As it turns out, his private teacher did indeed make his way towards Sam at a running gait. Although, running didn’t give old level 10 Dan enough credit. Sprinting was more like it, but only if you had the picture of an Olympic class sprinter in your head, because Sam imagined that his own sprints must look like Dan’s slow paced running. The mild-mannered, and even more mild-suited man stopped, as if whiplash was only the name of a movie, and without betraying any sign of discomfort at the abrupt change—or at his pace beforehand—began walking up to Sam with a bright smile on his face.

“Good day Sam. And how are you?” Dan asked him while putting his right hand forward for Sam to shake.

Mouth agape, Sam’s instincts went into action before his mind did and, by the time he was able to formulate an answer, his hand was already back from embracing Dan’s. “Did you really just run here like that? Is that even allowed?” Was the brilliant line of questioning he was finally able to serve out.

“Well, I’m not a Ruler, so flying doesn’t come with any crutches. Besides, I could hardly leave you waiting for me any longer once I knew that you were already here. That would just be a waste of time and yours is already precious enough. Good call on being here already, by the way, should have thought of it by myself, but I figured you’d still be with Sarah.”

Dan’s words rekindled Sam’s annoyance with the older man’s behavior, allowing him to start slipping back into his regular, overly critical self. “Yeah, what’s up with that, by the way?” He managed to brush off the last traces of wonder from his voice, if not face. “You found out I was all by myself, with no Sarah to keep watch of me, so you just had to bolt your way over here before I stuck a fork in an outlet or something?”

“No. I simply thought that there was no reason for you to be kept waiting for me.”

“In what world is your time less valuable than mine is?”

“In one where we’re more constrained by yours than mine. Again, don’t look so down on yourself. You are a future Ruler. There is nothing strange in me, or anyone else, placing a great emphasis on your studies.” He paused there, beckoning Sam into the building. “Might we continue this discussion in a better conditioned environment?”

“Why? You didn’t break a sweat. Your breathing isn’t even different,” Sam muttered. Still, he allowed himself to be led into the building and, once inside, made to follow Dan up to his office. “Don’t think that I forgot about you not answering me question. Both you and Sarah have been running around me like two first-time parents. And while I can somewhat accept that behavior from Sarah, you don’t have any reason to be helicoptering around me.”

“Hmm? What question was that?”

“Was it not clear from my analogy? Besides, I asked you only two questions today. You’re not being a very good teacher if you can’t remember your student’s questions. But fine, let’s say I’m willing to accept that your imitation of Tom Cruise was only as a result of you being prudent with your, my, time. I can respect that mode of thought. What I can’t respect is when an adult person wants to reach another adult person and they call a third adult person instead.”

“I was thinking that perhaps she has set on you some exercise or lesson and by calling her, I could avoid disturbing you in the middle of one.” By now they had made it to Dan’s office and he opened the door and ushered Sam inside before immediately going over to the counter and making drinks for the both of them.

“Look Dan,” Sam said after thanking the man for the glass of water and sitting down, “I’m thankful and everything for all the help you guys are giving me and all the attention and thoughtfulness. But I’m being serious when I’m telling you that it’s too much. You and Sarah are treating me like I’m a six-years-old who needs constant attention and supervision. And while that may or may not have been me at six years, it’s definitely not me now. I’m perfectly capable of being by myself and of finding my way in this maze of a campus. Where every building is clearly marked and numbered and there’s a map on every corner.”

“Perhaps you are right,” Dan said with a small sigh as he sat down with his steaming cup of tea. “I may have been over worrying about you a fair bit. But I’ve only been acting as suggested in the official protocol for being in charge of recently returned Taken.”

“I’m not familiar with it, but I’m guessing that it doesn’t take into consideration the fact that the Taken in question might not be a sniveling child but instead only a sniveling adult?” Fucking protocols.

“Fair enough.” Dan smiled while raising his cup and taking a sip of the boiling hot liquid. “I’ll try to make adjustments for that fact in the future. But I can’t promise that my attitude towards you will completely change by tomorrow.”

“’S all I’m asking for. So, leaving that behind us, may we start with the lesson?”

Dan nodded. “Happy to do so. Before that, however, so I’ll know if you’ve already begun on some subject today, what did you and Sarah end up doing? She texted me yesterday that you might meet up with the Twins?”

“Yeah, we met up with Yvessa and Felix to do a workout together. And stop calling them that, by the way, man, they really don’t like it.”

Dan smiled. “I’d wager that it’s Yvessa who doesn’t like it much more than it is Felix, no?”

“It relates to both of them, so the matter of each person’s personal dislike doesn’t enter into the equation. If a friend of mine asks me not to call him something, then I’m not gonna call them by that nickname.”

“And do you think that Felix and Yvessa are my friends before they are my students?”

“Why does that matter? Are you popularizing that nickname as some sort of a stupid lesson for the both of them?”

“Not the both of them, only for Yvessa.”

“Is that really it? You propagating that nickname is supposed to be training? If she can’t get over people calling her stuff now, she won’t be able to handle when people will call her something actually insulting?”

Dan held up his hands. “You are missing the point. It is not the name calling with which Yvessa has a problem, nor is it her part in the nickname given to her and Felix. I used that name with both of them when I first met them, before it received its current negative connotation in Yvessa’s mind. She showed no apprehension with the ‘title’ at first. Instead, it was Felix who was agitated by it. Driven as he is, he disliked the idea of someone his own age being equal to him, even better in some aspects, as Yvessa soon proved.

“But I digress. Yvessa only came to dislike this name that Sarah jokingly coined, when it began to be widely used by people who seek to point out the differences between her and Felix. What she particularly dislikes is being known as the ‘elven twin,’ as opposed to Felix being the ‘Terran’ one. Of course, if Yvessa ever approached me herself and asked me to stop using that nickname, I would hasten to do so, no matter her reasoning.”

“Huh.” Sam leaned back in his seat. “Didn’t know she never brought it up to you herself. But I’ll have to ask her myself about this before I completely exonerate you of the crime. Maybe she’s just afraid of requesting that of you. Could be she doesn’t want you to think less of her.”

“Does that sound like Yvessa to you?”

“I don’t know, I just met her today! Which is why I said that I’ll ask her myself. Just because someone appears confident doesn’t mean that they’re truly are, I should know. Besides, why are you coming down on Yvessa so hard? Wanting her to come and ask you herself to stop calling her some stupid nickname or that she shouldn’t let what other people think of her rattle her.”

“She shouldn’t.”

“OK, hold your horses there, Nietzsche. There’s always a time and a place for taking into consideration other people’s opinion of yourself. Besides, need I point out to you the difference in treatment between myself and Yvessa? While I can’t be trusted to be by myself, she needs to let other people’s derision wash over her and completely ignore it? She’s still nineteen, for Christ’s sake.”

“And she has spent all of those nineteen years being groomed and prepared for the position in which she finds herself now. Do you think this is the first time in her life that the only child of the Terran ambassador to Sarechal has had the differences between her and her peers pointed out to her? I assure you, elven kids are just as vicious as Terran ones, and noble children are doubly so.”

“That’s bullshit man, so just because she lived somewhere else, she should be callused to people calling her a foreigner? Or is it that she can’t feel bad because she’s been raised to be stronger than this?”

“Of course she can feel bad. My whole reason for continuing to use that nickname is that I don’t want her to feel bad. Either she gets over the fact that other Terrans might see her as an outsider and dislike her for that, or she doesn’t. My hope is that she does. And that she does it while still in the confines of this academy, where your mental state, and the attitude you adopt with your peers, matters less. If I didn’t know Yvessa to be made of sterner stuff, if I thought that some of the treatment she receives, even from the academy’s stuff, was to her real detriment. I would put a stop to the whole business yesterday. This is a military academy, after all. If I want discipline, I can enforce discipline.”

“So you know about her troubles from yesterday?”

“Of course I know. And were she to come to me, just like with the nickname, I would handle it. And I would not look down on her whatsoever, quite the opposite. Giving people who mistreat you what for, is the same in my book as not caring what they do and think of you, as far as mental fortitude goes.”

Sam exhaled, relaxing his hands. “Hmm… that does sound reasonable. Maybe even functionally sound. But it doesn’t compute at all with how you’ve been treating me with a silk glove.”

“Doesn’t it? Would you have a problem with being in Yvessa’s position?”

“What? Of course I would. Not one likes other people to make fun of them and see them as an outcast.”

“A little overexaggeration of Yvessa’s case, I think, but fair enough. No one likes being in a position such as hers. But would you, be as troubled as Yvessa is by a nickname where your roles reversed?”

“Probably? I don’t know.”

“Let me offer my own assessment. You would not. Your main worries have less to do with how other people view you but with how you view yourself, no? Let’s say that, for example, I wanted to ‘train’ your mental fortitude the same way I do Yvessa’s. How would I do that? Perhaps by giving you a huge workload, setting high expectations for what you should be able to achieve?”

“Yeah, except that you haven’t been doing that.”

Dan chuckled. “True, I haven’t. For a plethora of reasons. The first of which is that I know the Twins, and please allow me to call them as such because, by god, it saves a lot of time. But I know them. I know that Felix won’t break because he finds himself, for the first time, with people who he doesn’t immediately surpass. I know that Yvessa has suffered through much greater jeers in the past. You, on the other hand, I know nothing about. Not to mention that the difficulties you are faced with are of a different nature than the Twins. But, believe me, if I was sure that nothing could harm you mentally, I would be treating you just as harshly as I do them. Which isn’t very harsh, in case that wasn’t obvious. The only ‘bad’ thing I do to Yvessa’s is keep using a nickname that has lost its original meaning.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Sam took a long sip of his drink. “Fine, I hear you. But I hope that you won’t blame me for confirming with Sarah, and Felix and Yvessa, that you truly aren’t treating them harshly. And whatever the case is, I, should definitely be treated with a much coarser touch than you are using now. Believe you me, I respond best to shock therapy. I’m the exact opposite of those frogs that don’t jump out of a pot that’s being heated because someone took out their brains. Put me in a pot, and the minute I feel it getting warmer, I’m out of there. Throw me into a pot, however, and no matter the temperature, I’m staying in.”

Dan tilted his head. “Didn’t you tell Maurice a story of how you quit a French language class when you were a teenager? He said that you told him that in order to assuage his worries that if you decided in the future to quit the academy, you won’t be able to do that.”

“First, I’m not beholden to what three days ago Sam said, or a couple of years ago Sam did. And second, it was Latin. Why in all that is sweet and holy would I want to learn French? Third! I don’t have a third, but I very strongly stand by what I previously said.”

“Which part? About being quick to quit or that you didn’t really mean it?”

“About never being beholden to anything I have said or done in the past. There’s a joke to be made there about a certain set of politicians and we can even name a few, just to get the rage flowing, but you won’t get it, so I’ll skip it. What I won’t skip is this: are you seriously telling me that the stupid story I told Maurice actually affected you in how you treated me?”

Dan paused to think. “Perhaps a little bit,” he eventually admitted.

“Damn… I really need to start watching what I’m saying. Either that, or I could continue behaving in my current manner, and just tell people to never take anything I tell them seriously, unless they specifically ask me to be serious or I declare of being in a serious state of mind. Thereby putting all the onus of contextualizing my words and actions on other people. A perfect solution!”

“So, were you being serious or not when you asked me to treat you less gently?”

“I was, yes. I wasn’t being completely serious about the whole frog and pot business, however. Although I do believe that I cope better with a sudden worsening of conditions rather than a gradual one. Also, like I keep telling people today, I did go through two very heavy mental traumas in the last year alone. In fact, I was still in the middle of the first one when the second one happened.”

“That’s a reason to take it easy on you, if anything.”

“Au contraire, mon ami, au contraire. It would be a reason if was moping about and being all sad like. But as you can see, I am perfectly in control of my emotions and quite content to poke fun at the horrible situation in which I find myself in. That should show just how far the borders of my mental fortitude—or however you’d like to call it—stretch.

“I would prefer to wait for a psychologist’s official and comprehensive diagnosis regarding your mental state than simply taking you at your word. Especially considering your brain is under a unique magical influence currently.”

“Are you talking about how my brain is so hopped up on magic that even drugs won’t have any effect on me? Because if you are… you’re probably right. I’m willing to rescind my demand of being immediately put through the wringer until such time as I’m evaluated by an appropriate physician. That being said, I still stand by my assertion that I’m a perfectly capable of being my myself and that you should stop treating me like a twelve-year-old British girl in shock.”

Dan drank his tea while scrutinizing Sam. “Seems fair enough. I do recall having already agreed to that, however.”

“Yeah, but then you had to ask me what I did today, which brought on the matter of Yvessa and Felix to the forefront and from there we slid back to the matter of the treatment I receive in your hands.”

“And you never did tell me what you actually managed to achieve today from an academical standpoint.”

“Will you believe me if I tell you that for some reason all my interactions with other people today got sidetracked into different topics from what was initially intended and as a result the only lesson I had today was greatly shortened of it’s planned time?”

“Truly? I’ll have to take your word for that. And what was the shortened lesson that you were privy to?”

“Elven history, or some very abridged version of their creation myths and first civilizations, owing to a certain ambassador’s daughter’s benevolence.”

“Yes, I can see how Yvessa would make for a perfect teacher of that subject. I daresay she knows much more than is required by the academy’s curriculum. Still, seeing as how that is one of the courses for which self-study might prove relatively sufficient for you, I believe Yvessa’s time can be better spent not acting as your private instructor on the matter.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much what we agreed upon. Just wanted to get your own judgment. So what’s the verdict? Read the textbooks and if I have any questions, ask Ms. Smith?”

“That will be fine, yes. I had planned to ask one of the of the lecturers to make themselves available to you periodically, especially before the end of the school year and your exams, but if Yvessa doesn’t mind lending you her ear, then that will not be necessary.”

“So I’m actually going to be tested on history? Cause according to what I heard, they’re not really required courses in order to graduate, and seeing as I’m so short of time already…”

“Only if you don’t end up with next year being your first. Need I remind you that have the option of starting as a first-year student next year? This time with no deficit of knowledge than the rest of your year, but quite the opposite?”

“Right, but you’re still the one that gets to decide that, no?”

“Are you suggesting that I help you avoid some of the studies that every other pupil of this academy is subject to?”

“Only if they’re bullshit?”

“Is history bullshit?”

“Ordinarily no. But I’m coming to this with the perspective that knowledge of history shouldn’t be the determining factor between me staying here for a whole other year and me starting to do my part at the front in two and a half years.”

“Three and a half,” Dan said. “You are not very likely to do much fighting during your first year of deployment. You need to remember that it also counts as your last—or first—year of training. Besides, a year or two in either direction won’t matter all that much. Or are you preparing some sort of ace in the hole with which to make an impact the minute you step forth on one of the front-worlds?”

Sam cleared his throat. “Nothing of the sort. Just looking to get out there and start making my way up the ranks as soon as I’m ready.”

“I assure you. You would be just able to ‘climb up the ranks’ while studying here for another year. The only drawback to you staying for another year is delaying the time by which you might start gaining combat experience for that one year. And that is not a huge loss. Experience will come to you in time anyway, and it isn’t critical for your current phase of growth. Not to mention that getting to gain said experience from the get go isn’t even a certainty, considering your special status.”

“What? You mean I might not even get to fight because you’re afraid that I’m going to get myself killed?”

“‘Get to fight?’ Why are you so sure that combat would instill such pleasure in you?”

“I don’t. It probably won’t, but who knows? That’s not my point. I was talking about doing my part in the war effort.”

“The war effort would be much better served by you staying alive long enough to become a Ruler. But worry not, you are not going to be forbidden from fighting because of your future potential. A Ruler with no combat experience is not worth all that much if they’re intended for combat. What is most likely to happen is that you’ll be stationed at an elite unit, but one that does not carry out high-risk missions. Roughly speaking, there are three sorts of units new soldiers are deployed to. The first one is for regular recruits, the trenchies, where their lack of magical strength is supplemented with modern weaponry and high numbers. Next are the more magically inclined units, higher levels, but still the chance to spend time in the trenches. Lastly, are our elite units, or rather, elites in training. This is where you’ll be sent ”

“So what? You’re sending other people to die while keeping us future elites in reserve, only sending us on to missions where there’s no danger?”

“In a very cynical sense maybe. But no one is dying in the trenches in your stead. Manning the front is not a dangerous detail in itself; you are much more likely to die in a combat mission. But the front is unpredictable. The sector you’re stationed in might come under a heavy enemy attack. An attack that someone of your strength has no chance of surviving. The chances are slim, but they are still higher than only sending you on missions where the risk has been predetermined as to not be a threat to your life.”

“So will I, or won’t I, see combat?”

“Like I said, during your first year? Highly unlikely. But that is the same case for all academy graduates since we don’t consider you combat ready until after that extra year of training. After? Who knows… That’ll depend on your personal strength and aptitude for ground deployment. But in all honesty? If the Twins or Sarah were placed in a unit where they had a chance of dying, someone majorly fucked up. If you were placed in such a unit? That’s a fuck up on the scale of the entire service. So no, in all likelihood, you probably won’t see high octane combat in the next couple of years. But whatever the case may be, what I want you to remember is that you shouldn’t expect your time at the front to be any more fruitful for your personal development than time spent elsewhere. In another ten years, it won’t matter if you spent here two and a half years or three and a half years.”

Only we may not have ten years, Sam grimaced. “Fine. We’ll leave the question of next year alone for now. What are you planning to do with the fact that I’ve already missed the first exam of elven history, or any other of the first trimester courses, for that matter?”

“Ideally, you would be tested or required to prepare an essay, depending on the course’s requirements, on every subject of the first year before your second one. Practically? I’ll have you try and complete only those courses which are simple enough for you to do now or that are perquisites for next year’s material. But, for all the subjects that I will be teaching you personally, I will be the one to determine whether you have passed or not.”

“Putting my time with you aside. That’s still a lot of exams to spread over just two trimesters…”

“Only one actually, a month and a half is hardly enough time to have you catch up to speed on what you’ve missed.”

“Great. So that’s what? Three oral exams on the subject of elven history alone. And it’s not like I’ve had any oral before.”

Dan was either oblivious to Sam’s awful joke or, more likely, chose to ignore it. “Don’t worry, you’ll be tested for all three courses at the same time. I’ve already squared it away with administration. A single twenty minute oral exam instead of three separate ten-minute ones.”

“You realize that now it’s even harder?”

“That’s to be expected. You set yourself up on this route, or did you think trying to condense eighteen years of living and a full year of academic studying into the next couple of months would be an easy thing to do? Of course, you could always take the courses as they were supposed to be taken…”

Sam sighed while rubbing his eyes. He could already feel the dread of the upcoming challenge gathering at the old pressure points. He managed to keep his calm so far, despite the ridiculous demands being made of him, by keeping his goal posts for the future ethereal and out of his hands. Getting levels and learning how to fight were much less quantifiable goals than getting good grades.

“Guess I’m lucky that I already have some academic background to take the load off me,” Sam said with a forced smile, trying to wrestle his anxiety back down.

“Indeed. But even still, your course load remains much heavier than anyone else for this remaining half a year. And that’s not taking into account any remedial lessons that we’ll have to go through in order to catch you up with an academy entrant. There’s a reason that we’re not teaching Terran history after all. All students that wish to attend here have to pass an examination on the subject.”

“Jesus, again with the history, it’s like you’re trying to learn from the past or something. I assure you, there’s no reason for you to worry about my knowledge of history. Not Terran or anyone else’s. By the time I’m graduating, in two and a half years, I’ll know more about history than most other students. There’s no reason to worry about history. Me and history are like that.” He put his fingers together.

Judging by Dan’s eyes, he didn’t buy too much into Sam’s promise. “That very well maybe, but history, mathematics, philosophy and all the rest of the supplementary subjects are not going to be your main obstacle. Not only because you are already familiar with them, but also because, as I’ve just named them, they’re supplementary. At the end of the day, the real challenge will be combat and magic, both of which you’ll be starting from less than zero.”

“So it’s just more reason not to waste anymore time talking about learning but actually learning, no?”

Dan narrowed his eyes and made a point of sipping his tea as though he cared about its temperature. “And what will you do if it turns out that you can’t catch up to your peers by the end of the year? Will you agree with my assessment of having you repeat the first year?”

Sam snapped his fingers and pointed at Dan. “You betcha! But until then, we’re just wasting time that we should be spending on studying. And while I do love wasting time, I don’t like it when it’s being wasted on what I’ve deemed to be unnecessary meta-level discussions. At the end of the day, that just doesn’t get us anywhere.”

“Very well.” Dan nodded and took out from thin air three textbooks, one by one pulling them out of nothing and laying them before Sam. “These are for the elven history courses. They assume you know nothing of the subject matter, so you should be perfectly capable of independent study in the way we’ve discussed.” Sam took the books and put them in his bag, meanwhile Dan was quick to deposit a few extra materials on the table, yet again as if creating them from nothing. “And this is what we’ll be focusing on today. Patterns. Hopefully, in a couple of weeks, you’ll have enough basic knowledge to do some course work by yourself and I’ll be able to assign you homework.”

“Are you planning on explaining what it is you just did?”

“There’s nothing to explain, for I do not know how it works. But this”—he lifted up his left pant leg and pointed at a bronze shin guard that hung a bit above his foot—“is a Reshan artifact. It allows you to store items in it and bring them out with a simple tracing. As you can see, its storage area is much greater than the artifact’s size. But like I said, we, and by that I mean all races of the Web, simply make use of the artifacts when we find them. But we don’t know how to create them or how they work behind the scenes, so I’m just as clueless of the matter as you are.” He held his hands as if apologizing for his lack of a scientific explanation.

“No, it’s alright, I get it. It’s pretty much a bag of holding, a storage ring or whatever you want to call it. Very common trope, believe you me. A must have, some lazy authors might say. No need to explain anything more.” Mollified by the knowledge that storage magic wasn’t on the curriculum, Sam gestured over to the book laid on the table. “Let’s start, shall we?”