Nia’s home was bustling with activity that night, her mother returning soon after the battle had ended.
“So, you’re telling me that you made Papa Mya handle all of the work while I was gone?” Nia’s mother sighed in disappointment as she scratched the top of Nia’s head. “Honey, I told you that you needed to work on your cardio.”
“Nothing about the fact that Nia was there too?”
“Huh? Why would I be worried about Nia. You and I both know that she could easily run from some spindly goblins. I’m more concerned about how you managed to break your arm.”
Nelson unconsciously touched his arm, which was now fully healed from the courtesy of his wife.
“The goblins attacked right while the Protection Construct was reactivating, and they made it malfunction by throwing themselves on top of it. One of the guards was thrown into me.”
“And this is why I tell you to just wear the hat that I gave you. It’s supposed to protect you from stuff like that!” Annette’s finger pointed at the frilly feathered hat that was tossed aside in the corner of the room. “Don’t you know how much that cost me?”
“Didn’t you pick that off the streets after you were out one night?”
“Mama, don’t you use that as your bucket after you drink too much?”
“Besides the point!” Annette threw her hands up, as if she was offended. “You went and did something dangerous while I was out of town, and didn’t bring the safety charm that I gave you!”
Nelson shook his head and conceded. “Sorry dear, I promise I’ll bring the hat with me whenever I go out to the village outskirts from now on.
Nia giggled to herself as her parents continued to bicker, her mother not accepting the apology because it didn’t seem sincere enough.
“And you, Papa Mya!” Nia’s mother grabbing her father’s collar as he tried to slink out the back door. “How did you get Elder Phalk so beat up? I thought you would have had it under control!”
“Elder Phalk arrived at the cave first, and went in there immediately. If I had arrived first, he would not have -”
“You’re telling me that he out-ran you? How on earth did you let Elder Phalk out-run you?”
“I…”
“No excuses!”
Annette continued to berate the men of the household for a few more hours, Nia slowly falling asleep in her arms.
---
The next morning, Nia found herself at breakfast with her mother, her father, her grandfather, and Elder Phalk solemnly looking at her.
“Are you guys going to eat?” Nia stuck her fork in some bacon and began crunching it.
She saw the heads of all of the adults turn straight to Elder Mya, who briefly flinched, and then cleared his throat.
“Nia… We had a discussion last night about your actions. You’re still a young girl, and most of us agreed that someone your age should not have been somewhere dangerous.”
Nia’s mother turned her head in defiance.
Elder Mya continued, “Your mother has decided that she will take some time off work and prove to us that you are fully capable of protecting yourself, and she offered to start lessons with other children who are willing to be taught. If you’re okay with it, could you ask your friends if they want to learn from our village’s most famous warrior?”
Nia felt a big smile growing across her face.
“Mama’s going to stay home! Mama, how long are you going to be here this time?”
“At least a month, unless work has something world-ending issue come up, I’ll just default on some favors that some mercenaries owe me.” Annette grabbed a chicken leg and started munching away.
The men silently stared at Annette and Nia for a bit, before collectively sighing and continuing with their day.
As the wise men say: like mother, like daughter -- right?
For the first part of “training”, Nia and her mother maintained a constant jog around the village to ask Nia’s friends to join Annette’s training program.
Annette claimed that it was due to Nia’s popularity in the village, but the fear of Elder Mya’s disappointed gaze ensured that they had one-hundred percent participation from all of the families.
The plump Sammy’s family was one of the hesitators. Unfortunately for him, he was the first on the list. He was completely out of breath when they arrived at the second family’s home.
Pauline was the second on the list. Peter greeted the trio at the door, and gave Sammy words of encouragement along with a cookie. Nia’s family and Pauline’s family were on fairly good terms, as their mothers had grown up together. Marie, Pauline’s mother, still told Annette to go easy on her young daughter.
“We can’t have her being stronger than her older brother…” were the exact words coming out of her mouth.
The third house was the home of James and Joey. James had a wary look on his face as his little brother and Pauline glared daggers at each other. His parents were busy grabbing a glass of water for Sammy, who was on the ground panting while Nia massaged his legs.
By the time the group arrived to Khyl’s house, his family had heard about their arrival from Nelson and prepared some morning snacks, as well an emergency Recovery rune for the overworked and overtaxed Sammy. Pauline and Joey had started arguing again at some point during the jog, but were no worse for wear.
“Alright children! We’ll be following an easier version of what I teach the soldiers back at the capital.”
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Annette excitedly clapped her hands together, before grabbing another slice of cheese to nibble on.
“The first thing that we will do every day is a light jog around the village. This will happen after me and Nia fetch all of you, in this same order. Sammy, will you be able to keep up?”
Sammy’s hand weakly rose and gave a limp thumbs-up.
“Nice! Maybe you’ll be able to get your father in shape too. I’ll make sure to grab you something nice from the Royal Market when I get around to it.
Anyways, after the jog, we’ll be going into the forest to do some basic outdoor agility training. This would involve climbing trees and hanging from trees. It’s really just working on your basic fitness, but with trees as the obstacles.
Once everyone has reached a satisfac-tree level of fatigue,”
Nia winced.
“We will move onto the next part of our training, which will involve going to the river! This one will be mostly strength based. You’ll be wading through the currents, lifting some river rocks, and doing some swimming.
Morning exercise is required, but everyone can go home to their family after it’s over. It should only take around three hours, so don’t be afraid of missing lunch!
If you want to keep learning, come by my house after lunch, and I’ll give you some basic lessons on whatever feels interesting on that day.”
---
For as long as she could remember, Nia would go out on these morning outings with her mother. At first, Nia only accompanied her mother so that she could spend more time with her since Annette was constantly busy with work. It took a few years, but Nia eventually came to enjoy the morning routines.
“Mama, how is this training?” Nia hung down from the tree by her feet, as the rest of her friends struggled to climb up.
“Oh? Training for you starts after lunch. Papa has told me all about your laziness when it comes to your studies. Doesn’t he always tell you that a smart girl is attractive?”
Nia ended up spending more time catching her friends falling from the trees, than she had time to get her own exercise in. Sammy was surprisingly good at climbing trees, but not great at hanging from them. The rest of her friends had never climbed trees before, and struggled a good amount.
The river session wasn’t much better. Nia and her mother acted as spotters for the children as they attempted to push various rocks around. Khyl in particular didn’t know how to swim, so Annette had to spend some time watching over him flounder around in the shallow parts of the pool.
It didn’t take long for all of the less physically-inclined children to all tire out, and Annette ended up carrying most of them back to their homes.
“Sorry Auntie Annette, I think I’ll pass on the extra lessons after lunch.” ended up being most of the responses from the children as she dropped them off. Sammy seemed to be the only child with enough enthusiasm to promise to come by immediately after his meal.
But even he didn’t come after his parents were horrified by his shoddy appearance after engaging in more exercise in three hours than in his entire life.
---
“Ahh, just us.” Annette stretched her arms as she reclined on the couch and relaxed.
“Mama, Papa isn’t going to be happy if he comes home and we aren’t studying.” Nia said while curled up on the other side of the couch, about to fall asleep.
“Sigh, that’s true. Did you see anything yesterday that you wanted to talk about? I know that was your first time seeing an actual fight.”
Nia’s stomach briefly churned at the thought of the goblin splatter, before pushing it out of her mind.
“Grandpa Phalk made some weird noises before he did some weird explosion thing and green light thing. Does Mama know what those noises were?”
“Weird noises? Could you try and copy how they sounded?”
“It sounded kind of he was choking on some candy and trying to find some tea to drink it down.”
“Oh. He was probably using incantations. That stuff is weird, I never bothered looking too much into it.”
Nia pulled herself up from the couch, the appearance of a new word piquing her interest.
“Why do I have to learn all of the weird squiggly lines if I can make weird sounds to do cool stuff? It looks way easier and faster to just go bluhgluhfuhhuhnuh!”
Annette laughed at her daughter’s sudden outburst of awkward noises, and pulled over the black board standing in the living room.
“Anything that involves Mahana is like dealing with a fussy bunny. Sometimes if you give it the right treats, it’ll let you pet it. Other times, it’ll kick you away and run off.”
Two stick figures appeared on the black board. One of them had a circle around them, while the other had its arm out, with squiggles that looked like fire coming out.
“There are two main methods of invoking the weirdness that is Mahana. One is when you attempt to use the natural Mana that already exists in the world. This is basically Papa’s constructs and whenever you see the glowing glyphs and sigils. It’s the basis of written Mahana.”
Annette tapped on the stick figure with the circle around him. She took a second look, and drew some fire-y blobs surrounding it.
“The second one is when you use the Mana that exists inside you, and throw it outside your body. You have to tell it what to do, and it’s way more dangerous since you’re dragging something that’s supposed to stay inside, outside.”
The fire squiggles became more exaggerated.
“The weird noises that you heard Grandpa Phalk make were most likely incantations that were shaping his Mana into doing the things you saw. It’s pretty draining, I’d say casting one incantation is the same as doing what we do in the morning for 6 hours straight.”
Nia got up from the couch and took the chalk from her mother’s hand, starting to doodle more curves and lines around the existing inferno squiggle.
“What’s the difference between Enkt and incantations? They seem to both involve using your internal Mana and doing something with them outside.”
Annette raised one of her eyebrows, before turning to the black board and erasing the contents on it.
“Grandpa Phalk told you about Enkt?”
“Yep.”
Annette sighed in disappointment, and redrew the two stick figures. This time, one of them held a box in their hands, with arrows cycling between themselves and the box. The other one had their hand pointed at a box, the fire squiggle making its reappearance and hitting the box.
“I wanted to teach you about Enkt first, but I’m sure Grandpa Phalk did a decent introductory job. The biggest difference between Enkt and incantations is the uniqueness of your internal Mana.”
“Grandpa Phalk told me his meant he was going to be a great Elder!”
Annette wrinkled her nose at the comment.
“Internal Mana is an extension of your personality and being. I’m sure Grandpa Phalk was joking about it, but ‘being a great Elder’ isn’t a quality that your internal Mana can have. If I had to guess, I would assume that his internal Mana’s temperament is somewhere on the Domination affinity.”
“What’s Grandpa Mya’s internal Mana?”
“His internal Mana’s temperament got a special label from the King… I think they called it Tranquility of the Forest. Wanna guess what it does?”
“Does it mean that he’s really calm like a forest?” Nia tilted her head to one side at the easy question.
Annette gave her daughter a weary smile and sighed.
“It’s actually a misnomer to confuse his potential enemies. Grandpa Mya’s internal temperament is actually extremely chaotic. I’m sure you’ve noticed his temper before.”
Memories of shattered tea cups, boulders, and trees followed by Grandpa Mya’s strained smile fluttered into Nia’s mind.
“The most basic technique for Enkt is focusing your internal Mana around your eyes so that you can see what’s going on. This is also the first step of finding out your specific type of affinity.”
The blue hue in Annette’s eyes gradually became replaced by an ominous dark crimson. Nia gave her a few impressed claps.
“I haven’t looked at you with these since your birth. Your internal Mana’s beautiful silver color hasn’t changed a bit, which is good. That means you haven’t gone and done anything stupid while me and Papa weren’t looking.”
Nia happily received the pats from her mother.
“Are you interested in learning how to do this?”
“Yep!”