On the other side, all the D-ranked teams were gathered around in a circle, with us being the last team. Mr. Beldizon walked to the center and began talking about how we did. He told us what we did well and told us about what we did wrong. He pointed out how I left the barrier and how I shouldn’t have done that. I got really sad and almost cried, but Auris hugged me and said it’s ok to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them. After that, he had all the team leaders talk about how they thought their teams did well or poorly. They also asked him questions about things they didn’t understand. At the end he told us to talk to him or Headmaster Tellus later to get our additional reward for fighting in the beast tide.

The team leaders split up all the cores their teams had collected. There were a lot, but the cores were a lot smaller than the ones I collected with Gus in the tunnels. It’s better than nothing though!

When everything was done, Auris took me to get a bath, change my clothes, and head to the cafeteria. It was so full of people before, but now it is almost empty again!

“Hello Miss Auris,” Lannie says, seeing us enter, “and Chalia,” she says with a hug. “What can I get for you two?”

“Today’s regular meal for each of us, please,” Auris replies. Lannie gives a slight bow before taking our orders back to Susan.

We take our time eating our food and talking about the day. There aren’t many other people right now, so Lannie sits at our table, quietly listening to our conversation with a content smile.

“What do you want to do now?” Auris asks as Lannie takes our dishes back to the kitchen.

“Get stronger! Save Twenty-Six!” I say, holding out my bag of mana cores.

Auris sighs gently. “Alright, let’s go to a training room,” she says before leading me through the administration building to a hallway, and finally into a small room. When we enter the room, I can immediately tell that it is very quiet. I can’t hear anything going on outside of it.

“What are we doing here?” I ask Auris.

“I will start to teach you how to refine primordial essence from mana cores,” Auris replies. “First of all, let’s take all the mana out of the cores. You won’t need to do that with enough practice, but for now it will be easier to learn with an empty core.”

I start absorbing the cores one-by-one, taking all the mana out of them. Then I condense my mana, but make sure I don’t make my mana core too small. Auris, who has been sitting on the ground beside me, looking almost asleep, opens her eyes.

“Alright, first step: separate all your fire and void cores from the rest,” she says.

“How do I do that?” I ask.

“Find all the cores that look red or purple,” she says before waiting until I’ve done that. “Ok, take these two cores.” I take the two cores she is holding. Both of them are purple, but one is a lighter shade than the other one. “Try to feel them, kind of like sensing magic. What do they feel like?”

“This one,” I say holding my left hand a little higher, “feels kind of cold, “But the other one feels kind of warm, and a little bit electric-y.”

“Good!” Auris says. The one in your right hand is a void core, while the one in your left is a thunder core. Fire cores should also feel like the one in your right hand, except just a little bit warmer. Go through your red and purple cores again and try to sort out the fire and void cores.”

I sort through all my beast cores again. I get a few wrong, but Auris helps me figure out where I got mixed up.

“Ok, now take a fire core to start with,” Auris instructs. “Hold it with both your hands and slowly move some of your mana into it, but don’t let go of your mana.”

I take fire core in my hands and try moving my mana into the beast mana core. It’s really hard! I scrunch my eyebrows while trying to do what Auris said. It is easy to push it into the core, but keeping control of the mana is really difficult once it is outside of my body. I keep pushing it in but losing control of it, and so I have to keep taking it back out of the core. I do it over and over and I’m getting better at it, but it is still too much for me.

“Ok, stop for now.” Auris tells me. I stop and then take a deep breath. I was concentrating so hard I forgot to breathe!

“It is good to work hard, but we also need to take breaks at the right time. You’ve been running all day, so let’s go to a park this afternoon.”

“Park?” I ask with big eyes. Twenty-six and the others told me about parks, but I never saw one before.

“Sure!” Auris says. “Parks are actually pretty common in most cities. I’m kind of surprised no one has taken you to one yet! I know the perfect one, let’s go!”

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“Ok!” I almost shout. Parks sound nice.

We walk out to a corner of the courtyard where there is a section of somewhat large squares. Some of the squares are empty except for people appearing and then walking out of them. The other squares have people in official clothes. People will go up to them, show their guild badge, and then the official-looking people will use some magic to make them disappear. Auris says these are teleportation platforms controlled by spatial mages.

There aren’t many people here today, so Auris and I walk up to one of the spatial mages and Auris asks him to send us to the Jade Ward. Auris then brings us to the center of the platform, which has a circle around it, and the man starts chanting something. There is a flash of light, and we end up somewhere completely different. It looks like we are in a completely different hex! It’s still kind of like a city, but very different. At the guild headquarters there was stone everywhere. There were many different kinds, but it was still just stone. Here, there are plants everywhere! And while there are still a lot of stone buildings, there are many wood buildings, as well. The HQ had some flowers and bushes and looked very nice. This place is also nice, but in a different way. There are lots of trees and way more flowers and bushes everywhere. Where the signs at the HQ were carved into buildings and painted, or created from colored tiles, the shop signs here are mostly carved wood. Oh, also, the buildings are way smaller here than at the headquarters.

Auris and I walk hand-in-hand for a while, until we get past all the buildings to a large area with a big pond in the middle. The area around the pond is mostly clear except for grass, but there are also a few trees and benches around it. The area is really pretty!

“What do you think, Chalia?” Auris asks.

“Is this a park?” I return.

“Yes, this is. It’s one of my favorite places to go when I have a little time off. The capital is very nice, but everyone knows me and treats me differently. Here most people are regular families, so it feels more relaxing. Do you like it?

“I do!” I answer. “It’s very pretty.”

“I’m glad.” Auris says with a smile while leading me to the edge of the pond. “Look here!” She says, crouching down and pointing to the edge of the water.

I crouch down beside her and look at where she is pointing. I have to look closely before I finally see what she is pointing at. “Fishy!” I yell, as my eyes open wide.

“Hahaha,” Auris laughs deeply as I flinch a little, looking around. I half-expect to get hit for speaking too loudly, but Auris just gives me a light hug and rubs my back while agreeing, “Indeed, it is a fishy!”

“Can you find any others?” She asks, sending me looking into the water for more.

“There!” I say, a little more quietly.

We spend the rest of the evening at the park. Auris points out more fish and names a few of them. As it gets later, I start getting tired. Auris sits on a bench and lays my head in her lap. She seems to be talking to a friend she has met before, but I don’t pay much attention and fall asleep. I had a lot of fun today.

*** *** ***

“Chaaalia, good morning! Time to get up, sleepy!” I am woken up by a light voice.

“S-Selaena?” I say, opening my eyes and waiting for them to stop hurting from the light in the room.

“Time for breakfast!” She calls out. I get out of bed and almost fall over, but Selaena catches me. I latch onto her.

“Selaena!” I say, as tears start rolling down my face.

“Chalia, what’s wrong?” She asks, pulling me in closer.

“It was so scary!” is all I can say.

“You did well,” She replies after waiting for a moment. “In life there will always be scary things, but that’s just another reason why life is so interesting! And it helps you to appreciate the not-so-scary times that much more. All we can do is just push forward and do our best. And you know what? That’s exactly what you did. I’m proud of you Chalia. You are doing good, very good! And I’m still here, so you can always talk to me if you need to talk.”

Eventually Selaena gets me to go with her to get breakfast. It was a little busy this morning, so Lannie wasn’t able to sit with us, but the food was really good.

Then Selaena dropped the news—It was time for school again. Last time I went to school, I almost went to this really dark place and there were these dark purple strings and everything was just way too much for me to handle, so I really don’t want to go, but I have to. Selaena said she’d come with me this time, but then I’ll have to stay by myself at school after that.

Selaena walked me to the school. She talked with me a bit on the way, but I didn’t feel like talking. I’m scared!

Finally we make it to the school the building is lock, so Selaena takes me to the practice yard, where we find most of the other students already there with Mr. Beldizon.

“Chalia! I’m glad to see you back today. We’ll try to make things a little be less exciting than last time, alright?” he says with a smile.

“Mhm,” I say, but I’m standing half-behind Selaena.

He sighs before walking around and making these weird-looking pillars appear out of nowhere. I wonder how he does that?

“Alright class!” Mr. Beldizon announces, “most of us are here so we’ll get started. Today we will practice our control over mana channeling. Now who can tell me why channeling mana is important?”

A boy with glasses and short, brown hair raises his hand. Mr. Beldizon sees him but waits and looks around at the other students before nodding at him.

“Channeling control is important because some high-level spells will not work with too much or too little mana. Also, there are many magical devices and equipment that require careful control over mana in order to work.”

“Good! Thank you Jex!” Mr. Beldizon says with a smile, before adding on, ”There are many other reasons as well, though. Probably the most important of which is that for the majority of standard spells, mana channeling allows you to use the best amount of mana—enough to do the job, but not so much that you run out of mana too quickly.

“Now for these pillars I have set out here. A few of you probably know what these are, but for those of you who don’t, I’ll explain. These are practice devices that measure how much mana you are channeling. All you need to do is channel mana into the plate in front of the pillar. As you do this, the stones in the bottom of the pillar will light up. The more mana you channel in, the more stones will light up, until the whole pillar is lit up. Now on these pillars you will see that I have drawn two lines around each of the pillars. What I want for you to do is channel the right amount of mana into the pillars so that it is lit up to that area, but not above or below. You are free to begin!”

That doesn’t look too hard, right? I guess I can try it out. There are enough pillars for each of us to practice with one at the same time, so I walk up to the closest one. My hand is shaking a little, but I reach it out to the plate on the pillar. Let’s do this!