Once Zaric had let Talia down from the pillar, he had invited—or rather ordered— Osra to join them.

The mage-commandrum’s apprentice was taller than Talia—most were—but only by about a head. A mottled grey cloak wrapped around her shoulders and modest bust, melting into black robes with a skirt that cut off mid-knee. The rest of her thin legs were covered by rumpled black leg wraps that tucked into long leather boots. Gloves adorned the apprentices’ delicate hands, looking like they rose to her elbows under her sleeves. The only part of Osra’s caramel skin that peeked out of the girl's garments was her round face, soft and ever so slightly pudgy with baby fat. Unlike most delver women, who cut their hair short—like Talia—Osra kept her auburn curls tied up in a tight tail, which she tucked into the back of her cloak.

The confused young woman had taken a seat next to Talia at her master’s behest, giving the other woman a questioning glance but otherwise remaining silent and devoting all her attention to Zaric. The mage-commandrum stuffed his puzzle box into the folds of his sleeves and sat down before his two students, one new and one old.

“Ahem. I assume the two of you have met?” he asked.

The two women exchanged glances. Osra looked distinctly uncomfortable, but thinking back to their only prior interaction, Talia got the impression that discomfort was just a state of being for the mousy girl.

However, Zaric’s apprentice represented an opportunity. A possible inroad to peerage and maybe—eventually—friendship, free from the baggage of her academic cohort or the duty that her fellow expedition officers represented.

A fresh start.

Talia gave the girl a bright, hopeful smile. One that immediately wilted as all she got in return was a wide-eyed look. Stifling a pang of disappointment, Talia turned to Zaric.

“We’ve met,” she answered curtly, trying to ignore the hunched shoulders of the girl beside her.

The mage-commandrum, either uncaring or simply ignorant, made no comment on the byplay between his two students. He clapped his hands once, rubbing them together.

“Wonderful! In that case, I’ll spare you the awkward introductions. We can go straight on into today’s lesson.”

“Wait, she’s a mage? Where’s her collar?” Osra blurted out before Zaric could continue.

A discomfiting silence followed her question, and a slight blush crept onto the apprentice’s cheeks. Talia was at a loss, having not even considered the fact that Osra was in the dark about her powers.

It seemed that word was about to spread faster than she had hoped. Fortunately, Zaric had an excuse prepared.

“Talia awoke during the last battle, and as you know, collars aren’t the Guild’s purview. We don’t exactly carry spares.”

“Oh,” the mousy girl answered, turning to Talia, “Well aren’t you an arcanist? Can’t you just make one?”

Talia frowned.

That’s two out of two mages for death collars and zero against. Granted, that’s a tiny sample but—

“I can’t. And forgive me if this is blunt, but even if I could, I don’t think I would. Why in the Deep anyone would feel comfortable handing their life over to someone else like that is beyond me, but I would much prefer going out on my own terms than just… handing it off to some taskmaster.”

Talia braced herself, ready for Zaric to go off on her, this time with backup. Contrary to her expectation, the mage-commandrum only winced. Osra, on the other hand, looked…aghast, utterly flabbergasted, as if someone had just told her that magma was cold, or that the Maw didn’t exist.

“But—I mean— aren’t you…What about your soul?!?” the apprentice stammered, her voice rising to a stringent note at the end.

Suddenly it was Talia’s turn to be confused.

What in the hells do collars have to do with my soul?

What she said in actuality came out as a baffled “Huh?”

Osra, all evidence of discomfort or shyness gone, took a deep breath to explain and was immediately interrupted by Zaric.

“Ladies, if it pleases you, let’s keep the focus on magic. I suggest you discuss theology and philosophy on your own time,” he placated, throwing Talia a meaningful look that seemed to tell her to drop the topic.

The mage-commandrum’s apprentice looked unappeased, but closed her mouth with a click nonetheless, though the fire in her muted green eyes indicated that she still had more to say.

Talia was overcome with gratitude at the fact that Orvall had never taken her to Temple as a child if they preached such rubbish. As if an artefact could somehow safeguard someone’s soul, whatever that meant.

Nothing points to the idea that souls are even a real thing. I thought the idea of hells and afterlives was just…a comforting lie people told themselves.

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Apparently, that wasn’t the case for everyone, if Osra’s unexpected reaction was anything to go by.

Talia turned her focus back to Zaric as he pulled a metal cube, about the size of his palm on a side, from the depth of his robes and handed it to his apprentice. A cursory glance reported that it was a trinket bordering on an artefact, whose sole purpose was to diffuse mana into a harmless current of air. The input array, a generally standard runic configuration designed to accept mana, is what had nearly made her reclassify it as an artefact. It seemed needlessly complex and wasteful, hindering any mage who actively sought to push their mana into it.

“Same as usual, emittance training until your core is empty and then Capacity Cycling until you’re full up again. If you’re done say… five repetitions before I’m done giving Talia her next exercise, move on to shaping training. I want your cast time down to below two seconds.”

Osra took the cube and stood without a word, not even looking in Talia’s direction as she strode off to sit in a corner opposite them, holding the trinket in her lap with both hands, eyes closed.

So much for making friends…

Conflicted emotions fluttered about her stomach, confusion and disappointment mostly, but also a smidge of shame.

Am I in the wrong for wanting to stay free? For not wanting to be punished for a crime I haven’t committed? Or am I just being selfish?

Talia’s disquiet was interrupted as Zaric gave her his full attention for what felt like the first time since he’d begun teaching her. He brushed his hand on the floor between them. When it came away, three raised, overlapping circles were embossed on the floor. The word ‘mage’ was written where the three connected.

“All right. Being a good mage comes down to a few things. Firstly, control, or Will, is the broad category for how creative you are with your imagery, and how exactingly your power follows your intent. The exercise I had you doing before was primarily a Will exercise. Count on there being many more down the tunnel.”

Instead of groaning, as she might have done earlier, Talia straightened her back and mirrored Zaric’s serious posture. As she bobbed her head in understanding, the word Will appeared in the upper right stone circle.

“Will is probably the most important of the three. Without a strong Will, your powers are doomed to remain the same way they manifested, which for most mages means borderline useless. Will plays into almost every part of magic, from how much mana goes to which of your abilities, to whether or not you even get to control your Gift—as you wisely focused on to start with.”

Talia thought back to the indiscriminate wave of force that her first power had exhibited and considered its utility. In any scenario where she had allies, she couldn’t see any.

Seeing that she was still following, the mage-commandrum continued.

“The second most important part of being a mage is managing your Tolerance. You already experienced what happens when you exceed it just the other night.”

“Manaburn,” Talia said as the word ‘Tolerance’ appeared in its circle on the floor.

“Exactly. There are as many ways to subject yourself to it as there are mages. Expel too much mana too fast? Manaburn. Forcibly drain your Core without letting it refill periodically? Manaburn. Use too large or too complex of an image in your casting? Manaburn,” he said, nearly chanting the word.

As if on cue, a jolt ran down Talia’s arm, prompting her to wince.

“If there are so many ways to er— get manaburn? Manaburn yourself? Ugh, you know what I mean. If it’s so easy, then how do I avoid it?” the young woman asked.

“Manaburn yourself would be the correct term. The answer to your question is complicated, it involves a lot of factors. Not to mention that the possible symptoms of manaburn vary from exhaustion to outright mage-madness in the most extreme cases.”

“Oh joy,” Talia deadpanned.

Zaric rolled his eyes at her, a bit of his earlier playfulness seeping into his demeanour.

“Eventually, once you’re recovered, probably tomorrow, we’ll test out your innate Tolerance. I have a few artefacts designed to do just that. They’re not so accurate as to give us a number, but it should give you a rough idea of what your limits are,” he explained.

Talia furrowed her brow, thinking back to Evincrest’s books.

“I’m guessing there’s some way to train up my Tolerance?”

Zaric wiggled his hand in a so-so gesture.

“Sort of. Your Tolerance will increase naturally as you get older and cast more magic. It’ll also go up quickly as you train both your Will and the last component of the mage trinity, Capacity.”

The final element of the so-called trinity appeared in its own circle, completing the diagram. Talia opened her mouth to ask a question, but Zaric pressed forward, raising his hand to stop her.

“Capacity is a broad term for not only how much your Core can hold, but also how quickly mana spreads throughout your channels, how quickly your Core can pull mana from the atmosphere, and a host of other things that boil down to ‘bigger and faster are usually better’.”

Seeing that Zaric was done with his overview, Talia reached back to where she’d left her journal. Under the mage’s amused gaze, she opened it and flipped to a blank page, neatly writing out what he had said in crisp bullet points. When she was finished, she looked up at him with a voracious stare.

“Before you threaten to splatter me against the ceiling again, I have questions.”

Zaric chuckled and splayed his hands.

“Shoot. But bear in mind I’m no scholar.”

Talia nodded impatiently.

“Any knowledge to add to Evincrest’s—er” Talia glanced over at the meditating form of Osra and amended her statement, “—what I already know is better than nothing. So first off, what is a Core, really? Is it a physical organ of some kind, or something stranger? Second all, why does Will matter in magic but not in arcanistry? All I have to do to produce an effect is know the right runes and have the right materials. Nothing esoteric about it, just instruction and then reaction—”

Zaric put out his hands to stop her, already shaking his head.

“Ok stop, I can already tell you that I don’t have many answers to whatever you’re going to ask next. If I hypothesized, we’d never get to what we’re here to do, which is train you up. How about this? If you’d like to get deep into the theory, I have a proposal.”

Talia raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“I’m listening…” she said.

“How about, with each session, if you complete the exercise I give you to my satisfaction, I’ll answer or attempt to answer one question that doesn’t have to do with the practical applications of magic. Sound good?”

The young woman narrowed her eyes, hunched over her journal.

“As long as you answer the Core question today and promise to clearly state the criteria you’re looking for me to meet before we start every session.”

Zaric smiled widely. Too widely.

“In that case, you take my methods as they come, any technique is fair game.”

Talia pursed her lips and considered how important theory was to her. Almost getting smushed into paste had been…unpleasant. But he would have stopped, surely, before she came to any harm. She glanced at Zaric’s too-white smile.

Right?

In the end, the prospect that maybe commonly held magic theory had overlooked something that she would catch, while arrogant, was too tempting.

Talia stretched out her hand for Zaric to shake, hoping she hadn’t just made a mistake.

“Deal.”