As Lia came to, she stared at a white ceiling. At least it was one without a crack in it. Someone had put her into a comfortable bed and had removed her academy robes. Blushing and slightly panicked, she looked aroud. She seemed to be alone, and her robes were on a chair nearby. To her left was a broad window in the same style as the one in her dorm, which begged the question whether this was also just an HTV installation. The scenery of a tranquil ocean with clean sapphire blue water answered her question immediately. A palm swayed gently in an unseen and as virtual a wind. Even though she knew that it was fake, it helped her feel calm. When she turned her head, her view was blocked by a white curtain.
She slowly sat up and pulled the blanket aside. The fresh air felt good against her clammy skin. Pulling and pushing on her white shirt repeatedly, helped her to cool down. Could someone lower the thermostat a little? Maybe the increased temperature had been her fault again … She remembered that she had destroyed the training disc, somehow. She thought in that moment, that the damage was confined to that little device, but she couldn’t be sure. Though why had she passed out all of a sudden? And why was everyone else fine with controlling their energy? Why was she the only one having so much trouble?
Her thoughts were interrupted by the curtain being pulled away. She quickly grabbed the blanket and pulled it up to conceal her upper body. The flimsy white shirt didn’t really hide anything. A woman in a white robe with short pink hair stood on the other side of the divider and looked at Lia. Her eyes were wide and her mouth stood open slightly. It looked as if she was surprised at something. Not knowing what it was that she was surprised at, Lia looked past her. The rest of the room was slightly bigger as her little corner, painted in sterile white. A comfortable looking couch stood in one corner, a small table, and in the other there was a holo display, showing the body of a young girl. It had the wrong colors and was slightly translucent, but it showed … everything. Was that her? She blushed furiously and pulled the blanket a bit higher.
“It seems the drain wasn’t as bad as I thought,” the woman murmured, and set something back on the table. Had that been a syringe? A cold shiver ran over her back, despite the heat.
“How are you feeling?” the woman pulled a chair closer and sat down next to the bed, one leg crossed over the other.
“To be honest … mostly embarrassed,” Lia admitted. “Other than that, maybe a bit hot?”
The woman reached out and touched Lia’s forehead. “Well,” she said after a moment, “you have a slightly increased temperature, though that is normal. You somehow managed to overtax your magic reserves and your body is currently working to recover a base level of magical energy.”
Lia blinked slowly, lowering the blanket a bit to get more cool air. “Base level?” she asked to get clarification.
“Yes,” the woman answered and crossed her arms. “You have been born with one or more pools of mana. Because it is a part of you, it is also like it is your blood. If you suddenly loose a lot of blood, you’ll fall unconscious; the same is true for your magic. Using too much mana at once can be very dangerous and may even lead to … death. Another analogy would be that you exhausted both your body and your spirit. The effects usually differ on the pool that has been used up. A fire donar usually starts to feel cold, and may suffer hypothermia. A water donar feels dehydrated, although they aren’t. The ones possessing a spirit pool and overtaxing that usually fall into a deep depression. So … do you feel any sadness or hopelessness?”
Lia shook her head. “No … as long as I’m not expelled for destroying things all the time,” she murmured.
“Don’t worry about that. We’d never throw a Donar with a big mana pool out. You’re neither expelled nor are you in trouble,” she said and smiled. “You’re not the first one that simply overwhelmed the protections carved into the practice stone. Others have done the same and the station dissipated the energy. But we never expected someone with a very big spirit mana pool. Everyone on the station saw a flash of light, and several people were arrested after lashing out, because of a sudden burst of frustration.”
That made her feel worse, and she tried to hide more beneath the blanket.
“So … what now?” Lia asked timidly.
“We’ll train you much more carefully,” came the answer, and she leaned back to fetch a pad from her desk. “As I said, others managed similar feats. This happens every four or five years.” The pink haired woman shrugged and tapped a few times on the pad. Then her movements froze for a few seconds. “Okay, this might get more complicated than I thought.”
“W… What’s wrong?” Lia held her breath. She remembered that spirit magic was much more regulated than the other kinds. She didn’t dare move. Maybe she had broken some kind of law that she hadn’t been told yet.
“Nothing we can’t work with,” the woman shook her head. “Though your situation is more unique than I thought. Usually people with large mana pools only have access to one color. I hadn’t expected you to be able to access four colors.”
“Sorry,” Lia murmured.
“It’s not something you can change, and we just have to work around it somehow.” She put the pad down and looked Lia directly in the eyes. “You usually don’t feel your magic, right?” Lia nodded in answer. “Good, and when you started to feel frustrated, you suddenly had this ball of energy, correct?” She nodded again. “That’s good. That means your situation is similar to the other cases. We can simply test out whether their methods will work for you.”
“O… okay.” She felt relieved. Though part of her still felt like a freak. How many more times did she have to learn that she was different from all the others? It was as if some unseen force wanted to really rub in that she knew nothing at all about magic. Even though back home she was the self-styled foremost expert on it. Not that anyone had cared back home. The moon societies simply had to do without magic.
“Don’t look so grim. We’ll get this under control. Just give me a moment,” she said, tapped a few times on her pad, and held it up to her face. “Ah, Mister Leda? Could you come to the infirmary really quick?”
“Of course, Miss Joy,” came the answer. It was a soft-spoken, friendly male voice.
“Thank you,” Joy said, then tapped on the pad again, and put it back on her desk. She turned back to Lia and narrowed her eyes. “Now, listen closely,” she said, the friendly demeanor from before evaporated, just like that. Lia felt intimidated all of a sudden, and nodded. “There is a theory to why you can’t feel your magic, and that is that it is simply too big. Where others have started to feel their mana, you haven’t had the chance, as it is woven into every cell of your body. You’ll experience an advanced technique between Donar: You can share energy with one another, push it into each other’s body. You are not to do this on your own. You’ll not even try. This is a technique that you’ll learn in an advanced class, because you can seriously injure another Donar with it. Do you understand?”
Lia nodded a few times, gulping hard.
“Good. Mister Leda will use that technique to help you feel out your own mana pool, so you’ll be able to use it just like everyone else.” Joy leaned back, and her intense gaze softened once more. A smile returned to her face. “Fortunately for you, we have someone with a big air mana pool. Mr. Leda should be able to guide you through the process, since he’s done that a few times already.”
Lia blinked, then blushed slightly as she realized what she just told her. She was supposed to have air mana. Which meant she had gotten at least another color of hers wrong. But which one? Moon had been correct, the other was air. Which ones were the other two? What would happen if she accidentally showed a fifth one, just because she misremembered?
“Is something wrong?” Joy asked, and her hand touched Lia’s forehead. “It seems like your temperature is going down. You’re recovering your mana awfully fast … Maybe that’s a sideeffect of having more than one color,” she murmured.
“N… no. Everything’s fine.” Lia answered and shook her head. She couldn’t tell her that she’s forgotten her colors. After all she was supposed to only be able to use the ones she had. So there was no point in having to remember her colors. But … she had to. She and Orphelia couldn’t make mistakes here.
“Anyway,” Joy said, got up, and put the chair back at the desk in the corner. “You should get dressed.” With that she closed the curtain.
Lia sat there for a moment. She had painted herself such a nice picture of a magic school, only to find that it was not at all what she thought it would be. She wasn’t even the one that could throw fireballs around like in those stories. She got up and began to dress slowly, pulling the robes once more over her head. They could easily run out of mana and die, they couldn’t just create effects. Magic was just … very different from what was told in the stories, and even those she had seen on HTV made it look far more spectacular than it was. She … felt stunned by that. Magic felt far less useful and yet mages were still very respected. She felt like the main character in Full Metal Mage, when he noticed that it was impossible to bind a dying spirit to a golem body made of metal. When he noticed the first time that magic wasn’t all that powerful. When he stood before a problem and realized for the first time that he didn’t know anything. With each step from thereon he learned more and more limitations, and found ways to overcome some of them, but in the end … the realization was that the more he knew … the dumber he felt. She was now on that way down herself … and it felt awful.
While doing her buttons and making sure that the robes fell without any creases, there was a chime. The door opened with a gentle hiss, and a voice announced: “I’ve come, Miss Joy.” She recognized the voice of Mister Leda, who she heard stepping into the room. After another hiss of the door he asked: “What can I do for you?”
“I need you to teach a student,” Joy replied, and pulled slightly at the curtain. “Are you ready, Lia?” She looked inside as if to make sure she could expose the girl to the man’s eyes.
“Yes,” Lia said, casting her thoughts and doubts aside for the moment. Maybe she really had those side effects Miss Joy had talked about. She opened the curtain fully and stepped forward.
“I see … so, you are an air donar as well,” the newcomer concluded. He was rather handsome with angular features, light blue hair, and light blue eyes. He wore a robe that looked similar to that of Ludwig when had fetched her from the dock. The colors were inverted, white instead of black, and the trim was light blue instead of gold. It reminded her of the academy dress code. So they kept this division even after leaving the school …
“Among others,” she replied, feeling some kind of hopelessness.
Leda raised an eyebrow, then looked at Joy.
“She indeed has more than one color,” the pink haired woman admitted, “so she is an unusual case.”
“Wouldn’t that contradict your thesis?” he asked.
“Sort of,” came the answer and she shrugged. “I might need to make a few adjustments to that. I hope you can help me with this. Just tell me what you’ll find out, working with her. I’ll be counting on you.”
He sighed, and shook his head. “Lia, was it? I’m Paul Leda. It’s nice to meet you.” He offered her a hand. She hesitated a moment, then took it. It was as big as her father’s, but far softer. He still had a pretty strong grip. He looked into her eyes and held onto her hand for longer than usual. His touch felt strong and yet also like a gentle breeze. Lia felt awkward. She wanted to pull away, but couldn’t.
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“I see,” he said after what felt like almost a full minute, and let go of her hand. “Come with me.”
Lia shivered and looked to Miss Joy. That behavior had been creepy. Far too creepy. Should she really just follow him?
“He knows what he’s doing”, the woman replied. “You are his third student, and the other two have turned out great.”
The hiss of the door made her look around. Her new teacher had already left through the door, and she hesitated until Joy simply pushed her outside. “You’ll be fine, as far as I can tell. Still, I’d like to see you tomorrow.” With that the door closed behind her and she had to follow Mr. Leda.
The corridor had crystalline walls, and she could see the busy main floor of the station through them. She watched the people down there walk past another, argue or barter or whatever they were doing while she followed the man without saying a word.
Paul Leda stopped in front of door that looked exactly like every other door they had passed until now. Only a small pannel next to the door marked that those were his private chambers. The door opened with a hiss, and she gulped as he walked inside.
Taking a deep breath and soothing her nerves, she followed him inside. The short entrance opened up into a comfortable little room. In the corner was a patch of sand with a few cacti inside, next to it stood a large black sofa in front of a dark table. On the other side of the table stood an armchair in the same style as the sofa. His window, or HTV, showed a mountain region. There were two doors that led deeper into his apartment.
“Take a seat,” he said and pointed at the sofa. She slowly walked over to it and watched him rummage in a drawer. As he turned he had a disc in his hands, one that looked awfully close to the training disc she had wrecked. He sat down next to her and put the stone disc on the table. She could see sapphire blue lines forming an intricate pattern on top of the disc. The pattern was made out of triangles, that formed a ring on the outer edge, almost like a ring of little arrows pointing at one another. The triangles were intersected with a line each that was in itself part of a large polygon. Inside of that was another polygon and even more triagles that seemed to form some kind of whirlpool in the center. The longer she looked, she seemed to see even more triangles. The fractal nature of it made her head hurt and she looked away from it.
“Let’s begin,” Mr. Leda said and held his hand out to her. She worked through her hesitation and took it. “Close your eyes,” he instructed, but she hesitated. He stared at her for a long time, then sighed. “Look, Lia,” he said, “Magic is something that needs a lot of trust. Some can work around it, but the more trust a pair of mages has with one another, the more they can do. If you want to learn, then you first need to learn to trust me.” He waited for her to close her eyes, but when she didn’t, he added even softer: “I won’t do anything to you. You’re the age of my daughter … and I’d do anything to protect her.”
Lia stared at him for some time longer. He didn’t say anything more, and after a while she started to relax. Finally, she found it in herself to close her eyes.
“Good,” he said. “This will help you to focus on what I’m doing. I will now push some mana against your skin, and your task is to examine the feeling.”
Lia felt … something … like a warm breeze that caressed her … no it wasn’t her skin, it was something else, just below it, something that was still a part of her. If she’d had to put it into words, then it was a caressing of her soul.
“Can you feel it?” her teacher asked in a whisper. “Can you feel my mana pressing against yours? Like a second skin?” She nodded in answer to his question, and it took all her will power not to pull away right there and then. “Good. Next you have to try and grab that thin layer with your mind.”
She wasn’t quite sure what he meant by grabbing that layer with her mind. Was that even possible, to grab things with your mind? She felt herself frowning as she concentrated on the feeling. Then, she simply imagined grabbing it. In her imagination it slipped several times out of her envisioned fingers, but the more she tried, the more she felt … something grasping at her magic skin … and then, she had it firmly in her grasp. She experimented with pulling at it, pushing it around. As long as it was on her skin, she could move it freely, but she couldn’t push it into her skin … or pull it out. That simply didn’t work, it was as if there was another barrier that held it back when she pulled at the mana. Still, it felt like progress and she started to smile.
“Good, hold onto that,” Mister Leda said, and she felt his fingers withdraw from her hand. There was no gentle breeze pressing against her skin anymore, though she had lost track of that feeling as soon as she managed to grab onto her magic.
“Here, hold the disc,” he said and pressed the cold stone into her still open hand. As she concentrated on holding the stone, she lost the grasp of her mana. That second skin was … gone. There wasn’t even a sore spot on it. Nothing that hinted on where her skin ended and her mana started … or vice versa. She opened her eyes and frowned at the disc in her hands.
“It’s not easy to hold onto it, is it?” he asked. Not chiding, not angry or amused. It sounded more like stating a fact. “As a mage, even a donar, you need to learn to hold several things in your mind at once. You’ll also need to find a way to access your mana pool whenever you need to,” he explained, his hands cupping hers. “Now, let’s try again.”
Lia took a deep breath, then nodded slowly. Just as she wanted to put the disc back on the table, he held her hands firmly. “No, keep it there. It might be easier for the first time, and I want you to get a feeling for your mana, for how it flows. How you can control it.” All she could do was nod. He was the expert, and a part of her started to trust him.
She closed her eyes again and concentrated on the touch of his fingers against her skin, then the gentle breeze that she felt where they touched. A gentle breeze where there shouldn’t be one. It helped her grasp her mana, at least one task that this time took only three times.
“As soon as you have a grasp on your mana, move it toward the disc, and push it into the stone,” he instructed. She wondered for a moment, how she would be able to push it into the stone, with that unseen barrier in the way, but as soon as the energy touched the stone, it flowed freely. It was as if there wasn’t a barrier between her and the stone. It flowed freely, like a thin stream of water … or air. Then she felt even more change. The air itself began to move, and she opened her eyes. She could see wind tugging at her robe, caressing her fingers … Had she just invoked magic?
The wind died as fast as it had started, and she was left there, staring at the disc in her hands.
“You need to learn how you can keep concentrating while doing other things, or any magic you and your partner evoke, will die before it reaches fruition,” Leda said. “But it is good progress for your first time. Now we’ll simply have to keep practicing these things.”
She felt a smile blooming on her face, and nodded. This felt at least like she was making progress, and wasn’t such a freak anymore.
***
A few hours later, Lia had not only manage to grasp her mana at the first time, she also had finally an idea where the gossamer thin film of her power began. It did help that there was now a clear gap between her energy and her skin, something that, according to Leda, was normal. She was expending her power after all. It was also a sign that her mana regeneration was either faster than they all thought, or she hadn’t expended as much energy on her accident. “Think of it as a lightning bolt”, he had said, “it is a lot of energy in a very short amount of time. These discs are made to convert that energy over a longer period of time. It probably had a defunct limiter circuit.”
She simply shook her head, and wasn’t sure what to think about that. With her head feeling as if wrapped in cotton, that was no wonder at all. Her thoughts felt a lot slower, as if they were wading through molasses.
“I think we should stop for today. Working with magic is exhausting for your mind. You need to train with it, and it gets easier.” He smiled, took the disc and put it back into the drawer. “Now, let me bring you back to your room.”
“Th… thank you,” she muttered and pressed her eyes shut. For a moment she feared that she’d collapse if she moved just a little, but that feeling passed with a few minutes rest. She’d lay down in her room. And then sleep. Or pass out. Or … something. She got up and nodded to him. “Let’s go.”
“Sorry, it seems like we overdid the training,” he said as they stepped out onto the corridor. “You seemed to learn quite fast.”
She ignored his words and nodded, then followed him. If he said anything else, she didn’t hear it on the way through the maze-like corridors of the station. If she tried to remember the way, then all she got was a blur. There was no way that she would have found back to his room, or the infirmary. She wondered if she had to remember. Miss Joy wanted to see her again. Maybe she’d come and fetch her.
But more importantly, she could now learn with everyone else. In class. Like a normal student. One that didn’t stand out. Standing out too much just lead to trouble. And to that all she could say was: No thank you.
“Here we are,” he said suddenly. She stared at the door to her dorm room, and tried to shake some of the cobwebs out of her head.
“Thank you.” She remembered her manners and turned to look at him.
“No problem,” he said with a smile. “I’ll see you in class, tomorrow.”
“In … class?” she repeated, not quite grasping what he was saying.
“Yes, I’ll be observing you for a day or two. You might have trouble finding your mana tomorrow, so I’ll be there to assist you, if neccessary. Other than that, just pretend I’m not there.” With those words, he knocked at the door.
Pretending that he’s not there? That there is someone standing behind her in class, marking her as someone that needs special attention? No way that she could simply pretend that he wasn’t there!
As Orphelia opened the door, he said: “Make sure that you get plenty of rest tonight,” then walked away.
Her green-haired dorm-mate looked at the retreating back of Mister Leda, then grabbed Lia’s hand. “Lia! By the empress! Are you alright?”
“I … I’m alright,” she half-lied. She could fall into bed right that moment. “Just … overtaxed my mana … they said.”
“That’s dangerous!” she gasped. “So you recovered?” Orphelia pulled Lia into the room. The girl didn’t wait on an answer, as she continued: “We were worried. Well, some of us were worried. And none of the Impera know about this, so you can relax.” She stopped a moment, then sighed. “Well, for now.”
Lia sighed and sat on her bed. Most of the words Orphelia said entered one ear, and somehow found their way through all the cotton, to exit the other. All she wanted to do was sleep. So she started to strip out of her robes, more on autopilot than actively thinking about what to do, which resulted in not-folded clothing. That was something for Future-Lia to worry over.
“But those discs are really cool,” Orphelia said while sitting on her bed and kicking her legs. “I wonder if they can make some that allow us to work magic on our own! That would be soooo cool! And we wouldn’t need any Impera! Than we would be the celebrated class!” Lia simply nodded. She didn’t want to think about that right now. “Hey, you missed them measuring the size of our mana pools with the disc”, Orphelia continued her one-sided conversation. “Mine is the second largest in the class, John Rhea is first.”
A sudden knock on the door stopped Orphelia’s tirade. Her roommate got up, and frowned slightly. “Who could that be?” she wondered and opened the door.
“Mister Leda instructed me to bring Lia something to eat,” the voice of Miss Sao complained. “Make sure that she eats at the desk.” Orphelia took a tray from their instructor and walked over to the desk. “And just so we’re clear: This is an exception,” Sao added, before closing the door.
The smell of the food made Lia’s stomach growl. So she got up and walked to the desk to eat something before bed. Somehow she hadn’t noticed her hunger. She started to eat, which soon devolved into shoveling the food into her mouth.
“Woah, slow down,” Orphelia commented. “Didn’t you have any lunch?”
Lia shook her head slightly. Leda and her had made a pause while training, but all she got then had been some soup. So she kept at it, until the food was gone. The faster it vanished into her, the earlier she could sleep, after all.
“Say,” Orphelia said, after Lia had finished her food, “What really happened?” Her tone had changed from chipper and walking all over her with words to something … serious. “What you did there wasn’t just you overtaxing your magic,” she said. “All the donar’s in class saw a flash, whether they looked at you, or not. They all felt your frustration. And I’ve heard that this wasn’t confined to our classroom.”
Lia sighed and shook her head. Miss Joy had said something similar. “I … had hoped that I could ask them to swap out spirit for something else,” she muttered, then walked over to her bed.
“That’s not happening. They won’t change the records, because you don’t like a color,” Orphelia answered. “And now that everyone in class knows … it’s become impossible.” The girl shook her head and sat on the other bed. “So, what really happened?”
“I … I don’t know,” she answered with a sigh. “I … just was frustrated, and overwhelmed the disc … and overtaxed my magic. They said I have a pretty large mana pool,” she admitted and slowly laid on her bed, pulling the blanket up. “Mister Leda also said, that the disc’s limiter circuit was probably faulty.”
“A large mana pool? Welcome to the top three then,” Orphelia answered. “That means not every Impera will be entitled to boss you around. They have a certain limit on mana they can handle, so, anyone that is below our capacities …” Orpheila smiled. “It’s really nice to know that we do not have to listen to anyone we can simply overwhelm with our wealth of mana.”
Lia sighed and tried to find a comfortable position to sleep. “It still feels like another consolidation price,” she said, and closed her eyes.
“Yeah, I understand.” Orphelia answered. “But at some point, if consolidation prizes are all you’re getting, you need to make the best out of them.” Orphelia pulled her blanket over herself. “And just look at it this way: If you get enough consolidation prizes, you’ll have a normal prize.”
“And yet, it doesn’t feel the same,” Lia answered and turned around. “Good night.”
“Good night,” came the answer, then the command “lights out.”