"First," Lucas says. "We need to know the limits of your ability. Your magic never changes on its own. It only ever grows stronger through training, so it will be exactly the same as it was when you first discovered it thirteen years ago. Do you remember how to move through shadows? I'm always 'aware' of my abilities and how to use them, but with it being so long since you did, I'm not sure if you do or not."

So my power hasn't been growing all this time? That's nothing like how things work in the stories I heard when I was younger. In them, powers usually still get stronger on their own, just much more slowly than with training.

"I do," I nod. "It's not like it's in the forefront of my mind or anything, but if I think about my ability, I can 'feel' it there and how to activate it."

"Okay," he says. "Using the shadows in the training arena, try to shadow-walk as far as you can see. Since you're just starting out, you'll probably need to see the shadows you're shifting to. Don't be afraid to stand on the blocks for a better vantage point.

"When you try," he tells me. "You'll probably fail. Reduce the range you're attempting to travel by a foot each time. I'll monitor how far you traveled. Once you do, I want you to try again. Travel as far as you can as many times as you can in a row."

"What if I can only do the one?" I ask.

"That's fine," he tells me. "Can you sense your magic? The energy source for the spell?"

"No."

"Okay," he says. "You'll probably be able to once you start using your power again, though you might not be able to judge how much it takes at first, since you're new to it. You'll learn to tell over time. Once you run out of magic, we'll discuss things further, and once you're full on magic, we'll have you try again, but at a reduced range."

"Okay," I nod, then look at the field. "I should probably, uh, undress first."

"Up to you," he shrugs. "You'll end up naked either way."

Nodding, I decide to just do it now, pulling off my hoodie first, then my tee. After removing my belt, I pull off my sneakers before slipping off my socks, then I pull down my pants and blue boxer-briefs at the same time. Lucas doesn't seem to be watching me, but I'm sure he snuck a peek in while I was doing this. Not because he's gay, but because he's a guy, probably wanting to check out my build to see how he compares.

I'm skinny as all heck, so he definitely has the better build between us.

Though it's warmer here than in my apartment, a sign they have a heater, the air is still a bit cool, which gives me some goosebumps. I rub my arms for a moment, letting out a brief shiver, then stand.

"Alright," I walk over to the barrier, then notice there's no gap. "Uh-"

"Just climb over it," he says.

There's no way to do this without giving him a view of something.

"Alright," I climb over the barrier and drop down into the arena.

The floor here isn't really mats, but some sort of padded material similar to the covering on the blocks. After feeling myself sink into the floor just a little bit because of that, I look for a lower block that's cast in the shadow of a taller one.

Climbing onto that, I look around, spotting a shadow about sixty feet away. Thinking about my power, I remember how it works as clear as day. Focusing on the destination shadow, I attempt to slip through this one and into it, only for nothing to happen. Following Lucas's instructions, I start reducing the range. A few times, I have to move to see a shadow that's not much closer than the previous, eventually managing to slip through the shadow.

When I do, I come out exhausted. I can feel an energy in me now, just as he said I probably would, and there's almost none of it left. It's like I'm a sort of storage container for it, but the container can't hold much and is nearly empty. Just wisps of it left.

I have only a moment to register the magical energy within me. Then, my head spins, and I stumble for a moment, tripping backwards from the disorientation. The next thing I know, a pair of strong hands are holding me by the shoulders from behind.

"Easy now," Lucas murmurs, helping me to a nearby block so I can sit down. "The blocks and floor are padded, but it can still bruise if you stumble and fall like that."

"Thanks," I mumble, suddenly very aware of his hands on me, my heart starting to pound at the realization that he's touching me while I'm naked, even if it's just my shoulders. "I think-I think I'm good."

"Yeah," he pulls his hands away. "Let me guess – nearly empty?"

"Yeah," I moan a little as a wave of nausea fills me. "Is this normal?"

"Yes and no," he sits on the block facing me. It's a little higher up, resulting in his legs dangling down rather than having his feet resting on the floor. I'm not looking up because I'm pretty sure I'll puke if I do. "Normally, you can use up all of your energy without backlash. However, that's only true if you don't use it all at once. If you use up most of your magic at once, like you just did, well, there's backlash, which you're suffering from."

"And I'll have to deal with this every time I train?" I ask.

"Nope," he answers. "Because the next time you should push your limits, you'll have more magic and it'll probably use less magic, anyway."

"What do you mean?"

"The sick feeling will pass in a few minutes," he tells me. "And once you're back at full magic, you're going to try to step as many times as you can five feet away. You managed to go twenty-five feet, which is the current limit to the distance you can travel at the moment. It costs almost all of your magic, too."

Since he didn't say it was because of costing all of my magic, I feel like there's something I'm missing.

"If it cost almost all of my magic," I say. "How do we know that's the actual limit?"

"There's a difference," he says. "Between your range and the amount you can manage with how much magic you have. Do you still have any magic energy left?"

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"Um, yeah," I answer. "A small bit."

"So you didn't use it all up," he says. "In other words, if you could have gone farther, you probably would have, even if a little bit. The reason I'm saying that is because you were focused on going as far as possible, right?"

"Yeah," I answer.

He's right in that this feeling is clearing up, though my magic seems to be recovering rather slowly. It doesn't feel like there's much more than there was after I cast, if anymore at all.

"Because you were focused on that," he says. "The spell would have taken you to the absolute limit when you were focusing on that shadow. You only popped in halfway through it. Since you still have magic, twenty-five feet is your absolute maximum distance at the moment."

"Oh," I say. "I guess that makes sense. "If my range had cost more than how much magic I have, I would've just gone as far as my magic let me, then been empty?"

"Yep," he says. "And since you'd have used it all up at once, you'd have passed out, too."

Which explains how he knew I'd used up most, but not all, of my magic.

"Oh."

We're quiet for a few minutes as he lets me recover from the nauseous feeling, and once it's gone and the world stops spinning, I decide to speak again.

"It doesn't feel like my magic is recovering much," I tell him. "Not very fast at all."

"That's normal, to be honest," he tells me. "It'll get faster in time. The more you train your powers and use your magic, the more of it you'll be able to hold, the less your spells will cost, and the faster it will recover. All of those factors together work together to allow you to do more, even if it doesn't push the limits of each ability."

"How do we do that?" I ask. "You said I'll have more magic and it'll use less. Just that one use will increase those?"

"Goodness, no!" He laughs. "Using the ability one time, or pushing your limits one time, won't count as training. It counts as a use. That's it. To train your ability, you have to use it repeatedly, in a short period of time.

"That's where our next part of the assessment comes in," he tells me. "Once you're recovered to full, you'll be performing five-foot shadow-walks, like I said. We'll see how many of those you can do. Their cost will be much less than the full range. You can travel twenty-five feet one time from full, but that's not telling how many times you can do five feet. The cost increases a bit more than proportional the further you go. You might be able to do six steps, or seven. Maybe even ten steps, if you go at five feet."

"So I'll be training like that?" I ask.

"Yep," he answers. "Every day you train, go only five feet, but as many times as you can in a row. Once you're back to full, do it again. However, only train for two hours at most a day."

"Why?" I ask.

"There's little benefit beyond that," he tells me. "If any at all. It's like with working out your body – there's a limit to how much benefit you can get from performing a specific exercise each day. Magic works the same way in that you can only do so much to improve it each day."

He thinks about something for a few seconds.

"How devoted are you to improving this ability?" He asks.

"I kind of want the job," I tell him without hesitation. "So as much as I can."

"Okay," he nods. "Three times a week would be optimal, then. That's optimal for increasing your limits for the ability, decreasing how much it costs to use the spell, how much magic energy you have, and how quickly you regenerate it. Anymore than that, and you'd be training it purely for the skill itself. Activating it faster, moving quicker, and probably reacting as soon as you pop out. If you agree to the membership, I can work with you three times a week for the basic training, and four if you want to do a skill training."

Four times a week, training with him to better this ability? I might not be able to find someone else who can help me train this power with how uncommon it and similar abilities are. This facility is perfect for me. The cost is pretty decent and the trainer is pretty cute and knowledgeable about how this ability works, and I can't believe I just thought that him being cute was a plus to this.

Well, it is, but that's not supposed to factor in to the decision.

"Four sounds good to me," I tell him. "Do you think I'd be decent enough in a month to get the job?"

"Hard to say," he says. "It depends on their standards. That said, if you work hard at it, Kieran, they'll probably hire you. They already scouted you out when you hadn't used the ability since you were five. That means they're interested and want a teleporter, even if their range is only a few feet."

"A few feet?" I ask, and he snorts.

"Yeah," he says. "Starting out, most people with a power like ours can't go more than four to six feet as their limit. When I first started, I could manage ten feet three times, and I was considered pretty badass. You managed twenty-five feet. That's your base, which makes you pretty damn incredible, Kieran. It's a shame you took so long to start training."

"Why?" I ask.

"Because of the increases," he tells me. "A spell can improve by ten percent of the base at most in a month with training two hours a session, three sessions a week, every week. Let's say it's been exactly thirteen years since you first used your ability."

"Thirteen years and a month."

"Okay, so it's pretty close," he snorts. "At two and a half feet a month, every month for exactly thirteen years? That's a hundred and thirty extra yards you could travel. Up from barely more than eight. Over four hundred feet in total with a single shadow-step, Kieran. And chances are, you'd no longer need to actually see the shadow before using your shadow-walk in order to move to it. If you'd been training all this time, they'd probably have hired you on the spot."

Damn, I really missed out. Now I'm wishing one of my parents had found a way to train me comfortably so that I could have increased that. I don't hate them for not trying, and I can understand why they didn't. I was five and it was somewhat traumatizing, and then it was never really important.

Would the Patron really have hired me immediately? Would he have hired me sooner, if I had been training all this time?

"Sheesh," he says. "I'm a bit envious, Kieran. I can only manage about a seventy-six yards at the moment, and that's after seventeen years of training regularly. But hey – your lack of training means that I come out on top. It'll take you probably a couple of decades to match me in distance!"

I snort, amused by his cheerful tone at that. It's not malicious, just a playful poke at me.

"Yeah," I say. "So does the distance say anything else?"

"Not really," he says. "It doesn't mean you're particularly powerful or anything, just that you have a decent starting range for that particular ability. Let's say you learn the shadow whip, your version of that whip I did earlier? You might only manage a foot of it at first when the norm is four or five."

"How far could you do?" I ask.

"I'd been training with my powers for awhile," he says. "So my abilities with light magics overall were rather decent. When you train one ability, any abilities with overlaps get a little boost to them, too. At the root, they're all based in shadows, so there's an overall increase to everything, though slight. When I first used the whip, I could manage about ten feet. However, it only extended by about three-fifths of a foot each month when I actually actively trained it, which suggests that my base range was about six feet."

"Okay," I say. "Will we be training other abilities, too, then?"

"No," he answers. "Right now, you should focus on the one you know how to use. It's better than overloading yourself. I know dozens of spells, but I learned them over the course of years. Also, keep in mind that the only spells – the only abilities – you can learn will always be rooted back to the same origin."

"Shadow-walking."

"Shadows," he shakes his head. "The elemental aspect is telling there. So any spell you learn, it will have something to do with shadows."

"Okay," I say. "Do you mind if I lie down?"

"Not at all," he says. "Just keep in mind my vantage point and the tendency of humans to turn their gazes to people around them."

He's informing me that he might end up ogling me by accident. Or intentionally if I show no dislike for it. Not caring because he's cute and nice, I turn and lie down on the block, which is long enough for my head, torso, and thighs to rest on, my feet planted on the floor still.

How long will it take me to recover to full magic? I've noticed a small increase now, but it's not really that much.