I pretended to ignore Professor Kaban. He wandered back to the windows after only a moment. I watched him through the corner of my eye. I got the sense he was looking for something, so I wandered over to have a look myself.

And I was too small to see out the windows. And there were no window sills to speak of. Screw it, I decided, and tried to hop up on the half inch ledge in front of the window. My success was laughably non-existent.

Kaban sure thought it was funny. Bastard.

I was studying the windows and trying to figure out the best spot to try again when Kaban did something and the windows all darkened.

"That's enough for today, I think. Let's get you out of here before you cause real trouble."

He walked over to where the floor ended and open space began. Off that ledge was where the ground floor was a bajillion steps down. I quashed the impulse to push him. I may be a cat, but I'm not evil. Heh. That sounded like an oxymoron.

Kaban cast a spell and I could faintly see a translucent platform, very similar to the elevating platforms in other towers. Then he looked at me. "I'm not going to make you get on, but if you don't want to walk down all those steps, I suggest you come on over."

Well shit. I didn't actually want to leave yet. I took my time looking around, but there wasn't a whole lot to see. Then I looked up at the ceiling.

The tower kept going. There were no stairs, but the tower continued up for quite another long ways.

"Not today, little one. If your buddy earns access, I'll show you what's up there. For now, it's time to go."

I heaved a dramatic sigh, and slunk slowly to the platform, dragging my paws. The Professor chuckled.

Down on the main floor, which we reached annoyingly quickly considering how much effort went into going up, Professor Kaban held the door open for me and waited. I walked to the door and sat on the threshold. I didn't really want to leave yet.

"Uh-ah. Out, little one. Don't think I won't boot your butt."

Bastard. I left.

It was late afternoon and I still had plenty of time on my magic ring. What did I want to do now?

I headed off towards Seth, figuring I'd check to see if he was doing anything interesting first. I got to the grassy corner where the boys were 'training'. Seth was panting and lying on his back. Booth and Owen were play fighting. Or more accurately, Booth was running away and Owen was trying to hit him. Owen needed to learn to pick his feet up because Booth was pretty quick.

This little corner was honestly a nice and secluded space, on the far side of the coliseum and near a row of buildings I wasn't familiar with. I decided I'd become familiar with them.

I trotted across the grassy corner, across Seth's face, and continued on my way to my new playground.

"Ack! Hey!" And then a big sigh from Seth. "Thanks for checking in, Mau."

I spent the rest of the day exploring the campus. I discovered a bunch of empty buildings, A building that looked like teacher housing, and lots of other things you'd expect to see at a school.

The only really interesting thing I found was in one of the empty buildings. It was actually a tunnel that fed out into the city and let out in the basement of another building. Unless I missed my guess, this was pretty darn close to where Isolde's magic basement was. That could be handy.

I buzzed by Seth at dinner time, but again, didn't stick around. I swung by just long enough to steal a chicken leg from his plate. I was out most of the night too.

That made me sleepy during class. I stayed up for the lecture though. Well, I tried to. We were still covering the Copy Spell. About a third of the class still didn't have it down, including Owen. According to Professor Laur, they'd be moving on to a new spell next week. So, time to get it or miss it. I couldn't cast it at all. I did have it memorized though.

Later in Combat Class they started working on dodging. Professor Mick's training methods struck me as a bit sus, but hey. At least the kids were getting practice.

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None of what he was teaching was stuff I could use anyway. All the mana balls the kids were practicing dodging flew right over my head. No points for tagging a familiar. So I caught up on my beauty sleep.

I was gonna need to find these kids an actual trainer. Especially since Owen had expressed interest in sword work. I was a bit surprised that I didn't see much of the girls doing any training. Then again, they probably knew better than to flounder around like this. Maybe tomorrow I'd tail them and find out what they were up to.

It was late evening when Seth and Owen reserved one of the private training rooms above the dining hall. Once inside Seth dropped his bag in the corner and plunked down cross legged with his back leaning against the wall.

“Class. Homework. Spell practice. Your lessons. Training. There’s just not enough hours in a day," Seth complained. "Especially since you said we should add a run in every morning."

Seth expects me to go with them in the morning. I expect Seth to carry me. To be fair, I might do the run on occasion, but if I'm tired? Nope! Damn, but I hope I don't get too big too quick. How fast do cats grow anyway?

"A run every morning will be good for all of us," Owen said as he pulled his books out and laid them on the desk. "I find it peaceful. I like hearing the birds all wake up."

I stared at Owen in distaste. Figures. A morning person.

"Do you want to work on the Copy spell some more, or do you want to practice reading?" Seth asked. "There was also a spell in your cantrip book I wanted to try to learn."

"Oh, yeah. I wanted to see if the cantrips are numbered for Selendrith." Owen pulled out the book. "I didn't ask, seeing as everyone else already seemed to know, but what's the Ten Thousand?"

Oh, what's this? Did I miss juicy tidbits while I was off exploring? I flicked my ear in 'tell me more'.

Seth described the ten thousand spells being gifted by a forgotten source in ancient times. I bet this was before the Sundering that Professor Kaban was talking about. I had only a passing interest in ancient history, except when it came to old and valuable things. Knowledge that helped you appraise your treasures was worth knowing.

If all spells were gifted to humans by magic spell fairies and no one actually understood how they worked, then I found the weird teaching methods here suddenly making sense. Nobody thought too much into the spells because they were thought to exist as whole things. They weren't made or created by any means known to humans. I imagine some people tried to reverse engineer some spells, but if the majority just accepted that structured spells don't change, and there are only so many structured forms, then you only need to remember what they are. And honestly, ten thousand was quite a lot.

Although, that could depend on how specific they got with the variants.

"Go ahead and read the spell titles out loud and pick one you like. Maybe practicing something else will help with mastering Copy."

"Yeah, okay." Owen struggled through the names. "Soften Stone. Breeze."

"We did Breeze in the Wind Tower the first week. I thought that was an easy one," Seth said.

Owen hummed noncommittally. "Spark. Moonlet, no Moonleet?"

"Moonlight," Seth corrected. "That sounds like a light spell."

Owen nodded. "Chill. Detect Mana."

"That's the one I wanted to learn," Seth said and stood up. "We could really use that one right now. We can use it to find the thickest mana we can find up at the mana well."

"Yeah, okay. We can both do it. Should I try it first, or do you think you should have first go?" Owen asked.

"If you don't mind, I would like to try. I had played around with this one a bit before and I want to see if I've got it." Seth took the book and set it on the floor so he could use both hands to cast.

I watched him mutter the incantation a few times, and practice the sigils. I memorized all of it. One day I'd be able to do this too, dammit.

"All right, so for this one it says to focus on feeling the density of the mana. I guess that means you want to feel how deep it is? Like the pressure when you're swimming and you dive down deep?" Seth said.

"Feeling the density?" Owen asked. "Isn't it just doing what the spell says and knowing where the mana is?"

"Well, mana is everywhere so if you just want to know if it's there, you'll always get a yes. The intent here is to get an idea of just how much mana there is."

"Intent is what Professor Laur said I was doing wrong."

"All right, how can I explain this. Professor Laur explained it as magic does not decide what will happen. Your intent during the casting of every spell will affect the outcome of the spell. If you are not perfectly clear in what you want to happen, then misfires and backlashes might happen. You have to know precisely what the spell is going to do, and you have to intend for that thing to happen when you cast the spell."

I must have missed that bit during class. So how you want a spell to work, even in structured magic, has a big effect on the outcome. The main differences between structured and unstructured was what happened when you went off script. Structured magic wouldn't cooperate. Unstructured would. But unstructured became really hard to do if you didn't have the right elemental or specific talent for what you wanted. It was making sense. As much as magic could make sense.

Seth practiced it a few times, and pretty quickly got the spell right. Owen gave it a go. I guess backlashes on these minor spells were no big deal. No ink everywhere. No pages on fire. I was kinda disappointed. My whiskers did tingle a fair bit, so I was guessing the backlash was mana related.

"I'm going to need to find stuff with mana in it to really practice this," Seth said. He'd cast it on the air in the room, on the books they had, and on his amulet. He was pretty impressed with the results from the amulet.

When the frosted walls turned clear, Owen picked his book up off the floor and shoved it in his bag.