Aspect in class that week. It isn't helping you, and you're making everyone else nervous too."

"I'm not making anyone nervous." Pori glanced toward Mel, and Gilly followed her gaze. Mel lowered her eyes to the bowl in her lap.

"Mel?" She shifted uncomfortably.

"Pori..." Pori sighed.

"Mel has been practicing for hours every day and still thinks she's terrible because you keep talking as though anyone who isn't progressing as quickly as Arien is falling behind."

"I never said that."

"Not exactly. But you say you're failing, and you're already ahead of most of the class in Mana Manipulation. What do you think Mel hears when she's struggling with something you can already do?" Gilly looked toward the bowl in Mel's lap. The water sphere had reformed above it, but it trembled badly now.

"I didn't mean it like that."

"I know." Pori's voice softened.

"That's why I'm telling you." Pori was quiet for a moment.

"The other day during Aspect Discovery, I thought I felt something." Everyone looked at her. Gilly straightened.

"You did?"

"I think so. Only for a second." Pori began folding the corner of one of her papers between her fingers.

"I wanted to tell you afterward, but then you spent half of lunch complaining about how everyone else seemed to be getting closer to an Aspect before you, and I thought telling you would just make things worse." Gilly's face fell.

"Oh." Bud leaned forward.

"That's wonderful, Pori." There was no envy in his voice at all. Pori gave him a small smile.

"Thank you." Gilly pulled her knees closer.

"I didn't know. I'm sorry. It's just... all of this is so hard."

"I know," Pori said.

"But it's hard for everyone." She shifted closer and put an arm around her. After a moment, Gilly leaned against her. Arien searched for something useful to say and came up empty. For all his extra years and experience, Arien still had no idea what to say to a crying nine-year-old. Fortunately, Bud came to his rescue.

"Hey," he said suddenly.

"Remember Felix discovering Water?" Gilly sniffed and looked up. Bud sat straighter, closed his eyes dramatically, and raised both hands.

"I've got it!" he announced in a remarkably convincing imitation of their classmate's higher-pitched voice.

"I can feel Water!" Nobody reacted at first, and Arien briefly wondered whether Bud had badly misjudged the moment. Then Mel snorted, Pori failed to suppress a smile, and even Gilly eventually started laughing through the remains of her tears. The others quickly followed. The incident had happened during Mana Sense practice. Felix had closed his eyes, concentrated with every ounce of focus he possessed, and suddenly shouted that he could feel Water mana surrounding his arm.

For several glorious seconds, half the class had believed him. Then someone noticed that his robe sleeve had fallen into a puddle spilled across the desk beside him. That, in turn, led to stories about other incidents from their class, and within minutes the earlier tension had dissolved completely. A knock at the door cut through the noise. The room quieted, and when it came again, Arien frowned. Will had stopped knocking weeks ago.