Ivar ended the lesson after only an hour or two, but Idelle (along with a few other particularly passionate peers) continued to run through the drills on her own even after he left. Somehow, even as her arms had grown a little sore and tired, the exertion kept her head clear. So much had happened all at once recently, after the weeks lost and on the road, and she felt a slight headache lurking at the back of her head that seemed to worsen whenever she tried to think through it all.

So she didn’t. Instead, she let her attention fix on her sword, on the imaginary half-seen figures she cut and thrust at. It was meditative, in a way. Her body begin to feel like it was moving on its own; like she was watching it through someone else’s eyes as it flowed from step to step.

Occasionally she would see a small change that she could make, and her foot would step a little further out or the tip of her blade rise slightly higher before falling. The motions were still simple combinations of the six steps and basic strikes she’d been shown, but in her detached state of mind she realized just how much cleaner and smoother Ivar’s motions had been compared to hers.

Something about the man scared her a little. He seemed almost preternaturally fast. He’d occasionally struck at others in the class to demonstrate some detail or other, and no matter how fast they reacted his blade always seemed to arrive just barely in time. She wondered if there was some trick to it, or if he was just that good.

Slice, and thrust. Thrust, and slice.

So it continued.

At some point, a familiar tall blonde figure walked up to her, stopping a few meters away. She ignored them.

Chop, thrust, and slice. Slice, and chop.

“I didn’t know you knew how to use a sword.” Cecilia finally spoke, breaking her out of her reverie. She was wearing a dress today, woven of a smooth fabric that fell from a high waist in sweeping layers of light blue. It left her shoulders bare, and Idelle would have thought them at risk of sunburn if not for the broad hat the princess wore. And she looked like a proper princess like this. Idelle felt unreasonably annoyed at her for it.

She shrugged in answer to the question. “I didn’t either.” She purposefully ignored the delicately raised eyebrow that served as a response to her statement. Cecilia grinned at her.

“Well, if you desire to keep practicing further, I suppose we could postpone our magic lessons for now…”

Idelle narrowed her eyes. “No, no it’s quite all right, I couldn’t bear to make a princess wait, I’m sure.”

The grin grew broader. “Well, in that case, it would be my pleasure to have you attend to me. Right this way.”

Idelle had no comeback to that, and somewhat begrudgingly sheathed her sword and fell in beside the taller girl. As they got to the bottom of the hill, a thought occurred to her. “Do you have to talk like that? It’s so stifling somehow…”

“Nope, not at all. It’s not like anyone else is around to hear me~ I’m just doing it to mess with you. Probably.”

Idelle rubbed her temples. Her headache was coming back. “Can you not right now? I’m really not in the mood.”

“I’ll stop, just for you, how’s that?”

“Fine.” Idelle decided to leave it at that rather than continue another losing conversation with the incorrigible girl. How did you even lose a conversation? Ugh.

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They walked a little further in silence before she spoke up again. “Where are we headed? Is it far?”

“Wyrlet’s library - it’s not too far. The books won’t be super helpful for this, but I find the atmosphere is a great one for practicing magic.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s quiet and contemplative. Very little to distract me.”

Idelle hesitated. She really didn’t feel in a very contemplative mood. “And that’s a good thing?”

“Yep. How much do you know about magic?”

“Honestly? Nothing, really.”

“Hmmm…” Cecilia considered for a moment. “How then, would you define magic if I asked you what it was?”

Idelle thought about it. What was magic? People throwing fireballs or lightning, summoning light, or stopping wounds. What did those things have in common, really? “I guess, it’s maybe the ability to control things? Like fire, light, those kinds of things?”

“Pretty good answer. And certainly true for people. What about magic beasts? Why do we call them magic as well?”

“Huh.” She’d never really considered the point. “I never really thought about it.”

Cecilia shrugged. “Some scholars might say that you were right calling magic control and that we should use a different word for them. But the more common view is something like this: Magic is the thing, some substance, that permeates the world and is acted upon directly by will.”

Idelle blinked. “Sorry, could you say that again?”

“Mmh, let me explain in a little more detail. Imagine you wanted to lift a rock. You could just reach out, and pick it up with your hand. The fact that you wanted to lift it wouldn’t directly move the rock, instead, it moves your hand which then moves the rock. But suppose you wanted to lift something intangible? Something conceptual? Something like fire, or light.

You could maybe light a torch, and move that. But magic offers a different way. It’s not really like a hand, because it’s something external to you. But it serves the same role as your hand and the torch. It lets you act directly on the fire, in the same way that you can move your hand to catch a ball without even thinking about it. Does that make sense?”

Idelle nodded. “But what does that have to do with magic beasts, then?”

Cecilia shot her a pleased look. “Good question. The short answer is that we don’t really know. What we do know, is that in places with a lot of magic, places where reaching out to it is easier and our will can do more, we see the creation of magic beasts from their everyday counterparts. The most popular theory is that, without a conscious will of their own, the magic acts as a bridge to the beasts from somewhere else, instead of the other way round.”

Idelle paused as she unraveled the implications of the words. “You mean that someone is controlling them?”

“Someone, or something.”

For the third time that day, Idelle thought back to the wolf. How it had refused to run, even when she had already dealt a likely fatal blow to it. No, the bear too. No normal shy scavenger would have tried to chase her up a tree like that. “That’s terrifying.”

Cecilia met her eyes. “It is. Still, it’s just a theory. All we know is that magic beasts seem to hate conscious beings like humans despite not attacking each other. That, and… You’ve heard of beast waves?”

She nodded. “A tide of thousands or tens of thousands of magic beasts, all attacking at once. The kind of thing that destroys entire countries, like the stories of great floods or volcanos. Retribution from the dragons.” The stories were common knowledge, even for her.

Cecilia coughed. “Well, I don’t know about the last part, but beast waves are real enough. They happen any time too many beasts are cursed in a given area. Something drives them to band together and attack in a mad frenzy.”

She gestured around them. “That’s why this fortress city exists. We cull the beasts every year, but if something were to go wrong, Wyrlet is the baited trap set outside the door. The only thing standing between those beasts and the everyday people of the kingdom. Well. It’s not something you or me need to worry about, in any case.”

Idelle looked at the princess again. Cecilia had an ambiguous half-smile on her freckled face as she looked around her. She remembered what the teenage boy had told her earlier. An initiative to help teach the citizenry to fight, huh? “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

“I usually am. Anyway, the library is just over there. No more boring theory, let me show you how it’s done!” Idelle rolled her eyes but nonetheless found herself smiling back as they walked together over to the building Cecilia had pointed out.