"You picked who?!" Velvet's eyes nearly popped out of her head. "You can't be serious!"

"Hey, I don't like this either." Her friend rolled her eyes. "But it's because of you that I had no good picks left! What was I supposed to do? I did a little research on the ones that were left and he was by far the most qualified one to actually help me. The other two barely passed their own exams!"

"Hello, ladies!" Dan smiled widely as he came up to them and put his hand around Arianna. "I knew you would come around eventually! That's why I rejected everyone else who asked!"

"Ehm...uhm..." she got flustered immediately. "Is this...really necessary? You holding me?"

He only squeezed her tighter when she asked that. "Of course it is! We need to establish a bond between us, after all! I want to know all there is to know about you, little Arianna!"

"Her and I already have a bond between us!" Velvet butted in. "She doesn't need you too!"

After much struggling, Arianna finally managed to set herself free and stormed away. Daniel watched her disappear behind the corner of the hallway. "Isn't she just the cutest?"

"What does that have to do with helping her pass the exam?" the brown-haired girl asked.

"Ah, you're one of those oblivious girls!" He grinned. "Don't worry, your friend is in good hands with me! I promise I will do my very best to please her in every way."

"Arianna is already perfectly pleased as she is!" Velvet barked. "We don't need you!"

"Hey, she came to me and asked for us to be partners." The young man shrugged his shoulders. "All I did was accept her request. If you want to be angry at anyone here, be angry at her."

This made her think. A part of her actually was angry at Arianna for abandoning her like this. At the same time, she knew that her friend simply did what she had to do. In the end, her request to Argus was still hanging in the air and they needed a partner to graduate.

"What about you?" Daniel asked, snapping her back to reality. "Who are you going to pick as your partner? Or are you still hoping that they will somehow allow you to partner up with someone from a completely different course?" He chuckled after saying that last part.

"But I...don't want anyone else," she muttered more to herself than out loud, the reality of the situation finally beginning to kick in. "I always thought Arianna would be my partner."

"Well, that's too bad." The boy that was almost a whole head taller than her placed his hand on her shoulder. "Arianna is with me now, so you should pick someone else. I bet there are some graduates from the light course that would like to partner up with a talented girl such as yourself. Talk around the hallways says you're pretty smart. And you're quite cute too, so..."

Velvet grabbed his arm and pushed it off. "What's with you and 'cute'? First, you call Arianna cute, now you're calling me cute? Looks are completely irrelevant when it comes to magic."

"You're absolutely right about that," he agreed. "However, not when it comes to picking partners. I hate to admit it, but I would much rather help out a cute girl than an average-looking one."

"Why do I get the feeling this isn't really about helping Arianna?" She cocked her eyebrow.

"Oh, maybe you're not so clueless after all!" Dan winked at her. "But no. I really do want to help Arianna graduate, trust me. Although I would be even happier if I could get her to fancy me, you know? She seems like a really nice girl to be around, not like those other rich snobs."

"So you're saying you want to be her friend?"

"Err...something like that, yes." The cheeky boy smiled tellingly, knowing that the girl he was talking to right now won't be able to see through to the deeper meaning behind his smile.

"Well," Velvet looked up at him and squinted her eyes, "Arianna did say she wanted to make more friends...so I won't really go against her wishes. But remember, I am her best friend!"

"Yes, yes, sure," he waved and turned around, starting to walk away. "See you around!"

***

The students were gathered at the backside of the academy, where the dueling ring and training arena was. Mrs. Weiss stood before them, giving instructions on the task at hand.

"We are practicing summoning today!" she announced. "You've all done it before, so you know the gist of it. What we will be summoning today are our elementals! I don't want to see any other light creatures flying or jumping around here, understood?"

"Yes, Mrs. Weiss," the students replied in unison.

"Good," she nodded. "Let us go over the theory once more for the sake of revision. Who can tell me how summoning works and what we have to be careful about when performing it?"

Lauren's hand was up immediately, but the teacher passed on her. "Someone else, please!"

She eyed Velvet at the back, playing with her adaptive staff by extending it and contracting it over and over again.

"Ah, Miss Crow! I see you decided to join us today! How delightful!"

Some of the other students giggled at her sarcastic remark. The girl stopped playing with her staff and looked up. "Yes, Mrs. Weiss," she replied. "I'm sorry for being absent lately."

"Well, I am glad that Headmaster Finkleshore managed to talk some sense into you!"

The truth was, Argus and Velvet never even talked about this past him mentioning it briefly. It was Arianna who talked her out of skipping classes. Besides, her friend was in class as well right now, so there was nothing for her to do. She decided she might as well attend.

"Can you kindly explain how summoning works to us then?" the scholar asked her.

"I can. Summoning consists of two stages that happen simultaneously. First, you cast the spell to call upon the creature you wish to summon, picturing its form and channeling your magic. The second stage is binding the summon to yourself so it obeys your will. You do that by infusing it with a small part of your soul. That soul fragment acts as a transmitter that allows you to give commands to your summoned servant. In the more advanced stages, you can also see what the bound creature sees and give orders subconsciously."

"Very good!" Mrs. Weiss clapped. "Everything you've said is correct. Now, what do we have to watch out for when performing a summon? What can go wrong?"

"We have to be careful not to put too much of our soul into the summon," the girl answered, sounding exceptionally bored. "The more of our soul is allocated to the summon, the stronger it becomes. But it also gets harder for us to control it. We can lose control of it completely if we put in too much."

"Precisely!" the teacher exclaimed. "Which is why as a rule of thumb, you should never pour more than a tenth of your soul into any summon. You also need to take care not to oversplit your soul when having several summons active at once, but that is way beyond the level you are at right now. This is something you can continue working on and learning about after you have first graduated. Remember, graduation is not the end of your journey. It is more like a new beginning. There is still so much more to learn about magic that we couldn't teach to you in these five years. We only gave you the basics. The rest is for you to uncover yourself."

Realizing she got a bit carried away, Mrs. Weiss cleared her throat and got back on topic. "Ahem...right. Thank you, Miss Crow, for reminding us of the theory behind summoning. Now let us move to the practical part of this lesson. Everyone, please summon your very own light elemental! You should all be able to do this much by now."

The students proceeded to cast the summoning spells and one after the other, beings of light filled the area, each one having a slightly different shape and form. They all took on the appearances of various animals. There were wolves, snakes, and even some birds.

Velvet hadn't cast her spell yet. She was lost in thought, thinking about what the teacher had just said about how there is still much for them left to learn after graduation. It made her feel excited about the future. So many more books to read! So many more new spells to learn! What other secrets does this vast world hold? She dreamed of exploring it together with Arianna, just like the hero in her fairy tales — Thoracc the light wizard.

"Adventure..." she mumbled quietly.

"Miss Crow? Miss Crow!" The voice gave her a rude awakening. It was Mrs. Weiss, standing before her with her hands on her hips and a not particularly pleased expression on her face. "What are you waiting for? Almost everyone else has already completed the summon!"

"Right...sorry about that," the girl apologized and turned away, clenching her staff tightly.

"Oh, light, heed my call," she started to chant, "take form and stand tall. Become my servant and obey me you shall! Light Elemental!"

The crystal on her staff lit up and a steady stream of light started spilling out, slowly taking on the shape of a woman about as tall as the teacher herself, with long flowing golden hair and a serene smile. Once the elemental was fully formed, the golden stream of light turned white. Velvet let it flow for a few seconds before pulling away, severing it almost forcefully. That last bit was her soul leaving her and imbuing itself into her summon.

Her teacher only stood there in silence, mesmerized by the woman made of light. "Oh...I see," she finally said. "So this happened."

"What happened?" the girl asked. To her, this was nothing new. Her elemental always looked like this, ever since she summoned it for the very first time.

"I'm sorry to ask this," Mrs. Weiss started, treading carefully, "but have you...lost someone?"

"My mom died when I was five," Velvet answered without a filter. "I miss her very much."

The raven-haired woman looked eye-to-eye with the golden-haired one and nodded. "That makes sense then." She glanced down at her young student. "Sometimes, elementals can take on the form of someone we love. Or someone we lost. They are infused with our souls after all and therefore reflect our inner desires. Since you've lost a parent, the elemental took on her form by using your memories as a basis. This quite remarkable when it happens."

Velvet glanced at her summon again. Truly, it did look exactly like her mother. Instinctively, she took a step forward and hugged it. The elemental hugged back and gently patted her head.

She's essentially hugging herself now, the observing scholar thought. Filling that void.

"AAAHHH!" A scream pierced their ears and both she and Velvet jumped in fright.

"Teacher! Teacher!" a student called, causing Mrs. Weiss to run frantically in that direction. What she saw was a panicked Lauren trying desperately to command her elemental that attacked the summon of another student.

"What is the meaning of this Miss Clifford?!" she shouted furiously.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"She didn't cut the soul connection in time!" the boy whose elemental was currently fighting with Lauren's yelled out.

"Elemental stop! Return to me!" the girl desperately tried to make her summon yield, but her commands were spoken in vain.

"This is exactly what we talked about!" the teacher exclaimed. "There is too much of your soul in this elemental so you lost control over it! Why didn't you follow the rules?!"

"I couldn't!" Lauren cried. "I couldn't cut the cord! It just kept sucking the soul out of me!"

The boy's elemental perished under the claws of the golden lion and dissipated, a small white orb returning to his body — the part of his soul that was infused within it. But now, with its opponent no more, the out-of-control beast went after him instead.

"Stand back!" Mrs. Weiss shouted aiming her hand at the creature. Before she could cast a spell, however, the woman made of light threw herself at the lion and tackled it to the ground. Holding its neck in an armlock, she proceeded to choke the beast until it gave way and dissipated, a larger chunk of a soul returning to the girl who summoned it.

"Return to me," Velvet spoke with a soft voice and the woman of light disappeared as well. Everyone, including the teacher, stared in silence as she walked past them and made her way back to the academy. "I'm bored now. I am going to go read a book in the library."

"She can't just leave the class like this!" a student finally shouted.

"Class is dismissed!" Mrs. Weiss said in retort. "Please dispel your elementals and meet me inside. I shall deal with Miss Crow later."

Watching the students leave, she couldn't help but wonder about what she had just seen. Despite such a small soul fragment inside of her elemental, it was so much stronger than Lauren's, who poured in way too much of it. And at this age...

"You may not be the most dedicated student," she muttered to herself, "but you surely are one of the most talented ones. Possibly even the most talented student I've ever taught."

***

"Today was a pain," Velvet complained to Arianna when they were sitting in the dining hall later that day. "Lauren was all smart again in theory, but then messed up her summon. Go figure."

"My day was pretty bad too." Her friend nodded understandingly. "We were revising transformation spells and Alex lost control of his. He went on a rampage and Mr. Redwick had to knock him out. He's in the nursery now, getting healed up. It wasn't pretty."

"You see, this is why them not allowing us to partner up pisses me off," Velvet said. "Stupid mistakes like this could never happen to us. Those are things that can happen to you in the first year, maybe in the second one, but how anyone can still manage to mess up like this two months before the final exams is beyond me. We are years ahead of our classmates even though they are all basically at least three or four years older than us!"

"That may be true to some extent, but I wouldn't go as far as saying we can make no mistakes." Her friend attempted to keep her grounded. She did have a tendency to get a bit overconfident at times and Arianna tried to counter-balance that when it happened. "We have much to learn still."

Velvet pushed an empty plate away and slammed her forehead to the table with a loud bang. "I'm bored out of my mind!" She groaned. "I can't wait for us to graduate and go exploring!"

"Exploring?!" Arianna nearly choked on her soup. "Isn't that like...super dangerous?"

"Yes! There will be caves and monsters and treasures! And we can help people with our magic just like the great Thoracc did! Oh, I am so excited! There's a whole world out there!"

Her not-so-adventure-savvy friend wasn't quite feeling the same way. "I don't know," she said, sounding conflicted. "I'm not so sure about this. I mean, seeing the world sounds nice, but when you weigh the pros and cons, I think it leans pretty much towards the 'I'd rather stay here and continue my studies at the academy' side of the scales for me."

"No way!" Velvet exclaimed, jumping up from her seat. "You're coming with me! What kind of adventure would it be without my best friend there by my side? A pretty dull one, right?"

"Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves," Arianna tried to switch the subject. "We still have to graduate first, before we decide what we will do after that."

"You're right," the other girl said to the great relief of her friend. "Let's talk about this after."

When they finished lunch, they went to their second-favorite hangout place (the first one being the bench in the mini-park in the middle of the academy complex) — the library.

"Good afternoon!" a kind and familiar voice greeted them. It was Mrs. Kalaman, the academy librarian and history teacher. "Glad to see my most faithful readers here again!"

"Afternoon, Mrs. Kalaman!" Arianna returned the greeting, while Velvet simply waved and smiled at the slender woman with long gray hair, propped up neatly in a bun. Despite her age, she looked extremely fit and athletic. There were rumors that she was once a White Knight.

White Knights were a subdivision of the Ardor army, specialized in protecting royalty and carrying out important missions. They got their name from the white horses they always rode. Nobody ever confirmed these rumors, because Mrs. Kalaman swiftly changed the topic whenever someone would ask about her past. This only made it look like the rumors were actually true, though. It seemed like she quite enjoyed this mystery surrounding her.

"What can I help you with today, Velvet, my dear?" she called after the brown-haired girl.

"I want to read The Races of Rumerra again!" Velvet exclaimed happily. "I loved it!"

"Ah, I see you're in an adventuring mood once more!" The woman laughed and stepped from behind her desk, making her way toward the bookshelves. "You're in luck! It was just returned yesterday, so you can even borrow it if you want to."

"No, that's not necessary." The adventurous girl shook her head. "I just want to refresh my memory a bit, that's all. I don't want to be hogging the book all to myself."

"And what about you?" She turned to Arianna. "More books on air magic?"

"Yes, please." The blonde girl nodded eagerly. "Advanced ones! Grandmaster-level spells!"

"Oh my." Mrs. Kalaman chuckled. "Are you aiming to become the next Argus Finkleshore? Such books are usually read by post-graduate students. And you are only fourteen years old!"

"Arianna is super talented!" Velvet yelled from three shelves away. "She's going to be the best air sorceress in the entirety of Rumerra one day, just you wait!"

"I'm...not that good." The praised girl scratched the back of her head nervously. She never really liked it when her friend boasted about her abilities to others. It made her feel like she was someone special, which in her head was simply not true. She was just a simple girl from a small village called Dorether and there was nothing special about her at all.

"I don't doubt that in the slightest!" the librarian shouted back, only adding to poor Arianna's embarrassment. "Now let's get you two what you came here for!"

Mrs. Kalaman had her library organization down to an art and only a few minutes later both girls were sitting at a large oaken table, each with their own desired book in hand.

"This is so amazing!" Velvet pointed at a carving and turned the book around for her friend to see.

"What is it?" Arianna looked up, not completely present in the moment. The carving was one of a large human with horns, clad in armor, and wielding what looked like a very heavy sword in both hands. Her friend took a deep breath.

"Did you know that a dracon's horns keep growing until the end of their lives?" she explained excitedly. "Apparently they can get really long if they reach old age! And they are more than twice as strong as humans! I bet one of them could crush your skull with ease!"

"That's...scary..." Arianna was more frightened than impressed. "But thank you for sharing."

"And jakkals!" Velvet wasn't done yet, turning a page and pointing at what looked like a human with wolf ears, tail, and razor-sharp teeth. "They can see five times better in the dark than we humans can! And their ears are ten times more receptive to sound! You could hear someone whispering in the room next door if you were a jakkal! They are also apparently extremely agile and can run really, really fast!"

"Yes, I am aware," her friend said, sounding a bit annoyed. "I've read about the races of Rumerra, what their specific traits are and we learned it in class too. Why are you telling me these facts again right now?"

"I just really want to meet all these different people! They sound so interesting! Imagine if we had a friend that was a dracon? How cool would that be? Oh! Or a jakkal!"

"You're just going to list every race there is now, aren't you?" Arianna, who already knew how this usually goes, raised her eyebrow.

"Or a dwarf! They are short but strong and super smart!" The excited girl continued as expected by her friend. "Or an elf! They have all these beautiful hair colors! Imagine if your hair was green! Or purple, or blue...or yellow! Wait, it kind of already is yellow...scrap that idea."

"I'd prefer if I can keep my hair like this, thank you very much."

"You have to promise to go on an adventure with me after we graduate!" Velvet closed her book and leaned over the table, staring into Arianna's eyes hopefully.

"I...I'm not sure." She tried getting out of this uncomfortable situation. Making a promise right now would mean she would have to keep it. There was no way in hell Velvet would ever forget her making a promise like this. But turning her down right here and now would most likely make her sad. Luckily, someone came to save her in the nick of time.

"There you are!" Daniel exclaimed happily, slapping his hands down on the table. Probably for the first and only time, Arianna was actually glad to see this guy. His timing couldn't have been better. Granted he was no knight in shining armor, but he shall suffice as an excuse to leave this conversation.

"Dan!" she feigned her excitement. "I'm glad you came! Want to do some training together?"

"Uh...sure," he replied, confused at this reaction. She was never this eager before to go somewhere with him. He decided to just roll with it and label it as a win. "Yeah, let's go!" The boy smiled, reaching out his hand.

To his surprise, Arianna actually took it and quickly guided him out of the library, waving to her friend. "See you around, Vel!"

"Oh...see you..." Velvet was just as confused as Daniel himself. Is Arianna becoming better friends with this guy than she is with me? No, she could not think like this! She should be happy for her! But why was there an uneasy feeling in her chest as she watched them leave?

Thank you for reading! I appreciate you!

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