Fire licks heat into my skin from the clay pot set out on the veranda. Even in the winter, it was never so cold back home as it is here above the clouds tonight. I sit beneath a night sky clearer than any I have ever seen before, the only disruption to the nightscape of stars overhead is my foggy breath puffing in the air as it drifts heavenward. Even in one of the fur coats I found in the manor, a kind of brown fur that reminds me of a yak, the cold is enough to make me shiver. Two blankets scavenged from one of the spare bedrooms drape my shoulders, leaving me to look like a puddle of soft lilies and violets as I sit near the fire.
It looks as if we are skating on a snowfield. The clouds beneath the manor house turned sky ship blur with the speed. I feed another log to the fire in the pot and bundle myself tighter as I watch the cloudscape below race by. I’m not surprised when I hear footsteps from the entryway behind me. The clicking of heels on the clay tiles that make up the back porch of the manor house gives away my visitor before she reaches me. A gust of wind delivers the smell of lilacs and honey to me, and I turn to see Arabella Willian walking into the glow of the fire. The wind seems to ignore the woman; no, she defies it. Her dress of silver scales refuses to admit that the wind exists, while he hair floats in the breeze here, high above the clouds.
She is a beautiful woman. I can’t help but think it whenever I see her, and I doubt that I am the only one.
“I hope that I am not intruding on you,” she says while looking down at me.
“You aren’t,” I say. A scan of the quiet back of the house confirms we are alone. “I was wondering when you might come.”
“Oh?” Arabella takes one of the wooden chairs on the veranda and pulls it up next to the fire.
“Did we have some kind of appointment?”
“No.” I say. I feel a bit stupid for presuming too much, but I go on anyway. “So, how awfully have I done so far?”
Arabella purses her lips as her gaze roams over me. She sighs and pushes herself back in her chair. “I will admit to a bit of disappointment.”
“I could tell,” I say. I had sensed it ever since she trapped Macille and me in her illusionary battle again. Maybe she hadn’t expected me to be able to end that monster on the first attempt, but even after more than a dozen attempts, I still haven’t managed to land a decent hit on the thing.
Macille is a different story entirely. At first, I had felt better about my own inadequacy due to Macille also being unable to conquer the desert spearman. The man is strong, stronger than me by a long shot, but a rank two monster is just something that can’t be brute-forced. Perhaps Halford could have, but for us other mortals, it isn’t so easy. That was until Macille began landing hits on the monster, and I began to realize that I was what was holding him back. He would always try to position himself between me and the monster, and out of the two of us, when the monster inevitably won, he would be the first down.
I can still feel it, the phantom pain in my fingers and toes. Just thinking about the attempts at the monster sends shivers down my spine. In the last fight, the spearman snipped my left hand off as easily as someone trimming the bushes. The heat of the pain, the way it blocked out every other sensation in my mind is easy to recall. What’s worse is that I don’t even know if that is what it really feels like to lose a hand or not. What happens if the sensation of the real thing is so different that I am completely distracted by the difference if it ever happened in a real fight, making the terrible and lethal training Arabella gives to me worthless. Not that I plan to go around losing hands all over the place.
“You five are the first that I have ever had to teach,” Arabella says after a long moment of silence. “It is a poor teacher that blames their tools…pupils rather. If you had a sword to fight with like the majority of combatants–seriously, the over-representation of swords is something that confuses me to no end–I could teach you that. From what I have seen of your abilities–”
“My one ability,” I say.
“Many of the first rank only have one ability they use in combat,” she says.
“Really?”
“Some,” she says with a shrug. “From what you have told me and from what I have seen of your abilities you will easily fall into the category of what we call a mage, using magic to directly attack your enemies. You have a magical attack, that is what you shall be focusing on. There is much more that you can do with magic, but at the first rank, concentrating on your abilities will be the best for you.
“Manipulating objects with your mana is something that every magician worth her salt learns as they gain power. Usually, when people pick up the skill to do so, they opt to just manipulate swords. The amount of swordsman that will try to scare you or impress you by making a half dozen swords float about them at third rank will astound you.”
“You seem to have something against swords,” I say.
“Not especially,” Arabella says with another shrug. “I stray from my point. I would not call me pitting you against rank two monsters as training. It is more of conditioning. I want you to know what you are in for if you come across one.”
I blow out a long breath of steam and stare into the fire. “Something impossible to beat.”
“You will beat it,” she says. I am not so sure.
I don’t give her a reply, I can’t think of anything to say. The clouds continue to race below us as the manor flies over the land. Reaching, I snag another log and toss it on the fire.
“You will figure it out on your own,” she says, no trace of doubt in her voice.
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“I wouldn’t be so sure,” I say. With a wave of my hand a glob of orange fire springs away from me and splashes over the coals in the fire. “I have fought that oversized lobster thirteen times now, how many time will I have to hit it with fire to put it down?”
Arabella considers for a long time, watching after the fire that becomes more orange by the second until it is uniformly the color of morning. “Do that again, but this time do it more than once.”
“More than once?”
“Use more mana,” she says.
I can still see the line in the top of my vision representing my mana, 70/80. The first thought I have is to ask her how to do that, but for some reason I decide to just make the attempt instead. The ability is as natural as breathing, fire leaps to my fingers and I stare at the licking flames over my nails and try to…make it more. For a long moment nothing happens. Then, slowly, almost as if it is a trick of the mind, the fire begins to glow just a little brighter. I know it is real as I watch the number in my vision steadily tick lower: 59, 58, 57. Arabella watches the fire the same as I do, the surprise on my face absent from hers. After two or three minutes I have put the same amount of mana into the fire as two uses of the ability.
“Now throw it into the fire,” Arabella says.
I do as she instructs. The orange fire in my hand is hotter, brighter, but it doesn’t appear any bigger than it did before. When it splashes into the clay pot, the explosion makes me jump to my feet and away. When the dragonfire collides with the coals, the pot cracks and shatters across the veranda. Before I can try and stomp the coals out, Arabella waves her hand and a wash of cold air flows over the fire, snuffing it out.
“Magic is a representation of will. If your will is strong enough then there is nothing that can stop you. You are a fresh magician, you have never reinforced your soul by conquering the will of another, destroying a monster. The first thing that I want you to know is that you are a beginner; you know neither your limitations nor your abilities. Trust me when I tell you, you will conquer the rank two. You better.” Without another word, Arabella stands from her chair and walks away back to the manor. I watch her go, feeling the temperature drop by the second back toward freezing.
The wind chills and is the only sound left to me once she is gone. With a thought and a bit of effort, fire springs back into my hand, and I bring my hands together, watching the fire spread to sit flickering between my palms. As I pour more mana into the ability over the next few minutes I feel the temperature around me start to rise again. After ten minutes, I feel like I cannot pour any more mana into the fire. I watch the blue line representing my mana slowly begin to creep back up as I sit in the cold wind, warmed by own fire.
“Galea,” I say. The spirit appears in front of me, first a spinning ball of gold that expands into a serpent.
“Yes Mistress,” she says.
I study the spirit. The reptilian eyes that look back at me should be devoid of emotion, but I read a strange sincerity in them. “Why did you choose this form?”
“This form was what was most compatible,” she says.
“You chose to be a dragon before I obtained the Dragon Essentia,” I say. “How did you know that I would?”
“I did not,” Galea says. The spirit apparently doesn’t feel the need to elaborate further.
I don’t bother to make a gesture as I open the black rectangle that has my information on it. I point to a line below my own name, and Galea looks to where I point, the only other being in the world that can see what I do; at least I assume so.
“What does this mean, level 1?” I ask.
“That number refers to how many layers of soul reinforcement you have undertaken,” Galea explains.
“I figured as much,” I say. As soon as Arabella mentioned soul reinforcement to me I had thought of this number. One must be low, probably the lowest it could be. Looking over the rest of the message I ask, “You like numbers, don’t you?”
“My function is to be a spirit facilitating the use of the ability in the eye you now possess,” she says, motioning to the black and red eye in my left eye-socket. “Quantifying the information that you perceive with the eye is one of the primary methods in which this is done.”
I think about having Galea clarifying some of the other numbers that I read in the message but decide not to. The rest of it is fairly straightforward, other than one thing. “Is my Recovery attribute especially high for a level 1 human?” I ask. I don’t have anything to compare it against. Without really thinking about it, I look to the blue bar in the top of my vision and see that it has almost completely refilled itself.
“Mistress is a specialist in the Recovery attribute,” Galea says. “Of course, her’s is exceptional.”
I nod at the little gold dragon before focusing on the message some more. My physical attributes are much lower than my Magic attribute and my Recovery, not exactly surprising. I guess everyone guessing that my abilities lend toward me being primarily a magic user makes a certain amount of sense, and I briefly wonder if others are aware of the exact numbers of their attributes. Doubtful, I am only aware of them due to Galea, and apparently the eye she lives inside of is something called an artifact, at least Coriander called it that. I am ignorant of most things dealing with magicians, but something called an artifact must be rare.
“If I may say so,” Galea says, bringing my attention back to her. “Mistress is rather brave.”
I quirk my eyebrow at her. “How so?”
“You fought that monster thirteen times,” Galea says. “You had not had your magical abilities for even a full day before you fought that beast. That is brave.”
“It wasn’t even real,” I dismiss. “I didn’t even have a choice to refuse.”
“Maybe not the first time, but you continued to fight it even after it had killed you already. I do not think that I would be so brave,” she says.
I don’t have anything to say to that, so I nod again and focus on the fire between my hands. I am not so dense as to not realize that this fire is all that I have. Honestly, even if it is against rank two monster, I appreciate Arabella allowing me to face monsters without me being in any real danger. I scoff at myself, shaking my head. How ridiculous I must seem to that woman, sitting out here alone in the cold feeling sorry for how I have not immediately learned to defeat a rank two monster after having my abilities for less than a week. I followed Halford around for the better part of a year, and I know that if he had not reached rank two himself, he would not have dared to take on a rank two monster alone. I don’t know what I was expecting to be able to do.
I try one last time to squeeze as much mana into the fire as I can, but it feels as if there is some barrier inside the fire that prevents me from adding any more. I stand to leave, floral blankets draped around me, but before I turn to go, I launch the fire out past the edge of the flying manor house toward the clouds illuminated by moonlight. The small ball of fire sails away from me with an incredible speed, not falling like it should until it reaches a three hundred feet or more away where it disappears into the snowscape of clouds. With the fire gone, the cold starts to sap at me once more. I hurry back to my room, ready to give it my all tomorrow.