Feeling the vast emptiness that he always felt when he teleported into the stronghold, Vaunce took a second to stabilize himself before continuing on. Today was finally the day that he would begin studying Void mana and how to control it. He had already done so on his own accord, but it was slow going and although he was getting better at using it for things like teleporting to void anchors, that was pretty much the limit of spells he could cast. It had been about 2 years since he was first brought to the stronghold. His father occasionally came with him, but mostly he attended speaking class on his own.

“Vaunce!” “Vaunce!” “Brother!” “Cousin!”

Hearing the excited squeals of kids as he got closer and closer, he walked into the room where he had studied how to speak for almost 2 years now. At first he had barely been able to make any sound and his throat had been sore everyday. Eventually he could speak for a few minutes without an issue. It was only recently that he could speak for long periods without having to stop to rest. The kids had progressed quite a bit since he had come as well. They had the same issues as he did, except they couldn’t read or write as he could; So they had to work on vocabulary as well. Vaunce was proud of how all of them, including himself, had progressed and was a bit sad he had to leave to go to another class.

Crouching down, he held his arms open for the rushing kids to all run into him and hug him. He was pretty sure they thought that he came to the class just to visit them and hang out with them, but as long as they were happy he was fine with it. He had grown fond of them since he had started the class, even if at the start he was basically a second babysitter. Getting dragged to the chairs, he sat down and made sure all the kids were behaving while he waited for the teacher. He enjoyed the peaceful moments he spent with the kids before the class. He always felt happy being able to play the games with absurd rules they made up, and simply was happy to be with them. It was like being an older sibling, and he always felt happy hearing the kids play.

Hearing Ms.Chumil walk in, Vaunce glanced up at her.

Ms.Chumil always looked the same, regardless of when Vaunce saw her. Short and tiny, with glasses that framed her eyes to look a tad wide and brown curly hair that bobbed as she walked. He detached the kids hanging on him and walked up to her.

“Ah Vaunce, you passed your speaking test recently, yes? You should be good to go to the next class. Here I’ll give you a note and instructions on how to get there” Quickly scribbling on some paper, she handed Vaunce a note explaining he was getting moved.

The speaking test had just been an hour long conversation with his father and Ms.Chumil about anything that came to mind. It had been a pretty comfortable experience for him.

“Yeah, I’m excited. I feel like I'm finally starting to catch up to the people around my age. Not that I mind playing with the kids” Feeling someone hugging his leg, he rubbed their head while he stood talking “I think I might actually miss this place a bit honestly”

Ms.Chumil laughed loudly “You can always come back darling, the kids would be delighted to see you. Although soon they are going to go to beginners classes and leave my class, but I’ll always be here. Now come here and give me a hug before you leave” she waved Vaunce over and gave him a motherly hug, before sending him on his way to the next class.

Feeling warm inside, he waved goodbye to the kids and followed the instructions to the next class he was getting moved to. Hallway after hallway passed by as he checked and rechecked that he was moving in the right direction. He had never been to this area of the stronghold before and he was beginning to feel like he had walked in the wrong direction. Staring at the walls as he continued walking, he noticed they had a simple brick pattern that was chiseled to make the wall look like brick. Looking closer, he noticed there was signage in Voidic at corners and in the middle of long hallways. Following the signage, he walked through multiple sections he had never been in, smelling all sorts of things. He smelled a bakery somewhere, with baked bread and something he hoped was pie. After looking closely, he began to see and smell small signs of people living in the areas he was walking through, and quickly did his best to be quiet so he wouldn’t disturb them.

After about 10 minutes of walking, he finally found the auditorium that it was being held in. Unlike the other classes, the ones using mana were always in auditoriums since they needed space to practice using mana. Walking in, he saw it hadn’t started yet, so he walked to the teacher and waited to get his attention before handing him the note from Ms.Chumil. The teacher was almost as tall seated, as Vaunce was standing. He didn’t look old to Vaunce, he was kind of lanky, but had a full head of blondish hair, and a very questionable handlebar mustache.

Looking up, the teacher noticed Vaunce and took the note, reading it before saying anything.

“Ah yes, Mr. Vaunce. Good, I was just informed about you coming to my class. Please take a seat anywhere while all the other new arrivals get here.”

“New arrivals?” Vaunce asked, unable to stop himself.

“Yes, you aren’t the only person who needs to begin training with void mana manipulation. There are plenty of people who don’t develop void mana until they are older. I think the average is about 17? There are outliers of course, yourself for example. Anyway please take a seat and all of this will be explained” shooing him off, Vaunce sat among the stands and thought about how he had gotten here.

For the first few months, he was unable to communicate without pen and paper. It felt very frustrating for everyone around you to be able to communicate properly, but you could only bottle up your thoughts. He had never felt more frustration in his life than those first few months. All he was able to do was to do the vocal practices that Ms.Chumil had given all the children and himself. He was a good deal older than them, by about 10 years or so. The children of the stronghold learned to talk around 7, although edge cases like him happened with somewhat regularity. He became quite close with them because of this, and they liked to call him their cousin or brother as a result of it. His blacksmithing apprenticeship had been advancing smoothly as well, and he was on track to become a journeyman in a few years time. Master Randall told him his technique was good for a second-year apprentice, and that it was equal to any journeyman he had met; Excluding his of course.

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Feeling something tap his shoulder, he looked over and his eyes widened in surprise and shock. It was a boy his age with brown hair that, under a certain light, looked red. He looked to be at least a few inches taller than Vaunce, and was fairly well built. He was quite tanned as well, Vaunce assumed from all the sun he got from being on a farm for work.

“Yo Vaunce, finally here?” Tim asked with a wide smile.

“Y-Yeah why are you here?” Vaunce stuttered out, completely unable to process what was going on. Tim’s personality was wildly different than what he had experienced.

“I attend classes here” Tim replied, rolling his eyes “You didn’t think you were the only void mage in the group did you? Oh wait you probably did since I told everyone I used earth mana”

Chuckling to himself at Vaunces expression he continued “I was chosen to shadow you at school since we’re of a similar age group and stuff”

Mouth agape, Vaunce could only stare at Tim as he waited for a response.

“Dang man I know im pretty but you’re gonna make me blush if you continue” he joked

“Oh uh, sorry. I just don’t understand why I would need someone to shadow me?”

“Oh yeah. Well two reasons really. One is that your family is one of the few noble families that can use void. Which ties into the second reason, your dad is on the strongholds council. Which means that his family gets certain protections outside the stronghold for safety reasons.”

Tim started to speak again but stopped and made a ‘later’ motion as the teacher up front began to speak after everyone had sat down.

“I am Mr.Lenkil, I am in charge of the basic courses for void magic. Everyone here has some basic control over mana in general, but in this class I will be teaching you how to use void mana to form spells, safety, and other basic things you’ll need to know to be successful here.” Pacing back and forth, he gave a short introduction while waving his arms around as he spoke. Afterward, he instructed them to take a short break and then they will start with trying to manipulate void mana.

Vaunce turned to Tim “Anyway, what do you mean by safety reasons? Oh also before I forget, I’ll add you to my list so we can talk whenever”

“Sure. And I meant that literally. Outside the stronghold there’s a lot of risk with the government kidnapping you or your other family members. Well if they were to discover who your dad was at least. At the moment the only danger is from the other members of the council. There’s a lot of internal politics that goes on. My dad is close to your dad, thus why I was chosen.”

They kept talking about small things; their experiences in the stronghold, their lives so far and how it ended up this way, until the break was over. Vaunce paid rapt attention to the teacher as he explained how to feel the void mana in himself, and how to start using it.

“The main thing is that you can’t feel bad about using it. If you have negative emotions about it, your effectiveness will drop and you may not be able to use it at all. That is how the current rules of the empire are controlling how void mana is spread and why the common populace are unable to use it. They color it in this dark shade of evil, and pretend that anything or anyone that uses it is equally evil. This isn’t the case however.” He held out his hand, a bright light flashed into existence revealing a floating blue flame

“Void magic can be whatever you want it to be, it all depends what you want it to do, and how you approach things.” the flame shifted to a dark blue, and then a purple.

“Anything can be evil or good. This is mirrored everywhere. In this class I will teach you how to be good, while using void mana to its fullest.” The flame started to get brighter, turning red, and then orange, and then finally turning white. It flashed out of existence, leaving everyone staring at the empty hand that held it before.

“Let’s begin on the exercises” Mr.Lenkil started explaining the first exercise to them, leading them through how to access their void mana willingly.

Following the steps, Vaunce pulled slowly at the void mana he had inside himself. Slowly he tugged with his mind, or he tried at least. It was an awkward feeling that he wasn’t sure how to explain or do. It was like trying to cause one muscle of your arm to flex, but not the rest of the arm. He knew it was there and could even touch it and make it flex a bit, but the arm always moved. Pausing to look how other students were doing, he saw that some were looking around as he was, while others were locked in concentration, others were talking to Mr.Lenkil about it.

“Don’t worry if you can’t get any mana to move today, this class is almost a year long for a reason. Plus there isn’t a time limit or limit on the amount of times you can retake this class, so just do your best and ,again; It’s all about safety”

Vaunce heard the words Mr.Lenkil spoke above the noise of the class and tried again before taking a short break. Hearing ‘Oooooos’ and ‘Aaaaa’ noise from another area of the stands, he looked and saw a few colorful bubbles playfully bobbing in the air, reminding Vaunce of the mana control exercises his father would have him and his brother do. Looking around at all the other students, he saw that they were just as impressed as he was.

“Very good Vivian! That was very fast. Now that you’ve managed to do it so fast, please help the ones around you while you can still describe the feeling you encountered.”

Seeing her nod and start talking enthusiastically to those around her, Vaunce’s jaw dropped in amazement. She had done it so quickly, Vaunce thought she must be a genius or a prodigy. Redoubling his efforts, he focused and tried again. Attempt after attempt, he tugged and pulled at his void mana, getting more and more frustrated with each attempt.

Why can’t I do this? I’ve almost spent two years using void mana, and I suddenly can’t? That doesn't make any sense.

Frustration plain on his face, Tim tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey man, class is over, we can try again tomorrow. It's no big deal, it took me 2 weeks to even be able to fill a spell shape with void mana.” Pulling him to his feet, they walked home.

A few days passed by as Vaunce made his way to apprenticeship, then home, then to the stronghold to practice void magic. Though ‘practice’ wasn’t exactly the right term. All he did was feel inside himself to try to touch the void mana, but he couldn’t feel it any more than he could the first day. He was very frustrated about the whole ordeal, especially since he was one of the quickly dwindling students who hadn’t managed to use void mana yet. Vaunce wasn’t sure why, since he could teleport into the stronghold just fine. It made no sense to him, he could use void mana to teleport but couldn’t actually feel it or use it in any way.

Mr.Lenkil was a decent teacher, but he liked to show what to do and expect you to be able to copy it. If you couldn’t learn through watching him do it, he had trouble helping you. He usually resorted to showing you multiple times if you didn’t get it. It was during one of these that Vaunce had one of his first encounters with Vivian. He was still trying to feel out the void mana, when she walked up to him.

“Hey Vaunce, I heard you’re still having trouble feeling the void mana within. Do you want me to try to help? Maybe if i described how it feels to me it’ll help somehow”

“Sure, I honestly don’t know why I can't feel it. I can use the other types perfectly fine, but this is giving me a lot of trouble. Honestly it’s bothering me a lot”

They began to go over any possibilities that could help Vaunce begin to feel his void mana. Spending the next few hours of class trying, Vaunce started to notice the glances and looks his classmates gave him. They tried to make sure he didn’t notice, but Vaunce was used to people looking at him. Most of them were looking at him like he was a pitiful stray cat, meowing for attention and food. Some of them sent glances of annoyance and hatred his way, probably wondering how the chancellor’s son couldn’t even use void mana; despite being a noble. Vaunce closed his eyes, ignoring all of it and focusing. As long as he focused and did his best, he would eventually succeed.