“So, your Mom’s going to teach at Cardinal,” Armsmaster says.

Once Aunt Tamaya had said I was free to move, and we had returned home, Mom explained to me the offer she had gotten. Apparently, the previous Combat Tactics teacher had been killed in the siphon a little over a month ago, and the Headmaster needed someone to take over the position.

I knew Mom was good at that kind of thing, I’d seen it when she dissected and helped refine my approach to fighting, but good enough for the Academy?

I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised. Her skill alone couldn’t have been the sole thing to get her as far as she has.

Still it’s a strange thought, Mom as a teacher.

“Yeah,” I say as I keep up the pace. Armsmaster has me practicing switching between weapons mid-movement, using a swing of my sword to set up a punch with gauntlets equipped, that kind of thing. It’s not going as well as I’d like, the mental gymnastics required to dismiss one weapon, find the other thread, and summon the other without wasting too much mana or taking too long hasn’t sunk in yet. But I’m getting there.

“What do you think about it?” she says. To emulate a ‘high stress environment’ Armsmaster is wielding what looks like the largest greatsword I have ever seen, to the point of being a little absurd, but she holds it like she’s used to the weight of it, and it doesn’t throw her around with every swing. The idea here is that as we fight, she deliberately leaves openings I’d be able to better leverage with my other weapon, but never for long. I’ve still yet to be able to take advantage of the gaps she leaves because of how long it’s taking me to switch weapons, but I’m getting closer every time.

“Part of me’s a bit relieved to be honest,” I reply as I duck under a wide slash. My sword’s out of position, but this would be perfect for the gauntlets, so I dismiss my sword and summon them as quickly as I can. I’m a fraction too slow, though, as by the time they settle around my hands and I go to strike, Armsmaster has already skipped back and brought her sword around to block my punch.

“How so?” She pushes against the blade, sending me back, then pulls her sword up and launches a thrust at my torso. I skip to the side, switch to my sword, and strike down at her outstretched arm.

Finally.

It’s taken three hours, but I finally landed a hit.

In my distraction, Armsmaster drops her sword and rams her shoulder into my side, sending me sprawling to the ground.

“What was your mistake?”

I groan as I turn over. “I celebrated when I didn’t know if the fight had ended.”

She nods in satisfaction. “Good. I think we’ll take a break here, though. Give you time to think on what you’ve learned so far. You were saying about being relieved?”

“Right. Mom doesn’t do idleness well, you see, so I was a bit worried about what she’d do once I started attending the Academy. Now I don’t have to be.”

I remember a year back, there was an incident where she worked, and Mom had to stay home for a week or so while they fixed the damage. Two days in she was climbing up the walls she was so bored. It was really strange seeing her like that, considering she’s normally much more collected.

As I sit and talk with Armsmaster, I start running through my control exercises. Pulling my mana into the complicated twists and knots designed to help refine how I exert my control over it, I feel like I’m on the cusp of a breakthrough. Getting the threads to stop fraying when I pull them has been on my mind for days now, and I can almost, sort of, maybe tell what is actually happening there. But each time I try and look closer at it, the thread collapses.

“You need more range,” Armsmaster says, shocking me out of my frustrated stupor.

“What?” I say, dumbfounded.

“I said you need more range. You saw earlier today that you won’t always be fast enough. If you had a ranged attack you would have been able to disrupt the fire mage before he let loose. It might even have kept him off balance enough to take him down.”

“Okay, so what do we do about it?”

“Well, it’s a bit too early to start on your next weapon, so your daggers are out for now. Fortunately, we have other options. Come with me.”

She stands up, and leads me out of the room.

“The training serves our purposes for most things, so we haven’t needed any of the others yet, but for what I’m about to show you we’ll need something a little more specialised.”

“Are you going to tell me or are you going to play mysterious?”

“No need. The Armoury always keeps the two close together,” she says as she opens a door into a new room.

This space isn’t as large as the training room. It’s longer, but not as wide, and down the other end I can see some targets set at varying distances.

“I’m sure you can guess what this is for, but for formality’s sake, welcome to the target range. Now then, Stellar magic isn’t the best for offence, it’s mostly good for navigation, divination, mobility, that kind of thing. But, a focused beam of starlight in the eyes will blind most anyone, and it still hurts, it just doesn’t have the same oomph as Solar or Force.”

What? That doesn’t make sense.

Seemingly not noticing my confusion for once, Armsmaster continues, “Now, what we’ll have you do is focus your mana on a single point in your hand. Imbue that mana with the idea of a bright star, blinding and radiant, then release it with your hand pointing towards the target.”

With mounting scepticism, I raise my hand and pull on my mana, trying to focus it the way Armsmaster said.

And I can’t.

I don’t need to guess what the problem is. I already know.

Stars are more than just points of light to see by, at least to me.

Ever since I was little, they fascinated me. So beautiful, so distant, yet up close no different to the sun which warmed my world. Once I grew old enough to manage it, I’d sneak onto the roof of our home just to watch the stars. At times when my emotions ran particularly high, it was a calming sight.

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Mom bought me a telescope when I was ten. It wasn’t a particularly expensive model, but it was mine. I used to spend hours with it set up on the balcony, looking at all the constellations I could find.

My interest in the stars meant I knew full well that there was so much more to them than light.

Intense plasma, crushing gravity, blinding light. Their very deaths are one of the most destructive events in existence.

The people of Earth had known this for years, and that’s without magic to help them. So how did Armsmaster not know this, after millions of years?

I’m about to ask the question, but then I decide it doesn’t matter.

Mom said I shouldn't experiment with my magic unsupervised, but doing this any other way feels like a betrayal of myself.

I keep my hand raised, and instead imbue the mana with how I perceive stars.

A brilliant light sears my eyes, a wave of intense heat washes over me without burning, and I’m thrown back into the wall from the sheer force of what I just unleashed.

Disoriented from the impact, I lay there in a daze for a few minutes as my eyes begin to clear. Armsmaster is crouching over me, concern etched on her blurry face.

It takes a bit at first for me to realise she’s speaking, and I can’t hear her. After several seconds of her trying to get my attention, she reaches out and places her hand on the top of my head.

There’s a beat where I can feel nothing, see nothing, then it’s gone and I have full range of perception again.

And I look upon a scene of devastation.

I missed the target, I note absently, as I look at the charred wreck of the range. The blast was centered a little above and to the right of the target I was aiming at, likely because my aim was thrown from the shockwave.

It doesn’t matter that I missed, though. The crater itself is about two feet wide, but the heat and pressure scorched it’s way into everything around it with ease. The walls, floor, and ceiling are covered in burned remains, and every one of the targets were smashed to kindling and pushed to the sides of the room, burning away merrily. The crater is glowing fiercely with heat, and I can feel scorching waves radiate from it all.

“Valerie,” Armsmaster says a little too calmly, “What did you do?”

“Um,” I say, withering slightly under the intensity of her gaze, “What you said to do?”

“That,” she points to the wreckage, “is very much not what I said to do.”

**********************

It had been far, far too long since Ariel had allowed herself to enjoy flying, she mused as she soared towards the woods where Tamaya said Alex now lived.

She hadn’t been able to do it discreetly while on Earth, not while raising Valerie and doing her job there. And before that, things had begun to wind down, and flight had begun to feel like any other use of her magic.

Then Roland, and the Steelwoven Massacre.

Ariel forced herself away from those thoughts. It wouldn’t do to get distracted at this height.

This was one of the last chances she’d get to visit Alex. Accepting Roderick’s offer was obvious once Valerie reminded her how poorly she took not having something to do, but now her time was limited.

Even at her best speed, the trip out here took that whole day, and it will likely take the rest of tomorrow to return. So, she let Roderick know she would be going, and left early the morning after.

After her talk with Sophie in the hallway, Ariel had realised she had been doing the same thing. For the longest time, she’d blamed herself for Roland’s death, telling herself if she’d just woken up sooner, gotten a healer a little bit faster, he might have made it. She was kidding herself. The only reason Roland lasted as long as he had with a dagger in his neck, severing the spine even, was because of his magic.

Tamaya was a very good healer, one of the best, but even she couldn’t fix something like that.

Regardless, it had caused her to become overprotective of Valerie, whilst at the same time never letting herself become too close.

Realising this, and knowing that seeing Valerie the day after she’d been injured would cause her to lose her resolve, she left a note about where she’d gone and took flight. Valerie would be spending the next two to three days recovering, anyway.

Reckless, perhaps, but Valerie didn’t get her penchant for risk-taking from her father.

Besides, Alex deserved to hear about what happened as well.

It was mid afternoon by the time she arrived at the forest, and she could feel the mana in the air from the spring it had grown around.

She kept herself in that sweet spot between just above the canopy and high enough to catch the resident Primal’s attention as she looked about for Alex’s home.

She could handle the Matriarch, she knew. A Primal willing to let someone like Alex live in it’s domain would either be relatively young, and thus needing a service he could provide, or one of the very rare monsters willing to entertain the veneer of sociability. Manticores don’t do socialising as a rule, so it would be the former. But not only was that fight a risk too great to be worth taking, but it would leave her badly injured if she managed it at all.

Eventually, as the sun started to near the horizon, Ariel spotted a light in the forest.

She descended into the medium sized clearing, seeing a large house that Alex must have been working on for some time. To the side, a little ways off, was a building about half the size of the main house, built much more securely.

Marian’s laboratory, she guessed. Alex did like to dote on her.

As she touched the ground, Ariel returned the feathers holding her aloft to her cloak, and walked up to the house, letting the sound her cloak made as she did so act as warning of her arrival, Marian’s hearing more than enough to pick it out.

She was proved right when, before she was even halfway there, the door opened, letting Ariel see Alex Anders standing in the doorway.

Most people looked at him, with his broad shoulders, bald head, and big full brown beard, and assumed he was a melee fighter. But Alex’s favoured weapon was the longbow, and he was very, very good with it.

“Ariel,” he said gruffly, “Tamaya sent a message that you’d returned. Took you long enough to drop by.”

Ariel raised an eyebrow. “It would have been sooner, old friend, but first I had to find the place. Surely it wouldn’t have killed you to put a path?”

“The kind of people who need a footpath to find me are the kind I don’t want to see. Come on in, sun’s coming down.”

She followed him in, returning her cloak to her ring as she did. “Nice place, take you long to put together?”

“Started on the preparations for it about a year before you left. Clearing the trees, getting the materials, that kind of thing. Finished a year and a half after… you know.”

As Ariel stepped within, she was met with a cozy entrance, with basic enchanted lights and a door leading off both sides. “So this was that secret project of yours? Tamaya was convinced you were planning to build an orphanage.”

He snorted. “Tam’s convinced I’m a bleeding heart, no matter what anyone says.”

“Hmm. If you insist.”

Alex shook his head in exasperation, and walked further into the house. Ariel noticed he was favouring his left leg slightly.

“She told me about the Wraith, you know. What were you thinking, going after it alone?”

“He was being a damn fool, is what,” came Marian’s voice from the next room.

As Ariel passed through, she found herself in a relatively small dining room, with an easy view into the kitchen, where Marian was stirring a pot of stew over an enchanted hot plate.

It was easy to mistake Marian for Sophie’s sister, given how strongly the wolfblood came through in her, though if one paid attention to the details they’d see otherwise. Of the directly visible wolf traits, Sophie had inherited her mother’s ears and tail alone, whereas Marian had fur running down her back and along her arms, sharp claws at the tips of each finger, and the yellow eyes so common to her breed. Her black hair wasn’t as wild as Sophie’s, kept neatly brushed down to her upper back, and her physique, while fit, was more just to keep in shape than the result of a fighter’s build.

She wasn’t a fighter, after all.

“Not this again, Mar,” Alex sighed as he sat down at the table. Ariel took a seat as well, bemused at what she could already see coming.

She set down the spoon and turned to him. “Yes, this again. Halfstead was three days away from anyone else, and Wraiths travel slowly, if at all. You had more than enough time to bring in help, and you didn’t. Why can’t you just admit that you wanted to fight it yourself?”

“It was a miracle it hadn’t become a Nightmare already, I couldn’t take the chance it would come across some idiot on the road and tip over the edge.”

Marian gave him an unimpressed look. “If that’s what you want to keep telling yourself, go right ahead.”

“As entertaining as this is, I’m afraid this isn’t just a social call,” Ariel said, “There’s been an incident.”

Alex’s eyes snapped to Ariel, face serious, “You wouldn’t be here if Sophie wasn’t involved. What happened?”

“First of all, she’s fine. A little roughed up, but Tamaya’s seen to that already. She and Valerie were heading to the market yesterday when they were both attacked. A robbery attempt that got out of hand. Sophie fought back and Valerie helped as best she could. By all reports she handled herself in a way I can only be proud of.”

Alex may not have Marian’s hearing, but he knew Ariel well enough to notice the hitch in her voice as she spoke.

“How bad was it?” he asked softly.

“Valerie was injured. Badly. Sophie didn’t take it well.”

“And you came out here?”

Ariel shrugged. “The only reason I was remotely able to bring myself to leave was because Valerie won’t be leaving the house until Tamaya says she’s fully recovered, which will be a few days. You deserved to be told what happened.”

“She was hurt that bad, huh.”

“Yeah.”

Alex paused, and Marian returned to the stew, one ear pointed their way.

“You said Sophie didn’t take it well? How come?”

“The two have become… close. Valerie made a good impression when they first met, and Sophie made a few tactical errors when they were attacked that caused her to blame herself.”

He grimaced. “She’s always taken her mistakes too harshly. Pay attention to her mood over the next few days, if she doesn’t get any worse then she’ll be fine eventually.”

Ariel nodded.

“Right!” Marian said brightly, but a touch forced, “This is as good as it’s going to get. It’s fortunate you came Ariel, I’m still used to cooking for three, so there’s some extra.”

“Thank you, Marian.”

“Of course,” she replied, and used her C Grade Force magic to lift the pot off the hot plate. She then floated three bowls and spoons next to her, portioned some stew into each, then placed the pot on a wooden board on the countertop. Finally, she walked over to the table, laying a bowl in front of each of them and sitting down. “So, our girl’s are getting along then?”