“And now, a new chapter in this thrilling saga: Santino Belnades gets hit by balls.”

My head is shaking, my face hurts and the floor of this room is cold and uncomfortable. I am lying down after being battered with so many balls I lost count at this point, where did she even keep summoning them from? I doubt she had this many tennis balls lying around in her closet! Was she stealing them from somewhere, all with the purpose of beating me up!? She had a mean throwing arm, and it was always to the face, damn it!

I hear her walk beside me, careful not to slip on all these balls. She looks me in the eye and, without missing a beat, she says:

“I’m going for a coffee. After that, we will continue.”

Without even giving her the grace of a response, I simply stare into the ceiling as she leaves. My cheeks, I feel them swelling up and everything. For a moment I feel like crying but I resist, simply taking a few deep breaths as I try to figure out however will I stop this torture from continuing. Then, as I silently suffer on the floor, I hear someone approaching. Thinking it’s the guard coming to berate me for filling the room with tennis balls (even though we both know it wasn’t me who did it), I close my eyes and prepare for the nagging… but instead, I hear another voice. A female voice.

“Your teacher is an ass.”

I open my eyes, seeing the studious lady from before standing close, looking at me while fixing her glasses in place. With a sigh, I simply answer:

“You have no idea.”

“I, uhm, I empathize. My teachers haven’t been exactly merciful…” She looks a bit nervous, insecure of what she’s saying or thinking here. “... I shouldn’t do this. But I have a word of advice for you.” When she feels my intense, intent stare, she sighs and shudders. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“S-Sorry. I am just, well. Appreciative and in pain.” I try to smile a little bit. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah. I haven’t even told you anything yet, so stop that. Now. What was your creative process so far?” She kneels beside me, looking around at the balls scattered through the room.

“My creative… ah! Well, I try to create a panel in front of me. A panel of hard light! And the thing does appear! But I can’t do it fast enough to stop the balls coming for me!” My pout knows no limits.

“That won’t work. You have never seen a panel like that, have you?” The girl muses, while I nod softly. “You can imagine it, probably. But your brain needs a second to visualize it, because you’re untrained.”

With a flick of her wrist, a tiny octagonal panel of greenish light appears floating over the girl’s palm, before it disintegrates in the air. A part of me feels she’s showing off but the rest quickly memorizes the thing’s appearance, trying to burn it in my brain. She nods and says:

“Try to imagine a bubble.”

“A bubble?” I ask, out of reflex.

“I assume you know what that is.” God the sassiness of this bitch!

“I know what a bubble is.” With a snarl, I finally get up. She gets up as well. She’s as tall as me. “I was just wondering, why a bubble?”

“Because you’re familiar with them.” She said, looking at me as if it was obvious. “Don’t try to imagine all the details, let magic fill in the gaps for now. This will make a thin but effective barrier.”

Okay, I can do that. With a slow breath, I imagine myself inside of a bubble as I enunciate once more.

“Rein!”

It takes a moment, which I think is a problem… but I see it right around me, a sphere (or should I say a dome?) made out of tiny greenish octagonal panels, all surrounding me. I look around me in awe, a smile creeping up my lips while the girl crosses her arms and nods, probably prouder on herself than she is on me. With a sigh, I make the bubble disappear and stretch lazily. Alright, I can work with that.

But suddenly, I hear another voice, one I’ve grown all too familiar with.

“Dodge!”

Mustafá is back, when did she enter the Elysium!? With her eyes staring straight at me, she throws a ball at me. The girl jumps out of the way, I flinch and cover my face with my arms, trying to imagine the bubble once again. And it does form! A second too late. The ball passes right through and hits me once again.

“Ow!” I wince, rubbing my arms softly.

“Too slow.” My teacher says, walking over to the girl and nodding to her. “Your idea is good, but her summoning will not be instantaneous until she brands the spell with her instinct of self preservation.”

“So that’s what you’re trying to do. I guess the method makes sense now…” With a nod, the girl accepts it without even thinking about my suffering. Saints damn it all.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“What in the Hells do you mean ‘Branding’?” I walk over to the two, not really happy about any of this.

“She means you have to associate this spell to your feeling of self-preservation. That time, every time you’re in danger, you will instinctively summon the bubble.”

“I would prefer you to create a localized shield, but I guess a bubble is a good start.” Mustafá looked at the girl. “What’s your name.”

“Cecilia… but call me Sou.” She quickly corrected herself. My jaw drops. No, it can’t be. It has to be a coincidence.

But she is a mage, she knows Wohlian, she’s a bit of a bitch…

“...That doesn’t happen to be short for ‘Souseiseki’, right…?” I ask, trembling.

“W-What!?” Her face turns pale. I know how it is to be unmasked IRL (in real life, for the uninitiated), but this is important to me. “How, h-how the fuck— no…” She comes to my same conclusion, covering her face and letting out a frustrated wheeze. “No fucking way…”

“Hi…” I say, covering my face as well.

“Alright! Alright! Alright. I am calm now… I think. Which one of them are you?” Her voice is a whirlwind of emotions, fear, indignation, anger and surprise are the few I can catch.

“Tav…”

“The noob. Of course…” She mumbles under her breath, pulling her hands down slowly. “Okay. L-Let’s pretend none of this happened. I can do that… then you can go to another Elysium.”

“What? But this is my assigned Elysium!” My protesting only seems to be making her more uncomfortable.

“I arrived first and been here for way longer. Scat.” Sou crosses her arms and tries to glare at me again… but honestly, seeing her in person removed the intimidating air around her.

I’m still convinced she can grab me and break me like a twig though, she looks strong.

“Actually, none of that will be necessary at all.” Mustafá intervenes, standing between this girl. and me “I wish to strike a bargain.”

“I mean. I guess you can pay me to just ignore you, that sounds like a good—” The girl was starting to get too comfortable with that chance, when suddenly my teacher interrupts her.

“No. I want you to help me teach this racoon.” She pointed at me.

My eyes open widely as I look at Mustafá, incredulously. No, none of that, that’s a terrible idea! Abort, abort now! I don’t even care if Souseiseki is looking at me, I make all the negative gestures available to me. Of course, this matters not: the damn crone ignores me as she produces two Thrills from her pocket. Sou, the greedy bitch, immediately stares at them with hunger in those big eyes of hers.

“Two per day.” The crone says, with an expression bordering on smugness.

“Deal.” The girl doesn’t even hesitate. She snatches them. “Payment for today.”

“Fair.” Mustafá shrugs. “Now, help me keep throwing balls at Tav.”

“With pleasure!” Sou immediately picks up a tennis ball from the floor and throws it at my head. “Dodge!”

I do as she says and dodge, grumbling and taking some distance from my two torturers. This whole training business is already getting on my nerves, and we haven’t even got to the other runes I have to practice.

This afternoon’s going to be long…

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The Alchemist calmly oversees a development, now that she no longer needs to exercise her own arm. Sitting on a nearby chair, taking a few sips from her cold brew, Mustafá simply watches as the friction between the two continues to grow more and more palpable.

“Come on, are you even trying!?” The new woman said, throwing another ball. “You managed to do it a few balls ago, I wanna see it again!”

“Urgh! What you want is to get paid, that’s all you want!” Tav answered, defiantly creating her shield and letting a ball directed at her face bounce off. “Don’t even pretend you care!”

“My job isn’t to care, it’s to make sure you learn! Easy as that! Keep at it!” This woman, Claudia… or, her preferred name, Souseiseki… Mustafá could already see many things in her, interesting things. Her greed, the books of translation she was working with, her aggressive demeanor. These things made a bad apprentice, but an excellent rival.

Of course, the old mage wasn’t blind. She knew these two disliked each other quite a bit already… but she also saw how superficial those feelings were, how useful they could be if weaponized.

She also saw in Tav a streak of competitiveness that could only surface this way, but this was a dangerous game. If Mustafá started ‘picking favorites’, or pretending to like this newcomer too much, her real apprentice would grow resentful, depressed and, most troubling of all, jealous.

Yes, she had seen it before, she had made those mistakes in the past. Maybe she wasn’t smart enough (emotionally speaking) to understand the reasons behind those feelings, but she knew they could surface at any second now, and that she needed to be careful with them.

Mustafá didn’t want to make things more complicated than they needed to be.

Also, and this was deep down… maybe she did care a little bit about this mess of a girl she was tutoring. A little.

Training took hours, to the point where her contracted labor force demanded a break to finish the book she was reading and rest her arm (which was granted). While Tav rested on the floor, breathing heavily due to the exertion of constantly casting, Mustafá walked over to her and stared for a moment. It didn’t even take five seconds for the girl to get all self conscious about it.

“W-What? I am doing my best!” She protested.

“I see that.” Said the Alchemist. “You’re improving.”

The apprentice blinked, gulping and looking down with a sheepish smile. She gets restless.

“Can I… try something of my own?” Tav said, suddenly looking at her teacher.

Mustafá doubted for a moment, but deciding that she was probably capable of controlling whatever this girl could throw, she nodded.

“Go ahead.”

With a big smile, Tav cupped her hands together and held them up. Taking slow, short and nervous breaths, she whispered two runes in conjunction.

“Haeithoi…”

It started as a very small breeze…then, it grew a little more intense. Tav closed her eyes and kept her hands cupped, as the wind and the nearby moisture formed a tiny bubble of air on her hand, like wind trapped in a small sphere. This made Mustafá blink a few times, leaning closer, staring at the zephyr as it soon started flowing through the apprentice’s fingers, making little figure eights around them.

“I didn’t teach you that.”

“Golthoi means to start, but it also means ‘ignite’... and Gol means fire, so Thoi must be ‘to start’ or ‘to create’...” Tav was talking in whispers, afraid of breaking the wind if she raised her voice too much. “So if I say Haeithoi…”

“Once more, your logic is a stretch. Thoi is a rune used for botanic magic, to make seeds sprout… not to even mention, you don’t even know how that rune looks.”

The apprentice shrugged, while Mustafá simply stared at the little wind, tamed on Tav’s hands. The Alchemist could number the reasons why this shouldn’t work, from here to the end of the day… and yet she couldn’t deny the fact that it was working, right there, in front of her eyes.

Languages are flexible, she thought.

And then, she extended the maximum honor to her apprentice.

“... Well done.” She said, softly patting Tav’s head with a hand.

This took the girl by surprise, to the point that her magic was dispelled instantly. The apprentice froze, a little smile on her lips, while Mustafá simply sighed and walked away, while saying.

“I expect more breakthroughs like these. Keep up.”

Maybe, just maybe… things would work out after all.