Mace looked down at her bandaged hands while she sat on the porch of Ye Olde Roadhouse.

“Staring at them won’t make them heal faster,” said Tria softly. She sat on a cushion next to her.

“I know, but…” Mace waffled. “It’s like when you have a toothache and can’t stop going over it with your tongue, you know?”

Thistle sat in a rocking chair. Gently swaying, eyes closed, and enjoying the warm summer morning.

It was almost unbearably muggy, warm and overcast with clouds. The kind of morning where you were crushed under atmospheric pressure and drowning in sweat, but Thistle didn’t seem to mind.

“Well then it seems to be healing up nice, quickly too,” said the older woman. “How does magic healing work anyway?”

Tria turned to her. “Well, at my level, all I could really do was send a signal through her bloodstream to send more cells to repair the cuts. Essentially what your body already does but a bit faster. You have to train for years and years to be a real doctor.”

“It's a whole magical field all on its own,” piped up Mace.

“Exactly,” said Tria. “Most hospitals won’t even hire you until level ten!”

“You keep using levels, but I’m not exactly sure what they mean? Is a level twenty wizard like a king or something?”

Mace and Tria looked at each other. How did you explain how and why wizards liked to rank themselves? Wizards and hierarchy were practically synonymous. Why else would they keep building ivory towers? Though even ivory nowadays was considered plebeian.

“Well…it’s sort of like how well you’ve mastered magic,” began Tria.

“It’s supposed to take into account your skill, education, and the amount of phlogiston you can use at once,” added Mace.

“Supposed to? You say that like it…doesn’t?” asked Thistle.

“Well in my honest opinion,” started Mace. “It’s started to be only about your phlogiston. It’s all ‘power levels’ and ‘tier lists’ and ‘this wizard can totally beat up this other wizard’.”

“Power output does play a role, but it’s not the end all be all,” Tria put in. “If you’re powerful, it doesn’t mean you get to order other wizards around. I mean that’s how it used to be, but we’re a bit more civilized now.”

Mace wasn’t so sure about the ‘civilized’ part of that. Civilization was when you used fancier words to justify pillaging and murder. Yeah you just burned and looted that village, but now you had numbers to tally the loot.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, power really mattered to old Steelskin.”

“He was powerful!” said Tria. “Just not careful. And what I’m saying is that you need both power and care.”

“Steelskin?” asked Thistle.

“Medes Bergentoff,” began Tria. “Better known as Steelskin. He was a wizard who lived a century after the New Gods took over. He came up with a way to turn his skin into steel!”

Thistle’s eyebrow flew up at that. “But wouldn’t that make it really hard to move?”

“He could do it so fast that he’d freeze and unfreeze in a fraction of a second! He could even turn his bones briefly into steel. If you got punched, you stayed down.”

“So what happened to him?”

“He died stupidly,” scoffed Mace.

“It’s more complicated than that!” snapped Tria. He was fighting a feathered dragon and doing quite well. They wheeled in the air, Steelskin holding on with his, well, steel grip. He landed blow after blow, and started cracking the dragon’s scales!”

“Then he fell,” interrupted Mace.

“I was getting to that! But yes, he did fall. As he fell, he tried to make the outer layer of his skin and bones into steel, to absorb the shock. But he…sort of…kind of…missed…”

“He…missed…the ground?” asked Thistle.

“Not the ground,” said Mace. “The target for his steel spell.” Thistle looked confused. “You see, it’s believed that in his panic, instead of converting his skin to steel, he accidentally converted his blood.”

An expression of shock and disgust washed over Thistle. “His…blood? All of it?”

Tria nodded. “Because there’s so much iron in our blood, it turned into steel faster than he could think. No one is sure if he died of an aneurysm, acute metal poisoning, or what because he died before he hit the ground.”

“Ironically,” Mace said casually. “His body wasn’t even that physically damaged.” She idly played with a loose bandage. “Now all that’s left is a mesh cage of steel in the shape of a man. It’s still on display at Aethowix.”

Thistle cupped a hand over her mouth. “How horrible!”

Mace shrugged. “They like to use it as a teaching aid.”

“It’s pretty morbid, but it does get the lesson across,” Tria agreed. “Always think before you leap.”

“And that level isn’t everything…” grumbled Mace.

Tria rolled her eyes at that. “Yes, levels aren’t everything, but some people still like to achieve them!”

“Yeah but it just all seems so…” Mace trailed off, not knowing what word could summarize all her feelings towards the level system.

“Unfair?” offered Thistle.

“I was going to say arbitrary, but yeah it’s unfair too! Wizards obsess over raising their levels! It’s all about who can beat who in a fight. Not ‘who has added to our lexicon of knowledge’ or ‘who has invented something that can change the world’! It’s just one big contest to them, not a council of discussing ideas and actions. And you can’t get higher levels unless you have more and more phlogiston! It’s just a way for already lucky people to reward themselves. It’s like you could know everything about magic, but still fail because you can control phlogiston. Invent a world saving device? Reform a society so that it’s better? Get out of here kid, all we care about is fighting.” Mace ended her tirade and slumped back on the porch. She laid there, watching tiny insects buzz around the awning. “Whatever happened to ‘judge ye not a fish by its ability to grab horns’?“

“I don’t think that’s the phrase, but no I see what you mean,” said Tria. She put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“Why can’t levels be based on…” Mace trailed off. What was she supposed to say? Levels based on something she was good at? Knowing facts about a power she couldn’t use? You got levels from knowing facts and backing them up with raw power. Why couldn’t she have that power? Control of phlogiston wasn’t necessarily tied to lineage, but wizards have long suspected that both genetics and environment played a part in it. Her mother, uncle, and all her grandparents were natural talents. Did she have her father to thank for her lack of ability? She could chalk that up to yet another bad thing he passed onto her. But deep down, she knew it was unlikely that one bad swimmer in her gene pool could have this great of effect.

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Some wizards theorized that use of phlogiston could be affected by your mentality. Performance anxiety, depression, or even some form of mental block could prevent the flow of energy. Mace tried to think about what could cause a mental block and came up empty. Yes her father had been a selfish, self centered, miserable man, but she didn’t have an overall unhappy childhood.

Was it pent up anger? She got her general anger at the numerous injustices of the world from her mother. Maybe it was that she couldn’t relax enough, or maybe it was some kind of mental trick…or maybe…she had to stop herself from this train of thought. She had spent years on this line of thinking. Constantly questioning why she couldn’t use magic like her family and desperately fishing for a crumb of an answer. It was a well worn groove in her mind. She had to think of something else, anything else. Tria was looking nice this morning. Okay maybe not that either. Mace took a breath in and relaxed. She reminded herself that she didn’t have to solve her problems today. All she had to do was relax and heal.

Mace was shaken from her thoughts when she realized she hadn’t finished her thought. Thistle and Tria were looking at her.

“Based on what?” Tria asked “You kind of trailed off there,”

Mace blushed, which was embarrassingly obvious due to her pale complexion. The blushing compounded.

“Well, what I mean is…what I meant,” she stammered. “What I’m trying to say is maybe wizard levels should be… I don’t know looser?”

“How d’you mean?” asked Thistle.

Mace leaned back, she wasn’t even sure what she meant.

“Well…” she began. “Maybe it could be open to other forms of magic. You know, besides Push and Pull.”

Tria looked at her inquisitively. “I thought there was only Push and Pull?”

“That’s how we understand magic now in the Counties, but there were other forms before it. There are even some distant places that practice it much differently.”

Thistle piped up. “Huh, how do they use magic where you’re from Tria?”

In that moment, Mace felt the world pause, each second starting to drag. Discomfort crawled up her back. It was like dinners with dad all over again.

“I’m…from here?” said Tria slowly.

Mace prayed to any god, if they be a just and forgiving god, to spare her from this imminent embarrassment. Please for the love of all that is holy, let Thistle read the room and not put her foot in her mouth.

“Oh! Well it’s just that I thought…with your complexion I mean,” said Thistle, swallowing her entire leg.

Reality could not be saved, thought Mace. Humanity had a good run. Some of its highlights were laws, bookstores, takeout pizza places, but we should just pack it in. Mace just pleaded to be raptured before secondhand embarrassment open palmed slapped her.

“My complexion?” asked Tria.

Please god, any god, Mace thought as her head met her hands. Please don’t let the next thing out of her mouth be a comparison to food. Anything but that! There was in fact a god watching from far beyond. But all it did was grin and snacked on popcorn. The popcorn was actually an abstract concept, and it could’ve used some more metaphorical salt, but the god was thoroughly entertained by this train wreck of a conversation.

“Well it’s just that you’ve got that rich coffee colored-“

“Stain!” Mace interrupted. “You got a coffee stain on your shirt!” Mace chuckled nervously as she lifted herself off the porch.

Tria looked down at her shirt confused. “But I don’t drink coff-“

“Anyway!” shouted Mace. “Thistle we really need to get to your lessons today.”

“Oh! Alright?”

“Yes! Today’s lesson will be on…” Mace desperately searched around the patio for anything, and found her savior. “Your broom!”

“My broom?”

“Her broom?”

“Yes! Every great wizard has their own unique way of flying and we gotta develop yours!

Before Thistle could react Mace pulled her up and shoved the broom in her hands.

“But shouldn’t I-?”

“Start practicing? Yes we should!”

Tria sat there dumbfounded. “Wait…broom? Flying?!”

Thistle flew through the air with style and grace. The style was “hovering with toes just reaching to the ground”, and she was graceful in that she hadn’t fallen off you.

Tria waved an arm under Thistle. “Huh, so it just kind of…hangs there?”

“As far as we can tell,” answered Mace.

“And it’s not haunted?” Haunted was a catch-all term for when something was infested with gods or spirits. Gods typically had no concrete form, so they often tried to make their homes in cozy three dimensions. Usually objects, sometimes places. And rarely, but still worryingly, in people.

Mace shook her head. “No sign of it as far as I can tell. Usually there are signs. Scratches, dissonant whispers, weird impulses. You haven’t had any weird impulses lately right?”

Thistle looked thoughtful for a moment, then put two fingers to her wrist. “Well I’m a little nervous but it seems to be steady.”

“…”

“…”

“So yeah no spirits in the broom,” said Mace finally.

“How does it move?” asked Tria?

“Well that’s just it, I’m not sure how. It doesn’t have anything to actually propel itself. It just…doesn’t fall?”

“How do wizards usually fly?” asked Thistle as she tiptoed back and forth.

“All sorts of ways,” started Tria. “Some Push air into a parasol, others manipulate atmospheric pressure to make themselves float like a buoy.”

“Some use gliders to sail on the wind,” Mace put in. But the most common way, at least for the really advanced Pullers, is to make a spirit do the flying for you. Usually in rugs.”

“Maybe it’s a matter of Pushing?” Tria suggested. “Thistle, how good are you with Push magic?”

“Well Mace-“

“You know what, we’ll just take it from the start,” said Tria. She looked deep into Thistle’s eyes and gently took her shoulders. “Thistle, I want you to not think of whatever you’ve been taught,” she said clearly. “Push magic is about feeling the flow of phlogiston in everything.”

“But what about-“ Mace tried to interrupt, but Tria shushed her.

“Yes, there is a chemical component where learning and memorizing tables comes in handy, but you’re not there yet. You will be there eventually. But for right now, I just want you to feel it. Do you understand?”

“I-I think so, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be feeling?”

“It’s like feeling a storm in your bones. Like the tightness you feel in your throat before you cry. You take that feeling, and let it out.”

Thistle gripped tight on the handle and shut her eyes tight.

“I think I feel it?” she said through gritted teeth.

“Good! Now hold on to it…let it build…and now…release!”

Thistle screamed, threw her limbs out, and almost fell off the still stationery broom. Nothing else happened.

“Is that what it’s supposed to feel like?” asked Thistle once she regained balance.

“I’m curious too,” said Mace.

“Well that’s how it feels for me,” said Tria, defending herself. “Maybe it’s different for other people?”

The trio stood there in silence as each contemplated their options. Over the next half hour, Thistle tried anger, sadness, fear, every emotion the three of them could think of.

“Maybe you could think of a wonderful thought?” suggested Tria.

“Any happy little thought?”

“No, big, grand thoughts, like…achieving something great!”

“Like being a wizard?” asked Thistle hopefully.

“Well, I meant more like what you’ll do with being a wizard. Like do you want to discover some bit of new magic or explore distant lands or do something big and great?”

“I uh…thought being a wizard was the goal?”

Mace and Tria exchanged looks.

“Well…yeah, that can be a goal. But usually we want to do something with our magic.”

“I’ve always wanted to be a Justice,” said Tria.

Mace gave her a side glance. “All the jobs in wizardom and you want to be a cop?” All magic jobs had mystic titles like ‘hierophant’ or ‘hermit of the silvery spoon’. The titles came with the job. When your uniform consisted of patterned bathrobes and traffic cone hats, nonsense always followed. Occasionally, wizards have tried to update their image with leather trench coats and matching fedoras, but no amount of black could make a ninety pound wizard look intimidating. However, Justice was the least whimsical of wizard jobs, in that they could wear whatever and still look effortlessly stylish.

“Well what about you?”

Mace thought for a moment. In truth, her life goals and wizardry never completely meshed. “I’ve always wanted to explore ancient ruins. You know, archaeology, and stuff…” she trailed off, painfully aware that you didn’t have to be a wizard to be an archaeologist. So why had she become one?

“I guess I never thought that far ahead,” Thistle mumbled.

“Maybe we could try a different approach,” said Mace. “Something more unique to Thistle. What do you think we should do?”

Thistle’s jaw tightened as she thought. “Well, I do have one idea.”