A week later...

“Pay attention please,” Blaise said. This was the second time he had asked politely, and Ellen knew that if the boy continued being difficult, the third would not be as pleasant. The mercenaries had chosen to wait to begin Saran’s education, wanting to get out of the Duchesses sphere of influence before they slowed their pace.

“But seriously,” Saran whined. “I already know this stuff.”

“And I told you before that I don’t know what you do or don’t know. For that matter, you have no idea what you don’t know. I won’t teach you proper spells, if I’m not confident you can use them safely.”

Several scorched patches of grass attested to Saran’s lack of control over his magic when they asked him to display a spell not based on Spatial Magic. “I don’t know why I have to learn other kinds anyway. I mean I could just learn other spatial spells. I was never very good at other kinds anyway.” He said, looking down at the ground.

Ellen raised her hand to offer her input, and Blaise nodded. “Saran do you want to hear a story?”

He shrugged. “Ok?”

“When I was younger, about your age, all I wanted to be was a Spell-Blade. I practiced, and I trained. I put every spare moment of my time into it. I did this because I thought it was cool, and because it made me feel unstoppable. One day I was on vacation, resting at home, away from the academy I trained at. A group of men showed up, and attacked my family. You see, my father was leading a labor strike, and the local noble was not happy about his mine being stopped. He sent those men there to kill my father, and I grabbed my sword to defend him. Unfortunately I was too late. I ran outside, and watched from a distance as the men slaughtered him where he stood. The only thought in my head as I ran toward them was if only I had a ranged attack. Something I could use to kill them from a distance before they could kill my father. But spellblades as a class didn’t have any such thing back then. I had to run over a hundred yards at a dead sprint to reach them, and they had already started in on the rest of my family before I could. My mother lost an arm, and my sister lost her virginity. Ten men lost their lives to my blade in melee combat, and I nearly died of my injuries. All because I was too stubborn to listen when people more experienced than myself told me I needed to broaden my field of study.”

Saran was looking down at the ground, face clouded. After a moment he spoke. “Why… why don’t you hate us for what happened?”

“Us who?”

“Nobles.”

She smiled softly, and ruffled his hair. “I did for a while, but all nobles didn’t kill my family, only one. When I put him in the ground, I resolved to let go of my grief before it destroyed me.”

He looked away again, as if unable to bear her gaze. “I think… I think most nobles would have done the same thing, in a similar situation.”

She nodded, still smiling. “But not all.”

He nodded back, still not meeting her eyes. She spoke again. “Did you want to hear the second part of the story?”

He looked back into her face, startled. “There’s more?”

She began speaking again. “After I stormed the noble’s manor, tore through his guards, and left his head on a pike outside the mines, my head cleared enough for me to plan my next moves. I wasn’t subtle with what I had done. I fled the country, earned my keep as a mercenary, saved enough money, and entered a college under an assumed name. This time I learned all the theories, and schools of magic I missed the first time around. By the end I had invented a new style of spellblade that channeled magic through my weapon, rather than just infusing it. Yes there is a difference between the two. These days, my style is the standard, and the old style is mostly forgotten.”

“What about your family?” He asked, looking mollified by the more upbeat second half.

She looked away. “When I finally tried to get in touch with them, my neighbor intercepted the message, and passed on what had happened. I was branded a traitor for high crimes against the state. In my home country, when someone is branded a traitor, their whole family is branded with them. My mother and sister were hung for my crimes.”

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Saran looked away again. “But that’s not…”

“How stories like this are supposed to go? Heroes get those kinds of stories kid. I’m no hero. If anything, I’m the villain in this story. That noble may have killed my father by ordering his death. I may have killed him through my failure to save him. Perhaps he killed himself when he decided to strive for something greater. When I ask myself who killed the rest of my family though, there’s only one answer. It was my rash selfishness that killed them.”

Saran was staring into her face now, searching. “What… Why did you tell me that story? What did you want me to learn?”

She smiled at him sadly. “If you want to protect yourself, then you need to learn more. If you want to protect the people around you, you need to learn everything you can.”

He nodded with a newly determined expression, and looked at Blaise. “Alright fine. Teach me.”

Blaise nodded silently. He had never heard her tell her story before. Any time they had spoken of her past, her life started in the college. Suddenly he realized Ellen was probably not her real name. After considering this for a moment, he wrenched his mind back to the present. Time for circumspection later.

“As you know, magic stems from a disruption of the normally stable metaphysical field. The primary source of this disruption, outside of the occasional random fluctuation, comes from the thoughts of sentient beings. By mentally programming the right set of equations, you can shape the way in which your thoughts disrupt the field, producing predictable, repeatable effects. Do you know what happens when those thoughts aren’t shaped properly, or when magic is applied with no direction whatsoever?”

Saran nodded. “Fire. The magic gets released as uncontrolled energy, which then manifests as fire for complicated metaphysical reasons.”

“Close enough. This makes the fireball one of the easiest spells to manifest, but one of the most difficult to control. Can you create one now?”

Saran didn’t even say anything, just held out his palm, a ball of flame appearing inside.

“Now, do you know why it is so difficult to keep it contained?”

Saran gritted his teeth. It was taking all his concentration to keep the fireball in the proper shape, prevent it from bursting outward. Trying to do this, and think of the appropriate answer was difficult. “I… it’s… chaotic. Since I didn’t create it with any programming, there’s nothing for my-” The fireball began drifting into a more oval shape, and he had to stop speaking for a moment to fix it. “Nothing for my commands to interact with.” He finished.

“Ninety percent correct. It is raw mental energy, meaning it does respond to raw will, much like it is doing now. The chaotic nature of the energy is responding to the emotional centers of your brain, rather than the logical ones. Do you know why you have been having problems with this spell?”

“Because I’m emotionally unstable?” He ground out as a spike of flame jutted out for a moment before he retracted it.

“Because you mistook the raw chaotic flame for the actual fireball spell. I am not blaming you for this, your tutors should have corrected the behavior. Instead of releasing the flame as an uncontrolled burst which you must then will into obedience, layer on parameters to define the spell first. Then release the energy with those parameters in mind. Extinguish the flame you are holding, and try it that way.”

Saran nodded absentmindedly, distracted by the titanic effort of drawing the energy of the fireball back into himself. Once his task was complete, he started to cast again, but stopped.

“What parameters should I use for this? You haven’t told me the specifics.”

Blaise shrugged. “You know enough of the basics from your study of spatial magic that I feel confident you can construct them for yourself. Schools often teach spells with predefined structure, only leaving room to change smaller details. This makes it easier to manage teaching large groups. I feel this stifles ingenuity, and adaptability. I want you to become accustomed to adapting the structure of your spells to what you need from them on the fly.”

Saran nodded. He could already see a number of ways to modify his spatial magic with this new concept, but unfamiliarity was making it difficult to focus on creating the fireball he was supposed to be working on. Finally, he puzzled it out, rechecked to make sure he wouldn’t blow off his arm, and cast it. This time, the fireball sat in his hands needing no effort on his part to maintain it’s shape.

“Good. As you can see, the fireball is now a self-contained entity; much like you or I, though without sentience. It will operate according to the parameters you set for the duration of it’s lifespan.” As he was speaking, the fireball winked out of existence suddenly. “Ah, I see you gave it a set diameter. Scaling diameters will allow for greater mana efficiency.”

“Wait... what?”

Blaise eyed him consideringly. “It adheres to the parameters you give it as precisely as possible, and the mana held in the spell is slowly consumed by the spell’s framework. If the spell has a set diameter, the mana will be consumed at a set rate. If, however, you allow the diameter to scale according to the mana available, it will consume less and less mana as the framework gets smaller. Just remember that overcharging a too-small framework can have explosive results. I think that is enough for today. By our next lesson, I want you to have designed five wholly original spells. I don’t care which school or element they belong to. Your goals are learning comprehension, and practicality of the spell.”

Saran nodded his agreement, his mind roiling from the mixture of his recent mental efforts, and the aftereffects of Ellen’s story. He knew that his outlook had been changed irrevocably today, and he looked forward to what else was in store for him.