Sam bid goodbye to Carl Pines and prayed against hope that they won’t meet again anytime soon. His heart could only take so much. And while Carl proved to be a nice enough bloke, acting so open and courteous with the plebs could only lead to trouble in the long run. Besides, weren’t three—hopefully close—friends more than enough for a person with as stunted a social grace as Sam? Did he really need to spend energy on fostering more relationships than he already had? Especially with third years like Carl, who weren’t going to make an appearance once the year ends.

It’s like the famous saying goes: Better to make sure that you don’t shit on the three apples in your hand than climb up the three and risk shitting on all the apples. And speaking of apples… Haven’t had one for the longest time. Will have to keep a lookout next time I’m at the fruit stand. They’re probably not extinct.

He quickly made his way to Dan’s office, and once inside, settled down once again with the glass of cold water to contrast Dan’s steaming cup of tea. “How was your morning session with Lin?” Dan asked.

“As good as can be, I suppose. Considering he has to teach me how to fight from scratch and I’m well below the level of physical fitness he’s used to working with. Managed to avoid stabbing myself, so that’s a plus.”

“You’ll find yourself up to snuff in no time, have no worries. Did he finalize a weekly schedule with you?”

“Yeah. Three days a week, at morning before breakfast. At least while I’m not working out two times a day. That’s fine with your own schedule, I hope?”

“Quite fine. A load off my mind, if you will. And with that, I believe that your daily schedule for the next three months has finished taking shape.”

“Oh? What’s it like, studying from dawn till dusk and maintaining an unhealthy sleep regimen?”

“I’ve made up my mind to fully take up the mantle of your personal tutor for this year, and possibly the for parts of the following. This will include instructions on every topic that I deem too essential or difficult for you to study on your own. Luckily for us, there are no such subjects on the first-year curriculum that I feel less than adequate in being your teacher. This statement of mine might be less bold once we move on to the myriad of second and third year subjects. But hopefully by then you will have sufficient knowledge base to integrate with the student body at large. Provided we are still aiming for you to start at year two.”

“That is still the plan, yes. Is your schedule compatible with it?”

“It is certainly not incompatible. I feel confident in saying that whether you make it in time will depend solely on you.”

“That’s all I’m asking. So what are we studying together and what do I study alone?”

“Some of that will depend on you and on how you find the material. But I will surely be instructing you in: Magical theory, which, at the basic level that is required of you, is not as hard as it sounds, but it’s best to make sure that you have no shortcoming in this subject. Tracing, gathering and patterns, as we’ve already begun. Sculpting, once you hit level one, we’ll dedicate some time to as well. Not just the basics before it splits off with imprinting, but nothing more than two or three weeks of study. But that’s next year, most likely; same as imprinting. And muddling, which is not an actual course, but rather a series of individual sessions aimed at helping cadets with the process. Epirak study, of course. And perhaps some theoretical instruction in personal combat and battle tactics, we’ll see. Anything else, you’ll hopefully be able to study on your own, and I, or another teacher, will provide only supplementary help. If you manage our own lessons together well, your own studies, and your training with Lin, then you should be covered in everything major that a second year needs to know.”

“What are my chances of doing that in your mind? And be honest.”

“That’s a tough question to answer when you’re not going to believe me if I give you good chances. But you are going to if I give you bad chances, which would only help in demoralizing you.”

“No. You should have answered, ‘one-hundred percent, Sam.’ None of that of pointing out my of my flaws bit, thank you very much. Yeah, I wouldn’t have believed you, but that would have left me no worse off that I am now. That’s what we in the biz call Pareto Efficiency.”

“That’s not what Pareto Efficiency means.”

“Maybe not. But if you squint really hard, then it’s similar enough. Anyway, one-hundred percent, right? Great. Let’s get on with today’s lesson, then.”

Dan held his hand up. “Just a minute. I haven’t finished yet. My plan is that we keep the routine that we’ve already begun to establish. Meeting every weekday after you have had breakfast until we break for lunch, and then back until dinner, more or less. In the event that I am not able to be present for our lessons, I will try to find you a suitable teacher in my stead to cover the day’s lessons. This shouldn’t prove to hard, but if I am unable to do so, then you will use that time for you independent studying instead. I don’t want to hear that because I was away; Sarah had to skip one of her classes to teach you.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t going to ask her for help.”

“I know you weren’t. And now, Sarah has no excuse if she wants to cut class in order to help you.”

“Gotcha. And what about the stuff that I’ll be studying on my own?”

“I’ll accompany you back to your room after we finish today’s lessons and we’ll go over all the books and under which subjects they fall under. I’ve already sent you my proposed lesson plan for what to learn each day for the next three months. Not including Saturdays, of course. That’s your day off.”

“Imagine that I don’t want to take Saturday off. Should I just skip ahead to Sunday’s materials instead?”

“That’s up to you. You won’t find me advocating for you to spend every day of the week studying and training. I’m legally not allowed to do so.”

“There’s no way that’s true.”

“Feel free to check it on your rest day. Again, I’m not allowed to tell you what to do on that day.”

“Than what about my session with Lin?”

“That falls under the exemption that allows the academy to hold free-for-all combat classes on Saturday. And if you told him that you don’t want to train on Saturday, then that would have been that.”

“There’s no way that no students spend their Saturday’s studying.”

“What the academy’s pupils do on their own time is none of the academy’s business, so long as they aren’t breaking any laws, military or otherwise.”

“Oh, now I get it. It’s along the same lines of the military giving you an assignment before bed that’s due tomorrow. You were given your six hours of sleep—or how many that they have to give you—so it’s not their fault that you used that time to complete your assignment instead. In other words, what you’re saying is that I’m free to do fuck all on Saturdays the same way I’m free to repeat the first year.”

“I’m not saying anything of the sort. Plenty of cadets use their day off solely for leisure. What I am willing to say, is that I’m glad you are finally beginning to have more confidence in yourself and your abilities.”

“Huh?” Sam squinted. “How the hell did you infer that from anything that I said?”

“Because you seemed so sure of the fact that you will be able to keep up with the daily schedule for independent studying that I prepared for you. So much that you even considered using your day off to skip ahead. That’s very ambitious of you, if I might say so.”

“Right… Ha, ha. You know, you could have just come out and said that I’ll have to use Saturdays to make up for what I didn’t manage to cover. There’s no one else here. And even if there were, it’s not like they were going to do something to you.”

“Sam! I’m astonished. I expected more of you. Is fear of a reprisal the only reason for a person to be lawful in your opinion? Is adhering to the law not the right thing to do by itself? What would Socrates think of you?”

“Wow… bringing up old Criton himself. Very nice. Do you want my rebuttal to be directed the flimsiness of the social contract that you’ve forced upon me or do you want me to focus just on the question of lawfulness as justice? I can do both, but I’ll have way more fun with the first one.”

“I think that it’s high time we’ve returned to our lessons. But feel free to write me your objection in your time off. Say on Saturday maybe?”

Sam barked a laugh. “You know… Ever since you’ve finished my schedule, all ten minutes ago, you’ve been way less uptight with me than before. Change back please.”

“I want to us to start moving on from the basics by the week after the next. Actual gathering techniques, more complicated tracing, those sorts of things. Now, in my opinion, we should start today with tracing as well. Saves me having to refill you at the end of the day.”

“Yep. The old you was definitely better,” Sam muttered, but his heart wasn’t really in it. He was happy for Dan, who was finally freed from the constant anxiety he had when he was busy preparing a plan that would allow Sam to move on to year two. And yes, it didn’t make much sense that Dan was more relaxed being the one completely in charge of Sam’s education rather than just the one who was making plans for Sam’s education. But that’s what people are like. They don’t make sense. Except for Sam, of course. Sam made sense. It’s just that sometimes the sense that he made wasn’t rational in the least. But no one’s perfect. No one but a certain general’s niece, at least. A statement that he was already sure was going to become the butt of many a joke uttered in her best friend’s vicinity.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Sam spent the rest of the morning following Dan’s instructions on tracing. It was still very much the same thing that they did yesterday and the day before that, but at least he was getting better at it. So that was something, right? Now, how many days until he was as good as a sixteen-year-old?

Tracing practice was soon over with and they parted ways for lunch. Dan apparently had something that he needed to do, so that left Sam alone once again with the task of securing sustenance for himself. Luckily, this time, he was left unattended all throughout the meal and the path to it and back. Which unfortunately meant that he would have one less complainant to make to his friends once he met up with them for dinner.

Back from lunch, he had to wait a couple more minutes for Dan to return from whatever it was that occupied him. Wasted time that he only dithered on for two minutes before deciding to use to practice gathering. Some successful cycles later, he heard the office door opening and opened his eyes once he heard the thump of the cup on the desk.

Soon, they were once again engaged in the lesson. Although it was even less of a lesson than tracing was. Dan just having him repeat the same exact exercises from yesterday. Sam finished the session mentally exhausted, not having been offered even a single break from Dan and not daring to ask one for fear of letting himself down.

“You did well today,” Dan told him once they were on their way to Sam’s room. And Sam was not ashamed to admit that his shoulders squared up a little as a result of the compliment. Once they made it to Sam’s room, Dan quickly ran him through each of the textbooks and where they fell into the suggested schedule that he had made for Sam. Sam was also so very incredibly happy to see that the schedule only started from next week, which meant that Sam had a whole two days in which to get a head start on the material. Joy.

And indeed, proper studying would have to remain for tomorrow because he was already running late for his dinner appointment and he very much doubted that he would have any energy left to study once he got back from working out. And so, it was with a heavy plop, and an even heavier sigh, that he finally settled down next to his friends at mealtime.

“Oh! Thank god you’re here!” Felix cried in overexaggerateed concern. “We were just about to run out and start searching for you. Where have you been?!”

“Had to go back to my room first. I sent Sarah a message that I was running a little late.”

“No! That can’t be! Because that would mean that Sarah would have had no reason to be stressed and take out her phone in order to call you… No reason, at all.”

“I was just checking the news,” Sarah objected with squinted eyes and a slight blush.

“Oh yeah? Anything interesting happening?”

“None that would interest you.”

“There’s no way that’s true, considering what just came out a couple of hours ago out of Pyllan. You just weren’t actually checking the news.”

“Yes I was! I just didn’t think that you were interested in that.”

Sam leaned in to whisper to Yvessa. “What news came out of Pyllan? And is he talking about the capital or just the empire at large?”

“The capital. The surrogate of the heir apparent and his husband’s has given birth to a child. There is actually a lot of drama surrounding the story, but it isn’t that important, geopolitics wise.”

“It sounds important. Doesn’t that mean that the kid is going to be emperor eventually? Or do they have older siblings already?”

“He doesn’t. And that’s where all the drama comes from. But it doesn’t have anything to do with who will be the next emperor. The Empire’s succession isn’t as straightforward as that. In fact, the heir apparent is that in name only, he’s not even a Ruler so there isn’t a chance he’ll be chosen as the next Emperor.”

“Got it. Will you give me the juicy deets while we’re working out?”

“I can most certainly try.”

“What are you two whispering about over there?” Sarah broke off her argument with Felix to frown at them.

“Nothing dear!” Sam drew back. “We were just talking best methods of imperial succession. I argued for the post Golden Bull Holy Roman Empire while Yvessa was all for—really, you should have heard her passion—adoptive succession the likes of which can be found in the Five Good Emperors.” He then laughed uproariously. “And you guys know me and what I think about those guys, so I’m sure that you can guess what I was saying.”

“No.” Yvessa shook her head. “We’re all ears.”

“Dammit Yvessa.” Felix’s voice cracked. “Don’t encourage him! Did you already forget yesterday morning?”

“So the problem with the so called ‘Five Good Emperors’ is that they should really be called Four Good Emperors. Why? Because they most certainly aren’t called the Six Good Emperors. That’s because number five in the list: Marcus Aurelius, every wannabe stoic’s favorite Roman emperor, didn’t abide by the precedent set before him and made his biological son emperor by default. Which proved disastrous once he was no longer around to rein him in. So, shouldn’t making such a critical mistake, a mistake that he had plenty of precedents to learn from, cause us to reconsider our position on dear old Marcus? Making him not a ‘Good Emperor’ as advertised? And therein lies the rub. Because the minute we disqualify Aurelius from his acclaim, then we must also disqualify the emperor preceding him, for the same reason that we did Marcus Aurelius, thus—”

“No we don’t,” Felix said.

“What’s that?”

“No we don’t. You’ve made two different assumptions there. Even if the guy you’re talking about isn’t a good emperor because his heir was a bad emperor, that wouldn’t mean that the guy before him wasn’t a good emperor. Your first argument was that picking a bad heir disqualifies you from being a good ruler. But in order for you second claim to be true, you must also argue that picking an heir who isn’t good also prevents you from being a good ruler.”

Yvessa nodded. “I agree. There’s a difference between the two. And I since I wasn’t necessarily convinced by your first argument, I don’t see how you’re going to convince me to the second.”

“OK guys,” Sam said. “I get it, I get it. But what you need to remember is that our relationship will work much more smoothly if you guys just take everything I say as the grain of truth and just nod your head along with it. You can even clap if you feel that I’ve spoken extra eloquently. This whole bit of checking my logic is going to get real old real fast if you’re going to do it for everything that I say.”

“You could always try not saying everything that comes to your mind,” Felix suggested.

“Ooh boy. If you think that I just blurt out my every errant thought, then I’ve got bad news for you, friend. This”—he pointed to his head—“is a heavily censored printing press. It double checks everything that’s brought to it before it releases it out into the world. You would like me even less if I just said everything that I thought about out loud. That bit with the emperors that you’ve just crudely rejected, was a long thought about and formulated historical opinion.”

“Also, in Sam’s defense,” Yvessa said. “It’s not what we were actually talking about. While you two were busy arguing, I was informing him of the major sounding yet probably ultimately insignificant news to come out of the Empire.”

“Wait, something actually happened?” Sarah asked. “I thought that Felix was just talking out of his ass.”

Felix smiled. “Not this time I wasn’t. I’ve been following the imperial family drama for a couple of years now. So believe you me when I say that I know what I’m talking about.”

“I was wondering how you knew about that,” Yvessa said. “You’re not usually the foreign news kind of guy. Or even just news in general.”

“The news is generally less entertaining.”

“So what happened?” Sarah asked. Yvessa gestured Felix to take the lead, and he began to speak in length about why the recent birth was so worthy of his attention. Even Yvessa was surprised by the breadth of his knowledge on the subject. Perhaps because her knowledge of it stemmed from a professional pursuit, while Felix’s stemmed from the enjoyment he derived from learning about the personal lives of total strangers. Apparently, most of the drama resulted from the fact that both the heir apparent and his husband weren’t enthused about the prospect of child rearing. And since the imperial dynasty demanded many progeny, there was inevitable friction created between the two and the family as a whole.

Once they were done with the meal and on their way to get their exercise in, Sam couldn’t hold himself back anymore and turned to Felix. “Just remember mate: That next time you try to complain to me about speaking too long on some such subject, that you spent a whole ten minutes talking about the different possible meanings behind a newborn’s name. And you didn’t even come to a concrete conclusion.”

“Well there’s just so many possibilities! I barely even mentioned the fact that Taran’s mother wasn’t born in the Empire.”

“Which one was Taran again?”

“Are you kidding?! We’ve just talked about this! He’s the husband!”

“They’re both the husband.”

“Ugh! He’s the low-born one, the painter!”

“OK, OK… But which one of them’s gay?”

Felix raised his hands in defeat, which prompted Sarah and Yvessa to laugh. “So how was your morning session with Lin?” he changed the subject. “Got you ready enough for me to kick your ass without embarrassing you too much?”

“You’re working with the assumption that there’s some level of awfulness that would embarrass me to display, when there just isn’t. I’m completely immune to being embarrassed by my shortcomings.”

Felix laughed. “But seriously, how’d the training go? You gonna be good enough to work out now? Cause I know from personal experience that Lin works his pupils hard.”

“I’ll manage… hopefully. I’m still walking with you guys, right? If I didn’t have any hope of moving my legs in a run, I’ll have been moving them back to my dorm. Got a whole bunch of books that I’ve got to read now.”

“Dan finally finished with your schedule?” Sarah asked.

“More or less. He seemed pretty sure of himself, but I imagine that in the long run, there will be a couple of changes from his initial framework to practice. Here’s hoping that it’s not because I won’t manage learning all that stuff on my own.”

“If worse comes to worst, we’ll help you. Right guys?”

“Wouldn’t it make more sense for Dan to force one of the teachers to instruct him?” Yvessa asked.

“What she means to say is that we’ll be more than happy to help if we can,” Felix said.

“No I didn’t. We’re studying the same stuff that Sam is and at the same time as well. If there was a subject that you or I were struggling in, then the first thing we would have done is ask for help from the teacher.”

“Was that a humble brag saying that she’s acing all of her lessons, or was that just unintentional inference?” Sam asked.

“I wouldn’t put it past her.” Felix shrugged his shoulders and was only midway through the motion when Yvessa interrupted it by shoving him.

“f Sam needs our help, then we’ll help him,” Sarah said, and she made it obvious to all that that was that.

“In the end, it’ll turn out that he doesn’t even need our help and by our third year, he’ll be the one helping us.”

“Like that’s going to happen.” Sam laughed. “I’m not going to waste my precious time helping you guys. What am I, some kind of chump that likes to help his friends?”

“What if I want someone to explain to me in excruciating detail about what some bullshit that happened a hundred years ago and doesn’t even matter?”

“Then I’m your guy! And hey. I wouldn’t be doing that just for anyone. I’ll only do that because you’re my friend.”

They had to cut end their conversation at that point, as they had just reached their destination. Sarah ran Sam through some warm-up exercises, noticeably easier than what Felix and Yvessa were doing, before she set him loose to run his designated number of laps according to her already familiar instructions. She stressed to him that if he was struggling, then it was fine to take it a little easier today because he had already had one strenuous exercise today. In the end he managed to complete the full course, no easing necessary. He wasn’t sure whether it was Sarah’s encouraging comments that he barely heard over the din of his music. Yvessa’s look that said that he was going too easy on himself when he caught or eye. Or Felix’s middle finger, that he extended to Sam with a smile every time he lapped him. That kept him going all the way to the end. It was probably a combination of all three.

Nah, fuck that. It was the fact that he wasn’t in that much of physical pain and the thought that if he couldn’t manage this than how would he manage saving the world that really kept him going. But his friend’s gestures helped.

Whatever the case may be, it was with a tired grunt, an even more tired body, and somehow a still more tired mind that he finally crashed onto his bed when it was time for sleep. The rest of the night after parting with his friends, having been spent on reading the same textbook from yesterday and the day before. He was too tired to look up the schedule in order to open up new avenues of study. He ended up not cultivating though, after all, there had to be something for him to feel bad with himself at the end of the day.